Archives may 2015

"We have never been given the opportunity to live in our own ways ... since occupation of our lands in 1829, we have been forced, by successive policies, to be a reactive people. Now we are trying to change to be proactive, but we need time to do that in our own way. We are in the process of re-piecing together our community with our own value system, starting here at Heirisson Island," said Bella Bropho at the Matagarup Refugee Camp on Heirisson Island, Perth, Western Australia.

The Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia has described being hit by a double whammy after finding out about a 50 per cent state budget cut to Indigenous programs. It's all to do with ratings and unless the services are rated as 'very good' they lose their funding. Dr Hames said the Health Department believed a lot of programs listed as good still provided a quality service, and funding would be found somewhere.

Rosie Batty was right to criticise the federal government's allocation of a mere $16 million over three years to family violence in last week's budget. By comparison, more than a billion dollars was set aside for national security measures, an issue that is arguably costing fewer Australian lives at the present time. But when it comes to introducing oppressive legislation on the basis of race, state and federal governments suddenly seem to become incredibly concerned about violence against women - Celeste Liddle writes

A domestic violence shelter servicing 50 Aboriginal communities in the remote north of Western Australia has emerged as the latest project to miss out on funding under the Federal Government's overhaul of Indigenous funding. The women who run the Djarindjin safe house say they will have to shut their doors on June 30, if the decision is not reversed. - There is not a skerrick of evidence that abused women would be better off in larger towns and cities than in Ho,eland communities. Domestic violence is accelerated where alcohol is accessible.

Suicides in First Nations communities are linked to extreme poverty and disadvantage from the beginning of life, intergenerational trauma, cultural identity, racialisation and racism. Often alcohol and substance abuse are considered by many as underlying causes but these are not underlying causes and rather they are at best contributing factors borne symptomatically of the conditions above.

This article and links to all many other articles by First Nation suicide expert Gerry Georgatos.

While undergoing conservation work on existing Aboriginal rock images in the Grampians, rangers stumbled upon two new previously unknown and unrecorded sites, conserving them will be the challenge. At one site a mixture of ochre and emu egg has been used across the top of a hand to create a stencil. While a series of figures and lines appear on a rock at another site. These were recently discovered by rangers in the Grampians while working in the fire affected areas. "The more we look the more we find," said Chief Ranger David Roberts.

Unofficially, Recognise claims the debate has moved on and no-one, except for Noel Pearson, is talking about ‘Recognition' being in the form of fluffy words inserted in the preamble (Pearson is calling for Constitutuion Recognition, which would sit above the constitution in an attempt to drum up support from constitutional conservatives. It flies in the face of statements made by Prime Minister Tony Abbott suggesting the opposite - that we are not looking at any concrete suggestion to remove discriminatory clauses from the nation's founding document.

Indigenous land and sea rangers have called on the government to expand what they say is one of the most successful Indigenous jobs programs, caring for the huge swaths of protected land across the country. However, it falls on the deaf ears of racist and greedy governments who prefer to destroy the land with mining and sell the rest to China.
In doing so, they further damage the climate for everyone's children and grandchildren's future, including their own descendants.

Sydney's current city is probably the largest urban system ever built from, and upon, an existing city framework and it was built in an unholy silence. - What if our present historical city was not the first urban structure to occupy the coastal region extending from Port Stephens to Kiama? What would this primordial city reveal, what lessons of history could we learn; just what of this first, pre-invasion Sydney was admitted, and what was denied in the making of our second metropolis?

The WA Police Commissioner must explain where he sourced statistics used to support claims of widespread sexual abuse in remote Indigenous communities, the Opposition says. The Opposition's Aboriginal affairs spokesman Ben Wyatt told Parliament the figures were used in a newspaper opinion piece authored by Commissioner O'Callaghan in March. In it, O'Callaghan backed claims by Barnett of sexual abuse in remote communities, quoting statistics from an unnamed publication.