australian and european news & media releases 2004-2005 archive |
| The
Long Walk in London 2005 16 November 2005 - ENIAR (UK) - This year's event follows on from indigenous AFL legend Michael Long's walk in 2004. This year there are events happening all across Australia, with the main one taking place in Melbourne. |
| Make
Indigenous Poverty History by 2015 9 November 2005 - "Make Indigenous Poverty History" by 2015" challenged Graeme Mundine, Executive Secretary of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission, speaking about NATSIEC's new campaign aimed at the reduction of poverty experienced by Australia's Indigenous Peoples. |
| Mansell
Sees Anti Terror Laws Being Used to Quell Aboriginal Protests 8 November 2005 - Aboriginal lawyer and activist Michael Mansell believes Aboriginal protestors will be targeted by the new anti terror laws as a new way to discredit Aboriginal leaders. |
| Australia's
racial conflict exposed to wider audience 27 October 2005 - The Times (UK) - A VIOLENT “bushranger western” has broken new ground with its depiction of the ethnic conflicts that underpinned the creation of modern Australia. |
| Launch
of national campaign to help stop petrol sniffing 20 October 2005 - Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) and The Australian Greens today launched a national campaign to help stop petrol sniffing in remote Aboriginal communities. |
| Palm
Island Housing Crisis 7 October 2005 - Shocking poverty and overcrowding in a part of Queensland many of us would rather forget. In tropical north Queensland is a community with no industry, no agriculture, and an unemployment rate of at least 90 per cent. To make matters worse, this a poor and rarely visited town suffers an acute housing shortage. |
| DCMS
publishes guidelines on care of human remains 6 October 2005 - (Museums Association UK) - Guidelines are now available for museums in England and Wales that hold human remains. The publication of the guidelines also heralds a change in law allowing national museums to deaccession human remains… |
| Negligence,
malpractice and stolen wages 28 September 2005 - From 1900 until as late as the 1980s, governments around Australia controlled wages, savings and benefits belonging to Aboriginal people who were under their care and protection. |
| Inside
Australia's third world 15 September 2005 -Children begging for food, chronic health problems, overcrowded houses - this is not some basket-case nation but the reality of Aboriginal communities in northern Australia. As world leaders gather in New York to discuss poverty, Lindsay Murdoch looks at the distress in our own backyard. |
| View
on the Seine is Aboriginal 8 September 2005 -It seems to be an era of reverse imperialism on the banks of the River Seine. At the bustling construction site of the Musee du Quai Branly, Jacques Chirac's expansive dream of a museum in the heart of Paris dedicated to non-Western art from Oceania, Africa, Asia and the Americas, Australian Aborigines are conquering the Europeans. |
| Aborigines
dying faster than white Australians 26 August 2005 - Aborigines are dying at almost three times the rate of other Australians and have a life expectancy 17 years lower than the rest of the population, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said in a report on Friday. |
| Embassy
protestors to defy report findings 25 August 2005 - Protestors at the long-running Aboriginal Tent Embassy say they will ignore any directive to move on while there is still widespread Indigenous disadvantage. |
| Friar
rides for reconciliation 16 August 2005 - A 65-year-old Dominican friar has left on a 2,700 kilometre-long bicycle journey from Canberra to Alice Springs bearing a message of reconciliation to Aboriginal communities along the way. |
| Shameful
secret in the shadow of Uluru 13 August 2005 - The Daily Telegraph (UK) - It symbolises the harsh grandeur of the Outback and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, but the great red rock of Uluru hides a shameful secret that Australia's tourism promoters would rather the world did not see. |
| Out
of sight, out of their minds: sniffing's tragic toll 11 August 2005 - They speak with a stammer and walk with a shuffle. They are boys and girls as young as 11 but they are also adults, some of them in their 30s. And they are the outback's growing number of chronic petrol sniffers whose brains are damaged. |
| Aboriginal
culture next big tourist drawcard 6 August 2005 - When Manny Pamkal walks tourists into remote cattle country south of Arnhem Land he tells them how proud his people are of their ancient Aboriginal culture. |
| Ladder
of Obligation vs Clash of Culture 6 August 2005 - Noel Pearson and Lowitja O'Donoghue on indigenous affairs. |
| The
PM, football and reconciliation 2 August 2005 - JOHN Howard would not claim a close affinity with Aussie rules and he has never been too keen on symbols when it comes to reconciliation. But it was the Prime Minister who articulated the significance of the naming of the indigenous team of the century yesterday. |
| Bye
Bye, Sweet Bay 16 July 2005 - When French explorers met a group of 48 Aborigines at the southernmost tip of Australia in the early 1790s, the contrast with other early contacts could not have been more stark. |
| Lives
swamped by the riches of uranium 14 July 2005 - Yvonne Margarula doesn't care that she is blocking development of Jabiluka, one of the world's biggest known deposits of uranium worth an estimated $10.5 billion as world prices soar. |
| Aboriginal
voices break through on film 14 June 2005 - Jerusalem Post (Israel) - 'It's only in the last 20 years that we've started making movies about ourselves," says Erica Glynn, an Australian director of aboriginal descent who's visiting Israel this week to introduce her films at the Australian Film Festival, which is playing at cinematheques around the country. |
| Homeguard
in Australia's outback 11 June 2005 - BBC Radio 4 (UK) - Australia's armed forces are scattered far and wide, from Iraq to the South Pacific. But there is one regiment which specialises in protecting the vast wilderness regions found much closer to home, in the Northern Territory. |
| Aboriginal
boy locked up for taking ice-cream 8 June 2005 - The Independent (UK) - A 15-year-old Aboriginal boy was held in custody for 12 days and flown nearly 1,000 miles to face court for trying to steal an ice-cream. |
| Book
review: 'The N Word by Stephen Hagan' 8 June 2005 - The first thing that struck me on reading this book is that Stephen Hagan comes from a long line of troublemakers. And I mean that in the most complimentary way! |
| Australia's
shame: report to UN raises plight of children 6 June 2005 - A report on Australia's children that highlights the "shame" of indigenous children's welfare and the plight of children in immigration detention will be handed to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva this week. |
| A
new breed of centres for art for Aborigines 4 June 2005 - International Herald Tribune (France) - MELBOURNE To talk with Rammey Ramsay is to enter a 40,000-year-old world. It is a place of death, of nature's redemptive power and of communion with one of the world's oldest surviving cultures. But it is also a world of four-wheel drives and satellite television. |
| Australian
Christians focus on reconciliation between white and Aboriginal communities
2 June 2005 - Ekklesia (UK) - The Catholic Church in Australia is concluding a series of events for National Reconciliation Week, (May 29-June 3) focussing on healing relations between the white community and the Aborigines, reports the Fides news agency. |
| Howard
urges Aborigine patience 30 May 2005 - BBC (UK) - Australia's Prime Minister John Howard has warned the process of combating disadvantage within the country's Aboriginal community could take years. |
| Didgeridoo
echoes around Red Square 30 May 2005 - MOSCOW: It’s not quite Pitjantjatjara meets Putin, but it’s close. Muscovites have been astounded by the sights and sounds of an Aboriginal dance group performing to help publicise an Australian trade expo. |
| Island's
name is now truwana 29 May 2005 - CAPE Barren Island will be known by its Aboriginal name, says the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. |
| Moving
forward 28 May 2005 - More than 160 indigenous, political, and community leaders will gather in Canberra on Monday for the National Reconciliation Workshop. |
| Australia's
'Sorry Day' marked 26 May 2005 - BBC (UK) - Ceremonies across Australia have marked National Sorry Day, which remembers the government's removal of Aboriginal children from their families. |
| Stolen
forever: Tamara, 14, gives dead mother's speech 25 May 2005 - Tamara Jacobs speaking in place of her mother Christine at the National Healing Day launch in Canberra today. |
| No
longer your usual suspect 25 May 2005 - WHEN Gabriel Byrne packed his bags in February to begin filming Ray Lawrence's new feature film, Jindabyne, his daughter asked him morosely why he had to go to Australia. |
| Call
for govts to stop 'Indigenous genocide' 23 May 2005 - A Darwin church leader says governments must take radical action to halt what he calls a slow genocide of Indigenous people. |
| Aboriginal
party looks to land rights 22 May 2005 - An Aboriginal elder will launch the state's only indigenous political party within weeks, drawing grassroots support from 120 land councils across NSW. |
| Australian
Medical Association Indigenous Health Report Card focuses on low birth weight
babies 22 May 2005 - Australian Medical Association (AMA) President, Dr Bill Glasson, has launched Lifting the Weight, the AMA's fourth report card on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. |
| Poor
Aboriginal health traced back to birth 20 May 2005 - Rueters (UK) - Chronic health problems suffered by Australia's Aborigines can be traced to birth, a new report found on Friday, saying indigenous babies were twice as likely as others to be born underweight. |
| Sorry
in London 20 May 2005 - TNT (UK) - Australian day of reconciliation spreads north. When the first Sorry Day was held in Australia in 1998, thousands of people took to the streets in an act of protest, in solidarity with the stolen generations and in the spirit of reconciliation. |
| A
didgeridoo for Lincoln's Inn Fields 20 May 2005 - An annual day when Australians remember the 'stolen generations' of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families will be commemorated in London for the first time next week. |
| Aboriginal
outcry over noose case 18 May 2005 - The Journal of Turkish Weekly (Turkey) - Australian indigenous leaders have reacted angrily after two white men found guilty of assaulting an Aboriginal boy were fined A$800 ($605). |
| A
decleration by Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Stolen
Generations 18 May 2005 - We, Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Stolen Generations, our families and communities, still experience grief and trauma as a result of Government policies and practices. We remember those who have passed on without receiving justice. |
| Aborigines
miss out on heart surgery 16 May 2005 - Aborigines are much less likely than other Australians to undergo artery surgery after a heart attack, despite being at higher risk of dying early from heart disease, a study has found. |
|
Federal budget ignores Indigenous
suffering |
| No
Black Faces on the Block? 12 May 2005 - Signature (UK) - The Carr Government’s plans for the rundown suburb of Redfern are yet to be realised, but anyone taking a white brush to the black heart of Sydney is surely in for a fight. |
| Yorta
Yorta remains on the way home 12 May 2005 - The ancestral remains of four Aboriginal people held by a Sydney University museum for 50 years are headed back to their traditional lands. |
| Indigenous
Australians miss out 11 May 2005 - Once in a generation opportunity missed for Indigenous health The Federal Government's budget has failed to take advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the Third World health standards of Indigenous Australians, according to Australian aid agency Oxfam Australia. |
| Australia's
Shame - Eddie Gilbert 4 May 2005 - He was the cricketer who could have brought the English tourists to their knees during the Bodyline tests over the summer of 1932-33. |
| Yellow
Fella on a Journey to Cannes 1 May 2005 - An Australian documentary about Tom E Lewis’ search for identity will become the first Indigenous (documentary) film to be shown at Cannes Film Festival. |
| Catching
the secret new wave 30 April 2005 - The land rights movement gave Aborigines places to call their own. Samantha Selinger-Morris discovers a guide book that takes you to them. |
| Priest
taking Aboriginal Madonna to France 29 April 2005 - Catholic Mission National Director Fr Terry Bell is taking a copy of a painting of the Aboriginal Madonna to Lyon in France as part of celebrations to mark the restoration of the home of the founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith. |
| Blacks
join bay fight 24 April 2005 - TASMANIA'S Aboriginal community has joined the fight to protect the Recherche Bay historic site from logging. A French expedition, led by Bruny d'Entrecastreaux, had friendly meetings with Tasmanian Aborigines at Recherche Bay in 1792 and 1793. |
| Freeman's
Family 50 year old debt 23 April 2005 - THE family of Olympic hero Cathy Freeman has been forced to pay a 50-year-old debt of two pounds and five shillings for a pauper's grave left unpaid by the Queensland Protector of Aborigines before they were allowed to bury a relative yesterday. |
| Pope
John Paul II’s Indigenous legacy 17 April 2005 - Pope John Paul II visited Australia three times in his lifetime. The first, in the 70’s, as a Cardinal, during the Eucharistic Congress in Melbourne. In 1986 he visited all states and territories in his first visit as Pontiff and he came again in the 1990s to beautify Mary Mackillop, Australia’s first saint. |
| Turning
back the clock for Aborigines 11 April 2005 - In the early 1960s, as a young man, I saw bulldozers rip through our Gumatj country in north-east Arnhem Land to mine bauxite at Gove. |
| Still
waiting for the call to stardom that never came 10 April 2005 - Three years ago Dannielle Hall's wistful face captured hearts - and the world's attention - in the Australian road movie Beneath Clouds. |
| Commissioner
puts government on notice 8 April 2005 - Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma has used his first Social Justice Report to put the federal Government on notice |
| Aborigines
fear land law changes 8 April 2005 - A push by the Prime Minister, John Howard, to radically overhaul Aboriginal land rights could run into constitutional difficulties and lead to massive compensation payouts, the Federal Government has been warned. |
| New
opportunity for native title to achieve sustainable goals 8 April 2005 - Native title needs to move beyond the current legal framework towards achieving the economic and social development goals of Indigenous peoples. |
| New
autopsy casts doubt over death 7 April 2005 - A grieving Aboriginal widow buried her husband for the second time in 20 years yesterday, after a new autopsy threw doubt on his cause of death. |
| Rugby tackles
Aboriginal violence 31 March 2005 - BBC (UK) - Aboriginal leaders in Australia say rugby is helping to battle the domestic violence blighting their community. Statistics show Aboriginal women are 45 times more likely to suffer domestic violence than white Australians. |
| Island
of Distress 29 March 2005 - MULRUNJIE (Cameron) Doomadgee, 36, bled to death in a police cell on Palm Island after an incident that left him with four broken ribs and a crushed liver. |
| Geneva vs Canberra
28 March 2005 - The UN has again attacked the Howard Government's record on race. But this time the politicians are shutting up and news of the verdict isn't getting out. |
| Kidney crisis
hits rural areas 28 March 2005 - AN outbreak of kidney disease in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands in South Australia is tearing people out of their communities and forcing them to live hundreds of kilometres away so they can be treated. |
| International
award winners to visit Redfern 26 March 2005 - International guest speakers at the Globalise Justice Asia-Pacific conference in Sydney this weekend will be visiting the Redfern Block at the invitation of the family of 17-year-old T J Hickey, whose controversial death during an alleged police pursuit sparked riots in Redfern on February 14, 2004. |
| Damning UN
verdict on race relations 22 March 2005 - The United Nations has raised serious concerns about race relations in Australia and has called on the Federal Government to work towards a "meaningful" reconciliation. |
| Riding
the freedom bus 21 March 2005 - Take a handful of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, put them together on a bus for two weeks discussing the affairs of the nation and what do you get? Well, besides 20-something sausage sizzles, sleep deprivation and a wave of cultural and sexual tension, you get a very different take on Howard’s notion of “Practical reconciliation” that’s for sure |
| United Nations
Committee issues observations on Australia 18 March 2005 - The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has issued its concluding observations on Australia. This follows consideration of Australia's 13th and 14th periodic reports in Geneva on 1 and 2 March 2005. |
| Sorry Day
26 May 2005 A National Day of Healing 18 March 2005 - The National Sorry Day Committee has decided that Sorry Day, 26 May, should become a National Day of Healing - for all Australians. |
| Bob Bellear
1944-2005 17 March 2005 - Australia is called a classless society. But Bob Bellear, who has died at 60, did what few other Australians have done: he rose from the very bottom rung to the very top. Not just from working-class and rural origins but from Aboriginal deprivation to become Australia's first indigenous judge. |
| Indigenous
leaders lament ATSIC's demise 17 March 2005 - Indigenous leaders say Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have lost their voice with the formal scrapping of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). |
| Projecting
its own image 9 March 2005 - ADVENTUROUSLY programmed and well organised, the Adelaide Film Festival, which finished last Thursday, has earned its place within the ranks of the country's significant film events. |
| Govt. will
ignore UN predicts ANTaR 4 March 2005 - Key Indigenous lobbyists predicted the Australian government will ignore UN concerns over abuses of Aboriginals expected to be raised yesterday in the European headquarters of the human rights watchdog. |
| Charles has
a grubby encounter downunder 3 March 2005 - Hello Magazine ( UK) - The Prince of Wales had an encounter with some bare-chested ladies on Wednesday, before being presented with a witchetty grub, by way of a tasty snack. |
| Senior officials
to front UN Committee 1 March 2005 - Senior government officials due to front the UN in Geneva tomorrow are likely to be quizzed over Sydney's Redfern riots and the death in custody of a Palm Islander. |
| Pope inspires
Ecumenical Indigenous Commission 28 February 2005 - The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission (NATSIEC) has referred to Pope John Paul II's landmark 1986 speech to indigenous Australians as a source of inspiration at a time when setbacks in reconciliation demand "rebirth". |
| Aborigines
win veto on Kakudu uranium mining 25 February 2005 - Uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia will be allowed to further explore the valuable Jabiluka lease in Kakadu, but traditional Aboriginal landowners have the right to veto any future mining. |
| Bribe
row overshadows Palm inquest 25 February 2005 - A bribery scandal is threatening to overshadow a long-awaited investigation into the death of an Aboriginal man in custody on Palm Island off Queensland. |
| Berlin Film
festival Shine Spotlight on Indigenous Films 25 February 2005 - Writer and director Wayne Blair has hailed Australian film-makers for winning two major awards at the Berlin Film Festival in Germany as "amazing". |
| Tourists
guided on respect of country 17 February 2005 - A new Welcome to Country guide will give every traveller in Australia an opportunity to learn more about Australia's many Indigenous groups and cultures, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell said earlier this month. |
| Australia's
Aboriginal Debate 16 February 2005 - BBC website (UK) - Improving the lives of Australia's Aboriginals is an important challenge, with no easy answers. The BBC News website asked two prominent members of the Aboriginal community to debate the issues by email. This is the conversation they had over the last few weeks. |
| Growing
Indigenous Tourism will help address Future Challenges 7 February 2005 - Australia's burgeoning Indigenous tourism industry represents a new opportunity to meet environmental challenges, as well as the cultural needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Federal Tourism Parliamentary Secretary Warren Entsch said on Saturday (5 February 2005) at the inaugural Indigenous Tourism Expo in Sydney. |
| Australia:
The Sickening of Democracy 4 February 2005 - National myths are usually partly true. In Australia, the myth of an egalitarian society, or "fair go", has an extraordinary history. Long before most of the world, Australia had a minimum wage, a 35-hour working week, child benefits and the vote for women. |
| Dodson says
government ATSIC plan 'deplorable' 3 February 2005 - Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson has described the federal government's plan to kill-off Australia's peak indigenous body while failing to replace it as deplorable. |
| Camera
'off' during Palm Island beating 1 February 2005 - Video surveillance cameras in the Palm Island police station were turned off during the assault of a man who later died in custody, a leader from the tiny North Queensland community alleged yesterday. |
| Committee
told not to abolish ATSIC 31 January 2005 - The abolition of peak indigenous body ATSIC would leave Aborigines as the only native people in the democratic world without a voice, a Senate committee was told. |
| Aboriginal
massacre memorial defaced 31 January 2005 - Vandals who defaced a memorial commemorating the mass slaughter of Aboriginal people had committed an appalling and insulting crime, the New South Wales Government said today. |
| Expert says
Aboriginal infant mortality can be reduced with Government help 31 January 2005 - China Post (Taiwan) - The government must do more to combat infant mortality among Aborigines, whose babies die of unexplained causes at a rate six times higher than other Australian children, an expert on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) said Monday. |
| Call for
election focus on Indigenous health 28 January 2005 - A peak body representing Aboriginal medical services (AMSs) across Western Australia has called for Indigenous health to be made a priority in the election campaign. |
| Self respect
and changing attitudes boost Australia's Aboriginal population 23 January 2005 - The Scotsman (Scotland) - The aboriginal population is booming as more Australians identify themselves as indigenous. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2005 snapshot of Australia shows the indigenous population has grown at twice the rate of the overall population since 1996. |
| Survival
Day: What's on around the nation 21 January 2005 - Since 1992 Aboriginal people around the country have been celebrating their survival; the first official concert was held at La Perouse in Sydney and had hundreds of people in attendance. |
| Politics Meets
Art On Maori Television 21 January 2005 - The year is 1990 and Australia is two years’ out from its bicentenary celebrations. For the indigenous Aboriginal people of Australia, the year 1990 marks two centuries of dispossession and maltreatment. |
| Government's
whitewash of black affairs 20 January 2005 - NATIONAL: The Howard government’s brand new black bureaucracy - launched in June last year amid attempts to abolish ATSIC - is managed almost exclusively by white bureaucrats, NIT inquiries have revealed. |
| UN submission
reveals Government failure on Indigenous employment 20 January 2005 - A submission to the UN Race Discrimination (CERD)* Committee by Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) highlights an alarming decrease in Indigenous employment in Indigenous administration, particularly at a senior management level, in the Australian Public Service (APS). |
| Rivalling the
dots 17 January 2005 - Exciting changes in art are sweeping the Anangu-Pitjantjatjara lands. It is as if the traditional Aboriginal country of South Australia's Far North West has had its arts blinkers removed. |
| A tale of two
histories 17 January 2005 - There will be no official celebration for tomorrow's 217th anniversary of the First Fleet's arrival at Botany Bay. But the story will be remembered by at least one Aboriginal family. |
| A bone to
pick with museums 16 January 2005 - The Times (Scotland) - Returning collections of human remains to their home countries may sound noble, but science will suffer as a result. |
| Tovey or not
Tovey 16 January 2005 - Noel Tovey has spent most of his 71 years denying who he is. Now he's embraced his identity, and wants to share it with the world. He spoke with Luke Benedictus. |
| Pearson named
Australian of the Year 15 January 2005 - In the early '90s, Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson was in tune with the times when he passionately argued that ownership of land was the basis of future Aboriginal advancement. In 2004, he was equally in tune with his times in promoting a greater self-reliance among Aboriginal people and encouraging practical measures to further the lot of Australia's indigenous people. |
| Aboriginal
art shows creator snake 14 January 2005 - Philadelphia Daily News (USA) - "Track of the Rainbow Serpent" at the University of Pennsylvania Museum presents Australian aboriginal art as the handmaiden of anthropology. |
| Aboriginal
skulls to return home 13 January 2005 - BBC (UK) - Representatives from the Australian High Commission are in Devon to take back a collection of Aboriginal skulls held at a museum since the 1870s. |
| Museums face
court if they keep remains 13 January 2005 - Aboriginal groups were on the brink of taking legal action against some of Britain's great museums which could cost them huge and historic international collections unless they return the remains of generations of Aborigines to Australia. |
| Film
stars send their sympathy 12 January 2005 - International celebrities Brad Pitt, Steven Segal, Tina Turner, Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Claude Van Damme have sent their condolences to the Palm Island family of Cameron Doomadgee, who died in police custody. |
| Queensland
racial abuse claims resurface 5 January 2005 - More claims of racial abuse have emerged in far north Queensland following the arrest of one of the accused Palm Island rioters yesterday. |
| Uluru to host
Australia Day launch 4 January 2005 - The Australia Day Council says it will use Uluru in central Australia as a backdrop to launch the country's official Australia Day celebrations later this month. |
| Ku Klux Klan
threaten 'shanty town' 1 January 2005 - Police are investigating an alleged lynching-style raid on an Aboriginal shanty town near Townsville by white men claiming to be members of the Ku Klux Klan. |
| Pupils
to salute Aboriginal custodians 1 January 2005 - NSW public school students are to acknowledge Aborigines as the original custodians of the land, under new Department of Education guidelines. |
| Australia
