european news and media releases 2003 - 1997 : index
A return to the land of their birth for 'Stolen Generation'
20 December 2003 - Fifty years after Doris Pilkington was forcibly separated from her family, she persuaded her mother, Molly Craig, to take her back to the place where she was born; under a mulga tree on a cattle station in Western Australia's remote Pilbara region. As mother and daughter drove through Balfour Downs Station, Doris caught sight of one tree and was struck by a peculiar sensation. "I said, 'That's the one'. We stopped, and she said, 'Yes, that's it'.
Battle of the bones
12 December 2002 - Spiked! (UK) - Human bones, pieces of skin and bits of hair tucked away in museum display cases and vaults have become the subject of ferocious political battles. Many of these human remains were collected in the nineteenth century, when Western colonial expansion was at its height and there was a lust for scientific enquiry. Today, there are demands that these bones be returned to indigenous groups for reburial.
Aboriginal art under fraud threat
28 November 2003 - BBC - Australian aboriginal art is under threat after a series of high profile fraud scandals. The country's indigenous population has launched a campaign to protect its art after a number of fake imitations.
Crocodile hunting 'could help Aborigines'
27 November 2003 - Telegraph (UK) - Hunters should be allowed to kill Australia's saltwater crocodiles, officials said yesterday. The man eaters, which can be 20ft long, have been a protected species for three decades. However, a Northern Territory report says Aboriginal communities could earn thousands of pounds by allowing big game hunters to shoot crocodiles on their traditional lands.
Burying the evidence
24 November 2003 - Spiked! (UK) - Over the past decade repatriation departments have been set up in museums across America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand to return human remains to their places of origin. While research on human remains can reveal information about historic patterns of migration, lifestyle and disease - a substantial amount of energy, time and money has instead been committed to burying the evidence.
Aborigines shun rugby World Cup
17 November 2003 - BBC - From the outside it might appear that all of Australia is celebrating reaching the finals of the rugby union World Cup. But for many of the country's oldest original inhabitants, the event might just as well not be happening.
Anthony Mundine, de DreamWeaver
7 November 2003 - Boksnieuws - Anthony Mundine, een 25-jarige vanuit Australie afkomstige Super Middengewicht met Aborginal bloed in zijn aderen, presteerde het om na zeven gevechten en in een tijdsbestek van 12 maanden de Australian kampioenschap, de Pan Pacific en de P.A.B.A. kampioensgordels in zijn bezit te nemen.
Queensland indigenous art finds an international audience
6 November 2003 - Brit’s Art & Promotion - The Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency (QIAMEA), in conjunction with Brit's Art and Promotion, today announced that the special exhibition at the Great Art Exhibition 2003 will exclusively feature works by Queensland’s indigenous artists.
Premier’s Foreword, Great Art Exhibition, Dusseldorf
Aborigines back UK bones panel
5 November 2003 - BBC - Australian Aborigines have welcomed a plan to set up a panel to oversee the repatriation of human remains held by British museums and universities. But they say a wider inquiry is also needed to establish just how the body parts came into the possession of the UK institutions in the first place.
Racism on Ramsay Street?
28 October 2003 - The Perfect Blend - Erinsborough is a fictional suburb of one of Australia’s most cosmopolitan cities. Melbourne has the largest Greek population outside Greece itself, with other large communities ranging from Italian, Turkish and Spanish to Chinese and Maltese. Of course, nobody is expecting such diversity out in the suburbs, but it would be realistic to reflect a small part of this.
Tourism site is a blast
9 October 2003 - Reuters - Aboriginal community leaders on Thursday presented their plans to federal officials to turn a remote Australian wilderness site once used by Britain for nuclear testing into a tourist attraction.
List of 100 most endangered sites issued for 2004
25 September 2003 - Reuters - A 1908 explorer's hut in Antarctica, ancient palaces in war-torn Iraq, aboriginal rock carvings in Australia and Battersea Power Station in London are among the 100 Most Endangered Sites listed for conservation on Wednesday by the World Monuments Fund.
Aboriginal skulls may return home
16 September, 2003 - BBC - A Devon museum has been asked to return four Aboriginal skulls which have been part of its collection for more than 100 years. Tribal leaders from Australia have called on the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter to let them take the remains of their ancestors back home when they visit the city next month.
Curfew that targets teenage Aborigines is criticised as racist
8 September 2003 - A group of Aboriginal youngsters wanders past a row of cafés in Northbridge, Perth's nightlife district, glancing covetously at the plates of alfresco diners. The street lights cast shadows across their faces. It is curfew time: if they are not home soon, they will be picked up by police under a policy criticised as wrong-headed and racist.

Aboriginal art at Ayers Rock vanishes as wind, rain and vandalism take their toll
5 September 2003 - Australian scientists are being asked to help to preserve ancient Aboriginal rock art at Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock, which is vanishing because of wind, rain and vandalism.

Return of the native
1 September 2003 - New Humanist (UK) - On Human Rights Day 1992, the United Nations proclaimed an International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. A Decade for Indigenous Peoples was subsequently launched, to run from 1995 to 2004, and a Forum of Indigenous Peoples established. The inaugural meeting of the Forum, held in Geneva in 1996, was unfortunately disrupted by gatecrashers. A self–styled delegation of South African Boers turned up and demanded to be allowed to participate on the grounds that they too were indigenous people, and that their traditional culture was under threat from the new African National Congress government. They were unceremoniously ejected, and no doubt their motives were far from pure, but the drama might usefully have drawn attention to the difficulty of defining and identifying Indigenous People.
The Kimberley Declaration
20-23 August 2003 - International Indigenous Peoples Summit on Sustainable Development, Khoi-San Territory, Kimberley, South Africa
"We the Indigenous Peoples of the World assembled here reaffirm the Kari-Oca Declaration and the Indigenous Peoples' Earth Charter. We again reaffirm our previous declarations on human and environmental sustainability."
Australia's ancient art as modern commodity
22 August 2003 - BBC - In upmarket Sydney galleries, art from the Australian Bush is beginning to attract some serious interest. For the artists from the deserts of central Australia, this is their first visit to Sydney. But while their vivid work looks at home in this inner city setting, it is grounded in generations of tradition.
Landmark 'no-go' pledge from leading mining companies
20 August 2003 - International Council on Mining and Metals - Corporate membership of the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) - comprised of 15 of the world's largest mining and metal producing companies – has signed an undertaking to recognise existing World Heritage properties as 'no-go' areas.
Aborigines are wrong about Harry
20 August 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - It's not exactly difficult to pick sides in the dispute between Aboriginal artists and the British royal family.
Harry paints his way into outback row
19 August 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - In terms of cultural distances, they don't come much greater than Buckingham Palace and the deserts of Western Australia. But Prince Harry has unwittingly put the two worlds on a collision course with his Aboriginal-inspired A-level artworks, unveiled earlier this year as part of his 18th birthday portraits.
World: Dying Words -- Linguists Express Concern Over Fate Of Endangered Languages
15 August 2003 - Radio Free Europe - As many as half of the world's 6,000 languages face extinction in the coming decades if measures are not taken to preserve and maintain them. This was the subject of a recent conference of international linguists in the Czech capital, Prague. Participants learned of new efforts being undertaken to preserve an important part of the world's cultural heritage.
Diversity and relevance - Dream Traces: A Celebration of Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art
12 August 2003 - ENIAR - If Dream Traces and it's accompanying symposium had any main point it was to say that Aboriginal art is not what you think it is; it's extremely diffuse, not divided into urban vs. traditional – and it's evolving.
Fish farmers doing well home and away
5 August 2003 - Press and Journal Scotland - One of Scotland's leading aquaculture companies has extended a helping hand to colleagues from the other side of the globe - and to fishermen nearer home.
UN delays indigenous decision
4 August 2003 - Agence France Presse - The UN today put off a decision on the fate of an assembly representing 500 indigenous peoples, as representatives of Aborigines, native Americans, African Tuaregs and other communities pleaded for its preservation. "After 21 years of innovative but important developments in human rights, developed and coordinated by the working group, some governments are campaigning for the termination of this unique organisation," Kenneth Deer, a Mohawk Indian leader and leading member of the group told journalists.
UK Public Should Challenge Non-Human Trustees
30 July 2003 - Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) - Aboriginal leaders from Australia are calling for British citizens to join in with their protest against the Board of Trustees of the Natural History Museum. The delegation from Australia, who have travelled to the UK to receive back their ancestral remains from two museums, feel that the Aboriginal people have been deeply offended by ‘the old colonial policies’ of the Natural History Museum.
Return of Aboriginal remains
30 July 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - A museum yesterday said sorry and handed back four skulls collected from Australia's Aborigine people by colonial explorers more than a century ago. The skulls, which have been stored at Manchester museum, were handed over in a ceremony which included an antidote to any curses Manchester may have earned as a result of its sacrilege.
Manchester Museum returns Aboriginal remains to Australia - The Independent (UK)
Museum hands back Aboriginal skulls - Daily Mirror (UK)
Museum returns skulls to Oz - The Manchester News (UK)
Aborigine skulls handed back to their people - The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Museum returns Aboriginal skulls - BBC News
Aboriginal human remains to return to Australia - The Voice (UK)
Australians broaden the game's horizons
22 July 2003 - cricInfo.com (UK) - The Australian cricketers should have been playing the final day of their Test match with Bangladesh today, but instead they spent the day eating buffalo and fishing with Aborigines on the remote Tiwi Islands north of Darwin.
Buffalo, fish on Aussie plates
22 July 2003 - Agence France Presse - The Australian cricketers should have been playing the final day of their Test match with Bangladesh today, but instead they spent the day eating buffalo and fishing with aborigines on the remote Tiwi islands North of here. ‘‘It’s been a real eye-opener for us, to visit an Aboriginal community and see the culture and traditions, and the way people live,’’ captain Steve Waugh said.

