The intervention rolled into the Northern Territory like an unseasonal storm.
That's how some Territorians who lived through the policy – formally named the emergency response – remember its arrival, 15 years ago.
John Daly, a remote community resident from Nauiyu, was the Northern Land Council's chairman at the time.
"When you look at the intervention, it was based on a report – this wasn't the response [the authors] wanted from their report.
"Why basically ride in there and take away the rights of every traditional owner and Aboriginal person?"
In north-east Arnhem Land, Djambarrpuyngu clan cultural leader Lapulung Dhamarrandji remembers residents from Milingimbi fleeing to neighbouring homelands and communities out of fear.
"To us, it was like there wasn't any blue skies around us, it was covered with thick grey clouds – when the intervention came, it was like that," he said.
"The fear inside us all, I mean we are parents just like you people you know.
Accompanied by the military, Commonwealth public servants flew into the NT's remote communities in 2007.
They conducted compulsory health checks on children and put up signs about new financial penalties for breaching alcohol and pornography bans.
Then came welfare quarantining through a basics card and the demolition of an existing remote jobs program that was, according to some observers and locals, having success.
While John Howard's government oversaw the intervention, Labor leader Kevin Rudd did not oppose it and his government later tweaked and took intervention-based policies forward in the form of Stronger Futures.
This month, Stronger Futures quietly ended, wrapping up a controversial chapter in Australia's history, despite some policies remaining in place under different legislation, including compulsory income management.
Mr Daly likened the political strategy around the intervention to the use of the "boat people" phrase years later during the 2012 federal election campaign.
"We'll get another term of politics if we bring the black football out of the cupboard and start booting it around the political football field again," he said.
Leeanne Caton quit her job over it.
"They just smashed the Aboriginal community."
Ms Caton, a Kalkadoon woman who grew up in Darwin, was herself a Commonwealth public servant at the time.
She said she resigned after being asked to escort bureaucrats from Canberra around remote communities.
"You know what? It was worth it because I could sleep at night," Ms Caton said.
"Then I thought about how I was going to pay two mortgages after that. It didn't matter."
Ms Caton, who now chairs peak advocacy body Aboriginal Housing NT and is Yilli Rreung Housing's chief executive, said politicians still needed to "build their capacity" to work with and listen properly to Aboriginal people on the ground.
The intervention was said to be a response to the final report of the Little Children are Sacred inquiry, which examined child sexual abuse in remote communities.
The authors of that report had made it clear remote residents should be "empowered" and given support to find their own answers to health, housing and social issues in their communities.
They advised against one-off government interventions at the expense of community-driven change.
The NT's Australian of the Year Leanne Liddle, an Arrernte woman, government lawyer and former police officer, said she witnessed the opposite.
Ms Liddle was working in South Australia's APY Lands at the time.
She said men started crossing the border into SA, fearing they would be branded paedophiles in the NT.
"They had no idea except that they'd been told they'd been labelled as child sex offenders – good people, honourable people, and there was this blanket labelling of Aboriginal men," Ms Liddle said.
"I worry that messaging is still on the table, [the whole story] hasn't been told."
Nauiyu resident and former school principal Dr Miriam Rose Ungunmerr Baumann was the NT's first Aboriginal teacher and last year's Senior Australian of the Year.
She initially supported the intervention and was the only remote NT resident on the federal government's taskforce in 2007.
"We were all excited thinking that, wow, it's going to be really good for the communities throughout the Territory – in that a lot of the things that we're having issues with, they're going to listen to us and fix," she said.
"Nothing happened."
Ms Ungunmerr Baumann said the intervention was at best a "talk-fest" and later a heart-breaking failure to listen to people on the ground.
"You're hearing more organisations throughout Australia [today] asking, how do we work better with the First Australians?," she said.
"And I say, you're asking me that now?"
From her perspective, changes to the remote jobs program during the intervention caused the most damage, coupled with an NT government decision to merge local councils and remove local assets like machinery.
"They just took everything from us, they sacked everybody, they gave our jobs to people from the outside," she said.
"There's been a lot of young people from that time up to now that don't know what it is when it comes to working, there's nothing here for them," she said.
Ms Ungunmerr Baumann now wants the message about listening to finally break through.
"This is a good community," she said.
"If the government wants to do something to support and help make communities better and talk properly to find out what the needs are, come and sit and talk and listen.
Mr Daly said pleas for more investment in jobs and support for local leadership to boost role models for young people had still not been properly heard.
"The government nipped that in the bud when they brought the intervention in," he said.
"Now we have a situation out in our neighbouring town of Wadeye where we have a massive problem out there at the moment.
"Nobody knows how to fix it – well you can't fix it, government can't fix problems like that, communities need to fix it and it's the community that needs to sit at the table."
Mr Daly said this meant reaching out to men and women with knowledge of their own communities.
"They can keep sending police officers out there, police planes, to lock more blackfellas up but it's not going away," he said.
"It's because they're not listening to Aboriginal people on the ground."
He said his message was for all levels of government.
"Create something for the future generations," he said.
"Because if you have a look at conflicts around the world, if you continue to just push things in a corner and hope they just disappear and go away, bad things come from models like that.
"Make it worthwhile, that an Aboriginal kid can strive to be a Prime Minister or strive to be something."