honours Aboriginal team 27 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Australia have honoured a group of Aboriginal cricketers who undertook a tour to England in 1868. |
| Grinch
Steals Christmas From Palm Island Community 24 December 2004 - At a time when Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson was inviting the community to join the Queensland Police Service in celebrating the "festive season in song" at the Suncorp Piazza in South Bank, Brisbane. The Palm Island community is not celebrating this festive season. |
| Aboriginal
originals woo French 20 December 2004 - Financial Times (UK) - The prominent French social anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, is quoted approvingly in a 1962 book for his general rule: "One cannot modify societies based on so rigid a social system without destroying them." |
| United Nations
proclaims second International Decade of the worlds' Indigenous Peoples 20 December 2004 - The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People. The Decade will commence on 1 January 2005. |
| Aboriginal
policy raises storm 18 December 2004 - The Japan Times (Japan) - Aborigines in the remote Australian Outback are going blind amid filthy conditions while white Australians luxuriate in some of the world's most sophisticated cities. It's a disaster waiting to happen, and that day looks close. |
| A National
Day of Healing Newsletter from the National Sorry Day Committee 17 December 2004 - December 2004 - The National Sorry Day Committee asks that Sorry Day 2005, on 26 May, be a National Day of Healing. We invite everyone to celebrate the achievements of the past seven years, and to commit ourselves to all that still needs to be done. Australia now knows the story of the stolen generations. |
| Aborigines
offered smaller stolen wages payout 16 December 2004 - An estimated $15 million in stolen wages will be paid to elderly Aborigines or their descendants in NSW to compensate them for money placed in trust earlier last century and never repaid. |
| Freedom
ride to expose racism again 15 December 2004 - In February 1965, a group of Sydney University students called Students for Aboriginal Rights, led by Aboriginal students Charles Perkins and Gary Williams, set out in a bus across regional Australia to expose and confront segregation and colour bars against Aboriginal people. |
| Petrol for
face washing? Thanks but no thanks 12 December 2004 - (Khaleej Times) - Almost out of sight, out of mind, in the far-flung corners of Australia, people are living in utter squalor. It’s a familiar story in First World countries the indigenous people are pushed aside and do not benefit as their country experiences economic progress. |
| Uneasy
calm at Aborigine funeral 11 December 2004 - BBC ( UK) - The funeral has taken place of an aboriginal man in northern Australia whose death last month in police custody sparked violent disturbances. |
| First International
Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples comes to an end 10 December 2004 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said the end of the first International Decade of the World's Indigenous People today (10 December) is a timely occasion to reflect on the progress made on Indigenous issues during the last decade and an appropriate juncture to recommit to the challenges that lay ahead. |
| Australia
set for Aborigine march 8 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aborigines across Australia complain of prejudice and lack of opportunity. Thousands of Australians are expected to take part in a march on Thursday to protest at the treatment of Aborigines. |
| Aborigines'
dark island home. 4 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aboriginal residents of Palm Island in northern Australia are preparing for another depressing chapter in the story of their isolated home. The funeral of Cameron Doomagee is expected to take place in the coming day. |
| Aboriginal
death in custody triggers Palm Island riot 3 December 2004 - World Socialist Web Site - For the second time this year, anger over the death of an Australian Aborigine in highly suspicious circumstances involving police has boiled over into a riot. |
| Indigenous
roots with a touch of the blues 3 December 2004 - In sharp suits, mirrored shades and inky black hats, they might have been a couple of old blues artists. But touring the Art Gallery of NSW yesterday, Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford and his friend and relative Rammy Ramsey were in town to see the future of Australian contemporary indigenous art in Paris. |
| The anger
of the Aborigines 3 December 2004 - The Independent (UK) - A teenager's claim that he was dragged naked through the dirt with a noose around his neck has inflamed racial tensions in Australia. |
| Howard
meets Aboriginal Star 3 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aboriginal sports star Michael Long has met Australia's Prime Minister John Howard to highlight discrimination against indigenous groups and poverty. |
| La declaration
des peuples indigenes bloquee par l occident 29 November 2004 - AFP - Trois représentants de peuples autochtones ont accusé jeudi le gouvernement britannique de bloquer le projet de "Déclaration des droits des populations indigènes" aux Nations unies, alors que les débats sur le texte doivent prendre fin la semaine prochaine. |
| On the road
with a champion of his people 27 December 2004 - Last week Mr Long went to one funeral too many. He decided to walk from Melbourne to Sydney to see the Prime Minister about his people's problems. He set out on Sunday with his cousin, John Cusack, walking 30 kilometres to Wallan. They sat down and had a think on Monday. |
| Long walk
to freedom starts with a single man 27 December 2004 - A man on a mission, Michael Long is proudly Aboriginal and is challenging thinking and beliefs as he marches towards his past, writes Martin Flanagan. |
| Anger
reaches boiling point after death in custody on Palm Island 27 December 2004 - Two police officers have been transferred off Palm Island in north Queensland as community anger threatens to boil over in the wake of the death of an Aboriginal man in custody. |
| Protest rocks
Aboriginal island 26 December 2004 - BBC - Hundreds of protesters on an Aboriginal island off Australia's northern coast have stormed the local police station, after the death of a man in custody. One resident said there was smoke everywhere and that the building had almost been burnt to the ground. |
| Carr fails
again on wage theft 27 December 2004 - In March this year, NSW Premier Bob Carr gave his personal commitment that wages and savings stolen from Aboriginal people throughout much of the last century would be returned quickly and that those most in need would be moved to the front of the queue. Eight months down the track and seven years after the government first became aware of the thefts, Bob Carr - who earns around $200,000 a year - has still not repaid one single cent. |
| Row over Aboriginal
Idol send-up 25 December 2004 - An Internet parody of Australian Idol lampooning Aborigines has been blasted as racist garbage and is the subject of a complaint to an anti-discrimination tribunal. The material was published on an American-based website and has been picked up and distributed widely via e-mail. · Casey wins Idol's riches · Would the 'Real' Casey Donovan stand up? · Touchdown! |
| Tribal
Peoples Journey to UK: Government under attack 22 December 2004 - Survival Internationa (UK) - Three indigenous representatives arrive in London on 24 November to target the UK government for blocking an historic UN declaration on indigenous rights. |
| A carrot and
stick for Aborigines 13 December 2004 - New Zealand Herald (NZ) - In all the clamour of the election campaign that last month swept Prime Minister John Howard to his fourth term in office, there was one thundering silence: the continuing grim future for indigenous Australians. |
| Chief of army
to investigate KKK scandal 13 December 2004 - The image of soldiers dressed as the Ku Klux Klan betrayed the Australian Army's commitment to a "fair go" and destroyed the memory of black and white soldiers who fought together in war, the Department of Defence said yesterday. |
| Australian Aborigines
denounce welfare changes plan 12 December 2004 - Taipei Times (Taiwan) - Prominent Aborigines lashed out yesterday at a planned government overhaul of welfare payments to indigenous Australians that reportedly include punishing parents whose children cut classes. |
| Aboriginal welfare
plans cause stir 12 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - The Australian government is planning a controversial new welfare system for its indigenous Aboriginal population. The proposals, which were leaked to the media, are reported to include financial sanctions for parents who do not send their children to school. |
| Klan photo not
racism: local MP 11 December 2004 - There was no racism involved in a photograph of Australian soldiers wearing Ku Klux Klan-style hoods, federal MP Peter Lindsay said today. Mr Lindsay, whose Queensland seat of Herbert takes in Townsville's Lavarack barracks where the photograph was taken, said it was in poor taste. |
| Australian military
probes Ku Klux Klan stunt on black recruits 11 December 2004 - AFP - Australia's military chief said an investigation was under way after a leading newspaper published a photo showing black recruits hounded in a Ku Klux Klan-style stunt. Racism alleged in Australian Army - UPI |
| Sorry is an
attitude say committee 10 December 2004 - Two members of the National Indigenous Council have said that an apology to the stolen generations is not a priority. The stolen generations have no wish to be used as a political football, and the National Sorry Day Committee has no intention of getting worked up about a word. It is the attitude that concerns us. |
| Australia unveils
Aboriginal body 6 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aborigines are Australia's most disadvantaged community. The Australian government has unveiled a new Aboriginal advisory body that will help shape its policy towards disadvantaged native communities. |
| Aboriginal Groups
Receive Sydney Peace Prize from Arundhati Roy 5 December 2004 - Representatives from Mudgingal Aboriginal Women's Group in Redfern, ACT's Youth support service, The Connection and the Ceduna Aboriginal Women's Group, Weena Mooga Gu Gudba Incorporated received their controversial donations of the Sydney Peace Prize funding of $50,000 from Indian writer, Arundhati Roy last night in a glitzy black tie dinner at the University of Sydney. |
| Australia's
Aborigines lose political voice 5 December 2004 - Reuters (UK) - Australia's Aborigines have lost their only voice in parliament. Although 23 indigenous candidates ran in Australia's October 9 national elections, none was successful and the only sitting black senator, Aden Ridgeway, lost his seat, electoral officials announced this week. |
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World's indigenous people
slam UK government |
|
Competent Indigenous leadership
crucial to change |
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How do Indigenous people vote? |
| A mission
for the family 20 October 2004 - Andrea Mason, the Aboriginal leader of Family First, hopes reconciliation will be back on the political agenda. Andrea Mason is the first Aboriginal woman to be endorsed as the head of an Australian political party. |
| Haute Outback 16 October 2004 - The Globe and Mail (Canada) - The art of Australia's Aborigines is garnering awards, selling for six figures at Sotheby's auctions and drawing travellers to city galleries and dusty villages in search of rising talent. Not bad for paintings recently dismissed as 'folk art.' LASZLO BUHASZ explores the appeal of this bold and intricate work, and offers a guide on where to start hunting |
| Australia's
Indigenous Peoples Face On-going Crisis: After Election 2004 15 October 2004 - David Cooper/ENIAR - The situation of Australia’s Indigenous peoples is desperate with no relief in sight. Unchecked social and economic disadvantage means that Indigenous life expectancy remains 20 years less than other Australians. |
| Wik People win
back their land 14 October 2004 - After 10 years locked in the courts, a political battle that threatened to split the Coalition and landmark legislation limiting native title, the Wik and Wik-Way people yesterday formally settled their claim over a huge tract of land in western Cape York. |
|
Indian writer to donate Sydney Peace
Prize to Aborigines |
| Signs of
a shift over bones of contention 9 October 2004 - Nearly 100 years after Swedish scientists raided Aboriginal burial sites and smuggled out the skeletons saying they were kangaroo bones, indigenous men fought back tears as they brought the remains back to Australia. |
| Australia
is now a damaged and divided land 8 October 2004 - The Independent (UK) - Howard has built his electoral success by appealing to a darker side of our character.These days, television footage of young children and pregnant women behind razor wire in detention centres is as familiar an image of Australia as its golden surf beaches. |
| Aborigines
seek voice at election 7 October 2004 - Reuters - Aborigine Maisie Austin sits in the dirt under a tree hearing the grievances of aboriginal elders who have invited her to their "country" as she campaigns in the Northern Territory outback for Saturday's Australian elections. |
| Indigenous
Health Neglected in Health Policy Funding Frenzy, Australia 5 October 2004 - AMA (Australian Medical Association) President, Dr Bill Glasson, said today Indigenous Australians have been the big losers in the Federal election funding frenzy with the major parties failing to make the necessary leap of faith to turn around the parlous state of health of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. |
| Les Aborigines 1 October 2004 - Agency Francias Press - Les Aborigenes s'estiment une nouvelle fois les laisses-pour-compte des legislatives australiennes de samedi, ne nourrissant que peu d'espoir de changement dans leurs conditions de vie difficiles, peu importe le resultat du scrutin. |
| Reconciliation
in peril over museum dispute 1 October 2004 - Peter Lewis, Chairperson of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (Victoria), has called for Museum Victoria's Board and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in Victoria, The Hon Gavin Jennings, to immediately move to find a just resolution to the dispute over the two bark etchings and emu figure. The Dja Dja Wurrung community is seeking to prevent these cultural objects being returned to the British Museum. |
| Impaled
Redfern teen 'rammed' 24 September 2004 - A Redfern police Aboriginal liaison officer today accused police of covering up the cause of a wild riot and said officers had rammed teenager "TJ" Hickey before his impaling death. |
| International
protection for indigenous peoples' human rights long overdue 10 September 2004 - Amnesty International News - The end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People is now less than four months away. The Working Group on the Draft United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples meets in its 10th session in Geneva next week (13-24 September), but the prospect of achieving one of the decade's principle goals -- the adoption of an international declaration for the protection and promotion of indigenous peoples' human rights -- seems increasingly at risk |
| Capital idea
for Aboriginal business 10 September 2004 - Kevin Fong laughs at the memory of an older brother persuading him to do a chore. "I can remember him saying to me, 'Jeez, you've got wonderful fingers. I'll teach you how to play the guitar'." |
| International
pressure on Indigenous issues sought 9 September 2004 - Indigenous identity Lowitja O'Donoghue has appealed to the international community to keep up the pressure on human rights issues affecting Australia's Indigenous population. |
Stolen remains coming home |
| Indigenous
Affairs Policy is Central to Australia's Future 6 September 2004 - The Australian Democrats have called for Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation to be put back on the Federal policy agenda at the Democrat's policy and candidate launch at the Old Telegraph Station in Alice Springs today. Democrats Leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett, said the Democrats were the first political party to formally apologise to the stolen generations and will continue to push whoever forms Government after October 9 to issue a formal apology. |
Appeal: Help Australian Aborigines
keep their etchings |
Why I've fallen out of love with Australia |
Aboriginals urged to
enrol to vote |
Warrior Gillesppie Deserves Some
Luck |
| Local communities
in Australia relive history and organise online 3 September 2004 - Internet & ICTs for Social Justice and Development News - Rowville-Lysterfield History Project (RLHP) is an archive of photos and stories told by the eldest members of the Rowville-Lysterfield community (Victoria, Australia) of their memories of the oldest people they remember when they were children. It is a rich telling of anecdotal histories that would otherwise be lost; of Aboriginal mounted police, the Bunerong and the Wawoorung clans of the Kulin nation, the little known prisoner of war camp, the stories of both women and men, many who would live their lives over again. |
| Killer Faces
Tribal Justice 3 September 2004 - Daily Record (UK) - An Aboriginal woman convicted of stabbing her cheating lover to death has walked free because she faces severe punishment by her tribe. • Woman sentenced to tribal justice, not jail |
Ranger mine under threat |
Man leapt to death after police chase |
| TV show digs
up old wounds 30 August 2004 - When SBS called for indigenous families to take part in a new reality-style television show where people live off the land as if it was the 1800s, the response was lacklustre. The show's indigenous consultant and associate producer Darrin Ballingary told The Australian there was initial concern among the Aboriginal community about appearing on a show that focused on a tragic time for indigenous people. • Family Wanted For Australia's First 'Living History' Series |
| Grappling On Stage
With the Issue of Land Rights 29 August 2004 - The Nation (Kenya) - Whether in Kenya or in Australia, the issue of land continues to be a political, social and economic hot potato. This was made perfectly clear during the staged readings, from August 20 to August 24, in Nairobi, of the play, Yanagai! Yanagai! by Australian playwright Andrea James. Coming at a time when the issue of land ownership is at the top of the news agenda, the readings could not have been more topical had they tried. |
Democrats seek Ridgeway backing |
| From the Outback
to Bagshot in one leap 29 August 2004 - The Observer (UK) - The deep, vibrating drone of the didgeridoo ebbs and flows as the Smudging Ceremony, an ancient Aboriginal ritual to mark special occasions, begins. I inhale the smoke from burning herbs and mosses handpicked by Aborigines and concentrate hard on trying not to laugh. |
| FECCA, ATSIC Push
For Strong Campaign Policy 29 August 2004 - Australia's ethnic and Indigenous communities say both parties need to do more to promote harmony and reduce discrimination during an election campaign. |
| Zeitgeist 28 August 2004 - Scotsman - When the first white settlers arrived in the countries we now call Australia and the United States, preserving the art and culture of indigenous peoples wasn’t very high up on their list of priorities. After all, there were claims to stake, wars to fight and fortunes to be made. But now, finally, there is evidence that the white men who currently rule these two nations are starting to think about the creative output of the people who lived there before them. |
| Australia's perilous
conservative path 27 August 2004 - International Herald Tribune - MELBOURNE: Amid all the talk about free trade agreements, the cultural imperialism of Hollywood or the wonders of the Internet, the untold story of globalization has been the globalization of conservatism. Since the mid-1970s, conservatives around the globe have become keen students of U.S.-$ style attack politics - and none more so than Australian conservatives. |
| Australia considers
croc trophy hunting 27 August 2004 - BBC - The authorities want to introduce these crocodile safaris to boost tourism and to help impoverished Aboriginal communities. The Northern Territory's Environment Minister, Marion Scrymgour, told the BBC that the idea of allowing big-game hunters to shoot crocodiles on traditional tribal lands was a good one. |
| Indigenous
DNA testing in doubt 26 August 2004 - KERRY O'BRIEN: A landmark case in Western Australia has been testing, not only the reputation of one of the State's most prominent Aboriginal leaders, but also the use of DNA against Aboriginal suspects. |
| Melbourne
- ein gigantischer Ameisenhaufen 26 August 2004 - Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland) - Ameisen geben derzeit zu reden in Australien. Während in und um Melbourne eine zusammenhängende Kolonie entdeckt wurde, die sich über hundert Kilometer erstreckt, bereitet im tropischen Norden Australiens die Gelbe Spinnerameise der lokalen Aborigines-Bevölkerung und den Naturschützern Sorgen. |
| Redfern
inquest findings a sham 25 August 2004 - Family and friends were angry and in tears on August 14 after hearing the NSW coroner’s findings on the death of the 17-year-old son of Gail Hickey. Coroner John Abernathy described the February 14 fatality in Redfern as a “freak accident”, and exonerated the police who were pursuing him at the time. • Police cleared in Hickey death • Redfern, rioting and police - EDITORIAL • Stopping the next riot before it starts - EDITORIAL • The Block's still seething • Wrong path leads to fiery requiem |
| Tudo sobre
o país dos coalas no Festival da Austrália 25 August 2004 - Agência Estado (Brazil) - São Paulo - Quem está pensando em arrumar as malas para conhecer a Austrália ou simplesmente gosta de saber mais sobre outras culturas tem um encontro marcado neste sábado e domingo no Hotel Renaissance, em São Paulo. É lá o palco do Australia Festival, evento que vai divulgar os atrativos do país dos cangurus e coalas em termos de turismo, cursos e viagens de negócios, sem falar do surfe, da música aborígine e dos vinhos, já que a Austrália é o quinto maior produtor da bebida no mundo. |
|
Australia’s medical schools
launch Indigenous health curriculum |
| A Painful Life
Sentence: Hundreds of Thousands Abused as Children in Care 24 August 2004 - With the third of three major inquiries into institutionalised children due to report on Monday 30 August, Australian Democrat Senator Andrew Murray, who initiated the latest Senate Community Affairs References Committee Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, said today that the Committee has taken graphic and disturbing evidence that has revealed a litany of abuse, criminal assaults and general neglect that was widespread across government, charitable and religious institutions across all States. |
| Dja Dja Wurrung
Native Title Group appeal 23 August 2004 - ANTAR Victoria - Gary Murray, Secretary of the Dja Dja Wurrung Native Title Group has approached ANTaR to request we distribute as widely as possible information about their current dispute with the British Museum over ownership of two bark etchings and an emu figure and gather support. Please help! See below. |
| Viewfinder:
Aboriginal burial poles 23 August 2004 - Daily Telegraph (UK) - The aboriginal Yolngu people believe they are the tongue of the land: inseparable from the tropical swamps of north-eastern Australia that are their home. |
| Aborigines rediscover
their past in desert jail 22 August 2004 - Sunday Times (UK) - When Dale Walsh, a 23-year-old Aborigine, was jailed for theft he expected to be incarcerated in a grim urban prison run by whites. Instead he was sent to Australia’s first “outback jail”, an Aboriginal prison run by Aborigines, where the boundary is the desert and the inmates sleep in dormitories or under the stars. They also move about unrestrained by razor wire, searchlights, locks or electric fences. |
| Avoiding another
stolen generation 22 August 2004 - EDITORIAL - The words of Lowitja O'Donoghue, a Yankunytjatjara woman from South Australia's far north and a distinguished Australian, have found new echoes. "Nothing, absolutely nothing could ever compensate for taking me away from my mother, family, culture and belonging," she once said. The mere suggestion that Victoria is fostering another stolen generation of Aboriginal children is cause for genuine alarm. That a reprise of such a divisive social injustice is being played out in this state in the 21st century - albeit with good intentions - seems astounding. Yet even more disturbing is the reason: a spiralling crisis in indigenous child abuse and neglect. • Seeds of another stolen generation • Young deaths a backdrop to bitter power play • An inter-racial success story • Neglect of Aboriginal children shames us all |
| Sold on the dream
of a better deal 20 August 2004 - The Aboriginal art market is a paradox of profit and poverty. As the outgoing director of the National Gallery of Australia, Brian Kennedy, put it: "We cannot with clear conscience buy Aboriginal art without being concerned about the circumstances of the people who make it." Suddenly such conscience is manifest in several plans - complementary, competing, or controversial, depending on your view - initiated by dealers, auction houses, artists, and government. |
Rosella Namok UK Debut Show at The
October Gallery |
| Liberals represented
by Indigenous Australian in the Federal Seat of Fraser 20 August 2004 - ACT Liberals - The Canberra Liberals have announced their candidates to contest the upcoming Federal election. Adam Giles, a Gamillaroi man from NSW will contest the Federal seat of Fraser. Adam, aged 31, grew up in the Blue Mountains in NSW. His Indigenous heritage originates from the Pillaga scrub in North Western NSW. |
| 'Sorry Books'
registered as historic documents 19 August 2004 - UNESCO - A collection of 461 Sorry Books recording the thoughts of thousands of Australians on the unfolding history of the Stolen Generations has been formally recognized as having powerful historical and social significance. The books are among nine significant documentary heritage items recently inscribed on the Australian Memory of the World Register – part of UNESCO’s Programme to protect and promote documentary material- that records or reflects significant milestones and events in Australia’s history. |
No resolution of Aboriginal ownership |
| Third fire bomb
attack at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy Canberra 17 August 2004 - Aboriginal Tent Embassy - Monday night, at 9pm the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, on the lawns opposite Old Parliament House was a boom and a blast with the third firebomb attack in just over 12 months. "This is an attack within the Parliamentary precinct, if any other embassy was firebombed there would be serious repercussions. If the American Embassy was firebombed there would be a state of emergency, but the Aboriginal Embassy barely gets a mention." • In defence of the tent embassy |
| The Silent Victory For Aboriginal Sovereignty 13 August 2004 - On Friday 6th August, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Victoria Park staged a historical breakthrough by winning the support of the Sydney City Council. Aunt Isobel Coe and Mayor Clover Moore agreed to workout a plan to push the agenda of Aboriginal Sovereignty ahead on State and Federal levels. • Tent Embassy Resolved Peacefully - Clover Moore, Sydney Lord Mayor • Sydney City Council recognises tent embassy • Sydney mayor blames 'hysterical' media for racist phone calls • Tent Embassy evicted • News Ltd on Tent Embassy, image choice as racist inspired villification • Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Sydney |
