Assimilation & Oppression

A new report says Mental health services for Aboriginal Australians are "both inadequate and inappropriate", and immediate changes are needed to address growing rates of suicide, depression and other mental health issues among Indigenous youth. The report also highlighted several shortcomings in efforts to improve mental health among Indigenous Australians and cited "dramatic" increases in recent years in Indigenous rates of youth suicide, anxiety and depression and other related illnesses.

As elections loom in Victoria and New South Wales, their governments' focus on tough law-and-order policies and prison populations are beyond capacity, but reports state that the crime statistics in these states are falling. A lot of people will shrug their shoulders and wonder what the fuss is about. People who commit crimes go to prison and this makes the community safer. What they fail to consider is the very real downside: a bigger drain on the public purse and a bad social outcome.

In a submission to the Indigenous Jobs and Training Review, headed by billionaire mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, the National Welfare Rights Network has argued many of Forrest’s recommendations would have devastating impacts and do little to improve employment outcomes for Indigenous people.

A central recommendation is the creation of a “Healthy Welfare Card” - article by Max Chalmers, 'New Matilda'.

The Abbott government has opened up the first funding round of its streamlined $4.8bn Indigenous Advancement Strategy, with tough new guidelines for organisations wishing to access the money.

In other words the real owners of this continent are forced to go cap in hand to the missionaries as The Abbott amalgamates 150 First Nations programs into five broad areas

Welcome to the age of the Abbott Chain Gangs

A groundbreaking study on Aboriginal mothers in West Australian prisons has revealed the devastating effects of high levels of intergenerational incarceration on families.
Western Australians Curtin University researchers conducted interviews with 84 Aboriginal mothers in prisons across the state as part of a National Health and Medical Research Council-funded project, examining the experiences of First Nations women in prison in WA and NSW.

The Federal Government has struck a $100 million deal with Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and Victoria for the provision of basic services in remote Aboriginal communities. Under the deal, the states would take permanent responsibility to provide services like power, water and roads - areas the Commonwealth managed in the past. Nigel Scullion set up the deal but South Australian Government won't agree and the WA government said they agreed under great pressure.

On World Peace Day 2014, I pray for the rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia to determine their own destiny.

It is a severe indictment on Australia that many of its indigenous people still feel that their culture and dignity are being eroded, and that they continue to be treated as second class citizens – 42 years after the country signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Lois Olney was always told her mother had put her up for adoption, but a note scrawled on a pie wrapper and passed to her while singing on stage gave the first inkling she was stolen as a baby. Lois discovered her extended family in Roebourne Western Australia.

Lois had been adopted by the Olney family, with her adoptive father being Howard Olney who went on to become a state Labor politician, and then a Justice of the Supreme Court.

When languages die, especially indigenous ones, a large part of culture and history disappears along with it

High rates of economic growth are a driving factor behind global language extinction, with one-quarter of all native tongues classified as "threatened," a new report has said.

Out of around 6,000 languages around the globe, 1,705 fit the criteria for "threatened" status.

We have seen enough of the poverty in our communities when the rest of Australia are growing rich on the proceeds of genocide through the loss of our homelands through real estate and mining.

We have seen enough of the self-medicating blocking out from our trauma and grief and the dysfunction this brings. We need our own healing camps and safe places for the community to come to in times of despair.