Martin Ferguson’s nuclear waste dump Bill faces determined opposition
Muckaty nuclear dump faces more hurdles, SBS World News By Bill Code 08 February 2012 |Indigenous people in the country surrounding the proposed Muckaty nuclear waste dump have reiterated plans to block the Stuart Highway….. The Northern Territory government and various local clan groups are opposed to the plan to build a medium-level nuclear waste dump on the aboriginal land north of Tennant Creek.
Penny Philips, a member of the Wintiku clan, told SBS the federal government will have a fight on its hands if local people block the Territory’s principal road. “We’re going to do it if they’re going ahead with it…we’ll get people to block it, get traditional owners from other countries if they can block it as well.” Continue reading
Aboriginals’ peaceful protest against extinguishment of native title in Western Australia
The deal, which the government hopes to conclude by the end of the year, would extinguish all future native title claims for the area
Ms Mackay said Mr Barnett was “a coward for running away from us”. “We are never violent. We come and we are loud, but we are peacefully loud,” she said.
Protestors surround Barnett after ‘$1 billion native title whitewash’, SMH February 8, 2012 – Angry Aboriginal protesters have confronted West Australian Premier Colin Barnett in Perth, leading security officers to rush him to the safety of a waiting car.
The protesters delayed the premier’s departure from Fraser’s Restaurant in Kings Park on Wednesday after he addressed Noongar elders about a proposed $1 billion deal to settle native title claims in WA’s southwest.
In a scene reminiscent of the Aboriginal protest in Canberra on Australia Day, around 70 protesters waving placards and Aboriginal flags surrounded Fraser’s, demanding Mr Barnett come out and not hide inside….
No one was hurt in the jostling and police said no arrests were made. Continue reading
Lest we forget – the history of Australia’s Aboriginal tent embassy
Lease of ‘own land’ was impetus for campaign, Canberra Times, BY BREANNA TUCKER 28 Jan, 2012 It was pitch black in the earliest hours of the morning the minute the tent embassy was born.
About 1am on January 26, 1972, four Aboriginal men from Sydney had pitched a beach umbrella on the lawns of Old Parliament House and waited for the sun to rise so they could declare a new ”embassy” for Canberra.
The Koori men – Billie Craigie, Tony Coorie, Michael Anderson and Bert Williams – claimed to be ”aliens in our own land” after the federal government of the day announced a land rights policy suggesting Aboriginal people take out 50-year leases on land parcels they believed already belonged to them. A mate of the crew, Aboriginal activist Chicka Dixon, later said the men decided that if their country would not treat them fairly, they would establish an embassy to fight for their rights as foreigners.
”I … joined them on the Friday. The Member for the ACT, Kep Enderby, informed me that there was no legislation under the federal Act to remove campers, so we put up eight tents and gave ourselves portfolios,” he said. ”A dear, kind lady from Canberra gave us a big blue tent which became the official tent embassy.
”Like all embassies we needed a flag, so Harold Thomas, [designer of the Aboriginal flag] from Adelaide, gave us his flag to fly.” The creation of the tent embassy became the trigger for what would become a controversial 40-year campaign for Aboriginal rights…
.. The embassy was pulled down by authorities and re-established by demonstrators time and time again, moving from Old Parliament House to an army corporal’s home in Red Hill, across to Capital Hill and back to its roots at Old Parliament House.
The tent embassy has recorded several victories with the creation of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, the negotiation of an Aboriginal rights treaty and a National Heritage Listing that made the camp the only nationally recognised site for the political struggle of Aboriginal people. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/lease-of-own-land-was-impetus-for-campaign/2435783.aspx
Australia Day fracas: police violence rather than Aboriginal “riot”?
“[One officer] can be seen in footage that has now emerged attacking at least two different protesters, none of whom were aggressive towards him. He also uses foul language, including using the c-word at a cameraman and telling media to f— off. That is not the actions of a professional police officer. “Indeed Aboriginal people are arrested for that sort of conduct every
single day.”
Call to investigate police after tent embassy protest, SMH, Saffron Howden January 31, 2012 Indigenous groups are calling for an independent investigation into the “violent” conduct of police officers during last week’s tent embassy protest. The NSW Aboriginal Land Council asked the Human Rights Commission to investigate as new video footage emerged today depicting federal police officers yelling, swearing and using physical force after Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott were rushed from The Lobby restaurant in Canberra last week. Continue reading
Aboriginal tent embassy – its purpose as relevant today as 40 years ago
Why did she not speak with them, and why did she run away in fear?
It was not because there was a ‘riot’ or any great threat of violence, as the corporate media would later falsely claim.
It was Labor that reneged twice on promises (in 1972 and 1983) to enact national land rights law, to meet the just demands
of the traditional owners. This, of course, had been the main demand of the Tent Embassy in 1972. Yet land rights are today enjoyed by far less than 10% of the Aboriginal population.