| French Dreaming as artists head to Paris 12 August 2004 - It's a sort of Sistine Dreaming: Australian indigenous artists will spend next year painting the ceilings of a new museum in Paris, the French embassy has confirmed. Two indigenous curators - Brenda Croft, of the National Gallery of Australia, and Hetti Perkins, from the Art Gallery of NSW - have been working on the project for more than a year, following an approach by the French Government. |
| Floundering force 12 August 2004 - The riot helmets fell off, the bulletproof vests were too long or too short and the lines of communication simply fell apart. Police were totally unprepared for the Redfern riot and even "under-appreciated the seriousness" of it as the streets were burning, a damning internal report reveals. |
| Call for autonomy for Aboriginal community 9 August 2004 - A prominent Northern Territory indigenous leader says ATSIC must be replaced by Aboriginal autonomy. The chair of the Northern Land Council Galarrwuy Yunupingu has addressed a forum on the future of indigenous affairs at the Garma festival in north east Arnhem Land. Mr Yunupingu says he is sick and tired of governments using indigenous Australia as a political football. He says Aborigines should be left to shape their own policies and future. • Mine stand comes full circle • 'Black Prince' Yunupingu to leave politics • Survival in song and dance • Garma Opening • National Indigenous Recording Project Launch |
| Aborigines intimidated and falsely accused
of cruelty 8 August 2004 - The RSPCA (Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) has a bad name in Queensland. Many of the staff are genuine people, but some of the heirarchy have let their power go to their head and turned into little 'Hitlers'. Bruce Little of the Wakka Wakka Tribe/People has been accused of killing a dugong (sea cow is another name) cruelly. • RSPCA chief inspector steals Aborigine's property as supposed 'evidence' of 'alleged' cruelty to a dugong - SHAME • RSPCA probes dugong cruelty • Dugong eating cruelty investigation continues |
| Aboriginal Elders to Speak in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki 6 August 2004 - Uncle Speedy McGinness, Kungarakan/Gurindji elder (Northern Territory) and Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, Arabunna Elder (South Australia) have begun a week long speaking tour and cultural exchange in Japan. The visit coincides with the 59th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and both elders will be addressing the impacts of the nuclear industry in Australia and calling for a united effort to create a nuclear free future worldwide. |
| Germaine Greer tells half the story: Australian
society is British too 5 August 2004 - Greer and I are from different generations and our trajectories seem like odd reflections of each other. She grew up in an Australia that sold her the myth that we were simply British and nothing else, then went to live in the UK and discovered that she was actually nowhere near as British as she had imagined. She is evidently marked by that experience. |
| A colonial hangover 5 August 2004 - If there were any prizes for good, honourable white guys in the emotional, guilt-ridden debate about the return of Aboriginal remains, then the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University would have a fair claim to a podium position. The museum, home to one of the top six anthropological collections in the world, was among the first to hand back material — five skulls and a penis in mid-1990 — to Australia. It later attempted to return an Aboriginal woman collected by D. J Fitzgibbon and Dr Guy L'Estrange 160 kilometres south of Cooktown in 1914. Attempted? |
| Indigenous Knowledge Recognised 4 August 2004 - An international conference titled “Indigenous Knowledge and Bioprospecting”, held from 21-24 April at Macquarie University in Sydney, attracted more than 150 participants from around the world. Sponsored jointly by the Association for Baha’I Studies and the University’s Centre for Environmental Law and Department of Indigenous Studies, along with five other university departments and centres, the conference was called to mark the close of the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Peoples and to contribute towards social and economic development and the protection of the environment. |
| Elders celebrate as their memories
go online 4 August 2004 - Children would light bits of rubber in empty jam tins found in rubbish tips to use in the darkness during a curfew adults imposed on the Aboriginal mission station where Uncle Sandy Atkinson was raised. He can laugh now recalling his pain and outrage when an elder among the many sharing responsibility for both discipline and care of children at Cummeragunja, on the Murray River (or Dunghala), took his "pin light" lamp with wire handle and beat him. |
| Call to monitor Redfern violence 3 August 2004 - An inquiry into February's Redfern riot has recommended violence against police in the area be strictly recorded to help determine police numbers and a minimum experience requirement for officers stationed there. It also says a controversial needle and syringe van should be moved out of the Block, and calls for stronger government commitment to closer consultation with community leaders over the area's redevelopment. • Second Redfern Riot Possible |
| Repay the stolen wages! 2 August 2004 -The July 17 Courier Mail exposed the staggering depth of the state Labor government’s handouts of taxpayers’ money to some of Australia’s largest corporations conducting business in Queensland. A total of $21.5 million was handed out to 42 companies in “investment and incentive” grants last financial year. |
| Retrieving a stolen legacy 2 August 2004 - EDITORIAL - The Aborigines who want to keep bark etchings in Australia have a strong moral case. The senior curator of anthropology at the South Australian Museum, Philip Jones, spent a portion of 2001 identifying Aboriginal artefacts stored in the basements of European museums. He estimated about 40,000 artefacts were held overseas and that they comprised earlier artefacts than those held in Australian collections. He has written: "For the most part, objects in our museums were gathered after the 1880s. By that time the Aboriginal populations of the Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide areas had diminished by as much as 90 per cent. Their material culture traditions were effectively ended. Today much of the fragile evidence for those traditions exists in European museums." |
| Dozens arrested during police swoop on the
Block's drug-dealing houses 31 July 2004 - More than 200 police descended on the Block at Redfern yesterday, hauling out heroin dealers in raids on established drug houses which would be "bricked up". The action was followed by tough talk. Redfern's police commander, Superintendent Dennis Smith, said the raids could mark the beginning of the end of organised dealing on the Block. |
| Don't return Aboriginal 'stolen goods': lobby
group 31 July 2004 - Museum Victoria came under increased pressure yesterday when prominent lobby group Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation demanded that three Aboriginal artefacts on loan from British institutions be allowed to stay in Australia. The chairman of the group, Peter Lewis, said the items were stolen goods and it was important they remained in Australia. • Taking aim at hunter-gatherer England • Museum and Aborigines to meet in stand-off over heritage items • A Victorian Treasure Overseas: The recent rediscovery of a rare South-Eastern Australian bark drawing in London's Kew Gardens leads to an investigation • Joint Statement issued by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the British Museum |
| Minding the language: students give voice
to endangered words 30 July 2004 - It's little lunch at Darlington Public School, and between mouthfuls of bread and peanut butter Mikaela Welsh is trying out her newly acquired skills in the Wiradjuri language. "Nyan," she says, pointing to her shy, sticky grin. "Nyan - that's mouth." • Aboriginal languages for curriculum |
| The Young Man From Kamilaroi 28 July 2004 - On St. Valentines Day, 14 February 2004, the Young Man from Kamilaroi, the 17 year old son of Gail Hickey became impaled upon a metal fence at the back of 1 Philip Street, Waterloo. He died the next morning of his horrific injuries. There is embedded within a Coronial Inquest the sure evidence of Power. There is the Power of the Coroner and the Power of the Laws that provide that Power. There is, of course, also the Power of the Police in their control of what is presented to the Coroner - The Brief of Evidence. |
| Maori unite in new party 28 July 2004 - The task of organising a national Maori party was a daunting and enormous challenge. However, despite the differences and divisions within Maoridom, the process of getting everyone together was made easier by the months and months of daily anti-Maori sentiment and comments. This created a common threat that everyone could unite against, which encouraged rather than discouraged our merger as a political party. |
| How the goss is dimming the gloss 22 July 2004 - For a country so hungry for praise, it stings if tourists stop visiting because of the perception that Australia is racist. Trekking in Nepal, "up endless hills" the Lonely Planet travel publishing company's co-founder, Tony Wheeler, was walking behind a group of young British tourists. "A woman in the group was saying what a racist country Australia was and they all agreed," he says. |
| Liberation, word for word 22 July 2004 - Some called the institution a social experiment, others a training school. Playwright Alana Valentine believes it was “a house of horrors”, a place of consistent “mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse” for the girls who were forced to live there. The “house” is the Parramatta Girls Training School, which operated from the early 1900s to the late 1970s, and is now the subject of a new play by Valentine. Like her last play Run, Rabbit, Run, the work is “verbatim theatre” – a drama based on interviews with those involved. |
| Doubts over tour boomerang's origin 21 July 2004 - Serious doubts have been cast over whether a boomerang which cost the National Museum $13,200 at a Sydney auction on Saturday belonged to famous Aboriginal cricketer Twopenny. • Museum defends boomerang buy • Historic boomerang sells for Aus$11,000 - Wisden Cricinfo • Bowler's boomerang could fetch a high return |
| War waged on black workers: Queensland Government
reconciles ... its bank balance 21 July 2004 - The Queensland Beattie government knew it owed Aboriginal workers more than $70 million in under-award wage reparations but kept the figure secret and instead offered to repay just $25.4 million which it branded a step towards reconciliation, a leaked cabinet document has revealed. The 1999 cabinet submission, obtained by NIT, also reveals the government's real motives in engaging a prominent Aboriginal organisation to put the government's offer to Indigenous Queenslanders - it was to ensure widespread publicity for the government's offer and, in the process, make it impossible for future under-award wage claims to succeed in court. |
| Task force hoping for quick payment of Aboriginal
wages 20 July 2004 - The New South Wales Government task force working on repayment of wages and payments withheld from Aboriginal workers and state wards says it hopes for quick payouts of monies due. • Aborigines to seek wage justice • Indigenous community may be owed millions |
| The root cause of TJ Hickey's death 17 July 2004 - Editorial, The Sydney Morning Herald - The State Coroner, John Abernethy, has delayed his verdict on the Hickey death, sensibly acknowledging that "rushed justice is no justice". The evidence, however, has so far persuaded his counsel, Elizabeth Fullerton, SC, that police did not contribute directly or indirectly to TJ's death. Who or what, then, was responsible? |
| TJ's mother urges police charges 17 July 2004 - Two officers who "chased" Thomas "TJ" Hickey should be charged under the Police Service Act with giving untrue statements and wrongfully pursuing the boy, counsel for TJ's mother has urged the NSW State Coroner. • More police plan for Redfern • Don't let me die: TJ's desperate plea • No adviser for TJ's mother • Conflicting police reports emerge at Hickey inquest |
| Reconciliation victories to be found: Ridgeway 10 July 2004 - Aden Ridgeway accused the Howard Government yesterday of a "morally indecent act" in writing reconciliation out of its objectives, but took pleasure from victories for reconciliation won across the nation, such as in the old theatre and cinema at Bowraville. Senator Ridgeway was named yesterday as the National Aboriginal Islander Day Observance Committee person of the year. |
| Australia condemned for `racist tendencies' 10 July 2004 - The World Council of Churches has condemned Australia as a nation it says has "racist tendencies". General Secretary of the council Dr Samuel Kobia made the comment in Adelaide yesterday following his visit to the Baxter Detention Centre and Aboriginal communities near Port Augusta. |
| Lois adds jazz to her exotic mix 10 July 2004 - Nedlands blues singer Lois Olney wants to combine one of the world's rarest languages with one of its best known musical styles - setting lyrics in Yindjibarndi to jazz. It's a project with added challenges. Though Yindjibarndi is her traditional language, it's not her first. • George Negus Tonight: Lois Olney • Refugees in Australia • My name is Lois Olney |
| Officer mistook TJ's body for clothing 6 July 2004 - One of the first police officers to see teenager Thomas "TJ" Hickey impaled on a fence in Redfern said he originally thought the slumped body was hung clothing. Constable Alan Rimell told the inquest into the 17-year-old's death that when he first saw TJ's body slumped over the fence "like a rag doll", he thought it was a jacket and a backpack. • TJ not chased, followed, court told • Redfern rioters to elude charges |
| Police admit: we were following TJ 6 July 2004 - For five months police have insisted they had nothing to do with the horrific death of Aboriginal teenager Thomas "TJ" Hickey. Yesterday they admitted officers in a caged truck had been "following him" moments before the 17-year-old lost control of his bicycle and became impaled on a fence on February 14. • Coroner's inquest into death of TJ Hickey • TJ truth surrounded by police |
| Facing the lure of white society 5 July 2004 - Young indigenous people must not give in to the attractions of status in mainstream Australia, writes Patrick Dodson |
| A different flame for Athens 5 July 2004 - A major exhibition of Australian indigenous art, which opened in Athens last week, will give visitors to the summer Olympics a confronting insight into Aboriginal art, culture and history. |
| Past shrouded in polemics 5 July 2004 - During the row that followed last year's publication of my book The History Wars and Robert Manne's Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, many people suggested that I must be pleased that history was so much in the news. The media controversy certainly helped sales, but I am not sure that it assisted informed discussion of the issues. |
| Museum to consign 'bias' to history 3 July 2004 - The new director of the National Museum of Australia will overhaul two contentious galleries, scrap blockbuster exhibitions in favour of shows that can tour shire halls, and create a million- dollar acquisitions fund. |
| Landmark Victory 30 June 2004 - A small, dedicated group of Aboriginal people fighting to have their traditional ownership of land around Port Augusta recognised have scored an unlikely victory, helping defeat the federal government's plans to build a nuclear waste facility near Arcoona station. |
| Black health and wealth still behind 24 June 2004 - More aborigines are working, studying and shrugging off welfare dependency than ever before, but their health has seen no improvement over the past decade. |
| Art unites a land divided 23 June 2004 - Think of an Aboriginal artwork, and chances are you are picturing a dot painting of an outback tribal scene, rendered in traditional ochres. But indigenous artist Julie Gough has used cushions covered in the Australian flag, garden tools and a pogo stick to express her anger at exploitation of her ancestors' land. |
| Greer calls for a 'black republic' 20 June 2004 - Expatriate academic Germaine Greer has mounted a campaign in Britain for Australia to become an "Aboriginal republic". Writing a lengthy piece in yesterday's Guardian newspaper, the British resident argued that Australia needed to break links with the UK. • Greer given enough rope |
| Qld Govt in 'stolen wages' talks 18 June 2004 - A Queensland "stolen wages" advocacy group has met state Indigenous Affairs Minister Liddy Clark. Last weekend, state Labor Party members unanimously passed a resolution to reconsider compensation for wages stolen from Indigenous workers. |
| Legal action taken to stop Indigenous art
leaving Australia 18 June 2004 - Indigenous groups in Victoria's north-west say they have taken legal action to prevent three pieces of Aboriginal bark art being returned to Britain. |
| Two worlds, one vision 17 June 2004 - David Unaipon (1872-1967) was a Ngarrindjeri man who spoke Latin and Greek and endorsed assimilation, yet insisted Aboriginal culture was as rich and complex as any other ancient culture. Unaipon was a scientist, a dandy, an historian, an inventor and a Christian. He was, according to choreographer Frances Rings, an “in-between”, a man “brave enough to walk in a land that had no track”. • Breathless and bold in vibrant creativity |
| Aborigines rally over ATSIC bill 15 June 2004 - Indigenous Australians were on Tuesday promised a say in a parliamentary inquiry set to be convened by the Senate on ATSIC's future. • ATSIC set for reprieve pending Senate inquiry • An Opportunity to Tell the Whole Story - Media Statement by ATSIC |
| Aboriginal wage claims need evidence 15 June 2004 - Aborigines seeking to claim back wages and payments stolen or lost by the NSW government could miss out if they don't have documentary evidence. This is despite the government having lost or destroyed their records. |
| Howard's memory of burning beds June 14 2004 - Wondering why the Prime Minister said that his favourite Midnight Oil song was 'Beds are Burning' (from 'Diesel & Dust')? Webdiarist Mark Hayes in Brisbane does. |
| Indigenous communities criticise 'grog bans'
as racist 12 June 2004 - Several remote Aboriginal communities on Cape York are banding together to challenge the Queensland government's alcohol management plan - claiming that the so called "grog bans" are racist. At least nine communities say they plan to use international human rights laws - as well as the federal racial discrimination act - as part of their case. |
| Historic Yorta Yorta deal signed 11 June 2004 -The Victorian Government has signed a historic agreement with the Yorta Yorta people that formally acknowledges land management rights for indigenous people. • Historic accord on land control |
| Elders paving the way to reconciliation
at Myall Creek 11 June 2004 - Reconciliation will be the main objective of the annual memorial service for those who died in the Myall Creek massacre. |
| Stolen Generations case may go before UN 7 June 2004 - Legal avenues are being explored to take the case of the Stolen Generations to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. |
| An ancient society emerges 5 June 2004 - When the fury of the 2003 bushfires was finally spent, much was lost - one human life, thousands of forest animals, 1.1 million blackened hectares and 41 houses. It was a grim toll. But something has emerged from the ashes that is cause for celebration: one of Australia's most significant archaeological discoveries of recent times. |
| Letty Scott fights for the truth 4 June 2004 - On June 18, the Northern Territory Supreme Court will hear an appeal to re-open the coronial inquest into the death in custody of Douglas Bruce Scott. The case has been lodged by his widow Letty Scott, who has been fighting for nearly two decades for the truth about her husband's death. • Black death in custody - The real story |
| New bureau helps reunite the stolen generations 4 June 2004 - Cheers to a radio institution. Imagine reaching your 70s and finding out the man you called 'dad' was not your real father. That happens to the many Aboriginal people who are currently tracing their family history. Using old official documents, the Family Information Records Bureau is piecing together lost details about people's lives. Some have discovered siblings they never knew they had. But as Jonathan Beal discovered, the revelations are not always pleasant. |
| Support for reconciliation 2 June 2004 - Community leaders and representatives from more than a dozen faiths came together in support of indigenous Australians at a National Reconciliation Week event in Brisbane yesterday. Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Baha'i were among those at the Multi-Faith Centre at the Griffith University's Nathan campus to lend their spiritual "witness" to reconciliation. |
| First Aboriginal Art Museum in Europe 31 May 2004 - The Aboriginal Art Museum is the first and so far only museum specifically for Aboriginal art in Europe, and funnily enough it is situated in a small town – Utrecht – in a small northern country – The Netherlands. This story began in 1994 – with a Dutch import company for Aboriginal art, which bought Aboriginal art directly at the many art centres in the desert and in Arnhem Land. However conscience and culture started doing battle with profit, because the owners of the company kept discovering artworks they felt should not be sold. |
| Aborigines win land recognition 30 May 2004 - Victoria's Aborigines will be recognised as the original custodians of the land in constitutional amendments to be introduced by the State Government. Premier Steve Bracks, announcing the plan at the ALP state conference in Melbo |
| Travelling a road paved with tears 28 May 2004 - Australia is a shared land. Aborigines accept this. It's time governments did too, says Patrick Dodson. Almost in a line that intersects the country of the Gooniyandi and the Walmatjarri is the ribbon of Highway 1 known in that part of Australia as the Great Northern Highway. On that road travelled thousands of the stolen Aboriginal children of the Kimberley - from their homes in the East Kimberley to the missions at Forrest River, Sunday Island, Beagle Bay and, in some sad instances, all the way to Moore River. We were assured it was "for their own good". But it was their road of tears. For many the journey back down that highway to their families and their birthright was never to eventuate. |
| Indigenous art 'better understood in Europe' 28 May 2004 - The Frenchman's interest in art started in childhood, when he was fascinated by his father's collection of tribal artefacts. After coming across an exhibition of Aboriginal art in Paris, he was hooked. Despallieres was shocked by the general lack of understanding in Australia of Aboriginal art and culture. |
| Beyond axing ATSIC, there is no plan 28 May 2004 - The Federal Government has introduced its legislation to scrap Australia's main indigenous organisation with no immediate plans to appoint a replacement. This is amid boycott calls from Aboriginal leaders and Opposition claims that the changeover is a shambles. |
| Djerrkura educated Howard 27 May 2004 - One event more than any other crystalised the relationship between Djerrkura and John Howard. It was February 1998 and Djerrkura had invited Mr Howard to his traditional country at Yirrkala in Arnhem Land in what many believed was a vain attempt to engage with a Prime Minister who was bent on winding back an imaginary pendulum he said had swung too far towards Aboriginal rights. • Reconciliation pioneer Djerrkura dead at 54 • Towering figure in Australian reconciliation |
| Aboriginal health needs $300m: AMA 26 May 2004 - The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has used the annual Sorry Day to renew its call for increased indigenous funding. The AMA is calling for an injection of an extra $300 million into Aboriginal health, with the government having committed just $10 million a year over four years in this year's budget. |
| Song fest star raves 25 May 2004 - What does Bulgarian and Aboriginal music have in common? Edwina Harrison. It was with Bulgarian and Aboriginal songs that Ms Harrison won first prize in the Third International Youth Festival Competition Folklore Without Borders. |
| Police defend Redfern riot strategies 25 May 2004 - To police matters in NSW now, and in Sydney, the officer in charge of the inner city suburb of Redfern has defended his handling of the nine hour riot there in February. At a Parliamentary inquiry today, Superintendent Dennis Smith, said that his officers had no intelligence to indicate the riot would take place, and that when it did take hold they tried several strategies to end it, including negotiation. |
| Black Voice catches ear of world 23 May 2004 - The initiative by Aboriginal writer, director and musician Richard Frankland to form a political party for indigenous Australians has attracted international attention. |
| Rock painting one in a million 22 May 2004 - Rover Thomas's only known painting of Uluru is expected to set a new auction record for Aboriginal art. "It's a painting of Australia's most iconic landmark by one of our greatest painters of the 20th century," Sotheby's Aboriginal art department head Tim Klingender said yesterday. |
| UN told government backward on indigenous issues 21 May 2004 - A senior Aboriginal leader has used a United Nations meeting in New York to condemn the policies of the federal government. |
| Call to prosecute uranium miner 20 May 2004 - Mining giant Energy Resources of Australia should be prosecuted after drinking water at its controversial Ranger mine became contaminated with uranium, a Northern Territory Government report has found. • Inquiry into leak at uranium mine finds more problems: minister |
| Vanstone is dismantling the right to a fair
trial for Aboriginal people 20 May 2004 - For an increasing number of Australians, legal aid is a precondition to their ability to use the justice system. This is a fact compounded for Aboriginal Australians by the recent decision of the federal government to outsource Aboriginal Legal Aid for competitive tender. Having worked as a criminal lawyer for both Australian Legal Aid and Aboriginal Legal Aid, I feel the need to comment on the planned tender and the encroachment that it entails upon Indigenous rights in this country. • Indigenous legal service tender lacks support |
| How Indigenous women can take a greater leadership
role 20 May 2004 - It’s impossible to write about being Indigenous, being a woman and the challenges of leadership without reflecting on my own feelings and experiences, the things that guide and inspire me, and the tough aspects of playing all these roles at the same time. |
| The Senate must act to stop the erosion of
Indigenous representation 18 May 2004 - From the moment the ATSIC Review was announced and its subsequent report released, the key test always was and remains whether and how Indigenous people¹s circumstances, rights and representation were to be improved and advanced. The government has failed that threshold test. |