Test team spreading cricket in remote Australia
22 July 2003 - AP - The world champion Australians became cricket pioneers in their own backyard during a trip to an Aboriginal community in the remote Melville Island off far north Australia.

Johnson muscles in on gold
20 July 2003 - The Times (UK) - With an Aboriginal mother and an Irish father, Johnson describes himself as “a normal Australian with a colourful background who is doing the best he can”. His best is better than any other Australian sprinter has ever achieved.
Max Dupain, Olive Cotton and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy: A Three Dog Night
19 July 2003 - Counterpunch (USA) - Some men spoke of pinstriped blacks in well paid jobs, too cozy to remember the real struggles. How money compromised the bravest of men. They told me that the new Parliament House land site is a traditional sacred birth site for Aboriginal women, and how important sacred land is for them. I said that where my children were born seemed like a sacred site, and that the NSW Carr government had sold the Royal Hospital for Women's old Paddington land site in Sydney, and the land was redeveloped. The birth of a child had meaning for these Aboriginal people, and me, but that significance was overridden by government bureaucrats and developers.
Olympic victory defines Freeman career
17 July 2003 - Daily Mirror (UK) - Not only did she have to carry the hopes of Australia's track and field team at an Olympics on home soil but also the aspirations of an entire people. As Australia's most prominent Aboriginal sports person, Freeman had been thrust into the country's 200-year struggle for reconciliation between blacks and whites when she carried the Aboriginal flag on a lap of honour during the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada -- in breach of team rules.
Freeman urged to boost Aboriginal cause
16 July 2003 - The Independent (South Africa) - Cathy Freeman has only just called time on her athletics career but politicians are already urging the Olympic champion to use her fame to improve the status of Aborigines in Australia.
Meet Australia's delightful Mrs. Doubtfire
16 July 2003 - Christian Science Monitor - Alan Carpenter, indigenous affairs minister for western Australia, has only just stepped into the radio studio when the flirting starts. "You got a wife?" coos Mary G, his host, before he's had a chance to settle in his seat. "I can sit in your lap if you want," she trills a few minutes later.
No pitch? No contest? No worries
16 July 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - An air of unreality lingers over Darwin, Australia, as palpable as the clacking of cicadas and the steamy afternoon breeze that slaps you in the face. The grandstand walls are festooned with pictures of darting, twisting Aborigines, ducking tackles and uncoiling lightning handballs, as if re-enacting some exotic ceremonial ritual. This is one corner of Australia cricket forgot.
Freeman hangs up golden spikes
16 July 2003 - Guardian (UK) - Cathy Freeman, who came to symbolise the 2000 Sydney Olympics by lighting the flame at the opening ceremony and then fulfilling the hopes of Australia by striking gold in the 400 metres, announced her retirement last night.
Athletics: 'I don't care anymore', says retiring Freeman
16 July 2003 - Independent (UK) - The Olympic 400 metres champion, Cathy Freeman, has retired. Australia's head coach, Keith Connor, revealed that her decision would take effect immediately and she would not be running in the 4x400m relay at next month's World Championships in Paris.

Freeman says she couldn't top Sydney highs
16 July 2003 - CNNSI - Cathy Freeman says she never recovered from the "traumatic" experience of living up to Australia's expectations at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Freeman calls time on career
15 July, 2003 - Irish Examiner - Olympic 400metres champion Cathy Freeman has retired from athletics.

Aboriginal art — Selling out Aboriginal culture: yesterday, and today?
15 July 2003 - ENIAR - Unfortunately, alongside the rapid development of an export market for Aboriginal Art and music in Europe, Europeans have not been able to develop a sensitivity to the cultural property rights and values of this culture. On the contrary, we find lately excrescences in Europe — in our whole observational field, but particularly in Germany — which would not have been able to survive in Australia for such a long period of time.
Police apologise for using Aborigine mugshots in squad's target practice
8 July 2003 - The Independent (UK) - Police in Queensland were forced into a humiliating climbdown yesterday, admitting they had been using mugshots of criminal suspects, including Aborigines, for target practice.

Outcry over gun target mugshots
8 July 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - Police in Queensland came under fierce criticism yesterday for using mugshots of living people for target practice.

Australia to quit using mugshots for target practice
7 July 2003- Ireland Online - Australian police today abandoned using photographs of living people, including some Aborigines, for target practice after coming under fierce criticism.
Vom Bonbonladen Hollywood ins Outback Australiens: Phillip Noyce: Long Walk Home (Australien 2002)
7 July 2003- Jump Cut (Germany) - Ein Problem politischer Filme ist die mangelnde Akzeptanz durch ein breites Publikum. Die Klage über die Dominanz des Mainstream gehört zum Repertoire derjenigen, die sich im Gegenstrom des unabhängigen Kinos wohl fühlen. Auch in Australien übernimmt Hollywood die Vorherrschaft: Im Jahre 2002 starteten 258 Filme, darunter 22 einheimische Produktionen.
Aboriginal cave paintings date back 4,000 years
2 July 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - Associated Press - A chance discovery by a hiker has been hailed as one of the most significant finds of Aboriginal rock art in Australia's history - a cave containing more than 200 paintings, some believed to be 4,000 years old.
Cave reveals 4000 years of Aboriginal art
2 July 2003 - New Scientist (UK) - A cavern resplendent with Aboriginal cave art encompassing 4000 years is being hailed in Australia as the most important find in half a century. The cave was discovered by a backpacker in a remote and almost inaccessible part of Wollemi National Park in New South Wales.
Athletics: Johnson takes unconventional route to join the sprinters' élite
24 June 2003 - The Independent (UK) - The fastest man in the world this year has no shoe contract, and there is none on the horizon, but Patrick Johnson has more pressing matters on his mind. The first Australian to run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds, Johnson is convinced he can it mix with the best, and he is determined to prove it at the World Championships in Paris in August.

Race hatred polarises Australian town
21 June 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - Claims of racism are nothing new in Townsville, the hardbitten industrial city in Queensland's humid tropics, which is often described as the capital of Australia's deep north. "This is probably the most racist town in Australia," says Lloyd Wyles, a broadcaster for indigenous radio station 4K1G.

Aboriginal Politics Hits Crisis in Australia
18 June 2003 - Reuters - A crisis in Australia's key indigenous group is spilling over into other areas of black politics, hampering Aborigines from tackling horrifying rates of disease, abuse and neglect, a new report said on Wednesday.
Fire hits Aboriginal embassy
17 June 2003 - The Guardian (UK) -The days of Canberra's Aboriginal tent embassy are numbered after an arson attack on the camp over the weekend.
Kenneth Minogue: Apologising won't help Aborigines
13 June 2003 - The Independent (UK) - There is a proposal that Australians ought to say "sorry" for what they have done to their blacks [the Aborigines].

Wanted: Harry's Art
9 June 2003 - BSkyB (UK) - Prince Harry has caused a stir in the art world with an international gallery approaching Sky News to try to buy some of his work.

Aborigines clash with scientists over bones
1 June 2003 - The Observer (UK) - A furious row has broken out between British scientists and Australian Aboriginal rights activists over human remains being used as research specimens.
The Voices by Susan Elderkin
31 May 2003 - The Independent (UK) - Susan Elderkin's The Voices is a tour de force about ... well, difficult to say at first, but at least we can agree that it's about Billy. A white boy not at home in his home. Or his skin. Starved of tenderness and touch, Billy is the chosen one of a dead black girl, who "sings him up" to become a dreamer and a roamer, entering into the ancient songlines.
Australia Marks Sixth Anniversary of National Sorry Day
30 May 2003 - Cultural Survival - National Sorry Day is commemorated in Australia each year on May 26 as an expression of solidarity with the justice and reconciliation agenda of the nation’s Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and in particular with the tens of thousands of Aboriginal children who were removed from their parents during Australia’s assimilation era. This May 26 was the sixth Sorry Day to be commemorated, and the seventh anniversary of the “Bringing Them Home Report”, which revealed the sorry truth about the ‘stolen generations’.
Letter to the Editor of The Independent
20 May 2003 - The Independent (UK) - Sir: Professor Stringer claims that his colleagues in Australia cannot study human remains because of laws stipulating the reburial and destruction of Aboriginal bones ("Alarm raised over return of human remains", 16 May 2003). This is not an accurate summary of the situation here in Australia.
Second Session of Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Opens in New York
17 May 2003 - Cultural Survival - Over 1,500 delegates converged on the New York headquarters of the United Nations this week for the second session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Indigenous representatives, representatives of member states, and officials from international institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization met daily in Conference Room Two for six hours each day to wrestle with the issues of economic and social development, the environment and the methods of work of the Forum itself.
In Their Words – Voices from the Second Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
17 May 2003 - Cultural Survival - Below are excerpts from some statements made in the first few days of the second session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
As Permanent Forum Meets Down the Hall, Fake Didgeridoos Removed from Shelves at UN Gift Shop
17 May 2003 - Cultural Survival - The United Nations gift shop at its headquarters in New York is a wondrous affair, with magnificent artifacts drawn from the four corners of the globe. Divided into small sections, we see exquisite wood carvings from Ghana, dazzling Turkish ceramics, beautifully crafted dolls from China, and other representative works of member nations. Then in one corner, near some toy Koalas made in China, is a rack containing nine ‘Australian’ didgeridoos. Close inspection shows that they are all manufactured in Indonesia.
Alarm raised over return of human remains
16 May 2003 - The Independent (UK) - Leading scientists said yesterday that their research would become practically impossible if the Government sanctioned the return of human bones and other museum exhibits to their countries of origin.
Research fear over return of human bones
16 May 2003 - Financial Times (UK) - Plans to return human remains from museums and study collections to their ancestral owners would be a disaster for research in fields from forensic medicine to anthropology, scientists warned yesterday.
Folly to give back ancient bones, say scientists
16 May 2003 - The Daily Telegraph (UK) - Handing over Britain's extensive museum collections of ancient human bones and fossils to aborigines for burial or cremation would be "folly", leading scientists said yesterday.
Science argues to keep bones
16 May 2003 - BBC News Online - The repatriation of human remains currently held in UK museums and universities to indigenous peoples around the world will do immense damage to science.
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues takes center stage at United Nations
9 May 2003 - NEW YORK, Indian Country Today - On May 12, indigenous nations and supporters will gather at United Nations headquarters in New York for the second session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. With several hundred million indigenous people in the world, the forum was created to address issues indigenous peoples around the world are facing.
Speech by ATSIC Charman to Permanent Forum
Long walk home
4 May 2003 - Kulturweltspiegel (Germany) - Die geraubte Generation und wie aus einem der dunkelsten Kapitel der australischen Geschichte ein Filmepos wurde
Australia to stand firm over 'racist' sign
26 April 2003 - The Independent (UK) - Australian government is preparing to flout a demand by the United Nations for it to intervene to remove the word "nigger" from a sign on a sports stadium in Queensland.

