Sovereign Audio Collection

Paul Wiles from CAAMA News interviewing Paddy Gibson. - IMAGE: Warlmanpa ladies dance at Manuwangku court hearings - no Muckaty nuke dump! photo Paddy Gibson - via @IndigenousX pic.twitter.com/eRZMfSwLXs

It has long been thought that prior to white settlement, Indigenous Australians lived a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Now some scholars argue that the first Australians practised forms of agriculture and aquaculture ... More http://www.sovereignunion.mobi

Transcript - CHRIS UHLMANN: Thirty-three years ago today, a young Aboriginal man was picked up by police in the town of Wee Waa in north-west New South Wales. Ninety minutes later he was dead. - The death of 21 year old Eddie Murray was one of the cases that led to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Today his family are holding a national day of action and calling for another inquiry. - Lindy Kerin reports: - LINDY KERIN: Twenty-one year old Eddie Murray was on his way to becoming a first grade rugby league star. In 1981 he'd been out celebrating an upcoming football trip and was picked up by police for being drunk and disorderly. An hour and a half later he was found hanged in the Wee Waa police cell. - ANNE MURRAY: He was a happy go lucky, typical brother, who loved his family dearly. - LINDY KERIN: Eddie Murray's sister Anne was just 15 when her brother died. His death was one of 99 investigated by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The inquiry was critical of police evidence but found suicide was likely in the case of Eddie Murray. - The Murray family refused to accept the finding and they exhumed the young man's body and discovered he had a fractured sternum, which wasn't identified at the inquest or Royal Commission. Anne Murray says three decades on, there are still many unanswered questions. - ANNE MURRAY: The truth what really happened to my brother, and I'm out here to seek justice for my brother and let his spirit free, and my mother and father rest in peace, because they're not going rest till the truth comes out. - LINDY KERIN: Today the family will call on the state's new Police Minister and Attorney-General to re-open the case and hold a new inquest. They'll be supported by Ray Jackson from the Indigenous Social Justice Association. - RAY JACKSON: We're hoping that somewhere along the line we're going to get some real justice for the Murray family. - LINDY KERIN: There has been an inquest, there's been the Royal Commission and an independent investigation. What more can be done on this case though, really? - RAY JACKSON: Well, we can come to the truth. Like I mean the original coroner found that Eddie was too drunk to suicide, but he died at the hand or hands of persons unknown. Now he's in a Wee Waa police cell. The only people who have access to Eddie in that cell, he was by himself, are the police. - LINDY KERIN: Ray Jackson says despite the Royal Commission in 1991, the incarceration rates of Indigenous people have skyrocketed. Indigenous people make up more than a quarter of the national prison population. - RAY JACKSON: The 339 recommendations that were handed down by the Royal Commission were to stop the increase in incarceration, to stop deaths in custody. Yet because of lack of implementation of those recommendations, things have only got worse. - We have now since 1980 had over 450 Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody. No police officer, no prison officer, no custodial health officer has ever been found guilty. - CHRIS UHLMANN: Ray Jackson from the Indigenous Social Justice Association speaking to Lindy Kerin. - And the New South Wales Attorney-General says he would like to meet the Murray family to discuss their concerns.

Peter Coleman, White Supremacist and non believer in global warming uttered out loud what many Neo-Liberals in Australia believe but are rarely game to say. The majority of Australians are extremely racist and the fundamental issue behind the suppression of First Nations Peoples.

Covered by Paul Wiles, CAAMA News A Central Australian Aboriginal Elder challenged the moral conscience of the nation when she told a pro assimilationist championing the integration of her people that she is not “the problem” that white Australians have been trying to solve since colonization.

The granddaughter of Northern Territory Arrernte rights campaigner Rosalie Kunoth-Monks says she was inspired to see her grandmother take a stand against assimilationist policies. The Utopia elder appeared on the ABC's Q&A program this week, saying her culture had survived despite colonisation. She also praised the documentary film 'Utopia' for bringing Indigenous issues to light. Amelia Kunoth-Monks (pictured) says she was pleased to see her grandmother be able to speak in a widely-view forum. Source: Gerry Georgatos and Warren Barnsley - National Indigenous Radio

Chair of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, says ceremonies should not be an excuse to avoid other responsibilities.

