Archives September 2014

Be careful what you pray for. By proposing to strip away protection for Aboriginal people's heritage across the board, and throughout the State, the Barnett Government appears to have unwittingly conjured up a strong, united and angry Aboriginal coalition which is now mobilising against the AHA amendments.

Written Dr Stephen Bennetts, who is a consultant anthropologist that has worked with Aboriginal people in Northern Australia since 1994. [node:read-more:link]

Ray Jackson's Media release covers the NSW Attorney-General, Brad Hazzard, as to his decision on the 33 year old death in custody of Eddie Murray, the brutal assault by Redfern police to Ms Kathryne Fisher when they forced their way into her home, and the related Kings Cross incident when the Kings Cross police had wilfully and recklessly fired six shots into the car, the Un-gagged Lex Wotten, and more to the Palm Island cover-ups and lack of justice and the successful Aboriginal Passport Ceremony in Sydney. [node:read-more:link]

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. [node:read-more:link]

Children were "chained like dogs" and sexually assaulted at a government-run home for Aboriginal children in Darwin, a child sex abuse inquiry has heard.
A former resident of the Retta Dixon home in Darwin told the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. First Nations girls were chained to their beds, starved and flogged with leather belts until they bled, as punishment at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin. [node:read-more:link]

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Darwin has been focusing on abuse of children at the Retta Dixon home, which mainly housed Aboriginal children between 1946 until it closed in 1980.
There was clearly evidence to support charges against convicted sex offender Donald Bruce Henderson, who had numerous claims of child abuse against him dropped in 1976 and again in 2002, the head of an inquiry says. [node:read-more:link]