Book Reviews: Demonstrated Ideals
25 April 2003 - AlterNet - Naomi Klein: When, I asked 22-year-old Nina Brown, were we going to get down to work? She replied that the senior Aboriginal women, who called themselves the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, had taught her that before you can fight, you have to know what you are fighting for.

In Australia, Modern Aboriginal Art is a Hot Commodity
23 April 2003 - New York Times - Australia's Aborigines may have created one of the wor ld's oldest art forms and have certainly created one of the newest. Travelers in the remote outback of central and northwestern Australia can see cave paintings and rock carvings that date back at least 30,000 years.

Aborigines Continue Fight to Bring Back Ancestors' Remains
18 April 2003 - Cultural Survival - On April 9 the Royal College of Surgeons in London returned 75 sets of Aboriginal remains from its collection to Australia. A traditional ceremony was held at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, where the remains of the ancestors were purified, and where they will remain until researchers identify the different Aboriginal groups to which they belong. It is believed that a majority of the ancestral remains belong to the Yorta Yorta peoples.

Author rewrites the black-and-white history of Tasmania
17 April 2003 - Independent (UK) - The story of white settlement in Australia is one of brutality and bloodshed, and nowhere more so than in Tasmania, where the Aboriginal population was exterminated with the blessing of the British colonial authorities. That, at least, is the orthodox version of events, presented by eminent historians. But it is being challenged by a revisionist historian, Keith Windschuttle, who claims that Tasmania's Aborigines were not wiped out by the British.

Outlook is fine as Aborigines help the weathermen
14 April 2003 - The Telegraph (UK) - Weather forecasters in Australia are turning to the ancient lore of Aborigines to shore up scientific methods and gain a clearer understanding of one of the most complex climates in the world.
Plundered Aboriginal remains go home to Australia
10 April 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - The bodies of 75 Aboriginal men and women were returned to Australia yesterday after spending decades in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

Aborigines try to ban tale of the teddy bear on Ayers Rock / Guilty tourists regret bad day at Ayers Rock
5 April 2003 - Independent (UK) - A children’s book about a teddy bear that visits Uluru, the spectacular monolith formerly known as Ayers Rock, has incurred the wrath of the local Aboriginal community, which wants it banned.

The Relationship Between Thought and Matter: A Conversation with Antony Gormley
April 2003 - Sculpture Magazine - Inside Australia is an attempt to make an interior, as in the interior of a person. I agreed to do this project because Western Australia has some of the oldest rocks on the face of the planet ... However, there are all sorts of challenges to overcome. Who owns the land is a big question: the Aboriginal land claims underline the way this land was imaginatively inhabited, and this has now been destroyed by mining and pastoralism. These are the sensitive issues that the work reacts to and with.

Interview with Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network
March 15, 2003 - In Motion Magazine (US) - Tom Goldtooth "is the executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, a network of over 250 indigenous communities in North America. That includes Canada, the U.S. and some in Mexico. We also network with the indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica as well as South America and some in Africa." This interview was conducted during the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.

Britain backs plans to weaken heritage sites
13 March 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - Plans supported by the British government would undermine protection for world heritage sites such as Stonehenge and the Giant's Causeway, according to the organisation that advises on their protection.

Didgeridoo craftsmen under threat
13 March, 2003 - BBC - Manyallaluk, Northern Territory, Australia - The Didgeridoo is both the cultural icon of Aboriginal Australia and a keepsake for thousands of tourists each year.

Australian Right Takes Aim at Aboriginal History
5 March 2003 - Reuters - When the British settled Australia, they raped and flogged Aboriginal women, burned the natives with brands, roasted them alive, fed their flesh to dogs and dashed out the brains of babies. Or did they?

Tears of joy as Aborigine exile sees family
4 March 2003 - Telegraph (UK) - An Aboriginal woman removed from her parents under Australia’s infamous assimilation policy and taken to England as an infant more than 30 years ago has returned to her homeland for a reunion with tribal relatives.

'Stolen' Aborigine returns home
3 March, 2003 - BBC - An Aboriginal woman who was taken to Britain as a child under a government policy to assimilate Aborigines into white communities, has travelled to Australia to meet her family. Neila Penny, 35, is the first of the so-called "Stolen Generations" to take part in such a trip, under a new government-sponsored reunion programme.

Militant Aborigines embrace Islam to seek empowerment
28 February 2003 - Independent (UK) - Militant young Aborigines are converting to Islam in increasing numbers, and some are flirting with the fundamentalist ideologies that have inspired recent terrorism.

Aborigine insists tribal law gives right to underage sex
22 February 2003 - Independent (UK) - The place of tribal law in Australia’s legal system will be reviewed after a 50-year-old Aboriginal man argued that tradition gave him the right to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Lifeguard captains suspended for burning Aboriginal trophy vandalism
17 February 2003 - Independent (UK) - Australia’s most exclusive surf life-saving club is in turmoil after the captain and vice-captain destroyed a trophy, carved by Aboriginal elders, in a drunken act of vandalism.

Wake up Australia, racism is a problem
20 January, 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - The Darren Lehmann case has exposed a double standard in the Australian cricket community. Normally, moments of the highest pressure in sport are held to reveal character. Steve Waugh’s toughness and Shane Warne’s genius are revealed precisely in the heat of the moment.

One country, two histories
17 January 2003 - The Guardian (UK) - Conservative Australian historians rewrite accepted view that colonists massacred Aborigines. When a historian publishes a book accusing his peers of poor scholarship, most people would dismiss the ensuing argument as just another academic row. Not in Australia, where a dispute over history has broadened into a public debate which threatens to change the politics of race.

Swiss dealer caught up in Chirac museum row
January 15, 2003 - A Swiss art dealer has been dragged into the controversy surrounding a new museum in France dedicated to indigenous art. The Musée du Quai Branly - set to open in Paris in 2005 - has come under fire for purchasing works of art that were allegedly plundered by former colonialists. The project is the brainchild of the country’s president, Jacques Chirac, who wants to leave behind a legacy devoted to his long-standing passion for indigenous art and antiques from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

Aussies' broken rules
12 January 2003 - Sunday Herald (UK) - More than 20 million didgeridoos are sold each year, but can the bush they're made from sustain such a booming trade?

Displaying the British Empire for Posterity
4 January 2003 - New York Times - As Britain's baby boomers came of age in the mid-1960's, the sun was setting on the British Empire. Instead of young Britons heading off to run the colonies as soldiers and administrators, Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistanis and other former colonial subjects began migrating in droves to Britain. It was now the turn of the ex-colonies to change the mother country. In a sense, the British Empire had come home to roost.

Aborigines cast spell over Norwich
1 January 2003 - Norwich Evening News - Probably the most remarkable team ever to appear in the city made their visit in the summer of 1868. That was when the touring Australian Aborigines took on club side Carrow, a match recalled in a newly-published book by Australia's former Test off-spinner, now journalist, Ashley Mallett.