The Abbott government is in damage control following reports the Liberals tricked their coaltion partners the Nationals into accepting the reintroduction of indexation of petrol excise. Ellen Fanning ABC RN

Joe Hockey has launched defamation proceedings against Fairfax over its 'Treasurer For Sale' story from 5 May. - The front-page article went on to claim that Mr Hockey offered privileged access to businessmen and lobbyists in return for donations to the Liberal Party. - The proceedings again the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Canberra Times and their online services were filed in the Federal Court today. - So, what are Mr Hockey's chances of success? Audio source: ABC Radio Nations (RN Drive) 20 May 2014

The Chair of Abbott's Indigenous Advisory Council is trying to claw his way out of yet another hole he has dug himself. He is now gobbling off at full speed to try justify comments he made regarding First Nations culture and ceremonies. Last month, it was reported Warren Mundine suggested in a speech to an employment conference in Darwin that ceremonies, such as Sorry Business, went for too long and were impeding employment and education obligations. But speaking from the National Native Title Conference in Coffs Harbour, Mr Mundine is now trying to blame the ABC for misrepresented him. Audio source: nirs.org.au

ABC Radio National's 'The World Today' produced this shallow report in January 2012

Some of the original founding members of the Aboriginal Housing Company have this morning launched a Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy. 26 May 2014 Jenny and Lyall Munro have pitched the first tent, claiming The Block is for Aboriginal people and saying they feel betrayed by the Housing Company. The Embassy is opposed to a draft for a prime real estate and retail precinct at The Block, released in recent months by the Housing Company's Chair Mick Mundine. Jenny Munro says the company is selling out its Charter and the right of low Gerry Georgatos - National Indigeous Radio

Abbotts $7 Fee: Big medical chains could charge fees rather than bulk bill Pat McGrath reported this story on ABC RADIO 'PM' Tuesday, May 20, 2014

In 2012 the WA State Government announced the stolen wages reparation scheme which invited people born before 1958 to apply for payments of up to $2,000 if they had directly experienced government control over their income. Kimberley Community Legal Service solicitor Judy Harrison, says that Aboriginal people her organisation has spoken to are not happy with the 2012 reparation scheme. "The government came up with a figure and said 'Well here it is. We'll give you this. You don't have to give up your rights. We're not apologising to you, so take it if you care to take it and this will be the end of it,'" she says. Read more: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/node/897/edit

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's latest report on youth justice has revealed a significant drop in the number of young people within the system. The Institute says the decrease of over 1000 youths is a promising trend. But concern remains over the fact that almost half of the total numbers of youths under supervision are Indigenous. Marc Tong reports on SBS World News Radio

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Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheneer Interview with Dr Clare Land ABC Radio National 'Hindsight' - Presented by Lorena Allam Sunday 16 March 2014 - The colony of Port Phillip was just eight years old when it held its first execution. The first people hanged in 1842 were two Aboriginal men from Tasmania. How did they come to be on the mainland? - The story of Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheneer is shocking, exciting, tragic and moving. Their tumultuous and short lives tell us so much about frontier conflict and the early colonial history of Tasmania and Victoria. - The two men were among a larger group of people, including Truganini, who were brought to the mainland by George Augustus Robinson, to act as intermediaries. - Six months into their travels through country Victoria with Robinson, they spectacularly abandoned life with the whites and went on a six week ‘crime spree’. Eventually caught and charged with murder of two seal hunters, the women were sent back to Tasmania but the two men were put to death in a brutally botched execution. - They are remembered every year on the anniversary of their death by local Aboriginal people, and Melbourne Council has unanimously agreed to create a memorial to their lives.

