news index: 2001- |
| Pope's apology renews calls for PM to say sorry 24 November 2001- Pope John Paul II's apology to Aborigines for injustices today renewed national calls for the government to say sorry to the stolen generations. |
| Pope says sorry to Aborigines 21 November 2001- Pope John Paul II apologised to Australia's Aborigines and other indigenous peoples of Oceania for past "shameful injustices" of the Roman Catholic Church, in a message posted on the Internet yesterday. |
| Oh cry my beloved country 11 November 2001 - "Yesterday Australia failed to rise above its political leadership. One hundred years after Federation, when the first order of business was the White Australia policy, Australians turned back the clock." |
| Action to speak as loudly as words in push for treaty 8 November 2001- The Australian Democrats have called for a treaty agreement with indigenous Australians to be included in the national process of reconciliation. |
| Coalition plans bigger role for Aborigines 18 October 2001 - Aboriginal communities would be given a greater say in how government services were delivered to them under a re-elected Coalition government. |
| Both sides playing race card: Dodson 15 October 2001 - The Howard Government was highlighting race and cultural difference for political advantage in the lead-up to the federal election, Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson claimed yesterday. |
| Putting reconciliation on poll agenda 15 October 2001 - Fifty-eight community and welfare organisations attempted to elevate reconciliation as a major election campaign issue yesterday, calling on all political parties to commit to alleviating extreme indigenous disadvantage. |
| Aboriginal candidates are few, but determined 15 October 2001 - Four out of five Labor Aboriginal candidates may have been elected at the recent NT poll, but at the federal level there is still little indigenous representation. And safe seats for indigenous aspirants are few and far between. |
| Aboriginal Campaign heads to Europe 21 August 2001 - Co-ordinators of the Aboriginal tent embassy are to establish a European consulate and hope to lobby the Queen on indigenous rights before she travels to Australia in October. |
| Thoughts Germaine: Our future is Aboriginal 20 August 2001 - She has taken on patriarchy, paternalism and the pettiness of playing safe.Now, at 62, the expatriate writer and intellectual bomb thrower Germaine Greer is fighting the biggest battle of all. |
| Aboriginal side returns to blaze a trail 20 August 2001 - It's taken more than 130 years, but the second tour of England by an Aboriginal cricket side has finally begun. |
| No one should fear a Treaty 16 August 2001- At the time of Federation, Aboriginal peoples were excluded from the exercise of nation-building. Today, we are denied any real say in our destiny. |
| Needed: European action on Indigenous Australians' rights 15 August 2001 - Even if the British government shows no sign of apologising, it is moving on another issue. Amid reports that at least 40 British museums are preparing to hand their collections of ancestral remains back to Australian Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples, the government has just set up a working group to consider changing the law to make it easier for some museums to release their collections. |
| Aborigines' international hero unites warring parties 10 August 2001 - "Jack Beetson fights for the stolen generations," says the TV clip to be shown around the world about the Aboriginal leader the United Nations has named as one of only 12 Unsung Heroes. |
| NAIDOC Week: Tribute to Indigenous Service August 2001 - In recognition of the important contribution Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made to the Australian Defence Force (ADF), a number of high-ranking Defence personnel attended a special memorial service at the Australian War Memorial during National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Commemoration (NAIDOC) week. |
| Question of intent 28 July 2001 - Did Australians intend to exterminate the Aborigines? Historian Henry Reynolds looks for evidence of genocide in his latest book, An Indelible Stain? |
| Black Australia slips the net 14 June 2001 - "The internet in Australia is largely the province of the middle class and the educated, and the cities. It is inherently elitist. And, while it remains so and the status of indigenous Australians remains unchanged, so will their participation in it." |
| Black list opens road to parliament 12 June 2001 - NSW Labor has never sent an Aboriginal politician to either Canberra or Macquarie Street but the weekend endorsement by the ALP State conference to give indigenous candidates a 20 per cent weighting in preselection contests is aimed at redressing that fact, initially at the local government level. |
| God knows you should say sorry, new archbishop tells PM 8 June 2001 - Is the Prime Minister out of step with God? Possibly, according to Sydney's new Anglican archbishop, at least over Aboriginal reconciliation and Uniting Church minister Harry Herbert agrees. |
| 'Apartheid' law under fire in NT 7 June 2001 - A new Northern Territory law under which people can be fined $2,000 or jailed for six months for "anti-social behaviour" has been branded stupid and an imitation of a law from South Africa's apartheid era. |
| The talking cure 2 June 2001 - When white Australia says sorry for past injustices and present inequities, black Australia will respond in kind, believes Hugh Mackay. |