 
2002
Bridging whitefella law and clan justice
30 December 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - Australians wonder if traditional Aboriginal customs can be allied to European notions of human rights and due process.
Fears for health of Aborigine children
26 December 2002 - BBC (UK) - Doctors in Australia's rugged Northern Territory say the number of malnourished Aboriginal children is rising sharply. Figures released by the Royal Darwin Hospital show a 25% increase in those diagnosed with malnutrition and diarrhoea in the past three years.
Rewriting history over the death of a people
26 December 2002 - Sunday Herald (Scotland) - Claims that Aborigines in Tasmania were wiped out by disease and prostitution, not white settlers, have ignited a fierce debate in Australia, reports Nick Squires from Sydney.
Aborigines re-elect controversial leader
19 December 2002 - BBC (UK) - Controversial Aboriginal leader Geoff Clark has narrowly been re-elected chairman of Australia's most powerful indigenous body.
Danish Photos to British archive
19 December 2002 - Copenhagen Post (Denmark) - A remarkable bequest was made in London yesterday as veteran Danish travel writer and photographer Jens Bjerre donated nearly 1000 of his prized photographs to the archive of the Royal Geographical Society.
Chirac plan to visit Australia
18 December 2002 - Jacques Chirac is expected to become the first French president to visit Australia next year - possibly on a mission to gather Aboriginal art.
Aboriginal protest of Nazis marked
15 December 2002 - Cleveland Jewish News (USA) - An Australian Holocaust museum is dedicating a plaque to commemorate a protest staged by Aborigines against the mistreatment of Jews in prewar Nazi Germany.
New films shine spotlight on the humanity of Aborigines
15 December 2002 - Miami Herald - Most know them only from tourist ads, in which they appear almost as totems, evoking Outback exotica. A smaller number know some of their art, the colorful dot paintings of a strange, sunburned landscape. Yet there are few images that convey the humanity of Australia's struggling Aboriginal population, who - numbering just under 400,000 out of the country's 19.7 million people - can seem invisible even at home.
Australia Revisits a 'Black and White' Murder Case
14 December 2002 - New York Times (USA) - A celebrated murder case involving race and sexual assault, in which the young Rupert Murdoch and his feisty editor saved a semiliterate Aboriginal man from execution, has sprung back to life here.
Land case dashes Aboriginal hopes
13 December 2002 - The Guardian - Australia's longest-running Aboriginal land rights claim collapsed yesterday when the high court delivered a judgment regarded as the death-knell of the native title system.
Aboriginal case founders
13 December 2002 - The Financial Times -Australia's longest-running Aboriginal land claim has been dismissed by the country's top court in a judgment expected to have far-reaching consequences for other native title disputes working their way through the legal system.
Aborigines lose land battle
12 December 2002 - BBC (UK) - Australia's High Court has rejected an appeal by an indigenous group for possession of a vast swathe of land, ending the country's longest-running Aboriginal land dispute.
Lost in the tide
12 December 2002 - Radio Netherlands (NL) - Australia's Aboriginal people have suffered a blow with the highest court in the country dismissing a long-running land claim in the fertile south-east of the continent. The Yorta Yorta claim, made in the hope of establishing native title over 2000 square kilometres of grazing land, was dismissed on the basis that the claimants had not maintained traditional links to the area.
Digital salvation for Aboriginal art
10 December 2002 - BBC (UK) - Australia's aborigines have turned to digital technology to preserve their unique rock art for future generations, as Sharon Mascall reports from Melbourne.
Rabbit-Proof Fence triumphs at last Down Under
9 December 2002 - Screen International - Rabbit-Proof Fence has at last been voted best film in its country of origin.
Museums unite against return of imperial 'loot'
8 December 2002 - The Sunday Times (UK) - Forty of the world's top museums have issued a landmark statement firmly opposing the repatriation of precious artefacts seized in colonial times.
Tearing down the fence
13 November 2002 - BBC (UK) - The Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence, which tells the true story of three Aboriginal girls forcibly taken away from their families, has opened in London. It is both a devastating comment on Australian colonial history, and a beautiful portrayal of a universal fable - the journey home.
Exploring the pain of the 'Stolen Generations'
10 November 2002 - Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo) - Stolen tells the stories of five members of these "Stolen Generations." The work, which is to be performed in Tokyo next month, draws attention to the different forms the removal took and highlights the disastrous emotional impact on indigenous people's lives, particularly in adulthood.
The skeletons of colonialism may get a decent burial at last
10 November 2002 - The Independent (UK) - Body parts trundled back from all corners of the globe and displayed like mere ornaments are among the exhibits most popular with visitors to British collections. James Morrison reports on moves to give other cultures' ancestors a more dignified end.
A secret history in the Outback
7 November 2002 - London Times (UK) - Director Phillip Noyce used his hollywood clout to make a hit film about Aborigines - his film has reopened a fierce debate in Australia about the treatment of Aborigines
Phillip Noyce sails from dead calm to the centre of a political storm
3 November 2002 - The Scotsman - When Phillip Noyce received a phone call from screenwriter Christine Olsen at 3am one July morning in 1999, announcing she had the perfect script for him, it was the start of a journey that would force him to face up to the decisions he had made for the sake of his film career.
Australian judge rules against Aboriginal land claim
2 November 2002 - South China Morning Post - Aborigines yesterday lost their first attempt in court to regain control over part of the state of South Australia, as a judge ruled they had lost their spiritual connection to the land.
A right good didgeridoo
30 October 2002 - Rochdale Observer (UK) - Dust off your didgeridoos, get a Sheila on your arm, and take a walkabout to Spotland Stadium on Sunday for a fair dinkum rugby league match. The Aboriginal Development squad, which flew into England on Thursday, take on the pride of Lancashire.
The stolen ones
25 October 2002 - Guardian (UK) - A film dealing with the government's 'kidnapping' of part-Aboriginal children has caused fury in Australia. David Fickling reports from Sydney.
The Native Born: Contemporary Original Art From Ramingining, Australia: ART REVIEW
25 October 2002 - The New York Times - When the Australian government changed its currency from the Australian pound to the dollar in the 1960's, it used a design made from a bark painting by an Aboriginal artist, David Daymirringu, on the back of the new dollar note. But it neglected to ask the artist's permission, or even to notify him of its interest in his work.
John Howard: The dispiriting face of Middle Australia
19 October 2002 - Independent (UK) - Many people, particularly outside Australia, make the mistake of underestimating Howard. He has scant charisma and no commanding presence; his eyebrows are unruly, his voice an irritating whine. Visitors seduced by images of a diverse, progressive nation are startled to find it run by a grey man who belongs in the 1950s.
The lost tribe
14 October 2002 - Guardian (UK) - Only a handful of native Tasmanians escaped being slaughtered by the English in the 19th century. Now a bitter row has broken out between the many people - some black, some white - who claim to be their descendants. Acclaimed author Richard Flanagan asks what it really means to be an Aborigine. Tasmanian Aboriginal leader and lawyer Michael Mansell says Flanagan is "too distant for his account of the issues to be at all reliable".
Aborigines struggle to find a voice
7 October 2002 - Guardian (UK) - Australia's native languages have drifted towards extinction and it could take generations to revive them, writes David Fickling
Aborigines recover vast territory
27 September 2002 - BBC (UK) - In a remote desert ceremony, an Australian judge on Friday handed over rights to a huge swathe of land to the Martu Aboriginal tribe.
When these two sisters die, a whole language will die with them
27 September 2002 - The Scotsman - What follows is about wombats. How to catch and cook them, to be more precise. It contains probably every piece of information you will ever want to hear on the subject of hairy-nosed wombats.
Australian Aborigines Return Home
26 September 2002 - Pravda - Australian aborigines will be granted property rights to a large section of a desert, the area of which is about 130 thousand kilometers. This territory makes up almost two percent of Australia. It is the largest territory ever given back to the native population after 50 years of expulsion.
Racism and small-town bigotry
19 September 2002 - World Socialist Review - Australian Rules, directed by Paul Goldman and based on Phillip Gwynne’s semi-autobiographical novel Deadly, Unna? is a compassionate exposure of racism and small-town bigotry and its tragic consequences.
“A cause worth fighting for”
19 September 2002 - World Socialist Review - Lisa Flanagan, who plays Clarence in Australian Rules, and Phillip Gwynne, scriptwriter and author of Deadly, Unna?, on which the movie is based, spoke this week with the World Socialist Web Site.
Aborigines halt Rio Tinto project
15 September 2002 - Independent (UK) - Mining giant Rio Tinto has indicated it is about to abandon plans to develop a giant uranium mine in northern Australia in the teeth of opposition from the local Aboriginal people.
Starring Rupert Murdoch: the crusader returns
8 September 2002 - The Daily Telegraph (UK) - A new film about a notorious miscarriage of justice in the Australian Outback in the 1950s casts the media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the unlikely role of a crusader for the rights of the underdog.
Aboriginals sue Crown over loss of their land
3 September 2002 - Telegraph (UK) - Aboriginals have asked lawyers to challenge the Crown and Parliament over the way Australia's indigenous people were deprived of land more than 200 years ago.
Transcript: Interview with Sir Robert Wilson
27 August 2002 - BBC WORLD: HARDtalk with Tim Sebastian
The business of caring
27 August 2002 - BBC (UK) - The boss of one of the world's biggest mining companies has denied that big business is the enemy of the environment. Robert Wilson, chairman of the multi-national mining company, Rio Tinto, said that everyone must work together to protect the planet.
Film Festival star united with Scots family
20 August 2002 - The Scotsman - When Everlyn Sampi was told that she was going to travel to a different hemisphere to appear at a film festival, the teenage Australian actress could have been forgiven for feeling a little apprehensive.
Raising the sovereignty stakes
19 August 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - When a fire started last Tuesday morning in the heart of Canberra's Aboriginal tent embassy, Australia's federal territories minister, Wilson Tuckey, moved quickly. The National Capital Authority, which administers the city as part of Mr Tuckey's department of transport and regional services, asked local electricity company ActewAGL to cut off power to the site.
Aborigine rights damaged by mining verdict
9 August 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - The Australian high court dealt a severe blow to the Aboriginal land rights movement yesterday when it rejected claims by the Miriuwung-Gajerrong people to a 3,050sq mile area of land in the country's remote north-west.
Einblicke in die traditionelle Kultur der Aborigines
8 August 2002 - Stuttgarter Zeitung - Auch die moderne Kunst Zentralaustraliens zeugt noch von dieser engen Verbundenheit zum Land und seinen Überlieferungen.
Lecturing angels, ignoring villains
8 August 2002 -The National Post (Canada) - Mr. Howard has the right idea. The human rights abuses that require the UN's attention aren't in Australia or Canada, but are taking place in countries such as Zimbabwe.
