Official Hashtags: #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA #NOconsent #Lifestylechoice
Stop the Forced Closure of Aboriginal Communities in Australia
Kimberley Aboriginal communities have declared a GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION to stop the forced closure of Aboriginal communities within Western Australia amidst the growing campaign by State and Federal Governments to withdraw their support and remove Aboriginal people from their traditional homelands.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has whipped up a great amount of fear, anxiety and doubt amongst the already marginalised First peoples of this nation when he said that “What we can’t do, is endlessly subsidise choices, if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have”.
Abbott’s statement was in support of the declarations made by Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett in a press statement released 12 November 2014, suggesting that the State could no longer support 150 Aboriginal Communities, flagging the prospective removal by the end of 2015.
The cost of closing remote communities is greater than tackling issues, so instead let’s tackle the issues.
“Mass Protests planned across the Country”
Grand Theft Australia – Class Actions
3 Pronged Spear tactics
Legals – Ideas 2 keep a flow in the movement – Plan 4 Self Sustainable Communities
1. Help with Complaints to the Human Rights Commission:
Calling for volunteers to help with forms in affected communities.
There is a racial discrimination commissioner, who should already be involved but apparently they need to receive a complaint before they can do anything
There is state and federal discrimination, and there are little outs in all the laws so need to try and hit the right nail on the head first go, so a call for as much info and personal statements of events you can give us, will go along way.
To get copies of the complaints form and a reply paid envelope pls contact us at the Ancestral Strategic Alliance on FB.
Supporters can send complaints too! Email your issues with the communities at threat here: newcomplaints@humanrights.gov.au if u need help, sing out!!!!!
2. Planning for self sustainability
We are seeking expressions of interest from appropriately qualified supporters willing to assist in providing sustainability to the affected communities. Looks like we need electricians, plumbers, carpenters, resources and supplies etc
Just as research shows we are happier and healthier on country, speaking language, living in community.
Occupy any of your vacant land, this is our right.
For those with skills or resources to offer, please get on board as we begin project rebuild in a community that was closed down last year.
Right now we are trying to survey our mob about the needs of each community, some are without water and power since the government shut it off and bulldozed homes without any formal notice or consent.
We are calling on volunteers and contributions needed to rebuild a small self sustainable community using low impact methods to build ie sand bag, earthship and simple sheds etc.
If you can help in any, we are wanting to set up funding page for people to contribute directly to the project. Once we establish the best way to make it happen we will advertise.
For now please post details of communities u are aware of that have had their water, power cut or have bn forced to leave.
“Unviable.” That’s a term used by the WA government in recent weeks to justify closing up to 150 more remote Aboriginal communities. But as I have seen first-hand, there is nothing more “unviable” for Aboriginal people than to be forcibly evicted from their traditional lands and assimilated into white townships.
The eviction of the residents had the opposite effect. Many residents were left homeless and either camped or stayed with relatives throughout the Kimberley region. Three years later some residents are still homeless or not appropriately housed.
The children suffered the most from the eviction. On our visit we were told that most of the children from Oombulgurri who now live in Wyndham do not go to school.
Many others have been removed by the department of child protection.
We are witnessing Genocide. Evidence has been out for 4 years proving we are better off on country and still our traditional way of life is being smashed apart to further explore mining interest.
Speaking an Indigenous language linked to youth wellbeing
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth in remote areas who speak an Indigenous language are less likely to experience risk factors associated with poor wellbeing, according to a report released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The report found that in 2008, almost half (47%) of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth (aged 15–24 years) in remote areas spoke an Indigenous language. These young people were less likely to engage in high risk alcohol consumption and illicit substance use, than those who did not speak an Indigenous language. They were also less likely to report being a victim of physical violence.
However, the report also showed that there has been a decline in the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth who can speak an Indigenous language. In 2008, 13% of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth could speak an Indigenous language, down from 18% in 2002.
If we all just do wat we can, we could just be amazed at wat we can achieve. If all u can do is share that’s great and if u can get involved thats great to and we look forward to hearing from you smile emoticon
We need help now
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Old people having water and power cut and getting removed from their home with no letter to warn them.
Injustice for 1 is injustice for all!!!
We R 1MOB – we bleed together. This is war on our entire race, our way of life and the future of our people.
This is illegal and being condemned by the international communities.
The whole government is illegal, their policy, their law and we do not give free, informed and prior consent.
Wat will it take to stand up to this racist country? We have alot of supporters and can make change. But we the people must cry out at the site of injustice or our children have no future in this country other than to be bread out.
Please fight for our old ways, pick up the baton and run with it for ur kids, ur family, ur brothers and sisters, nan and pops, aunties and uncles and the kids to come.
They are threatening to bring the army if we stop them from moving mob. This is all for mining. Please u mob we gotta come together, u dont got to be no leader… if u got arms and legs or any means to resist – ur people need u now.
Look at the picture, evil continues while good people do nothing.
The time is now to take our final stand.
Please share the post:
*************** Marianne L Skeen’s Post *****************
Share this please..
My mother had her power cut & water turned off Then was relocated to town last year against her wishes,!!.. Mardiwa loop, Halls Creek, WA
With: Marianne L Skeen Michelle Aleksandrovics Lovegrove
if you know of any other affected communities please list them here
3. Hardcore to personal protests
A suggested supporter action plan
Bn keeping my ear to the ground, listening to our deadly mob and supporter talk about plans. This is wat i gathered up.
There is a humanitarian crisis happening on your doorstep. You do not have to save the world or donate money. You can:
1. Do something LOW LEVEL. Like a couple of pages. Like a few pictures just to show that you have seen what is happening and to show that you care. You are busy but you DO care. This means so much to people who are really out there struggling on their own. Every like or every word of support really touches people’s hearts on a personal level.
2. Do something MEDIUM LEVEL. Find some Aboriginal pages. Post them on your facebook, add a personal message of how you feel about his situation.
3. Do something HIGH LEVEL. Do your own protest, or join a protest against this situation (Be sure to get a copy of the cultural protocols before planing). I am joining a protest in London this week. I am proud to join a protest which supports the rights that were died for in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
4. Go HARDCORE: Write to your media outlets and ask them about why they didn’t publicise the recent protests for Aboriginal people. Write to your politicians and tell them that what the a re doing is unacceptable, tell them that you will not vote for them if they continue with this attack on Aboriginal people.
5. BE HUMAN: Let people know how beautiful Aboriginal culture is. Do some research and have a 10 minute conversation about what you have learned on your lunchbreak.
Time to stand up and be counted. The world’s media is starting to shine the light on this situation. Please don’t be that PERSON who stood in the shadows. Just like ONE post on ONE page. That will be enough to show that you care. C’mon Australia. Racism went out of fashion in the 1960s. People got beaten up and died for this cause.
Please do one of the above, to support Aboriginal people. That will be enough. But please do SOMETHING.
Many of my friends are immigrants or GAY. So please let’s not pull the ladder up after us… EH???
(Time to RAMP IT UP…. STAND UP AND BE COUNTED OR UNFRIEND ME PLS) Franka Pavlova (minus swearin lol)
If you are a member of a Union, I suggest you call them tomorrow and start agitating them to DO SOMETHING. If you’re a worker, whatever you do, and if you’re a member of these structures that say they represent YOU, hold them to that word. Start using this dormant power within the system to stop these atrocities. They’ve spent decades deceiving us into believing we are powerless here, we are much more powerful than they would have us believe, on every level, but we will never find out until we start kicking. So humbug your Union, start to organise in your workplace.
– Vivian Malo
“Just a Thought On Da Run…Given The Media Are Clearly Under The Instructions Of The Rich n Powerful…To Ignore And Give No Oxygen To Convey The Aboriginal Voice…The Story and Messages Relating To The Marches…And All Other Initiatives To Stop The Forced Closure Of Spirit Homelands…Perhaps a Destination of a future March Should Be To One of The Media,s Head Offices n Studios In Melbourne…I know ABC,s major setup is in Southbank…haven’t looked up wer grubby ch 7 or 9 or 10 is…We can hit them live while on air…We go to the medias Home…not wait for them to be dispatched to us…We Protest Outside Their Doors…Lets take da message rite to their Doorstep…In a passionate n peaceful way…They gunna ignore us then…????..Just a thought –
Neville Austin
Im thinking 1 weekend media next weekend churches the next weekend mps n bring letters each time or drawings etc and ask artist to perform. black street theatre stunts would b awesome right now. As well as wat Vivian suggested on her post to use the unions if ur a member. Have sent Vivian a PM too. Hope to see something happening – at very least everyone should turn off the murdoch box – especially pay tv. hit em in the pocket. Divest and make sure your bank does not contribute in anyway to unethical practices ie mining etc.
Kits for Individuals – letter template to the queen, templates to send to all mp’s, pm and GG to put a spanner in the works, a know ur rights document, instructions on how to invoice for repatriations with a template, videos, fliers and the proclamations for both white and black to be signed.
We can do a Sovereignty walk as public declarations of Sovereignty hold alot of weight and will be a good tool to educate en mass.
Have letters sent from all communities calling for contributions to affirm their rights, aspirations and calls for justice in any way they wish to document them. writing, painting, video, audio etc.
National Meet up to finalise national strategy to become free of the British and biggest celebration we ever saw after we hand in document (which could also demand demand the GG be replaced with a tribal council of elders/ a group the people nominate or are the final say on all Sovereignty matters, as added protection) and lodge a class action case to make sure we are not ignored.
Signing onto this campaign means that you have taken the first step in helping to create real change around this issue.
Successful campaigns rely upon their ability gain the support of as many people as possible – the more people that are behind an issue, the more likely it is that decision makers will actually stop and pay attention. Please support our effort to get this happening by August 2015. We have organised mass gatherings and can provide food, tent accommodation, entertainment and workshops with the money raised.
The food will cost $6000
The hire of equipment will cost $12000
Travel assistance for elders, entertainers and large groups $20,000
Legal costs and workshops $4000
Port a loo’s n showers $5000
Kids activities, banner material, historical display of our resistance and emergency cash $3000
This is where you come in.
It’s simple. Can you spread the word about this campaign by sharing it with your friends and family on social media?
We are seeking expressions of interests from volunteers to get involved at different levels, from printing letters, to organising and helping out on the ground with events and sharing the message.
By Kaiyu Bayles – https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grand-Theft-Australia-Class-Action/901150616596301?fref=ts
THE OLDEST SURVIVING PEOPLE’S, ANIMALS, WATER, LAND, CULTURE & LEGACY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS ARE IN GREAT DISPAIR n needs lots of prayers and support.
Please find out more today, google intervention, nuclear waste dump, stolen generation, racial discrimination, deaths in custody, save the kimberly, youth suicide, aboriginal infant mortality, save stradbroke island, save the kangaroo, stolen remains, and the list goes on.
Because we have so many angles of peril here, some of my people do believe we are in a state of secret/silent war as cultural genocide etc are war crimes and we need an urgent call for peace. Please sign the petitions and read more about our cause in the different states.
Papal Bulls (bulletins)
“During this Historic Symposium, the gathering of delegates from the seven regions of the world talked of the need to now focus on the continuing Sovereignty of the Aboriginal Nations of the world. The South American delegations pointed out that in order for them to be free, they need to have the Vatican repeal the Papal bulls (bulletins) and to have the Vatican apologise for the wrongs and destruction that the Papal bulls have caused to the Aboriginal Peoples of the Southern and Central America.
When the past mistakes are erased, it is as kids say SWEET! Sweet because it amazing, sweet because it is profound, sweet because it feels good, sweet because it makes a difference in the world. A difference that matters to us and the next seven generations. Why does it matter?
We have entered a new era. It simply would be a shame to take our old baggage with us into a new beginning on earth. It is time for all humanity to join together in claiming justice for the Indigenous People on our earth.
This is a call for the people of the world to rescind the Papal Bulls.
Everyone around the world carries in their ancestral history injustices for humanity from our past history toward Indigenous people. As we move toward 2013 it time to cleanse the past, and claim it is no longer part of us and create a healing on earth.
For the past 500 years every Pope of the Catholic Church has ignored repeated requests to rescind doctrines which grant the authority to essentially kill, enslave and confiscate the land of Indigenous People who do not accept Catholic religion and remain so called “pagan /heathens” from having other faiths.
With all due respect this is not to say that Catholic’s agree with these doctrines, as many do not even know they exist. As Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrims says so clearly, “ No one is even alive today that had anything to do with the creation of these Doctrines.”
Our collective consciousness has evolved leaps and bounds since the 1400’s and can no longer be a vibrational match to injustice. As we move toward this new era, a higher vibrational shift is taking place. We are being called to spiritually rescind our past mistakes. As we claim justice through acknowledging, past wrong doings, we become the change we are seeking in the world and accelerate our evolutional process.
Please send a letter to the pope, sign the petitions, watch the videos, create an event and share, care and love!
Biggest Blessings to u all on a majikal journey!
Your Sister thru life n light
Kaiyu
Save Pilliga – our largest temperate woodland
Eastern Star Gas has applied for approval under both state and federal regulations to develop a massive coal seam gas field of around 550 gas wells in the State Forests of The Pilliga. Commonly known as the ‘Pilliga Scrub’, this unique woodland is near Narrabri in northern NSW. The gas project is set to clear over 2,400 hectares of native vegetation and will forever change the landscape of the Pilliga.
Sign the petition at: http://catefaehrmann.org/2011/05/save-pilliga-our-largest-temperate-woodland/
“…See the impact of colonialism has been huge…we Aboriginal people are spiritual people and we are still recovering because of colonialism… There’s not a lot of understanding about that on the part of white Australia because they have this misguided belief that colonialism doesn’t affect them. Of course it does! It’s made them into the people they are today, which means they cannot hear what Aboriginal people are telling them… Many are trying to run away from their own history… As they get older and more mature [chuckles], hopefully they’ll have a better understanding… You see, that mouth of the snake… our people are in pathological grieving. Our people have retreated into the belly of the snake… it’s our consolidation of our Aboriginality, a renewing of our identity. Only recently have we begun emerging from the mouth of the snake with renewal and consolidation of who we are…” Lilla Watson Birri Gubba, Gungulu Elder Brisbane Qld.”If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time; but if you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Lilla Watson
Discussion & Resource pagesWelcome to our pair of brother sister pages that promote healthy discussion and the sharing of vital information around Cultural Preservation, Protection and re-emergence and another page with information flowing on grass roots law, justice and freedom.This page and its sister page “Cultural Preservation, Protection and Re-emergence” have been set up because of a perceived desire in the community to have a place which supports the open and respectful discussion on the issues affecting us.Respectful is the operative word here. Nobody will be banned and no posts will be deleted if you stick to that rule of respect for your fellow list-members and others. At the first sign of disrespect, abusive behaviour or ad-hominum attacks, you will be deleted by the admins. No correspondence will be entered into – the admin’s decision is final. We look forward to your input and hope that through facilitating open and respectful debate on this important topic, we can arrive at a place where personal choice and transparent leaders can be supported by both sides of this issue.Please take a moment to introduce yourself to our members and to let us know why you are interested in this issue / what work or research you have already done on the subjects at hand.
Roles of Admin for discussion pages•help keep conversations to the point and proper respect is maintained so we can be sure we are being proactive.•Respectful is the operative word here. Nobody will be banned and no posts will be deleted if you stick to that rule of respect for your fellow list-members and others. At the first sign of disrespect, abusive behaviour or ad-hominum attacks, you will be deleted by the admins. No correspondence will be entered into – the admin’s decision is final. •To remove or block a member of the page please have the support of the available admins before this decision is made.
•Unacceptable behaviour will not be tolerated at all by admin as we have a job to do – to make sure we are being part of a proactive solution not being at all reactionary and frustrated, us humans can make mistakes that we cant afford to leave our children. •We need to be operating from our most highest self, bring our your best self, put your best foot forward and always humbly grounded. I want us to be depended on for bringing the sobering news to the people in a flow state. Wen everything unfolds as its meant to and without too much resistance. This is about the long haul and longevity, big lotta work 2 b done and hopefully one day our pages will be resourced to do wat ever it is that is needed in these crucial areas of human existence if we wanna thrive and be and empowered people again.•Allow people to release, express oppression and water the seeds of the youth. It is our role as the next generations to encourage, nurture and support the children and younger ones.•
Please feel free to give a brief explanation if you decide to leave the role of admin, so we can take on board any feedback for improvementsThank u for being apart of this new initiative to keep a flow of all relevant information and resources needed to impact the positive change that is needed.
Pages to admin:
Cultural Preservation, Protection and Re-emergenceI’m Proper Deadly – Time To Rise – Time To ShineMoving past the crippling conditions in our lives by finding inspiration, motivation and truth together in unity. Please post with love and respect. Let us thrive in our lifetimes for the oppressor’s children too, for who else can save us all?
Remember, you are the children of ancestors connected to this land since the beginning of time, that very same blood is still flowing through your veins today. You are deadly!
The more we learn, the more we have to appreciate, let’s remind each other everyday to learn more about our inter connectedness with all things, practice more gratitude and less attitude. Once we begin, the wisdoma and masteries within our culture make it so easy to want more and more. How far do your family stories go back in time? What were your grandparents concerned about, what obsticles did they face? How has this changed and how can/have you used this to shape your destiny or make the necessary changes around you… Did you have a choice? We are born onto the hottest coals, bouncing, running for safety and never enough time to just stop an be. Until now that is….
Please turn off the tv, radio, take some time to think if all those old people in our country before us. What would they be thinking, what would they want?
The power lies in the wisdom and understanding of one’s role in the great mystery, and in honoring every living thing as a teacher.Jamie Sams and David Carson, American Indian Writers
Being a warrior… It is a willingness to sacrifice everything except your truth, your way of being, your commitment. The ultimate stand is to your commitment to do something with your life that will make a difference.Douglas Cardinal, Canadian Indian Writer, Artist and Architect
The Right Reverend Jesse Jackson“Today’s students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude”
As Jim Rohn said -“Formal education will make you a living; selfeducation will make you a fortune
Proposed future projects to include building a bank of information “i-pack”, networking, idea sharing, building on identity and cultural pride, co-ordination and micro financing models/ projects.
When: The messenger mail will be sent fortnightly beginning Monday 27/9/11.
Who: The idea came about like all good ideas – round the dining table, by a small collective of family members, younger ones, women and men. And, is intended for everyone wanting to be a part of re-shaping the future and wellbeing of all Australians. The work will hopefully be carried out on a volunteer capacity by community people with contributions coming from all areas.
Why: We feel the need to compliment the current News services for our mob by taking the issues to the people through our mailing list, with shorter stories we hope to make it accessible to more age groups and levels of language literacy, encourage pro -active rather than reactive direct action and we hope this will be the beginning of a centre point for yarning about Black Fulla business and taking a unified approach to addressing the issues we deal with daily.
How: With people contributing or volunteering time and resources, keeping the initial plan simple we hope to grow our mailing list and reach, to as many community members and supporters as possible. By creating grass roots contact points across the land, we hope to work on creating a steady flow of relevant information about our communities and explore more and more avenues to create and be involved in positive change.
To join the creative crew and get involved in making this as deadly as possible or for further information please email kaiyumoura@hotmail.com or visit https://thrivalinternational.wordpress.com/
Keeping the fires burning bright forever!!!!
Issues on Grass Roots Law, Justice and FreedomoDemocracy means a fair go for alloGenocideoFrontier WarsoHistory WarsoThe Black Armband DebateoSmallpox History WaroNational Museum of Australia controversyoHistory wars and culture warsoSovereignty Never Ceded – court questioned, jurisdiction over AboriginesoFacing the facts: what the 1967 Referendum didn’t achieveoNative Title vs Land Rights’oCONSTITUTIONAL RECOGNITION OF FIRST AUSTRALIANSoThe United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.oIs it Survival Day or Australia Day?oThe Garma FoundationoThe Prime Ministesr ApologyoTreaty
Democracy means a fair go for allA democracy has many common threads and integral to these are diversity of views. Gandhi said: Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. But honest debate can only come through trust and understanding, based on knowledge, not prejudices. Debates such as: Is it Australia Day or Survival Day?; a treaty is a good thing for Australia; or should we have a Bill of Rights? are important to our society, as they are embedded in the meaning and practice of democracy. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/civics/demos/p_common.htm
Genocide debateAfter the introduction of the word genocide in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin, Lemkin himself and most comparative scholars of genocide and many general historians, such as Robert Hughes,Ward Churchill, Leo Kuper and Jared Diamond, basing their analysis on previously published histories, present the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines as a text book example of a genocide.[38] The Australian historian of genocide, Ben Kiernan, in his recent history of the concept and practice, Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur, (2007) treats the Australian evidence over the first century of colonization as an example of genocide.[39]Among scholars specializing in Australian history much recent debate has focused on whether indeed what happened to groups of Aborigines, and especially the Tasmanian Aborigines during the European colonisation of Australia can be classified as genocide. According to Mark Levene, most Australian experts are now “considerably more circumspect”.[40] In the specific instance of the Tasmanian Aborigines Henry Reynolds, who takes events in other regions of colonial Australia as marked by “genocidal moments”,[41] argues that the records show that British administrative policy in Tasmania was explicitly concerned to avoid extermination, however practices the events on the ground that lead to the virtual extinction worked out.[42] Tony Barta, John Docker and Anne Curthoys however emphasize Lemkin’s linkage between colonization and genocide.[43] Barta, an Australian expert in German history, argued from Lemkin that, “there is no dispute that the basic fact of Australian history is the appropriation of the continent by an invading people and the dispossession, with ruthless destructiveness, of another”.[44] Docker argues that, “(w)e ignore Lemkin’s wide-ranging definition of genocide, inherently linked with colonialism, at our peril”.[45] Curthoys argues that the separation between international and local Australian approaches has been deleterious. While calling for “a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship”,[46] her own view is that the Tasmanian instance constitutes a “case for genocide, though not of state planning, mass killing, or extinction”.[47]Much of the debate on whether European colonisation of Australia resulted in genocide, centres on whether “the term ‘genocide’ only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or … might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers”.[48] Historians such as Tony Barta argue that for the victim group it matters little if they were wiped out as part of a planned attack. If a group is decimated as a result of smallpox introduced to Australia by British settlers, or introduced European farming methods causing a group of Aborigines to starve to death, the result is in his opinion genocide.[49]Henry Reynolds points out that European colonists and their descendants frequently use expressions that included “extermination”, “extinction”, and “extirpation” when discussing the treatment of Aborigines during the colonial period, and as in his opinion genocide “can take many forms, not all of them violent”[50] this is an indicator of genocide. Janine Roberts has argued that genocide was Australian policy, if only by emission, noting that despite contemporary newspapers regularly decrying “the barbarous crop of exterminators” and “a system of native slaughter… merciless and complete”, the government contended that “no illegal acts were occurring”, with the worst incidents being described as merely “indiscretions”.[51]The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and other historians such as Keith Windschuttle disagree and think that no genocide took place.[52][53] Minogue does not try to define genocide but argues that its use is an extreme manifestation of the guilt felt by modern Australian society about the past misconduct of their society to Aborigines. In his opinion its use reflects the process by which Australian society is trying to come to terms with its past wrongs and in doing this Australians are stretching the meaning of genocide to fit within this internal debate.[54]In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote further on the topic of genocide. He wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like “driv[ing] the original inhabitants off the land… confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers… Tak[ing] indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst… assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names.”[55] Aboriginal Genocide, UN Genocide Convention, jurisdiction & need for a TreatyRobbie Thorpe is from the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation, the traditional owners of Lake Tyers. He has been active in initiating indigenous solutions and, in particular, has been a strong advocate for ‘Pay the Rent’, an indigenous initiative which would provide an independent economic resource for Aboriginal peoples. Robbie has initiated a number of legal actions, where he has argued that crimes of genocide have been committed against Aboriginal peoples throughout the history of the colonisation of Australia (see: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2000/4.html ).
Robbie Thorpe on Aboriginal Genocide and the need for a Treaty (2007): “The Howard Settler Governments invasion of the Northern territory was land-grabbing racism nothing more. The invasion was part of the neo liberal structural adjustment programme of Intuitions such as the World Bank, the IMF and APEC to diminish and extinguish Indigenous rights forever.
It is no surprise to see that the four countries that were blocking the passage of the Draft Declaration of indigenous rights through the United Nations, Australia, New Zealand, United States and Canada, they are the same four states that as part of APEC are raping the marine ocean environment in the Pacific, and are further oppressing and eroding the hard won rights of their Indigenous Nations and Peoples through out the world and within their own countries.
What is happening to our brothers and sisters in the NT, is part of that process, part of that genocide.
On the 14th July Indigenous peoples worldwide stand united in their opposition to these agenda’s, invasions and to the unending dispossession and disrespect shown to our peoples.
As the Indigenous Peoples of Australia, we weren’t afforded civil rights and as such we weren’t recognised and we’ve missed that process for the last two hundred years. I don’t think you can have any laws that are appropriate for Aboriginal people in this country until you have a treaty, which ends the war. Before you have a treaty you have to have an end to hostilities. Before those processes take place, you can’t talk about having a civil rights society.
One of our rights being breached is the right to consent. Aboriginal people haven’t consented. If you do things without consent, it’s considered rape. Now, a lot of crimes have been committed against Aboriginal people. There is a history of denial, which has gone on, and these crimes are continuing.They won’t take the fundamental steps towards establishing a civil society. They need to have a treaty; they need to end the war against the Aboriginal people. We know we’ve had a war here, but they can’t tell you what day it ended. That may be the national day this country could celebrate.
Until they have that treaty with Aboriginal people we can’t talk about making laws for Aboriginal people or applying it to them. The treaty will give them that basis of law to do it.”. [1].
Robbie Thorpe on Aboriginal Genocide, UN Genocide Convention, proper legal jurisdiction and lack of a Treaty (2000): “Australia ratified the Genocide Convention in 1949, but never legislated to protect people from crimes of genocide. So considering that this country was based upon a terra nullius of law, which meant it was an empty country, they had a hollow Genocide Act. We have challenged the Commonwealth of Australia in Thorpe v Commonwealth[1] to qualify our legal status and we argued it should be done at an international level. You’ve got to have an umpire to make that unbiased decision… In our first case, Thorpe v Commonwealth,[2] we alleged that genocide was a crime of universal jurisdiction, and that no-one was immune from prosecution. We tried to place blocks in the system so that other people who came after us could use them, but what tripped us up in Nulyarimma v Thompson[3] was that Australia recognised the crime of genocide everywhere else except in Australia… Preventing genocide happening to our people would be a good start to having some kind of future. The [extradition] treaty became relevant to extradite war criminals, because there’s no jurisdiction over crimes of genocide in Australia. We need to extradite those people to a place where they can be tried for crimes of genocide. We are claiming we’ve got genocidists in this country, and we want them out of here, and if Australia hasn’t the facility to deal with it, we need to do something about that. We need to extradite these people to a jurisdiction, which has it. That became relevant today, Friday July 13… This [extradition] treaty to take Konrad Kalejs, a war criminal from Melbourne, is an applicable law now for us, to apply to people like Kennett, Howard, and any other war criminals in this country…. There ain’t no future here. My people are haemorrhaging in terms of their lives. We have historical Aboriginal people who control and run our cultural business, for example – they are just the native police people, who did the ethnic cleansing and the genocide in our early days. They’re the black people who survived in our territory, and we’re a minority amongst Aboriginal people in our territory. We’re way behind the eight ball: we’ve got no rights, we’re the most despised people, the indigenous people of this area. There’s been a lot of movement of Aboriginal people who don’t respect other Aboriginal people’s land… Absolutely, that’s our worst problem, native police. The whole issue of native police needs to be brought into light now. We’ve had the deaths in custody, the stolen generations, and everything that constitutes genocide in the Genocide Convention. Australia’s guilty of everything… Genocide would mean that the Gunnai Nation are no more; there’s a sunset on it, and they’re aiming at that. It’s been going on for a long time and we’re at the end of it… Initially it was smallpox infestation, then it was massacres and hunting them down, and then it was reserves, then as they died out they moved other blacks in, and they moved the surviving traditional blacks to other reserves in other parts of the country. They uprooted entire populations, moved them, took their children away, stopped them from speaking their language; genocide they committed in Victoria and a lot of other places. People think genocide’s shooting people; it’s not, it’s a lot broader than that. The cultural definitions come into it…. How do they do it [Genocide] today? They deny us resources, they destroy our sites, and they control our culture. [The Department of] Aboriginal affairs in Victoria is in control of all the Aboriginal peoples’ culture in Victoria: all the information goes there, nothing comes into the communities. The cultural officers work for them; they’re not accountable to the communities. There are no indigenous structures in Victoria. There are no elders’ councils that are not corporate bodies. There are no politically independent Aboriginal people… We need to have a treaty. We’ve got to have an end to the war on our people. Our people are still wounded. They’re still afraid of these people. There’s still that sort of fear. Now, how can you deal with people in an honest and fair way with your rights and your future when they’re still under that duress? We’re not getting free and informed consent. We can’t possibly make decisions about our long–term future in such a short time. We’ve only had government bureaucrats doing our business on our behalf, and it’s just been a battle for our people on the ground to fight that off.” [2].
Robbie Thorpe on invasion, alien law, Aboriginal Genocide and destruction of Australian environment (1994): “What I’d like to talk about is the relationship to the land Aboriginal people have, and how the destruction of our land also represents the destruction of Aboriginal people. That can be seen right across the face of this planet. You even have indigenous people destroying their own lands now, to enable themselves to survive. It’s an absolute tragedy that this is happening. Where the land is destroyed, so are the Aboriginal-indigenous people . . . I also see the law as it is today as the single most destructive thing in the Australian environment.
What I mean is that the law that we live under in this country is an alien law which was imposed on this country. It was imposed through an invasion. A lot of people say it was settled; it’s not true. A fleet of ships came out here captained by an English naval officer, Captain James Cook. Cook’s instructions from his king were to get consent from the Aboriginal people. That failed to happen. We all know the story of Terra Nullius. For the people that don’t know what Terra Nullius means, it’s a latin term meaning empty land.
That’s how Australia was occupied, the fact that it was a Terra Nullius and that was overturned in 1992 through the Mabo decision (a High Court decision that determined that traditional land rights were not extinguished by the illegal occupation of this country – ed’s note). Under the guise of Terra Nullius the British set about committing genocide of the indigenous peoples . . . and also the unbelievable destruction of our lands. If people can imagine what it was like in this country 200 years ago, you don’t know what you’ve missed out on. You don’t know anything about what life is all about.
The condition this country is in now, probably has one tenth of its beauty left, if I can put it like that. It was an absolutely beautiful country and probably the most important thing, because of the way Aboriginal people looked after the land and because of the way they respected the law of the land, was that we had something to offer our children and that was a future. That was the driving force behind our conservation.
We were always going to be here in this country. We were a part of the creation. A part of this country just like any other of the animals that are here, the flora and fauna. Aboriginal people are a crucial element in that ecology. The crucial element.
My fears are when that crucial element is finally destroyed, which it looks like it’s going to be, particularly in the areas of southern Australia where there’s been no recognition under white mans law, the land will suffer as a result. You’ve got to remember that the indigenous people have a spiritual relationship to the land. It’s vitally important.” [3].
Robbie Thorpe on Labor- and Coalition-supported Northern Territory Intervention and Aboriginal Genocide (2007): “The Howard Settler Governments invasion of the Northern territory is land-grabbing racism nothing more. This invasion is part of the neo liberal structural adjustment programme of Intuitions such as the World, Bank, and the IMF & APEC to diminish and extinguish Indigenous rights forever. It is no surprise to see that the four countries that are blocking the passage of the Draft Declaration of indigenous rights through the United Nations, Australia, New Zealand, United States & Canada, they are the same four states that as part of APEC are raping the marine ocean environment in the Pacific, and are further oppressing & eroding the hard won rights of their Indigenous Nations & Peoples through out the world and within their own countries. What is happening to our brothers and sisters in the NT, is part of that process, part of that genocide.” [4].
[1]. Robbie Thorpe, “NT Invasion – another example of genocide”, Treaty Republic, 8 July 2007: http://treatyrepublic.net/node/37 .
[2]. Irene Watson, “Talking up Aboriginal Law in a sea of Genocide. Interview with Robbie Thorpe”, Indigenous Law Bulletin, 2000: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2000/4.html .
[3]. Robbie Thorpe, “Relationship to the Land” (taken from Native Forest Network Australian Forest Conference Papers – October 1994), Hancock Watch: http://www.hancock.forests.org.au/docs/aboriginal.htm .
[4]. Robbie Thorpe, quoted in “International Day of Action: Stop Aboriginal Genocide on Stolen Aboriginal Land”, Indymedia, 22 July 2007: http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/73848/international-day-action-stop-aboriginal .Source: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/thorpe-robbieAboriginal Activist William Cooper, Australian Aboriginal Genocide & Nazi German Jewish HolocaustGary Foley (born 11 May 1950) is an Australian Aboriginal activist, academic, writer and actor who helped establish the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in front of Parliament House, Canberra, in 1972, established an Aboriginal legal service in Redfern, Sydney in the 1970s and co-wrote and acted in the first indigenous Australian stage production, “Basically Black” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Foley ).
Gary Foley on 1930s Aboriginal activist William Cooper and comparing the genocide of Indigenous Australians with the Nazi German genocide of Jews (1997): “In November 1938, throughout Germany a major Nazi pogrom was conducted against the Jewish community. This notorious event was dubbed kristallnacht and signalled a dramatic upsurge of violence, intimidation and persecution of Germany’s Jewish population. Less than one month later, on December 6th 1938, on the other side of the world, a Victorian Aboriginal man, William Cooper, led a deputation of Kooris from the Australian Aborigines League, in an attempt to present the German Consulate in Melbourne and attempted to present a resolution ‘condemning the persecution of Jews and Christians in Germany’. The Consul-General, Dr. R.W. Drechsler, refused them admittance. Thus, the first group in Australia to try and lodge a formal protest with the German government’s representative about the persecution of the German Jewish community, were a group of Koori political activists representing a people who, in the previous hundred years, had themselves been subject to genocide, and in 1938 were (like Germany’s Jewish people) denied citizenship. Furthermore, Aboriginal people had also been labelled by a white supremacist society as ‘subhuman’, and subjected to scientific research to establish if they were closer to apes than humans. They had also had experience of the concentration camps that white Australia had created to contain them, and which were later used in the notorious ‘assimilation program’ designed to ‘eliminate’ the ‘crossbreeds’, ‘half-castes’, ‘octoroons’ and ‘quadroons’. The ‘full-bloods’ were assumed to be ‘dying out’ thus resolving that aspect of the Aboriginal ‘problem’…In Tasmania about 96% of the Aboriginal population was killed between 1804 and 1834, whilst in Victoria conservative estimates suggest that up to 60% of the Aboriginal peoples of Victoria died between 1835 and 1850. Census figures published in March 1857 showed that only 1,768 Aborigines were left in all of Victoria. In northern Australia invasion and occupation of Aboriginal lands came later so that conflict continued well into this century…Australia during the 1930s was a society that held almost identical racial theories of evolution and Social Darwinism as those that dominated the ideology of Hitler’s Germany. It was the inherent assumption that ‘inferior’ peoples could be disposed of that led to genocidal acts being perpetrated in both societies. Many people today assume that what happened in the ‘holocaust’ in Europe was an aberration of history and was not possible in other Western ‘civilised’ nations, but in doing so those in settler-nations such as Australia, the United States and Canada are able to conveniently absolve themselves of their own bloody histories. In Australia the greater part of the mass murder and genocide of Indigenous peoples occurred in the 150 years prior to the advent of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, and that the most destructive phase of the Australian concentration camps occurred from the 1930s through to the 1960s. This means that the Australian holocaust not only has been unacknowledged, but also has persisted in different forms for two hundred years, whereas the entire period of Nazi German excesses covers less than two decades.” [1].
Gary Foley, “”, Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori perspective”, The Koori History website, 1997: http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_8.html .https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/foley-gary
“Bundoora Arabesque” And Australian Aboriginal Genocide” Countercurrents, 12 August, 2007. Gideon Polya , La Trobe University.“La Trobe University, “Bundoora Arabesque” And Australian Aboriginal Genocide”La Trobe University (Bundoora, outer Melbourne, Australia is its main campus) ranks roughly #10 out of Australia’s 40 odd universities. It can boast past or present associations with some outstanding scholars in the areas of bioethics, gay rights, science and human rights. It is named after Charles Joseph La Trobe who was a governor of Victoria in the 19 th century. However La Trobe has an ambivalent history – he was a traveler, mountaineer and writer on the one hand but during his rule the notorious Native Police were involved in the Aboriginal Genocide that delivered the rich agricultural lands of Victoria to European settlers. Indeed this ambiguity is possibly behind a statue of Governor La Trobe at La Trobe University which is UPSIDE DOWN (i.e. head on the ground, feet and plinthe in the air!).This same dichotomy arises now. I have painted a huge painting (1.3 metre x 2.9 metre) called “Bundoora Arabesque” (for an expandable image see:http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15960/42/ ) and am using this Art to inform people around the world about the appalling, ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide. In this process of Art versus Genocide I have been doubly inspired by La Trobe University – I have been inspired by the beauty of Bundoora in which it is set and in which I live (Bundoora means “the country kangaroos like” in the Aboriginal language of this region – try to spot them, in the painting!) and by the example of an outstanding La Trobe University academic, Professor Robert Manne, who has led the scholarly fight against right-wing DENIAL of the Australian Aboriginal Genocide.Professor Robert Manne of La Trobe University is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals and in recent years he has been particularly forthright and articulate in his defence of Australia’s downtrodden Aboriginal community. One of the world’s and Australia’s leading experts on genocide, Professor Colin Tatz (University of New South Wales, formerly of Macquarie University), has described what happened to Australia’s Indigenous Australians as the Aboriginal Genocide – the Indigenous population fell from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after European invasion (mainly through introduced disease, deprivation and horrendous violence); a policy of forcible Aboriginal child removal (0.1 million “Stolen Children”) continued up to about 1970; Indigenous Australians were not even “counted” or able to vote as Australians until after a referendum in 1967 that permitted the Federal Government to legislate about them; and horrendous Aboriginal Genocide through deprivation and discrimination CONTINUES (9,000 Aborigines die avoidably every year out of a population of 500,000 due to deliberate, sustained Federal and State Government neglect) (see:http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15140/42/ ).Professor Robert Manne has been a leading figure in the so-called Australian “History Wars” in which many Australian scholars have pitted themselves against writers and politicians who claim that there was NO Aboriginal Genocide. Indeed the extreme right-wing, Bush-ite Australian Government refuses to say “sorry” for the past atrocities. A very notable publication is a major academic anthology edited by Professor Robert Manne entitled “Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History”, Melbourne, Black Inc, 2003. (for more a detailed list of relevant scholarly works see the following Yale University site: http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/ ). However we live in an Orwellian Age in which “money buys truth” and in which “all the news that’s fit to print” means “fit to print by the corporate Mainstream media” – denial of the Aboriginal Holocaust is alive and well in White Australia.This has been dramatized by very recent events in Australia. In response to shocking anecdotal reports in 2006 of Aboriginal child sexual abuse in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), the NT Government set up an expert Inquiry. The subsequent Northern Territory (NT) Report “Little Children are Sacred” concluded that from a QUALITATIVE perspective Aboriginal child sexual abuse IS occurring and this and other serious Aboriginal circumstances must be URGENTLY addressed but sensibly and with community CONSULTATION.However the Report (p57) states that “it is not possible to accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory” while DOCUMENTING that 34% of females and 16% of males in Australia as a whole experience child sexual abuse (Dunne, M.P., Purdie, D.M., Cook, M.D., Boyle, F.M. & Najman, J.M.(2003), Is child sexual abuse declining? Evidence from a population-based survey of men and women in Australia, Child Abuse & Neglect, vol. 27 (2), pp141-152) (see: http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf ).Yet the Bush-ite Australian Federal, “Coalition” Government and Mainstream media have been commenting extensively and in very strong terms about this without actually knowing about the ACTUAL extent of NT aboriginal child abuse (for all we know it is far LESS than in Australia as a whole).The Government is simply INCORRECT in implying that it knows of the horrific extent of the NT child abuse problem when it does NOT actually know the NUMBERS – just as it was INCORRECT about children overboard (it won the 2001 election by falsely claiming that Muslim refugees had thrown their children into the sea); Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) (a falsehood used to “justify” the illegal, war criminal Australian invasion if Iraq); ignoring and denying Australian Wheat Board (AWB) bribes to Saddam Hussein; and denying huge civilian casualties in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan (post-invasion excess deaths now total over 3.4 million).Thus there were actually NO children thrown overboard; there were NO WMDs; everybody knew of the need for Iraqi wheat sale bribes from the mid-1990s onwards (the $250 million in Australian bribes diverted from the UN Oil for Food Program are estimated to have killed up to 21,000 Iraqi infants); post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories total 1.0 million and 2.4 million, respectively, and post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths total 0.5 million and 1.9 million, respectively (largely avoidable and due to war criminal Occupier mass child-abuse in gross violation of the Geneva Convention; see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/13099/26/ ).The racism and neglect of the Conservative (Coalition) Australian Federal Government has created appalling Aboriginal living conditions. My recent book “Body Count, Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ; copies in major libraries around the world) estimates that the “annual death rate” (2003 figures) is 2.2% (for Aboriginal Australians) and 2.4% (for Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory) – as compared to 0.4% (what it should be for a comparable high birth rate society), 2.5% (for pre-drought sheep in paddocks of Australian sheep farms), 0.7% (for White Australians), 1.7% (non-Arab Africa), 2.6% (Occupied Iraq under-5 year old infants), 6.5% (Occupied Afghanistan under-5 year old infants) and 10% (Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese in World War 2).This is happening in one of the richest countries of the world because of deliberate and sustained neglect – Australian Aboriginal health services are funded at about 50% of what they should be according to the Commonwealth Grants Commission (2001) report “Report on Indigenous funding” (quoted by a recent and very detailed report on Indigenous Australian Health by N. Thomson et al: “Overview of Indigenous Health, 2004”: http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/html/html_bulletin/bull_44/reviews/thomson/reviews_thomson_1.htm ).The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates “total per capita medical expenditure at average exchange rate ($US)” (2004) as $14 (US-UK-Australia-Occupied Afghanistan) and $58 (US-UK-Australia-Occupied Iraq) versus $3,123 (Occupier Australia) (see: http://www.who.int/nha/country/Annex%202.pdf ). With an Indigenous population of about 0.5 million that is funded at roughly the national average (despite huge morbidity and remote location problems) the EXTRA funding required is about US$1.5 billion annually – as compared to the US$0.4 billion now offered, and this largely for Army and bureaucratic personnel and infrastructure.Let us be clear about what this legislation does and how it grossly violates the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, International ant-racism conventions and indeed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (specifically Articles 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17, 19, 22 and 30; see: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html ). Racist White Australia is proposing to grossly abuse the human rights of NT Aboriginals in a racially-specific way.THUS: NT Aboriginals will be circumscribed about what they can read, see, drink, use, consume and purchase in ways that do NOT apply to White Australians; their welfare payments will be withheld by the Government; they will not be able to litigate to protect themselves – the Racial Discrimination Act is suspended in a racially-specific way; a Permit system, vital for keeping drug- and alcohol-pushers from remote Aboriginal communities will be abolished; NONE of the 97 recommendations of the expert NT Report will be addressed and indeed the key #1 Recommendation of URGENT ACTION WITH CONSULTATION is fundamentally violated; their Land (Sacred to Indigenous Australians) and their Communities will be seized and controlled for years by the Federal Government which currently presides over 9,000 avoidable Aboriginal deaths annually and which still refuses to say “sorry” for the past horrendous Aboriginal Genocide and Ethnocide. Indeed the Aboriginal Genocide continues – it took 90,000 lives in the last 11 years alone of rule of Australia by the Coalition Government (see “Aboriginal Genocide. Racist White Australian Child Abuse & Passive Mass Murder: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15140/42/ and “Racism in Australia. La Trobe, “Bundoora Arabesque” & Aboriginal Ethnocide”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15960/42/ ).According to the Australian Human Rights Commission (see: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/about_the_commission/legislation/index.html#rda ) the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 gives effect to Australia’s obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Its major objectives are to (1) promote equality before the law for all persons, regardless of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin, and (2) make discrimination against people on the basis of their race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin unlawful.Sanctions and Boycotts were applied successfully against the racist Apartheid régime in South Africa which had an “annual avoidable death rate” of 0.4% overall in 1993 as compared to 2.0% for Northern Territory Aborigines in Australia TODAY. The head of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) says that the Federal Government’s legislation for intervention in Northern Territory Indigenous communities could face an international back-lash (see:http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/08/2000137.htm ).The Nazis wiped my family from the face of Europe. I am married to a Black Australian. The Jewish Holocaust and the Aboriginal Genocide both instruct that there must be ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RACISM. The racist Bill has already passed the House of Representatives with bi-partisan support – only Senate approval is now needed but the Senate is overwhelmingly dominated by the 2 major parties that support the Bill (only the minority Greens and Democrats oppose the Bill). Australians have been given just a few days to present submissions to a One Day Senate Inquiry into the 500 page NT Intervention Bill and about 70 submissions have been made (for details – my submission is #35 – see:http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/nt_emergency/submissions/sublist.htm ). I and others have urged all Senators to vote against this Bill – a vote for this Bill is a vote against a non-racist Australia and the international reputation of this country.The World should be watching. Tell everyone you know about the horrendous, continuing Aboriginal Genocide and the resurgent, bi-partisan-backed, politically correct racist (PC racist) New Racist White Australia.Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007:Source: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/-bundoora-arabesque-la-trobe”Sydney Madonna” & Aboriginal Genocide”For an image of the huge “Sydney Madonna painting (1.3 x 2.9 metres) see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/3429287878/in/set-72157616584873236/ .
Images of GenocideHephzibah Menuhin was a better musician than a sociologist. But a line in one of her books remains with me: that the test of a nation’s civility and civilisation is the manner in which it treats its most underprivileged minority. An emotional rather than an empirical measure, perhaps, but it isn’t difficult to take her meaning. Who are the most underprivileged? And how does Australia rank? In South Africa, I studied “native policy”. On arrival here in 1961, I studied “Aboriginal policy”. People who know of my dual interest still ask me, “Is it true to say that apartheid was a malevolent instrument of racial oppression, whereas racism in Australia was a form of ignorant innocence, or innocent ignorance, an inability to understand or respect indigenous culture and values, albeit with some nasty consequences?” Comparisons aside, how does one categorise Australia’s race relations? Much of that inter-racial history I call “genocide”. In the current climate of heat in Aboriginal affairs, which I will describe, very few people use the word. Almost all historians of the Aboriginal experience – black and white – avoid it. They write about pacifying, killing, cleansing, excluding, exterminating, starving, poisoning, shooting, beheading, sterilising, exiling, removing – but avoid genocide. Are they ignorant of genocide theory and practice? Or simply reluctant to taint “the land of the fair go”, the “lucky country”, with so heinous and disgracing a label? Australians understand only the stereotypical or traditional scenes of historical or present-day slaughter. For them, genocide connotes either the bulldozed corpses at Belsen or the serried rows of Cambodian skulls, the panga-wielding Hutu in pursuit of Tutsi victims or the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. As Australians see it, patently we cannot be connected to, or with, the stereotypes of Swastika-wearing SS psychopaths, or crazed black tribal Africans. Apart from Australia’s physical killing era, there are doubtless differences between what these perpetrators did and what we did in assimilating people and removing their children. But, as we will see, we are connected – by virtue of what Raimond Gaita calls “the inexpungable moral dimension” inherent in genocide, whatever its forms or actions [1]. There are two ways of approaching the issue. One is to use the yardstick of the only extant international legal definition of genocide, namely Article II (a) to (e) of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 1.Killing members of the group; 2.Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3.Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 4.Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 5.Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Even so, the physical killing in (a) is seen by most Australians as wholesale killing within a short or definable time-frame and in a localised geography, such as death camps. Clearly there has been no Australian Auschwitz. Clearly, if there was no Auschwitz here, then no genocide occurred here. Since 1997, as we will see, (e) has become the sharp focus. There are flaws – perhaps grievous ones – in the Convention. Nowhere is there mention of the role of the state as a perpetrator, yet it is the signatory state that is required to report (itself?) to the United Nations. To obtain Soviet support for the Convention, political groups were omitted, thus ensuring no possible reference to the Soviet genocide of the land-owning peasants, the kulaks, or to Stalin’s elimination of those whom he defined as “enemies of the people”. Physical killing usually occurs in a compact time period – though not always so, as we will see with the Tasmanian and Queensland Aboriginal experiences. Sterilisation and removal of children imply a much more enduring time frame, over generations perhaps. We know what constitutes serious bodily harm, but how do we calculate mental harm? The Convention equalised in seriousness, and in time, the act of physical killing with the act of forcibly removing children, an idea not easy to grasp. There could well have been a scale, akin to the gradations of unlawful killing in the American criminal justice system, of genocide 1, genocide 2, genocide 3. Certainly there are gradations of genocide – differing motives, different orders and levels of intent, scale, method, outcome. Certainly the quantum leap from images of Auschwitz to sad and ragged children clustered in old sepia photographs is beyond most Australians. Critics can rail at the presence of II (e), but it is there, in a law treaty ratified by Australia in 1949, albeit with some remarkable protests [2]. Overlooked by almost everyone, including genocide scholars, are clauses (b), (c) and (d). Overlooked by everyone is Article III of the Convention: not only is genocide a crime but so too is “conspiracy to commit genocide”, the “attempt to commit genocide” and “complicity in genocide”. In the vocabulary of genocide there are three parties: the perpetrators, the victims, and the bystanders – those without whom the perpetrators cannot effect their purposes. Within the latter category, there are those who are simply indifferent, those who are hostilely indifferent, those who are, in some degree, complicit, and those who are, for want of a clearer or better term, companions to events. One can be a companion to something even in the act of opposing it. Thus, in South Africa, I was complicit in much of apartheid while teaching and writing about the evil of the system. It seems never to occur to those who deny involvement, or legal or moral guilt, or who distance themselves from past events, that they were, and are, indeed companions, and therefore in some degree complicit. The other measuring-rod is to be found in the much broader conceptualisation suggested by the Berlin Director of the Centre for the Treatment of Torture Victims, Christian Pross: that nineteenth-century race theory led to genocide by providing the ideological tools for a biological solution to a social (or political) problem [3]. His less forensic concept facilitates a better appreciation of justifications, ideologies, race theories, motives and moral defences. However much I prefer this approach, we should not stray from the international law wording and seek either proof or disproof in the definitions of historians and social scientists. Professor Robert Manne says he wrestles with Hannah Arendt’s articulation following the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem – that genocide is the desire (by Nazis) that certain distinct people (Jews) “disappear from the earth” [4]. Certainly Arendt was trying to find words for that which was (relatively) new in our moral (and physical) experience – a monstrous attack upon human status and human diversity. Perhaps if she had looked at that much overlooked half-brother to the Holocaust, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks in 1915-16, she might have been less surprised and disconcerted by Nazi behaviour. Manne believes, with Raimond Gaita, that genocide can be committed by non-murderous means, such as the biological assimilation of Aborigines. He is less certain about socio-cultural assimilation. There are many more, and better, definitions of genocide than Arendt’s [5]. Social science definitions assist us in analysis of causes and in conceptualising events. But if we venture into this realm of improved definitions, we will have no universally accepted yardstick – certainly no justiciable basis for trials of genocidal practice or for civil suits of restitution by victims. Some theorists will seek to narrow the definition and others will expand the genocidal universe to the point of meaninglessness. Chalk and Jonassohn take the narrow view that “genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing” by the state or some other authority. Charny’s much broader view sees genocide, in the generic sense, as the “mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action …under conditions of the essential defencelessness and helplessness of the victims. [6]” He emphasises the victimness of essentially “defenceless and helpless” people, but he insists on mass killing of substantial numbers – which applies well to Australia’s nineteenth century private settlers’ killing of Aborigines but not to the “sophisticated” state removal of children. However, many cannot share his vision that the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor was “genocide resulting from ecological destruction and abuse”. The broadest view comes from the reputable scholar Henry Huttenbach: he defines genocide as “any act that puts the very existence of a group in jeopardy”. Courts would find it impossible to pinpoint “any act”, the meaning of “existence” and what constitutes “jeopardy”. Impunity in genocide is now an enormous issue, and the wider the concept the less likely any court will be able to arrive at conviction and punishment. It is quite significant that the 1998 Rome conference establishing the new International Criminal Court had no hesitation in incorporating into Article 6 of the Court’s statute the verbatim definition given by the United Nations in 1948. Misconstruing the nature of genocide, and failure to pay due attention to the partly precise, partly elusive language of Article II, can lead to some startling cases. There is an ongoing application before the ACT Supreme Court by four Aborigines for the arrest of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister on the grounds that by securing the Wik ten-point plan legislation in 1998 they committed specified and unspecified acts of genocide, and that all members of federal parliament have committed genocide by, inter alia, failing to enact an Australian offence of genocide [7]. The case could well be misguided and doomed, depending on the evidence adduced. We need a firm basis for both discussion and action and the only solid (and universal) definition, however flawed, is the one defined in international law. Even so, we have to look to the philosophy inherent in the legal wording of Article II, namely, that genocide is the systematic attempt to destroy, by various means, a defined group’s essential foundations. In this tighter legal sense, Australia is guilty of at least three, possibly four, acts of genocide: first, the essentially private genocide, the physical killing committed by settlers and rogue police officers in the nineteenth century, while the state, in the form of the colonial authorities, stood silently by (for the most part); second, the twentieth-century official state policy and practice of forcibly transferring children from one group to another with the express intention that they cease being Aboriginal ; third, the twentieth century attempts to achieve the biological disappearance of those deemed “half-caste” Aborigines; fourth, a prima facie case that Australia’s actions to protect Aborigines in fact caused them serious bodily or mental harm. (Future scholars may care to analyse the extent of Australia’s actions in creating the conditions of life that were calculated to destroy a specific group, and in sterilising Aboriginal women without consent.) There has been an emotional, even an hysterical, response, to the word genocide. This century has seen several particularly well-documented episodes of the removal of children. That Australia sits alongside some strange bedfellows is perhaps reason enough to wriggle out of a verdict of genocide. Sir Ronald Wilson, the former High Court judge who chaired the National Inquiry, was accused, among many other things, of “intemperate slander” [109]. His detractors, the Inquiry’s critics, the “senior” denialists of Australian history, do not see, nor do they wish to see, the causal chains that begin with the incursions of settlers, the destruction of environments, the “rough work”, the genocidal impulses of the squatters, the segregation-protection era of reserves, settlements and missions, the legislation which always proclaimed itself to be for “the physical, mental and social welfare” of the people, the dismissal of Aboriginal values and their evaluation as less than human, the creation of chronic dependency, and the (continuing) practice of institutionalisation, something which even Neville, a pioneer of forced assimilation, for once correctly saw all too clearly – “that coloured races all over the world detest”. It is that very premeditated institutionalisation – whether on Christian missions, cattle stations, government settlements and reserves, assimilation homes, dormitories, juvenile facilities and prisons – that helps explain the degradation, disease and premature dying over these past two hundred years. GENOCIDE IN AUSTRALIA by COLIN TATZ AIATSIS Research Discussion Papers No 8