| Growing the Indigenous Australian internet June 2001 - Participation in online services by Indigenous Australians is currently very limited. The rate of individual computer ownership is extremely low and private access to internet services is minimally represented within this. |
| Diplomatic bagging for Irish MP who provoked motion commotion 28 April 2001 - When it comes to Australia and matters of international diplomacy, don't mention the 't' word - 'treaty'. Irish MP Michael Higgins did recently, but he didn't quite get away with it. |
| Debate rages over "peaceful" white settlement 16 April 2001 - Tony Jones speaks with Henry Reynolds and Keith Windschuttle. Henry Reynolds is one of Australia's most influential historians, who's responsible for some of the most comprehensive and original research, documenting the violence on Australia's frontier. He's written nine books and is presently a research professor at the University of Tasmania. Historian Keith Windschuttle's recent series in the conservative magazine 'Quadrant' attacked the work of Henry Reynolds and others. He's also the author of 'The Killing of History', how literary critics and social theories are murdering our past and he's the publisher of Macleay Press. |
| Right and wrong 31 March 2001 - Conservative efforts to deny the existence of the stolen generations are a sinister cultural development, argues Robert Manne, and are designed to undermine the very notion of Aboriginal dispossession. |
| Tribal voices 31 March 2001 - Roulla Yiacoumi looks at the people, culture, health, music and art of Aboriginal Australia on the web. |
| Amnesty calls for Teoh Bill block 28 March 2001 - Australians should ask themselves, 'Well, hang on a second. What's going on there? Why are our legal representatives suddenly so keen to pass this law?' |
| Money that's black and white and spent all over 16 March 2001 - The dollars may appear black, but there are plenty of "grey" areas. Not all native title dollars are being used to Aboriginal advantage. They are being used to help those opposing native title claims. They are being used to help other landholders and the nation deal with the fallout of a High Court decision - the landmark Mabo finding in 1992 that native title exists. |
| Ending economic racism: bringing together the Indigenous and business communitites 15 March 2001 - There has been increasing debate about Indigenous economics development between Indigenous people, Governments and business groups. Some are calling for welfare reforms while other argue to maintain the status quo. Various models for economic development have been produced by the groups such as the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, ATSIC and others. |
| Misused spirits of creation returned to proper custodians 7 March 2001 - Since fellow artist Donny Woolagoogja's giant wandjina image awed the masses at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, Mr Tatayra and other Ngarinyin elders Paddy Neowarra and Scotty Martin have set up a Web site, wandjina.com, to spread the message of their culture worldwide. |
| Black Australia: a picture of despair, rage and violence 16 February 2001 - Aboriginal people are 45 times more likely than other Australians to be victims of domestic violence, while their risk of being murdered is eight times greater, the most comprehensive research into indigenous community violence reveals. |
| Dream time for our film-makers 28 January 2001 - Some of Australia's finest film directors are scrambling to make films of Aboriginal stories. And now many predict the ailing local film industry could be in for an Aboriginal-led recovery. |
| We ignore UN rights report at our peril 29 December 2000 - Australia must recognise the increasing links between international trade and human rights, writes Angela Ward (Associate Professor in International Law at Essex University, and junior counsel to Cherie Booth, QC). |
| No trespass, Cockatoo is ours, declare Aborigines 23 December 2000 - Aborigines who set up a tent embassy on an island in Sydney Harbour have been ordered to leave after a Supreme Court judge found they were trespassing on Commonwealth property. |
| Pride of the land 26 September 2000 - This was Australia's longest minute. This was the breathless, unforgettable minute. The 112,524 people at Olympic Park last night - a record for the stadium - will never forget it. Few Australians can ever forget it. This was the minute when the nation's heart leapt in the breast and thudded against the ribs like a muffled drum, when the nation's gut churned. |
| Flame of reconciliation ends its trek to Sydney 4 September 2000 - The Olympic torch is not the only flame that has traversed New South Wales. The alternative flame is a humble glow - it was not accompanied by a convoy of shiny vehicles, you can't buy it, and famous people are not queueing to run with it.It's a small flame, flickering on a piece of old wood cradled to the chest of Kevin "Uncle Kev" Buzzacott, a South Australian Arabunna elder. |
| Flame of Freedom burns in Victoria Park 23 August 2000 - The last time an Aboriginal campfire burned in Victoria Park could well have been more than 200 years ago. The Gadigal tribe of the Eora people, traditional Aboriginal inhabitants of the area now known as Sydney's inner west, are known to have used the park as a meeting place long before European settlement. The fire then would have been for utility and warmth as well as a place to gather in tribal community. |
| Facing the wrong way on human rights 31 July 2000 - Australia is displaying increasing ambivalence towards the international human rights regime. Such ambivalence has been manifest in tardiness in complying with international reporting obligations and the rejection of a series of adverse findings by independent UN bodies. |