Australian Aborigines: Their future welfare: On This Day in The Times, August 8, 1922
8 August 2002 - The Times (UK) - The most important step taken in recent years to save these wild tribes is the establishment of a sanctuary in the far-away country on the border of South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.
Friend of art world
3 August 2002 - Washington Times - After seeing works by aborigine artist Emily Kngwarreye (pronounced "ung-wahr-ay") in galleries all over Australia, he chartered a private plane to get to her home in the heart of the Australian Outback. (The artist lived in a tiny village called — no kidding — "Utopia.")
18 års fengsel for babyvoldtekt
31 July 2002 - VG Nett - En 26 år gammel australsk mann er dømt til 18 års fengsel for å ha voldtatt en åtte måneder gammel baby.
Pride in Aboriginal Roots Grows in Australia
31 July 2002 - BBC News (UK) - Australia is experiencing a surge in black pride. Census figures show strong growth in the Aboriginal population, up 16 percent in the last 5 years. One reason for this is that thousands of Australians are now willing to identify themselves as part of the indigenous community.
Stimmen aus der Tiefe des Raumes
28 July 2002 - Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG - Warum Peter Bichsel im australischen Busch eher einen Jean-Paul-Leser gefunden hätte als in Berlin - und eine vitalere Literatur auch. Eine Reise durch den literarischen Outback. Von Pia Horlacher
Battle of 'last Tasmanians'
25 July 2002 - Telegraph (UK) - An explosive dispute over who is entitled to call himself an Aborigine has engulfed Tasmania, where the native people were all but annihilated by British settlers in the 19th century.
Clifford Possum, leading Aboriginal artist in Australia
1 July 2002 - The New York Times - Clifford Possum, who painted some of the masterpieces of Australian Aboriginal art, died June 21 in Alice Springs in the Australian desert, an ancient landscape he depicted in the mythical terms central to his heritage. He was about 70.
De transformatie van Australian van Belgisch salon in een trendy vormgegeven multinational
25 June 2002 - NRC Handelsblad - De van oorsprong Belgische ijs- en bonbonwinkel Australian heeft Nederland stormenderhand veroverd en richt zich nu op de rest van Europa. De verandering en schaalvergroting is niet zonder slag of stoot gegaan. De hippe vormgeving is een essentieel onderdeel van het imago, en daarmee van de aantrekkingskracht.
Aboriginal schilder sterft anoniem
25 June 2002 - NRC Handelsblad - Een Aboriginal die tijdens zijn leven beroemd was door de schilderingen van zijn thuisland, is anoniem gestorven, omdat zijn geloof verbiedt dat zijn naam bekend wordt gemaakt.
Ancient didgeridoo adopted by the digital generation
23 June 2002 - The Japan Times - For aborigines, the music of the didgeridoo is less an art in itself than a conduit to Dreamtime, the ongoing creation story that is the center of Aboriginal ritual and myth. For Goma, the challenge was fitting the ritualistic, transcendent possibilities of the instrument to his own particular background.
The fortunes of Aboriginal art outside Australia: ethnographica or art?
23 June 2002 - The Art Newspaper - SYDNEY. When Australians with even the most glancing interest in art meet overseas visitors, Aboriginal art is invariably a pressing topic. Tourists routinely buy Aboriginal work from all sorts of vendors, ranging from airport shops to Aboriginal-owned cooperatives. But many Australians are deluded about the health of the international market for Aboriginal art, according to some experts. Wally Caruana, senior curator of Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Australia, says “the acceptance of contemporary visual indigenous art practice is far from common in European art institutions.”
Australia marches backwards on its Aborigine rights
4 June 2002 - Independent (UK) - Reconciliation is off the agenda, the optimism has evaporated and race relations are as polarised as ever. Thanks to John Howard, Keating's successor, the Mabo legacy has been a tale of lost opportunities and crushed aspirations.
Museum returns sacred samples: Remains of last Tasmanian Aborigine to be put to rest
31 May 2002 - Guardian (UK) - She was the tragic sole survivor of the "Black War", the last full-blooded Aborigine in Tasmania after British settlers systematically rounded up the island's indigenous population. When she died, to the despair of her mixed race relatives, Truganini's body was exhumed and plundered by scientists and souvenir hunters.
Advertising Oz
28 May 2002 - spiked! (UK) - Peter Slipper, an Australian member of parliament ... claims the Miramax angle is 'sensationalising, misleading, and grossly distorting' - but his indignation seems a bit hypocritical.
Aboriginal health 'scandalous'
24 May 2002 - BBC - A new report by the main doctors' group in Australia says the country has failed to improve the health of its 400,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
The Cherry Pickers
16 May 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - The history of Aboriginal playwriting begins here, with a compendious piece chronicling the theft of the indigenous Australians' country.
The Aussies are coming
1 May 2002 - The Observer (UK) - British audiences rarely get to see drama from Down Under, but now Madonna, star of Up for Grabs, is set to change all of that. Daniel Rosenthal meets its creator, the playwright
My undercover attempt to court the Duke
29 April 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - There was an embarrassing leak last week; word got out that the Queen had asked me down to Windsor for a tête-à-tête. The person responsible has been disciplined.
Genocide, Ethnocide, Or Hyperbole? Australia's "Stolen Generation" and Canada's "Hidden Holocaust"
25 April, 2002 - Cultural Survival - A decade awash in genocide and deadly conflict has passed since Jason Clay lamented that "it is impossible for concerned activists and scholars to agree on which cases constitute genocides, much less how interested people would go about documenting them." (Clay, 1988) While this statement holds true today, a vast array of relevant scholarship on genocide has nonetheless arisen, informed by events in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, East Timor, and far too many other "exotic and deadly" locales. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNGC), once thought to be a languishing example of empty political rhetoric, has found purchase in fresh criminal trials. The learning curve when it comes to genocide, however, is conspicuously uneven. The challenge lies not in cultivating and maintaining an awareness of the phenomenon -- a task the mass media has demonstrated itself more than capable of handling -- but in recognizing its universal implications.
Aborigines hope for TV Stardom
11 April 2002 - BBC Online - Coming to a screen near you... maybe.. A new push is underway to get more black faces in Australian films and on television. The under-representation of indigenous actors on the silver and small screens is blamed by some on racism and by others on a simple lack of opportunity.
Thought-Proof Fence
2 April 2002 - spiked! (UK) - Problem: The film sucks. It uses a hackneyed, conventional narrative, a contrived approach to character, some very bad dialogue, and some acting that is worse.
G'bye to G'day
25 March 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - A Blighty-bound Patrick Barkham reflects on the good - and the not so good - aspects of life in Australia. When I tell Australians I am returning to Britain, most react as if I am going to the funeral of a mass murderer.
Last post for the rabbit fence king
17 March 2002 - The Scotsman - The last Australian bushman still patrolling the country’s famous rabbit proof fence on horseback is about to hang up his spurs. After 21 years riding the fence in Queensland, Keith Reid and his trusty bay horse Matey have decided to retire.
Forgotten Aborigine team who changed cricket forever
8 March 2002 - Guardian (UK) - They were cricket's forgotten heroes - a team of Aborigines who came to England in 1868 viewed as little more than a joke, and ended up changing the face of cricket forever. Now a previously unseen archive of photographs, scorebooks and other memorabilia chronicling the first - and last - tour by native Australians has surfaced after languishing in an attic for more than 80 years.
Fenced out
6 March 2002 - The Guardian (UK) - The received wisdom in Australia is that no one really wants to watch films about Aborigines. That has changed in the last month with the blaze of publicity surrounding the release of Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, starring Kenneth Branagh.
Still throwing spears at each other, asks Philip
2 March 2002 - Daily Express (UK) - Blundering Prince Philip sparked outrage with his latest gaffe yesterday when he asked an Aboriginal leader: "Do you still throw spears at each other?" The disaster-prone Duke's question during the royal tour of Australia could not have been worse judged and was last night branded "ignorant".
Tracey Moffatt
28 February 2002 - Sammlung Essl (Austria) - Tracey Moffat wird 1960 als Halbaborigine in Brisbane geboren und aufgrund der Assimilationspolitik Australiens ihren Eltern entrissen. Noch als Baby wird sie von einer weissen Arbeiterfamilie adoptiert und wächst mit der Bilderwelt des Fernsehens in einer Arbeitersiedlung auf. 1982 schliesst sie ihre Ausbildung am Queensland College of Art (Brisbane) in Visueller Kommunikation ab und avanciert bald als Fotokünstlerin und Filmemacherin zur derzeit bekanntesten Repräsentantin der Avantgarde Australiens.
Seeking the first black face on Ramsay St
13 February 2002 - Teams of youth workers are about to begin scouring the streets of Sydney at the start of a project that could culminate in an Aboriginal family moving into Ramsay Street on television's Neighbours.
Film forces Australia to face up to its cruel past
10 February 2002 - The Observer (UK) - A story of Aboriginal girls penned in camps and sent into domestic service echoes present injustices. A new film about the plight of Aborigines is making Australia face its demons.
Aborigines claim kangaroo copyright
29 January 2002 - BBC (UK) - In Australia, a group of Aborigines has lodged a high court writ, seeking to stop the government from using the kangaroo and the emu on the national coat of arms.
Australia: Apartheid?
29 January 2002 - ZNet - Indigenous Australians were never included. Their extraordinary civilisation, their survivalism and oneness with an ancient land, was not taught, until recently, as a source of national pride; and their inclusion, still to be achieved, may well be the key to what the small liberal elite constantly refers to as "the search for identity" and which means overcoming a legacy of brutal racism.
Grand tours: Lawrence's novel view of Down Under
26 January 2002 - Independent (UK) - Eighty years ago, DH Lawrence arrived in Sydney, where Australia Day is celebrated today. The alien land was first to annoy him, then inspire him and, finally, to help him come to terms with his life. Deirdre Coleman finds out what fired his imagination.
White and Off-White - Aborigines and Travellers: A shared legacy of discrimination
17 January 2002 - An Phoblacht/Republican News - On Christmas Eve I was at an outdoor cafe in Freemantle, sipping coffee and smoking a fag. It was a savagely hot day. A group of evidently disadvantaged locals were sitting under a tree at the far side of the road. These are the Njunga people, whom whites generically call Aboriginals.
Aborigines ask for a Royal apology
7 January 2002 - London Times (UK) - Indigenous leaders in Queensland have asked the Queen to apologise for the way Aborigines were used as human ornaments during a royal visit to Australia in l901.
2001
Nightmare in dreamtime: the genocide of australian aborigines
25 December 2001 - disinformation - The people who could sing dreams into reality are falling away. Where insects once buzzed praise through human avatars enraptured in music, gravestones and concentration camps chain a world. Stories that shaped the world into the mythic Dreamtime and back out again are as forgotten as the Ancestors and the joyful camaraderie brought by food, laughter, and playing children.