The Australian frontier wars The Australian frontier wars were a series of conflicts fought between Indigenous Australians and European settlers that spanned a total of 146 years. The first fighting took place several months after January 26, 1788 and the last clashes occurred as late as 1934.A recent study calculated indigenous fatalities caused by the Queensland Native Police Force alone to no less than 24,000,[3] and most scholars accept an overall minimum of 20,000 for all the colonies.[4] Violent frontier deaths of Europeans and associates, on the other hand, have been estimated as between 2,000 and 2,500.[5]Far more devastating in their impact on the Aboriginal population, however, were the effects of disease, followed by infertility, loss of hunting ground, starvation and general despair, loss of pride, and the alcoholic ‘remedy’ for this devastation. There are powerful indications that small-pox epidemics may have impacted some Aboriginal tribes with depopulation in large sections of what is now Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland with up to 50% or more, even before the move inland from Sydney of squatters and their livestock.[6] Then other diseases hitherto unknown in the Indigenous population—such as the common cold, flu, measles, venereal diseases and tuberculosis—made a second impact, significantly reducing their numbers and tribal cohesion, so limiting their ability to adapt and resist invasion and dispossession.[7]The Black War refers to the period of conflict between British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in the early nineteenth century.[4][5]Although historians vary on their definition of when the conflict began and ended, it is best understood as the officially sanctioned time of declared martial law by the colonial government between 1828 and 1832.The term Black War is also sometimes used to refer to other, later conflicts between European colonists and Aboriginal Australians on mainland Australia.[6]Background[edit source | editbeta]In 1770 a British expedition under the command of then-Lieutenant James Cook made the first voyage by Europeans along the Australian east coast. On 29 April Cook and a small landing party fired on a group of Tharawal people who threatened them when they attempted to come ashore at Botany Bay. Two Tharawal men threw spears at the British, before fleeing in alarm after being fired on again. Cook did not make further contact with the Tharawal, but later established a peaceful relationship with the Kokobujundji people when his ship, HM Bark Endeavour, had to be repaired at present-day Cooktown.[8]Cook, in his voyage up the east coast of Australia, observed no signs of agriculture or other development by its inhabitants. Some historians argue that the prevailing European law was such land was deemed terra nullius or land belonging to nobody[9] or land ’empty of inhabitants’ (as defined by Emerich de Vattel).[10] Cook claimed the east coast of the continent for Britain on 23 August 1770.The British Government decided to establish a prison colony in Australia in 1786.[11] Some historians argue that Britain took possession of Australia under the European legal doctrine that it wasterra nullius. Under this classification Indigenous Australians’ were not recognised as having property rights and territory could be acquired through ‘original occupation’ rather than conquest or consent.[9] The colony’s Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, was instructed to “live in amity and kindness” with Indigenous Australians, however and sought to avoid conflict.[12]However, other historians argue as an inhabited land annexed by Britain, colonists could be granted the right to occupy such areas of the annexed land that did not appear to be under cultivation or some other kind of development (such as a village or town) but were generally expected to respect the property rights of the original inhabitants. These historians contend that as, in European terms, property rights were principally exercised by the cultivation of land, the marking of boundaries and by the building of permanent buildings and settlements, the settlers did not believe that Indigenous Australians claimed property rights to the lands they roamed over. Instead, nomadic hunter-gatherers seemed, to the Europeans, to be concerned only with the right to hunt and kill the wild game, which was their principal source of food. Many of the violent incidents between white settlers and Aborigines seem to have occurred when Aborigines objected to settlers hunting wild game, rather than because the settlers were ‘occupying’ Aboriginal territory.[13][14]History[edit source | editbeta]Violence between Indigenous Australians and Europeans began several months after the First Fleet established Sydney on 26 January 1788. The local Indigenous people became suspicious when the British began to clear land and catch fish, and in May 1788 five convicts were killed and an Indigenous man was wounded. The British grew increasingly concerned when groups of up to three hundred Indigenous people were sighted at the outskirts of the settlement in June.[15] Despite this, Phillip attempted to avoid conflict, and forbade reprisals after being speared in 1790.[16] He did, however, authorise two punitive expeditions in December 1790 after his huntsman was killed by an Indigenous warrior named Pemulwuy, but neither was successful.[17][18]During the 1790s and early 19th century the British established small settlements along the Australian coastline. These settlements initially occupied small amounts of land, and there was little conflict between the settlers and Indigenous peoples. Fighting broke out when the settlements expanded however, disrupting traditional Indigenous food-gathering activities, and subsequently followed the pattern of European settlement in Australia for the next 150 years.[19] Indeed whilst the reactions of the Aboriginal inhabitants to the sudden arrival of British settlers were varied, they became inevitably hostile when their presence led to competition over resources, and to the occupation of their lands. European diseases decimated Indigeous populations, and the occupation or destruction of lands and food resources sometimes led to starvation.[20] By and large neither the Europeans nor the Indigenous peoples approached the conflict in an organised sense, with the conflict more one between groups of settlers and individual tribes rather than systematic warfare, even if at times it did involve British soldiers and later formed mounted police units. Not all Indigenous Australians resisted white encroachment on their lands either, whilst many also served in mounted police units and were involved in attacks on other tribes.[20] Regardless a pattern of frontier warfare emerges, with Indigenous resistance beginning in the 18th century and continuing into the early 20th century, belying the “myth” of peaceful settlement in Australia. Settlers in turn often reacted with violence, resulting in a number of indiscriminate massacres.[21][22]It may be inaccurate, however, to depict the conflict as one sided and mainly perpetrated by Europeans on Indigenous Australians. Although many more died than Europeans, some cases of mass killing were not massacres but military defeats, and this may have had more to do with the technological and logistic advantages enjoyed by Europeans.[23] Indigenous tactics varied, but were mainly based on pre-existing hunting and fighting practices—utilising spears, clubs and other primitive weapons. Unlike the indigenous peoples of New Zealand and North America, on the main they failed to adapt to meet the challenge of the Europeans, and although there were some instances of individuals and groups acquiring and using firearms, this was not widespread.[24] In reality the Indigenous peoples were never a serious military threat, regardless of how much the settlers may have feared them.[25] On occasions large groups attacked Europeans in open terrain and a conventional battle ensued, during which the Aborigines would attempt to use superior numbers to their advantage. This could sometimes be effective, with reports of them advancing in crescent formation in an attempt to outflank and surround their opponents, waiting out the first volley of shots and then hurling their spears whilst the settlers reloaded. Usually however such open warfare proved more costly for the Indigenous Australians than the Europeans.[26]Central to the success of the Europeans was the use of firearms, however the advantages this afforded have often been overstated. Prior to the 19th century, firearms were often cumbersome muzzle-loading, smooth-bore, single shot weapons with flint-lock mechanisms. Such weapons produced a low rate of fire, whilst suffering from a high rate of failure and were only accurate within 50 metres (160 ft). These deficiencies may have given the Aborigines some advantages, allowing them to move in close and engage with spears or war clubs. However by 1850 significant advances in firearms gave the Europeans a distinct advantage, with the six-shot Colt revolver, the Snider single shot breech-loading rifle and later the Martini-Henry rifle as well as rapid-fire rifles such as the Winchester rifle, becoming available. These weapons, when used on open ground and combined with the superior mobility provided by horses to surround and engage groups of Indigenous Australians, often proved successful. The Europeans also had to adapt their tactics to fight their fast-moving, often hidden enemies. Strategies employed included night-time surprise attacks, and positioning forces to drive the Aborigines off cliffs or force them to retreat into rivers while attacking from both banks.[27]Fighting between Indigenous Australians and European settlers was localised as Indigenous groups did not form confederations capable of sustained resistance. As a result, there was not a single conventional war, but rather a series of violent engagements and massacres across the continent.[28] According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey, in Australia during the colonial period: “In a thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings. Even worse, smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases swept from one Aboriginal camp to another … The main conqueror of Aborigines was to be disease and its ally, demoralisation”.[29]The Caledon Bay crisis of 1932–4 saw one of the last incidents of violent interaction on the ‘frontier’ of indigenous and non-indigenous Australia, which began when the spearing of Japanese poachers who had been molesting Yolngu women was followed by the killing of a policeman. As the crisis unfolded, national opinion swung behind the Aboriginal people involved, and the first appeal on behalf of an Indigenous Australian to the High Court of Australia was launched. Following the crisis, the anthropologist Donald Thompson was despatched by the government to live among the Yolngu.[30] Elsewhere around this time, activists like Sir Douglas Nicholls were commencing their campaigns for Aboriginal rights within the established Australian political system and the age of frontier conflict closed. While this was the end of the Australian Frontier Wars it was not the end of the Australian Frontier itself as the NT and the ACT hadn’t been classified as states which both remain territories to this day.Frontier encounters in Australia were not universally negative. Positive accounts of Aboriginal customs and encounters are also recorded in the journals of early European explorers, who often relied on Aboriginal guides and assistance: Charles Sturt employed Aboriginal envoys to explore the Murray-Darling; the lone survivor of the Burke and Wills expedition was nursed by local Aborigines, and the famous Aboriginal explorer Jackey Jackey loyally accompanied his ill-fated friend Edmund Kennedy to Cape York.[31] Respectful studies were conducted by such as Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in their renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of central Australia (1899); and by Donald Thompson of Arnhem Land (c.1935–1943). In inland Australia, the skills of Aboriginal stockmen became highly regarded.[32]New South Wales[edit source | editbeta]The first frontier war began in 1795 when the British established farms along the Hawkesbury River west of Sydney. Some of these settlements were established by soldiers as a means of providing security to the region.[33] The local Darug people raided farms until Governor Macquarie dispatched troops from the British Army 46th Regiment in 1816. These troops patrolled the Hawkesbury Valley and ended the conflict by killing 14 Indigenous Australians in a raid on their campsite.[34] Indigenous Australians led by Pemulwuy also conducted raids around Parramattaduring the period between 1795 and 1802. These attacks led Governor Philip Gidley King to issue an order in 1801 which authorised settlers to shoot Indigenous Australians on sight in Parramatta, Georges River and Prospect areas.[18]Bathurst War[edit source | editbeta]Main article: Bathurst WarConflict began again when the British expanded into inland New South Wales. The settlers who crossed the Blue Mountains were harassed by Wiradjuri warriors, who killed or wounded stock-keepers and stock and were subjected to retaliatory killings. In response, Governor Brisbane proclaimed martial law on 14 August 1824 to end “…the Slaughter of Black Women and Children, and unoffending White Men…”. It remained in force until 11 December 1824, when it was proclaimed that “…the judicious and humane Measures pursued by the Magistrates assembled at Bathurst have restored Tranquillity without Bloodshed…”.[35][36] There is a display of the weaponry and history of this conflict at the National Museum of Australia.[37] This includes a commendation by Governor Brisbane of the deployment of the troops under Major Morisset: “I felt it necessary to augment the Detachment at Bathurst to 75 men who were divided into various small parties, each headed by a Magistrate who proceeded in different directions in towards the interior of the Country … This system of keeping these unfortunate People in a constant state of alarm soon brought them to a sense of their Duty, and … Saturday their great and most warlike Chieftain has been with me to receive his pardon and that He, with most of His Tribe, attended the annual conference held here on the 28th Novr….”[38]Brisbane also established the New South Wales Mounted Police, who began as mounted infantry from the third Regiment, and were first deployed against bushrangers around Bathurst in 1825. Later they were deployed to the upper Hunter Region in 1826 after fighting broke out there between Wonnarua and Kamilaroi people and settlers.[39]Van Diemen’s Land[edit source | editbeta]
Poster issued in Van Diemen’s Land during the Black War implying a policy of friendship and equal justice for white settlers and Indigenous Australians. Such a policy did not actually exist at the time.[40][41]The British established a settlement in Van Diemen’s Land (modern Tasmania) in 1803. Relations with the local Indigenous people were generally peaceful until the mid-1820s when pastoral expansion caused conflict over land. This led to sustained frontier warfare (the ‘Black War’), and in some districts farmers were forced to fortify their houses.[34] Over 50 British were killed between 1828 and 1830 in what was the “most successful Aboriginal resistance in Australia’s history”.[42]In 1830 Lieutenant-Governor Arthur attempted to end the ‘Black War’ through a massive offensive. In an operation which became known as the ‘Black Line’ ten percent of the colony’s male civilian population were mobilised and marched across the settled districts in company with police and soldiers in an attempt to clear Indigenous Australians from the area. While few Indigenous people were captured, the operation discouraged the Indigenous raiding parties, and they gradually agreed to leave their land for a reservation which had been established at Flinders Island.[34]Northern Australia[edit source | editbeta]The British made three attempts to establish military outposts in northern Australia. The initial settlement at Fort Dundas on Melville Island was established in 1824 but was abandoned in 1829 due to attacks from the local Tiwi people. Some fighting also took place near Fort Wellington on the Cobourg Peninsula between its establishment in 1827 and abandonment in 1829. The third British settlement, Fort Victoria, was also established on the Cobourg Peninsula in 1838 but was abandoned in 1849.[34]Western Australia[edit source | editbeta]The first British settlement in Western Australia was established by the British Army at Albany in 1826. Relations between the garrison and the local Minang people were generally good. Open conflict between Noongar and European settlers broke out in Western Australia in the 1830s as the Swan River Colony expanded from Perth. The Battle of Pinjarra is the best known single event, it was fought on 28 October 1833 between a party of British soldiers and mounted police led by Governor Stirling attacked an Indigenous campsite on the banks of the Murray River.[34]The Noongar people forced from traditional hunting grounds and denied access to sacred sites turned to stealing settlers crops and killing livestock to supplement their food supply. In 1831 a Noongar person was killed taking potatoes this resulted in Yagan killing a servant of the household as was the response permitted under tribal law. In 1832 Yagan and two others were arrested and sentenced to death, settler Robert Menli Lyon argued that Yagan was defending his land from invasion as such he should be treated as a prisoner of war. The argument was successful and the three men were exiled to Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers, the group later escaped from the island.[43]Fighting continued on into the 1840s along the Avon River near York.[34]In 1841 a massacre of all Ganeang men found, occurred in and around Lake Mininup, [44] in the area of the Vasse and Blackwood.The discovery of gold near Coolgardie in 1892 brought thousands of prospectors onto Wangkathaa land, causing sporadic fighting.[45]Continued European expansion in Western Australia led to further frontier conflict, Bunuba raiders also attacked European settlements during the 1890s until their leader Jandamarra was killed in 1897.[45] Sporadic conflict continued in northern Western Australia until the 1920s, with a Royal Commission held in 1926 finding that at least eleven Indigenous Australians had been killed in the Forrest River massacre by a police expedition in retaliation for the death of a European.[46]Wars on the plains[edit source | editbeta]
An illustration of the explorer Charles Sturt’s party being “threatened by blacks (sic) at the junction of the Murray and Darling, 1830”, near Wentworth, New South Wales.From the 1830s British settlement spread rapidly through inland eastern Australia, leading to widespread conflict. Fighting took place across the Liverpool Plains, with 16 British and up to 500 Indigenous Australians being killed between 1832 and 1838. The fighting in this region included several massacres of Indigenous people including as the Waterloo Creek massacre and Myall Creek massacres in 1838 and did not end until 1843. Further fighting took place in the New England region during the early 1840s.[47]Fighting also took place in Victoria after it was settled by British in 1834. A clash at Benalla in 1838 marked the beginning of frontier conflict in the colony which lasted for fifteen years. The Indigenous groups in Victoria concentrated on economic warfare, killing tens of thousands of sheep. Large numbers of British settlers arrived in Victoria during the 1840s, and rapidly outnumbered the Indigenous population. By the late 1840s frontier conflict was limited to the Wimmera and Gippsland.[48] Considerable fighting also took place in South Australia between 1839 and 1841.[49] and in Queensland. Indeed, most conflict in the 1870s took place in western and north Queensland and northern Western Australia.Queensland[edit source | editbeta]
Fighting near Creen Creek, Queensland in September 1876The frontier wars were particularly bloody and bitter in Queensland. The invasion of what is now Queensland commenced as the Moreton Bay penal settlement from September 1824. It was initially located at Redcliffe but moved south to Brisbane River a year later. Free settlement began in 1838 but a wholesale invasion and settlement only really began with the great rush to take up the surrounding land in the Darling Downs, Logan and Brisbane Valley and South Burnett onwards from 1840, in many cases leading to widespread fighting and heavy loss of life. The conflict later spread north to the Wide Bay and Burnett River and Hervey Bay region, and at one stage the settlement of Maryborough was virtually under siege.[50] Both sides committed atrocities, with settlers poisoning a large amount of Indigenous people, e.g. at Kilcoy on the South Burnett in 1842 and on Whiteside near Brisbane in 1847 and Indigenous warriors killing 19 settlers during the Cullin-La-Ringo massacre on 17 October 1861.[34]Queensland’s infamous Native Police Force was formed by the Government of New South Wales in 1848 and under the well connected first Commandant Frederick Walker.[51]Central Queensland was particularly hard hit during the 1860s and frontier violence peaked on the northern mining frontier during the 1870s, most notably in Cook district and on the Palmer and Hodgkinson River goldfields, with heavy loss of Aboriginal lives and several well known massacres. Battle Camp and Cape Bedford belong amongst the best known massacres of Aboriginal people in Cook district, but they were certainly not the only ones.Raids conducted by the Kalkadoon held settlers out of Western Queensland for ten years until September 1884 when they attacked a force of settlers and native police at Battle Mountain near modern Cloncurry. The subsequent battle of Battle Mountain ended in disaster for the Kalkadoon, who suffered heavy losses.[52] Fighting continued in north Queensland, however, with Indigenous raiders attacking sheep and cattle while native police mounted punitive expeditions.[45] The frontier wars in Queensland was overall the bloodiest the history of Colonial Australia. The latest studies gives evidence to some fifteen hundred whites and associates killed at the Queensland frontier during the 19th century and strong indications suggest that upwards of 30 000 Aborigines were shot and otherwise killed at the Queensland frontier, sections of Central and North Queensland were particularly bad.[53]Northern Territory[edit source | editbeta]The final battles of the Australian frontier wars took place in the Northern Territory. A permanent settlement was established at modern-day Darwin in 1869 and attempts by pastoralists to occupy Indigenous land led to conflict.[45] This fighting continued into the 20th century, and was driven by reprisals against European deaths and the pastoralists’ desire to secure their land. At least 31 Indigenous men were killed by police in the Coniston massacre in 1928 and further reprisal expeditions were conducted in 1932 and 1933.[54]Historiography[edit source | editbeta]
The existence of armed resistance to white settlement was generally not acknowledged by historians until the 1970s. In 1968 anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner wrote that historians’ failure to include Indigenous Australians in histories of Australia or acknowledge widespread frontier conflict constituted a ‘great Australian silence’. Works which discussed the conflicts began to appear during the 1970s and 1980s, and the first history of the Australian frontier told from an Indigenous perspective, Henry Reynolds’ The Other Side of the Frontier, was published in 1982.[45]Between 2000 and 2002 Keith Windschuttle published a series of articles in the magazine Quadrant and the book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. These works argued that there had not been prolonged frontier warfare in Australia, and that historians had in some instances fabricated evidence of fighting. Windschuttle’s claims led to the so-called ‘History wars’ in which historians debated the extent of the conflict between Indigenous Australians and European settlers.[45]The frontier wars are not commemorated at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The Memorial argues that the Australian frontier fighting is outside its charter as it did not involve Australian military forces. This position is supported by the Returned and Services League of Australia but is opposed by many historians, including Geoffrey Blainey, Gordon Briscoe, John Coates, John Connor, Ken Inglis, Michael McKernan and Peter Stanley. These historians argue that the fighting should be commemorated at the Memorial as it involved large numbers of Indigenous Australians and paramilitary Australian units.[55]Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars1700s%5Bedit source | editbeta]•1790 In December, Governor Arthur Phillip issued an order for “a party…of two captains, two subalterns and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison…to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that number shall be found impracticable, to put that number to death”.[4] This was largely in response to the spearing by Pemulwuy of the Governor’s gamekeeper, McEntire, and his subsequent death. McEntire was suspected of violence towards Aboriginal people and Watkin Tench writes he was “the person of whom Baneelon had, on former occasions, shown so much dread and hatred”.[5] And, “from the aversion uniformly shown by all the natives to this unhappy man, he had long been suspected by us of having in his excursions shot and injured them”. On his deathbed, McEntire “began…to accuse himself of the commission of crimes of the deepest dye”, but “declared that he had never fired but once on a native, and then had not killed but severely wounded him in his own defence.” Tench wrote of this denial, “Notwithstanding his deathbed confession, most people doubted the truth of the relation, from his general character and other circumstances.”[5]Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars
1800s[edit source | editbeta]The first known massacre of Aboriginal people by the British occurred in 1804 at Risdon Cove, in 1816, along the Cataract River,[clarification needed] a tributary of the Nepean River, south of Sydney. Governor Macquarie sent parties against the Gundungurra and Dharawal people, allegedly in reprisal over their encroachments against white farms in the “Nepean” and “Cowpastures” Districts. The British raiding parting split in two at Bent’s Basin, with one group moving south-west against the Gundungurra, and the other moving south-east against the Dharawal. This latter group came upon Cataract Gorge,where the soldiers used their horses to force men, women and children to fall from the cliffs of the Gorge, to their deaths below.[6] The occurrence of the Cataract Gorge (or Appin) Massacre is confirmed by Heritage NSW and the University of Western Sydney.[7]•The Black War in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) refers to a period of intermittent conflict between the British colonists, whalers and sealers (including those of the American sealing fleet) and Aborigines in the early years of the 19th century. The conflict has been described as a genocide resulting in the elimination of the full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal population.[8] There are currently some 20,000 individuals who claim Tasmanian Aboriginal descent.The culmination of this period was the transfer of some 200 survivors, rounded up by George Augustus Robinson in the 1830s, to Flinders Island in Bass Strait.[9] Some historians such as Henry Reynolds have described the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island, as ‘by far the best equipped, most heavily funded and lavishly staffed of all colonial institutions for Aborigines ’. Josephine Flood notes that they were provided with housing, clothing, rations of food, the services of a doctor and educational facilities. Convicts were assigned to build housing (Henry Reynolds notes that the cottages for Aboriginal people were extremely well built) and do most of the work at the settlement including the growing of food in the vegetable gardens.[10][11][12] However, in 1839, Governor Franklin appointed a board to inquire into the conditions at Wybalenna that rejected Robinson’s claims regarding living conditions and found the settlement to be a failure. Camp conditions had deteriorated and many of the residents had died of ill health and homesickness. The report was never released and the government continued to promote Wybalenna as a success in the treatment of Aboriginal Australians.[13] Of the original 220 who arrived, most died in the following 14 years from introduced disease, with the 47 survivors moved to a settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, in 1847. Some historians have described the Wybalenna settlement as not suitable: the food and living conditions as poor, and allege that many died of malnutrition as well as disease. Some descendants of sealers and whalers who brought Aboriginal Tasmanians and other women from elsewhere still live on Flinders Island and nearby Cape Barren Island.1810s[edit source | editbeta]•1816 Appin massacre, New South Wales: After some earlier raids on settlers which had resulted in deaths, on April 17, around 1 AM soldiers arrived at a camp of Dharawal people at Appin. Captain Willis from the party of soldiers wrote: “The fires were burning but deserted. A few of my men heard a child cry […] The dogs gave the alarm and the natives fled over the cliffs. It was moonlight. I regret to say some (were) shot and others met their fate by rushing in despair over the precipice. Fourteen dead bodies were counted in different directions.” How many more who might have died when they plunged over the precipice will never be known.[14]1820s[edit source | editbeta]•1824 Bathurst massacre, New South Wales: Following the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, and a battle between three stockmen and a warband over stolen cattle which left 16 Aborigines dead, Governor Brisbane declared martial law to restore order and was able to report a cessation of hostilities in which ‘not one outrage was committed under it, neither was a life sacrificed or even Blood spilt’. Part of the tribe trekked down to Parramatta to attend the Governor’s annual Reconciliation Day.[15][16]•1828, 10 February – Cape Grim massacre, Cape Grim, Tasmania. Four shepherds ambushed and killed 30 Pennemukeer Aboriginal people.[17][18][19]1830s[edit source | editbeta]•1830 Fremantle, Western Australia,: The first official ‘punishment raid’ on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, led by Captain Irwin took place in May 1830. A detachment of soldiers led by Irwin attacked an Aboriginal encampment north of Fremantle in the belief that it contained men who had ‘broken into and plundered the house of a man called Paton’ and killed some poultry. Paton had called together a number of settlers who, armed with muskets, set after the Aboriginal people and came upon them not far from the home. ‘The tall savage who appeared the Chief showed unequivocal gestures of defiance and contempt’ and was accordingly shot. Irwin stated, “This daring and hostile conduct of the natives induced me to seize the opportunity to make them sensible to our superiority, by showing how severely we could retaliate their aggression.” In actions that followed over the next few days, more Aboriginal people were killed and wounded.[20][21]•1833-34 Convincing Ground massacre of Gunditjmara: On the shore near Portland, Victoria was one of the largest recorded massacres in Victoria. Whalers and the local Kilcarer clan of the Gunditjmara people disputed rights to a beached whale carcass.[22] Reports vary with from 60 to 200 Aborigines killed, including women and children.[23] An 1842 report on the incident notes that the Gunditjmara people believed that only two members of the Kilcarer clan survived.[24]•1834: Battle of Pinjarra, Western Australia: Official records state 14 Aboriginal people killed, but other accounts put the figure much higher, at 25 or more.[25][26][27]•1836: August, Lieutenant Bunbury[28] after killings in the York area, tracked one wounded Aboriginal man into the bush and shot him through the head. Bunbury also recorded the names of another 11 Aboriginal men he killed during this period. Settlers to the district collected ears of Aboriginal men slain.[29]•1838 26 January Waterloo Creek massacre, also known as the Slaughterhouse Creek or Australia Day massacre. A Sydney mounted police detachment, despatched by the Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales Colonel Kenneth Snodgrass, attacked an encampment of Kamilaroi people at a place called Waterloo Creek in remote bushland.[30] official reports spoke of between 8 and 50 killed.[31] The missionary Lancelot Threkeld set the number at 120 as part of his campaign to garner support for his Mission.[32] Threkeld also claimed Major James Nunn later boasted they had killed from two to three hundred natives, a statement at odds with his own claim, and both not based on any direct evidence but endorsed by historian Roger Milliss.[33]Other estimates range from 40 to 70, but judge that most of the Kamilaroi were wiped out; as the band involved was only part of the tribe, this is hard to reconcile.[34]•1838 11 April, by the Broken River at Benalla. A party of some 18 men, in the employ of George and William Faithful, were searching out new land to the south of Wangaratta for their livestock. According to Judith Bassett,[35] some 20 Aborigines attacked, according to one recent account possibly as a reprisal for the killing of several Aboriginal people at Ovens earlier by the same stockmen and at least one Koori and eight Europeans died.[36] It was long known locally as the Faithfull Massacre though Chris Clark argues that ‘there is no reason to view this incident as anything other than a battle which the Aborigines won’.[37] Local reprisals ensued resulting in the deaths of up to 100 Aboriginal people.[38] It also seems they were camping on a ground reserved for hunting or ceremonies.Additional murders of these people occurred at Wangaratta on the Ovens River, at Murchison (led by the native police under Dana and in the company of the young Edward Curr, who could not bring himself to discuss what he witnessed there other than to say he took issue with the official reports). Other incidents were recorded by Mitchelton and Toolamba.This “hunting ground” would have been a ceremonial ground probably called a ‘Kangaroo ground’. Hunting grounds were all over so not something that would instigate an attack. The colonial government decided to “open up” the lands south of Yass after the Faithful Massacre and bring them under British rule. This was as much to try and protect the Aboriginal people from reprisals as to open up new lands for the colonists. The Aboriginal people were (supposedly) protected under British law.•1838 Myall Creek massacre – 10 June: 28 people killed at Myall Creek near Inverell, New South Wales. This was the first Aboriginal massacre for which European settlers were successfully prosecuted. Several colonists had previously been found not guilty by juries despite the weight of evidence and one colonist found guilty had been pardoned when his case was referred to Britain for sentencing. Eleven men were charged with murder but were initially acquitted by a jury. On the orders of the Governor, a new trial was held using the same evidence and seven of the eleven men were found guilty of the murder of one Aboriginal child and hanged. In his book, Blood on the Wattle, journalist Bruce Elder says that the successful prosecutions resulted in pacts of silence becoming a common practice to avoid sufficient evidence becoming available for future prosecutions.[39] Another effect, as one contemporary Sydney newspaper reported, was that poisoning Aboriginal people became more common as “a safer practice”. Many massacres were to go unpunished due to these practices,[39] as what is variously called a ‘conspiracy’ or ‘pact’ or ‘code’ of silence fell over the killings of Aboriginal people.[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]•Mid-1838. Gwydir River. A war of extirpation, according to local magistrate Edmund Denny Day, was waged all along the Gwydir River in mid-1838. ‘Aborigines in the district were repeatedly pursued by parties of mounted and armed stockmen, assembled for the purpose, and that great numbers of them had been killed at various spots’.[58]•1838 In July 1838 men from the Bowman, Ebden and Yaldwyn stations in search of stolen sheep shot and killed 14 Aboriginal people at a campsite near the confluence of the Murrumbidgeeand Murray Rivers in New South Wales.