Antinuclear

Australia’s Aborigines still being deceived out of their land – but they are fighting back

the main advocacy that we’re focusing on of course is still land rights. … Aboriginal people feel that they are still being deceived in terms of land.

Q&A: Aboriginal rights then and now  SBS World News Q&A between Michael and SBS Online Producer Chiara Pazzano 28 JUN 2012, 40 years on, the last surviving founder of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy says Indigenous Australians are still being deceived over their land.
Michael Anderson is the leader of the Euahlayi people of northern New South Wales and the last surviving of the four founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.

Since that historic moment in 1972, he’s been a high-profile fighter for Aboriginal rights, but in a new interview with SBS for NAIDOC Week, he says while much has changed, Indigenous Australians are still
being deceived over their land……

Question: What are the main things that the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is advocating for now?

Well, the main advocacy that we’re focusing on of course is still land rights. Gary Foley coined the phrase that native title is certainly not land rights and most people now have adopted that slogan, but Aboriginal people feel that they are still being deceived in terms of land.
But we’re also arguing quite clearly now, that the sovereignty aspect
– and we’ve been to England in the last 40 years and more recently –
and found documents and ordering counsel from Queen Victoria during
her reign in 1875, where she said, by ordering counsel that ultimately
was written into an act of British parliament, that she did not claim,
as the monarch of England, sovereignty or dominion over the Aboriginal
people and their places in Australia.

Now, we’ve looked at all the laws and that’s never been superseded by
another ordering counsel. Those acts have been taken off the public
record, but in terms of them being taken off the public record, the
law that was established is still very much in vogue today and still a
dominant force in the legal system and political system.

And that’s what the embassies now are pushing around this nation. It’s
become an organic movement, sovereignty movement, through the
embassies and the embassies are a representation of this fact. And
that’s what people are doing now, and beginning to assert their
sovereign rights and say to the Australian Government, ‘Hang on a
minute, we never ever ceded anything to you, so we’re still there.’
And Aboriginal people are taking the initiative in this regard…

June 30, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL