Genocide

A South African writer has claimed Australia is more racist than her homeland, where segregation by skin colour used to be law. She said the treatment of Aboriginals is worse than apartheid South Africa and that Australians are denying there are no differences between races. 'Last week I opened the newspaper and read a story about a white woman who called a family of neighbors who are originally from Sierra Leone "jungle bunnies" and "monkeys." In the story her racist rant had been filmed on their phone. I was chagrined, but others I spoke to weren't: They argued that the paper was "just trying to be neutral."

In the announcement made in recent days, Aboriginal communities in South Australia have suffered a 90 per cent cut to their funding. APY Lands – including Amata, Pukatja (Ernabella), Indulkana – have received no funding at all. These include big settlements as well as smaller communities and homelands. There is no funding for the Maralinga Lands. WA has accepted a one off $90 million for their 'transfer' grant and consequently announced 150 communities would be closed down. This has received much publicity, and the South Australian situation is much less known.

Here are the videos of the Canberra gathering, smoking ceremony, speeches and march. The speakers were Senator Rachel Seiwert (Greens), Nova Peris (Aboriginal Labor MP), Alice Haines (One of the key SOS Global organisers), Ghillar Michael Anderson (Sovereign Union), Nicole Culbong (Perth), Shaun Harris (WA), Gerry Georgatos (WA), Rod Liddle and Hamid Bin Saad (Kimberley). Stop the Forced Closure of Aboriginal Communities was an Australia wide rally and online event with international support.

In the 1950s the Spinifex people living in the Maralinga region in the Great Victoria Desert were dispossessed from their homelands to allow for atomic testing to be carried out by governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. The people were placed at Cundalee and later moved onto Coonana because of water issues. Coonana lies approximately 170km east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder along the Trans Access Road, Once a busy community but following the government bleeding the community of vital resources, it is now all but deserted.

The suicide rate for young people in First Nation communities is of catastrophic proportions, but there is so little discussion and attention given to it by government's, the media and mainstream Australia. Suicide is evidencing itself in high-income nations as demonstrative that social cohesion is fallacious. And there is much mention in the media of gun and drug-related violence, but it fails to and discuss the leading cause of lethal violence – suicide. In Australia, suicide prevention should be highly prioritised in the nation’s social agenda.

A little before 1892, Archibald Meston who later became the Southern Protector of Aboriginals for Queensland rounded up 27 First Nations people from Wakaya, Kuthant, Kurtjar, Arapa, Walangama, Mayikulan, Kabi Kabi, Kalkadoon and Muralag. There were 22 men, four women and one child. He called his prisoners the 'Wild Australia' show and carted them down the east coast of Australia until he ran out of funds and deserted them in Melbourne. - A Photographic Exhibition aims to reconnect families to their descendants.

Aboriginal leaders say the WA government plan to close communities is already driving people out of some of the most remote parts of Australia. Premier Colin Barnett last year announced as many as 150 of the state's 274 communities would be closed in the next three years because of a funding shortfall. Mr Steven Kopp, the Chairman of Mulan homelands community, which sits on top of the Tanami Desert, said some people were so worried about the community's future that up to 20 had already moved away.

The Freedom Movement held a Sit-In at Parliament House on 27 January, 2015. - There is no greater rights struggle than the Aboriginal rights struggle. It is a human rights struggle where not only the First Peoples of this continent were violently and murderously dispossessed of their lands but since the advent of British colonialism onto their shores they were subjected to segregation, apartheid and the systematic destruction of their cultures and languages – more than 350 First Peoples' nations and languages have been impacted.

Burrup Rock Art

A steep drop in Aboriginal sites being added to WA's heritage register is leading to "a vast sea of ignorance" that will thwart heritage protection, according to Carmen Lawrence, the chair of the Australian Heritage Council.
After changing the heritage laws to favour mining companies, Aboriginal Affairs Minister said some places "presented as worthy of protection" were "of little or no interest" to Aborigines and that only "the industry of heritage professionals" appeared to value those sites.

Educating for Democracy - A letter by Ray Jackson, President, Indigenous Social Justice Association.

Ray reminds us of the hypocrisy in relation to the 'Recognition Campaign' after 227 years of silence, and at the same time in our education system, choosing not to recognise that the First Nations and peoples even existed or that each nation fought a bloody battle for the land and their rights.