[59]•May–June 1839 Campaspe Plains massacre, Campaspe Creek, Central Victoria, killing Daung Wurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung people. In May 1839, Daung Wurrung killed two shepherds in reprisal for the murder of three Daung the previous month. An armed party of settlers led by station owner Charles Hutton killed up to 40 Daung at a campsite near Campaspe Creek. The following month, Hutton led an armed party of police who killed six Dja Dja Wurrung at another camp. All six had been shot in the back while fleeing. The Assistant Protector of Aborigines for the region, described the massacre as “a deliberately planned illegal reprisal.”[60]•Mid 1839 The Murdering Gully massacre near Camperdown, Victoria was carried out by Frederick Taylor and others in retaliation for some sheep being killed on his station by two unidentified Aborigines. The Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung people, around 35-40 people, was wiped out. Public censure led to Taylor’s River being renamed Mount Emu Creek and, fearing prosecution for the massacre, in late 1839 or early 1840 Taylor fled to India. Of particular note for this massacre is the extent of oral history, first hand accounts of the incident, the detail in settler diaries, records of Weslayan missionaries, and Aboriginal Protectorate records.[61]•1830s—1840s Wiradjuri Wars: Clashes between European settlers and Wiradjuri were very violent, particularly around the Murrumbidgee. The loss of fishing grounds and significant sites and the killing of Aboriginal people was retaliated through attacks with spears on cattle and stockmen. In the 1850s there were still corroborees around Mudgee but there were fewer clashes. Known ceremony continued at the Murrumbidgee into the 1890s. European settlement had taken hold and the Aboriginal population was in temporary decline.1840s[edit source | editbeta]•1840-50 – the Gippsland massacres in which 250-1000 Indigenous Australians were indiscriminately killed.•1840 8 March. The Whyte brothers massacred, according to various estimates, from 20 to 51[62][63] Jardwadjali men, women, and children on the Konongwootong run near Hamilton, Victoria. Aboriginal tradition puts the death toll as high as 80.[64]•1841•27 August. The Rufus River massacre, various estimates – between 16-50.[65]•There was an extensive massacre at Lake Minimup in Western Australia, lead by Captain John Molloy who “gave special instructions that no woman or child should be killed, but that no mercy should be offered the men. A strong and final lesson must be taught the blacks. … The white men had no mercy. The black men were killed by dozens, and their corpses lined the route of march of the avengers.”[66]•1842•Settlers poisoned 50 Aboriginal people to death in the Brisbane valley in 1842[67]•On the outskirts of Kilcoy Station owned by MacKenzie, 30-60 people of the Kabi Kabi died from eating flour laced with strychnine or arsenic.[68]•1842 Evans Head massacre – the 1842 massacre of 100 Bundjalung Nation tribes-people at Evans Head by Europeans, was variously said to have been in retaliation for the killing of ‘a few sheep’, or the killing of ‘five European men’ from the 1842 ‘Pelican Creek tragedy’. It is also referred to as the ‘Goanna Headland massacre’.•1843 Warrigal Creek massacre, amounting to 100-150 Aboriginal people.[69][70]•1846 George Smythe’s surveying party shot in cold blood from 7 to 9 Aboriginal people, all but one women and children, at Cape Otway.[71]•1849 By 1849 clashes between Aboriginal people and settlers occurred on the Balonne and Condamine Rivers of Queensland.[72]•1849 Massacre of Muruwari people at Hospital Creek in retribution for a suspected killing of a white stockman.[72]•1849 Massacre of Aboriginal people at Butchers Tree near Brewarrina, along the Barwon River, and on the Narran River.[72]•1849 Avenue Range Station Massacre (Mount Gambier region of South Australia) – at least 9 indigenous Buandig Wattatonga clan people allegedly murdered by the station owner James Brown who was subsequently charged with the crime. The case was dropped by the Crown for lack of (European) witnesses.[73] Christina Smith’s source from the Wattatonga tribe refers to 11 people killed in this incident by two white men.[74]1850s-1890s[edit source | editbeta]•1857 Massacre of the Yeeman. In the early hours of the 27 October 1857, members of the Yeeman tribe attacked the Fraser’s Hornet Bank Station in the Dawson River Basin in Queensland(the Hornet Bank massacre) killing 11 people in retaliation for the deaths of 12 members shot for spearing some cattle and the deaths of an unknown number of Yeeman nine months earlier who had been given strychnine laced Christmas puddings by the Fraser family. Following the deaths of his parents and siblings, William Fraser, who had been away on business, began a campaign of extermination that eventually saw the extinction of the Yeeman tribe and language group. Fraser is credited with killing more than 100 members of the tribe with many more killed by sympathetic squatters and policemen. By March 1858 up to 300 Yeeman had been killed. Public and police sympathy for Fraser was high, and he gained a reputation as a folk hero throughout Queensland.[39][75]•1861 Central Highlands of Queensland. Between October and November 1861, police and settlers killed an estimated 170 Aboriginal people in what was then known as the Medway Ranges following the killing of the Wills family.[59]•1865 The La Grange expedition in Western Australia was a search expedition carried out in the vicinity of La Grange Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia led by Maitland Brownthat led to the death of up to 20 Aboriginal people. The expedition has been celebrated with the Explorers’ Monument in Fremantle, Western Australia.•1867 Goulbolba Hill Massacre, Central Queensland: large massacre in early 1867 involving men, women and children. This was claimed to be the result of settlers pushing Aboriginal people out of their hunting grounds and the Aboriginal people being forced to hunt livestock for food. A party of Native Police, allegedly under Frederick Wheeler, who had a reputation for violent repressions, was sent to “disperse” this group of Aboriginal people, who were “resisting the invasion”. He is supposed to have also mustered up a force of 100 local whites. Alerted to Wheeler’s presence by a native stockman, the district’s Aboriginal people hid in caves on Goulbolba hill. According to eyewitness testimony taken down from one local white in 1899 (thirty years after the event), that day some 300 Aboriginal people, including all the women and children, were shot dead or killed by being herded into the nearby lake for drowning. There is no other supporting evidence of this event.[76]•1868 Flying Foam Massacre, Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. Following the killing of two police and two settlers by local Yaburara people, two parties of settlers from the Roebournearea, led by prominent pastoralists Alexander McRae and John Withnell, killed an unknown number of Yaburara. Estimates of the number of dead range from 20 to 150.[77]•1873 Battle Camp Massacre, Far North Queensland: The event took place during the first rush of miners travelling from the Endeavour River to the Palmer river in about November or December 1873. In an article in the Queenslander’s Sketcher in December 1875, one digger recalled the Palmer rush two years earlier. One morning he and his party had, he told: …passed ‘Battle camp’ … It was here the blacks of the interior first re-ceived their ‘baptism of fire;’ where they first became acquainted with the death-dealing properties of the mysterious weapon of the white man;…Here and there a skull, bleached to the whiteness of snow, with a round bullet-hole to show the cause of its present location…[78]•1874 Barrow Creek Massacre, Northern Territory: In February Mounted Constable Samuel Gason arrived at Barrow Creek and a police station was opened. Eight days later a group of Kaytetyemen attacked the station, either in retaliation for treatment of Kaytetye women, the closing off of their only water source, or both. Two white men were killed and one wounded. Samuel Gason mounted a large police hunt against the Kaytetye resulting in the killing of many Aboriginal men, women and children – some say up to 90.[79] Skull Creek, where the massacre took place, 50 miles south of Barrow Creek, takes its name from the bleached bones found there long after.[80]•1874-75 Blackfellow’s Creek Massacre, Far North Queensland. A letter from a miner dated “Upper Palmer River April 16, 1876”, describes his camp at a place known locally as “Blackfellows creek”. He explained, leaving very little doubt as to its appearance, that: “…To my enquiry as to why it was so named, the answer is that not long since ‘the niggers got a dressing there’ – whatever that may mean; possibly a bright coloured shirt apiece, for decency’s sake. There have been, certainly, ‘dressings’ of another sort dealt out in this part of the country to the blacks,…. Be that as it may, however, the Golgotha on which we are at present camped would well repay a visit from any number of phrenological students in search of a skull, or of anatomical professors in want of a ‘subject.'”[81]•1879 Cape Bedford, Far North Queensland: Cape Bedford massacre on 20 February 1879 – taking the lives of 28 Aborigines of the Guugu-Yimidhirr tribe north of Cooktown – Cooktown based Native Police Sub-inspector Stanhope O’Connor with his troopers, Barney, Jack, Corporal Hero, Johnny and Jimmy hunted down, subsequently “hemmed in” a group of Guugu-Yimidhirr Aborigines in “a narrow gorge”, north of Cooktown on, “of which both outlets were secured by the troopers. There were twenty-eight men and thirteen gins thus enclosed, of whom none of the former escaped. Twenty-four were shot down on the beach, and four swam out to the sea” never to be seen again.[82] This was just one of numerous similar episode, most of which will remain uncounted for, on the Far North Queensland mining frontier during the 1870s.•1880s-90s Arnhem Land, Northern Territory: Series of skirmishes and “wars” between Yolngu and whites. Several massacres at Florida Station. Richard Trudgen [83] also writes of several massacres in this area, including an incident where Yolngu were fed poisoned horse meat after they killed and ate some cattle (under their law, it was their land and they had an inalienable right to eat animals on their land). Many people died as a result of that incident. Trudgen also talks of a massacre ten years later after some Yolngu took a small amount of barbed wire from a huge roll to build fishing spears. Men, women and children were chased by mounted police and men from the Eastern and African Cold Storage Company and shot.[84]•1884 Battle Mountain: 200 Kalkadoon people killed near Mount Isa, Queensland after a Chinese shepherd had been murdered.•1887 Halls Creek Western Australia. Mary Durack suggests there was a conspiracy of silence about the massacres of Djara, Konejandi and Walmadjari peoples about attacks on Aboriginal people by white gold-miners, Aboriginal reprisals and consequent massacres at this time. John Durack was speared, which led to a local massacre in the Kimberley.•1888 Diamantina River district in south west Queensland. A killing of a station cook near Durrie on the Diamantina in 1888 led to a reported attack by a party of the Queensland Native Police led by sub-inspector Robert Little. The attack was timed to coincide with an assembly of young Aborigines around the permanent waters of Kaliduwarry. Great gatherings of Aboriginal youth were held at Kaliduwarry on the Eyre Creek on a regular basis and attracted youths from as far away as the Gulf of Carpentaria to below the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Perhaps as many as two hundred Aborigines might have been killed on this occasion.[85]•1890 Speewah Massacre, Far North Queensland: Early settler, John Atherton, took revenge on the Djabugay by sending in native troopers to avenge the killing of a bullock. Other unconfirmed reports of similar atrocities occurred locally.[86][self-published source?]•1890-1926 Kimberley region, Western Australia – The Killing Times – East Kimberleys: During what the colonial government called “pacification”, recalled as “The Killing Times”, a quarter of Western Australia’s police force was deployed in the Kimberley where only 1% of the white population dwelt.[87] Violent means were used to drive off the Aboriginal tribes, who were hounded by police and pastoralists alike without judicial protection.[88] The indigenous peoples reacted with payback killings. Possibly hundreds were killed in the Derby, Fitzroy Crossing and Margaret River area, while Jandamarra was being hunted down.[89] Reprisals, and the “villainous effects” of settler policy left the Kimberley Aboriginal people decimated.[90] Massacres in retaliation for attacks on livestock are recorded as late as 1926.[91] The Gija people alone recall 10 ten mass killings for this period.[92]1900s[edit source | editbeta]Kimberley region – The Killing Times – 1890-1920: The massacres listed below have been depicted in modern Australian Aboriginal art from the Warmun/Turkey Creek community who were members of the tribes affected. Oral history of the massacres were passed down and artists such as the late Rover Thomas have depicted the massacres.1910s[edit source | editbeta]•1906-7 Canning Stock Route: an unrecorded number of Aboriginal men and women were raped and massacred when Mardu people were captured and tortured to serve as ‘guides’ and reveal the sources of water in the area after being ‘run down’ by men on horseback, restrained by heavy chains 24 hours a day, and tied to trees at night. In retaliation for this treatment, plus the party’s interference with traditional wells, and the theft of cultural artefacts, Aboriginal people destroyed some of Canning’s wells, and stole from and occasionally killed white travellers. A Royal Commission in 1908, exonerated Canning, after an appearance by Kimberley Explorer and Lord Mayor of Perth, Alexander Forrest claimed that all explorers had acted in such a fashion.[93]•1915 Mistake Creek Massacre: Seven Kija people were alleged to have been killed by men under the control of a Constable Rhatigan, at Mistake Creek, East Kimberley. The massacre is supposed to be in reprisal for allegedly killing Rhatigan’s cow, however the cow is claimed to have been found alive after the massacre had already taken place. Rhatigan was arrested for wilful murder apparently due to the fact that the killers were riding horses which belonged to him, but the charges were dropped, for lack of evidence that he was personally involved.[94] While there are four versions of the incident in the oral histories they vary only in minor details. The historian Keith Windschuttle disputes the version put forward by former Governor-General of Australia,William Deane, in November 2002. The official 1915 Turkey Creek police station files which document the massacre contains a claim by an Aboriginal person that Rhatigan was involved, supporting the view of Aboriginal oral history.[95] Despite this, Windschuttle claims that the police inquest ultimately cleared Rhatigan (eyewitnesses reported that Rhatigan was not present) and that the massacre was not a reprisal attack by whites over a cow, but “an internal feud between Aboriginal station hands” over a woman. “No Europeans were responsible. There was no dispute over a stolen cow, and it had nothing to do with theories about terra nullius or of Aborigines being subhuman.”.[96] Members of the Gija tribe, from the Warmun (Turkey Creek) community have depicted the massacre in their artworks (see Warmun Art).•1918 Bentinck Island: Part of the Mornington Island group, Bentinck Island was home to the Kaiadilt clan of just over 100 people. In 1911 a man by the name of McKenzie (other names unknown) was given a government lease for nearby Sweers Island that also covered the eastern portion of the much larger Bentinck Island. Arriving on Bentinck with an Aboriginal woman and a flock of sheep, he built a hut near the Kurumbali estuary. Although the Kaiadilt avoided contact and refrained from approaching McKenzie’s property he is alleged to have often explored the island, shooting any males he found while raping the women. In 1918 McKenzie organised a hunt with an unknown number of settlers from the mainland and, beginning from the northern tip of the island, herded the Indigenous inhabitants to the beach on its southern shore. The majority of the Kaiadilt fled into the sea where those that were not shot from the shore drowned. Those that tried to escape along the beach were hunted down and shot, with the exception of a small number who reached nearby mangroves where the settlers’ horses could not follow. Several young women were raped on the beach, then held prisoner in McKenzie’s hut for three days before being released. As the Kaiadilt remained isolated throughout much of the 20th century, the massacre remained unknown to the authorities until researchers recorded accounts given by survivors in the 1980s.[97]1920s[edit source | editbeta]•1924 Bedford Downs massacre: a group of Gija and Worla men were tried in Wyndham for spearing a milking cow on the Bedford Downs station. When released from the court they were givendog tags to wear and told to walk the 200 kilometres back to Bedford Downs. On arrival they were set to work to cut the wood that was later used to burn their bodies. Once the work was finished they were fed food laced with strychnine by white station hands and their writhing bodies were then either shot or they were clubbed to death. The bodies were subsequently burned by the local police.[98] This massacre has been depicted in artworks by members of the Gija tribe, the identities of the alleged perpetrators passed down and the events re-enacted in a traditionalcorroboree that has been performed since the massacre allegedly occurred.[99] It has been questioned by Rod Moran (a Western Australian journalist) whether this massacre actually occurred or if it is merely a local legend with no foundation in fact. In a magazine article, he argues that there is no evidence for such a massacre and that it is much more likely to be an invention.[100]Moran bases his argument on the implausibility of the claim that the men were ‘marked for death’ with a ticket or tag that they declined to remove even when warned to do so; that it is improbable, because of the number of perpetrators allegedly involved, that word of such an alleged massacre would not have ‘leaked out’ until over sixty years later; on a lack of written contemporary documentation; and that the Europeans and survivors that are mentioned are not named. The accounts became widely known after oral histories collected for the 1989 East Kimberley Impact Assessment Project (EKIAP) were published in 1999. As is customary for Indigenous reports, the EKIAP did not name anyone who was dead. Moran was unaware that several of the original written accounts did name not only the eyewitnesses and survivors but also the killers and other whites who were present but did not participate.[95]•1926 Forrest River massacre in the East Kimberleys: in May 1926, Fred Hay, a pastoralist, attacked an Aboriginal man by the name of Lumbia and was speared to death. A police patrol led by Constables James St Jack and Denis Regan left Wyndham on 1 June, to hunt for the killer, and in the first week of July Lumbia, the accused man, was brought into Wyndham. At his preliminary hearing, Lumbia testified that Hay had flogged him 20-30 times with his stockwhip because Hay believed he had butchered one of the station’s cattle, which he denied. According to a claim made by the Rev Ernest Gribble at the later Royal Commission, Hay had then raped one of Lumbia’s child wives and was speared and killed by Lumbia as he was departing. At his trial Lumbia was not provided with a lawyer but was represented by Aborigines Department Inspector E.C. Mitchell, who acted as his advocate. After escaping from the courthouse and being recaptured, Lumbia was chained to a post in the street while the jury continued to hear the prosecution case before finding him guilty in his absence. The prosecutor claimed Hay was murdered while protecting his stock and the alleged rape was not mentioned. Statements by Lumbia and his wives recorded before the trial through an Aboriginal interpreter, Mrs Angelina Noble of Forrest River Mission and produced in court, made no mention of rape.[101] In the months that followed, rumours circulated of a massacre by the police party. The Rev. Ernest Gribbleof Forrest River Mission (later Oombulgurri) alleged that 30 people had been killed by the police party and a Royal Commission, after sending out an evidence-gathering party, found that 11 people had been massacred and the bodies burned. In May 1927, St Jack and Regan were charged with the murder of Boondung, one of the 11. However, at a preliminary hearing, Magistrate Kidson found there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial.•1928 Coniston massacre: A WW1 veteran shot 32 Aboriginal people at Coniston in the Northern Territory after a white dingo trapper and station owner were attacked by Aboriginal people. A survivor of the massacre, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, later became part of the first generation of Papunya painting men. Billy Stockman was saved by his mother who put him in acoolamon[102] A court of inquiry said the European action was ‘justified’.[103][104]tp://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/history/genocide.html
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War
History WarsThe history wars in Australia are an ongoing public debate over the interpretation of the history of the British colonisation of Australia and development of contemporary Australian society (particularly with regard to the impact on Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders). It has resemblances to debates in other countries.[1]While no historians or major political leaders in Australia would contend that Australia’s colonial period was undertaken without a degree of violence or dispossession, the Australian debate often concerns the extent to which the history of European colonisation post-1788 and government administration since Federation in 1901 may be characterised as having been:a. marked by relatively minor conflict between European colonists and Indigenous Australians, and generally lacking in events that might be termed ‘invasion’, ‘warfare’, ‘guerrilla warfare’, ‘conquest’ or ‘genocide’, and generally marked instead by humane intent by government authorities, with damage to indigenous people largely attributable to unintended factors (such as the spread of new diseases) rather than to malicious policies;b. or whether the settlement of Australia constituted an invasion marked by violent conflict at the frontier, guerrilla warfare (or other forms of warfare) between Europeans and Aborigines, involving frequent or significant massacres of Aboriginal peoples engaged in defending their traditional tribal lands; a situation which can be said to have developed either nationally, or in certain areas, into something like a war of ‘extermination’ or something which accords with the term genocide as a consequence of British imperialism and colonialism involving continued dispossession, exploitation, ill treatment and cultural genocide.The History Wars also relates to broader themes concerning national identity, as well as methodological questions concerning the historian and the craft of researching and writing history, including issues such as the value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the political or similar ideological biases of those who interpret them.OutlineIn 1968 Professor W. E. H. “Bill” Stanner, an Australian anthropologist, coined the term the “Great Australian Silence” in a Boyer Lecture entitled “After the Dreaming”, where he argued that the writing of Australian history was incomplete. He asserted that Australian national history as documented up to that point had largely been presented in a positive light, but that Indigenous Australians had been virtually ignored. He saw this as a structural and deliberate process to omit “several hundred thousand Aborigines who lived and died between 1788 and 1938… (who were but) … negative facts of history and … were in no way consequential for the modern period”. A new strand of Australian historiography subsequently emerged which gave much greater attention to the negative experiences of Indigenous Australians during the British settlement of Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s, historians such as Manning Clark and Henry Reynolds published work which they saw as correcting a selective historiography that had misrepresented or ignored Indigenous Australian history. The historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in the literary and political journalQuadrant in 1993 that the telling of Australian history had moved from an unduly positive rendition (the “Three Cheers View”) to an unduly negative view (The “‘black armband'”) and Australian commentators and politicians have continued to debate this subject.Interpretations of Aboriginal history became part of the wider political debate sometimes called the ‘culture wars’ during the tenure of the Coalition government from 1996–2007, with the Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing the views of some of those associated with Quadrant. This debate extended into a controversy over the way history was presented in theNational Museum of Australia and in high school history curricula. It also migrated into the general Australian media, with regular opinion pieces being published in major broadsheets such asThe Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as ‘war porn’and an ‘intellectual dead end’Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, were major participants in the “wars”. According to the analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library of Dr Mark McKenna,[9]Paul Keating (1991–1996) was believed by John Howard (1996–2007) to portray Australia pre-Whitlam in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the Monarchy and the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the Conservative Australian Parties who had been barriers to national progress and excessively loyal to the British Empire. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during World War II. Keating was a staunch advocate of a symbolic apology to indigenous people for the misdeeds of past governments, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998 Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aborigines as the “most blemished chapter” in Australian history, but he did not make a Parliamentary apology. Howard argued that an apology was inappropriate as it would imply “intergeneration guilt” and said that “practical” measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to British origins: including deference forANZAC Day, the Australian Flag and the Monarchy in Australia, while Howard was a supporter of these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley, Keating never traveled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as “misguided”.In 2006, John Howard said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that “Political Correctness” was dead in Australia but: “we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia’s universities”; and in 2006, Sydney Morning Herald Political Editor Peter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd was entering the philosophical debate by arguing in response that “John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating ‘a fraud’ in his so-called culture wars… designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government’s economic policies”.The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election of 2007, and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government has altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Stolen Generation with bi-partisan support. Like Keating, Rudd supports an Australian Republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd has declared support for the Australian flagand supports the commemoration of ANZAC Day and expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies.Since the change of government, and the passage, with support from all parties, of a Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile has argued: “the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate”,a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen.[18] An intention to reengage in the history wars has been indicated by the Federal Opposition’s Christopher Pyne.The Black Armband DebateThe black armband debate concerns whether or not accounts of Australian history gravitate towards an overly negative or an overly positive point of view. The black armband view of history was a phrase first used by Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture to describe views of history which, he believed, posited that “much of [pre-multicultural] Australian history had been a disgrace” and which focused mainly on the treatment of minority groups (especially Aborigines). This he contrasted with the ‘Three Cheers’ view, according to which: “nearly everything that came after [the convict era] was believed to be pretty good”. Blainey argued that both such accounts of Australian history were inaccurate: “The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced.”.[20]The lecture was subsequently published in the political and literary journal, Quadrant,[21] which at the time was edited by Robert Manne and is now edited by Keith Windschuttle, two of the leading “history warriors”, albeit on opposing sides of the debate. The phrase then began to be used by some commentators pejoratively to describe historians viewed as writing excessively critical Australian history ‘while wearing a black armband’ of “mourning and grieving, or shame”. New interpretations of Australia’s history since 1788 were contested for focussing almost exclusively on official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession and cultural genocide and ignoring positive aspects of Australia’s history.[9] Manning Clark was named by Blainey in his 1993 speech as having “done much to spread the gloomy view and also the compassionate view with his powerful prose and Old Testament phrases.”[21]The Howard Government’s responses to the question of how to recount Australian history were initially formulated in the context of Paul Keating’s characterisation of the subject. John Howardargued in a 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture that the “balance sheet of Australian history” had come to be misrepresented:“The ‘black armband’ view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. […] I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed. In saying that I do not exclude or ignore specific aspects of our past where we are rightly held to account. Injustices were done in Australia and no-one should obscure or minimise them. […] But […] our priority should […] [be] to commit to a practical program of action that will remove the enduring legacies of disadvantage.[22]”In 2009, Howard’s successor Kevin Rudd also called for moving away from a black-arm view:“Time to leave behind us the polarisation that began to infect our every discussion of our nation’s past. To go beyond the so-called “black arm” view that refused to confront some hard truths about our past, as if our forebears were all men and women of absolute nobility, without spot or blemish. But time, too, to go beyond the view that we should only celebrate the reformers, the renegades and revolutionaries, thus neglecting or even deriding the great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers, and of our entrepreneurs. Any truthful reflection of our nation’s past is that these are all part of the rich fabric of our remarkable story…[23]”Stephen Muecke, currently Professor of Writing at the University of New South Wales, contributed to the debate by arguing that black armband events bring people together in common remembrance and cited Anzac Day as an example; while Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson argued that whilst there was much that is worth preserving in the cultural heritage of non-Aboriginal Australia, “To say that ordinary Australians who are part of the national community today do not have any connection with the shameful aspects of our past is at odds with our exhortations that they have connections to the prideful bits”[24]The notion of the ‘white blindfold’ view of history entered the debate as a pejorative counter-response to the notion of the “blackarmband school”.[25][26][27]In his book Why Weren’t We Told? in 1999, Henry Reynolds referred to Stanner’s “Great Australian Silence”, and to “a ‘mental block’ which prevented Australians from coming to terms with the past”.[28] He argued that the silence about Australia’s history of frontier violence in much of the twentieth century stands in stark contrast with the openness with which violence was admitted and discussed in the nineteenth. Reynolds quotes many excerpts from the press, including an article written in the Townsville Herald in Queensland as late as 1907, by a “pioneer” who described his part in a massacre. Reynolds commented that violence against Aboriginals, far from being hushed up or denied, was openly talked about.The nature of the debate began to change in 1999 with the publication of a book Massacre Myth by journalist, Rod Moran, who examined the 1926 Forrest River massacre in Western Australia. Moran concluded that the massacre was a myth inspired by the false claims of a missionary (possibly as a result of mental health issues).[29] The principal historian of the Forrest River massacre, Neville Green, describes the massacre as probable but not able to be proven in court.[30] Keith Windschuttle, an Australian historian, said that reviewing Moran’s book inspired his own examination of the wider historical record.[31] Windschuttle argues that much of Australian Aboriginal history, particularly as written since the late 1970s, was based on the use of questionable or unreliable evidence and on deliberate misrepresentation and fabrication of historical evidence. He based his conclusions on his examination of the evidence cited in previous historical accounts and reported incidences of non-existent documents being cited, misquoting and misleadingly selective quoting from documents and of documents being cited as evidence that certain events took place when his examination concluded that they do not support those claims. Windschuttle reported his conclusions in a number of articles published in Quadrant and in 2002, he published a book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1847, which focussed on Tasmanian colonial history.Historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in a 2003 book review of Fabrication,[32] that the number of instances when the source documents do not support the claims made and the fact that the divergences overwhelmingly tend to support claims of violent conflict and massacres indicates that this is not a matter of mere error but bias.The debate had therefore changed from an argument over whether there was an excessive focus on negative aspects of Australian history to one over to what extent, if at all, Australian Aboriginal history had been based on questionable evidence or had been falsified or fabricated and whether this had exaggerated the extent of violence against Aborigines. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle’s naming of historians whom he accused of misrepresentation and fabrication of the historical evidence, created considerable controversy and produced a range of responses including condemnation of as well as support for his work.