| 'Passing race' never so valued as now 18 May 2004 - Unnamed and virtually unknown, the subjects face the camera with fixed poses, wooden and unmoving, surrounded by objects such as spears, nets, boomerangs and a dead kangaroo. The studio setting only heightens a sense of the bizarre: wilting gum leaves accompany the subjects in front of a universal, painted background. Australian Aborigines, their image taken by the German-born photographer John Lindt in Grafton in the 1870s, are now being offered for sale again by Bonhams in London. • Record price paid for slice of history |
| Wit and wisdom from the concrete Dreamtime 17 May 2004 - Dr Anita Heiss is quick, clever, witty. Last year, on a lecture tour in America, she was asked by an anthropology student what was the biggest problem now facing indigenous women in Australia. "Finding a decent man," she replied |
| Redfern, 90 days after the eruption 16 May 2004 - On a hot Sunday night three months ago, the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern erupted in fury for nine long hours. It wasn't the first time and it probably won't be the last. But the raw intensity of the February 15 riot, its graphic portrayal in the media and its synonymity with the death of 17-year-old Thomas "TJ" Hickey guaranteed it would not be swept under the carpet. • Carr blamed for failing Redfern youth on drugs • Police ill-equipped to handle Redfern riot • Police get riot blame • More riots in Redfern, inquiry told • Police defend Redfern riot strategies |
| Our paternalistic model of government 14 May 2004 - Gatjil Djerrkura: Let me be clear. The Prime Minister has long refused to accept the fundamental difference of Aboriginal people in our community. He was never sympathetic to the principles on which ATSIC was based and founded. He has always rejected any suggestion of indigenous autonomy and self-determination. Even when the Prime Minister took up my invitation to visit Arnhem Land in 1998, he seemed incapable of understanding indigenous aspirations. |
| Australian foreign policy should not be
based on the Anglosphere concept 14 May 2004 - The Anglosphere argument is put forward by a number of prominent people, including Conrad Black, the Canadian-born peer and former media magnate; Robert Conquest, the distinguished Anglo-American historian; and James Bennett, an internet entrepreneur. It goes something like this: there is a group of countries which have so much in common – language, culture and values, democratic traditions, political and legal institutions, even a developed spirit of entrepreneurialism – that they should form some sort of closer association. |
| Wanganeen 'honoured' at AFL life membership 12 May 2004 - Gavin Wanganeen says he is ‘very honoured’ to be receiving AFL life membership for playing his 300th senior match ... Of being the first Aboriginal player to receive automatic life membership of the AFL, Wanganeen said: “It makes me feel very proud. Mum will be very happy and (so will) my clan over on the West Coast (of SA). I suppose I’m representing them as well, and they’ll be very proud of it also.” • Wanganeen collects another honour |
| SA files court appeal against nuclear
waste dump 11 May 2004 - The South Australian Government is appealing the Commonwealth government's compulsory purchase of land for the low level radioactive waste repository, arguing it used urgency provisions inappropriately. • Report on N-dump scathing |
| A healing from the past, for the future 10 May 2004 - Tom Murray and Allan Collins have a remarkable story, and they'd prefer to let someone else tell it. It's about a blackfella called Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda from north-east Arnhem Land. In 1933 this Yolngu tribal leader came across a policeman who had broken Aboriginal law by trespassing on Yolngu land. He had also chained up Dhakiyarr's wife. In accordance with black law, Dhakiyarr speared the policeman, Constable Albert McColl, through the leg. McColl died. • Dhakiyarr vs the King Study Guide (PDF 240kb) |
| Celebration of an artist who took on the world 10 May 2004 - The man standing by the broken-down car in the red heat of the Western Desert was pleased to see his rescuers. "He'd been stuck there for three days," remembers Dr Vivien Johnson. "He needed to get a new gearbox." The man introduced himself - "I'm Clifford Possum" - and seemed surprised Johnson knew who he was. "This was back in 1980. Clifford was already the leading figure in the Papunya Tula movement. We gave him a ride into Alice." Not that the artist had been in danger. "He was quite comfortable being by the side of the road for three days. He'd been brought up in the bush. He referred to it as 'my supermarket'." |
| Finding home amid the stolen memories 8 May 2004 - Larissa Behrendt greets me at her office in the University of Technology, Sydney, carrying a bundle of legal documents. There's no room on the desk and she sighs at the stacks of papers. Behrendt, 35, appears both confident (especially when discussing complex legal arguments) and slightly guarded. She is nervous, she says, about how her debut novel, Home, winner of the 2002 David Unaipon award, will be received. |
| Clan leaders look for a way forward 8 May 2004 - Leon Melpi says alcohol, drugs, gang fighting and a lack of basic services left the clan leaders of Wadeye fearing their children had no future. "One day we just decided enough was enough," says Melpi, a leader of one of 16 clans living in the town, at the edge of mangroves 350 kilometres south-east of Darwin. "We dug a hole and buried all the newspapers with the bad headlines about us," he says. "We decided we had no option but to bury the past and act to improve our lives." |
| Reconciliation at the crossroads 8 May 2004 - History of sorts will be made later this year when the performance pay of several of the nation's most senior public servants will be decided, at least in part, on what they have done to reduce the suffering of Aboriginal Australia. It will be a difficult exercise, not least because, on a range of indicators, indigenous disadvantage has actually increased since John Howard decided to focus on practical reconciliation. The numbers of underweight babies and overweight adults have increased, while the income, employment, incarceration and life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has widened. But the pay plan will be a symbol of how serious the Government and those it employs to implement policy are about improving outcomes. |
Aborigines seek lost wages worth $350m |
| Child caged for 500km drive to jail 4 May 2004 - An 11-year old Aboriginal boy was arrested, held in custody and transported 500km in a police utility cage. His crime? The boy and several of his friends had constantly clashed with police in Normanton for petrol sniffing and stealing. Aboriginal leaders and legal representatives are outraged at his treatment and allege police ignored all recommendations of the Black Deaths in Custody Royal Commission. • Mother told son’s 500km ride in cage ‘comfortable’ |
Yorta Yorta win historic deal |
| UN to hear Aboriginal plight 28 April 2004 - Aboriginal health workers will tell the world just how bad indigenous health services are in Australia at a meeting with the United Nations next month. The chairman of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) Tony McCartney said the group would raise its concerns about indigenous health during a major presentation to a UN sub-committee in May. |
| March a show of unity 28 April 2004 - The Australian and Aboriginal flags marched side by side for the first time in the Anzac march held last Sunday in Lightning Ridge. • Anzac Day march begins in Darwin - Coming in from many remote communities are the Indigenous soldiers who serve with the Northern Territory's reconnaissance and surveillance unit NORFORCE. • The Forgotten - To celebrate ANZAC day and pay tribute to the Indigenous men & women that have proudly served this nation ABC's Message Stick presented a twenty six minute documentary: The FORGOTTEN. |
| Life of Aborigines second worst on earth 28 April 2004 - The quality of life of Australia's Aborigines is the second worst on the planet, according to a Canadian study of 100 countries. Only China performed worse, according to a United Nations index that measures human development. |
| Indigenous affairs demands action, not more
words 26 April 2004 - Yes, just words, you might say. But given his high, and precarious, position, Deane was really doing something. He was shaping attitudes, the biggest hurdle to reconciliation. His is one arm of the battle: leadership. Brave speeches like his, and, to be fair, Keating's Redfern address, mobilise thought and create the climate. But we need the other arm - action. |
| A quest for national decency 24 April 2004 - Sir William Deane: We have reached a sort of blind alley in the search for national Aboriginal reconciliation and it is no longer enough to talk about walking onwards. Rather we must now start to work together to build new pathways and bridges. |
| The feather and the bone - a difference in
approach to Indigneous issues 22 April 2004 - Sometimes pictures do tell the story. On Monday this week, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin met in Ottawa with First Peoples and was presented with a ceremonial Eagle Feather. The next day, Mr Martin's Australian counterpart, John Howard, was photographed leaving a community centre in the small town of Colac when Aboriginal elder Moopor, wearing traditional possum skin and tribal makeup, pointed a bone about 2.5 centimetres long at the Prime Minister, placing a curse on him. |
| Aborigines get Jabiluka veto 22 April 2004 - Traditional Aboriginal owners signed off on a historic agreement ending their long struggle against the controversial Jabiluka uranium mine. The landmark deal gives the owners the right to veto the future development of the site in the heart of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. • Kakadu traditional owners strike deal to stop uranium mining |
| German proposes stolen generation film 21 April 2004 - German film director Jo Baier wants to make a movie about Australia's stolen generation. Baier, who is visiting Australia for the first time as part of the German Film Festival, would like to make a film about a young Aboriginal girl fostered to German immigrants. |
| PM `cursed' in Colac 21 April 2004 - An Aboriginal woman pointed a bone at Prime Minister John Howard yesterday, cursing him on his visit to Colac. The curse, intended to "torment" the Prime Minister, was made as members of the Aboriginal community turned out to protest against the abolition of ATSIC. • Why we pointed the bone - Wathaurong tribal member Allan Browning was standing beside Moopor while she cast the spell that made headlines around Australia and even rated a mention on American TV station CNN. Curse on PM could backfire - Geoff Clark has been attacked by fellow Aborigines for using his cousin to point the bone at Prime Minister John Howard. In revealing the identity of "Moopor" as Bernadette Clark, Mr Clark's second cousin, they have questioned her right to carry out the sacred ceremony. |
| Hooded cop speaks out 19 April 2004 - A Police officer facing dismissal after being caught wearing a white hood while speeding past a speed camera says he's sorry he confessed to the prank. |
| Hooded cop speaks out 19 April 2004 - A Police officer facing dismissal after being caught wearing a white hood while speeding past a speed camera says he's sorry he confessed to the prank. |
| Mainstreaming still unworkable 17 April 2004 - EDITORIAL - Even with special focused services - such as Aboriginal medical services - designed to deal with some of the practical consequences of the gap in such consumption, net per capita assistance from government falls well below Australian averages, even the averages of comfortable middle- class areas such as, say, John Howard's own Sydney seat of Benelong. |
| Howard silences Aboriginal advocates 16 April 2004- The Federal Government has ended the policy of self-determination which for three decades has taken the voices of elected Aboriginal representatives to Canberra, with the Prime Minister, John Howard, announcing he will abolish the nation's peak indigenous body. • Biggest scandal of all ignored 16 April 2004 - Symbolism, scandals and ideology have brought Australia's great experiment in Aboriginal self-determination to an end. • Anger at ATSIC abolition 16 April 2004 - Indigenous leaders have reacted with dismay and anger at government plans to abolish ATSIC and end direct political representation for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. • PM jumps, ATSIC falls 18 April 2004 - By instinct a monoculturalist, John Howard has reluctantly got used to a multicultural Australia. But he has not come to understand or accept the importance of cultural identity to the country's indigenous people, which leads to their attachment to ideas of self-determination or self-management. • An indigenous voice stilled 19 April 2004 - Can Aborigines dare to dream of a better future for their children? Today I look at my eight-month-old daughter Nakaya - "bird song" in Gunditjmara - and I know that another sliver of hope has been removed from her future. • Letters to The Age 21 April 2004 - ATSIC and apartheid are poles apart - Self-determination has not failed - Making 'em white |
| Actor hopes to expose Australian racism 15 April 2004 - Actor Aaron Pedersen says racism is rife in Australia and he hopes to expose the problem internationally on a federal and state government sponsored trip to the United States. "I don't want to go around tiptoeing anymore." |
| Pearson condemns Howard's Indigenous plan 15 April 2004 - MAXINE McKEW: As the former head of the Cape York Land Council and a leading voice for reform in Indigenous affairs, Noel Pearson has in recent years been a strong critic of centralised bureaucratic control. |
| Cathy's life in new lane 15 April 2004 - Cathy Freeman is still searching for what comes next. It has been almost a year since she walked away from her sanctuary of the running track and threw herself into the great unknown. |
| Suffer The Children 14 April 2004 - Muriel Cadd couldn't believe it had happened again. As head of Victoria's only Aboriginal child protection agency, she was used to bad news. But when she got a telephone call last October alerting her that another two-year-old boy, Daniel Thomas, was missing, suspected murdered, she was devastated. Ten months earlier, she had taken a similar call when Mildura toddler Joedan Andrews vanished from a settlement just over the Victorian border in NSW. |
| Aboriginals' significant role in WWI revealed 13 April 2004 - The names of more than 400 Aboriginal soldiers who served in World War I have been uncovered -- and many were from Tasmania's Bass Strait islands. Canberra-based historian David Huggonson, who has spent 20 years researching the Aboriginal contribution to Australia's military campaigns, announced his findings yesterday. |
| Uranium drinkers say mine cut them loose 5 April 2004 - Australia's biggest uranium miner has gone into damage control 12 days after workers drank large quantities of water containing 400 times the legal limit of uranium following a leak at the Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park. Three of the men say they have been suffering from vomiting, diarrhoea and lethargy and were forced to pay their own way to leave the Northern Territory to seek medical treatment in their home state. |
| Institutional racism in Australian healthcare:
a plea for decency 5 April 2004 - The way forward that we propose is recognising and addressing institutional racism. This would provide a framework for improving Aboriginal health. We believe, however, that acceptance of the need to address such racism can only come about through building a more compassionate and decent society. • Institutional Racism in Australian healthcare and disparities in health care for Afro/Americans in the United States - The Health Report, ABC Radio |
| Athens to see Aboriginal art 3 April 2004 - An Aboriginal art collection would be shown in Athens to mark the 2004 Olympic Games, the NSW government said today. NSW Tourism Minister Sandra Nori said the exhibition - Our Place: Indigenous Australia Now - was the first indigenous Australian exhibition to be seen in Greece. |
| The art of saying sorry 3 April 2004 - When we were growing up, my generation knew nothing and cared less about Aboriginal culture. Indeed, those two words - Aboriginal and culture - seemed a contradiction in terms, a classic oxymoron. The view from the Melbourne suburbs? Aborigines were a dying people and a dead issue. |
| Putting black beauty up in lights 1 April 2004 - Politics permeate Brook Andrew's art but he is wary of being pigeonholed "Aboriginal", writes Ashley Crawford. Brook Andrew's latest exhibition is a sensuous grouping of large-format Cibachrome photographs, a number of which feature gorgeous nudes, both male and female. They are works that could appear in any space as technically adept and downright gorgeous images. But Andrew is slightly uncomfortable. |
| Rabbit-Proof Fence , Relational Ecologies and
the Commodification of Indigenous Experience April 2004 - When Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence (Miramax 2002) premiered in a remote East Pilbara schoolyard in Western Australia, on January 28, 2002, the Melbourne Sunday Age proclaimed that this was 'the night Hollywood came to Jigalong' (Quin 2002). '[F]or a moment... I was back there on Hollywood Boulevard,' Noyce recalled of the evening in which the mechanisms of a global industry and the specificities of a local community were brought together to deliberate effect |
| Indigenous health 'below third world standards' 30 March 2004 - Key health standards for indigenous Australians were below those of poor countries such as Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nepal, the Fred Hollows Foundation said today. The medical aid group said Aboriginal health standards were not improving and, in some areas, declining, despite years of national prosperity. |
| Labor would abolish ATSIC: Latham 30 March 2004 - Opposition leader Mark Latham said today a Labor government would abolish Australia's peak indigenous body ATSIC - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Mr Latham said the executive agency the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS) would also be abolished. • Apology to Aborigines back on political agenda 30 March 2004 - Federal Labor leader Mark Latham yesterday reignited the debate over Aboriginal reconciliation, saying he would expect an apology if his family were split up. • Labor's new ATSIC plan 30 March 2004 - MARK LATHAM, OPPOSITION LEADER: I'm here with Kerry O'Brien to announce that the Labor caucus this morning decided that a Labor Government will abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ATSIC, and the executive agency of ATSIS. • My 'sorry' story 30 March 2004 - Leaked copies of the draft speech showed Mr Latham had intended to tell the Labor faithful that Australia was "big enough to say sorry" to Aborigines, but the words were removed from the final version. |
| Slave descendents sue British insurance company 30 March, 2004 - In a case set to test the bounds of the legal definition of "pain and suffering", the American descendents of Africans forced into slavery have launched a legal action against the British insurance company, Lloyds of London. And here in Australia, indigenous groups are watching the case with interest. |
| Indigenous tour push 28 March 2004 - Darwin's rich archeological heritage is being documented as part of a nation-wide conservation and tourism project to develop Indigenous tourism in Australian cities. Hundreds of shell midden sites - including one 7m high - and examples of Aboriginal rock art and stone artefacts have been registered with NT Heritage Conservation as part of the project. |
| Ken Colbung 26 March 2004 - Ken was born at Moore River settlement in 1931. After the death of his mother, he was taken to Sister Kate’s Home for Children at the age of 6 years. Ken’s profile enabled him to lobby the prime minister in 1997 in London for the return of Yagan’s Head with the result that in September of that year Yagan, a Nyungar leader, returned to his homeland. |
| Native title over sea areas: court 24 March 2004 - The Federal Court has decided native title exists over some areas of the sea in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria. In a decision handed down yesterday it said it recognised that native title existed over areas of sea surrounding the Wellesley Islands in the gulf. |
| Aborigines to demand royal commission
into youth policing 24 March 2004 - Aboriginal groups will march on NSW Parliament House today to call for a national royal commission into the policing of indigenous youth. They also want a NSW royal commission into the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey, who died last month after falling off his bike and becoming impaled on a metal fence. • TJ's mother makes plea for justice • Police hold Redfern in 'state of siege', Pilger tells rally • Demonstrators go out, demolishers go in • Tell the World • Notice to the Australian Government and the People of Australia |
| BBC blast for 'white' Australia 21 March 2004 - A BBC documentary into the Redfern riots promises to give Australia a "very uncomfortable" hour's viewing. British reporter David Akinsanya, who made his name with TV programs about his own tough life in British institutions, said of the film: "As a black man I feel I am treated better in Britain as a stranger than Aborigines are treated in their own land." |
| Moves to save dying languages 15 March, 2004 - HAMISH ROBERTSON: According to UNESCO, more than half of the world's 6,000 languages are in danger of dying out, ranging from native American languages in the United States to Scottish Gaelic, which is now spoken by only 60,000 or so mostly elderly people. Well, with growing concern about the rapid disappearance of so many languages around the world, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is beginning a study of Aboriginal languages in Australia. |
| Redfern meeting denounces racist police
violence 10 March 2004 - “The views of the Aboriginal community in general, and residents of the Redfern Block in particular, have fallen on deaf ears since the death of TJ [Thomas Hickey]", Redfern Aboriginal leader Lyall Munro told a meeting of 100 people at the South Sydney Leagues Club, organised by the Socialist Alliance, on March 4. • Redfern Block community defiant |
| The inherent flaw in the concept of 'practical
reconciliation' 9 March 2004 - The Howard government says Indigenous Australians will be assisted by what it terms, “practical reconciliation”, rather than by pursuing what Co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia Fred Chaney calls “the symbolic aspects” of the Indigenous struggle. The Government claims that it is a pragmatic government and demands that Indigenous Australians put to one side the déclassé concept of a rights-oriented reconciliation process. Any discussion of a treaty is totally verboten. |
| Australian Governor-General's Appointment
goes to United Kingdom Court 9 March 2004 - A case showing that documents used to appoint Australia's Governor General have been illegally issued, went before a court in the Chancery Division of the British High Court in London last week. |
| Journalist sacked over Redfern report 5 March 2004 - A US journalist who made up the source for a disparaging quote about Aborigines in a report on last month's Redfern riots has been sacked by his paper. |
| Racist police email blasted as 'filth
and disgust' 4 March 2004 - Senior NSW police apologised today for an email containing racist slurs against Aboriginal people which was found circulating in stations in the state's west. The contents of the email, found in four regional stations including the troubled towns of Bourke and Dubbo, were described as "filth and disgust" by Deputy Commissioner David Madden. |
| The Redfern Block vs developer greed 3 March 2004 - The attacks on Redfern are occurring in the context of a big push for more inner-city private redevelopment. Housing prices have been escalating in the inner-city for more than a decade. The creeping privatisation of public housing has been contributing to the fragmentation of long-standing communities. |
| Where are the stolen wages? 1 March 2004 - Something stopped the NSW Government from paying back money it took from the earnings of Aboriginal workers for 70 years. Debra Jopson exposes the mystery. • Aborigines treated like Nazi slaves, says report |
| Rabbit-proof myths 29 February 2004 - The truth of Australia's past is hard enough to face, and untruths and exaggerations now will only divide us. Phillip Noyce claims his new film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, is a true story. The Hollywood director's publicity blurb repeats the boast: ``A true story.'' Even the first spoken words in the hyped film, which opens next week, are: ``This is a true story.'' Wrong. Crucial parts of this ``true story'' about a ``stolen generations'' child called Molly Craig are false or misleading. And shamefully so. • Rabbit-Proof Fence writer Christine Olsen regading some of the 'fact' statements made by Andrew Bolt |
| The fatal error 28 February 2004 - Could white Australia have averted many problems by signing early treaties with the Aborigines? Treaties would not have resolved all issues between the first Australians and the European settlers, any more than the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 settled all differences between Maoris and European settlers in New Zealand. However, Waitangi guaranteed Maori tribal chiefs land and other rights in return for British sovereignty over the country and any Australian treaty would most likely have provided a similarly useful foundation document. The chances are that the relationship between black and white would have been put on a happier basis than it was. |
| Aboriginal tourism 27 February 2004 - Aboriginal tourism gives Indigenous people the chance to tell their story in their way, to share cultural insights, traditional practices and contemporary concerns with non-Indigenous Australians and international visitors. Indigenous communities view tourism as a means of both educating others about Indigenous culture, and creating employment and training opportunities at a local level. |
| Different treatment may have led to
riot, says PM 27 February 2004 - Prime Minister John Howard has suggested that the Redfern riot was partly the result of a policy of treating the indigenous community differently to the rest of Australia. Mr Howard said the riot arose from a combination of factors including a "total breakdown in family authority within Aboriginal communities". • Redfern leader says PM out of touch • PM accused of racism over Hickey |
| Busker set to battle Beattie 26 February 2004 - An indigenous rights campaigner and renowned inner-city busker today announced he would stand for Premier Peter Beattie's seat in the Queensland election. |
| TJ Hickey remembered 24 February 2004 - A funeral has been held in northern NSW for the Aboriginal teenager Thomas Hickey, whose death sparked Sydney's Redfern riot. The young man's family had appealed to mourners to remain calm and the funeral in the town of Walgett went ahead peacefully. |
| An 'intolerable' sickness 21 February 2004 - A new indigenous health initiative might have been more appropriately launched this week in Redfern than at Government House but the Governor, Marie Bashir, pointed out that Aborigines were among the healthiest people in the world when the first governor stepped ashore down the hill. |