In place of land rights, Labor offered ‘reconciliation’ and a stinking piece of hypocrisy called ‘native title’, the weakest land title imaginable and which firmly denies (by ‘extinguishment’) any land rights to the vast majority of traditional owners….
Julia Gillard’s words of respect to Aboriginal Australia, Green Left, January 30, 2012 By Tim Anderson Moments before Julia Gillard was whisked away from the angry crowd, losing her shoe in the process, she began an awards ceremony speech with these words: “Can I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and in the spirit of reconciliation pay my respects to elders past and present.” Continue reading
Australian media: lies and distortions about a legitimate Aboriginal protest
That evening the WIN TV news repeatedly referred to “violence” and used other inflammatory terms so inaccurate as to amount to lies. The Canberra Times front page next day screamed “Australia’s day of disgrace”. There are disgraces involved, but the rowdy protest was not one.
The media, unfortunately typically, reported inaccurately and used inflammatory language, thereby promoting division.
Aussie Day ‘riot’: perspective and balance hard to find The Drum, Geoff Davies, 30 Jan 12 The bias, hysteria and divisiveness of our public political conversation is never far from view, but this week I encountered it firsthand.
I watched outside as the Aboriginal protest unfolded at The Lobby restaurant on Australia Day. The event reported in the media and reacted to by many commentators is a lurid parody of what actually happened. Perspective and balance are hard to find.
The protest was not violent. It was certainly rowdy and confronting. The protesters chanted loudly and angrily, and some beat time on the glass walls of the restaurant. There was some pushing and shoving as the VIP cars finally moved out. Police on the day said there were”scuffles” and no arrests would be made. Continue reading
Australian media distorts Aboriginals’ peaceful protest – what a load of anti-Aboriginal spin!
Gillard and Abbott were never really threatened by aboriginal protestors, Independent Australia, 26 Jan 2012 The official account portrays Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott as being attacked by violent aboriginal demonstrators today in Canberra. Present at the demonstrations was John Passant — who paints a rather different picture of events. Lunching at the appropriately named Porkbarrel Café for an awards ceremony, Gillard and Abbott became the target of a large crowd of demonstrators from the nearby Tent Embassy 40th year commemoration. Earlier that morning, 2,000 of us had gathered at the Australian National University for a welcome, some talks, rap and dancing before marching up to Parliament House and then on to the Tent Embassy at Old Parliament House….. Soon about 200 of the demonstrators moved from the Tent Embassy commemoration to the café to tell Abbott what they thought of him.
There was a bit of banging on the glass walls. The chants started as “Shame, shame!” and “Racists, racists” and then became a steady “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.” This is a truth the one per cent and their paid mouthpieces, Gillard and Abbott, cannot acknowledge, let alone address.
The cops reacted as they always do when confronted by angry Aboriginal people. The riot squad and the Prime Minister’s protection unit brutalised the crowd to clear a path for Gillard and Abbott, ….
Then the cops tried to wreak their vengeance on the crowd – an Aboriginal crowd and their supporters – for having dared to protest against these two representatives of the mining companies that are stealing Aboriginal land. Together in a line, they walked slowly towards the protestors chanting ‘Move, move, move’ and in one case, shoved a pepper spray bottle into a demonstrators’ face….. The demonstration was a reminder that polite conversation isn’t going to shift entrenched capitalist interests and their representatives in the Parliament. It might give you fake constitutional changes but not land rights, not sovereignty, not a treaty…. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/gillard-and-abbott-were-never-really-threatened-by-aboriginal-protestors/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=IA+Newsletter
Tent Embassy spokesman Pal Coe made a point largely lost in the media coverage today, which is that Warren Mundine and Mick Gooda don’t speak for those involved, much less for Aboriginal Australia as a whole
The Mob Violence That Wasn’t New Matilda.com, By Ben Eltham , 28 Jan, 12, The media has framed it as violent but the tent embassy protest was basically peaceful. It’s this gross distortion – and the heavy-handed response of the AFP – that warrant criticism, writes Ben Eltham
Somehow, with the strange alchemy that the media seems to summon, the dominant angle of reporting about yesterday’s Australia Day kerfuffle involving the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition has been to condemn it as a violent protest.
“Indigenous leaders condemn ‘disgraceful’ protesters” is how the ABC has beendescribing it and much of the Fairfax press has carried similar stories. The television networks have, of course, reveled in the dramatic footage. Channel 9’s news report from last night, which carried the inside-the-restaurant footage of the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader conferring on whether to evacuate, repeatedly framed the protest in emotive terms like “violent”, “raging”, “angry mob”, under siege” and so on.