Smallpox History WarThe arrival of smallpox in Australia is of uncertain origin. The lack of immunity among Aboriginal Australians to this introduced disease saw it inflict a devastating toll on the Aboriginal population. Though the First Fleet itself did not arrive with any known carriers of the disease, the observation of an epidemic among the Aboriginal population of Sydney around 16 months after the British arrived has led to speculation that the Fleet itself brought this disease to Australia. Some historians have suggested that the disease may have been either released by accident or theft of medicine stores or perhaps been deliberately employed as a form of “germ warfare” against indigenous Australians. Inoculation was thus commonly practised by surgeons decades before 1796 and the process of smallpox vaccination was introduced by Edward Jenner. Dried scab was commonly stored in glass containers as part of a surgeons remedies.[56]Early speculation on the origins of the disease is recorded in the writing of a First Fleet Captain of Marines, Watkin Tench, who noted an “extraordinary calamity” among the Aborigines of Sydney, beginning in April 1789. Repeated accounts of dead bodies marked with pustules consistent with smallpox began being reported around Sydney Harbour around this time. Tench wrote that the colonists’ observations had led them to suppose that smallpox was not known in New South Wales and as no First Fleeters had suffered from the disease, its sudden existence among the Aborigines was “inexplicable”. Tench speculated as to whether the disease might be indigenous to the country; or whether it had been brought to the colony by the French expedition of Lapérousea year before; traversed the continent from the West where Europeans had previously landed; brought by expedition of James Cook; or indeed by the first British settlers at Sydney. “Our surgeons brought out varioulous matter in bottles”, he wrote, “but to infer that it was produced from this cause were a supposition so wild as to be unworthy of consideration”.[57]Subsequently, and despite the lack of certainty over how or when the disease reached Australia, there has been history warfare over the allegation of the “use” of smallpox against native peoples. In 1983, Professor Noel Butlin, an economic historian, suggested: “it is possible and, in 1789, likely, that infection of the Aborigines was a deliberate extermination act”. Historians David Day and Henry Reynolds repeated Butlin’s claims and in 2001 Reynolds wrote “one possibility is that the epidemic was deliberately or accidentally let loose by someone in the settlement at Sydney Cove. Not surprisingly this is a highly contentious proposition. If true, it would clearly fall within the ambit of the Genocide Convention”.[58]Australian virologist Frank Fenner, an authority on smallpox and principal author of the 1988 World Health Organisation report, Smallpox and its Eradication, felt that it is not possible for live smallpox to have survived the long voyage out from England or the next fifteen months before the first cases were seen amongst Aborigines near the settlement but, he did not address the literature relevant to the variolous material in bottles brought from England. This material was carried by First Fleet surgeons for inoculation purposes and it has been shown conclusively by Christopher Warren (2007)[59] that, though degraded, it could still infect highly susceptible people with smallpox. Smallpox spread by the inhalation of airborne droplets of virus in situations of personal contact or by contact with blankets, clothing or other objects that an infected person had recently used.[60]Medical scientists Sir Edward Stirling and Sir John Cleland published a number of books and articles between 1911 and 1966 suggesting that smallpox arrived in Northern Australia from an Asian source.[61] This was one of the points disputed by Butlin who argued that while Macassan fishermen could possibly ‘have landed the virus on the Australian mainland at some stage their ability to do so was limited’.[62] It is furthermore highly unlikely, he argued, that this virus should have been brought down from the Gulf of Carpentaria to coincidence with the first major outbreak ‘just fifteen month after the landing of the first fleet’. Besides the time factor connected to Macassans, ‘over seven or eight weeks (or more)’, the type of vessels, the limited potential for contact between Aborigines and fishermen, and the fact of clothing as carrier and virus is destroyed or seriously reduced in contact with salt water, makes the Macassan theory highly unlikely, he argued. Indeed, infected ‘Macassans would be either dead or fully recovered long before reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria.[63] Whereas transfer somehow, theft accident or the like, from scab originally stored in glass containers carried by just one of the seven medical officers on the first fleet seems the most likely cause.[64]In her 2002 book, historian Judy Campbell reviewed reports of disease amongst Aboriginal people from 1780–1880, particularly the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, 1830s, and 1860s. She argues that the evidence, including that contained in these reports shows that, while many diseases such as tuberculosis were introduced by British colonists, this was not so for smallpox and that the speculations of British responsibility made by other historians were based on tenuous evidence, largely on the mere coincidence that the 1789-90 epidemic was first observed afflicting the Aborigines not long after the establishment of the first British settlement. Campbell argues instead that the north-south route of transmission of the 1860s epidemics (which is generally agreed), also applied in the earlier ones. Campbell noted that the fleets of fast Macassan fishing vessels, propelled by monsoonal winds, reached Australia after being at sea for as little as ten to fifteen days, well within the incubation period of smallpox. The numbers of people travelling in the fleets were large enough to sustain smallpox for extended periods of time without it ‘burning out’. The Macassans spent up to six months fishing along the northern Australian coastline and Aboriginal people had “day-to-day contact with the islanders. Aboriginals visited the praus and the camps the visitors set up on shore, they talked and traded…” [65] She also notes that Butlin, writing in 1983, “did not recognize that Aboriginals were ‘great travellers’, who spread infection over long distances….” and that smallpox was spread through their extensive social and trading contacts as well as by Aborigines fleeing from the disease. [66] Campbell notes that in 1987 “British historian Charles Wilson used medical microbiology to disagree completely with Butlin about a European origin in 1789, and doubted his estimates of its demographic impact. Recently (1995) First Fleet historian Alan Frost also disagreed with Butlin’s views” [67] however, as demonstrated in Warren (2007), Frost’s view was based on the false premise that the First Fleet’s stocks of virus were sterilised by summer heat. The hypothesis that the introduction of smallpox to Australia in the far north, via long-standing trading contacts between Aboriginal people and Makassar fishermen from what is now Indonesia,[68] in relation to the Sydney epidemic of 1789-90, has been disputed by historians Craig Mear in Journal of the Royal Historical Society[69] and Michael Bennett in Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2009)[70] Stuart Macintyre’s The History WarsIn 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark.[96] This was a study of the background of, and arguments surrounding, recent developments in Australian historiography, and concluded that the History Wars had done damage to the nature of objective Australian history. At the launch of his book, historian Stuart Macintyre emphasised the political dimension of these arguments[97] and said the Australian debate took its cue from the Enola Gay controversy in the United States.[98] The book was launched by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the then Prime Minister John Howard), saying that they suffered from “a failure of imagination”, and said that The History Wars “rolls out the canvas of this debate.”[99] Macintyre’s critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that “its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War.”[100] Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to “caricature the history debate.”[101] In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was “a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia.”[102]National Museum of Australia controversyIn 2001, writing in Quadrant, historian Keith Windshuttle argued that the then-new National Museum of Australia (NMA) was marred by “political correctness” and did not present a balanced view of the nation’s history.[103] In 2003 the Howard Government commissioned a review of the NMA. A potentially controversial issue was in assessing how well the NMA met the criterion that displays should: “Cover darker historical episodes, and with a gravity that opens the possibility of collective self-accounting. The role here is in helping the nation to examine fully its own past, and the dynamic of its history—with truthfulness, sobriety and balance. This extends into covering present-day controversial issues.”[104] While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements.[105]The report drew the ire of some historians in Australia, who claimed that it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Government to politicise the museum and move it more towards a position which Geoffrey Blainey called the ‘three cheers’ view of Australian history, rather than the ‘black armband’ view.[106] In 2006 columnist Miranda Devine described some of the Braille messages encoded on the external structure of the NMA, including “sorry” and “forgive us our genocide” and how they had been covered over by aluminium discs in 2001, and stated that under the new Director “what he calls the ‘black T-shirt’ view of Australian culture” is being replaced by “systematically reworking the collections, with attention to ‘scrupulous historical accuracy'”.[107]An example of the current approach at the NMA is the Bells Falls Gorge Interactive display, which presents Windshuttles’s view of an alleged massacre alongside other views and contemporary documents and displays of weapons relating to colonial conflict around Bathurst in 1824 and invites visitors to make up their own minds.[108]History wars and culture warsThe “history wars” are widely viewed, by external observers and participants on both sides as an extension of the “culture war” originating in the United States. William D. Rubinstein, writing for the conservative British think tank the Social Affairs Unit, refers to the history wars as “the Culture War down under”.[109] Participants in the debate including Keith Windschuttle and Robert Manne are frequently described as “culture warriors” for their respective points of view.Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars#Black_armband_debate
What is sovereignty?Sovereignty is best defined as a sphere of authority and autonomy – the legitimate power to govern. It is often said that whatever the institutions of government, sovereignty resides in the people and it is the people who determine how they will be governed. This is the internal aspect of sovereignty. Sovereignty also has an external aspect. The people as a sovereign entity should be respected in their autonomy and should be allowed to determine their relationship with other sovereign peoples. This is often referred to as the right of peoples to self-determination. In the international system of states, these principles of self-determination and independence form the basis of international relations and international law.
Under the international system, it is accepted that each state has the right to self-determination. However, the right to self-determination is a right of ‘peoples’, not states, because it is the people that are sovereign. In international human rights instruments, this principle is expressed in the first Article:’All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ (The International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), article 1 and The International Convention on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), article 1)
Therefore, self-determination is asserted by non-state actors including Indigenous peoples. It is included at Article 3 of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples currently being considered by United Nations committees.
From an external perspective, Australia is seen as a sovereign entity in the international community of states. But from an internal perspective, Australia must negotiate the ways in which sovereignty is to be exercised – whether it is to be shared, and how it is be administered. Formally, under the Australian Constitution, sovereignty is shared between the federal and state governments and between the three separate arms of government – the legislature (the Parliament); the judiciary (the courts) and the executive (the government). Informally, some functions of government are also reserved at the local level, to local government. Each of these separate arms of government has a sphere of authority and autonomy, which is respected by the others. Through these systems of federalism and separation of powers, power is divided to ensure that the rights of the people are protected and that the institutions of government reflect regional differences. http://www.mabonativetitle.com/info/whatIsSovereignty.htm Author: Lisa Strelein
A Proposed date for our Sovereignty Day1.On the 22nd August 1770, Captain James Cook planted a foreign flag on an Island belonging to Aboriginal nations, now called Possession Island, taking illegal possession of our lands and its resources, without the permission or knowledge of any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples.
2.We believe that no Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Peoples ceded or made treaties or agreements over their lands and all of its resources to any foreign nation or Peoples since time immemorial.
3.We believe that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples continue to maintain, to this day their sacred, spiritual, social, political and economic connections to their lands since time immemorial.
4.We call upon all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to claim this day, 22nd August as Aboriginal Sovereignty Day.
5.We propose that Sovereignty Day be a Day of celebration, ceremony and acknowledgement by all Aboriginal Peoples that our ancient connections to our beloved lands have never been ceded or broken by the tide of history or by any foreign nation or Peoples.
What is the difference between Legal Sovereignty vs. Political Sovereignty?
The sovereignty of the state may be viewed from two points of view i.e., Legal Sovereignty and Political Sovereignty. Legal sovereignty represents the lawyer’s conception of sovereignty. It is associated with the supreme law-making authority in the state.
The body which has the power to issue final commands in the form of laws is the legal sovereign in a state. This power may be vested in one person or a body of persons. It may be a king or dictator or parliament. Under absolute monarchies, it was the king who was vested with the power of making laws.
A dictator makes laws under a dictatorship as was the case in pre-war Germany and Italy. The courts recognize only such laws as are made by a sovereign. In England, Parliament is the legal sovereign which enjoys unlimited powers of law making.
In the words of Dicey it can adjudge an infant of full age, legitimize an illegitimate child or if it thinks fit, may make a man judge in his own case. The following are the characteristics of a legal sovereign:
1.A legal sovereign is definite and determinate. It may be a person as in the case of an absolute monarchy or a body of persons as in the case of the British Parliament.
2. Legal sovereignty is definitely organized and re-organized by constitutional law.
3. Legal sovereign alone has the power to declare in legal terms the will of the state.
(b) Political Sovereign:
The concept of political and popular sovereign is very confusing. In the modern democratic state, a distinction, all the same, has come to stay between legal sovereign and political sovereign.
Legal sovereign is defined as that person or body of persons that makes law and whose law is final and is recognized by courts and is enforced by the executive.
However above the legal sovereign is the political sovereign, As Dicey says, “Behind the legal sovereign that the lawyer recognizes, there is another sovereign to whom the legal sovereign must bow.
” This is the political sovereign. In democracies, the legal sovereign receives its authority from the electorate, whatever be the basis of the right of vote, and is answerable to it for the exercise of its powers.
Legal sovereign is subject to be changed by the mandate of the electorate at regular intervals. Even during the term of Parliament, in the cabinet system of government, legislature may be dissolved and fresh mandate from the electorate sought.
The legislature makes laws on the basis of the policy approved by the electorate. So we may say that the electorate is political sovereign. http://www.preservearticles.com/201106248493/what-is-the-difference-between-legal-sovereignty-vs-political-sovereignty.html
Facing the facts: what the 1967 Referendum didn’t achieveLarissa BehrendtWhile we celebrate the achievement of the Referendum campaigners we must also face the facts today. The hopes for social justice that inspired them, and united such a large proportion of the Australian electorate in 1967, did not translate into federal action to create the necessary mechanisms.Views about the place and role of Aboriginal people in the national consciousness are not just philosophical or psychological – they translate into differences in legal status and resource allocation. The nature of native title and the way in which it has been demonised and weakened since it was first recognised in the Mabo case highlights how so-called ‘special laws’ for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can actually provide lesser protection. It seems Indigenous conceptions of rights and political aspirations are tolerated only until they look like upsetting power structures within the legal system.The reason Aboriginal people and our rights are so vulnerable to whims of the legislature stems from assumptions within our founding legal document, the Australian Constitution, drafted in the Australian colonies and enacted by Queen Victoria in 1900.2007 is the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum that amended the Constitution. It is a moment to celebrate that this country, sceptical of constitutional change and founded on institutional racism, voted by an overwhelming majority to include Aboriginal people in the census and to empower the federal government to make laws on their behalf. It is a moment to celebrate the people’s movement that built over decades to make that historic change.But it is also time for deep reflection. Forty years later, despite that grass roots call for equality, we still see Aboriginal communities living in conditions far below those of other Australians. We must ask ourselves: why hasn’t the Constitutional change and the resources and attention provided since, brought equality to Indigenous people?One of the defining characteristics of our legal system – as Aboriginal people know all too well – is that its faith in the benevolence of government. The founding fathers of our Constitution agreed that the decision-making about rights protections – which ones we recognise and the extent to which we protect them – were matters for the Parliament. They discussed including these rights in the Constitution, but rejected the idea and our founding document is still silent on human rights.This document was framed within prejudices like white racial superiority and the subordination of women. A non-discrimination clause prohibiting the state from depriving anyone of ‘life, liberty, or property without due process of law’ and denying ‘any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws’ was proposed by Tasmania. It was rejected by the other colonies on the basis that constitutional rights protection was unnecessary as Parliament could be entrusted to make laws for rights if necessary. This meant of course that Parliament could also make discriminatory laws – and it has used this power from the start.When we look at the intentions and attitudes of the men who drafted our Constitution, it’s no surprise that it offers no protection against racial discrimination today. But the key problem is what is missing from the Constitution, more than any legacy of prejudice embedded in its seemingly neutral text. Our founding document leaves Indigenous people vulnerable by relegating the most fundamental human question of how we value and protect rights to the legislature.Though people often think the 1967 Referendum gave Aboriginal people citizenship rights, or the right to vote, it didn’t. We already had those. The 1967 Referendum did two things:•It enabled Indigenous people to be included in the census, and•It enabled federal parliament the power to make laws in relation to Indigenous people.In her biography of Faith Bandler, Marilyn Lake explains something of the aims of the campaigners for this Constitutional change. Supporters saw including Indigenous people in the census not just as a body-counting exercise, but as a nation-building exercise. Their vision was of a symbolic coming together into an imagined inclusive community that could transcend an ‘us and them’ mentality.Their arguments for giving the Federal government power to make laws in relation to Aboriginal people, rather than leaving it to each state, reveal a belief that the Commonwealth would use the power to protect Indigenous people. This has not been the case. Look at policies like taking Aboriginal children from their families, or removing heritage protections to preserve Aboriginal culture, or extinguishing native title. Or how a law recognising a right is followed by another that closes the door again. Look, for instance, at how the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth) prevented the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) from applying to certain sections of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth).The failure to protect rights and the false reliance on government benevolence has a heavier impact on Aboriginal people. In 1997 the High Court considered for the first time the legality of the policy of child removal in the case of Kruger v The Commonwealth. The plaintiffs’ case argued that the effect of the relevant Northern Territory Ordinance violated human rights, including the implied rights to due process before the law, equality before the law, freedom of movement and the express right to freedom of religion contained in S.116 of the Constitution. That they lost on each count was a dramatic demonstration of Australians’ lack of rights protection and of the disproportionate impact on Indigenous people.But the Kruger case does serve to show how the harms of child removal, as a particularly Indigenous experience and a particularly Indigenous legal issue, connect to what we hold as fundamental – the right to due process before the law, equality before the law, freedom of movement and freedom of religion. It is a chilling demonstration of how few of the rights we assume as inherent, are actually guaranteed us. It spotlights the intended silences in our Constitution about rights and reveals the rights violations that can result.While we celebrate the achievement of the Referendum campaigners we must also face the facts today. The hopes for social justice that inspired them, and united such a large proportion of the Australian electorate in 1967, did not translate into federal action to create the necessary mechanisms. Neither has the added federal government power always been used to benefit Indigenous people. No more has inclusion in the census count overcome divisive ‘us and them’ thinking on Indigenous issues.Indeed, the Federal government power has itself been employed as a barrier to effective policy-making, with key areas of government responsibility shared with the states and the now self-governing Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory. Instead of cooperating for success, the two levels of government more often blame each other for failure. A recent example was the response prompted by negative media coverage of findings of high incidence of sexual assault in some communities and gang violence in others.Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Mal Brough blamed the Northern Territory Government for not putting police into communities where violence was endemic. While he was absolutely correct that any community of 2500 people with no police force would have law and order issues, it was a simplistic response focused only on blame (and cost) shifting. Many other factors contribute to the cyclical poverty and despondency within some Aboriginal communities that create, over decades, the environment in which the social fabric unravels and violence, sexual abuse, substance abuse and other anti-social behaviour is rife. Just as unhelpful was the response of Northern Territory Chief Minister Claire Martin in asserting that the problem was the Federal government’s failure to provide adequate housing and health and education services.Both were of course correct. Governments, federal, state, and territory all continue to underfund the most basic Aboriginal community needs like health services, educational facilities and adequate housing services. Forty years ago it was precisely the same unjust conditions that made Australian voters direct the Commonwealth to take responsibility for the good government of Indigenous people, just like all other Australians.The 40th anniversary of this historic referendum is a time to reflect on what it really achieved and how much further we still have to go to achieve social justice for Aboriginal people, otherwise we fail to learn the lessons of that extraordinary campaign. Facing the facts so we can meet our own challenges today is the way we can truly honour those ordinary, everyday Australians all around the country who changed our Constitution in 1967.This essay is an edited extract from Larissa Behrendt’s 2006 Rick Farley LectureSource: http://australiansall.com.au/archive/post/facing-the-facts-what-the-1967-referendum-didn-t-achieve/The 1967 Referendum: Important Facts and Interesting Pieces of Information Referendum Fact Sheet(Hinchinbrook Libraries)The GovernmentAt the time of the referendum in 1967, Harold Holt was the Prime Minister and a Liberal Country Party Coalition Government was in power. The Constitutional review process was commenced by Robert Menzies who retired in January 1966. The original question (as proposed by Menzies) only included changes to s127. Holt decided to delay the referendum until after the Federal election in November 1966 and added the s51 change to the question.1’The Aboriginal Question’The referendum did not- give Indigenous people the right to vote- give Indigenous people citizenship rights- give Indigenous people the right to be counted in the census1 MacKerras, M. ‘One of our most important days ever’, produced as part of Reconciliation Australia’s program to mark the 40th anniversary of the referendum, available 20/02/07 atwww.reconciliationaustralia.org2 RA’s 1967 Fact Sheet Final sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Informing a Nation: The Evolution of the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1905-2005. 2005..The real purpose of the referendum was to make two changes to the Australian Constitution. These changes enabled the Commonwealth Government to:a) make laws for all of the Australian people by amending s51of the Constitution, (previously people of ‘the Aboriginal race in any State’ were excluded), and;b) take account of Aboriginal people in determining the population of Australia by repealing s127 of the Constitution (formerly, Indigenous people had been haphazardly included in the census but not counted for the purposes of Commonwealth funding grants to the states or territories. From 1967, Indigenous people were counted in the census and included in base figures for Commonwealth funding granted to the states and territories on a per capita basis).2The effect of the referendum on the national censusPrior to 1967, there was a race question included in the census to establish the number of ‘full-blood’ Aborigines. The term ‘full-blood’ referred to people with an Aboriginal blood quantum of over 50%. This number was then subtracted from the national population count. Remote rural areas that were uninhabited by non-Aborigines were not enumerated although rough estimates were often made. This means that the quality of the early Aboriginal counts is questionable. Society viewed Aboriginality as a disadvantage and many people did not report their origins or changed it from one census to the next. After the 1967 referendum, the wording of the census question used ‘race’ but did not ask for blood fractions of race. There were greater efforts to obtain a complete coverage of the Indigenous population, including remote areas. “Between 1966 and 1971 the count increased by 44.6% and between 1971 and 1976 it increased by 38.8%.” All censuses since 1981 have used the same question to determine Indigenous status: ‘Is the person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin?’3Source: http://treatyrepublic.net/content/1967-referendum-important-facts-and-interesting-pieces-information
Comparison of Land Rights and Native TitleLAND RIGHTSNATIVE TITLEHISTORYWoodward Commission 1974 Whitlam/Fraser 1976Gove Land Rights Case 1972 Mabo High Court 1992LAWAboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth)Native Title Act 1993 (Cth)
HOW – FIGHT Land claim – Land CommissionerNative title claim – Federal Court
HOW – AGREECommonwealth Minister agrees togrant freehold titleConsent determination of native title with NT Government
WHATFreehold title – ownership of land, right to control entry with permits
Native title – recognition oftraditional rights to access landand hunt, no right to control entry
WHERENT – vacant (empty) land, not pastoral or town landAustralia – vacant or pastoral or town land
WHOTraditional Owners – ‘primary spiritual responsibility’ for sitesNative Title Holders – right holders in land according to traditional law and custom
DECISIONMAKERSCLC on behalf of Land Trust Prescribed body corporate (with help of CLC)
DECISIONPROCESSConsent of Traditional OwnersConsult with affected communitiesConsent of Native Title Holders
DEVELOPMENT– BLOCKINGRight to block mining, compulsory acquisitionRight to negotiate (talk), no blocking rights
DEVELOPMENT– AGREEMENTSMining, developments, cansubleaseMining, developments, cannot sublease because no title to land
HOW STRONGStrong title for traditional ownersRecognises some rights but not strong title
Original PDF Produced by the Central Land Council, March 2008, 33 Styart Hwy, Alice Springs NTFor enquiries on the Native Title Act call 08 8951 6202www.clc.org.au“Views about the place and role of Aboriginal people in the national consciousness are not just philosophical or psychological – they translate into differences in legal status and resource allocation. The nature of native title and the way in which it has been demonised and weakened since it was first recognised in the Mabo case highlights how so-called ‘special laws’ for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can actually provide lesser protection. It seems Indigenous conceptions of rights and political aspirations are tolerated only until they look like upsetting power structures within the legal system.The reason Aboriginal people and our rights are so vulnerable to whims of the legislature stems from assumptions within our founding legal document, the Australian Constitution, drafted in the Australian colonies and enacted by Queen Victoria in 1900.”Larissa Behrendt
CONSTITUTIONAL RECOGNITION OF FIRST AUSTRALIANS
Elders and Lawmen and Women of the Original Sovereign Tribal Federation challenge the Prime MinisterTo the Editor,In order for the various Australian governments to complete the fraud of unlawfully usurping the Sovereign status and authority of the Original Tribes of this island continent it requires the icing on the cake of a constitutional inclusion which it will be claimed has the effect of skull-dragging the Tribes under the jurisdiction of the parliaments of the Commonwealth and the various states and territories.Dissimulatione tollitur injuria – is a term not many would be aware of – it is a legal maxim which when translated says that “Injury is wiped out by reconciliation”.It is easy therefore to comprehend the true meaning behind John Howard’s smug quip that he supports ‘practical reconciliation’.In a press release dated `9th August 2010, ANTaR’s president, Janet Hunt states that:“Australia’s Constitution includes no reference to the unique place, history and rights of Indigenous peoples in our nation”. The reason the Constitution does not include a reference to Our ‘unique place, history and rights’ is because the Constitution does not and was never meant to have any authority in respect of the Original Tribes.Ms hunt continues,“It (the Constitution) also offers no protection against racial discrimination, and it has been interpreted as enabling governments to legislate to the detriment of Indigenous peoples”.For once someone has stated the truth (although possibly unintentionally) about the misinterpretation of the Constitution and its’ relevance to the Original Tribes, as when first created, the ‘Constitution’ held at Section 51.26 that the Commonwealth could make laws for anyone other than for people of the ‘Aboriginal race’. This being due to the fact that the Sovereign status of the Original Sovereign Tribes had been ensured 25 years previously in the Pacific Islander Protection Act Amendment of ~2nd August 1875 Sections 6 and 7.Further, the Sovereignty of the parliament of the Original Tribes could not be usurped by the Sovereignty of the Parliament of the UK. This rule applies equally for Aotearoa (New Zealand) and other Pacific jurisdictions, (Halsbury 3rd Edition, volume 36-statutes paragraph 559 at page 337 of that volume).The Constitution has indeed been INTERPRETED as enabling governments to legislate to the detriment of indigenous peoples. However this misinterpreted claim of right has been erroneously and apparently intentionally assumed by various governments for the criminal benefit of corporate greed.The Original Sovereign Tribal Federation is the voice of many Tribes across this continent, with Our membership growing daily, and we put the Commonwealth, states and territories on Notice that We intend to be taken seriously in Our stand on Our status as the True blood-line connected, Lodial title holding Sovereigns on this content. The Original Sovereign Tribal Federation challenges the Prime Minister (an office not found ANYWHERE in the boundary of the Constitution by the way) to come and sit in circle with Our Elders and Lawmen and Women to negotiate to create a better way forward. We know we can do it – Where is the Crowns representative?Gary Simon Jagamarra & Gunham Badi Jagamarra (Mark McMurtrie)Co-Convenors and SecretariatOriginal Sovereign Tribal Federation (OSTF)
An example of submission submitted: As a Goori from the Biripai Thungutti Marrawon more commonly known today as Hastings & Macleay valleys of Mid North Coast NSW, In relation to the submission to The Panel on Indigenous Constitutional Recognition- submit the following: Any recognition for Aboriginal people must: Acknowledge Aboriginal people as Sovereign owners of Australia as the First Nations of the land to ensure human rights are not comprimised by any acknowledgement. Ensure that any rights for the 1st Nations of Australia meet as minimum the standards established in Canada, NZ & USA as fellow British penal colonies of parlimentary representation, recompense for loss and trauma sufferred establishing AustraliaUN DRIP – United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous PeoplesOriginal article posted by Michael Anderson.