| Latham vows stolen generation apology 21 February 2004 - Federal Opposition Leader Mark Latham has put the stolen generation on the election agenda, telling schoolchildren that a Labor government would apologise for breaking up Aboriginal families. Mr Latham said at the Leongatha Secondary College in Gippsland that the ALP would do more to recognise Aboriginal land rights and fight poverty. He told the students an apology was necessary to maintain basic family values. |
| Amanda Vanstone: The political quick
fix is not the solution to Aboriginal problems 20 February 2004 - The problems facing indigenous Australia are many and varied. And they are very long term. They did not happen overnight and they will not be solved quickly. There is no magic wand. I don't say that to thwart the hopes of indigenous Australians who want improvements and want them soon. Nor do I say it as an excuse for turning a blind eye to current events. |
| Fred Chaney: The lessons of Redfern 19 February 2004 - The warning signs about Redfern were already apparent in the early 1980s. What had seemed a good idea at the time was not producing the kind of outcomes we had anticipated. All of us, white and black, who were involved over that period should feel a sense of personal responsibility for not asking some of the hard questions or being sufficiently critical of our own well-meaning efforts, and those of successive governments. |
| No easy answer to the Block's plight 19 February 2004 - Bring in the bulldozers is the solution that John Brogden favours for the problem that is the Block ... For the moment, redevelopment of Redfern, and of the Block in particular, has to be done in a way that is sensitive to its political and historical significance. It cannot be as simple as kicking out the residents, bulldozing the place and allowing developers to take over. Besides, the last thing that Sydney needs is yet another enclave of bland yuppiedom. |
| Aden Ridgeway: Boiling point after
a decade of tension 18 February 2004 - I do not excuse the events of that night. But they come as no surprise to me or any person who is familiar with the volatile dynamics of Redfern, and the wider issues of indigenous politics in this country. |
| 'Alcohol, heat, grief triggered the
riot' 17 February 2004 - The Premier, Bob Carr, and the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, have blamed alcohol, grief over a boy's death and the unrelenting heat for the Redfern Aboriginal riot and announced three inquiries into the rampage. • Ongoing tensions helped fuel riot, academic says • No excuses can exonerate Redfern riot |
| Chased or not, TJ had reasons to run 17 February 2004 - Within a few days of his arrival, say his mother, aunt Virginia and uncle Michael West, he was beaten up in a mistaken identity arrest by a group of police in the Block, a claim police would not comment on yesterday. • Back on Eveleigh Street it's still us versus them • Despair the reality for a race lost in the alien space of Redfern • Violence blamed on 'softly-softly' approach • Rage, boredom and peer pressure fuel Redfern's youthful violence • School system has let down many boys like TJ |
| Black leaders lay the blame on politicians 17 February 2004 - Indigenous leaders yesterday accused state and federal governments of failing to tackle the problems faced by young Aborigines living in the suburb they called a "national embarrassment". |
| The politics of Redfern's Block 16 February 2004 - There are now to be several inquiries into Thomas Hickey's death, and into the subsequent riot that surrounded it, but today the politics of dealing with the social issues of the Block took centre stage, with New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, saying that he had full confidence in how the police dealt with the events of last night. Meanwhile NSW Opposition leader, John Brogden, has suggested clearing the area out altogether. |
| Redfern riots a 'tragedy for all': Mick
Mundine 16 February 2006 - I suppose it's got a history you know. It's been very bad between our people and the police because they really gave our people a really hard time in the early '70s, '80s, they were really very vicious in them days |
| Exclusive interview with the block
residents 16 February 2004 - "Remember in the paper and that when they said about one hundred and fifty Blacks pelted police with stones and bottles and that there? Well when they chased the young fella into the house there was a baby laying on the bed. The police stepped all over the baby. That's why they fuckin' bottled them fuckin' coppers. They do everything the wrong way. Bringing the riot squad down after ten year old boys, you know what I mean, that's wrong." Mother angry over son's death 16 February 2004 - I was terrified and that. Wild and that. I wanted to go up to the police station and smash the police station up, that's how wild I was. My 17-year old boy was just coming down to get money off his mother and then these dogs here, fucking end up killing my son. How does a fucking 17-year old boy end up on the fucking fence? |
| New techniques record ancient art of ancestors 16 February 2004 - Deep in the Grampians, Ricci Marks perches on a ledge in an Aboriginal rock shelter ... Once, indigenous history was told by word of mouth - ancient stories passed down the generations. But that is now being complemented by other ways to read the past. |
| Give back stolen wages! 11 February 2004 - Calls for a national levy from former governor-generals and prime ministers, headlines in two states’ Sunday papers, supportive candidates in the Queensland state election, renewed grassroots support in Townsville and a furore over missing, unpaid and underpaid wages in New South Wales have all given a boost to the “stolen wages” campaign in the last month. |
| 'Stolen wage' case sparks court protest 6 February 2004 - Relatives of a leading Aboriginal boxer of the 1940s and 50s will find out next week if they can sue the State Government for $18 million in allegedly "stolen wages". |
| Marjorie awaits her back pay, 62 years late 5 February 2004 - All Marjorie Woodrow ever got back from the NSW Government trust fund holding four years' worth of her wages was £5. "It was for the material for my wedding dress," said Mrs Woodrow, one of more than 11,000 former state wards who could be owed a total of up to $69 million by the Government. |
| Aboriginal Australians owed millions 4 February, 2004 - A leaked New South Wales Government report shows that Aboriginal people in the state are owed tens of millions of dollars. There are also fears that some of the money has been rorted by public servants and employers for many years. It's estimated that more than 11,000 indigenous Australians could be entitled to a share of the funds, amounting to as much as $70 million. |
| Invasion Day rally demands `repay stolen
wages' 4 February 2004 - The demand to repay the stolen wages of Aborigines who worked under successive Queensland governments from the 1890s to the 1970s was the central focus of this year’s Invasion Day rally, held at Emma Miller Place (Roma Street Forum) on January 26. |
| Rising dollar threatens to end boom in Aboriginal
art 1 February 2004 - The booming international market for Aboriginal art is set for a slump this year as a result of the high-flying Australian dollar. Traditional Aboriginal work has been the big success story of the Australian art market in recent times, with record sales of $7.5 million at Sotheby's annual Aboriginal art auction last July. |
| 'Practical reconciliation' ignores the problems
of Indigenous identity 26January 2004 - Pat Dodson: Hopefully, at some time on the Australia Day long weekend most Australians would have reflected on what it means to be Australian. And although most non-Indigenous Australians are content with - indeed proud of - their national identity, the circumstances of Indigenous Australians allow no such easy certainty. • Australia Day: a celebration for some but sorrowful reflection for others 5 February , 2004 - Australia Day means different things to different people and this is especially true for the First Australians. For many Indigenous Australians 26 January is an occasion to reflect on past loss and suffering. |
| Bradley banks on Aboriginal players making
their mark 25 January 2004 - Prime Minister's XI batsman Matthew Bradley believes it is only a matter of time before more Aboriginal cricketers are representing Australia. Bradley, whose mother is a Wiradjuri woman and comes from central NSW, will represent ATSIC in the Prime Minister's XI game against India at Manuka Oval, Canberra on Wednesday. |
| Inspiration for 'Rabbit Proof Fence' passes
away 15 January 2004 - A great outback saga came to an end in a remote desert community in Western Australia this week. Though many did not know her by name, Molly Kelly Craig achieved fame as the woman who inspired the film 'Rabbit Proof Fence'. One of the most powerful symbols of the stolen generations debate, Molly Kelly Craig died on Tuesday, aged 87. |
australian media releases 2005-2004 |
Make Indigenous Poverty History by 2015 |
| Mansell Sees Anti Terror Laws Being Used
to Quell Aboriginal Protests 8 November 2005 - Aboriginal Provisional Government - Aboriginal lawyer and activist Michael Mansell believes Aboriginal protestors will be targeted by the new anti terror laws as a new way to discredit Aboriginal leaders. |
| Launch of national campaign to help stop
petrol sniffing 20 October 2005 - Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) and The Australian Greens today launched a national campaign to help stop petrol sniffing in remote Aboriginal communities. |
A decleration by Australia's Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders Stolen Generations |
Federal budget ignores Indigenous suffering |
Indigenous Australians miss out |
| Social Justice Commissioner puts government
on notice 8 April 2005 - HREOC - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma has used his first Social Justice Report to put the federal Government on notice that he will be closely monitoring the new arrangements for the administration of Indigenous affairs and how they are implemented. |
| New opportunity for native
title to achieve sustainable goals 8 April 2005 - HREOC - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said that native title needs to move beyond the current legal framework towards achieving the economic and social development goals of Indigenous peoples. |
International award winners
to visit Redfern |
United Nations Committee issues
observations on Australia |
Death in custody video evidence |
UN submission reveals Government failure
on Indigenous employment |
| 2004 |
Grinch Steals Christmas From Palm Island
Community |
| United Nations proclaims second International
Decade of the worlds' Indigenous Peoples 20 December 2004 - The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People. The Decade will commence on 1 January 2005. |
| First International Decade of the World's
Indigenous Peoples comes to an end 10 December 2004- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said the end of the first International Decade of the World's Indigenous People today (10 December) is a timely occasion to reflect on the progress made on Indigenous issues during the last decade and an appropriate juncture to recommit to the challenges that lay ahead. |
| A National Day of Healing Newsletter from
the National Sorry Day Committee December 2004 - The National Sorry Day Committee asks that Sorry Day 2005, on 26 May, be a National Day of Healing. We invite everyone to celebrate the achievements of the past seven years, and to commit ourselves to all that still needs to be done. Australia now knows the story of the stolen generations. |
| Sorry is an attitude say committee 10 November 2004 - Two members of the National Indigenous Council have said that an apology to the stolen generations is not a priority. The stolen generations have no wish to be used as a political football, and the National Sorry Day Committee has no intention of getting worked up about a word. It is the attitude that concerns us. |
Australia's Indigenous Peoples Face On-going
Crisis: After Election 2004 |
Reconciliation in peril over
museum dispute |
New Chairs for Sorry Day Committee |
Indigenous Affairs Policy is Central to Australia's
Future |
Australia’s medical schools launch Indigenous
health curriculum |
A Painful Life Sentence: Hundreds of Thousands
Abused as Children in Care |
Dja Dja Wurrung Native Title Group appeal |
Liberals represented by Indigenous Australian
in the Federal Seat of Fraser |
Third fire bomb attack at the Aboriginal Tent
Embassy Canberra |
Indigenous Crisis Forces Unprecedented Call
For Vote Against The Howard Government |
Sydney: Aboriginal-owned Cultural
Cruises |
Wiradjuri Elder Rebuts Mayor on Lake Cowal |
Democrats Highlight Govt's Shameful Record
on Indigenous Affairs here and at the UN |
Stolen Wages A National Issue |
Female Australian Aboriginal Party Leader
Confirmed as First for Australian Politics |
Indigenous art studies to be globally accessible |
Australian Government Welcomes Latest Milestone
for the Repatriation of Indigenous Human Remains from the United Kingdom |
Richard Frankland a Bill of Rights
for all Australians! |
Aboriginals of Australia: Statement at the
WGIP |
NAIDOC Awards Recognise Our Ongoing Culture |
Activism in Aboriginal art |
| Have Your Say On The Future Of Indigenous Affairs 30 June 2004 - Australian Labor Party - Federal Labor encourages all Australians to have a say on the future of Indigenous representation and the delivery of Indigenous programs by making a submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs. • Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs |
ACT Makes Headway
on Improving Social And Living Conditions For Indigenous Community |
| New Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander statistics 23 June 2004 - Australian Bureau of Statistics - The results of the second national social survey of Indigenous people were released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and point to some changes since the groundbreaking original survey in 1994. |
| National survey of languages to strengthen
Indigenous culture 22 June 2004 - Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Amanda Vanstone, today announced a major investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, through an online and community survey of Indigenous languages. |
Doors open for closure on stolen wages |
Kim Beazley Launches Australia On
The Map Website |
Private Collection of Aboriginal Ancestral
Remains Repatriated |
Top Australian Aboriginal Experience Anangu
Tours Wins 2004 World Legacy Award |
Western Australian Aboriginal Child
Health Survey |
A Fair Place In Our Own Country: Indigenous
Australians, Land Rights And The Australian Economy |
First 'Dramatically Black' project wraps |
Mr Djerrkura- Statesman, Leader, Lawman |
The Participation of Indigenous Peoples in the
United Nations System's Political Institutions |
Beyond the bridges and sorry |
Sorry Day is this Wednesday May 26 |
If it's good enough for Iraq why not us - Damaging
Australia's Reputation |
Stolen Wages and Consequential Indigenous
Poverty: A National Issue |
Referral of Ranger contamination incident to
Northern Territory Department of Justice |
Federal Government Stooge Misleads UN |
"Your Voice" Aboriginal political
party email news |
2004 Budget - real issues in Aboriginal Health
forgotten |
New Indigenous political party announced |
UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues |
NSW Govt Must Make All Stolen Wages Records
Available |
ACCC concludes aboriginal-style souvenir proceedings |
NSW stolen wages response 'outstrips'
Queensland |
Press conference excerpt on Aboriginal
trust funds |
Austrade Introduces Local Indigenous Models
to the World |
Social Justice Commissioner Welcomes
Yorta Yorta Agreement |
Indigenous arts marketing and export
agency launched |
Mirrar welcome NLC endorsement of Jabiluka
agreement |
Stars, skills and soccer gear delivered to
outback communities |
Stolen Wages in NSW |
| The Hon John Howard MP: Joint press conference
with Senator Amanda Vanstone 15 April 2004 - Transcript of the Prime Minister - ... getting value for the money we·ve been spending and the whole purpose and priority of this Government in terms of indigenous affairs is to deliver better services on the ground. Now that·s more important to me and to members of the Government than arguing about who represents who . |
Statement on ATSIC |
UK Crown owes 20,000 1836 English Pounds plus
interest to South Australia's traditional owners |
Aboriginal affairs in danger of becoming election
football |
Abolishing ATSIC won’t solve complex problems |
Information briefings about 'Indigenous
Health in Australia' |
Opportunity and Responsibility for Indigenous
Australians |
Uranium contamination spreads |
ATSIC’s unique voice and record of achievement |
FAIRA statements presented
at Commission of Human Rights, Geneva (PDF, 170kb) |
Lyall Munro - Spokesman for the Hickey family
and the Redfern 'Block' community |
Qld and NSW governments promote theft from
Indigenous communities |
List of demands in relation to the
enquires into the death of TJ Hickey |
Tracey Moffatt exhibition set to break attendance
records at MCA |
Lack of Accountability on Redfern Embarrasses
Nation |
Protester burnt in Lake Cowal Camp Incident |
| First conference for indigenous tourism 10 Feb 2004 - The first-ever Australian Indigenous Tourism Conference is underway this week in Fremantle. The 'Better Business, Better Country' conference will aim to drive indigenous tourism and create opportunities to showcase and promote authentic indigenous tourism products. • Mandawuy Yunupingu speech: Australian Indigenous Tourism Conference 2004 – WA • Indigenous Employment on the Agenda at Australian Indigenous Tourism Conference 2004 • Wheatbelt Area Consultative Committee Report • Australian Indigenous Tourism Conference brochure (PDF 960kb) • Conference proceedings: speeches by Indigenous tourism operators |
Address at the launch of the 'Trust'
exihibition, Australian prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame, Kalgoorlie,
Western Australia |
| New UK Promotion To Win An Aboriginal Tourism
Adventure 2 February 2004 - A new promotion on Aboriginal tourism experiences in Australia has been launched in the United Kingdom's Daily Telegraph newspaper as part of a month long promotion. |
european news 2005 |
| The Long Walk in London
2005 24 November 2005 - ENIAR (UK) - This year's event follows on from indigenous AFL legend Michael Long's walk in 2004. This year there are events happening all across Australia, with the main one taking place in Melbourne. |
| Australia's racial conflict exposed
to wider audience 27 October 2005 - The Times (UK) - A VIOLENT “bushranger western” has broken new ground with its depiction of the ethnic conflicts that underpinned the creation of modern Australia. |
| DCMS publishes guidelines
on care of human remains 6 October 2005 - (Museums Association UK) - Guidelines are now available for museums in England and Wales that hold human remains. The publication of the guidelines also heralds a change in law allowing national museums to deaccession human remains… |
| Shameful secret in the shadow of Uluru 13 August 2005 - The Daily Telegraph (UK) - It symbolises the harsh grandeur of the Outback and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, but the great red rock of Uluru hides a shameful secret that Australia's tourism promoters would rather the world did not see. |
| Aboriginal voices break through on film 14 June 2005 - Jerusalem Post (Israel) - 'It's only in the last 20 years that we've started making movies about ourselves," says Erica Glynn, an Australian director of aboriginal descent who's visiting Israel this week to introduce her films at the Australian Film Festival, which is playing at cinematheques around the country. |
| Homeguard in Australia's outback 11 June 2005 - BBC Radio 4 (UK) - Australia's armed forces are scattered far and wide, from Iraq to the South Pacific. But there is one regiment which specialises in protecting the vast wilderness regions found much closer to home, in the Northern Territory. |
| Aboriginal boy locked up for taking
ice-cream 8 June 2005 - The Independent (UK) -A 15-year-old Aboriginal boy was held in custody for 12 days and flown nearly 1,000 miles to face court for trying to steal an ice-cream. |
| A new breed of centres for art for Aborigines 4 June 2005 - International Herald Tribune (France) - MELBOURNE To talk with Rammey Ramsay is to enter a 40,000-year-old world. It is a place of death, of nature's redemptive power and of communion with one of the world's oldest surviving cultures. But it is also a world of four-wheel drives and satellite television. |
| Australian Christians focus on reconciliation
between white and Aboriginal communities 2 June 2005 - Ekklesia (UK) - The Catholic Church in Australia is concluding a series of events for National Reconciliation Week, (May 29-June 3) focussing on healing relations between the white community and the Aborigines, reports the Fides news agency. |
| Howard urges Aborigine patience 30 May 2005 - BBC (UK) - Australia's Prime Minister John Howard has warned the process of combating disadvantage within the country's Aboriginal community could take years. |
| Australia's 'Sorry Day' marked 26 May 2005 - BBC (UK) - Ceremonies across Australia have marked National Sorry Day, which remembers the government's removal of Aboriginal children from their families. |
| A didgeridoo for Lincoln's Inn Fields 20 May 2005 - An annual day when Australians remember the 'stolen generations' of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families will be commemorated in London for the first time next week. |
| Poor Aboriginal health traced back to birth 20 May 2005 - Rueters (UK) - Chronic health problems suffered by Australia's Aborigines can be traced to birth, a new report found on Friday, saying indigenous babies were twice as likely as others to be born underweight. |
| Sorry in London May 2005 - TNT (UK) - Australian day of reconciliation spreads north. When the first Sorry Day was held in Australia in 1998, thousands of people took to the streets in an act of protest, in solidarity with the stolen generations and in the spirit of reconciliation. |
| Aboriginal outcry over noose case 18 May 2005 - The Journal of Turkish Weekly (Turkey) - Australian indigenous leaders have reacted angrily after two white men found guilty of assaulting an Aboriginal boy were fined A$800 ($605). |
| No Black Faces on the Block? 12 May 2005 - Signature (UK) - The Carr Government’s plans for the rundown suburb of Redfern are yet to be realised, but anyone taking a white brush to the black heart of Sydney is surely in for a fight. |
| Rugby tackles Aboriginal violence 31 March 2005 - BBC (UK) - Aboriginal leaders in Australia say rugby is helping to battle the domestic violence blighting their community. Statistics show Aboriginal women are 45 times more likely to suffer domestic violence than white Australians. |
| Queen urges Australia to do more
for Aborigines 15 March 2005 - (Reuters UK) - The Queen praised Australia for its international leadership on Tuesday, but urged the country to do more at home to alleviate poverty and to help disadvantaged Aborigines. |
| Aborigines threaten Queen Elizabeth
with writ 15 March 2005 - Daily Express (Malaysia) -MELBOURNE: Australian Aborigines have threatened to serve a writ on Queen Elizabeth II accusing her of genocide if the monarch fails to launch treaty negotiations while in Melbourne to open the Commonwealth Games. |
| Charles has a grubby encounter downunder 3 March 2005 - Hello Magazine ( UK) - The Prince of Wales had an encounter with some bare-chested ladies on Wednesday, before being presented with a witchetty grub, by way of a tasty snack. |
| Australia's Aboriginal Debate 16 February 2005 - BBC website (UK) - Improving the lives of Australia's Aboriginals is an important challenge, with no easy answers. The BBC News website asked two prominent members of the Aboriginal community to debate the issues by email. This is the conversation they had over the last few weeks. |
| Expert says Aboriginal infant mortality
can be reduced with Government help 31 January 2005 - China Post (Taiwan) - The government must do more to combat infant mortality among Aborigines, whose babies die of unexplained causes at a rate six times higher than other Australian children, an expert on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) said Monday. |
| Self respect and changing attitudes boost
Australia's Aboriginal population 23 January 2005 - The Scotsman (Scotland) - The aboriginal population is booming as more Australians identify themselves as indigenous. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2005 snapshot of Australia shows the indigenous population has grown at twice the rate of the overall population since 1996. |
| A bone to pick with museums 16 January 2005 - The Times (Scotland) -Returning collections of human remains to their home countries may sound noble, but science will suffer as a result. |
| Aboriginal art shows creator snake 14 January 2005 - Philadelphia Daily News (USA) - "Track of the Rainbow Serpent" at the University of Pennsylvania Museum presents Australian aboriginal art as the handmaiden of anthropology. |
| Aboriginal skulls to return home 13 January - BBC (UK) - Representatives from the Australian High Commission are in Devon to take back a collection of Aboriginal skulls held at a museum since the 1870s. |
european news 2004 |
| Australia honours Aboriginal team 27 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Australia have honoured a group of Aboriginal cricketers who undertook a tour to England in 1868. |
| Aboriginal originals woo French 20 December 2004 - Financial Times (UK) - The prominent French social anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, is quoted approvingly in a 1962 book for his general rule: "One cannot modify societies based on so rigid a social system without destroying them." The French painter Karel Kupka was the man going all the way with Levi-Strauss. In Dawn of Art, Kupka's flawed but remarkably early appreciation of Australian Aboriginal art, he theorised that 1962 was its absolute apogee, "a golden age for the Aboriginal plastic arts, conserved in a miraculous state of purity, even though their disappearance is inexorably growing near". |
| Aboriginal policy raises storm 18 December 2004 - The Japan Times (Japan) - Aborigines in the remote Australian Outback are going blind amid filthy conditions while white Australians luxuriate in some of the world's most sophisticated cities. It's a disaster waiting to happen, and that day looks close. |
| Petrol for face washing? Thanks but no thanks 12 December 2004 - (Khaleej Times) - Almost out of sight, out of mind, in the far-flung corners of Australia, people are living in utter squalor. It’s a familiar story in First World countries the indigenous people are pushed aside and do not benefit as their country experiences economic progress. |
| Uneasy calm at Aborigine funeral 11 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - The funeral has taken place of an aboriginal man in northern Australia whose death last month in police custody sparked violent disturbances. |
| Australia set for Aborigine march 8 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aborigines across Australia complain of prejudice and lack of opportunity. Thousands of Australians are expected to take part in a march on Thursday to protest at the treatment of Aborigines. |
| Aborigines' dark island home 4 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aboriginal residents of Palm Island in northern Australia are preparing for another depressing chapter in the story of their isolated home. The funeral of Cameron Doomagee is expected to take place in the coming days. |
