Gross Abuse

During our London-based International Consultative Preparatory Forum on Decolonisation and Reparations I was invited to an interview on BBC World News Live TV in order to open up the international debate on First Nations Sovereignty. The London broadcast reached 200 countries worldwide on 14 October 2016, during Black History month. - The uniting of descendants of former slaves with other First Nations throughout the Pacific and Canada is telling.

In 2012, a self-appointed neighborhood watch member, chased a 17yo African American boy in Florida, and shot him. Last week, a 55-year-old man chased a 14yo Elijah Doughty ran him down with his truck. In USA the court failed to hold the perpetrator accountable, giving rise to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In each case, a vigilante suspected a young person of colour of wrongdoing and killed him. In each case, the killer executed summary justice.

From 1998-2004, the Australian federal government used thuggish, racist tactics in a failed attempt to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in South Australia. The government's subsequent attempt to impose a dump on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory was even more thuggish and even more racist. But that also failed. Now the Australian government has embarked on its third attempt to establish a nuclear waste dump and it has decided to once again try to impose a dump on Aboriginal land in SA despite clear opposition from Traditional Owners.

PM Turnbull's Royal Commission into juvenile justice in Northern Territory is a cowardly act by a Prime Minister, who is ducking for cover in an attempt to protect his Minister, Nigel Scullion, from being scrutinised by the national and international community, which has been shocked into total disbelief at what was shown on Australian National TV by ABC Four Corners report 'Australia's Shame' on Monday 25 August 2016. We thank Cara Meldrum Hana for her investigative journalism skills to expose graphically what had been ignored by the authorities for so long.

It must be acknowledged that this country was invaded and this is confirmed by the actions of Captain James Cook when he fired at the first group of Aboriginal people he came in contact with. Then the invaders imprisoned us and interned us in detention centres in the guise of looking after our welfare, protecting us from the barbarous acts of the squatocracy and their militias, supported by the police and redcoats, and then had the audacity to try and establish representative government on the land of others, while we were being imprisoned and killed.

Between 1946 and 1949, at least 800 Aboriginal workers walked off stations across the Pilbara led by Nyamal lawman Peter Coppin. Supporting the worker's strike action was a small group of non-indigenous unionists and radicals and it's these activists, in particular Don McLeod, that supported the people in fighting for their rights for wages and freedom of movement. The Aboriginal strikers, who worked on dozens of stock and sheep stations throughout north-west Western Australia, wanted 30 shilling a week minimum wage, freedom of movement for more control over their lives.

Our people are surrendering their homelands forever with Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs) without understanding they are whitewashing their own history, under the invaders' law. This surrendering trick takes effect before the deed of grant of land is issued to the shires of the whole area. In this way compensation is also avoided. This article provides a background to some of the illegal and fraudulent acts carried out preceding Native Title and how the Native Title Act 1993 was amended in 1998 to create 'bucket loads of extinguishment' of inherent rights.

Ghillar, Michael Anderson has recently been sent a letter from one of our people caught up in a Native Title claim and who is trying to understand if there are any benefits that result from the Native Title process. She asked me to interpret the letter (attached in article) from the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Native Title Unit and for me to give my opinion as to the truth of the Attorney-General's position ... From my understanding of history and the colonial law I can categorically say that the Attorney-General's position is wrong and is deliberately misleading the Native Title claimant.

Proposed changes to South Australia's Aboriginal Heritage Act will reduce powers of traditional owners, according to Indigenous groups.

South Australian Native Title Services chief executive officer Keith Thomas believed amended language in the act would give traditional owners less say over their heritage. "This is going to help people who want to access lands and destroy heritage, rather than improving the protection of Aboriginal heritage," he said.

When you know who owned the stations on which Aboriginals were killed and the names of the politicians who knowingly allowed it all to happen, you also know the Who's Who of colonial Australia.

It is horrific to read, in fine detail, what was done to hundreds of innocent men, women and children. That is why some people still want this history to remain hidden.

Tony Roberts 'The Monthly Essays' November 2009