At this point we need to be very clear about the limitations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration is creating a vision where we have rights as Peoples, but these rights for Aboriginal/Indigenous Peoples within the Declaration are, in fact, inferior to the rights of all other Peoples.
The Declaration is, in fact, a misrepresentation of a legal truth when the rights of all Peoples are already enshrined in UN covenants.
We need to be careful not to be supporting this, the Commonwealth governments’ objective to limit our right to self-determination, while the power and authority of the invader state remain in force and have the authority and ability to override our rights as sovereign independent people. If we look at it from this point of view very carefully it can be seen that
“we are in fact ceding our sovereignty to the higher authority of the invader state if we are to follow this pathway.”
In its entirety the Declaration gives, to some degree, encouragement in its purpose and intentions but, like all laws, the devil is the detail and in this regard we must focus our attention closely to the details in the DeclarationLes Malezer effected in 2007;
– second class rights!
With great concern we need to focus on the restriction of our rights through the Declaration. What Les Malezer and others failed to inform our people is the fact that Aboriginal Peoples’ universal rights under international law have been reduced to second-class rights.
Take for example, the right to self-determination. What Malezer introduced as the Modified Declaration, in those final days, was that our rights are subject to acceptance of and recognition of the superior rights and territorial integrity of the dominant nation state, which in our case is the Australia Commonwealth government.
How then can one promote the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the vehicle for asserting sovereignty?
Under the Declaration we have the right to be recognised as Peoples only on the proviso that we accept the power and authority of our invader state over our affairs. What Malezer and his co-conspirators have brokered between the UN member states and the world’s Aboriginal/Indigenous Peoples, who number over 370 million, is a complete and comprehensive return to the colonial subjugation, from which we in Australia have spent over two centuries fighting to deshackle ourselves and our Peoples.
Mark McMurtrie states
We, the Original Tribes of this continent, declare to the world that no matter our geography, tribe, faith or political affiliation we are united as one People through the Almighty, the Creator of all things, the Creator confirms our Brotherhood and Nationhood, with and by the Creators’ will and blessing we exist.
Terra Australis, Terra Australis Ignota or Terra Australis Incognita (Latin for “the unknown land of the South”) was a hypothesized continent, not even appearing on European maps until the 15th century. However, since time immemorial, for many millennia before it ‘appeared’ on European maps, this continent has been the Sovereign lands of the Original Tribes. Other names used to acknowledge our continent by various other peoples over the times have been Magallanica (“the land of Magellan”), or La Australia del Espi´ritu Santo (Spanish: “the southern land of the Holy Spirit”), and La grande isle de Java (French: “the great island of Java”). Terra Australis was one of several names applied to the land mass of what is now known as the continent of Australia.
We, the Indigenous Tribes of Terra Australis confirm that we are the most ancient autochthonous Peoples on this, our Mother Earth, and our contribution into the development of humanity is unique. As is our contribution to and maintenance of the maintenance of the most Ancient Tribal culture, songs, dances and ceremonies and the oldest surviving system of law on the planet.
By the Creators’ will we were created the Sovereign Autochthonous Peoples of Terra Australis with unlimited, inalienable and unassailable rights and freedoms as a Peoples and a Nation and with Sovereign authority over ourselves and Tribal our lands.
We have suffered cruel turns of fate; Our Tribes had known peace for tens of thousands of years. This was until the arrival of the British on Darug Tribal lands in 1788 at the place now commonly referred to as Sydney Cove.
Since that time the British have attempted to usurp our Sovereignty. They have unlawfully occupied our lands, and, with neither consent nor authority, have stolen and interrupted our Natural wealth, sacred sites, culture, families and other matters and sites of significance to our Tribes. They have done so despite our making it clear to them that this is against our will, law and culture. They have done so despite being mere guests upon Original Tribal lands, and in the process have committed ethnic cleansing on some of our fellow Tribes.
The Crowns parliaments have attempted to illegally disperse and dispossess Our peoples across the continent in an attempt to displace us from our domicile upon our Tribal lands in an attempt to justify their fraudulent usurpation of our absolute title and sovereignty over our Tribal lands, ourselves and our Creator granted status upon this continent.
We have been pushed out by force from our own lands, and over time, the records of our existence are being gradually eliminated and destroyed in a systematic program of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The settlers’ parliaments have been waging a war of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Original Tribes since their arrival on our lands.
Our graves are robbed and destroyed by bulldozers, concreted over and flooded with water. Our Relics, Sacred and Holy sites, our bones and artefacts have been looted, stolen and illegally hidden in collections abroad and in foreign museums, and worse, in the homes of private settlers as monuments to their cunning craftiness in destroying the Creators longest surviving line of humanity and law.
Our People are facing extinction, our tribes are dying out and our tongues are losing their speech. We are the People who are losing our identity, names, voice, and Nationhood – but we haven’t lost them yet.”
– American Indian Law Alliance (AILA) Disavow harmful provisions within the Modified Declaration.
These provisions incorrectly represent fundamental principles of international law and/or re-inscribe, rather than correct, past indignities and injuries done to our peoples.
The UN General Assembly (GA) voted on September 13, 2007 to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) [UN Document A/61/L.67*].
The response of many in the indigenous world who have worked long and hard for the day when the GA would adopt a just Declaration of our rights was a mixed one. To understand this ambivalence, it is important to know that the DRIP text differs in 9 places from the text of the Human Rights Council Declaration (CD) that was adopted by the UN human rights body in Geneva in June 2006. The CD text itself, in turn, had been significantly altered from the 1994 Draft Declaration (DD) completed by the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples that was chaired by Professor Erica-Irene A. Daes of Greece.
Of the three successive texts mentioned, the DD alone commanded the full support of indigenous peoples (IP). AILA circulated, soon after learning that 9 textual changes were being incorporated into the DRIP, a memorandum analyzing the impact of the changes.
Reasons for issuing statements endorsing most MD provisions without endorsing the MD as a whole, and for specifically disavowing MD PP 16, and Articles 30 and 46:
These 3 provisions substantively weaken important rights we negotiatedin Geneva.
A statement preserves a historical record of indigenous peoples’ disavowal of the 3 most harmful MD provisions. This record will be important to have when the Human Rights Council begins its task of overseeing the implementation of our rights.
A statement will protect us, when the time comes for working on a Convention, from allegations that indigenous peoples as a whole agreed to these harmful provisions in 2007.
Our non-indigenous friends need to know the mixed nature of the MD so that they may continue to support our rights in an informed way, rather than throw their blanket support to the MD.
In conclusion, AILA hereby commits to working in good faith partnership with states to implement the provisions of the MD with reservations, as noted here, regarding MD PP 16 and Articles 30 and 46 inasmuch as these provisions incorrectly represent fundamental principles of international law and/or re-inscribe, rather than correct, past indignities and injuries done to our peoples.
In taking this position, AILA adds its disavowal of the MD’s harmful provisions to those already expressed in various ways by others including Laguna Pueblo, Owe Aku, Aotearoa Indigenous Trust, Consejo de Todas las Tierras-Mapuche, other Latin American organizations identified by Estebancia Castro Dias and Fortunato Turpo Choquehuanca, Bill Means of IITC, and Tonatierra. In addition, Kekuni Blaisdell as Convenor of Kanaka Maoli Tribunal Komike, and the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, as well as the Flying Eagle Woman Fund for Peace, Justice and Sovereignty add their voices to this disavowal.
EXPLANATION.Through the long years that AILA fought alongside our world-wide indigenous brothers and sisters with the support of our Chiefs, Faithkeepers, and Clan Mothers for a strong Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we have been guided by the following principles:1. The brutality, injustice, and indignities that our peoples suffered for 500 years must be reversed by securing, among other things, a UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that advances our rights and the corresponding duties of states, and not vice versa.2. The process for achieving this instrument must be legitimate, inclusive, transparent, and otherwise respectful of our peoples. In this regard, we find it both unprecedented and most disrespectful that the indigenous peoples of the world were given three days in which to respond to an instrument, the MD, that will affect the course of indigenous/state partnership into the indefinite future. States, we note, gave each other nine months in which to reconcile their differences over the CD.
Having now discussed over the course of ten days the substance of the MD with our communities and experts on international law, indigenous and non-indigenous, AILA has decided to record, before the G.A. acts on the matter, our position regarding specific provisions of the MD, rather than regarding its adoption, which in any event states will decide on their own on Thursday September 13, 2007.
It is now up to indigenous peoples who will be participating in the future work of the Mechanism (whose five independent experts the Human Rights Council will shortly appoint) to affirm the fundamental link between the norms of the Declaration and the future activities of the Mechanism.
Extract of article Les Malezer needs to be called to answer for a major fraud by Michael Anderson. http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/les-malezer-needs-be-called-answer-major-fraud North Carolina Conservative have acknowledged that coming under a United Nations Declaration would cede their Sovereignty. Quote “Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it would cede our national sovereignty to an international committee we do not elect and has no vested interest in us.” http://northcarolinaconservative.net/ceding-sovereign-rights-to-the-u-n-get-ready/ America’s sovereignty got ceded to United Nations via a Child Disability Declaration. It’s all in the fine print.For further reading on the topic•http://www.cfr.org/sovereignty/sovereignty-globalisation/p9903•United Nations Agenda 21 calls the end of all National Sovereignty’s. They want your Sovereignty for Global Control. A one world government. Agenda 21 is a United Nations Document. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM
Is it Survival Day or Australia Day? Is it a commemoration or celebration? Was it Settlement or Invasion?But for Australia Day to have relevance to both points of view, it must be all embracing.The following information provides historical and contemporary thought on these questions:
•European Values•The Past•January 26 – An Overview•The Aboriginal Flag•Torres Strait Islander Flag•1988 Onwards – A Turning Point•Garma, the Present and Future•Democracy means a fair go for all•References•Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s ‘sorry’ address European ValuesContemporary Australia has many social justice and human rights issues that are a result of policies and practices originating in the 18th century. It was a world of different values, attitudes and beliefs to those of contemporary society. 18th century Europe practiced slavery, and child labour was common; astrology was a university subject and disease was linked to superstitions, not bacteria; the idea that Europeans were superior because of their religion, cities and technologies; the rule of kings and nobles was the dominant form of government; modern ideas of democracy were taking shape to burst onto the world stage at the end of the century; and the idea of terra nullius (an empty land) was a recognised international protocol. Doctrines of racism applied in practice throughout the world in their colonies. The world was there to be taken: land, resources and people.The invasion of the Cadigal people’s land was part of a world-wide process in the Europeans’ grab for the land, resources and people. It was nationalist rivalry that drove this land-grab. As part of this process, the cultural norms and values of those Europeans travelled with them.So the European values, beliefs and attitudes were imported with the colonisation. This is a natural phenomenon: all people take their personal and cultural identity with them where ever they travel. Therefore, all sections of Colonial and Australian society participated in the many different policies and practices that discriminated against Indigenous Australians by way of assuming their values were superior to those of the original inhabitants. These policies and practices were the same the world over. A number of European nations participated in some form of imperialism over indigenous peoples throughout the world.However, not all people believed the dominant thinking, some people married out of their culture, some people formed friendship out of their culture; but many people did believe the dominant thinking because they were institutionally exposed to it (such as at school) and therefore exhibited prejudices; and successive governments reflected the prejudices in our laws and our practices.Take this quick quiz.Q: Name and describe the two recognised Indigenous flags.A: The Aboriginal Flag – it is divided horizontally into equal halves of black (top), red (bottom) and a yellow circle in the middle. The black is said to represent the people, the yellow represents the sun and the red represents the earth/land and the blood that was shed.The Torres Strait Islander Flag – it has three horizontal stripes with green at the top and bottom and blue in between divided by thin black lines. A white dharri or deri sits in the centre with a five pointed star underneath. The green is said to represent the land and the blue sea, the black line and the dharri head dress the people and the five pointed star the five island groups.
Q: What event did William Cooper and William Ferguson organise? What were the objectives of this event?A: 1938 protest. The objective of the protest was to have Indigenous people recognised as citizens.In 1932, William Cooper formed the Australian Aboriginal League in Melbourne in protest to the conditions under which Aboriginal people were forced to live and draft a petition to King George V.In 1937, William Ferguson launched the Aboriginal Progressive Association (APA).Together, they planned the 1st day of mourning in 1938, which was the 150th Anniversary of the First Fleet landing in Sydney Cove.Q: Who was the first indigenous Australian to be awarded the Australian of the Year Award?A: 1968 – Lionel RoseQ: Name one contemporary Aboriginal artist from NSW.A: Gordon SyronOthers include: – Shirley Amos- Marion Coghlal- Robin Bailey- Jingalu- Euphemia Bostock- Josie Haines- Tracey Bostock- Treanna Hamm- Denise Brown- Leeanne Hunter- Robyn Caughlan- Joanna Clancy- Isobell CoeQ: How many sovereign Aboriginal nations are in modern NSW? A: 70Q: Name five Aboriginal nations in NSW.A: Cadigal, Kurrajong, Boorooberongal, Muru-ora-dial, TagaryQ: What is the Dreaming?A: Law of loreThe understanding the past, as well as the debates of today, come from the knowledge of how and why these policies and practices were dominant for so long in our society. It is about the knowledge of the storylines of our histories.The Dreaming means identity as people. It is complex knowledge, faith and practices that derive from stories of creation and which dominates all spiritual and physical aspects of Aboriginal life. The Dreaming sets out the structures of society, the rules of social behaviour and the ceremonies performed in order to maintain the life of the land. The PastOnce upon a Dreamtime the people roam, Land shaping the people as they ever shape the LandBlack is Dreaming Black is freeAustralia has always been multicultural. It has about 250 sovereign Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations. Each nation always embraces change, as the Dreaming is about the living land, the Land, the mother. Moreover, Australia has seen many changes since the Dreaming began.The balance of the law and the lore are inherent in all nations. Thus the synergy of the Land and people remains. Over many 1000s of years Indigenous people have continued to adapt to new ways. It is inherent in the Dreaming.In northern Australia, Aboriginal and Macassan peoples, from Indonesia, influenced each other’s cultures over 400 years ago. The evidence is seen in the language of the Yirrala area where there are about 400 borrowed words from Macassan; in Arnhem Land there are songs about Macassans; and smoking of Malay, or Macassan, pipes. Recent evidence show groups in Victoria developed an extensive eel smoking industry for export to other nations. All have adapted to fire, flood, drought the extremes that are Australia.Since 1788 there have been an extra 170 cultures added to the original cultures. In contemporary Australia there are over 400 language groups. This is a unique position in the world as the meaning and expression of cultures has changed, again.Moreover, Indigenous people are still adapting and re-inventing the culture. New expressions blending urban, rural and traditional culture are evident in the storylines of modern Australia.Nevertheless, it must be remembered that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations had change forced upon them with the coming of European laws, values and social constructs.BatteredBlack metal kills DreamingBuriedBlack metal violence White control : gun Black control : MotherEarth White control : fence Black control : clan voice White control : poverty Black control : clan lifeNew South Wales nations bore the brunt of forced change.Impact of the smallpox epidemic on the Cadigal people.Soon after he (Arabanoo) was taken the smallpox raged among them (the natives) with great fury and carried off great numbers of them. Every boat that went down the harbour found them laying dead on the beaches and in the caverns of rock forsaken by the rest as soon as the disease is discovered.Irvine, N. (ed.), (1988), The Sirius letters. The Complete Letters of Newton Fowell 1786 -1790 p.113The frontier war: not written in the histories nor taught to generations of Australians.Lord John Russell to Sir George Gipps:You cannot overrate the solicitude of H.M. Government on the subject of the Aborigines of New Holland. It is impossible to contemplate the condition or the prospects of the unfortunate race without the deepest commiseration. Still it is impossible that the Government should forget that the original aggression was ours.Despatch 21 December 1838Historical Records of Australia Series I Vol. XX p 440.Official Government Policy of the 1880s for the status of Aboriginal children in NSW schools. This was not removed as an official policy from the NSW Department of Education until 1972, when challenged in court:The Department of Public Instruction’s policy became dependent on local attitudes:..no child whatever its creed or colour or circumstance ought be excluded from a public school. But cases may arise, especially amongst the Aboriginal tribes, where the admission of a child or children may be prejudicial to the whole school.George Reid, Minister for Education 1883Unpublished NSW Department of Education and Training Paper.The maltreatment of Aboriginal peoples on missions in the 20th century: … In 1934 John Howard, the new manager of Stoney Gully station was instructed to use ‘any reasonable means’ to end the dispute at Lismore between Aboriginal people and town whites….Howard, on his first visit to Tuncester, stopped the rations completely, starved the inhabitants, acting on instructions by his Board… He then attempted to bluff the people, saying the Aborigines Protection Board is forcing them to another reserve and if they didn’t comply with his instructions he, or the Board, would take the children away from their parents. Next step was to demolish the school at Tuncester and move it to another settlement 52 miles away. The result is now thirty-five children are without a school.Words cannot express what is scandalous treatment by the Destruction Board.Quoted in Goodall, H. (1996), Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770-1972, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, p220The culmination of the exclusion policies led the racism of omission and paternalism. This is reflected in the 1960s in the books and encyclopaedias of the time:
Native Peoples When white settlement of Australia began in 1788 the continent was sparsely inhabited by only about 800,000 very primitive people. They were short, with black, wavy hair and chocolate-brown skin, wore no clothing, had no domestic animals except the dingo, and had tools and weapons made only of wood or stone. They had no permanent homes, but moved from place to place hunting and gathering wild fruits and nuts for food.Their way of life was a good adjustment to their environment but the coming of the white man upset the balance. Diseases new to them took a heavy toll and today there are only about 52,000 and they are rapidly decreasing. Those who are able to adjust to white man’s ways are valued as expert hunters and trackers. They can follow even the faintest trail, know every possible source of water in the desert, and are of great value to the police.Britannica Junior 1961, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. United Kingdom pp. 467-468In the 1990s came government recognition of the past:The Redfern Park StatementAnd, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.It begins, I think, with that act of recognitionRecognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.We brought the diseases. The alcohol.We committed the murders.We took the children from their mothers.We practised discrimination and exclusion.It was our ignorance and our prejudice.And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.We failed to ask – how would I feel if this were done to me?Speech by the Hon. the Prime Minister, P.J. Keating, MP 10 December 1992 Australian launch of the international year for the world’s indigenous peoples.As always, it’s those that inherit the past that are left to deal with the consequences of events, policies and practices. All Australians are left to face the facts from the past.It is estimated that some 2,500 European settlers and police died in this conflict. For the Aboriginal inhabitants the cost was far higher: about 20,000 are believed to have been killed in the wars of the frontier, while many thousands more perished from disease and other unintended consequences of settlement. Aboriginal Australians were unable to restrain – though in places they did delay – the tide of European settlement; although resistance in one form or another never ceased, the conflict ended in their dispossession.Resistance took many forms. People like Pemwulwuy, William Cooper and Gary Foley have led the fight. Events like the presenting of Yirrkala bark petitions 1963, the sesqui-centenary protests, freedom rides of the 1960s, tent embassy of the 1970s, land rights marches of the 1970s and 1980s, Deaths in Custody protests of the 1980s and High Court challenges by Mabo and the Wik peoples of the 1990s reflect the commitment to the fight for the sovereign rights taken at the time of invasion / colonisation. So:Is the 26th of January Survival Day or Australia Day? Was it Settlement or Invasion? Is it a commemoration or celebration?To many Indigenous peoples there is little to celebrate and it is a commemoration of a deep loss. Loss of their sovereign rights to their Land and the right to practice their culture.For those Australians who are passionate about the English view it is a celebration of great achievements.For Australia Day to have relevance to both points of view it must embrace both. For it is about both. It is about the loss of Indigenous land and sovereignty and about the achievements of past and present Australians.To achieve the balance there has to be an honest remembrance of the past, for it too has its good as well as the bad. January 26 – An OverviewThe choice of 26 January as the day of celebration for all Australians has been queried and argued from a historical and practical viewpoint from the 1800s. That the day might symbolise invasion, dispossession and death to many Aboriginal people was a concept alien to the average Australian until even the latter half of the 20th century. The Editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 January 1995, arguing for a change of date, stated that January 26 “can never be a truly national day for it symbolises to many Aborigines the date they were conquered and their lands occupied. This divisive aspect to 26 January, the commemoration of the landing at Sydney Cove will never be reconciled”.Involvement of the Indigenous community on Australia Day has taken many forms – forced participation in re-enactments, mourning for Invasion Day, peaceful protest through to an acknowledgment of survival and an increasing participation in community events at a local level.By 1888, the year of the centenary celebrations, the white population had increased significantly while the Aboriginal population had declined from at least 750,000 in 1788 to a mere estimated 67,000. (Aboriginal people were not counted in the census until after 1967). The 1888 Centenary events overwhelmingly celebrated British and Australian achievement and as Nigel Parbury writes in his book Survival: ”In 1888 Aboriginals boycotted the Centenary celebrations. Nobody noticed.”By 1938, the Aboriginal community was becoming well organised in the white ways and able to make strong demands for political rights and equality. An Australian Aborigines League (AAL) had been formed in 1932 and this was followed in 1937 by the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), a group that began to achieve publicity in the press and addressed a variety of groups such as the NSW Labor Council.The AAL leader William Cooper and the APA’s leader William Ferguson, were instrumental in organising the Day of Mourning Committee for the 1938 Sesquicentenary celebrations. A manifesto, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights, was published and on Australia Day a conference and protest were held in the Australian Hall, Sydney. Five days later, the APA led an Aboriginal delegation to meet with the Prime Minister and soon after Australia Day, the Committee for Aboriginal Citizen Rights was formed.The Aboriginal community’s push for recognition was highlighted by the 1938 official Australia Day celebrations. Due to a refusal to cooperate by city-based Aborigines, the government imported Aborigines from western communities, locking them up in a stable at Redfern Police Barracks. Immediately following the re-enactment, the group featured on a float in the huge parade in Macquarie Street. The following day they were “sent back to their tin sheds on the Darling River”.Re-enactments of Phillip’s landing continued to be an accepted part of Australia Day ceremonies around the country and it wasn’t until the Bicentennial in 1988 that the New South Wales government refused to condone a re-enactment as part of their official proceedings.In 1968, the National Australia Day Council announced the first Aboriginal recipient of its Australian of the Year Award – Lionel Rose.Other Indigenous award recipients since then have included more sporting personalities: Evonne Goolagong in 1971, Galarrwuy Yunupingu (1978) , Mark Ella (1982), Dr. Lowitja O’Donoghue AM, CBE (1984), Cathy Freeman (1990) Mandawuy Yunupingu (1992) and Nova Peris-Kneebone (1997). In 1995, the recipient of the inaugural National Australia Day Council’s Community of the Year Award was the Jawoyn Association, recognising a decade of achievement by the traditional owners of the Katherine region in the Northern Territory.Australia Day 1972 was marked by Prime Minister William McMahon’s announcement of his government’s Aboriginal policy, against the advice of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs. The frustration within the Aboriginal community found expression on the afternoon of Australia Day 1972 when a tent appeared on the lawns in front of Parliament House – to become known as the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – The Aboriginal black, red and yellow flag designed by Luritja artist Harold Thomas was to become a national symbol.1988 Onwards – A Turning PointThe 1988 Bicentenary Australia Day celebrations in Sydney were marked by a huge and well-organised gathering and protest march by the Aboriginal community, many of whom had travelled to Sydney from all over the country.Significant numbers of the non-Aboriginal communities joined the gathered Aboriginals to create a crowd of around 40,000 people who marched from Redfern Oval to Hyde Park for a public rally. Aboriginal activist Gary Foley commented about the gathering: black and white Australians together in harmony…… this is what we have always said Australia could be.Many Aborigines who took part in the Bicentennial marches felt they would like to have an alternative celebration of how their history and culture had survived. The first Survival concert, held in 1992, really began from those early concepts and reflected a major shift away from the traditionally-named Australia Day to Invasion Day.The Survival Concerts, now one of the biggest Aboriginal cultural events of the year, have been entirely initiated and coordinated by the Aboriginal community. La Perouse hosted the concerts for many years. This, the first place of European contact, has also had continuous Aboriginal occupation for thousands of years before 1788 and played a crucial role in the coming together of the Aboriginal community for the huge 1988 march.Regionally across New South Wales, an increasing number of Indigenous communities are participating in their local Australia/Survival Day ceremonies and celebrations. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags are raised alongside the Australian flag. High profile Aboriginal people take the role of key-note speakers for the Australia Day Council, as well as local Australia Day Committees.In 2001 250,000 Sydney-siders marched across the Harbour Bridge to demonstrate their support for Reconciliation. Their message was that we begin to reconcile the past by walking and talking together.This same spirit is seen in the Sea of Hands (http://www.antar.org.au/). Over 250,000 people have signed their name to plastic hands, which are displayed to show their support for Native Title and Reconciliation.In 2003 the Australia Day Council of NSW, in partnership with the Cadigal people, held the Woggan-ma-gule, Farm Cove Morning Ceremony. It is a Shark Dreaming site for the Cadigal people where land and water meet.All contemporary events that people participated in show change in our society. The change has been slow but it is here. If we do a snapshot from the early 1960s, when texts were saying that Aboriginal people were dying out and paternalism was dominant then we see it. Garma, the Present and FutureThe Woggan-ma-gule ceremony on 26 January 2003, followed by traditional celebrations, reflects the values, beliefs and attitudes of many contemporary Australians, that a commemoration is an appropriate part of the day. It is recognition that the storylines of the past are full of pain because of the dispossession; but it also represents the many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people active in making the present and the future one of respect. Respect for the values and traditions of the 250 Indigenous nations in Australia and 170 other language groups.The 1990s saw a shift in our shared history. The hurt and anguish of past policies became evident as the decade went on. The decade began with the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. This was followed by the release of the report on the Stolen Generations. Both provided damning evidence of the past policies that had been too slowly removed since 1967. They show that the racist policies and practices were not in the distant past but rather in the living memory of many, many Australians and their effects still resonated deeply within many parts of the Australian community. This recognition of the past, again should not be about blame, rather about truth and reconciliation if we as a nation want change: change not only in government policies and practices but also in all levels of society.Change, after all, was forced on the governments with the historic High Court decisions, Mabo and Wik. These reflected a new approach to the past – they recognised the truth that the land was occupied – it was not terra nullius (land belong to no-one). They removed the legal basis upon which the Europeans had invaded. There was panic, as most people did not, and still do not understand the decision, nor the consequences of the ensuing government legislation. The decade ended with the official Reconciliation ceremonies. But has Reconciliation been a success?Away from the government level, as always, there has been a swirl of ordinary people mixing, creating a freshness of culture throughout the 90s. And these swirls of different storylines can be seen in many aspects of our society:More indigenous and non-indigenous Australians are forming partnerships and having children. (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics)Most Australians have participated at least one event that symbolises change, for example:•Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation events, such as “Sorry Days” and participating in the Sea of Hands•The healing ceremonies, such as those at Myall Creek•Debated the importance of our past history and present and future directions. Examples of these debates are highlighted by the Barton lectures, The Boyer lectures and Lingiari lectures.These are a reflection of the swirling storylines of our history. These swirls are articulated in Garma, a Yolgnu (peoples from northern Australia) concept meaning foundation of life. There are many ways of explaining Garma, here is one:In a meeting arranged for school staff, a Yolgnu elder, consultant to the curriculum, explained to us what garma meant, and we were told of a garma site at a homeland centre a couple of hundred kilometres away, which we knew. Garma is a still lagoon. It may appear smelly and threatening to whitefellas, but it is full of life and very productive as a food source. Water is often taken to represent knowledge in Yolgnu philosophy. In the garma, the water is circulating silently beneath the surface; we can read that from the spiralling lines of foam on top. In the swelling and retreating of the tides, and the wet season floods can be seen in the two bodies of water. Each body of water has its own life. What happens in the processes of knowledge production in a school where two different cultures (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal), is to the Yolgnu elders akin to what they can see happening in the garma lagoon. For education to be genuine, natural and productive, both cultures have to be presented in such a way that each is preserved and respected. What is produced by their interaction is quite different from either. It is deep, inexhaustible, and always changing. But moment by moment we can read the surface.