ABC Radio National 'Hindsight' Sunday 16 March 2014

What factors come into play when people are deciding whether to self-identify as Indigenous? - By Peggy Giakoumelos Source World News Radio UPDATED 28 MINS AGO - (Transcript from World News Radio) - Do you identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander? - It's a question that appears on many government forms across the country but for some indigenous Australians, it's a question loaded with confusion, fear and sometimes shame. - The Bureau of Statistics has been asking Australians whether they identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders only since the 1971 Census. - More than 40 years on, Indigenous people are now encouraged to identify themselves when applying for government services as well as when applying for employment. - NSW Koori artist Darren Bloomfield is proud of his heritage. - But whenever he's asked, he prefers not to tick the box, taking issue with the word Aboriginal itself. - "I've been bothered by that for years because again you have to look at the word Aboriginal. Aboriginal means native to land. I find it quite derogatory in the sense of an identification that we stand under. I don't like to be called an Aboriginal. If someone says what country do you come from, I say I come from Australia and I am an Australian Aboriginal, so they know about my identification of what I am to this country, if I am outside this country, yeah, because that's all people know. But I try to convince them after, I tell them that I'm Aboriginal, I prefer to be looked at or identified as a Koori because that's what we identify and put ourselves into. It's our word." The New South Wales government is concerned that not enough people are identifying themselves as Indigenous when accessing government services, and is looking at the reasons why. - The Aboriginal Affairs unit within the Office of Communities is conducting the project, saying higher rates of identification would mean more Indigenous people would use the programs and services available to them. - An online description of the project, acknowledges Aboriginal identity as complex. - Dr Victoria Grieves is the Australian Research Council's Indigenous Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney. - She says since European settlement, any traditional sense of what it means to be an Indigenous person in Australia has changed dramatically. - She also says past policies of removing indigenous children from families have also left a legacy of fear. - "A lot of our institutional structures have been knocked out from under us and we're in a process still I think of re-grouping and re-forming. Something that goes along with that is confusion, sometimes about identity, confusion about what it means. For example it's very concerning if people think that if I identify myself as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person, that means that I'm likely to be discriminated against. But I do believe that there are people who feel that way and they might have good reason to feel that way as well" - SBS asked members of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Facebook group for their views about self-identification. - These were some of the responses. - " About 60 years ago, Aboriginal people were forced to carry exemption certificates.. Remember FORCED if they wanted to go any where, work other places.... Now The Australian government has tricked us again, NOW you have to have certificate to prove you are Aboriginal.... Oh yes I know the argument of non aboriginals trying to be Aboriginals.... But isn't it funny, how after all the marches and fight to free the Aboriginal, so they would be treated as Humans and have same rights as white fella.... we're back to having to carry a paper.... boy oh boy who got done .. sorry if I offend but I find it ironic." - "...Why would people want to identify in a system that abuses them for statistical gain?..." - "If only we had a group who could help teach the culture to those who are disconnected from their culture ancestry.... Wow, we could help so many.... I grew up in children's homes, didn't get culture except a little that I remembered before my dad died...Had to learn as an adult. My heart bleeds for those lost descendents who have lost their culture... Gee the Government wins with the old integration policy.. breed the black out.... I often wonder how large our Aboriginal population would be if "those lost could be found". - "The stolen generation created a gap to prove relational history. Families also chose to hide their history because circumstances of the time made life easier." - Tania, who responded to the Facebook post, is of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry. She told SBS she used to identify as Indigenous when accessing government services but no longer does so. - "I've had people say to me 'you Aboriginal people get everything'. And I looked at them and said 'what do you mean?' You get cars houses and whatever. And I say, well no we don't. We have to apply for them like anyone else would. Since my son's been in primary school, that's one of the first questions people ask, because my understanding is that they got extra funding for you. But it doesn't mean that they provide extra support for you, they just wanted the money. And I'm not saying that every school is like that, but he's primary schools were. You want to be known just for you. You don't want to be known because you're an Aboriginal person. Because at the end of the day, it shouldn't matter what culture you are as a person, you are just you." - Tania says she instils an awareness and a sense of quiet pride in her children about their Aboriginal and their European ancestry. - But she says for herself it has been difficult to ignore what she says is the shame and stigma associated with being an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander in Australia. "I know this sounds terrible, but when you've got and you see the media, what they portray the Indigenous people why would you declare yourself being proud of them? They all portray the negative side of it. You don't really see a lot of positives come out of the media. A lot of people have this perception that indigenous people are nothing but alcoholics and druggos, abusers, violent. I've even had people say that to me and I've gone, hold on their not all like that. I had someone one day and they were, you know 'I hate Aboriginals' because they didn't know that I was Indigenous. And I let them finish what they were saying, and I said, you know their not all like that, and he said yes they are. And I said, how long have you and I been friends for? And he just looked at me and said, well a few years. And I said, did you know I was indigenous, and he said, hey? I don't advertise the fact, because that's why." Documentation may be required for Indigenous people who want to apply for indigenous specific programs and projects. Darren Bloomfield, who was part of the Stolen Generations, says while he doesn't tick the box identifying as Aboriginal when accessing government services. - But he did decide a few years ago to go through a confirmation process. - "I was taken away as a kid. And then I had to go through that identification process, you have to go and get an Aboriginality identification certificate. The most difficult part of that was that you try to get identified. Sure I look like a Koori but they couldn't identify me. And they said 'mate we don't know you. You have to go back to where you were born, to your land council.' And I'm thinking I don't even know them either, and they don't know me. I'm proud to be identified as a Koori man of the Wiradjuri nation, but just to get that was even more difficult than anything. I feel a little bit stupid that I have to do that too." - Professor Peter Buckskin is the Dean of Indigenous Scholarship and Engagement and Research at the University of South Australia. - He finds it sad that some people won't identify as having indigenous ancestry. - He believes the benefits of identifying far outweigh the negatives. - "Personally I think the benefits are more around your own psyche, how you feel about yourself and about your heritage. If you're a proud person in terms of your family heritage, I think you're better positioned to deal with the wider world. And I think governments are looking for more people to identify on forms so the can actually work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to ensure that they can be more culturally responsive and part of our responsibility is to educate. So I think it's a very good thing to identify, because we've got to speak back to the ignorance." - The New South Wales government is due to release its report on Aboriginal Self-Identification by mid 2014.