The evidence is overwhelming – Australia’s Frontier Wars were real, deadly, and long, and a landmark new book lays it out in full. So when will the Australian War Memorial fully face the truth?
Category: Indigenous affairs
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Indigenous political candidates face less voter bias than parties might think: new research
When political parties consider potential Indigenous candidates, they often worry about voter backlash. (more…)
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‘No restrictions’ and a secret ‘wink’: Inside Israel’s deal with Google, Amazon
To secure the lucrative Project Nimbus contract, the tech giants agreed to disregard their own terms of service and sidestep legal orders by tipping Israel off if a foreign court demands its data, a joint investigation reveals. (more…)
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Embedding free, prior and informed consent in Australia’s legal framework
Tiarna Williams is one of six talented young Australians who will travel to the UN General Assembly in New York next week as part of the Global Voices project. (more…)
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Exposing the language of oppression: Debra Dank’s ‘Terraglossia’
At demonstrations about the genocide in Gaza, it has been encouraging to see that speakers have acknowledged the traditional owners of unceded sovereign lands. (more…)
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Reclaiming illegally granted Indigenous land: An interview with Wiradjuri man Paul Towney
Proud Wiradjuri descendant Paul Towney was out in front of the Federal Court of Australia on Gadigal land on Macquarie Street in Sydney city on 19 September 2025. (more…)
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Call for national action to prevent ‘torture’ or death of incarcerated First Nations children
Paediatricians in the Northern Territory see the dire effects of entrenched structural racism on Aboriginal children on a daily basis. (more…)
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Is the Northern Territory Government knowingly endangering First Nations children and young people?
It should be impossible to ignore heartbreaking evidence of the effects of structural racism on Aboriginal children and young people, particularly those caught in a fully discredited punitive system in the NT that now includes “torture” plus risks of death as well as trauma. (more…)
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Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
The Federal Court has handed down its long-awaited judgment in a four-year climate case brought by Torres Strait Islanders. (more…)
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It’s time for another reforming and agitating attorney-general
Just last month Australia celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam Government’s Racial Discrimination Act (1975), without much fanfare it has to be said. (more…)
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The politics of a police criminal organisation
In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk. (more…)
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Aboriginal-Chinese roots of reconciliation: China’s first cultural envoys in Australia
As Australia marked Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June ), a landmark exhibition at the National Museum of Australia reminds us that Indigenous–Chinese bonds helped forge the links between the two peoples long before Canberra and Beijing formalised diplomacy in 1972. (more…)
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‘Deadly’ sports diplomacy: why Australia’s Indigenous people must be a part of our sports strategy
The fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have practised sports diplomacy for more than 60,000 years is a powerful story. (more…)
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In one awful decision, Albanese has revealed his do-nothing plan
It didn’t take long for us to discover what a triumphantly re-elected Labor government would be like. (more…)
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Time again for stewards to do a moral health check-up
Was there ever anything more predictable, and more shameful than the detached and independent — and, of course, apolitical — decision by federal Environment Minister Murray Watt that damage caused to Aboriginal Australian heritage values could not weigh as heavily as the economic interest of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf project, worth billions of dollars, potentially trillions? (more…)
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Bridging now to next – seeking to rise from the ashes of the Voice referendum
During this Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June), with the theme Bridging Now to Next, the nation is aware that there is still unfinished business on the national agenda when it comes to the due recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. (more…)
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Sydney Harbour Bridge walk – unsuspected joy and hope
At the end of reconciliation week it is time to look back at a extraordinary event. While Aboriginal people remained quiet and uncomplaining, most of our leaders showed very little interest in them. And “average Australians”, they believed, were right behind them. Didn’t social media and talkback radio prove that? (more…)
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Voice rejection sends Australia backwards
It was a dramatic return to the political stage! With the election underway, indigenous activist Noel Pearson broke a self-imposed silence which he had kept for 18 months since the failure of the referendum on the voice to parliament. (more…)
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The Racial Discrimination Act at 50
The passage 50 years ago of the Racial Discrimination Act, Australia’s first substantial piece of human rights legislation, laid the basis for the recognition of native title in the common law in the 1990s. (more…)
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RSL stands up for Welcome to Country while Dutton weaves and dodges
On 25 April, a group of Neo-Nazi protesters booed Uncle Mark Brown’s Welcome to Country at the Melbourne ANZAC Day Shrine service. (more…)
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From welcome to jeering: How disrespect spreads
Norms do not sustain themselves. They are shaped, modelled, and sometimes destroyed – publicly, rhetorically, politically. (more…)
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Beyond fear and false choices: Why loyalty to the major parties is no longer tenable
It’s time for Muslims and allies to vote with principle, not fear. (more…)
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The Frontier is the way ahead for the War Memorial
“Sacrifice”, the ABC Four Corners episode of 10 March, was a train-wreck for the Australian War Memorial. Its spokespersons came across as dismissive, timid, or too clever by half. The critics of the Memorial, however, were passionate, regretful, and, in the case of Geoffrey Watson SC from the Centre for Public Integrity, downright angry. (more…)
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The Pacific is fighting for climate justice: Will Australia listen?
The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) participated in the final day of the Sydney Climate Action Week, on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and had the privilege of listening to Indigenous and First Nations stories, learning from their wisdom. (more…)
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Gove and the native title revolution
The High Court’s judgment in March 2025 in favour of the Gumatj people has reaffirmed the centrality of the Indigenous peoples of Gove in the Northern Territory in the native title revolution that was conceived in a case against mining company, Nabalco Ltd, in the 1960s and continued with the High Court’s Mabo and Wik judgements in the 1990s. (more…)
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Uncle Robbie Thorpe to raise Australian genocide claim to the International Criminal Court
Having a legal action one has lodged with a court being refused is not usually the ideal outcome. Yet, the recent attempt by Uncle Robbie Thorpe to launch a private prosecution against so-called King Charles III for the crime of genocide being denied by the Victorian Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Krauatungalung elder to take the matter to a higher court beyond local borders. (more…)
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The Henty legacy and its ongoing impact
In the 1860s, as the new colony of Victoria boomed following the discovery of gold, First Peoples were being moved onto missions and reserves, where their lives were tightly controlled. (more…)
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John Howard and British colonisation of Australia
Humphrey McQueen (Pearls and Irritations, ‘The lucky Aborigines’ 26 January 2025), has reminded us of John Howard’s opinion that “the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British. Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent than other European colonisers.” (more…)
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The lucky Aborigines
“I do hold the view that the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British,” he said. “Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent colonisers than other European countries.” – John Howard, October 26, 2023. (more…)