| Aboriginal death in custody triggers
Palm Island riot 3 December 2004 - World Socialist Web Site - For the second time this year, anger over the death of an Australian Aborigine in highly suspicious circumstances involving police has boiled over into a riot. |
| The anger of the Aborigines 3 December 2004 -The Independent (UK) - A teenager's claim that he was dragged naked through the dirt with a noose around his neck has inflamed racial tensions in Australia. |
| Howard meets Aboriginal Star 3 December 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aboriginal sports star Michael Long has met Australia's Prime Minister John Howard to highlight discrimination against indigenous groups and poverty. |
| La declaration des peuples indigenes
bloquee par l occident 29 November 2004 - AFP - Trois représentants de peuples autochtones ont accusé jeudi le gouvernement britannique de bloquer le projet de "Déclaration des droits des populations indigènes" aux Nations unies, alors que les débats sur le texte doivent prendre fin la semaine prochaine. |
| Protest rocks Aboriginal Island 26 November 2004 - BBC (UK) - Hundreds of protesters on an Aboriginal island off Australia's northern coast have stormed the local police station, after the death of a man in custody. One resident said there was smoke everywhere and that the building had almost been burnt to the ground. |
| Tribal Peoples Journey to UK:
Government under attack 22 November 2004 - Survival International (UK) - Three indigenous representatives arrive in London on 24 November to target the UK government for blocking an historic UN declaration on indigenous rights. |
| A carrot and stick for Aborigines 13 November 2004 -New Zealand Herald (NZ) - In all the clamour of the election campaign that last month swept Prime Minister John Howard to his fourth term in office, there was one thundering silence: the continuing grim future for indigenous Australians. |
| Australian Aborigines denounce welfare changes
plan 12 November 2004 - Taipei Times (Taiwan) - Prominent Aborigines lashed out yesterday at a planned government overhaul of welfare payments to indigenous Australians that reportedly include punishing parents whose children cut classes. |
| Aboriginal welfare plans cause stir 12 November 2004 - BBC (UK) - The Australian government is planning a controversial new welfare system for its indigenous Aboriginal population. The proposals, which were leaked to the media, are reported to include financial sanctions for parents who do not send their children to school. |
| Australian military probes Ku Klux Klan
stunt on black recruits 11 November 2004 - AFP - Australia's military chief said an investigation was under way after a leading newspaper published a photo showing black recruits hounded in a Ku Klux Klan-style stunt. Racism alleged in Australian Army - UPI |
| Australia unveils Aboriginal body 6 November 2004 - BBC (UK) - Aborigines are Australia's most disadvantaged community. The Australian government has unveiled a new Aboriginal advisory body that will help shape its policy towards disadvantaged native communities. |
Australia's Aborigines lose political voice |
| World's indigenous people slam
UK government 1 November 2004 - Survival International (UK) - Indigenous organisations from around the world have criticised the UK government's attempts to block the recognition of their rights. Recent negotiations to finalise a UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples were almost wrecked when the UK government attempted to remove all references to 'collective rights'. At the end of November, when negotiations resume, the UK government stands poised to scupper a century of progress in human rights. |
Haute Outback |
| Ertrunken in Tasmanien 12 October, 2004 - Frankfurter Rundschau -Geschichten aus einem unbekannten Australien: Richard Flanagan betreibt eine ganz eigene Historiographie. |
| Rock Spirits 11 October 2004 - Time Asia - From the natural sandstone galleries of western Arnhem Land, an ancient art tradition makes thrillingly contemporary twists and turns. |
| Australia is now a damaged and divided land 8 October 2004 - The Independent (UK) - Howard has built his electoral success by appealing to a darker side of our character.These days, television footage of young children and pregnant women behind razor wire in detention centres is as familiar an image of Australia as its golden surf beaches. |
| Les Aborigenes October 2004 - Agency Francias Press - Les Aborigenes s'estiment une nouvelle fois les laisses-pour-compte des legislatives australiennes de samedi, ne nourrissant que peu d'espoir de changement dans leurs conditions de vie difficiles, peu importe le resultat du scrutin. |
| Aborigines seek voice at election 7 October 2004 - SYDNEY (Reuters) - Aborigine Maisie Austin sits in the dirt under a tree hearing the grievances of aboriginal elders who have invited her to their "country" as she campaigns in the Northern Territory outback for Saturday's Australian elections. |
| Logging threat to French explorers’
site in Australia 4 October 2004 - AFP - Efforts to preserve a site where French explorers conducted some of Australia's first scientific research more than 200 years ago were branded inadequate by environmentalists Thursday. |
| SmallWorld: The larger crocs are strong
enough to snatch a horse or a water buffalo from the river bank 3 October 2004 - Sunday Herald (Scotland) - Tom Northrope hooks a chunk of meat on to a piece of string attached to a wooden pole and dangles it over the coffee-brown water. Suddenly there’s an explosion of movement as a 9ft-long crocodile leaps from the river and lunges for the bait. With an audible snap and a swirl of water the meat – and the croc – are gone. |
| International protection for indigenous
peoples' human rights long overdue 10 September 2004 - Amnesty International News - The end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People is now less than four months away. The Working Group on the Draft United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples meets in its 10th session in Geneva next week (13-24 September), but the prospect of achieving one of the decade's principle goals -- the adoption of an international declaration for the protection and promotion of indigenous peoples' human rights -- seems increasingly at risk. |
| Appeal: Help Australian Aborigines keep
their etchings 6 September 2004 - Paul Canning (ENIAR Webmaster) - The Dja Dja Wurrung are urgently requesting that supporters contact the Minister - but they also want British people to ask their Government to put pressure on the British Museum; they describe the Museum as 'out of step' with other international institutions in their attitude towards Aboriginal people. |
| Why I've fallen out of love with Australia 5 September 2004 - The Observer (UK) - Howard's support rose overnight and the atmosphere of Australia changed almost as quickly. An emboldened Howard moved on with his mean-spirited agenda, refusing to officially apologise to Aborigines for the generation of children taken from them by the state. The republican cause was canned. |
| Warrior Gillesppie Deserves Some Luck 3 September 2004 - Sporting Life (UK) - Jason Gillespie probably couldn't give a XXXX for statistics, such is his attitude towards playing for his country. Gillespie is the archetypal team man, a true-blue Aussie who is at his best with his heart on his sleeve and the baggy green cap thrust over his unkempt mullet. Personal reward is secondary to Australia's success, something the 29-year-old fast bowler has been devoted to since making his debut in 1996. |
| Local communities in Australia relive history
and organise online 3 September 2004 - Internet & ICTs for Social Justice and Development News - Rowville-Lysterfield History Project (RLHP) is an archive of photos and stories told by the eldest members of the Rowville-Lysterfield community (Victoria, Australia) of their memories of the oldest people they remember when they were children. It is a rich telling of anecdotal histories that would otherwise be lost; of Aboriginal mounted police, the Bunerong and the Wawoorung clans of the Kulin nation, the little known prisoner of war camp, the stories of both women and men, many who would live their lives over again. |
| Killer Faces Tribal Justice 3 September 2004 - Daily Record (UK) - An Aboriginal woman convicted of stabbing her cheating lover to death has walked free because she faces severe punishment by her tribe. • Woman sentenced to tribal justice, not jail |
| Grappling On Stage With the Issue of Land Rights 29 August 2004 - The Nation (Kenya) - Whether in Kenya or in Australia, the issue of land continues to be a political, social and economic hot potato. This was made perfectly clear during the staged readings, from August 20 to August 24, in Nairobi, of the play, Yanagai! Yanagai! by Australian playwright Andrea James. Coming at a time when the issue of land ownership is at the top of the news agenda, the readings could not have been more topical had they tried. |
| From the Outback to Bagshot in one leap 29 August2004 - The Observer (UK) - The deep, vibrating drone of the didgeridoo ebbs and flows as the Smudging Ceremony, an ancient Aboriginal ritual to mark special occasions, begins. I inhale the smoke from burning herbs and mosses handpicked by Aborigines and concentrate hard on trying not to laugh. |
| Australia's perilous conservative path 27 August 2004 - International Herald Tribune - Amid all the talk about free trade agreements, the cultural imperialism of Hollywood or the wonders of the Internet, the untold story of globalization has been the globalization of conservatism. Since the mid-1970s, conservatives around the globe have become keen students of U.S.-$ style attack politics - and none more so than Australian conservatives. |
| Australia considers croc trophy hunting 27 August 2004 - BBC - The authorities want to introduce these crocodile safaris to boost tourism and to help impoverished Aboriginal communities. The Northern Territory's Environment Minister, Marion Scrymgour, told the BBC that the idea of allowing big-game hunters to shoot crocodiles on traditional tribal lands was a good one. |
| Melbourne - ein gigantischer Ameisenhaufen 26 August 2004 - Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland) - Ameisen geben derzeit zu reden in Australien. Während in und um Melbourne eine zusammenhängende Kolonie entdeckt wurde, die sich über hundert Kilometer erstreckt, bereitet im tropischen Norden Australiens die Gelbe Spinnerameise der lokalen Aborigines-Bevölkerung und den Naturschützern Sorgen. |
| Tudo sobre o país dos coalas no Festival
da Austrália 25 August 2004 - Agência Estado (Brazil) - São Paulo - Quem está pensando em arrumar as malas para conhecer a Austrália ou simplesmente gosta de saber mais sobre outras culturas tem um encontro marcado neste sábado e domingo no Hotel Renaissance, em São Paulo. É lá o palco do Australia Festival, evento que vai divulgar os atrativos do país dos cangurus e coalas em termos de turismo, cursos e viagens de negócios, sem falar do surfe, da música aborígine e dos vinhos, já que a Austrália é o quinto maior produtor da bebida no mundo. |
| Viewfinder: Aboriginal burial poles 23 August 2004 - Daily Telegraph (UK) - The aboriginal Yolngu people believe they are the tongue of the land: inseparable from the tropical swamps of north-eastern Australia that are their home. |
| Aborigines rediscover their past in desert
jail 22 August 2004 - Sunday Times (UK) - When Dale Walsh, a 23-year-old Aborigine, was jailed for theft he expected to be incarcerated in a grim urban prison run by whites. Instead he was sent to Australia’s first “outback jail”, an Aboriginal prison run by Aborigines, where the boundary is the desert and the inmates sleep in dormitories or under the stars. They also move about unrestrained by razor wire, searchlights, locks or electric fences. |
| Rosella Namok UK Debut Show at The October
Gallery 20 August 2004 - The October Gallery - Conscious of her rapidly developing reputation - which has led to a series of sell-out shows- and the consequent difficulty of obtaining work by Rosella that has not already been spoken for, the October Gallery is delighted to present the first-ever solo exhibition of this talented young Australian artist to audiences in the U.K. |
| 'Sorry Books' registered as historic documents 19 August 2004 - UNESCO - A collection of 461 Sorry Books recording the thoughts of thousands of Australians on the unfolding history of the Stolen Generations has been formally recognized as having powerful historical and social significance. The books are among nine significant documentary heritage items recently inscribed on the Australian Memory of the World Register – part of UNESCO’s Programme to protect and promote documentary material- that records or reflects significant milestones and events in Australia’s history. |
| Aussie cops cleared after riot-sparking
death 17 August 2004 - Agence France Presse - A coroner has cleared Australian police of causing the death of an Aboriginal teenager which sparked one of the country's worst race riots. • Australian police cleared over Aboriginal riot - Reuters • Australian Police Cleared - Sky News (UK) • Sydney death 'not police's fault' - BBC |
| Freeman's Moment Runs On 15 August 2004 - ATHENS, The Washington Post - She jokes that she spends her days doing things too mundane to mention, "like popping a couple of pimples and plucking my eyebrows. "My concentration needs to be questioned, I'm so relaxed." |
| Journée internationale des autochtones
: L'ONU défend les droits des populations marginalisées 11 Août 2004 - Al Bayane (Morroco) - La Journée Internationale des populations autochtones a été célébrée, lundi au siège de l'ONU à New York. Lors de cette cérémonie, le secrétaire général de l'ONU soutient bec et ongles la démarginalisation de la population des autochtones qui selon lui, sont dépouillés de leurs terres, et dont la culture est dénigrée ou directement attaquée, alors que leurs langues et leurs coutumes sont reléguées au second plan... |
| Descendance in New York on 9/11 14 August 2004 - ENIAR - The World Culture Open is one of the biggest gatherings of cultures ever in New York City. On Sept 11 Descendance Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Dance Theatre will perform at the memorial to the victims of 9/11 at Battery Park which is not far from ground zero, they also have a performance set for the Australian Embassy in New York ... these tours have been funded by overseas cultural organizations ... Why is it that traditional, indigenous groups can't get money but the contemporary ones can? We are no closer to setting up anything permanent here or on the world stage than we were 10 years ago - if anything things have gone backwards. |
| Hands in history 12 August 2004 - An Phoblacht (Ireland) - One of the oldest pieces of artwork in the world is a handprint in Kaakadoo Cave, left there by an Australian aborigine 60,000 years ago. On a recent trip to Australia, artist Raymond Watson heard about the hand and the story behind it. It prompted, in part, one of two exhibitions, which he put on in this year's Féile an Phobail, called Hands In History. |
| AMA Indigenous Health Report calls for more Indigenous
health workers and funding Australia 12 August 2004 - Medical News Today (UK) - AMA (Australian Medical Association) President, Dr Bill Glasson, today released the AMA’s third report on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, ‘Healing Hands – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Workforce Requirements’. Based on an Access Economics report commissioned by the AMA, the report calls for increased targeted funding, more Indigenous health workers and more non Indigenous health workers committed to working with Indigenous people. • Crisis in Redfern could have been averted: AMA |
| Trois dijonnais Partent En Septembre en
Australie a la rencontre des aborigènes 11 Août 2004 - Le Bien Public (France) - Trois Dijonnais ont tracé des « sentiers du rêve » pour créer un échange culturel, pédagogique et humain avec les aborigènes d'Australie. |
| From Dreamtime to Nightmare: John Howard's Olympian
Deception 11 August 2004 - AxisOfLogic (USA) - October 1, 2000 the word 'Eternity' was up in lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a multicultural Australia welcomed people from all over the world to the Olympics. The dazzling Opening Ceremony charted the whole of Australia's history starting from the Dreamtime and the Olympic flame was lit by Kathy Freeman, a proud and beautiful aboriginal athlete, who seemed to represent the spirit of the land. For one brief moment it seemed all people in the land of the Southern Cross all the people across this extraordinary vast country were united and compassionate and understanding future seemed assured. |
| Indigenous Poeple's Day: Genocide It Is 9 August 2004 - IPS-Inter Press Service - When the Belgian Defence Ministry earlier this year blamed North America for the world's worst ever genocide over its killing of millions of indigenous peoples, outrage at the claim spotlighted a topic that rarely enters the public realm but has long been accepted by many native Americans and their supporters. |
| Australian parliamentary report rubberstamps
police buildup in Redfern 9 August 2004 - World Socialist - A parliamentary committee report into the issues raised by death of 17-year-old Aboriginal youth Thomas “TJ” Hickey in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern amounts to a crude political cover up for the New South Wales Labor government. |
| Amnesty International Launches Campaign For
Indigenous Rights 9 August 2004 - Voice of America - Amnesty International is launching a campaign to promote and protect the rights of indigenous peoples. The effort corresponds with the U.N. International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. Amnesty International says the estimated 370 million indigenous peoples around the world continue to endure widespread discrimination, impoverishment and ill-health. It says their unique cultural identities are threatened, their lands are confiscated and they are subject to armed violence. |
| Germaine Greer: Australia must become an Aboriginal
country 9 August 2004 - From the Royal Society of Arts lecture by the author and broadcaster - I don't feel so much anger against my own white ancestors in Australia as I do tremendous pity. Everywhere I go in Australia, I see land that was cleared at a human cost that you can hardly imagine. I don't condemn my ancestors who displaced Aboriginal people. I may deplore them, but I don't condemn them. I'm not here to apportion blame; I'm actually looking for a way forward. • The complete transcript of the lecture is available as a PDF file (98kb) |
| WIPO Director General Welcomes Growing Recognition
Of Indigenous People's Rights 9 August 2004 - World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - The Director General, Dr. Kamil Idris, welcomed the growing recognition by the international community of the need to promote the enjoyment of rights of indigenous peoples ... in the field of intellectual property (IP), he observed, this translated into greater respect and recognition for the cultural and intellectual framework and knowledge systems in which traditional cultural expressions (TCEs), traditional knowledge (TK) and associated genetic resources are developed, maintained, and transmitted to future generations within the traditional or customary context. |
| Populations autochtones : un 10e anniversaire
qui doit déclencher des mesures concrètes 9 August 2004 - Trop longtemps dépouillés de leurs terres, attaqués dans leurs langues, leurs coutumes et leurs cultures, les peuples autochtones ont fait appel à l'ONU. Il est temps que le processus engagé se traduise par des actes concrets, déclare Kofi Annan à l'occasion du 10e Anniversaire de la Journée internationale des populations autochtones. Action Needed Now To End Abuse Of World's Indigenous Peoples 9 August 2004 - The United Nations today marked the International Day of the World's Indigenous People with calls to governments, intergovernmental organizations and the international community at-large for urgent action to end the gross human rights abuses, discrimination and marginalization that all too often are still their lot in society. • Kofi Annan lauds rich indigenous cultures - Ghana News Agency |
| Tiwi myths inspire 'complicated' image of Oz 5 August 2004 - Budapest Sun - This ancient legend and these characters reappear in the form of Tiwi art, even today, examples of which are on display at Le Meridien hotel in a major exhibition organized by the Australian Embassy. |
| Disgrace dressed up as history 1 August 2004 - Scotland On Sunday - Rarely have I been so angry over the publication of a book as I am over Frank Welsh's Great Southern Land: A New History of Australia. In the past, if I have had to negatively review a book I've felt a pang of regret. This book is the exception. Welsh's so-called history is a disgrace. |
| Les génocides dans l’histoire
: compléments documentaires August 2004 - Le Monde Diplomatique |
| Yes, it's Jesus and they're not having a laugh 31 July 2004 - The Scotsman - He's a black warrior, an ice-skater, a keen juggler and the spitting image of an Edinburgh artist. Jesus, as he's never been seen before, is the subject of a series of pictures on show at a church festival coming to the Capital. |
| Brits back Aborigines 30 July 2004 - The Voice - A BBC documentary highlighting the plight of Aborigines has stirred the hearts of black Britons and jogged memories of frustration for David Akinsanya. |
| Shantytown in the shadow of a gold mine 29 July 2004 - Guardian (UK) - The fresh lick of paint on the toilet blocks can't cover up what's wrong with Ninga Mia. An Aboriginal shantytown in the shadow of one of the world's biggest gold mines, living conditions here are probably as grim as they get in Australia. A third of houses lack bathrooms and toilets, and even those that have these basic facilities are overcrowded and often insanitary. "This is the richest square mile in Australia and our people are living here in substandard conditions," says Maria Meredith, the manager of Ninga Mia's Aboriginal corporation. • Letter from Australian health minister |
| Cosmic Dreaming 29 July 2004 - TIME Pacific - Barbara Sturt, of the Jaru, sits beneath a tree in the yard of Halls Creek's Yarliyil Arts Centre and points to her dazzlingly bright canvas. "Here are the Rainbow Snakes," she says shyly, tying her tale to a myth that features in almost all Aboriginal cosmology. "They go in here, and everywhere they come up they make a creek or billabong." |
| U.N. Set to Designate Second Indigenous Decade 28 July 2004 - allafrica.com - A second U.N. decade spotlighting indigenous peoples is a step closer after the world body's economic and social council (ECOSOC) recommended another 10-year project after the existing decade expires Dec. 30. The decision will go before the 191-member U.N. General Assembly (GA) whose annual meeting begins in September. In their recommendation the members of ECOSOC, one of the U.N.'s five main bodies, said a second decade would have to take its mandate from a review of the first 10 years, and include concrete goals and adequate resources to ensure those aims could be met.. |
| “There’s 67 percent poor
people—we need our own government” 28 July 2004 - World Socialist - Among those present when a coronial inquest into the death of 17-year-old youth TJ Hickey concluded on July 16 was Bowie Hickey, 51, TJ’s second cousin, and “aunt” in traditional Aboriginal custom. The Aboriginal boy’s death in February ignited a violent confrontation between police and Aborigines in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. Bowie has lived in Redfern for 35 years. She spoke to the World Socialist Web Site, describing how TJ had moved in with her only a week before he died |
| Panel may rule on museum remains 28 July 2004 - icberkshire - An advisory panel could be set up to adjudicate in cases where museums refuse to repatriate human remains to their country of origin. Arts minister Estelle Morris has launched a consultation on the proposal to deal with contested claims and whether museums need more regulation or a code of practice on holding human remains. • Care of Historic Human Remains Consultation - Department for Culture, Media and Sport • Bone return consultation launched - BBC • Ancestral remains to 'go home' - Manchester Evening News |
| Crown Jewels Down Under 27 July 2004 - CIRCA Art Magazine (Ireland) - A battle has begun between the British Museum Goliath and an unlikely underdog opponent comprising the Dja Dja Wurrung Native Title Group. Australian Aboriginal artifacts, on loan from the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Museum of Victoria in Melbourne have been seized by the representatives of the Aboriginal tribe that originally owned them. |
| La question maorie divise la Nouvelle-Zélande 26 Juli 04 - Le Monde (France) - La sensation s'appelle Keisha Castle-Hughes. Cette gamine née d'une mère maorie et d'un père australien est devenue, à 13 ans, la plus jeune comédienne jamais nominée aux Oscars dans la catégorie de la meilleure actrice. L'héroïne du film Paï n'a pas remporté la fameuse statuette dorée. Mais tout le peuple néo-zélandais a salué d'une même voix l'éclosion de ce nouveau talent. Le long-métrage dans lequel Keisha a joué racontait l'histoire d'une petite fille qui souhaitait succéder à son grand-père à la tête de la tribu maorie dont elle était issue. Un sujet sensible dans une culture où l'héritage des responsabilités ne concerne jamais la gent féminine. |
| The Cradle of Civilisation 26 July 2004 - Anorak (UK) - Visitors to the British Museum are often amazed that a small collection of islands off the coast of mainland Europe should have spawned so many artefacts of world renown. One thinks of the mummies excavated from the Melton Mowbray pyramids, the Rosetta Stone of Basildon, the Elgin Marbles, saved for posterity from the Parthenon at Peterborough. |
| Waves of change 26 July 2004 - Telegraph (UK) - Phillip Knightley reviews Great Southern Land: a New History of Australia by Frank Welsh |
| Aboriginal tribe seizes museum artifacts 26 July 2004 - United Press International -- Australia's Dja Dja Wurrung tribe has seized 150-year-old aboriginal artifacts on loan to a Melbourne museum from Britain, it was reported Monday. • British museums up in arms after Aborigines grab loaned art - AFP • Una tribu impide la devolución de dos grabados al Museo Británico - La Voz De Galicia • Museum collections: Letter from the Director of the Museum of London - The Times • Aboriginal tribe seeks return of artefacts - Daily Mail |
| Aborigines grab art on loan from Britain 26 July 2004 - The Times (UK) - The earliest surviving Aboriginal bark etchings have been seized in Australia along with a ceremonial headdress while on loan from the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The move has sent a tremor through the international museum community because it will have such an impact on future loans to exhibitions as collectors, both private and public, are likely to refuse to part with prized objects which could be seized under another country’s laws. • Family tree and a question of bark • Australian Tribes Seek Return of Native Artefacts - Press Association • UK exhibits seized in Australia - BBC • Row erupts over Aboriginal artefacts - The Guardian (UK) • Community pushes for return of artefacts • Minister weighs in to artefacts stoush • Museum stoush heats up over artefacts' return • Petition calls for return of Koori etchings |
