Why should Aborigines be expected to celebrate Australia Day?
A national day of shame January 24, 2013 The Age, Peter Gebhardt Australia Day stands as a reminder of massacres. Why should Aborigines celebrate it? “….What might an Aboriginal person say of Australia Day? Why should the Aborigines celebrate that day? It was the day that marked the theft of a land (terra nullius), the day that marked the theft and abduction of a people, of a culture, the day that initiated the pathways to the Stolen Children and, to our ultimate shame, the deaths in custody. It is a day that stands as a reminder of massacres. The wind-stench of bodies burned in bonfires hangs heavy upon the nation’s conscience and in the clouds.
This is not some John Howard ”black armband” view of history, rather a white man’s whitewash. You can shuttle history, but you cannot shuttle facts. It would be a great Australia Day if it faced honesty, historical facts, abandonment, hypocrisy, shelved superiority and embarked upon an exercise of spiritual empathy rather than religious hubris.
Let’s meditate upon this quotation from an editorial in The Argus newspaper on March 17, 1856. I wonder what Howard and Keith Windschuttle would make of this?
”We never listened to a discussion in the Legislative Council which more strongly stirred within us the sentiments of a bitter indignation, than that which took place upon the sum placed on the estimates for the Aborigines. We have long held the opinion that as a people we are guilty of the basest meanness and dishonesty in our treatment of this unhappy race. And that impression was most vividly freshened by the scene we refer to – by the contemptible sum which the present occupants of this colony award to its original possessors [and] by the indecent levity by which the whole discussion on the subject was characterised. These poor wretches have evidently few enough friends. It is only fair to devote an hour to the pleading of their cause.
”It would seem that never does the white man … appear in a more thoroughly despicable light, than in his dealings with his less civilised brother. He takes possession of the land as a matter of course. He alters water-courses, drives off game, fences, clears, and cultivates, tears open the very bowels of the earth, and walks away with uncounted wealth, while the original occupant of the soil, not only looks helplessly on, but sinks, contaminated by the new vices, and wasted by imported diseases, into premature extermination. And we – a Christian people – God-fearing, magnanimous, intelligent race – with a history to look back to, and a character to support – stand quietly by, and do not feel the disgracefulness and sin of such a position!…… ”We assert that under present circumstances this country has been shamelessly stolen from the blacks…. We, the people of this colony, occupy in this instance, the position of cheats and swindlers, and we do not deserve that the land should prosper with us, which has been so dishonestly come by.”
In the light of the news about Australia’s seat at the United Nations, it is sanguine to recollect what John Pilger said in his article ”Fighting for justice when your skin’s black” in The Age on October 4, 2012: ”No country since apartheid South Africa has been more condemned by the UN for its racism than Australia.”
Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone – an Aboriginal puppet and show pony for the Australian government?
Michael Anderson condemns Peris-Kneebone “steamrolling” Dubbo, central NSW, 23 January 2013 – A prominent Aboriginal sovereignty campaigner has condemned Prime Minister Gillard’s choice of former athlete, Nova Peris-Kneebone, for the Northern Territory Senate seat.
“I do not have confidence in her ability to stand up for and fight the hard fight that is coming our way,” writes Michael Ghillar Anderson in a media release.
“Ms Peris-Kneebone is only being used as a public relations exercise for Labor.
“After all, what role has Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone played in fighting the hard political fights that we are currently involved in?
“Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone has not been involved in major political processes, rallies or otherwise. She has been missing in political action all the time,” Mr Anderson writes.
Mr Anderson is the last survivor of the four young Black Power men who founded the Aboriginal embassy in Canberra 41 years ago and now speaks for the Sovereign Union of First Nations Peoples set up at its 40th anniversary last January 26th.
“The question that has to be asked of Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone is, if she is going to be involved in politics at this level, is she going to be a Julia Gillard puppet with little to no power or opinion, but instead, fall in line with Julia Gillard’s personal and political ambitions?
“The other horror will be that Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone will be put up and used as a show pony for the Labor party at an international level,” the media release says.
“I appeal to Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone to rethink this offer so as to ensure that she is not a puppet of Julia Gillard’s Labor party, otherwise we need her to come out and simply say that just because she is Aboriginal she is not our voice.
“She is the voice of the Labor party and their policies. She cannot argue that she has an Aboriginal mandate to speak for what our people want.