| The Aboriginal Arts 'fake' controversy: Traditional art holds the key to world understanding of Aboriginal culture 29 July 2000 - But a rising market brings pressures as well as blessings. When demand for a successful artist to produce more and more work meets a tradition in which art is a communal activity -- with elders like the late Emily Kngwarreye authorising others to assist with her paintings -- the outcome at times has been scandals over bogus works. |
| Germaine Greer 25 July 2000 - They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but sometimes the view from afar just makes the faults appear that much deeper. This seems to be the case for ex-pat Professor Germaine Greer, whose recent tearful outburst at a literary forum in London left no doubt as to what she currently thinks Australia's stance on indigenous rights. Speaking to an audience of 400 people, Professor Greer said that she had wanted to leave “white Australia” ever since she could think clearly and that her return to this country over the years has been exclusively to “black Australia”. |
| Cherie Booth tells UN of `cruel and inhuman punishment. 20 July 2000 - The complaint by Ms Cherie Booth, QC, alleges "cruel and inhuman punishment". It says mandatory sentencing laws in the Northern Territory and police practices associated with them discriminate against Aborigines in comparison with their effect on other people. |
| Canberra denies unease over Blair 15 July 2000 - The Federal Government has denied embarrassment over the involvement of Cherie Booth, the barrister wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an international legal challenge by Aborigines to the government's mandatory sentencing laws. |
| A Black Day in London 8 July 2000 - In the British Parliament, a Labour MP, Mr Jeremy Corbyn, tabled a motion calling on "the governments and peoples of Australia to mark the Centenary of Federation by committing themselves to redress discrimination and disadvantage" of Aborigines. |
| Post and Riposte 19 April 2000 - Two emails are republished here. The first was read out on commercial radio station 4RO. The second is an answer from Tim Dunlop. The presenter who read out the first was apparently disciplined. These two are presented here side by side in the belief that views should be addressed, not suppressed. |
| The wild ride of Charlie Perkins 8 April 2000 - It's the day after Charles Perkins told the world that Sydney would burn during the Olympics. A news crew from Seven is waiting outside his Sydney home; so am I and so is a German journalist. Over the next two days Perkins will do interviews with journalists from around the world. When I ring him later in the week, he can't remember all the countries, but lists a few - England, Ireland, Germany, the United States, Switzerland, Japan twice. |
| Words apart, but two worlds come a little closer to terms 23 March 2000 - Young Tara McKellar, of Bourke, and Elizabeth II, Queen of England and Australia, did their best yesterday to complete a circle and put behind them a deep unhappiness in the heart of this country. |
| Reconcile black and white, says Mandela 17 November 1999 - Mr Nelson Mandela sent a subtle message urging Aboriginal reconciliation when he accepted an Order of Australia from the Prime Minister, Mr Howard. |
| A cruel case of absurd historical denial 15 November 1999 - When asked to explain how it came about that hundreds of Aborigines were now testifying about their removal and its consequences, McGuinness claimed, without a hint of evidence, all had fallen victim to "false memory syndrome". |
| Greer to stay in exile until treaty rights past wrongs 24 March 1999 - Australia's feminist icon Germaine Greer yesterday vowed not to return to Australia until the Federal Government negotiated a treaty with Aborigines that sought to put right past injustices. |
| Lifting Shadow from Aboriginal Art 10 March 1999 - The Aboriginal art market in recent years has soared to great heights while periodically being racked by the exposure of fakes. Now 1999 is shaping up to offer more of the same, as a new scandal casts a shadow over the first indigenous shows of the year. |
| Mr Mabo is entitled to be an agitator 11 February 1999 - "He was in the best sense a fighter for equal rights; a rebel; a free-thinker; a restless spirit; a reformer, who saw far into the future and into the past. In all this he embodies in Australia a long and noble tradition of fighting for black rights." |
| Jeers from The Diary 27 March 1998 - London: Feminist icon Germaine Greer is never far from controversy. Some would say it doesn't so much follow her as actively seeks her out. |
| Sorry Book open in
UK 25 March 1998 - The Howard Government faces more embarrassment over its handling of race issues with the British launch of a campaign to win an apology for the "stolen generations" of indigenous Australians. |
| Mandela and Wik 29 October 1997 - When Nelson Mandela taps you on the shoulder and offers to help, it is a fairly sure sign that you are in trouble. |
| Working For the Man: Wages Lost to the Queensland
Workers 'Under the Act' June 1996 - The Indigenous Law Bulletin - The kindest complexion one might put on the disposition of wages was that the government believed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were unable to manage their own affairs. However, this is not supported by the evidence |
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