| Philip, der Feinfühlige 24 July 2004 - Stern (Germany) - Der Gatte von Königin Elisabeth II. ist nicht gerade für seine Ausführungen auf höchstem diplomatischen Niveau bekannt. Neuester Fauxpas: Prinz Philip bezeichnete eine Rollstuhlfahrerin als Sicherheitsrisiko. |
| The whole world in our hands 24 July 2004 - The Guardian (UK) - Controversy over ownership of its treasures obscures the British Museum's purpose. By offering everyone insights into cultural history, argues its director Neil MacGregor, the museum promotes a greater understanding of humanity |
| Populations en quete de droit 23 July 2004 - Libération (France) - La haute commissaire aux droits de l'homme, Louise Arbor, dansant au coeur de la grande ronde de célébration en l'honneur de Leonard Peltier, Indien lakota anishinabe, détenu depuis vingt-neuf ans dans une prison américaine et reconnu prisonnier politique par Amnesty international. Hier à Genève, dans le parc des Nations unies en marge de l'ouverture de la Journée internationale des peuples autochtones, c'était une vision surprenante. Mais représentative d'une volonté de l'ONU de faire progresser la prise de conscience internationale face aux discriminations dont souffrent des peuples spoliés de leur terre, dépossédés de leur culture, profondément niés. |
| Presentation to the Twenty Second session of
the Working Group on Indigenous Populations 23 July 2004 - Joint Statement on behalf of FAIRA, Forest Peoples Programme, Innu Council of Nitassinan, Ogiek Cultural Initiatives Programme, and Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links - Mr Chairman, with reference to the difficulties currently being experienced in finalising the text of the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we would like to make specific reference to the position of the United Kingdom on collective human rights. As UK or Commonwealth-based organisations we condemn the position stated by the UK government that collective human rights for indigenous peoples do not exist. |
| Aboriginal challenger for Deputy Prime Minister's
NSW Outback seat 19 July 2004 - ENIAR - An Aboriginal sheep farmer and rights activist, Michael Anderson, is taking on the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, for the seat of Gwydir in the coming federal election. Michael, 53, of Goodooga, is standing for The Greens and is campaigning on rural and Aboriginal issues. |
| From outback to outrage 16 July 2004 - Independent (UK) - This book is Germaine Greer's brilliant and original - but highly provocative - solution to Australia's problems. She wants every Australian whitefella and whitesheila to sit down in front of a mirror and say, "I live in an Aboriginal country". She says that this simple declaration could change Australia and its relationship with the rest of the world. • Fantasies under the river gums - The Spectator (UK) Other reviews of 'Whitefella Jump Up' - InLondon.com - Gnist (Norway) - Amazon (UK) - New Stateman (UK) |
Australian Aborigines look forward to election
with hope |
| Aboriginal dance in step with modernity 15 July 2004 - International Herald Tribune - Thirty-eight-year-old Stephen Page, the 10th of 12 children who grew up in assisted housing in the subtropical Australian town of Brisbane, burst onto the world stage with his spectacular choreography of "Awakenings," the indigenous segment of the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. For a bit more than 11 minutes, 3 billion people around the world watched 1,000 indigenous dancers from the red gorges of the Kimberley and the tropical far north of Arnhem Land to the baked earth of the Central Desert, a diverse range of clans each with their own language and cultural traditions, perform their dances and music. |
| Australia looks for Pacific solution to
nuclear waste problem 14 July 2004 - AFP - Prime Minister John Howard proposed Wednesday sending Australia's low-level nuclear waste to an offshore island after being forced to abandon plans for a radioactive waste dump on a remote mainland site. The repository was to have been built on a sheep farm acquired for the purpose near Woomera in South Australia, but after years of wrangling with state authorities, Prime Minister John Howard said his government had dropped the plan. • Resistance stopped Australian nuclear dump - ENIAR • Why Howard dumped the dump |
| Australian children in sea ordeal 13 July 2004 - BBC -Three children have been found on a remote island in northern Australia, six days after their dinghy sank in choppy seas. The children, aged between 10 and 15, swam to safety, and survived on coconut milk and shellfish. • Local knowledge saved children • Children survive six days stuck on island • Oysters, plums and coconut milk: how children survived on a desert island - The Guardian (UK) |
| Aboriginal art debuts in Greece 10 July 2004 - Ekathimerini (Greece) - An exhibition focusing on the art of indigenous Australians opened recently at the New Building of the Benaki Museum, situated on Pireos Street. At the new Benaki wing, the new exhibition joins the “Periplous” photography exhibition and the “Ptychoseis — Folds & Pleats” exhibition — all three shows will remain on display throughout the summer. |
| Kobia expresses dismay at deteriorating Aboriginal
situation in Australia 9 July 2004 - World Council of Churches - "The right to self-determination is an inalienable right of Australian Aboriginals. It is unacceptable that in a democratic civilized country like Australia, the government denies the basic rights of the original inhabitants of the land," said World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia in his first public address in Australia. |
| L'oscuro segreto dell'Australia (Australia's
Dark Secret) 7 July 2004 -New Statesman (UK) -Cosa c'è nel retro delle splendide immagini da cartolina australiane? Segregazione e razzismo. Nel suo ultimo editoriale per il New Statesman, John Pilger commenta uno straordinario documentario della BBC, che indaga le radici dell’eccezionale rivolta di febbraio dei nativi australiani, gli Aborigeni. |
| Australia's Dark Secret 7 July 2004 - New Statesman (UK) - On 8 July, BBC television showed an outstanding documentary called The Boy from the Block ... The reporter is David Akinsanya. I heard about his film when I was in Sydney earlier this year. He is a black Briton with a way of reporting that is devoid of television's cliches and veiled insincerity. In his film, he achieves what his Australian equivalents rarely do - that is, the few who try. He tells the truth about the heartbreaking, shaming treatment and abandonment of Aboriginal Australia. |
The no worries society |
| UK Museums Association backs licensing body
for human remains 6 July 2004 - The Museums Association has published a response to the Church Archaeology Human Remains Working Group Report, which recommends a licensing body to oversee the use of human remains by museums. The response states: 'A licensing authority would ensure that a set of minimum standards for best practice could be established and only those adhering to such standards would be able to retain human remains.' • Church Archaeology and Human Remains Working Group: Consultation Document On Guidelines On The Treatment Of Christian Burials In Archaeological Projects |
| Professional Savages - Captive Lives and
Western Spectacle 3 July 2004 - ENIAR - The Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London saw the launch on 24 June of Roslyn Poignant's new book 'Professional Savages - Captive Lives and Western Spectacle' which is the result of many years travel, research and detective work through Australia, America and Europe. • History of horrors |
| Australian Aboriginal Political Party Emerges
Out of ATSIC Abolition 2 July 2004 - Cultural Survival - Three months ago, when Australian Prime Minister John Howard shut down the country’s only elected government agency representing indigenous people, his reasoning was based in the power of "mainstreaming." Recently, a group of activists led by Aboriginal musician and filmmaker Richard Frankland have banned together to try to make sure that doesn’t happen. In May, they announced the formation of a pro-indigenous political party called Your Voice, which hopes to run indigenous candidates in marginal Parliament seats in elections tilted for this October. |
| Rock painting among stars of aboriginal
art show in London 1 July 2004 - AFP - Leading works of Australian aboriginal art due to go under the hammer later this year in Australia went on show in central London, the first time Britain's capital has played host to such an exhibition. • Sotherby's Australia To Offer The Largest And Most Valuable Collection Of Australian Indigenous Art Ever Assembled For sale By Auction • Aboriginal art set to top $15 million |
| Condom campaign to indigenous people 28 June 2004 - UPI - An Australian charity says special marketing techniques are making its "snake" condom popular among Aborigines in Victoria. |
| The Long Trail to Apology 28 June 2004 - New York Times - All manner of unusual things can happen in Washington in an election year, but few seem so refreshing as a proposed official apology from the federal government to American Indians — the first ever — for the "violence, maltreatment and neglect" inflicted upon the tribes for centuries. A resolution of formal apology for "a long history of official depradations and ill-conceived policies" has been quietly cleared for a Senate vote, with proponents predicting passage. Tribal leaders have been offering mixed reactions of wariness ("words on paper") and approval somewhat short of delight ("a good first step"). • Actions would speak louder than apology, tribes say - The Kansas City Star • Journey toward reconciliation The past flows into the present - Minneapolis Star Tribune |
| Ancient land of art, myth and tourism: Australian
Tourist Board 27 June 2004 - Independent (UK) - The ancient baked red earth Aboriginal Art side of things is what they're selling in the new Australia Tourist Board commercial. |
| Honoring Australia for Misguided Policies 25 June 2004 - Forward (USA) - On Howard's support for the United States and Israel, there can be no question. The war on terrorism has been a major concern of Jewish organizations around the world since the September 11 attacks, and the Australian prime minister's steadfast backing of Washington and Jerusalem no doubt factored into his being honored. But Howard's record in and out of government stands against almost every significant domestic policy for which the AJCommittee stands. |
| Australian court upsets government plan for desert
nuclear waste dump 24 June 2004 - AFP - Australia's federal court on Thursday overturned the government's seizure of a remote outback sheep station where it wants to build the country's first nuclear waste dump. Prime Minister John Howard's administration immediately said it would challenge the ruling. |
| Cathy Freeman tells her story 24 June 2004 - Telegraph (UK) - The Cathy Freeman story has always been an extraordinary trackside tale - fairytale in fact - of talent, training and ultimately triumph. That much was always available for public consumption and has been well documented. What we didn't know was the full extent of her personal dramas and tangled relationships away from the great athletics stadiums. • Cathy 's prayers were answered - Belfast Telegraph |
| Reception in honour of the Amerindian peoples,
Paris 23 June 2004 - Speech by M. Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic - It is a great joy and very moving for me to welcome a delegation of Amerindian representatives to the Elysée Palace, as I had the pleasure of doing eight years ago, on 20 June 1996. |
| Chirac veut lutter contre la "dissolution"
des peuples premiers 23 juin 2004 - Liberation (France) - Jacques Chirac a déclaré mercredi que la France refusait "la fatalité d'une dissolution progressive" des peuples premiers et a appelé de ses voeux une "rupture" politique et juridique afin de reconnaître leurs particularismes en droit international. • Chirac: "il est temps que la dignité des peuples autochtones soit protégée" - AFP • Acques Chirac reçoit les peuples amérindiens à l'Elysée - Presse Canadienne (Canada) |
| Hounded out of Australia for speaking the truth
about Aborigines 22 June 2004 - Blink (UK) - A black filmmaker who made a television documentary on Aborigines has been hounded out of Australia after receiving death threats BBC journalist David Akinsanya was forced to leave Australia ahead of schedule following a newspaper interview he gave to at Sydney newspaper criticising Australians their treatment of Aborigines. • Aboriginals: Foreigners in their own land? • The Boy from The Block: Send us your comments |
| Art for the masses in transit 21 June 2004 - International Herald Tribune - PARIS: Chances are there is a new exhibition opening near you - somewhere between check-in and baggage claim. In an effort to humanize terminals and entertain waiting passengers, airports have woken up to the power of art and design. Choosing works is often a political as well as an artistic exercise; a significant portion of Melbourne's collection is devoted to the work of aboriginal artists. |
| We can dream too 19 June 2004 - The Guardian (UK) - The day white Australians can look in the mirror and say 'I am Aboriginal' is the day their tormented country will start to heal, argues Germaine Greer. There is only one way to escape from an impasse, and that is to turn back to the point where you went wrong, sit down on the ground and have a think about it. I've seen too much of the frantic grief that is eating the heart out of Aboriginal communities not to have racked my brain for years trying to imagine a way of healing it, but I'm not here offering yet another solution to the Aborigine problem. Rather I want to suggest an end to the problematisation of Aborigines. Blackfellas are not and never were the problem. They were the solution, if only whitefellas had been able to see it. |
| Uluru Rock Turns a Deep Purple 19 June 2004 - Daily Record (Scotland) - New pictures show that one of Australia's most famous attractions has changed colour almost overnight. |
| Dream Time Lottery Win 19 June 2004 - Daily Mirror (UK) - Aboriginal great-gran Iris Curley thought life couldn't get any better after she bought her first home for £11,000 aged 64. The mum of seven knew her pension would cover the three-bedroom prefab's mortgage in Australia's outback. But now the payments should be a little easier to make - thanks to a £6million Powerball lottery win. |
| Ancestral bones to return to Australia 17 June 2004 - Ann Arbor News(USA) - Ted Bailey loved boomerangs, not bones. So when the bones of four Australian Aborigines turned up in a box of artifacts sent to him nearly 20 years ago, the Ann Arbor resident decided to find somebody who wanted them. He never thought it would lead to this. On Wednesday, Bailey looked on as two Australian Aborigines took possession of the bones in a solemn ceremony organized by the University of Michigan. |
| La antorcha olímpica inicia en Sídney
su periplo por los cinco continentes 17 Junio 2004 - La Voz de Galicia (Spain) - La antorcha olímpica ha arrancado en Sídney su periplo por los cinco continentes de la mano de la atleta aborigen Cathy Freeman, a 70 días de la ceremonia de inauguración de los Juegos Olímpicos de Atenas. • Tocha OlÍmpica inicia viagem mundial - Correio da Manhã. (Portugal) • Freeman first [sic] Aboriginal Australian to win gold - ESPN |
| Prime stupidity 16 June 2004 - Wisden CricInfo - Around the rest of the cricket-playing world his comments were viewed through a racist prism. This was as unavoidable as it was unfair. After all, he is a prime minister best known internationally for turning away boatloads of asylum seekers and refusing to say sorry to generations of Aboriginal children stolen from their families. A month before volunteering his inexpert opinion on Murali, Howard abolished ATSIC – the democratically elected Aboriginal body – without bothering to consult anyone or come up with a suitable alternative. It is no wonder if Murali now feels he had little alternative. |
| Aborigines watch their hopes betrayed again 15 June 2004 - New York Times - Black Australian lives, men's especially, are generally 20 years shorter than white ones. The death last month of Djerrkura, the great Aboriginal leader from the Northern Territory, conformed to these statistics. He died early, at age 54. Through three turbulent years in the mid-1990s, Djerrkura was chairman of the embattled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. His fight for self-determination and full participation in the Australian government endures among the Aborigines. And he was not long gone before they had to begin their battle anew. |
| Cinematic gems from Down Under 13 June 2004 - Jerusalem Post - While it's no secret that a lot of good films come out of Australia (My Brilliant Career, Gallipoli, and Rabbit-Proof Fence to mention a few), an Australian Film Festival is long overdue here. Now, lovers of Aussie film can rejoice, because an Australian film festival is starting this week at the Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv cinematheques, and will run until the end of the month. |
| Aboriginals of Australia: Amnesty International
report 2004 9 June 2004 - Amnesty International - Domestic violence against Aboriginal women and children and indefinite detention of child asylum-seekers were prominent themes in the domestic human rights debate. |
| Grande exposition d’artistes aborigènes
contemporains à Marseille 5 Juin 2004 - AFP - Le musée public de la Vieille Charité à Marseille accueille jusqu’au 3 octobre sous le titre "paysages rêvés" une grande exposition consacrée aux artistes aborigènes contemporains de la communauté de Balgo (Australie). |
| A Obsessão Jimmie Durham 5 Junho 2004 - Público (Portugal) - O artista Jimmie Durham, um índio norte-americano de 64 anos, parece estar a tornar-se numa obsessão na Bienal de Sydney, uma das mais importantes do mundo e que este ano é comissariada pela portuguesa Isabel Carlos. |
| ATSIC Denied Opportunity to Succeed, say Aboriginal
activists 4 June 2004 - It was a last ditch effort. After five years of scandal had crippled the only elected governmental agency representing indigenous people in Australia, an independent three-member review panel went to work. |
| UK students look Down Under 3 June 2004 - BBC - "They want to find out what's happening with Aboriginal land rights. They go out to Australia and discover it is a much more complex place. " |
| Djerrkura, chef de file aborigène
australien 2 Juin 2004 - Le Monde (France) - Un des principaux chefs de file aborigènes australiens, Djerrkura, est mort, mercredi 26 mai, d'un arrêt cardiaque à l'hôpital de Nhulunbuy (Territoire du Nord). Il était âgé de 54 ans. • Djerrkura, 54, Who Led Aboriginal Rights Group, Dies - New York Times |
| Indigenous doctors urged to take on leadership
role 1 June 2004 - Medical News Today (UK) - Aboriginal leader Lowitja O'Donoghue has told an international health conference in far north Queensland that Indigenous Australians are at a dangerous point in history. |
| Abolition of ATSIC Puts Indigenous Representation
At Risk 28 May 2004 - Cultural Survival - The Australian government announced in April that the only government agency representing the country’s indigenous peoples will disband. • ATSIC Denied Opportunity to Succeed, say Aboriginal activists |
| Indigenous Peoples Funding and Resource Guide 27 May 2004 - Compiled by International Funders for Indigenous Peoples and First Peoples Worldwide, this guide was created to assist indigenous development projects, due to the great and urgent need for financial resources to improve the situation of traditional communities. |
| Every day is a sorry day for indigenous health:
Australian Medical Association 26 May 2004 - Medical News Today (UK) - AMA (Australian Medical Association) President, Dr Bill Glasson, said the AMA today acknowledges the plight of many Indigenous Australians and the impact that past events have had on the health and wellbeing of many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. |
| Crocodile experts back safari plan 25 May 2004 - BBC - International crocodile experts have backed a controversial plan in Australia to allow safari hunting of saltwater crocodiles. The Northern Territory government already allows limited hunting by landowners, and is now proposing to let tourists join in. |
| Aborigines count cost of mine 25 May 2004 - BBC - To the ancient Mirarr people of Australia's Northern Territory, the Ranger uranium mine has left a painful scar on their tribal lands. A recent contamination scare has again exposed the brittle relationship between aboriginal groups and mining companies. The Ranger facility, which lies within the Kakadu National Park, was temporarily shut down in March after workers were accidentally exposed to water polluted with uranium. |
| Rail disruption blamed on didgeridoo 20 May 2004 - London Evening Standard - A didgeridoo sparked two terror alerts on the Wimbledon to Blackfriars line when a train driver twice mistook it for a rocket launcher. |
| Indigenous Peoples Speak Out: The Permanent
Forum on Indigenous Issues May 20 2004 - Cultural Survival - More than 1,000 indigenous people and indigenous rights advocates are gathered at the United Nations in New York City for the third session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. |
| New auction record set in London for Aboriginal
Photographs 19 May 2004 - Bonhams - Thirty-one 19th Century photographic prints of Aborigines by J W Lindt of Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, sold in London at Bonhams for a new auction record of Aus $135,000. There were sighs of relief amongst the Yaegel local Aboriginal people of the Maclean District of North Coast NSW when a collection of photographs of Aborigines was repatriated to Australia last night (Tuesday, May 18) at Bonhams first London Sale of Photography. |
| La Tierra tiene una nueva era (The Earth
has a new era) 19 mayo 2004 - BBC Mundo - Los geólogos han agregado un nuevo período al calendario oficial de la historia de la Tierra.El período Ediacaran cubre un lapso de 50 millones de años de nuestro planeta, desde 600 millones de años atrás hasta hace 542 millones de años. |
| Australia's Crimminal Past - A History Lesson
for Muslims 12 May 2004 - PakNews.Com - Some have also quietly pointed to its criminal past, as many of their forefathers were convicts, shipped from England. Subsequently, these white Australians have built a savage history by annihilating the indigenous Aboriginal population. All of this has contributed towards developing an innate desire to murder defenceless people and hence their enthusiasm for war. Such a view is a gross generalisation and may be bordering on racism and personally I do not subscribe to. |
| Boomerang is British? 11 May 2004 - ILKLEY (Reuters) - A best-selling author says he has evidence the boomerang was invented by Yorkshire dwellers rather than Australian aborigines, but the claim may not fly. • Boomerangs a 'British invention' - BBC • Give us our boomerang back - Guardian • Brit claims Aussie legend - Sky News • Play miniBrits & Win mini iPods - viralmonitor |
| UN Forum: Indigenous Women Need Rights, Health
Care 11 May 2004 - UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Native women die earlier, have more children and are more frequently attacked by the men in and out of their community, according to delegates attending a U.N. forum on indigenous people. |
| Mulheres indígenas têm menos direitos,
diz fórum da ONU 11 May 2004 - NAÇÕES UNIDAS - Reuters - Mulheres indígenas morrem mais cedo, têm mais filhos e são agredidas por homens de dentro e de fora de suas comunidades com mais frequência, disseram delegados reunidos em um fórum da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) sobre povos indígenas. |
| Aborigines launch political party 10 May 2004 - BBC - Australia's aborigines have formed their own political party. Organisers said the party, to be called Your Voice, was born out of frustration at government policies and the continued marginalisation of indigenous people. |
| UN Secretary-General's address to the opening
of third session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 10 May 2004 - New York - I welcome you all to the Third Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and offer a special welcome to the indigenous women of the world, who are the special theme of this Session. |
| Annan calls for solidarity and respect as UN
indigenous peoples forum opens 10 May 2004 – With native peoples worldwide continuing to encounter systemic prejudice and discrimination, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on the international community to confront such ill-will head on, in a spirit of solidarity and respect, to help indigenous peoples overcome a history of inequality. |
| Paper Trail Grows at U.N. Indigenous Forum 8 May 2004 - MONTREAL (IPS) - The lengthy list of reports submitted to the only full-time United Nations body dedicated to indigenous peoples prior to its 2004 session is a sign of its success, say some observers. For others, it is a bad omen. |
| Forget that frontier spirit stuff: Australians
are neither adventurous nor subversive 8 May 2004 - The Spectator (UK) - The name of the station seemed to ring a bell. An hour or so south of Sydney, and through the window of my double-decker Australian railway carriage, I could read the sign ‘Thirroul’. Wasn’t that the little seaside town where D.H. Lawrence stayed with his wife, Frieda, and where he began his novel Kangaroo? Did the couple not stay in a bungalow here close to the Pacific and where the story starts? |
| TJ Hickey and the plight of
young Aboriginal Australians 6 May 2004 - World Socialist Web Site - Less than three months after the death of seventeen-year-old Aboriginal boy Thomas “TJ” Hickey on February 14 this year, the Australian media has virtually buried the issue. To the extent it is even referred to, it is portrayed as a tragic and unfortunate accident, with no wider social significance. |
| Assemblee Generale 2004 d' I.C.R.A. International
(16eme Annee) 5 May 2004 - Le Conseil d’Administration d’ICRA a le plaisir d’inviter les adherent(e)s a participer a l’Assemblee Generale d’ICRA International. |
| Analysis: The slow march to corporate accountability 3 May 2004 - Ethical Corporation - In less than a decade there has been a fundamental revolution in the debate on corporate responsibility. The full breadth of companies’ impact on the social and physical environment of their operations, particularly in developing countries, is now at the forefront of debate. |
| Bullie's House: Review 29 April 2004 - Guardian (UK) - On a Christian mission in outback Australia in the 1950s, the old and new worlds co-exist uneasily. Bullie, a young Aboriginal whose house has been blown away, is caught in the middle. Was it a freak climatic incident or the wrath of the Aboriginal thunder god? Or even the work of the white man's god? |
| International Dance Day -
Year 2004 - International Dance Day Message 29 April 2004 -International Theatre Institute/UNESCO - Stephen Page: Dance is the original most ancient form of human expression. Through the body and physical language, dance has a powerful connection with the emotional and spiritual worlds. |
| Study: Australian Aborigines die younger than
other indigenous populations 27 April 2004 - Associated Press - Australian Aborigines are dying much younger than indigenous people in the United States, Canada and New Zealand, a study by Canada's University of Western Ontario revealed Tuesday. |
| New Order in the Court: Aboriginal lawbreakers