“I condemn Julia Gillard’s action of steamrolling Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone into the Northern Territory Senate seat.”
Mr Anderson’s release in full: Continue reading
Injustice of Britain’s refusal to recognise harm done by atomic bomb testing in South Australia
UK servicemen, Australian soldiers and civilians, including Indigenous people, all exposed to radiation as a result of British atomic weapons testing in South Australia’s outback.
“We had a skin rash, sore eyes, diarrhoea, vomiting and a lot of people got sick, and we couldn’t prove that, because we never had doctors.”
The Australian Greens’ nuclear spokesman Scott Ludlam says the dangers of radiation are well known and it’s unfair to ask Aboriginal people with scant medical records to prove a direct link between exposure to fallout and subsequent sickness.
Senator Ludlam says legalities aside, Britain should do what’s morally right, by way of an Act of Grace – a discretionary payment to remedy the suffering he says is evident.
AUDIO Aboriginal people exposed to British nuclear tests in South Australia during the 1950s are being told they have no hope of compensation. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1729400/Maralinga-compo-collapse-prompts-calls-for-Act-of-Grace 23 JAN 2013, – SOURCE: KAREN ASHFORD, SBS
(Transcript from World News Australia Radio
Aboriginal people exposed to British nuclear tests in South Australia during the 1950s are being told they have no hope of compensation.A British law firm says their cases cannot proceed because medical science cannot conclusively prove that fallout from the tests made people sick. But while legal arguments may not prevail, pressure for a settlement on moral grounds is growing. It’s pressure that the UK government is so far resisting, as Karen Ashford reports. Continue reading
Australian government did admit harm to people exposed to British atomic bomb tests
Legal advisors to the The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement have said that they cannot proceed in a legal case on the effects of Atomic bomb testing in the 1950’s and 60’s, because there is no proof of harm to the Aboriginal people from atomic radiation. Paul Langley has unearthed a document from Australia’s Minister of Health 2001, which shows that evidence of harm did, and does exist. An excerpt from this document is shown at the bottom of this post.
The results of the global research effort showed that humans were being adversely affected by radioactive fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons
Proof of Harm imposed by Nuclear Fallout, Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 23 Jan 13, “……It is weird day indeed when people acting in the interests of Aboriginal Legal Rights claim a case cannot proceed because of lack of proof, when a Federal Minister of the Australian Government, and Liberal and National Party Government at that, provided a body of proof in 2001.
The documents released by Wooldridge and ARPANSA in 2001 were extensive and included detailed information pertaining to Strontium 90 uptake by the people of Australia and New Guinea…..
Minister Wooldridge confirms that the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee was actively engaged in Project Sunshine. The first 11 pages of the Minutes of the AEC Committee, which sat in August 1953, remain deleted and restricted from public view. In this document the Committee considered the risks of those close in to nuclear test areas and the vulnerability of such populations. The committee pondered the adequacy of the limits set in terms of the ICRP derived tolerance dose for Strontium 90, based as it was on the radium standard.
In the 1980′s Titterton, Chair of the Safety Committee admitted that he could not share all he knew in relation to the hazards of nuclear weapons testing with the rest of the Committee and hence could not share this information with the government and people of Australia because he was subject to the secrecy provisions of both the United States of America and the United Kingdom…….
It is past time for the world to know the contents of pages 1 – 11 of the August 1953 AEC minutes. Titterton for sure was in on it. What did he take to the grave? Continue reading
Michael Anderson on Aboriginal people and Australia’s lack of democracy
They are welfare dependent and have to accept loss of income if they don’t bow to the rules of the government. That happens while they make billions and billions from mining on Aboriginal land. Just look at the Northern Territory, where most Aboriginals live, and its special conditions as federal territory. It is the only place in the world where a state directly operates an industry to gain communal assets, often without even allowing negotiations with Aboriginal locals. Democracy does not apply to Aboriginal people,
‘Democracy does not apply to Aboriginal people’, New Internationalist,
22 Jan 13, This year’s Australia Day, one of the world’s longest
occupation protests turns 40. Activists of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy
in Canberra have been fighting for acknowledgement, sovereignty and
self-determination of their peoples ever since.
Michael Anderson, Aboriginal rights activist and former ambassador of the Embassy, talks to Christoph Behrends about past and current struggles – and the offering of a peace pact.