Few media outlets seem to have asked whether there was in fact any violence from protesters. The available video and eyewitness evidence suggests that the violence came mainly from police and security staff. Yes, there was chanting, Yes, there was banging on the windows of local restaurant The Lobby.
But were the protesters really “violent”? Continue reading
Australia: Constitutional change will entrench dispossession of Aborigines
Settler colonialism is an ongoing process. The maintenance of the Australian nation as it exists today relies on the ongoing displacement and dispossession of aboriginal people from their lands and their cultures…..
The proposed constitutional amendments will not solve this. By continuing to reiterate the idea that aboriginal culture is “ancient”, “traditional” and “part of our national heritage”, the proposed amendments help non-aboriginal Australians to forget not only the genocidal violence perpetrated by early settlers but also their own implication, as settlers on unceded land, in producing the conditions under which most aboriginal Australians live today. By constitutionalising aboriginal Australia in the past tense, this prosperous settler colony may simply take another step towards a future in which tribal dance ceremonies and ancient rituals are all anyone can remember….
Aboriginal Australians are part of the country’s present – not just its past, Guardian UK, 26 Jan 12, It’s Australia Day, but proposed constitutional changes stressing ‘ancient’ aboriginal culture will not unite the country Australia celebrates Australia Day today, marking 224 years since the declaration of British sovereignty and the arrival of the first fleet of convict ships. Australia remains the only Commonwealth country not to have a treaty with its original owners, and although a treaty may have made little difference to the lives of aboriginal Australians, the celebration of Australia Day on unceded land makes many non-aboriginal Australians, myself included, feel highly uncomfortable….. Continue reading
Preserving country and culture- Laurie Baymarrwangga – Senior Australian of the year
Protecting Australia – Senior ANinety-five-year-old Laurie Baymarrwangga from the Crocodile Islands in East Arnhem land is the senior Australian of the year. ABC Rural, By Liz Trevaskis , 26 January 2012 The Aboriginal elder has dedicated her life to the preservation of environment, culture and ecological knowledge, and has donated $400,0000 of her own money to establish projects including a local ranger program and a turtle sanctuary.ustralian of the Year fights for environment and culture…
. She has worked in enormously wonderful ways to create homelands, to put together dictionary projects, to aid livelihood projects like the Crocodile Islands rangers, and she’s worked to help bilingual education and help children learn their own
language on their own country. ….http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2012/s3416266.htm?site=darwin
Honour for Aboriginal man Jeffrey Lee, who saved his land from uranium mining
Territorians recognised in Australia Day honours, ABC News, By Emma Masters January 26, 2012 Four Northern Territorians have been recognised for their contribution to the community with the highest Australia Day honours.
Traditional owner Jeffrey Lee has been made a member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his conservation work in Kakadu National Park.
Mr Lee, who now works as a ranger in the park, offered his uranium-rich country to be included in Kakadu for free, and fought for it to be recognised as a World Heritage Area within the park.
He says he did not expect to receive an award for protecting the country he loves, and he appreciates the support he has been given along the way.
“I love the park,” he said.
“It is good that I get out and look on my country.”….. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-26/20120126-territory-orders-of-australia/3794570?section=nt
Land grab and discrimination against Aboriginals remain in Australia’s draft Constitutional changes
A recommendation that jars, however, is Section 116A that would prohibit racial discrimination. It is not long ago that the federal government over-rode the Racial Discrimination Act to launch its outrageously discriminatory Northern Territory Intervention in 2007 during the Howard era. The Rudd and Gillard governments embraced the policy. It is not ancient history.
The discrimination was said to be ended by atrocious legislation that extended aspects of the Intervention to disadvantaged people of all backgrounds in the Northern Territory and beyond.
While the original Intervention legislation is approaching its sunset clause to be replaced by the cheerier sounding “Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory”, the land-grabbing intent continues. Residents of remote Aboriginal communities are being pressured to sign regular leases on their property. Sign on the dotted line before the August
deadline or lose it. Funding for housing in remote communities is frozen in favour of construction in faraway towns. Opposition leader Tony Abbott is rubbing his hands together on behalf of resource developers referring to the current situation in the NT as that of a “failed state”.
Words won’t replace need for struggle, The Guardian 25 Jan 2012, Symbols and words can be powerful and useful; they can unite and heal. But nobody is impressed by lip service or tokenism. In the lead-up to Invasion Day (or Survival Day as it also known) and which is officially celebrated as Australia Day, such judgements are being made about a government-sponsored report on proposed changes to the constitution.
Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution is the work of a panel headed by Aboriginal leader Professor Pat Dodson and senior lawyer Mark Leibler AC. It is said to be the result of discussions with “… more than 4,600 people, in more than 250 meetings in 84 locations across the country and received more than 3,500 submissions.”