in Victoria can now ask to be sentenced with input from fellow Kooris 27 April 2004 - Time Pacific - He's just 22, but already toby has spent eight years in and out of institutions and jail. His life has been a hellish rollercoaster of heroin and crime, and doing time has done nothing to halt it. Today he's been back in court: too many missed appointments for a drug treatment program have put his bail at risk. But he's been given another chance, perhaps his last, and he knows it. "I've never had a better opportunity than I've got today," he says. "It makes you think people have faith in you." |
| UK: government rejects collective
rights for tribal peoples 23 April 2004 - Survival International - Reversing a century of progress in the recognition of human rights, the UK government has now decided that collective human rights do not exist. If allowed to become official policy, this threatens to harm tribal peoples around the world. |
| Auge in Auge mit fast acht Meter langen
Krokodilen 21 April 2004 - Hamburger Abendblatt - Gerade sind wir in Darwin, der Hauptstadt des Northern Territorys in Australien angekommen. Diese Provinz gehört zu den am dünnsten besiedelten Gebieten der Erde. Einzelne Rinderfarmen sind größer als die Schweiz. Auf der einzigen Verbindungsstraße zwischen den wenigen Ortschaften fährt man oft stundenlang, ohne einem Fahrzeug zu begegnen. Jetzt zur Regenzeit ist es an der Küste überall grün, im Landesinneren dominieren roter Sand und Steinwüste. |
| UN human rights commission extends mandate
of expert on indigenous rights 21 April 2004 – UN News - The mandate of the United Nations human rights expert who records and tries to help correct violations of the rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people has been renewed for another three years by the UN Commission on Human Rights. |
Aborigines put curse on Australian PM |
| Policemen sacked for KKK prank 20 April 2004 - Guardian (UK) - As a force struggling to shake off a racist image, the Western Australia police hardly needed a speed camera catching two officers racing through a town centre wearing Ku Klux Klan-style hoods. The incident in August 2001 was condemned by officers, before it was discovered that the culprits driving at more than twice the speed limit were colleagues in an unmarked police car. |
| Aborigines Say Australia Pushes Their Plight
to Sideline 18 April 2004 - New York Times - The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard has pushed the needs of the Aborigines to the sidelines, with few complaints from his white constituency. |
| Booze ban extended for Aborigines 17 April 2004 - BBC - Alcohol restrictions have been brought in at several Aboriginal communities in northern Australia. The total number of settlements where curbs on alcohol have been introduced in a bid to cut assaults and domestic violence now numbers 17. |
| The Wukindi Rom Project: Dispute Resolution
Aboriginal-Style 15 April 2004 - Cultural Survival - The Yolngu (Aborigines) of northern Australia will join with leading exponents of mediation to offer a cross-cultural workshop in dispute resolution this June. The Wukindi Rom Project seeks to engage people in an exploration of the similarities and differences of approach between indigenous and non-indigenous peace-making. |
| Howard axes Aboriginal body 15 April 2004 - BBC - Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced plans to abolish the country's top Aboriginal body. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was created to represent the country's impoverished indigenous population. • Australia Axes Top Aboriginal Body - Reuters • Aborigines Condemn Australian Government - Associated Press • Outrage as Australia abolishes 'failed' Aboriginal council - Independent (UK) • Aboriginal leader warns of potential violence - International Herald Tribune • Corrupt' aboriginal group is abolished - Daily Telegraph (UK) |
| Prohíben venta de alcohol en Australia 15 Abril 2004 - Agencia EFE - El gobierno del estado de Queensland, en el norte de Australia, ha prohibido la venta y posesión de alcohol en varias zonas de aborígenes para reducir los problemas sociales y de salud que causa su consumo entre los indígenas. • Aborigines banned from storing alcohol in homes - Scotsman |
| Rio’s uranium contamination scare
grows as indigenous group calls for regulatory overhaul 14 April 2004 - Ethical Corporation World News - The uranium contamination scare at Rio Tinto subsidiary Energy Resources Australia has intensified following allegations of more contaminations at the company’s Ranger uranium oxide mine in northern Australia. |
| Pacific islands appeal to UK for 'slave voyages'
compensation 13 April 2004 - Guardian (UK) - The government of the Pacific country of Vanuatu is to appeal to Britain and France for compensation for 19th century "slave voyages" which saw 62,000 Melanesians uprooted to work in the sugarcane fields of Queensland and Fiji. Thousands of Pacific islanders were kidnapped or tricked by European and South American traders and taken away for manual labour in Pacific colonies in the late 19th century. |
| People of Shetland unite to save failed
asylum-seekers from deportation 11 April 2004 - Sunday Herald (Scotland) - Thirty miles south in the island capital, Lerwick, Tanya Koolmatrie, 30, and her Shetlander partner Davie Thomason, 55, play with their baby boy Magnus-Ché – that’s Ché, as in Ché Guevara – in the house where Thomason’s parents and grandparents lived and died. Thomason and Koolmatrie, an Aboriginal Australian, met in southeast Australia five years ago, but decided to return to his native land in June 2002 to build a future together. That future looks to be shortlived since Koolmatrie is also facing deportation. Thomason says if Tanya is forced to leave with young Magnie, he will not hesitate to join them, and another young family will have turned their backs on the Northern Isles. • Community stands together to try and stop deportations- The Shetland Times • Second Shetland deportation row erupts - Grampian TV News • Shetland won’t let families be deported - Shetland News • Shetland pleas to be reheard - Guardian (UK) |
| Les aborigènes, peintres du temps 8 Avril, 2004 - Le Monde (France) - Le Muséum de Lyon puis la Vieille Charité de Marseille exposent les peintures que les Aborigènes australiens créent depuis une trentaine d'années. Leur succès international et les transformations de cet art, inscrit dans la lignée des anciens tableaux de sable rituels, pose de nombreuses questions. |
| Scientists to study industrial damage to Aboriginal
rock art 7 April 2004 - Associated Press - Scientists have begun a major study in Australia's remote northwest into how mining and pollution is damaging the world's largest concentration of ancient rock art, a state government announced Tuesday. |
| Aborigines fight for their money back / In pictures: Victims and campaigners 7 April 2004 - BBC News - Over the past 15 years, Australian Aborigines have fought to receive official title to their ancestral lands and for governments to acknowledge the sad history of the removal of their children. Now they have a new target in their sights: the state-sanctioned confiscation of the wages earned by tens of thousands of Aboriginal workers for much of the 20th century. |
| Agreement between Rio Tinto subsidiary
and traditional owners over uranium mine 7 April 2004 - Ethical Corporation Asia News - Energy Resources Australia reaches agreement with land owners regarding the controversial Jabiluka mine in the country. |
| Pope seeks Aboriginal welfare update 2 April 2004 - Reuters - A Queensland Bishop says the Pope has asked about the welfare of Aborigines during a visit by Australian Catholic Bishops. |
| The Australian Indigenous Band 'Kross
Kulcha' is playing in St Petersburg on 22-25 April 2004 April 2004 - Young Kimberley band Kross Kulcha has been invited to play at the SKIF-8 in St Petersburg Russia this year, after performing at the Perth International Festival’s Indigenous Showcase in 2003. |
Aboriginal males unlikely to live beyond
mid-40s, says report |
| Patrimoine. L'Unesco reconnait les richesses
“orales” et “immaterielles” de l'humanite Avril 2004 - Liberation - Leur nom signifie «pays des medecins» ou «herboristes originaires de la terre sacree de medecine». |
| El didjeridoo contiene todos los sonidos
de la naturaleza 31 Marzo, 2004 - Diariovasco (Spain) - Empezó a tocar el didjeridoo con 20 años y quedó tan fascinado con su sonido, que viajó a Australia para aprender directamente de los aborígenes todo sobre este instrumento ancestral. Ahora publica su segundo disco, 'Didjeridu hotsak'. |
| Aborigine health 'getting worse' 30 March 2004 - BBC - An influential aid organisation says the health of many indigenous Australians is worse than that of people in the developing world. The Fred Hollows Foundations is demanding an emergency summit to address the problem |
| Fencing Off Kakadu 29 March 2004 - Time Pacific - A swimming ban at a popular spot sets off fears of a park lock-up and divides tour operators and owners. |
| Slave descendants to sue Lloyd's 29 March 2004 - BBC - Descendants of black American slaves are to sue Lloyd's of London for insuring ships used in the trade. High-profile US lawyer Edward Fagan, who secured settlements from Swiss companies in the Nazi gold case, is taking the action for 10 plaintiffs. |
| Tradition bound 28 March 2004 - Newsday - Last December in the New South Wales Parliament, a politician from a right-wing party offered his opinion on Australian Aboriginal culture: "Aboriginal civilization, if it could be referred to as that, is Stone Age." But in many parts of Australia, you could equally hear this view: Unless Aboriginal Australians are prepared to go back to living the way they had prior to the arrival of white men, then they have no claim to land rights based on their prior ownership. |
| Walkabout' actor stars in gallery 27 March 2004 - Independent (UK) - An oil painting of Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil has won the much-coveted Archibald Prize. The artist Craig Ruddy, who was awarded £14,350 in prize money said he had long admired Mr Gulpilil: "David is a man who crosses the lines that still divide two contrasting worlds ... One is an infinite world of spiritual connection with the land and universe as a whole, and the other a materialistic conformation of western civilisations". • Art win for Aboriginal portrait - BBC |
| Solace in a Box of Rocks 25 March 2004 - Los Angeles Times - Superstitious or enlightened, tourists are returning pilfered pieces of Australia's Uluru, or Ayers Rock, a sacred place to the Aborigines.Nearly every weekday, rocks sent from around the world arrive here at the headquarters of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. |
| Uranium mine in Australian national park
is closed after uranium is detected in water supply 25 March 2004 - Associated Press - A uranium mine in the middle of a pristine heritage-listed national park in northern Australia was temporarily shut down Wednesday after tests revealed increased levels of uranium in its water supply, the mine's operator announced. ERA closed the Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park after the higher-than-usual levels were found late Tuesday in water used by mine staff for drinking and showering. |
| Wellenbrecher 25 March 2004 - Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany) - Oper, Tanz und Aborigenes-Kunst: Das Festival im australischen Adelaide brachte Inszenierungen aus aller Welt ins Städtchen. |
| New research centre to save 'lost languages' 24 March 2004 - Guardian (UK) - A language is lost every two weeks, according to the head of a new centre for research into endangered languages, which is being launched today. People are increasingly choosing to teach their children more commonly used languages in a bid to help them gain work in later life, their research says. As a result half of the 6,500 languages spoken around the world are anticipated to disappear in the next century - a rate of one every fortnight. |
| Australians plan a 'less European' Botany
Bay 23 March 2004 - Telegraph (UK) - Australian authorities want to remodel Botany Bay, where Capt James Cook first landed in the country, to make it look less European and more Aboriginal. |
Too Many Cooks |
| Talk About Walkabout 19 March 2004 - Backstage (USA) - Staging Daisy in the Dreamtime is clearly a labor of love for those involved in the six-character, historically based drama, which opens this week at the Ford as a West Coast premiere. • 'Daisy' playwright finds inspiration in gutsy women - Seattle Times • Cranky heroine weakens 'Daisy' - Seattle Times |
| History colors Aboriginal artist's life: Mural
in East Atlanta reflects Australia's racist past 17 March 2004 - Atlanta Journal Constitution - Australian artist Pamela Croft, recently spearheaded an effort to paint a mural in East Atlanta that draws heavily on symbolism from Aboriginal culture and her Kooma clan. She's titled the 20-foot-tall, 100-foot-wide mural "Bringing Nations, Cultures and Communities Together" and thinks it might be the largest example of Aboriginal art in the world. |
| Inequality in Australia: Book review 15 March 2004 - Cultural Survival - Inequality in Australia is a well-written college sociology textbook that explores, with an impressive eye to detail, the changing nature of inequality in modern industrial Australia. The authors adopt an innovative approach to the task at hand, linking theoretical approaches, individual experiences, and empirical evidence. They skillfully blend Australian material with the latest developments in scholarship, applying their “model” to three broad domains—the body, the self, and politics. This division determines the book’s three parts. |
| Australian Journalist Questions ‘Stolen
Generation’ 11 March 2004 - Cultural Survival - In Australia’s Sunday Mail on February 29, journalist Andrew Bolt, in what he claims is an innocent attempt at finding the truth, denounces the existence of the ‘Stolen Generation,’ a group of 50,000-100,000 children taken from their Aboriginal parents for racist purposes by racist governments in the early years of the twentieth century, supposedly in the peoples ‘best interests.’ Claiming that not one person who was stolen can be identified anywhere on the continent, Bolt’s naïve and misguided attempt at objective reporting is causing an uproar, particularly because Australian papers are prepared to print his inflammatory remarks. |
| City of 'shotguns and sheilas' out to smarten
its image 6 March 2004 - Daily Telegraph (UK) - The remote city of Darwin, long seen by the rest of Australia as a refuge for drunks, drifters and dreamers, has launched a campaign to "re-brand" itself as an oasis of tropical sophistication. |
| Church helps soothe Australia's Aborigines 4 March 2004 - Ekklesia (UK) - The race riots in Australia's biggest city, Sydney, have focused attention on the role of the Church in helping to heal the country's fractured indigenous community reports the BBC. Dozens of police officers were injured in last month's confrontation in the inner-city district of Redfern. The violence was sparked by the death of an Aboriginal teenager, which is the subject of three investigations. • Church helps soothe Australia's Aborigines - BBC |
| Historic Election at Palm Island 4 March 2004 - Cultural Survival - A historic election is taking place at the Australian Aboriginal settlement of Palm Island, in northern Queensland. For the first time, the head of the community council is to be directly elected by the Aboriginal people. |
| Indigenous Filmmaking in Australia 2 March 2004 - World Catholic Association for Communications - SIGNIS (Pacific) - In Australia there is a real expectation that Aboriginal people should be making films about Aboriginal people, that they should take the initiative in steering the rest of the Australian filmmaking community in how indigenous people are represented on the big and small screen. |
| Why Australia is not all cuddly koalas 29 February 2004 - Aljazeera - Little J says the best thing about the Redfern race riots is that they were beamed around the world on satellite television. "They saw us," he said. "People around the world, who just think about Australia as a nice place with kangaroos and beaches and sport - now, they know the Aboriginal people are angry. And if they think we are going to lay down and do nothing, just because the police tell us to, they have got another thing coming." |
| Australien: Wut und Verzweiflung in
Redfern 28 February 2004 - Neues Deutschland (Germany) - Thomas TJ Hickey wurde am Dienstag dieser Woche in seiner Heimatstadt Walgett im australischen Outback zu Grabe getragen. Der 17-Jährige war zehn Tage zuvor in Sydneys Aborigine-Stadtteil Redfern zu Tode gekommen. Hickeys Familie und die Aborigines in Redfern sind überzeugt, dass der Junge von der Polizei in den Tod getrieben wurde. Auf der Flucht vor der Polizei sei TJ Hickey von seinem roten Mountainbike in einen Zaun gestürzt und von den eisernen Spitzen aufgespießt worden. Wenige Stunden später starb er in einem Krankenhaus in Sydney an den Folgen seiner Verletzungen. |
| Aboriginal fury over topless ban 27 February 2004 - AP - Aborigines in central Australia are furious after police interrupted a traditional dance featuring topless women, saying they will file a formal complaint to an anti-discrimination body. A group of Aboriginal women from Papunya, a remote community near Alice Springs, were practicing a dance in a public park last week ahead of a performance in Sydney when police asked them to stop, the commissioner of an elected Aboriginal council said. |
| The rich live 5 years longer 26 February 2004 - Pravda - Aboriginals, consistently among the poorest of the poor, fare even worse: They can expect to live, on average, 10 years less than a non-native. |
| Riot in the Block 25 February 2004 - Jungle World (Germany) - Kindermörder« und »Killer« – die Sprechchöre der rund hundert Jugendlichen und Erwachsenen brachten die Stimmung innerhalb der Aborigine-Community von Redfern über die örtliche Polizei auf den Punkt. Am vorletzten Sonntag lieferte sich die wütende Menge in dem Innenstadtviertel Sydneys eine Straßenschlacht mit der Polizei, die die Lage in der australischen Metropole erst nach neun Stunden wieder unter Kontrolle bekam. |
| 'If you oppress people long enough,
things will erupt. Riots will happen' 22 February 2004 - The Observer (UK) - David Fickling reports from Sydney's downtrodden Aboriginal quarter, where the death of a teenager has sparked Australia's worst race violence. |
| An Aboriginal Boy Dies, Chased by Cops:
This Week in Redfern 22 February 2004 - Counterpunch (USA) - There is a boy dead in a city morgue. A teenager. Thomas "TJ" Hickey. Dead at 17. How do you write about death? About riots? About an issue no-one in power seems to want resolved? |
| Australia's Enduring Shame 19 February 2004 - New Statesman (UK) - John Pilger: Australia, like white South Africa, has a deeply racist history of dispossession and cruelty, buttressed by "the law". But even history is a battleground, in which "revisionists" - the likes of Keith Windschuttle, a self-publishing and much-publicised "new historian" - can suggest that Tasmanian Aborigines lacked humanity and compassion. Not anywhere in the world with indigenous populations, not in North America, New Zealand, even South Africa, could you get away with such a slur. |
| Brennpunkt Redfern: Australien: Die Straßenschlachten
in Sydney sind beendet, die Probleme bleiben 19 February 2004 - Junge Welt (Germany) - Das Verhältnis zwischen der weißen Mehrheit und Australiens Ureinwohnern, den Aborigines, ist nach wie vor gespannt. Auch sechs Jahre nach der öffentlichen Entschuldigung von Regierung und Parlament für die Gewaltakte und Diskrimierungen der Vergangenheit warten die Angehörigen der Minderheit noch immer auf Gerechtigkeit und eine Behandlung als »normale Staatsbürger«. |
| Står opp 'down under': Antonsen og Golden
til Sydneys opera 18 February 2004 - Verdens Gang (Norway) - Straks han er ferdig med å imitere samer i «Team Antonsen», reiser Atle Antonsen sammen med Johan Golden til Australia for å tøyse med en ny urbefolkningsgruppe: aboriginene. |
| 'Violence damages the Aboriginal cause':
The Australian papers respond to the clashes 18 February 2004 - The Guardian (UK) |
| Disregarded and dispossessed 17 February 2004 - Guardian (UK) - The message given out by government is perfectly clear: comfortably-off white Australians who feel their culture is being threatened by the country's modest refugee intake must have their views respected, even to the point of driving children to depression and self-harm in outback concentration camps. However, poor black Australians who feel their culture has been destroyed by 200 years of dispossession should just buck their ideas up and get over it. |
| Race, riots and an Australian national
disgrace 17 February 2004 - Independent (UK) - Editorial: There will be no substantial improvement as long as white Australians and the country's political leaders refuse to recognise the state of race relations fort the national disgrace it is. The best that could come out of the 2004 Redfern riot is that it could give an impetus to change. |
| Eleven years later, and promises have
done little for the people living in the Block 17 February 2004 - Guardian (UK) - In December 1992 the then Australian prime minister, Paul Keating, made a startling speech in which he promised a future of renewal for Aboriginal Australia. Standing five minutes' walk away from the site of the weekend's riots in Redfern, he admitted that the country had failed the Aboriginal people. |
| Aborigines riot over boy's death 17 February 2004 - Telegraph (UK) and more - Peace was restored yesterday to an inner-city area of Sydney set ablaze by rioters in some of the worst racial violence for a decade. • Uneasy calm follows Sydney riots - BBC • Australia's lost generation - BBC • Aboriginal Leader Warns of More Violence - Reuters • Australian riot throws the spotlight on Aboriginal despair - AP • Aborigines' deep anger - AFP • Sydney mourns Aboriginal teen - BBC • Redfern, Sydney szégyenfoltja - Népszabadság Online • Les émeutes du quartier aborigène de Sydney ébranlent toute l'Australie - Le Monde |
| Aussie riot fuelled by long history
of repression 17 February 2004 - Independent (UK) -- Politicians and community leaders have appealed for calm after an unparalleled night of rioting in inner-city Sydney. |
| Schwere Ausschreitungen in Sydney 16 February 2004 -indymedia (Germany) - Bei heftigen Straßenkämpfen nach dem Tod eines 17-jährigen Aborigine in einer Vorstadt von Sydney sind 40 Polizisten verletzt worden. Aufgebrachte Jugendliche setzten in der Nacht zum Montag einen Vorstadtbahnhof in Brand, schlugen Fensterscheiben ein und bewarfen Polizisten mit Steinen und Brandsätzen. Auslöser war der Tod des 17-jährigen Thomas Hickey, der am Sonntag beim Sturz von seinem Fahrrad ums Leben kam. Seine Mutter erklärte, der Junge sei von Polizisten verfolgt worden. Die Polizei wies dies zurück. |
| Aborigines' Protest in Sydney Leaves
40 Injured 16 February 2004 - AP and more - Rioters set fire to a train station and pelted police officers with gasoline bombs in an Aborigine neighborhood here during a nine-hour street battle on Monday that began after a teenager died, reportedly while being chased by officers. • Uroligheder i Sydney - DR Nyheder • Australia's simmering racial tensions - CNN • Sydney riots over Aborigine death - BBC • Sydney police investigate Aboriginal death - The Times • Riots in Sydney - Channel Four News • Dead boy sparks race riots - The Sun |
| "They're lucky they haven't got
a guerrilla war happening" 16 February 2004 - Infoshop - We've got to let our frustrations out and that's the only way we see fit to. They're lucky they haven't got a guerrilla war happening. Aboriginal people are peaceful people but (if) they push our buttons, mate we will go to the point where if they're going to shed blood so will we." |
Die Ausgestoßenen Australiens |
Young Aborigine glue-sniffers rob stores
for fix |
| Lust auf Laster 12 February 2004 - Die Zeit (Germany) - Wo die Luft flirrt, die Pferde wild und die Männer Kumpels sind: Unterwegs mit zwei Truckern von Perth an die Spitze Westaustraliens. |
| Moomba 5 February 2004 - Urban Legends Reference Pages - Claim: The name of the annual Moomba festival held in Melbourne, Australia, was taken from a derogatory Aboriginal term. Status: Undetermined. |
| MOLLY KELLY, 1917 TO 2004 4 February, 2004 - Jeremy Corbyn MP - For your information, 39 signatories eventually signed Early Day Motion (EDM) 558 on Molly Kelly |
| Bullie's House to tour UK February 2004 - By Thomas Keneally, Winner of the Booker Prize for Schindler's Ark, the play is the true story of Australian Aboriginals who expose their precious ranga, totems which hold the secrets of the world, to the eyes of white Australians, in the belief that the white world in return will exchange its own wisdom and its technology. |
| Diary: Mark Little 26 January 2004 -New Statesman - Why does everything I get asked about as a comedy communicator have to be about Australia? Australia Day: to me and other Aussies, it is known as "Invasion Day". The day in 1788 when England stole Australia for England. It is not a happy day for many Aussies. A few years ago, a group of Aussie Aboriginals planted the Aboriginal flag on the beach at Dover and claimed England as Aboriginal land. Laughable? Sure. Just as laughable as England's little joke back in 1788. |
Film Review: Black and White |
| Fence film inspiration dies 19 January 2004 - BBC - The woman who inspired the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence, trekking 1,000 miles as a girl to return to her Aboriginal mother, has died. Molly Kelly's nine-week journey in 1931 across the Australian outback with her sister became a symbol of the Aborigines' fight against settlers. |
| Molly Kelly 16 January 2004 - Telegraph (UK) - Molly Kelly, who died on Tuesday, probably aged 86, was forcibly removed as a child from her Aboriginal mother by the Australian authorities and sent, with her younger sister and a cousin, to a bleak government institution to be trained as a domestic servant; the story of her escape and her 1,200 mile-long trek home inspired Philip Noyce's acclaimed film Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), starring Kenneth Branagh. |
| Indigenous Peoples and the Creation of an Inclusive
International Legal System 14 January 2004 - Carnegie Council - Our guest, John Scott, focuses on a human rights-based approach to social justice for aboriginal and indigenous peoples. He has worked as a high school teacher, an aboriginal educational advisor, an indigenous policy officer, a university lecturer, and a senior manager at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. He has a particular interest in biodiversity and the protection of traditional knowledge. |
| Australian Un human rights chair 'a shame',
says Aborigine 7 January 2004 - ENIAR - How can a racist country like Australia have a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, much less chair it ? That's the question burning the gut of Aboriginal activist Michael Anderson. |
| Ruthless Rupe is recast as an angel of mercy 4 January 2004 - The Observer (UK) - A handsome crusader beats the right-wing establishment to save a black man from the gallows. The unlikely liberal hero? Young Rupert Murdoch. Now the media baron's past as a rebel with a cause is to be retold in a film starring Robert Carlyle and Charles Dance. |
| Rupert the Brave 2 January 2004 - The Guardian (UK) - In 1950s Australia, a newspaper campaign helped save the life of an Aboriginal man accused of murder. Could the hero of the tale really have been the young Rupert Murdoch? |
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