Garma, Foundation of LifeChristie 1995, unpublished NSW Department of Education and Training paper.Why are the concepts of two bodies sharing the same pond and producing something new that is inexhaustible, important to our present and future?The ceremony at Myall creek in 2001 gives us at least part of the answer. The land cries with the voices of the dead; and without proper ceremony the spirits can never rest.The Myall creek massacre of innocent Kamilaroi children, women and men was an infamous event in colonial Australia.In 2001 a ceremony close to the massacre site brought together descendants of the slain and the perpetrators. The people had the courage to face this horrific event and each other; through barriers of pain and ignorance they crashed. The voices spoke, and each listened to each other’s pain and guilt. The tears flowed and the ceremonies happened. And each spoke peace for the spirits enveloped the area. Each brave person could see what each could do to add to the swirl of their ‘garma’.The Woggan-ma-gule ceremony on 26 January as part of the official part of the day, again, offers a model for the present and future. It is saying that the Indigenous ceremony is important and it is an integral part of being a modern Australian. To bring the Indigenous voice back to the sacred grounds once more is about the values held by us all: the values of respect, tolerance and justice, for if asked, all Australians would say that these are central to our identity. As deeper knowledge is reached through events like those at Myall creek and the Woggan-ma-gule ceremony, our shared histories are positive. A number of Australians, because of the past are calling for a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. The Treaty Now organisation reports that a recent AC Nielsen Age poll showed that 53 per cent of Australians are ready to embrace the concept of a treaty. A national treaty here will reflect an Australia that has matured as a nation. This organisation argues that:A properly negotiated binding treaty will deliver:•agreed standards;•a framework for settling relationships between Indigenous peoples and governments at local, regional, state, territory and federal levels;•legal recognition including constitutional recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have inherent rights which must inform all processes of governments in Australia; and•improved services such as health, housing, education and employment in accordance with the legitimate aspirations of Indigenous peoples. Source: http://www.treatynow.orgAnd if we call ourselves a democracy, then it is important to reflect on its successes, as well as the areas that need more effort. This can be done through a series of measures including how civil a society is and how minority groups are treated. In other words are all members of our society equal before the law? Do all members of our society have equal access to health and education services? Are identifiable groups in our society over-represented in prisons or below the poverty line? Are people free to walk anywhere at anytime?Yes, more Australian walk together and talk together. Yes, more Australians participate in debates about the place of Indigenous Australians and events to support Indigenous events. Yes, there is still many wrongs to be righted.But many communities through events like those of 26 January are the agents of change. The Australia Day Council will continue to foster these debates and recognise Indigenous peoples for their values, beliefs and attitudes. For these are integral to a healthy society.Ask yourself is it:Is it Survival Day or Australia Day or both? Is it a commemoration or celebration or both?Was it settlement or invasion?ReferencesFrom Little Things Big Things Growhttp://www.paulkelly.com.au/lyrics/from-little-things.html Some Signposts From Daguragu – Speech by the Governor General August 1996 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/misc/daguragu.html#5 Reconciliation and Social Justice LibraryMessage Stick – ABC Indigenous Online http://www.abc.net.au/message The Draft Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoplehttp://www.caa.org.au/campaigns/polliewatch/ddrip.html Reconciliation and Social Justice Libraryhttp://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/car/ Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairshttp://www.immi.gov.au/level2/09_indigenous.htm NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairshttp://www.daa.nsw.gov.au Vibehttp://www.vibe.com.au/index.htmOther references :http://www.garma.telstra.com http://www.aboriginal-art.com/journey.html http://www.ausanthrop.net http://www.nativetitle.edu.au http://www.alc.org.au http://www.abc.net.au/message/radio/awaye/ms_opera/sorry_day-doris.htm http://rubens.anu.edu.au/student.projects/ccas/tent.html http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/chron/1999-2000/2000chr03.htm http://www.koorimail.com/index.php http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/atsia/index.htm http://www.abc.net.au/civics/oneworld http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani/default.html http://www.whoseland.com/ http://www.aboriginalaustralia.com http://www.dropbears.com/l/links/aboriginal.htm http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/aborig.htm Wednesday February 13, 2008I move:That today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.We reflect on their past mistreatment.We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time.That is why the Parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nations soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.Last year I made a commitment to the Australian people that if we formed the next government of the Commonwealth we would in Parliament say sorry to the stolen generations.Today I honour that commitment.I said we would do so early in the life of the new Parliament.Again, today I honour that commitment by doing so at the commencement of this the 42nd parliament of the Commonwealth.Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great commonwealth, for all Australians – those who are indigenous and those who are not – to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.Some have asked, Why apologise?Let me begin to answer by telling the Parliament just a little of one person’s story – an elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s, full of life, full of funny stories, despite what has happened in her life’s journey, a woman who has travelled a long way to be with us today, a member of the stolen generation who shared some of her story with me whenI called around to see her just a few days ago.Nanna Nungala Fejo, as she prefers to be called, was born in the late 1920s.She remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp just outside Tennant Creek.She remembers the love and the warmth and the kinship of those days long ago, including traditional dancing around the camp fire at night.She loved the dancing. She remembers once getting into strife when, as a four-year-old girl, she insisted on dancing with the male tribal elders rather than just sitting and watching the men, as the girls were supposed to do.But then, sometime around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men.Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide.What they had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback cracking his stockwhip.The kids were found; they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away. They were herded and piled onto the back of the truck.Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away to the Bungalow in Alice, all in the name of protection.A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. But which church would care for them?The kids were simply told to line up in three lines. Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the middle line, her older brother and cousin on her left. Those on the left were told that they had become Catholics, those in the middle Methodists and those on the right Church of England.That is how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s. It was as crude as that.She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then Croker Island. Her Catholic brother was sent to work at a cattle station and her cousin to a Catholic mission.Nanna Fejo’s family had been broken up for a second time. She stayed at the mission until after the war, when she was allowed to leave for a prearranged job as a domestic in Darwin. She was 16. Nanna Fejo never saw her mum again.After she left the mission, her brother let her know that her mum had died years before, a broken woman fretting for the children that had literally been ripped away from her.I asked Nanna Fejo what she would have me say today about her story. She thought for a few moments then said that what I should say today was that ”all mothers are important”.And she added: ”Families – keeping them together is very important. It’s a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations. That’s what gives you happiness.”As I left, later on, Nanna Fejo took one of my staff aside, wanting to make sure that I was not too hard on the Aboriginal stockman who had hunted those kids down all those years ago.The stockman had found her again decades later, this time himself to say, sorry. And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him.Nanna Fejo’s is just one story. There are thousands, tens of thousands of them: stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mums and dads over the better part of a century.Some of these stories are graphically told in Bringing Them Home, the report commissioned in 1995 by Prime Minister Keating and received in 1997 by Prime Minister Howard.There is something terribly primal about these firsthand accounts. The pain is searing; it screams from the pages. The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity.These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology.Instead, from the nation’s Parliament there has been a stony, stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade; a view that somehow we, the Parliament, should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong; a view that, instead, we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side, to leave it languishing with thehistorians, the academics and the cultural warriors, as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon.But the stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities. They are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments. But, as of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end.The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward.Decency, human decency, universal human decency, demands that the nation now step forward to right an historical wrong. That is what we are doing in this place today.But should there still be doubts as to why we must now act, let the Parliament reflect for a moment on the following facts: that, between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30% of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers; that, as a result, up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families; that this was the productof the deliberate, calculated policies of the state as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute; that this policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority that the forced extractions of children of so-called mixed lineage were seen as part of a broader policy of dealing with the problem of the Aboriginal population.One of the most notorious examples of this approach was from the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who stated: ”Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes” – to quote the protector – ”will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white”.The Western Australian Protector of Natives expressed not dissimilar views, expounding them at length in Canberra in 1937 at the first national conference on indigenous affairs that brought together the Commonwealth and state protectors of natives.These are uncomfortable things to be brought out into the light. They are not pleasant. They are profoundly disturbing.But we must acknowledge these facts if we are to deal once and for all with the argument that the policy of generic forced separation was somehow well motivated, justified by its historical context and, as a result, unworthy of any apology today.Then we come to the argument of intergenerational responsibility, also used by some to argue against giving an apology today.But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s.The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity. There are still serving members of this Parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s.It is well within the adult memory span of many of us.The uncomfortable truth for us all is that the parliaments of the nation, individually and collectively, enacted statutes and delegated authority under those statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful.There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation – and that value is a fair go for all.There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that, for the stolen generations, there was no fair go at all.There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that says that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs.It is for these reasons, quite apart from concerns of fundamental human decency, that the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology – because, put simply, the laws that our parliaments enacted made the stolen generations possible.We, the parliaments of the nation, are ultimately responsible, not those who gave effect to our laws. And the problem lay with the laws themselves.As has been said of settler societies elsewhere, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors; therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well.Therefore, for our nation, the course of action is clear: that is, to deal now with what has become one of the darkest chapters in Australia’s history.In doing so, we are doing more than contending with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public debate.In doing so, we are also wrestling with our own soul.This is not, as some would argue, a black-armband view of history; it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth – facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it.Until we fully confront that truth, there will always be a shadow hanging over us and our future as a fully united and fully reconciled people.It is time to reconcile. It is time to recognise the injustices of the past. It is time to say sorry. It is time to move forward together.To the stolen generations, I say the following: as Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry.On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry.I offer you this apology without qualification.We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous parliaments have enacted.We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied.We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.In making this apology, I would also like to speak personally to the members of the stolen generations and their families: to those here today, so many of you; to those listening across the nation – from Yuendumu, in the central west of the Northern Territory, to Yabara, in North Queensland, and to Pitjantjatjara in South Australia.I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the Government and the Parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that.Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing.I ask those non-indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you.I say to honourable members here present: imagine if this had happened to us. Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive.My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is accepted in the spirit of reconciliation, in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia.And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us.Australians are a passionate lot. We are also a very practical lot.For us, symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong.It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history.Today’s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs.It is also aimed at building a bridge between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians – a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt.Our challenge for the future is to cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians – to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives.But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children and, within a generation,to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy.The truth is: a business as usual approach towards indigenous Australians is not working.Most old approaches are not working.We need a new beginning, a new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure; a new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country but instead allowing flexible,tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership; a new beginning that draws intelligently on the experiences of new policy settings across the nation.However, unless we as a Parliament set a destination for the nation, we have no clear point to guide our policy, our programs or our purpose; we have no centralised organising principle.Let us resolve today to begin with the little children, a fitting place to start on this day of apology for the stolen generations.Let us resolve over the next five years to have every indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper pre-literacy and pre-numeracy programs.Let us resolve to build new educational opportunities for these little ones, year by year, step by step, following the completion of their crucial pre-school year.Let us resolve to use this systematic approach to build future educational opportunities for indigenous children to provide proper primary and preventive health care for the same children, to begin the task of rolling back the obscenity that we find today in infant mortality rates in remote indigenous communities up to four times higher than in othercommunities.None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard, very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.The mood of the nation is for reconciliation now, between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The mood of the nation on indigenous policy and politics is now very simple.The nation is calling on us, the politicians, to move beyond our infantile bickering, our point-scoring and our mindlessly partisan politics and to elevate this one core area of national responsibility to a rare position beyond the partisan divide.Surely this is the unfulfilled spirit of the 1967 referendum. Surely, at least from this day forward, we should give it a go.Let me take this one step further and take what some may see as a piece of political posturing and make a practical proposal to the opposition on this day, the first full sitting day of the new Parliament.I said before the election that the nation needed a kind of war cabinet on parts of indigenous policy, because the challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football, as it has been so often in the past.I therefore propose a joint policy commission, to be led by the Leader of the Opposition and me, with a mandate to develop and implement, to begin with, an effective housing strategy for remote communities over the next five years.It will be consistent with the Government’s policy framework, a new partnership for closing the gap. If this commission operates well, I then propose that it work on the further task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians, consistent with the longstanding platform commitments of my party and the pre-election position of the opposition.This would probably be desirable in any event because, unless such a proposition were absolutely bipartisan, it would fail at a referendum. As I have said before, the time has come for new approaches to enduring problems.Working constructively together on such defined projects would, I believe, meet with the support of the nation. It is time for fresh ideas to fashion the nation’s future.Mr Speaker, today the Parliament has come together to right a great wrong. We have come together to deal with the past so that we might fully embrace the future. We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future, with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched.So let us seize the day. Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection.Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepestlevel of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.It is for the nation to bring the first two centuries of our settled history to a close, as we begin a new chapter. We embrace with pride, admiration and awe these great and ancient cultures we are truly blessed to have among us cultures that provide a unique, uninterrupted human thread linking our Australian continent to the most ancient prehistory of our planet.Growing from this new respect, we see our indigenous brothers and sisters with fresh eyes, with new eyes, and we have our minds wide open as to how we might tackle, together, the great practical challenges that indigenous Australia faces in the future.Let us turn this page together: indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, government and opposition, Commonwealth and state, and write this new chapter in our nation’s story together.First Australians, First Fleeters, and those who first took the oath of allegiance just a few weeks ago. Let’s grasp this opportunity to craft a new future for this great land: Australia. I commend the motion to the House.Source: http://www.australiaday.com.au/studentresources/indigenous.aspx
Talkin Treaty in terms of Sovereignty“…See the impact of colonialism has been huge…we Aboriginal people are spiritual people and we are still recovering because of colonialism… There’s not a lot of understanding about that on the part of white Australia because they have this misguided belief that colonialism doesn’t affect them. Of course it does! It’s made them into the people they are today, which means they cannot hear what Aboriginal people are telling them… Many are trying to run away from their own history… As they get older and more mature [chuckles], hopefully they’ll have a better understanding… You see, that mouth of the snake… our people are in pathological grieving. Our people have retreated into the belly of the snake… it’s our consolidation of our Aboriginality, a renewing of our identity. Only recently have we begun emerging from the mouth of the snake with renewal and consolidation of who we are…” Lilla Watson Birri Gubba, Gungulu Elder Brisbane Qld.•From the Religious groups in oz•What Is Treaty•Benefits of a Treaty•Where It’s At•The Road Ahead•Conference Papers and Speeches•Examples of Sovereignty in action in – The City of London, The Crown•Ways forward…•BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS•What we are up against- Why there should be no Aboriginal treaty•Makarrata•VITAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A TREATY OF COMMITMENT, AN ABORIGINAL BILL OF RIGHTS, AN AGREEMENT AND SOVEREIGN RIGHTS•The Bark Petitions•The Barunga Statement•Canada – Statement of Reconciliation•Preamble to the Constitution of South Africa•The Magna Carta or Great Charter
The ChurchesWhen Pope John Paul II addressed that big crowd in Alice Springs in November 86,he too emphasised the urgency for honesty in moving forward. Remember thesewords?
‘… What can be done to remedy the deeds of yesterday must not be put off tilltomorrow.’
So – what progress toward Reconciliation has been made in these past 20 years?Well, I can understand that for many of you, the heaviness in your hearts indicatesvery little seems to have been achieved. There have been some momentous eventssince 1986. But sadly, highly publicised episodes can result, paradoxically, in anegative spin-off: individuals may lapse in their personal motivation to keep movingforward, because it looks like action is being accomplished on a grander scaleelsewhere – so what use is one little local contribution?
But let’s list some of those high profile starting points – and I say ‘starting points’,because most are not yet fully implemented triumphs in our history!
5 years after the Pope’s visit to Alice Springs, in:•1991: The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was established, with thevision: ‘A united Australia which respects this land of ours, values Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander heritage, and provides justice and equity for all’.•1991: The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody presented itsreport and recommendations to the Federal Government.•1992: The High Court of Australia ruled in the Mabo case that native titleexists over particular kinds of lands, and that Australia was never terra nulliusor empty land.•1993: The Native Title Act was passed in Federal Parliament.•1994: The Indigenous Land Fund was established by the Federal Governmentfor indigenous people to buy land, part of the government’s response to theMabo decision.•1997: The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission released the‘Bringing Them Home’ report into the separation of indigenous children fromtheir parents. And later that same year:•1997: The Australian Reconciliation Convention took place, 30 years after the’67 Referendum.•1998: Sorry Day remembrances were instituted, and have been observedaround Australia each year on 26 May since. [This year to be changed inname and context to ‘National Day for Healing’.]•2000: More than one million Australians participated in bridge walks forreconciliation; and the same year:•2000: Reconciliation Australia was established as an independent, nongovernmentfoundation, to provide national leadership on reconciliation.•Oct 2003: The report of the Senate enquiry into National Progress onReconciliation was released.
That’s just skimming the surface, of course, but there have been some long overdue,significant leaps forward in the reconciliation journey during the past 20 years.
But … There have also been some momentous hiatuses, which inevitably shadow theway we can even notice – let alone celebrate – the positives.
One of them is the UN’s draft Statement on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – still adraft after 10 years, and most of its clauses still not acknowledged by ourgovernment.
There’s continuing evidence of significant and disproportionate social disadvantage toindigenous Australians. The report of the Senate inquiry into National Progress onReconciliation, not quite 18 months ago, sadly reveals that the situation ofindigenous peoples in this country is not only still bad, but deteriorating. It makesclear that the Federal Government’s policy of ‘practical reconciliation’ is not working,and that the momentum for reconciliation is in danger of being lost through lack ofnational leadership.
Did you know that Australia remains the only colonised country in the world not tohave made a treaty with its indigenous population? Now – there’s a variety ofopinions about what treaty might mean, but most within the reconciliationmovement agree that some form of symbolic agreement between indigenous andnon-indigenous Australia is needed to redress this glaring breach of the instructionsgiven to (the then) Lieutenant James Cook when he invaded this land.
And there remains the inexplicable refusal by our Prime Minister and the FederalGovernment to formally apologise to those of the Stolen Generations – to offer asincere apology, and to engage in the consequential actions of ensuring wrongs ofthe past can never recur and of providing concrete reparation measures. The failureto do so stands as an ugly ink blot on the history of this country and in the hearts ofthose still suffering day by day.
Conference Papers and Speeches•The Political Economy of a Treaty: Opportunities and Challenges for Enhancing Economic Development for Indigenous Australians – Professor John Altman Read Document..•Agreement Making – Dick Estens Read Document..•Restored to Life Treaty as Renewed Spirit – Associate Professor Michael Horsburgh Read Document..•Opening Panel – Unfinished Business – Jackie Huggins Read Document..•Sovereign Union of Aboriginal Nations and Peoples of Australia – Yaluritja Clarrie Isaacs Read Document..•Recognising Aboriginal Sovereignty – implications for the Treaty process – Dr William Jonas AM Read Document..•Treaties and agreements as instruments of order in and between civil societies: a rational choice approach – Professor Marcia Langton and Dr Lisa Palmer Read Document..•Labor’s Framework for Lasting Agreements – Starting the Process – Carmen Lawrence Read Document..•A Treaty for Better Indigenous Health – Dr Kerryn Phelps Read Document..•The Winds of Change – Gregory Phillips Read Document..•Speech by Lynne Rolley Read Document..•Social Impacts of a Treaty – Professor Deryck Schreuder Read Document..•Possible Treaty Framework – Glenn Shaw Read Document..•Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sovereignty – Mr Terry Waia Read Document..•Address by the Local Government Association – Ed Wensing Read Document..•The Treaty Debate, Bills of Rights and the Republic: Strategies and Lessons for Reform – George Williams Read Document..•Speech – Nova Peris Read Document..•Speech – Declaration Aboriginal Tent Embassy Read Document..•Bread verses Freedom: Treaty and stabilising Indigenous Languages – Lester-Irabinna Rigney Read Document..Source: http://www.treatynow.org/index.htmWhat is sovereignty?
Sovereignty is best defined as a sphere of authority and autonomy – the legitimate power to govern. It is often said that whatever the institutions of government, sovereignty resides in the people and it is the people who determine how they will be governed. This is the internal aspect of sovereignty. Sovereignty also has an external aspect. The people as a sovereign entity should be respected in their autonomy and should be allowed to determine their relationship with other sovereign peoples. This is often referred to as the right of peoples to self-determination. In the international system of states, these principles of self-determination and independence form the basis of international relations and international law.
Under the international system, it is accepted that each state has the right to self-determination. However, the right to self-determination is a right of ‘peoples’, not states, because it is the people that are sovereign. In international human rights instruments, this principle is expressed in the first Article:’All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ (The International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), article 1 and The International Convention on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), article 1)
Therefore, self-determination is asserted by non-state actors including Indigenous peoples. It is included at Article 3 of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples currently being considered by United Nations committees.
From an external perspective, Australia is seen as a sovereign entity in the international community of states. But from an internal perspective, Australia must negotiate the ways in which sovereignty is to be exercised – whether it is to be shared, and how it is be administered. Formally, under the Australian Constitution, sovereignty is shared between the federal and state governments and between the three separate arms of government – the legislature (the Parliament); the judiciary (the courts) and the executive (the government). Informally, some functions of government are also reserved at the local level, to local government. Each of these separate arms of government has a sphere of authority and autonomy, which is respected by the others. Through these systems of federalism and separation of powers, power is divided to ensure that the rights of the people are protected and that the institutions of government reflect regional differences.
Another explanation of Sovereignty (needed to show complexity of subject matter):Sovereignty is defined as “the ultimate overseer or supreme authority in a state. In a state sovereignty is vested in the institution, person, or body to impose law on everyone else and to alter any pre-existing law.”In Australia sovereignty lies with the people because we are a Democracy where, by definition, the people rule. Australia is a Common Law country, where the law made by the common people prevails over all other forms of law. The Australian Constitution is, itself, Common Law because it was directly approved by and can only be altered by a referendum of the common people (s. 128).Australian State and Federal Parliaments create Statute Law, which are only laws made indirectly by the common people, through their elected representatives.However, Australian Courts create Common Law because they are laws directly made by the common people forming Juries of twelve. It is a lie to say that Judge-made Law is Common Law because a Judge is not a Jury of the common people . Lord Edward Coke (1552 – 1634) said, “Common Law doth control Acts of Parliament and when adjudged against common right to be void”. No one man has sovereignty over another. The American Declaration of Independence says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –” and goes on to give one of “the causes which impel(led) them to the separation” being “– For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury”. “Inalienable” means that those rights “cannot be given away nor taken away.” Such rights are sacred – “all men are (so) ..endowed by their Creator”. Ancient civilizations such as the Romans regarded the number 12 as sacred, ie: “safeguarded or required by religious or reverance or tradition, indefeasible, inviolable, sacrosanct”. Juries of 12, bound by oath, were regarded as a sacrament, which are the “visible signs of agreement between God and individuals”. Only then could there be “the lawful judgment of his Peers” (Magna Carta) Trial by Jury is the confirmation of the “Freeman” status (as per Magna Carta) and the sovereignty of the People. Tyrants want to abolish Trial by Jury so that they can assume sovereignty. No one man can pass judgment on another but there must be the unanimous verdict of 12 of his equals, “beyond a reasonable doubt”, for an accused to be punished for violating the rights of another. Juries exercise their sovereignty in every action brought before them by judging the justice of the law or laws cited by the parties. Law and justice are not synonomous because a law can be unjust. The Preamble to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights says “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”. Juries are just such a protection at law with Magna Carta, granting “for ever”, the right to Trial by Jury. Trial by Jury is the result of the wisdom of generations and has been sustained and honoured over the centuries by the wisdom of further generations. To survive, Common Law must be in harmony with Natural Law. Natural Law is the permanent underlying basis of all law. Philosophers have extolled that there was a kind of perfect justice given to man by nature and man’s laws should conform to this as closely as possible. Theories of Natural Law have been an important part of jurisprudence throughout history. The moral power of Natural Law derives from the fact that man’s innate nature (itself part of the nature of the cosmos) and his propensities are viewed as ideal or inherently good. Immanuel Kant said that in all men there is a categorical imperative, ie: they know what is right and what is wrong. This unconditional, absolute, explicit, direct and plain-speaking bidding of conscience creates the ultimate moral law and comprises the conditions under which all members of society can enjoy the maximum freedom from subjection to the arbitrary will of others.- Compiled by J. Wilson, http://www.rightsandwrong.com.au
MAKARRATA
N.A.C. SELLOUT
DANGER!DANGER!DANGER!PUBLIC WARNING –WE ARE BEING TRICKED!
The NATIONAL ABORIGINAL CONFERENCE (N.A.C.) is selling out our heritage, our independence, our proper Aboriginal ident¬ity, by calling for a ‘MAKARRATA’ instead of a ‘TREATY’, which in¬cludes a ‘BILL OF ABORIGINAL RIGHTS’.