The recommendations include “Recognising that the continent and its islands now known as Australia were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; Acknowledging the continuing relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with their traditional lands and waters; Respecting the continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; Acknowledging the need to secure the advancement of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”
Commentators have noted that solid majorities in polls taken on these issues have been reflected in the recommendations. The fact that attitudes to questions like recognition of the first peoples of Australia are improving is certainly to be welcomed. Continue reading
Australia’s continuing land grab from Aborigines
It’s the same the whole world over Online Opinion, By John Tomlinson – , 23 January 2012 “………..When the British came to Australia they “acquired” which had, until then, been communally owned by members of various Aboriginal language groups. With the exception of a few trinkets handed over by John Batman in Victoria the rights of the existing owners were entirely ignored. Various devices were put in place to give the appearance of civility to this brutal dispossession. Myths about Australia being “terra nullius” –a land belonging to no one – gained ascendency by the 20thcentury. The High Court’s Mabo judgements put a bit of a spike in that hoary one but politicians rushed through legislation cunningly called the Native Title Act to “legitimate” all prior alienation of Indigenous land and to legalise ways by which future governments could continue to acquire land.
Judges were able to find that “the tide of history had washed away” the Yorta Yorta people’s claim to Native Title. The High Court’s Wik judgement found to the dismay of the Howard Government that Native Title had not been totally extinguished on pastoral leases. Where the leases specified a pastoralist was entitled to do certain things on his or her property they were still able to carry out such activities but if they wished to extend the activities then Native Title considerations might apply. The Government legislated to “provide certainty” to pastoralists and delivered, in the words of Tim Fisher (the then Deputy Prime Minister), “bucket loads of extinguishment.” This Howard Government could not bring itself to acknowledge the reality of Aboriginal prior ownership; preferring instead to speak about Indigenous “custodianship” of the country.
……..Mal Brough may have been the one to introduce the Northern Territory Intervention but it has been continued and extended by Rudd, Gillard and Macklin. Macklin has even gone so far as to use the Aboriginal Benefit Account (into which mining royalties owed to Aboriginal communities are paid) as her own little slush fund……”
Constitutional change needed to stop Australia’s discrimination against Aborigines
There are two provisions that are still considered to have racist connotations: one that allows states to disqualify people of “all persons of any race” from voting at elections; and another that authorizes parliament to make “special laws” for “the people of any race.”
Australian panel to recommend changing constitution to recognize Aborigines, By Jethro Mullen, CNN, January 18, 2012 – A panel of Australian citizens is expected to set the tone Thursday for a planned constitutional referendum to better recognize the indigenous population that inhabited the vast continent long before Europeans settled there.
The diverse group includes Aboriginal leaders, business executives, legal experts and members of the main political parties. It spent the past year crisscrossing Australia to gather opinions in order to provide recommendations to the government.
“At the moment, the Constitution denies that there was a prior presence of Aboriginal people in Australia,” said Mark McKenna, an associate professor of history at the University of Sydney. “They’re pretty much invisible.”… Continue reading
Australia’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy – a renewed drive for Aboriginal rights
Michael Anderson is preparing to launch a legal campaign to overturn the lie of peaceful British colonial settlement of Australia. This legal action will establish beyond dispute that Aboriginal people never ceded our sovereign rights over this land.
This legal challenge will be taken to the international community. We need to seek a binding treaty to fully recognise our rights. This will recognise our demands for comprehensive land rights and an end to mining on our land…..
Aboriginals of Australia: Tent Embassy Celebrates 40 – Year Anniversary Unrepresented Nations and people’s Organisation (UNPO) 16 Jan 12, On January 16, Activists and supports came together to celebrate the achievements of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
Few Australian political protests can claim to have made an impact as great or as lasting as the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. First set up on the lawns of Old Parliament House in January 1972, the embassy has been a focal point for the struggle for Aboriginal rights.
Four Aboriginal men, Michael Anderson, Billie Craigie, Tony Koorie and Bertie Williams, launched the embassy in response to then-prime minister Billy McMahon’s refusal to grant Aboriginal land rights. Instead, McMahon had offered to lease stolen land back to Aboriginal people. Continue reading
South Australia’s Supreme Court rules in favour of Aboriginal landowners
Mining exploration on indigenous land blocked , WA News. com.yu 15 Jan 12,AN exploration venture in South Australia’s north has been blocked by a court ruling in favour of the land’s traditional owners. Argonaut Resources and its joint venture partners, Straits Resources Ltd, were planning to start drilling for copper, gold and iron-oxide in parts of Lake Torrens and Andamooka Island.
The companies had been given ministerial approval to access the area, which is part of the traditional lands of the the Kokatha Wati and Adnyamathantha people.
But the South Australian Supreme Court has overturned that approval, ruling that the traditional owners were denied procedural fairness in not being properly consulted.
The court also found problems with the nature of the approval, ruling that Straits did not actually hold any exploration rights but that they were held by another company……
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