Question: Michael, you’ve been one of the initiators of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that has been residing in front of the Old Parliament House for 40 years. What comes to your mind when you think about 27 January 1972?
If you go back in history, there have been a lot of wars fought within this country. But Australia suppresses these facts This day is still very clear in my mind. The day before, the Prime Minister stated they would lease land to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples instead of giving us land rights. As a consequence, we decided to put up a permanent camp in Canberra. Within our discussions we became aware that we need a political entity, an embassy, to gain sovereignty. It was a period of not knowing what the future would bring, but knowing what we wanted…..
Question: In 1995 the National Heritage Trust listed the Aboriginal Tent Embassy as the ‘only location that represents Aboriginal Peoples in their political struggle’. Was that occasion important for the movement? It was important that they recognized that we have a legitimation, and it also symbolized a milestone in Aboriginal affairs in Australia’s history……
Socially our people are totally demoralized. Continue reading
Chief Executive Officer of the Gandangara Land Council, Jack Johnson, against NSW Land Council
Jack Johnson lashes NSW Land Council National Indigenous Times, 23
Jan 13 The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC) has
recommended a consultancy firm allegedly linked to the New South Wales
Labor Party mining corruption scandal and also linked to an Aboriginal
death in custody be appointed by the New South Wales Government to
investigate Gandangara Local Aboriginal Land Council.
Chief Executive Officer of the Gandangara Land Council, Jack Johnson
has made the claim… (subscription only)
http://www.nit.com.au/news/2331-jack-johnson-lashes-nsw-land-council.html
Chairman of Mutawintji land council opposes uranium mining in Western New South Wales
NSW prospectors await uranium riches, 21 JAN 2013,
BILL CODE, SBS“…….There’s no doubt that talk on uranium
mining in western NSW is still in its very early stages.
But in the area, there are some traditional owners of the land who are
far from convinced of its benefits.
Wilcannia lies on the banks of the Darling River east of Broken Hill.
These days, many traditional owners from Western NSW live here.
One of them is William Bates, a man who fought against uranium mining
in South Australia in the early 1980s.
He’s the chair of Broken Hill’s neighbouring Mutawintji land council.
Because of the nascent stage of development, whether there’s uranium
under that arid piece of NSW taken up by the indigenous-run national
park is not certain, but he is sure the prospectors will come knocking
sooner or later.
‘I’m against it because it’s not safe, mining companies are always
stuffing up’ he says when I pull up in Wilcannia on a scorching
afternoon. ‘They might have an accident.’…
Atomic bomb tests harmed animals, but “no evidence” of harm done to Aborigines!
In 1953 the USA’s Atomic Energy Commission documented that sheep and cattle at that range suffered Beta radiation burn to their hides. The matter was secret at the time and an important one for the AEC to control. While the AEC admitted internally that beta burns were being found on livestock, no document mentioning the same condition in humans has been released to the public. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The US position admits to harming animals, but it denies any harm to humans. Even though Warm Spring children suffered skin rashes, sickness and other symptoms..
Britain must show proof of dose at distance in relation to Totem 1′s Black Mist, Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 21 Jan 13 The legal action on behalf affected Australian Aboriginal people has been halted by the British view that no proof of harm exists in relation to bomb fallout.
Specifically in relation to the test blast named Totem 1 of October 1953, Australian and British authorities state no harm could possibly come to anyone. This has been stated to me in a letter by the CEO of ARPANSA. The assertion is based upon British calculations of dose estimates from the cloud.
Disagreement still exists over the very existence of the Black Mist ground level atomic cloud which caused so much harm and suffering particularly to Aboriginal people at distances of 100 miles and more. Continue reading
Australian government colluded with Britain to refuse diagnosing Aboriginal Maralinga test victims
a detailed description of how nuclear authorities denied diagnosis for decades, “lost” medical records, when diagnosis of survivors was made 3 decades after the event, the event which caused the symptoms was not referenced and specifically in relation to recurrent local radiation injury to skin, which can become a chronic and cyclic event, outbreaks of symptoms recurring in cycles over decades. This is diagnosed in at least some cases, one specifically known to me, not as local radiation injury (beta burn) but as psoriasis.
It is an easy thing to deny diagnosis, as was done – affected people asked for diagnosis in 1953 and later and doctors in Australia REFUSED to give a diagnosis.