Aborigine deaths linked to poverty
12 December 2001 - Scotsman - Australian Aborigines are dying 25 years younger than white Australians and about 15 years before indigenous people in New Zealand and the United States, according to the findings of a recent study.

Papal email reignites 'sorry' debate
26 November 2001 - The Times (UK) - Pope's apology to Australia's Aboriginal population has put pressure on the prime minister to follow suit.

Stolen
23 November 2001- The Guardian (UK) - Sometimes in the theatre it is the way you tell the story that matters most. and sometimes it is just the story that is crucial.

The lost and found generation
23 November 2001 -The Times (UK) - They've clearly been on the move and haven't appreciated the experience. They want an explanation for their rootlessness. Actually, they want an apology - and haven't yet got it, for the Australian Prime Minister doesn't seem too interested in reconciliation. Who are they?

Pope offers apology on the net
23 November 2001 - The Times (UK) - The Pope apologised yesterday to victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in his first message to bishops via the Internet.

Aboriginals visit Westminster
19 November 2001 - ENIAR media release - The Aboriginal Tent Embassy - from Canberra Australia today met with members of Westminster Parliament to discuss the fact that the Aboriginals of Australia never ceded their sovereignty to the British when Australia.

At Home In The World: Book review
31 October 2001 - Cultural Survival - At one time, the books anthropologists wrote were about the peoples -- exotic or familiar -- they studied. Recently, a new genre of anthropological monographs has appeared.

Winning Australia's Aboriginal vote
25 October 2001 - BBC - Prominent aborigines have accused the two leading candidates in Australia's federal election of offering nothing to ease the plight of the country's indigenous people.

Aboriginal Sea Rights Confirmed in Australia's High Court
21 October 2001- ENS - A landmark ruling handed down by the High Court of Australia late last week has confirmed the validity of limited Aboriginal rights over 2,000 square kilometres of the seas adjoining traditional lands off the north coast. The decision has been cautiously welcomed by Aboriginal and environmental groups.

Stolen: An Aboriginal tragedy
8 September 2001 - Black Britain News - What do you do when you meet your mother for the first time in 26 years? Shake her hand? Give her a hug? Will she feel like your mother? What does having a mother feel like?

Britain blocks protection for indigenous people
7 September 2001- The Independent (UK) - Britain is blocking an attempt by the world's 300 million indigenous peoples ­ including Maoris, Aboriginals and Native Americans ­ to have their rights protected under international law, The Independent has learnt.

Voices against racism: Australia's Aborigines
5 September 2001 - BBC - Amid the diplomatic posturing and the haggling over language at the World Conference against Racism it is easy to lose sight of the reality of racism.

The blood in our old bricks
5 September 2001 - The Independent (UK) - A couple of years back, there was a brief fashion for historical hypotheticals. Authors speculated on how the entire course of human history might have been changed if, say, a haemorrhoid-plagued Napoleon hadn't sent Marshal Grouchy off on a cross-country chase after the Prussians just before Waterloo. Or, had Hitler concentrated on Moscow in 1942, might we not all now be celebrating his birthday in April, rather than the Queen's? And what if Stonewall Jackson had not died at Chancellorsville; would he have won at Gettysburg and would there now be two USAs?

Discrimination against Aborigines in Australia is racially motivated
31 August 2001 - Society for Threatened Peoples International - .. are seeking to raise at the World Conference against Racism in Durban. They also aim to call attention to the issue of racial discrimination suffered by Aborigines in Australia.
Groundbreaking guide challenges stereotypes
August 2001 - Lonely Planet - "There's more to being an Aborigine than playing the didjeridu and posing in a barren landscape, spear in hand, before a mystical dusk backdrop" .. Aboriginal Australia & the Torres Strait Islands, Lonely Planet 2001.

Early tour of sideshows and insults
28 August 2001 - The Independent (UK) - The first Aboriginal team to play in England arrived in 1868, 10 years before the first white team to reach British shores.

British Musems to return long lost Aborignal Art
26 August 2001 - The Sunday Telegraph (UK) - Some of Britain's biggest museums are to return hundreds of artefacts to their original owners as part of a Government initiative on disputed collections

Coming in from the Outback
21 August 2001 - The Observer (UK) - Britons flock to Australia each year but rarely learn anything about its Aborigines or their culture. Caroline Hendrie says that could be about to change

Stiff Gins ****
10 August 2001 - The Scotsman - Gin was once a word for woman in the language of one Australian Aboriginal tribe, but, over some shameful years, it came to be used as a derogatory term for any black woman. The Stiff Gins use the word as a way of reclaiming it, giving it dignity again - and they succeed pretty thoroughly.

Aboriginal Islanders reunited with their 'stolen' ancestry
8 August 2001- The Independent (UK) - More than a century ago, a leading British anthropologist visited the Torres Strait Islands, off the northern tip of Australia, and stole away with more than a thousand of the inhabitants' most important artefacts.

Aborigines 'have asked Mugabe for help on land rights'
7 August 2001- The Independent (UK) - Zimbabwe stepped up its propaganda campaign over seizures of white-owned farms on Monday, saying that Australian Aborigines have enlisted the help of President Robert Mugabe in their quest for land rights.

Paddy Roe, Aboriginal leader whose life was a story of reconciliation
27 July 2001 - The Independent (UK) -The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has refused to apologise to the Aboriginal people for injustices committed for at least a century and a half under government authority.

Dictionary gives hope to Aborigines
13 July 2001 -Telegraph (UK) - Aboriginal leaders have claimed that the inclusion of the phrase "stolen generation" in the latest edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary amounts to international acknowledgment of their campaign for reparations.

Aborigines offer alternative guide to their land
11 July 2001- The Independent (UK) - "There she goes," said Lino Thomas, peering through the drizzle at the mist-veiled mountain rising ahead. "Look at that grey cloak. She's wearing her possum skin again." Ms Thomas, an Aboriginal tour guide, was pointing to one of the earliest landmarks recorded by Captain Cook as he sailed up the coast of southern New South Wales. Cook called it Mount Dromedary, but the mountain already had a name: for thousands of years, Aborigines had known it as Gulaga.

Boemerang tentoonstelling in het Museon, Werphoutjes en strijdknotsen
22 June 2001 - NRC Handelsblad Voorpagina - Een lied uit het midden van de vorige eeuw laat een Australische Aboriginal zingen: ,,My boomerang won't come back''.

Rule of the Australian Rednecks
16 June 2001 - Guardian (UK) - This is the story of a rural community where blacks live in fear of men in white robes. Welcome to Casino, the KKK capital of Australia.

Aboriginal wizards of Oz
10 June 2001 - The Observer (UK) - Mark Whitaker reports on the pioneering Australians who toured England - nine years before the first Test match.

Pieces in the 'Puzzle' of Australia
9 June 2001 - International Herald Tribune - The brand new National Museum of Australia here has brought together, for the first time, the story of Aboriginals with the cultural history of the European settlement of Australia.

BHP consigue acuerdo con aborigines para explotar mina de hierro / BHP is able agreement with aborigines to operate iron mine
6 June 2001- EFE - Australian miner Broken Hills Proprietary has decided with two native groups a compensation 30 million dollars by the operation of an iron mine in the region of Pilbara, in the state of Western Australia, informed the company today.

Aborigines promised apology
3 June 2001 - BBC - In Australia the Labor opposition party has moved to put an apology to the country's indigenous people back on the political agenda ahead of a general election due later this year.

Australia rejects Amnesty's claims
1 June 2001 - BBC - The Australian government has rejected claims by Amnesty International that it was no longer a leader in promoting human rights, which were at a record low in the country.

Demise of world’s vanishing languages
June 2001 - Scotsman (UK) - There are 6,800 languages spoken in the world today, but, by the end of the century, up to 90 per cent of them could have disappeared.

Australia's shock of the new
28 May 2001 - The Guardian (UK) - The National Museum of Australia seems to be designed to shock, rather than educate, says Patrick Barkham.

Les Aborigènes d'Australie, les touristes et la montagne sacrée / Aboriginals of Australia, tourists and the crowned mountain
26 May 2001 - Le Monde (France) - Once more, their culture is ridiculed for vulgar financial interests. The Aboriginals living around the crowned mountain of Uluru - more known in France under the name of "Ayers Rock'n'roll " - ended up yielding.

BEl Festival Internacional de Poesia adopta este año acento australiano
24 May 2001 - La Vanguardia, Barcelona. (Redacción.) - El Festival Internacional de Poesia de Barcelona estrena en la edición de este año -la 17ª- la iniciativa de contar con un país invitado, en este caso Australia.

