Colonialism

The federal government’s Cashless Debit Card trials in the East Kimberley and Ceduna were recently extended. In the space of a day, the government not only released the limited evaluation of the trial, but used this to justify its extension. The extension is puzzling given that the trial has led to further economic and social harm among people compulsorily included. Some communities argued that the card would be important to curb gender-based violence. However, there are reports that domestic violence has actually increased since the card was introduced and crime increased. [node:read-more:link]

This page provides an insight into the treatment of the First Nations peoples in the second phase of the mass slaughters in the Australian Eastern states and the archaic attitudes of the colonisers immediately following the first stage of the invasion and the many massacres, land theft and displacements in the late 18th to the mid 19th centuries.

A Croatian born artist Vesna Tenodi who has an Art Centre in NSW stole the sacred image of the Wandjina in 2009 and commissioned a Wandjina sculpture at the front of her gallery and has been misusing the sacred image ever since. Local First Nations people objected strongly and a Worora Tribal custodian of the Wandjina travelled over from the West Kimberley to tell her the statue seriously offended his people, but she discarded what he said by saying her actions were a "revival of Aboriginal spirituality", even though she was born on another continent and the culture of the sacred Wandina is still practiced by its peoples. [node:read-more:link]

In 1926 a group of colonists with self acclaimed 'high moral standards' and with a small touch of guilt, came up with the idea to create an Aboriginal state. The idea was to give Arnhem Land to Aboriginal people and teach them how to be self-sufficient ... "It is a bold scheme, but the committee behind it includes men who know the aborigine, and who have sufficient faith in it to call for signatures to a petition to be presented to the Commonwealth Parliament asking for its inauguration" [node:read-more:link]

There is one group in society so powerless, that its voice has not been heard. The abuses its members experienced should make all of those arguing about rights, morality, power, and the separation of Church and State, in the debate on stem cell research, sit up and take notice. Its members are the victims of the lack of church and state separation in past medical experimentation in this country. They are the children who lived in child welfare institutions and were used as real life “lab rats” in the pursuit of medical breakthroughs. [node:read-more:link]