Now, in 2013, British authorities claim nothing can be proven to show it is liable for the suffering and death it visited by its actions and in concert with Australian authorities upon Aboriginal people
Aboriginal Truth Buried Under Atomic Fudge, Paul Langley’s Nuclear history Blog, 19 Jan 13 The refusal of British authorities to acknowledge that British nuclear weapon testing in Australia in the 1950s and related “minor trials” which continued into the 1960s (including some which contravened the spirit if not the bones of the LTBT) and the Operation Brumby “cleanup” which resulted in a worsened situation of contamination on Aboriginal land.
For many years a sign on the road from Maralinga to Oak Valley warned people to stay in their vehicles.
On this same land Aboriginal people hunted and hunt and gather.
A Vulcan bomber fired a loaded but disarmed nuclear missile over the Maralinga Range. The missile overshot its target, resulting in the missile disintegrating and spreading plutonium dust over a wide area off of the Range.
In the 1980s the Adelaide Advertiser reported on the discovery of plutonium in the Oak Valley school yard and buildings. The white teachers refused to work and returned to Adelaide. The people of Oak Valley had to continue to live there. Continue reading
Military exercises will go ahead on Aboriginal land, if landowners can be bribed
the project had been frustrated by another
Aboriginal group, the Kokatha, who have objected to the land use under
heritage provisions.
It is understood the commonwealth will offer the Kokatha $2 million to
compensate them for their concerns over the land use, which if
accepted will allow the ILUA to proceed.
Warring remote clans delay expansion of military training area BY:
SARAH MARTIN : The Australian January 14, 2013
THE creation of one of Australia’s largest military training areas in
South Australia’s outback has been delayed by up to five years because
of a territorial war between two Aboriginal groups.
The Cultana training area near Port Augusta, 300km north of Adelaide,
was to be tripled in size to 1600sq km by 2009 to allow for live
firing exercises for a full battle group. The area, which resembles
the terrain of Afghan battlefields, was also intended to host training
exercises for the Army’s 7th Royal Australian Regiment Battle Group,
which relocated to the Edinburgh base in Adelaide’s north from Darwin
in 2011.
However, a delay in finalising the Indigenous Land Use Agreement for
the expansion has pushed the completion date to beyond next year. Continue reading
Maralinga Aboriginals and veterans blocked in their quest for justice
No way forward for Maralinga victims ABC News Jan 11, 2013 Aboriginal
people exposed to British atomic tests in the South Australian outback
have been told by lawyers their fight for compensation is over because
it is impossible to prove radiation caused their illnesses.
Seven atomic bombs were detonated at Maralinga in the 1950s and ’60s
on land that has since between handed back to traditional owners.
The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement employed legal firm Hickman and
Rose to pursue a class action in the British courts on behalf of
Aboriginal people from the area.
The movement’s director of legal services Christopher Charles says the
firm is unable to mount a case because it cannot prove ionising
radiation is dangerous to human health.
“Regrettably it’s been made very clear that they just cannot proceed
in the English courts,” he said.
“Modern medical science has to date not been able to find a way to
prove a causation link between ionising radiation and subsequent
illness and until such time that causative link is proven and able to
be proven, these cases won’t be able to proceed……
Aboriginal people were planning to join the class action if the case
was allowed to proceed…….
Mr Charles says Aboriginal people have been deeply disappointed by the
development……
Last year, Britain’s Supreme Court blocked an attempt by 1,000 British
Maralinga veterans to seek compensation over the tests.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-11/fight-over-for-maralinga-victims/4460542
“An Aboriginal Embassy event on 26th is not ours”
Coonamble, NSW, January 2013 – – Aboriginal sovereignty activist, Michael Ghillar Anderson, makes clear that an event being organised by the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (NCAFP ) for 26 January at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, is NOT an Aboriginal Embassy initiative.
The spokesperson for the Sovereign Union of First Nations and Peoples in Australia emphasises that the NCAFP is a government funded organisation that has not gained the majority support of grassroots Aboriginal people.
“But Congress has chosen the Embassy for its discussion on ‘Sovereignty, the Constitution and Congress’,” Mr Anderson writes in a media release.
“This debate on continuing Aboriginal sovereignty and its relationship to the Constitution from Britain needs to be had and I recognise Congress’s efforts to have a national conversation.