A town like Malice
23 May 2001 - Guardian Unlimited (UK) - This is the story of a rural community where blacks live in fear of white men in robes. But this story takes place a world away from Tennessee. Welcome to Casino, the KKK capital of Australia.

Victim of Australia’s ‘Stolen Generations’ appeals for reparations
18 May 2001 - Minority Rights (UK) - The UN Working Group on Minorities which is meeting in Geneva this week heard the testimony of Audrey Ngingali Kinnear, an Indigenous woman from Australia...’.

Branagh waives fee for film on Aborigines
18 May 2001 - The Guardian (UK) - The British actor-director Kenneth Branagh waived his usual fee to play a white official who tried to destroy the Aboriginal race in Australia.

Disturbing Tide of Racism in Australia
10 May 2001 - There are warnings in Australia that racist hate groups are increasingly targeting the country's Aboriginal people. Hate crimes against aborigines are on the rise.

Written Answers - Human Rights Abuses
9 May 2001 - Dáil Éireann - 83. Dr. Upton asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the Government's opinion on a submission made to his Department on behalf of the aboriginal people; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12910/01]

Aboriginal party eyed in Australia
7 May 2001 - China Daily - DARWIN, Australia: It has been more than three decades since Australia's Aborigines were granted the vote. But the island continent's original inhabitants can boast only one current federal senator and have shown little interest in a political system that long spurned them.

Aboriginal sin of Australia exposed
3 May 2001 -The Ham & High (UK) - 'Stolen' particularly excels when exploring the mental illness, inability to settle down and suicide that result from their upbringing. By the end, you are left with a few eloquent images – snapshots of bewilderment, leave-taking, home-coming and searching.

Secret abuse shame of Aboriginals women
22 April 2001 - Independent (UK) - "They tell us that it's none of our business, it's their cultural way," said one white domestic violence counsellor. "But the elders have told me that these things were never part of their culture. We have to get rid of the romantic view of the Aboriginal way of life, because they don't believe it themselves. It's just white do-gooders being politically correct."

Tracy Moffat @ Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
19 April 2001 - The Guardian (UK) - This is an exhibition of two halves: one thrilling, the other less so.

Just don't call me an Aboriginal artist
16 April 2001 -The Independent (UK) - Meet Tracey Moffatt and you sense it straight away: beneath the chatty, congenial veneer, a manic gleam, a taste for mayhem. Her photographs, which have made her easily the best-known Australian artist in the world today.

Stolen lives
16 April 2001 - Guardian Weekly (UK) - Beatrix Campbell on the 'sisters' who are challenging Australia to admit to its forced separation of Aboriginal families.

Few set out on road to ethics
14 April 2001 - The Guardian (UK) - Despite activists' clamour, key pension funds have yet to move towards socially responsible investment. Tony Levene reports.

Vom Holocaust zu den Aborigines
8 April 2001 -F.A.Z.Net - Was bedeutet die Analogie von Jüdischem Museum und Aboriginal Gallery? Wird hier insinuiert, wie der Architekt Howard Raggatt meint, dass die Geschichte der Juden in Berlin mit der Geschichte der Aborigines gleichgesetzt werden könne - schließlich seien ja auch die Aborigines Opfer gewesen, Opfer schlimmster kolonialer Unterdrückung.

Johnny Warrangkula Tjupurrula
31 March 2001 - The Times (UK) - Obituary: A troubled life that produced Aboriginal art quite untouched by European conventions.

Aborigines call for withdrawal of 'insensitive' book
21 March 2001 - Independent (UK) - An Aborigine community has called for a book to be withdrawn and pulped for being insensitive about their culture. Copies of the book, titled "Broometime", were reportedly hurled by angry residents at its authors when it was launched in the Western Australian town of Broome yesterday.

Museums of cultural dispossession?
17 March 2001 - Frontline (India) - The two new projects in Paris for museum development may well be a saga of dispossession of the cultural heritage of micro-civilisations.

New bridge in Australia opens old wounds
5 March 2001 - The Guardian (UK) - The opening of a bridge in south Australia has reignited a 10-year conflict between Aborigines, white Australians and academics, writes Patrick Barkham.

Angry Aborigines storm out of racism conference
20 February 2001 - Independent - Dozens of angry Aborigines stormed out of a conference on racism today after heckling the Aboriginal affairs minister, who insisted that the Australian government does care about the plight of indigenous people.

Gift of life
14 February 2001 - The Guardian(UK) - The world's largest mining company has been given a chance to prove its green credentials and save Aboriginal homelands. By Paul Brown.

'Racist law' blamed for boy's death
4 February 2001 - The Observer (UK) - Benjamin, a 15-year-old Aborigine of the Lalara tribe, in Australia's 'Deep North', died a slow and ghastly death after taking the sheets in his room at a detention centre and hanging himself. He was cut down from the noose but died the following day in hospital.

Film places focus on saga that shamed Australia
3 February 2001 - The Independent (UK) - The plight of the Stolen Generations - Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families by the white authorities - is to receive international exposure thanks to a new film based on the remarkable true story of three girls who escaped and walked 1,200 miles home across the Australian Outback.

Aborigines face greatest jail threat
31 January 2001- The Independent (UK) - Aborigines are 15 times more likely than other Australians to end up in jail, and they make up a fifth of the country's prison population, according to official statistics.
2000
Guilt surfaces at Australia's centenary
31 December 2000 - The Independent (UK) - When proud Australians paraded through Sydney 100 years ago tomorrow to hail the birth of their independent nation, there were no black faces among the marchers, or the hat-waving crowds. There were, for that matter, only two women in the procession.

Outback spirits to return home
26 November 2000 - The Independent (UK) - The spirits of hundreds of Aborigines may be finally laid to rest after a decision by Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, to return their bones to Australia.

Australian reconciliation off the cards
11 December 2000 - The Guardian (UK) - The process of reconciliation between Aboriginal and white Australians was dealt a blow last week, writes Patrick Barkham.

Aboriginal leader at Bray seminar
1 December 2000 - Bray People Newspaper (Ireland) - An Aboriginal leader was the keynote speaker at a conference which took place in Bray last weekend. Patrick Dodson, who has been a campaigner for the rights of Aboriginal people in his country for the last 30 years, addressed the conference, 'Exploring Identities'.

Ethnic Cleansing? We Have It Here Too!
17 November 2000 - International Journal on World Peace - The United States Government has been trying unsuccessfully to register Native American Indians for over a hundred years. The infamous Dawes Act of 1887 was the first such effort on a large-scale. The purported aim of the Act was to protect Indian property rights during the Oklahoma Land Rush. By registering, Indians were told, they would be allotted 160 acres of land per family in advance of the Land Rush and thus be restituted for 100 years of genocide against them.

That historical wizard of Oz
4 November 2000 - The Independent (UK) - An epic teller of truth that trumps fiction, Thomas Keneally still dreams of a republican end to Australia's story.

Australia slammed over Aborigine rights
29 October 2000 - BBC - An international aid organisation has criticised Australia for failing to protect the basic rights of indigenous Australians. The report, from the aid agency Oxfam, says Australia is the only country in the world with a constitution that allows racial discrimination.

Charles Perkins
19 October 2000 - The Times (UK) - Obituary: Aboriginal leader who campaigned for civil rights reform and was the first of his people to become head of a government department.

Australia is the only developed country whose government has been condemned as racist by the United Nations
13 October 2000 - By John Pilger. There is no doubting the efficiency of the Sydney Olympics, the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the setting; but there was a political façade. Soon after the Aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman won her gold medal, the cabinet of John Howard’s government met in Canberra to mount yet another attack on her people by planning to change the Land Rights Act.

Olympics gave indigenous Australians their biggest ever stage
2 October 2000 - The Independent (UK) - Aboriginal myths at the opening ceremony. Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron and blazing to victory in the 400 meters race. Indigenous rock group Yothu Yindi's closing ceremony performance.

After the party, it's back to brutal reality for the Aussies
1 October 2000 - The Independent (UK) - With the scent of the fireworks from today's closing ceremony lingering in their nostrils and the roar of the crowd in the Olympic stadium still ringing in their ears, Australians are about to wake up to one of the worst cases of Monday morning blues in their 212-year history.

Indian Affairs Head Makes Apology
October 2000 - AP -The head of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs apologized Friday for the agency's ``legacy of racism and inhumanity'' that included massacres, forced relocations of tribes and attempts to wipe out Indian languages and cultures. "By accepting this legacy, we accept also the moral responsibility of putting things right," Kevin Gover, a Pawnee Indian, said in an emotional speech marking the agency's 175th anniversary. Gover said he was apologizing on behalf of the BIA, not the federal government as a whole. Still, he is the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to make such a statement regarding the treatment of American Indians.

Cathy comes home to gold and a nations adulation
26 September 2000 - Telegraph (UK) - When the Aboriginal athelete Cathy Freeman stormed to victory in the 400m yesterday, she carried a colossal burden on her shoulders - the dreams and expectations of 19 million Australians. By Barbie Dutter.

Aboriginal cry for freedom echoes cries for Freeman
26 September 2000 - The Guardian (UK) - David Hopps watches the race in a makeshift inner-city 'tented embassy'. At the Aboriginal tented embassy in Sydney's Victoria Park, safeguards were being taken to ensure Cathy Freemans victory.

Aborigine fury as 'false image' sells Olympics
17 September 2000 - Telegraph (UK) - Aborigines are furious over the use of their culture and art to sell the Sydney Olympics which they say masks the harsh reality of their lives and paints a falsely romantic image of "the noble savage".

