home | news l

Flames of anger at 'Stolenwealth Games'

By Greg Ansley

14 March 2006 - New Zealand Herald (NZ) - Smoke from the sacred fire where the Rainbow Serpent lives drifts across Melbourne's Kings Domain as fire-keeper Robert Corowa welcomes visitors to Camp Sovereignty, the centre for two weeks of protest against the "Stolenwealth Games".

He passes guests through an entranceway of eucalyptus branches into a circle defined by sawn logs and hands them a gum twig to drop into the flames with words of peace: "We believe that by coming to the fire and placing leaves on the flames we can help heal the world."

The fire has come from Canberra, where it has been burning at the iconic tent embassy outside old Parliament House since protesters first settled down in the early 1970s to embarrass Australia into improving the lot of its dispossessed and appallingly deprived indigenous people.

Now, with a strong gust of wind, its smoke can roll across the gentle slopes of Kings Domain to Government House, where the Queen and Prince Phillip will stay after opening the Commonwealth Games tomorrow .

Government House itself says it all for Targan, a spokesman for protest organiser BlackGST and a PhD student who uses only his single tribal name.

"That's the site of the first concentration camp in Victoria," he says. "They called it a mission station, but they locked our people in there where they were killed by influenza, not allowed to hunt and gather. Who knows how many died behind its walls."

The McG, where the Games will be opened, is built on sacred ground, a meeting place where local tribes met to settle disputes and arrange inter-tribal marriages.

BlackGST is new on the indigenous block. The initials stand for "genocide to be stopped, sovereignty to be restored, treaty to be made".

It is working closely with other groups such as Australians for a Treaty and Reconciliation (Antar) - which yesterday defied special anti-protest laws to spell "Stolenwealth Games" in placards across the Yarra River - and traditional landowners to use the Games to help bring international pressure on federal lawmakers.

Targan says that little has changed for indigenous Australians since they first received constitutional recognition 40 years ago.

"Until 1967 we were just flora and fauna," he says. "But my 72-year-old mum says we were better off as flora and fauna. Our situation is like a boulder going downhill."

Jill Webb, Victorian chair of Antar, says conditions for indigenous Australians continue to deteriorate and that protesters hoped to use the Games to highlight ongoing injustice.

But she concedes: "I'm not sure if it is possible to embarrass this Government."

Protesters' anger was this week firmed by a new Oxfam report supporting repeated official measures of indigenous disadvantage - life expectancy almost 20 years less than other Australians and much higher rates of infant mortality, cancer, diabetes and heart and lung disease.

The report found that in contrast to rising health standards for Maori and Canadian First Nations peoples, one in three indigenous men will die before he reaches 55 years.

Strengthened by a ream of such figures, representatives of Victoria's 36 tribal groups met two weeks ago to debate a protest strategy for the Games, and backed BlackGST's plans for the Kings Domain Camp.

They plan to mobilise supporters for mass demonstrations. Targan is confident that with 120,000 Aborigines in Victoria, BlackGST's target of 20,000 demonstrators can be reached. Police believe that at best Camp Sovereignty will attract 2000.

For the moment at least, Camp Sovereignty is peaceful. Police and park rangers arrived after the camp was set up on Sunday in defiance of special Games laws but took part in the fire ceremony and left. How long that continues remains to be seen.

Equality end of the game

Today a new book, Australia's Blackest Sporting Moments - The Top 100 will be launched at the protesters' camp, detailing the worst in incidents of racism in sports.

Tomorrow , again in defiance of Games laws, protesters march on the Old Exhibition Centre, where the Queen and Prince Phillip will be lunching.

"We're aiming at equality for the first time since 1777, and we're not stopping short of that," says protester Targan.

Source: New Zealand Herald

Indigenous activists set for Games

Geraldine Mitchell and Holly Ife

14 March 2006 - SMOKE billowed just metres from native trees as a fire burned and protesters blessed hundreds of visitors at their makeshift campsite at the Royal Botanic Gardens yesterday.

Authorities turned a blind eye as about 50 indigenous rights activists set up home in more than a dozen tents pitched in Kings Domain, near Government House.
The camp, organised by Black GST (Genocide, Sovereignty, Treaty), is attempting to draw attention to their cause as hundreds of thousands of national and international visitors converge for the Commonwealth Games.

The State Government has given up its attempt to find another site for the protesters now that the camp is not in a "Games management zone".

Commonwealth Games Minister Justin Madden's spokesman Brent Hooley said the Government would act only if the group posed a security threat or interfered with Games activities.

ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation), supporters of Black GST, took advantage of the city's Moomba crowds to get their message across.

"Stolenwealth Games" was spelled across the pedestrian footbridge at Southbank in 1.8m letters.

ANTaR Victoria chairwoman Jill Webb said the group had been planning the protest for months.

"A key point we want to make is that the wealth that most Australians enjoy today is because of the wealth that was stolen from the Aboriginals," she said.

Source: Herald Sun

Without Cathy Freeman, Aborigines aren't in the race

By Sean Brennan

14 March 2006 -MELBOURNE this week hosts the largest sporting event held in Australia since the 2000 Olympics. The country will be on show again and Aboriginal people again will be visible: some are competing, others are involved in associated arts and business events, many are taking to the street in protest.

This should be no surprise. The Commonwealth is an association of 53 nations with something in common: their experience of British colonisation. The old British Empire took this continent, without regard for the laws or property of Aboriginal peoples. By contrast, the modern Commonwealth built its identity on self-determination and decolonisation.

These Games — a moment of international fellowship, and exposure — are an opportunity for reflection on these matters. How do we Australians look in our dealings with indigenous peoples by comparison with nations we closely resemble in so many ways?

Canada is also a federation and constitutional monarchy, based on common law and parliament. Its constitution guarantees freedom from racial discrimination and requires that government respect the inherent rights of Canada's aboriginal peoples. Canada's federal government has long recognised self-government as an inherent aboriginal right.

New Zealand acknowledged Maori land rights from the outset, even if they were frequently abused. Maori have reserved seats in the national parliament. The Treaty of Waitangi, concluded in 1840 with more than 500 Maori chiefs, is seen as a founding document for the nation. Since the 1980s, the Waitangi Tribunal has created a forum to address New Zealand's unfinished business. A process for airing past grievances and then sitting down to discuss a new beginning, based on a legislated settlement, provides a safety valve for the pressures created by colonisation and racial inequality.

What can we Australians say to fellow members of the Commonwealth about the place of our indigenous peoples?

The shocking statistics on indigenous disadvantage are well known. Many people are striving every day to turn this around. Aboriginal people, often in partnership with non-Aboriginal Australians, are building enterprises, delivering vital services and holding their communities together in the face of daunting challenges.

What is most concerning about the past few years is the way in which Aboriginal people have almost vanished from the institutions of national government and political life. We lost Aden Ridgeway, the only identified Aboriginal voice in Federal Parliament. The number of Aboriginal people in the Commonwealth public service has declined over 10 years, with a sharp fall in recent times. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, afflicted by personality issues at the top, a scapegoat for long-term state and Federal Government failure, was abolished in 2005.

The representative voice of Aboriginal people within our system of government was silenced in the midst of a review the Government itself had initiated.

The Commonwealth had no institutional solution in place, except a hand-picked council with a limited advisory role.

When visitors came to Australia for the 2000 Olympics and saw a nation unite with pride behind the performance of Cathy Freeman, there was some genuine space for the political aspirations of indigenous people to be debated and Aboriginal people had access to the corridors of power. The reconciliation process was also coming to its climax. The idea of a treaty or another form of fundamental agreement to tackle the issues of unfinished business was a national issue. Today a visitor to the Melbourne Commonwealth Games will find little evidence of official engagement with these aspirations.

Significant changes are going on in the public service and attempts are being made to close the gaps that exist in government administration across the federal-state divide. But turning things around in indigenous affairs involves more than improved service delivery. There is a political dimension.

The example of the Commonwealth shows Australia can do much better in finding fresh avenues for genuine political engagement, whether it be through a treaty, a settlement process or the construction of new national and regional representative bodies.

As shared responsibility agreements run into predicted problems, the Federal Government seems to be letting go some of its ideology and resistance to political representation. Regional partnership agreements are coming to the fore and the Government recently agreed to funding for a regional assembly in western NSW.

But recent Senate hearings reveal these developments lag shamefully behind the abolition of ATSIC regional councils.

Many indigenous peoples may have to wait for years before they have an institutional voice again for talking with the government.

Hardly a gold-medal performance.

Sean Brennan is a project director at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the UNSW law school and co-author of Treaty (Federation Press, 2005).

Source: The Age

Queen won't acknowledge Melbourne's traditional owners

13 March 2006 - Buckingham Palace says the Queen will not be officially acknowledging the traditional owners of Melbourne when she opens the Commonwealth Games later this week.

The Queen arrived in Canberra yesterday for an official five-day tour of Australia.

On Wednesday she heads to Melbourne to open the Commonwealth Games and Aboriginal groups have been calling for the Queen to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the traditional owners of the land on which she will be standing.

But a publicist for the royal tour, Sam Cohen, says the Queen will only be reading a message from the Commonwealth baton before declaring the Games open.

Shelley Reyes from Reconciliation Australia and Arrilla Indigenous Services says that is a pity because the custom of a welcome to country is common place here.

"These things do take time to filter through, but one day hopefully perhaps on her next visit or Prince Charles' next visit," she said.

Ms Reyes says a welcome is a simple and unifying thing to do.

Ms Cohen stressed the Queen will meet Indigenous leaders during her visit and that will be at an official ceremony in Sydney today.

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

related links:

• Camp Site Established
  13 March 2006 - The Stolenwealth Games Convergence in support of the Black GST established camp today in Kings Domain, Melbourne.
• Aboriginal protesters converge for Games
  12 March 2006 - Hundreds of Aborigines are converging on Melbourne in a bid to embarrass the federal and Victorian governments over their indigenous policies as the international spotlight focuses on the Commonwealth Games.
• Australian's for Native Title and Reconciliation (Victoria)
• Stolenwealth Games
• Black GST

Further information: social justice issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page