Antinuclear

An Aboriginal call for true leaders, not government stooges

Ngiyani-ga nganbinganbi baluwaal miinba-y nginu-ngay, giirr wangaarrama-li! (We are in this together, never allow yourself to be beaten).

Enough is enough – It’s time to act by supporting the call for our true leaders The Stringer by Dr Woolombi Waters October 19th, 2014 The national call by community leaders Tauto Sansbury, Geoff Clark and Michael Mansell among others for a National Summit of legitimate First Nations leaders has the potential to change a generation. We are talking of the same influence of the Freedom Marches back in the ’60’s, the establishment of the Tent Embassy in ’72 and the Bark Petition in 1963.

But it will only change a generation if we embrace this movement as our own and realise the time for change has come. We can all be a part of history or we can continue to be victims of history. By calling for a National Gathering we are not excluding any people who share in the very real concerns of our mob, our identity and our Culture.

Very few will be given the opportunity to change history during their lives but by each and every one of us standing together we can start a movement to overcome … as together we work towards change.

We have all been called to the same stomping ground and it has come time to act.

At times we all feel physically and emotionally exhausted having to repeat ourselves not only daily but for decades. Together we have been providing answers to our own problems but been ignored by government over the generations as we have found ourselves going around and around in circles.

And the source of our frustration and disempowerment continues.

Look at the way people embraced the Recognise campaign, a movement which is proving itself to be little more than a government-sponsored removal of grass roots autonomy and Indigenous governance run by White Australians.

And the way our people flock to the Rugby League Knockout where whitefellas are again sponsoring teams and making money off inflated food prices and entry. It’s time to reclaim our identity and take back the power of our collective.

As stated over and over again, the Prime Ministerial Indigenous Advisory Council is not only an embarrassment to the First Peoples but it is an insult.

The one thing these uptown blackfella’s who run side by side with the government have never been able to do is call the mob together – we just don’t come. We didn’t vote for ATSIC, we refused to vote for the National Congress and that will not change.

The one thing that hasn’t been tried in all this time is a return to Traditional Aboriginal Governance and kinship systems that would respect autonomy within the many Aboriginal nations within Australia.

There was a great opportunity provided by the 1963 Bark Petition presented to the Federal Parliament in an attempt to get the recognition of our autonomy and self-governance prior to colonisation and even though the petition was successful to a degree in that it did lead to a Royal Commission and Land Rights it was never accepted as a form of control and autonomy under Blackfella Law.

Land Rights instead came in under a foreign law where the whole process of control was given to Lands Councils funded by government that eroded Indigenous customary obligation to the point that when a second bark petition was handed to then Prime Minister, John Howard in 1998 he was able to completely ignore it.

That second petition now collects dust as academics and politicians argue that we no longer have connection to our own organisational structures, and mainstream media paints us as child-molesters and woman-bashers.

At what point do we wake up as a community and realise that government is working against us, not with us? The two greatest myths created in this generation was that we are welfare dependent, and that you can only change the system from within it.

Those myths created a managerial class enabling a generation of Aboriginal people through welfare. Then, as if these strategies didn’t cause enough division we are now labelled as child-molesters and woman-bashers. What’s next … extinction?

You may laugh but that’s what is happening with our cultural practices and ceremony as they become victim to enforced cultural amnesia with white government refusing to fund remote schools or allow teaching of bilingual Aboriginal languages knowing full-well this action is destroying traditional communities.

I stated above the 1963 Bark Petition was an opportunity for change and change happened all right … but not in the way we intended……….

Once again we need to get together, otherwise we are complicit in our own genocide. We are living in a period that can be identified with a new Indigenous capitalism that appears to have triumphed over Indigenous-owned community governance. This has led to a decline in Indigenous cultural nationalism and the practice of our own ceremony and autonomy……….

the white man’s government is the same one that undermined the Aboriginal Land Rights Act and refused to build infrastructure and provide resources to Local Community Councils……..

in order for it to work, there has to be some common ground that’s shared. We now have to establish that common ground in reclaiming this as our land and the Whitefellas must show respect for our legacy as the oldest living Culture in the world……..

Ngiyani-ga nganbinganbi baluwaal miinba-y nginu-ngay, giirr wangaarrama-li! (We are in this together, never allow yourself to be beaten).http://thestringer.com.au/enough-is-enough-its-time-to-act-by-supporting-the-call-for-our-true-leaders-8873#.VEV0k2ddUnk

October 21, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history