Aborigine torch-bearer
17 September 2000 - Sport can be a truly perplexing business. One moment knee deep in banality and bathos, the next instant transformed into a crescendo of pathos and ovewhelming, spontaneous joy. The phenomenon resurfaced again at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics on Friday evening when, just as some of us were beginning to droop under a deluge of dismal pre-torch songs, suddenly we had lumps in our throats and tears welling in our eyes as Cathy Freeman emerged from the darkness to walk on water and ignite the Olympic flame for these Millennial Games.

The wonder of modern Australia
14 September 2000 - The Independent (UK) - As Australia enters its big year, with the Sydney Olympics opening this week and the nation's 100th birthday coming up in January 2001, it presents two sharply contrasting faces to the world. One is the hearty, red-necked Crocodile Dundee .. the other is the cosmopolitan, multicultural Australia of a city such as Sydney.

Aboriginal protests may turn violent, says leader
8 September 2000 - The Independent (UK) - Nelson Mandela has been feted like a living legend during a flying visit to Australia this week - by everybody except the Australia government, which was accused yesterday of snubbing the former South African president.

Australie : Rendez-vous Manqué Avec La République (95kb PDF)
4 September 2000 - LiMes - Le 6 novembre 1999, les Australiens se rendaient aux urnes pour un double référendum visant à modifier leur constitution. Ils étaient appelés à se prononcer pour ou contre une “république d’Australie”. Ils étaient également consultés sur l’opportunité d’introduire dans la constitution un nouveau préambule reconnaissant, pour la première fois, le rôle primordial des Aborigènes, en tant que premiers occupants de l’île-continent, et l’importance de la contribution économique, sociale et culturelle des immigrants venus massivement s’installer.

Aborigines granted Olympic protests
4 September 2000 - BBC - The Australian Government has given Aborigines permission to demonstrate near Sydney airport in the days leading up to the 2000 Olympics.

Their Olympic moment: Australia's Aborigines in world spotlight for Games
3 September 2000 - CNN - It was an odd place to welcome the Olympic flame -- in a country surrounded by water. Yet Uluru-Kata Tjutu National Park in the red sandy plains of central Australia was also the perfect place for the torch to begin touring the 2000 Olympics' host nation. In a sense, Australia begins here.

UN reports finds Australian aborigines disadvantaged
1 September 2000 - BBC - A United Nations report says that Australia's Aboriginal people continue to be disadvantaged in employment, housing, health and education.

Australia's treatment of Aborigines 'appalling'
September 2000 -Survival International (UK) - As athletes and spectators arrive in Sydney from all over the world, Survival today condemned Australia's treatment of Aborigines as 'appalling'
UN censures treatment of aborigines
31 July 2000 - Guardian Unlimited - Australia has come under renewed fire from the United Nations for the way it treats its Aboriginal population.

UN Human Rights Committee Findings
28 July 2000 - Amnesty International (UK) - Today's findings of the UN Human Rights Committee on Australia's record of civil and political rights confirm Amnesty International's major concerns on the country....

Australia attacked over Aborigine treatment, The UN says Australia must redress years of injustice
21 July 2000 - BBC - Australia has come under attack for its treatment of Aborigines at a UN Human Rights Committee. The committee, which is due to publish its official recommendations next week, expressed concern at the marginalisation and discrimination of Aborigines in Australian society.

Dirty tricks down under
8 July 2000 - The Guardian (UK) - Australia's shameful past is being raked up on the London stage. Michael Billington reports.

A constitution lacking human rights guarantees is nothing to celebrate
5 July 2000 - Amnesty International (UK) - Human rights protection in Australia largely remains subject to an outdated British-Australian "gentlemen's agreement" that international standards do not need to be enshrined in law.....
Prime Ministerial Joint Statement on Aboriginal Remains
5 July 2000 -The Australian and British governments agree to increase efforts to repatriate human remains to Australian indigenous communities. In doing this, the governments recognise the special connection that indigenous people have with ancestral remains, particularly where there are living descendants.

Where did all the children go?
5 July 2000 - The Independent (UK) - Stolen, one of several Australian plays about the abduction of Aboriginal children, has caused audience members to have heart attacks. Why is it so powerful?

Britain pressed to return Aboriginal bones
5 July 2000 - The Guardian (UK) - Australia's prime minister, John Howard, yesterday took the opportunity of a visit to Downing Street to press Tony Blair for help in persuading British museums and universities to repatriate the remains of more than 2,000 aborigines.

Old Bill digs up little weed beside Big Ben
5 July 2000 - The Times (UK) - The plants would have continued to prosper were it not for an observant group of Aborigines who were themselves staging a protest over land rights ... said Michael Anderson, from the Sovereign Union of Aboriginal Peoples. "You must be a very liberal country. We should all emigrate to England".

Church Leaders Take a Desert Trek to Bridge Australia's Divisions
15 June 2000 - Christianity Today - Leaders of nine Australian churches have completed a pilgrimage of reconciliation—a week-long 1,900-mile bus trip to Australia's remote heart.

Australia gets taste of Seattle
Summer 2000 - Red Pepper (UK) - Australia's long-suffering Aboriginal population sees the games as a golden opportunity to push the country's human rights record up the world's agenda. Key issues in the demonstrations will include mandatory sentencing for minor crimes in Australian states and the government's refusal to apologise for past crimes against indigenous peoples.

Squabble over Aboriginal chief's head
19 April 2000 - The Telegraph (UK) - The head of an Aboriginal chief was believed to be still in an Australian bank vault yesterday, almost three years after being exhumed from an English cemetery.

Australia is divided between rich and aboriginal
18 April 2000 - Independent (UK) - They are citizens of the same country but they might as well be living on different planets, so diverse are their living conditions and life expectancy.

Inauguration of the Pavillon des Sessions at the Musée du Louvre
13 April 2000 - Speech given by Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic

Aborigines target Olympics
2 April 2000 - BBC - Leaders of Aboriginal groups in Australia are threatening to disrupt the Olympic Games in Sydney to draw international attention to their plight.

Australia shies away from UN scrutiny
30 March 2000 - Amnesty International (UK) - By deciding to review Australia's participation in UN treaty committees, the government shows a deplorable lack of respect for and understanding of the crucial role they play within the UN human rights system....

Aborigines 'deserve a royal apology'
27 March 2000 - The Telegraph (UK) - After a week of large crowds and little controversy, the royal tour of Australia was finally dragged into the political arena yesterday when a party leader called on the Queen to apologise to the Aboriginal people for their suffering at the hands of the Crown.

Royal Aborigine apology urged
26 March 2000 - BBC World Service - A leading Australian politician is calling on the Queen to apologise to aborigines for their past treatment by British colonists. The controversial call for an apology was made by Australian Democrats leader Meg Lees.

Queen visits race riot town
22 March 2000 - The Independent (UK) - The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh travelled to the "back of beyond" in the Australian outback today to a town called Bourke. The small settlement of 3,600 people, 500 miles north west of Sydney, is down-at-heel and renowned for the wrong reasons.

Protests at Queen's Australian visit
18 March 2000 - BBC - There have been two low-key protests outside Government House in Canberra, where the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh are staying at the start of their Australian visit.

Queen braves tour furore over Aborigines' loyalty pledge
5 March 2000 - Telegraph (UK) - The Queen will face a severe diplomatic predicament when she visits Australia later this month, created not by disgruntled republicans but by the Aborigines, who regard her as their champion.

Prime Minister's disregard of human rights obligations shocks A.I.
18 February 2000 - Amnesty International (UK) - In an ironic coincidence, the United Nations Secretary General's praise for Australia's assistance to East Timor today contrasts with the Australian Prime Minister's refusal to accept that universal human rights standards equally apply to his own country...
Amnesty International submission on juvenile mandatory sentencing
14 February 2000 - Amnesty International (UK) -The application of Australia's mandatory sentencing laws to juveniles is clearly inconsistent with its international human rights obligations, Amnesty International warned the government four months ago....

Aboriginal boy's death in custody fuels debate on sentencing
11 February 2000 - The Guardian (UK) - The death of a 15-year-old Aboriginal boy in custody yesterday has given a tragic boost to an international campaign being fought by churches and civil libertarians against what they describe as unjust and draconian mandatory sentencing laws.

Exhibition brings Aboriginal art to St Petersburg
4 February 2000 - The St. Petersburg Times - The most significant exhibition of its kind that has ever been seen abroad - that was how Brian Kennedy, director of the National Gallery of Australia, introduced "World of Dreamings: Traditional and Contemporary Art of Aboriginal Australia," which opened at the State Hermitage Museum on Wednesday.

Stolen Identities
29 January 2000 - As Aboriginal people transferred their visions onto canvas, buyers swiftly began to recognise their value. Aboriginal painting is now recognised as one of the most important movements in modern art. It generates around 200 million Australian dollars a year: some canvases are worth as much as A$40,000 each. For a while it looked as if the sale of art would be a means by which the Aborigines could start to recover some of the self-respect of which they have been deprived, as well, of course, as some of the resources. As soon as their painting became valuable, however, white marauders began to steal even that.

Aborigines to Protest At Ceremony in Sydney, Group Will Try to Drown Out Prime Minister
International Herald Tribune - Prime Minister John Howard of Australia and other political and civic leaders will attend a ceremony in Sydney on Saturday that is intended to advance proposals for reconciliation between the country's indigenous black minority and its predominantly European majority.

Aborigines Facing Rebuff at the Polls, Australia Likely to Reject a Tribute
International Herald Tribune - Furious debate in the campaign on a referendum on Saturday over whether Australia should become a republic or remain a constitutional monarchy has overshadowed a second question: Will Australians approve a preamble to their constitution that honors Aborigines for the first time?