“But there is still an odious stench of contradiction surrounding this, because Les Malezer and Congress are publically supportive of the token Constitutional reform.
“Their failings are paramount when we realise that Congress has no model; they promote themselves for any Constitutional inclusion that does not affect our sovereignty, our inalienable inherent right as First Nations Peoples.
“If Congress understands that sovereignty is an issue on the lips and minds of every Aboriginal person, Congress must put out their thoughts for scrutiny so that we are not dealing with slogans.”
Mr Anderson’s release in full: Continue reading
Australia’s Maralinga atomic test victims – soldiers and Aboriginals – deserve compensation
Government must do the right thing by Maralinga victims, 11 January 2013. The Greens have called on the Government to ensure victims of the atomic testing at Maralinga are properly compensated after a British court decision overnight shattered hopes for justice.
Greens spokesperson for nuclear policy, Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam, said the hopes of Australians exposed to nuclear testing in the 1950s were dealt a serious blow by another UK court ruling against compensation.
“In 2010 the British courts ruled British veterans who participated in nuclear tests in Australia could not sue the Defence Ministry because they could not prove their illnesses were caused by exposure to radiation. Now, Aboriginal people expose to the same toxic tests have been told their legal fight is over for the same reason.
“Foreign Minister Bob Carr should be on the phone urging the British Government to deal directly with the victims – outside of court – and compensate them appropriately with an act of grace payment.”
Senator Ludlam said the veterans have said the exposure caused cancer, birth defects amongst their children, and other disorders such as anaemia.
“There is no doubt these people were exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation and there is no doubt many of them have suffered greatly, but it is almost impossible to prove concretely that the testing more than 50 years ago caused their illnesses and the illnesses of their children.
“The British Government detonated atomic bombs in this country and should take responsibility for the consequences. People should need only to prove that they were exposed to high levels of radiation as a result of the weapons testing in order to get compensation,” he said.
Aboriginal culture shows that there are alternate ways to live
the visionary realm of the Aborigines represents one of the great experiments in human thought
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond – review Should we look to traditional societies to help us tweak our lives? Wade Davis takes issue with the whole idea The Guardian, 9 January 2013 “……The goal of the anthropologist is not just to decipher the exotic other, but also to embrace the wonder of distinct and novel cultural possibilities, that we might enrich our understanding of human nature and just possibly liberate ourselves from cultural myopia, the parochial tyranny that has haunted humanity since the birth of memory……
Studies of the human genome leave no doubt that the genetic endowment of humanity is a single continuum. Race is a fiction. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all descendants of a relatively small number of individuals who walked out of Africa some 60,000 years ago and then, on a journey that lasted 40,000 years, some 2,500 generations carried the human spirit to every corner of the habitable world.
It follows, as Boas believed, that all cultures share essentially the same mental acuity, the same raw genius. …..
The Victorian notion of the savage and the civilised, with European industrial society sitting proudly at the apex of a pyramid of advancement that widens at the base to the so-called primitives of the world, has been thoroughly discredited – indeed, scientifically ridiculed for the racial and colonial notion that it was, as relevant to our lives today as the belief of 19th-century clergymen that the Earth was but 6,000 years old….. Continue reading
Kimberley gas hub an election issue – Compulsory Acquisition pressure on Aboriginal people
The Barnett/Grylls government’s act of Compulsory Acquisition…is simply another episode in the dispossession of
Aboriginal people. Compulsory acquisition can never promote nor lead
to self-determination. By no measure was the James Price Point Native
Title Agreement made with ‘free, prior and informed consent’,
consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples.
The Greens say that it is morally wrong to use Compulsory Acquisition
to pressure native title holders to trade their country for services
and benefits that are entitlements of citizenship…….
Greens Candidate Chris Maher says the proposed Kimberley gas hub is
the central election issue this year. Kimberley Page, 10 Jan 13,
“But the election will be about more than just the gas hub; it will be
about a vision for the future of the Kimberley,” Mr Maher said. Chris
Maher
The Greens Candidate for the Kimberley. 8 January 2013 The central
issue for the Kimberley in this year’s WA State Election is the
proposed LNG processing factory at James Price Point, just north of
Broome Continue reading
1 This month.
20 September –National Day of Action in Melbourne on the International Day of Peace
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 