ABORIGINALS have never given away or sold any of our land, nor given whites the right to take any of it. Aborigin¬als always have owned ALL of Australia, our sacred lands – ruler, king, boss of our own country, sov¬ereigns with sovereign right to rule in our own country. A KING, the boss in his own country, has ownership and sover¬eign right in his own land.THE N.A.C. has been persuaded by their white managers, the Australian Government, NOT to ask for a Treaty, but to call their deal a ‘Makarrata’, an agreement which means ”all is well after the fight’.
THE N.A.C., on the advice of their white manager, agreed to compromise Aboriginal people by not calling for a ‘TREATY’ because a ‘TREATY’ means an agree¬ment between equals – an agreement between men who own their own country and another government, the white government, – and agreement between sovereign nations.THE WHITE GOVERNMENT says we are not rulers, kings in and of our own country, we are not equals. So instead of a Treaty between equals, between righful owners, between kings, between sovereigns, they call for a ‘Makarrata’, a deal between white,gov¬ernment and men with no status, rubbish men, same as the old ‘Dog Licence’.INSTEAD of land owner, king, who owns his own country and his law and ruler of his own govern¬ment, they say we are vermin, rubbish who have no proper title and do not own land, rubbish men who haven’t the right to call for a’ Treaty, but only for an agreement – a dog deal.WE MUST protect our heritage, the Australian government’ must recognise our sovereign right, our right as equals, as kins who fathers and mothers owned and ruled ALL of this country un¬til the whiteman came with his government, came in with guns and strych¬nine, killed our men and killed our women and children – the whites said, ‘Kill the breeders, kill the nits!’THEY SAID we had no government and no rules, no law. They said we were not kings in our own country and said we had no sovereign rights. They said our land was waste land an unoccupied. They said we were vermin and not human.NOW THE ABORIGINALS on the N.A.C. have agreed with the white government and say they won’t go for a Treaty between equals, between equal men with equal right. The N.A.C. say they will call their agreement a ‘Makarrata’ – ‘things are OK again after the fight’.Aboriginal way, ‘Mak¬arrata’ is a dog deal, a Jacky Jacky deal, a pact with the devil on the devil’s terms. WE, THE ABORIGINAL people, have owned all of this country, from the Dreamtime, from the time before time began. We are owners of this land. We are ruler, king, of our country and we must make white government talk to us as kings of our own country.WE WANT our land own¬ership recognised, title to all tribal land, sac¬red areas, hunting, and fishing rights and title to all reserves. For our tribes in the south, who had all their land stolen by whites, we want enough land so they can build their strength again and survive. We want all reserves and sacred sites. WE WANT compensation, in cash, for all land taken and used by whites. In the Treaty, we want a Bill of Aboriginal Rights put into the Australian Constitution so the whiteman can’t go back on his word.THIS TIME, if the whiteman treats us like vermin by making a rubbish agreement, if he says we are not king with our sovereign rights, we must prepare our people for a long and bitter fight, for we must fight against the Devil Deal ‘Makarrata’, the kiss of Judas.IF WE DO NOT fight we will lose the law, the rule, and we’ll become ungootcha, the soul-less, the dead who have no place. Our children will become the dead whohave no place and will live like dogs in shame, under the whiteman for¬ever.WE WANT a Treaty, a Bill of Aboriginal Rights. We do not want a dog deal Makarrata, which the Aboriginals on the N.A.C. have been tricked into.PREPARE to fight. Pre¬pare the people for the storms, so justice and the proper way will live forever in our own country. Things are not OK after the fight, the fight is not over…… THE N.A.C. DOES NOT REPRESENT THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE. The N.A.C. is not even democratically elected, because to be democratic the people have to have a choice to vote for the speaker they want, their repre¬sentative and also the party or the machinery. White elections have at least a Labor Party and a Liberal Party, at least two choices and the voice goes right to the top.THE WHITE GOVERNMENT chose to set up one body of Aboriginals, the N.A.C., that can’t have its full voice heard right to the top because there is a lid on them, the Committee of Abor¬iginal Development (C.A.D.) which is select¬ed by the white minister and the N.A.C.THE C.A.D. can veto N.A.C. decisions and the white minister can veto C.A.D. decisions. So the people’s voice is not in it right to the top, but the white government claims the N.A.C. represents the voice of the Aboriginal people, says it is our black parliament.WE SHOULD HAVE a choice between two bodies, not only the one N.A.C. that dances as the strings are pulled by white government. When Germany invaded Holland during the second world war, the Dutch would not co¬operate with the invaders, so the Germans set up a ‘quisling government’ of Dutch traitors and called it their govern¬ment, but the people had no choice. The N.A.C. is a ‘quisling govern-ment’ for the Aboriginal people.THE NORTHERN LANDS COUNCIL, Central Lands Council, North Queens-land Land Council, Ab¬originals in Perth, W.A., S.A., N.S.W., Victoria and Queensland said they want a Bill of Aboriginal Rights and the National Aboriginal Government to talk for them. They wrote letters saying this. We want proper selection so the traditional owners and Aboriginals can elect their own voice and own spokesman to the Nation¬al Government and form an Aboriginal Rights Council who talk straight to the white government and go back and talk straight to the people again.THE PROPER WAY to select is that each big mob picks out their talker, telling him what to say and sends him to do it. He has to come back and talk again be¬fore any change is made. The Aboriginal Rights Council would be free of the whiteman’s chains. As the first step of com¬pensation, the white government must unconditionally provide the same amount of money that they give to their body, the N.A.C., for the Aboriginal Rights Council of the National Aboriginal Government, so that the voice of the Aboriginal people can be fairly represented.
SEND YOUR VOICE to the National Aboriginal Gov¬ernment, to the N.A.C. and the white minister, and to all tribes all over the country, tell¬ing them what you want.TALK UP as the ruler, boss of your own country and lead your people the proper way. Otherwise the rules will leave our country, the proper way will be lost, our shadow, our soul, our dreaming will leave and we will lose forever. While ever there are fish in the river, while the sun is in the sky, the Aboriginal has to lead the people the strong way, the proper way – that is the business, the law.VITAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A TREATY OF COM¬MITHENT, AN ABORIGINAL BILL OF RIGHTS, AN AGREE¬MENT AND SOVEREIGN RIGHTS
A TREATY does not bind a government to the rules. A Treaty literally means the intention to legislate, the intention to carry out a recognised pact. It does not guaran¬tee that the States will obey what the Federal government agrees to in the Treaty, or that meat will be given to the bones of that Treaty. It does not guarantee or give its unbreakable word that a new white government won’t change the rules of the Treaty or rubbish it.AN ABORIGINAL BILL OF RIGHTS in a Treaty would mean all white Australians and all State gov¬ernments would hold a referendum and vote yes or no for a Bill of Ab¬original Rights to be in¬cluded in the Australian constitution and to stay in the constitution to protect our Aboriginal rights forever.HOWEVER:The Federal Australian Government is not a completely autonomous,. sovereign government in its own right.THE AUSTRALIAN Govern¬ment is not a sovereign government in its own right. It is still under the control and power of Britain, the sovereign nation. This was proved when the British Queen’s main representative and controller of Australia the governor-general, Sir John Kerr, kicked the representative sov¬ereign government, the Whitlam Federal Labor government out of power. The governor-general acted in the name of the Queen of Britain.
THE WHITE government, acting for their sov¬ereign of Australia, the Queen of Britain, can immediately legislate under the power of Britain. Under the power of British’ statute of Westminster, the Austral¬ion constitution can be altered without recourse to a referendum and if necessary, without the consent of the Australian government. An Aboriginal Bill of Rights can be included in the Australian constitution by Britain exercising its sovereign power under the statute of Westminster. IT IS THE sovereign right of Aboriginal people to call on sovereign Britain to negotiate a Treaty. It is the Aboriginal right to offer a Treaty to any other sovereign power if the British and Austral¬ian governments refuse to accept.When exploring and col¬onising, the British recognised the sovereign right of indigenous nat¬ive peoples. Britain gave orders that the land was to be settled only with ‘the consent of the natives’. The colonisers disobeyed that law and invaded our country, instead of ask¬ing for our consent to occupy or buy the land like British law said they should.THE SETTLERS said we had no government, no land ownership, no human rights. They said we were not human;. They said the land was ‘waste land and unoccupied’. They murder¬ed our people and took the land by force as outlaws and desecraters.
IN 1837, the British government in their House of Commons said white Australian settlement was wrong and that the Aboriginal country was taken illegally, out¬side British law. Re¬commendations to rectify the situation were ignor¬ed in Australia. That means that the Federal government of Australia illegally, without proper law or rights, now occupies our land.THEY ARE ROBBERS and murderers who have acted without obeying the proper law. Our land is wrongfully occupied. The Australian government must follow the proper law of Britain and accept the fact of our sover¬eign right, our owner¬ship of this our land.A BILL OF ABORIGINAL rights included in the Australian constitution and in the Treaty is the proper way for the Abor¬iginal owners of our land to talk to whites.AN AGREEMENT can be a promise between two people. It doesn’t mean the agreement will be kept. It doesn’t stop government from changing the words of the agree¬ment.THE MAKARRATA agree¬ment takes away our right as the proper owners of our land to go outside Australia to ask for our rights to be recognised. It takes away our sov¬ereing power and says we are, in political terms, a domestic matter, only to be heard inside Aust¬ralia.SOVEREIGN RIGHT is the right of the proper own¬ers of the land to talk to the invading white government, or other governments, about land ownership – the right to decide how much of our land, the land left to us by the law and the old ones, our sacred land, we want to keep for Aboriginals and how much we will sell and let the invaders live on.SOVEREIGN RIGHT means the right of the boss people, the owners, to talk in their right place as boss, as king.
LAND RIGHTS.
WE KNOW we own the land. Our tribes own all the land in this country. Why do we talk about Lard Right – Land owner¬ship and compensation?LAND RIGHTS IS an attempt to gain some of our land back and to draw up the area of land onto a map, so the white people know where the borders are and can re-gister the title.EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE knows we own our land, the Woodward Commission and the white courts try to give us as little as possible. They make us fight our land claim in the white courts under white rules to try and trick us out of our land right. They keep us poor by making us pay for white solicitors and expenses. Sometimes each land right case costs us $40,000 and if the white rules trick us, we lose the money and the land.THE AGREEMENTS made by government have no faith or good heart. The Pitjanjarra got land and mineral right. Now the minister of Aboriginal Affairs says the miner¬al agreement has to be chucked out so miners can go into Pitjanjarra country and dig it up like they did before Land Right.ABORIGINAL LAND Right is proper. It means we want ownership recog¬nised and the title deeds registered so that no mistakes can be made.
ABORIGINALS OWN ALL of Australia. It is our land, our right to hold our main areas, our tribal land, our sacred sites. The white man has got it wrong, he should draw up a plan, a map, of the land he wants to buy off us for his people to live on and ask us, the Aboriginals, if we will sell some of our land to him.
IT IS NOT HARD for white Australians to give us back our proper Land Right. When they took over Papua Nuigini, its land and people, they gave Land Right back to the Papua Nuigini people. But Australia is the only country in the world that hasn’t given back Land Right to the indigenous people they have colonised.THE AMERICAN Red In¬dian has Treaties. They are recognized as a nation within a nation. They still have their sovereign rights.THE MAORI in New Zeal¬and have their Land Frights, they did not surrender their sover¬eign rights.ABORIGINAL Land Right is for white Australia to take notice of our sovereign right – to recognise our right of ownership of all the land before Captain Cook came to this land – to take notice that we never gave away or sold land to whites. We never signed a Treaty. We never surrendered any of our land to them.WR WANT a Bill of Aboriginal Rights to be concluded and made law forever to protect our people forever.
THE FEDERAL government and State governments shall:- Ask to reside upon any portion of land to legally qualify them selves and their subject white citizens. They shall also acknowledge and guarantee the Treaty and Bill of Aboriginal Rights for inclusion into the Australian constit¬ution.-Guarantee and fac¬ilitate the return of our land base, our sacred and traditional areas in perpetuity.- Guarantee and fac¬ilitate the return of our sacred sites and their protection.- Where tribes have been massacred and driven from their trad itional home land, land bases shall be returned on a needs basis in in¬alienable perpetual title.-Guarantee that Ab¬original communities re¬tain their sovereignty – nation within a nation.-Guarantee fishing and hunting and camping rights without any white rule usurping or re¬straihing our right in this matter.-Guarantee that in those areas where trad¬itional Aboriginal lawis maintained, that Aboriginal law prevails. – Acknowledge the sovereignty of the Abor¬iginal nation and guaran¬tee the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to examine questions of massacre, infringements against human rights, racial victimisation and apartheid.
– Guarantee a com¬pensation and war repar¬ation fund be established to pay for human, social cultural damages in¬flicted unlawfully upon us by white Australia.- Guarantee a compen¬satory fund be establish¬ed from a negotiated percentage of the gross national product and a continuous levy of 2% on local and federal valuer-general’s unim¬proved capital value of all lands held by what¬ever title, except Abor-iginal perpetual title.- Guarantee the es¬tablishing of a primary compensation/reparation fund equalling 21/2% of the gross national pro¬duct taken over the last twenty five years.- Guarantee that, of all Aboriginal land bases claimed and all tradit¬ional areas claimed, the total shall be not less than 33 and one-third percentum of the total land mass of Australia. -Guarantee that, where the area of land¬base cannot be determined according to traditional structures because of contemporary fragment¬ation of Aboriginal communities in that area, or loss of traditional information because of enslavement, transport¬ation to different areas of the country by whites or fleeing from massacre areas, the people shall be returned a land base determined on a basis of land per total capita (excluding Aboriginals from the per capita sum), the sum acreage per cap¬ita multiplied by a sum of 5 – or the area to be not less that 2 square mile per Aboriginal in the designated area.- Guarantee that all mineral rights on design¬ated Aboriginal lands be held by Aboriginals, such right to be in¬alienable and not to exclude their right of consent or veto on min¬ing.- Guarantee the es¬tablishing of a National Aboriginal Government Commission to be fully representative of Abor¬iginals, completely autonomous and staffed and controlled by Aborigin¬als. This Commission to receive Compensatory and Royalty disbursement funds and to represent Aboriginal people.- Guarantee the es¬tablishing of a National Aboriginal Bank of Aus¬tralia.- Guarantee the es¬tablishing of a National Academy of Fine Arts.- Guarantee the es¬tablishing of a National Aboriginal Art Gallery.- Guarantee a National Holiday be declared to celebrate National Aborigines Day.-Guarantee to es¬tablish within Parlia¬ment 3 Parliamentary Senatorial seats for Aboriginal representat¬ives and more orthodox representation.
Kevin GilbertWiradjuri.
For further reading on the topic visit link below to read Treaty or Makarrata?http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/collections/exhibitions/treaty/docs/m0040285_a/m0040285_ch06_a.pdfTreaty, Compact, Makarrata – http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40332345?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102024654761
The Bark Petitions
In August 1963, the Yolngu people of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land sent two bark petitions – framed by traditional ochre paintings of clan designs – to the Australian House of Representatives.
The petitions protested the Commonwealth’s granting of mining rights on land excised from Arnhem Land reserve and sought the recognition by the Australian Parliament of the Yolngu peoples’ traditional rights and ownership of their lands.
Asserting title to Yolngu country under Yolngu law, the petitions were the first traditional documents recognised by the Commonwealth Parliament and helped to shape the nation’s acknowledgment of Aboriginal people and their land rights.
We value the foresight, strength and determination of the Yolngu people whose Bark Petitions set into motion a long process of legislative and constitutional reforms for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
While appealing for the recognition of Yolngu rights to land, the Bark Petitions were a catalyst in advancing changes to the Constitution in the 1967 referendum, the statutory acknowledgment of Aboriginal land rights by the Commonwealth in 1976, and the overturning of the obstacle of the concept of terra nullius by the High Court in the Mabo Case in 1992 that recognised the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their islands in the eastern Torres Strait.
Today, we look to a future that better understands and celebrates the unique connection that Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander’s share to country, as we continue to build an Australia that reflects the achievements and furthers the aspirations of our people.
If you would like to know more, read on for a comprehensive insight into the Petitions. http://www.naidoc.org.au/celebrating-naidoc-week/2013-national-naidoc-week-theme/Story of the Barunga StatementIn the 1870’s pastoralists and telegraph line construction crews followed the explorers; tin mining began in 1913 and continued until 1946. The Darwin – Mataranka railway was completed in 1928. During the war Katherine became a major army base, and many people moved in from all over the NT to work as labourers or drovers. After the war a ration station opened at Maranboy, but water shortages forced its removal first to the King River, and then east to Tandangal in 1948. The people were reluctant to settle at Tandangal because it was a sacred site, and so in 1951 the station was relocated again, on the Beswick Creek, an area rich in rock art. The settlement, known as Beswick Creek, was renamed Bamyili in 1965 and Barunga in 1984.The people won freehold title to the 100ha former government station which is managed by Bamyili Community Council Inc. The community hosts the annual Barunga cultural and sporting festival. A statement of national Aboriginal political objectives issued to the federal government in June 1988 became known as the ‘Barunga Statement’. Written on bark and presented to Prime Minister RJL Hawke at that year’s festival, it called for Aboriginal self-management, a national system of land rights, compensation for loss of lands, respect for Aboriginal identity, an end to discrimination, and the granting of full civil, economic, social and cultural rights. The Prime Minister responded by saying that he wished to conclude a treaty between Aboriginal and other Australians by 1990, but his wish was not fulfilled.Text by Dr Ian Howie-Willis from the Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia The Barunga StatementWe, the Indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia, call on the Australian Government and people to recognise our rights: •to self-determination and self-management, including the freedom to pursue our own economic, social, religious and cultural development;•to permanent control and enjoyment of our ancestral lands;•to compensation for the loss of use of our lands, there having been no extinction of original title;•to protection of and control of access to our sacred sites, sacred objects, artefacts, designs, knowledge and works of art;•to the return of the remains of our ancestors for burial in accordance with our traditions;•to respect for and promotion of our Aboriginal identity, including the cultural, linguistic, religious and historical aspects, and including the right to be educated in our own languages and in our own culture and history;•in accordance with the universal declaration of human rights, the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, the international covenant on civil and political rights, and the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, rights to life, liberty, security of person, food, clothing, housing, medical care, education and employment opportunities, necessary social services and other basic rights. We call on the Commonwealth to pass laws providing: •A national elected Aboriginal and Islander organisation to oversee Aboriginal and Islander affairs;•A national system of land rights;•A police and justice system which recognises our customary laws and frees us from discrimination and any activity which may threaten our identity or security, interfere with our freedom of expression or association, or otherwise prevent our full enjoyment and exercise of universally recognised human rights and fundamental freedoms. We call on the Australian Government to support Aborigines in the development of an international declaration of principles for indigenous rights, leading to an international covenant.And we call on the Commonwealth Parliament to negotiate with us a Treaty recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our human rights and freedom.
Canada – Statement of Reconciliation Learning from the Past As Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians seek to move forward together in a process of renewal, it is essential that we deal with the legacies of the past affecting the Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including the First Nations, Inuit and MÚtis. Our purpose is not to rewrite history but, rather, to learn from our past and to find ways to deal with the negative impacts that certain historical decisions continue to have in our society today. The ancestors of the First Nations, Inuit and MÚtis peoples lived on this continent long before explorers from other continents first came to North America. For thousands of years before this country was founded, they enjoyed their own forms of government. Diverse, vibrant Aboriginal nations had ways of life rooted in fundamental values concerning their relationship to the Creator, the environment, and each other, in the role of Elders as the living memory of their ancestors, and in their responsibilities as custodians of the lands, waters and resources of their homelands. The assistance and spiritual values of the Aboriginal peoples who welcomed the newcomers to this continent too often have been forgotten. The contributions made by all Aboriginal peoples to Canada’s development, and the contributions they continue to make to our society today, have not been properly acknowledged. The Government of Canada today, on behalf of all Canadians, acknowledges those contributions. Sadly, our history with respect to the treatment of Aboriginal people is not something in which we can take pride. Attitudes of racial and cultural superiority led to a suppression of Aboriginal culture and values. As a country we are burdened by past actions that resulted in weakening the identity of Aboriginal peoples, suppressing their languages and cultures and outlawing spiritual practices. We must recognise the impact of these actions on the once self-sustaining nations that were disaggregated, disrupted, limited or even destroyed by the dispossession of traditional territory, by the relocation of self-sustaining nations that were desegregated, disrupted, limited or even destroyed by the dispossession of traditional territory, by the relocation of Aboriginal people, and by some provisions f the Indian Act. We must acknowledge that the result of these actions was the erosion of the political, economic and social systems of Aboriginal people and nations. Against the backdrop of these historical legacies, it is a remarkable tribute to the strength and endurance of Aboriginal people that they have maintained their historic diversity and identity. The Government of Canada today formally expresses to all Aboriginal people in Canada our profound regret for past actions of the federal government which have contributed to these difficult pages in the history of our relationship together. One aspect of our relationship with Aboriginal people over this period that required particular attention is the Residential School system. This system separated many children from their families and communities and prevented them from speaking their own languages and from learning about their heritage and cultures. In the worst cases, it left legacies of personal pain and distress that continue to reverberate in Aboriginal communities to this day. Tragically, some children were the victims of physical and sexual abuse. The Government of Canada acknowledges the role it played in the development and administration of these schools. Particularly to those individuals who experienced the tragedy of sexual and physical abuse at residential schools, and who have carried this burden believing that in some way they must be responsible, we wish to emphasize that what you experienced was not your fault and should never have happened. To those of you who suffered this tragedy at residential schools, we are deeply sorry. In dealing with the legacies of the Residential School system, the Government of Canada proposes to work with First Nations, Inuit and MÚtis people, the Churches and other interested parties to resolve the outstanding issues that must be addressed. We need to work together on a healing strategy to assist individuals and communities in dealing with the consequences of this sad era in our history. No attempt at reconciliation with Aboriginal people can be complete without reference to the sad events culminating in the death of MÚtis leader Louis Riel. These events cannot be undone: however, we can and will continue to look for ways of affirming the contributions of MÚtis people in Canada and of reflecting Louis Riel’s proper place in Canada’s history. Reconciliation is an ongoing process. In renewing our partnership, we must ensure that the mistakes which marked our past relationship are not repeated. The Government of Canada recognizes that policies that sought to assimilate Aboriginal people, women and men, were not the way to build a strong country. We must instead continue to find ways in which Aboriginal people can participate fully in the economic, political, cultural and social life of Canada in a manner which preserves and enhances the collective identities of Aboriginal communities, and allows them to evolve and flourish in the future. Working together to achieve our shared goals will benefit all Canadians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. On behalf of the Government of CanadaThe Honourable Jane Stewart, P.C, M.P. Minister for Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The Honourable Ralph Goodale, P.C., M.P. Federal Interlocutor for MÚtis and Non-Status Indians.
Preamble to the Constitution of South Africa We, the people of South Africa,Recognise the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.
We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to – Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; Lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law;
Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.
May God protect our people. Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrika. Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso. God seen Suid Afrika. God bless South Africa. Mudzimu fhatutshedza Afurika. Hosi Katekisa Afrika.
The Magna Carta or Great CharterThe Magna Carta, or Great Charter, is a document created for the purpose of limiting the powers of the monarch and preserving the basic legal rights of all free men in England. It was made after a rebellion in 1215 against King John of England, a corrupt, absolute monarch who angered all those under the influence of his power. The Barons, rich land owners and direct vassals of the King, would no longer tolerate the abuses of power conducted under John’s reign, and demanded a change in government. John was forced to meet with them at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. There the Barons proposed the Magna Carta, a document similar to, as well as an ancestor of, the Bill of Rights. After several days of debate, the King gave in to the Barons’ demands and adopted the charter into the British system of government on June 19th.The Magna Carta was eventually sent out to all of the towns and provinces of England so that all free men could see their basic legal rights. Among the rights granted by the document are a trial by jury, a punishment fitting and not excessive to the crime, and no taxation without representation. To whom these rights were granted has been heavily debated. The barons who created the Magna Carta originally intended it to protect only the rich, upper class of the feudal system. It was reinterpreted by many leaders and politicians for years after it was created, and with each it was applied to more and more groups of people. With the interpretation of Sir Edward Coke, a 17th century British Secretary of State, the rights in the Magna Carta could even be applied to American colonists. The colonists felt that the government was violating a basic right granted them in the charter, they were being taxed without representation in Parliament. This belief led to the creation of the Declaration of Independence.The Magna Carta marked a turning point in world history. Until the 13th century in England, European rulers were absolute monarchs. With absolute rule came absolute power; these rulers had the power to do and order anything they chose. The end of absolute power in Britain came with the revolutionary Magna Carta, which established a set of laws that not even the king could violate. The same laws that applied to the lowest class of society applied to everyone, even to the royal family. The Magna Carta was a major first step toward the democracies of today, governments in which there are no monarchs but rather self governing citizens.http://library.thinkquest.org/20176/mcarta.htmFor a full transcript of the charter visit: http://library.thinkquest.org/20176/mcarta.htm
Papal Bulls (bulletins)”During this Historic Symposium, the gathering of delegates from the seven regions of the world talked of the need to now focus on the continuing Sovereignty of the Aboriginal Nations of the world. The South American delegations pointed out that in order for them to be free, they need to have the Vatican repeal the Papal bulls (bulletins) and to have the Vatican apologise for the wrongs and destruction that the Papal bulls have caused to the Aboriginal Peoples of the Southern and Central America.http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/michael-anderson-returns-un-symposium-and-announced-next-sovereign-union-meetingWhen the past mistakes are erased, it is as kids say SWEET! Sweet because it amazing, sweet because it is profound, sweet because it feels good, sweet because it makes a difference in the world. A difference that matters to us and the next seven generations. Why does it matter? We have entered a new era. It simply would be a shame to take our old baggage with us into a new beginning on earth. It is time for all humanity to join together in claiming justice for the Indigenous People on our earth. This is a call for the people of the world to rescind the Papal Bulls.http://youtu.be/Ajrd0u85Eqs Everyone around the world carries in their ancestral history injustices for humanity from our past history toward Indigenous people. As we move toward 2013 it time to cleanse the past, and claim it is no longer part of us and create a healing on earth.For the past 500 years every Pope of the Catholic Church has ignored repeated requests to rescind doctrines which grant the authority to essentially kill, enslave and confiscate the land of Indigenous People who do not accept Catholic religion and remain so called “pagan /heathens” from having other faiths. With all due respect this is not to say that Catholic’s agree with these doctrines, as many do not even know they exist. As Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrims says so clearly, “ No one is even alive today that had anything to do with the creation of these Doctrines.” Our collective consciousness has evolved leaps and bounds since the 1400’s and can no longer be a vibrational match to injustice. As we move toward this new era, a higher vibrational shift is taking place. We are being called to spiritually rescind our past mistakes. As we claim justice through acknowledging, past wrong doings, we become the change we are seeking in the world and accelerate our evolutional process.
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITIONS: http://www.change.org/petitions/honor-the-indigenous-people-of-our-world-through-a-conscious-global-stand-in-rescinding-the-papal-bulls-of-the-1400-s?utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition http://www.change.org/petitions/honor-the-indigenous-people-of-our-world-through-a-conscious-global-stand-in-rescinding-the-papal-bulls-of-the-1400-s?utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition
Please send a letter to the pope, sign the petitions, watch the videos, create an event and share, care and love!
Biggest Blessings to u all on a majikal journey!Your Sister thru life n lightKaiyu
This is why i fight, born in the frontline. this photo was taken 40 years ago. My Mum on the ground in front of pram being arrested by the dogs and leaving me n sister to be taken home by family at games protest 82 — Stolenwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia. This government dont care about children, didnt then and dont now. Photo courtesy of Juno Gemes
thrivalinternational 