Category: Indigenous affairs

  • RICHARD FLANAGAN. The world is being undone before us. If we do not reimagine Australia, we will be undone too

    In the full transcript of his speech to the Garma festival, the author says the country can make itself stronger by saying yes to the Uluru statement (more…)

  • ROSEMARY O’GRADY. Remembering Stars.

    Some ninety-odd years ago this week was born in the bush in the rugged far north-west of Western Australia a child given the Christian name of David.   (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Wishful thinking.

    It may be sheer fantasy, wishful thinking. But in the last week the torpor of politics appeared to lift a little; there were signs that progress might not be stalled forever in the coalition party room in Canberra.  Not that anything much has changed within the gaffe-prone cabinet of Malcolm Turnbull – at least not yet. But perhaps the exit of the reactionary influence of Barnaby Joyce as deputy prime minister is providing a glimmer of hope for the handful of rational optimists who have been frustrated for so long by Turnbull’s capitulation to Joyce and his rightist rump. (more…)

  • Public servant to the First Australians.

    Funeral Homily for Barrie Dexter CBE. Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 26 April 2018. Listen on SoundCloud [commencing at 2:00]

    In Australia, there have been many children of the manse who have gone on to be great contributors to Australian society, regardless of their own religious faith or practice. Barrie Dexter was one of them. (more…)

  • Anzacs fought and died at Gallipoli for Britain, not Australia

    Conservatives and militarists want us to cling to a disastrous imperial war.  Such a war could never be ‘nation building’ as the apologists for empire suggest. It was quite the reverse.The Anzac myth makers encourage us to focus on how our soldiers fought in order to avoid the central issue of why we fought. We do the same today, highlighting the valour of our military and avoiding the much more important question of why we were  in  Turkey and Vietnam and now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

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  • RICHARD FLANAGAN. Freedom means Australia facing up to the truth of its past. (Part 2 of 2)

    We should, of course, question these things more. We could ask why – if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country – why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country here in Australia in the frontier wars of the 1800s? Why is there nowhere in Australia telling the stories of the massacres, the dispossession, and the courageous resistance of these patriots?  

    (Second Extract from a speech by Richard Flanagan to the National Press Club on 18 April 2018)   (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. Brendan Nelson and the War Memorial – what about the Frontier Wars?

    On Friday the Director of the Australian War Memorial Brendan Nelson announced plans for a massive redevelopment of the institution which would cost up to $500 million.He hoped to receive the required funding in next year’s budget and he is likely to be given what- ever he asks for having already received strong support from both sides of politics. He also explained there would be an opportunity for the public to provide input into the project.   (more…)

  • Indigenous education: closing – and opening – the gaps

    The reports and narratives around the strategy to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians are quite well-known, if only because they don’t change much from year to year. With the possible exception of education, not many targets are being reached. The gains in education in numeracy, reading and school retention will be welcomed by schools more used to wearing all the blame for deficiencies in student achievement. We seem to be closing the gaps that we measure, but a new report from the Centre for Policy Development shows that we risk widening the gaps that we choose to ignore – especially those created by where indigenous students go to school.  (more…)

  • Closing the health gap – ten years on

    Warning signs were emerging many decades before, but by the early part of this century it was obvious that the health of indigenous Australians was much worse than that of other citizens. Indicators such as high infant mortality, widespread malnutrition and infections in children, much shortened life expectancy, high rates of chronic diseases and disabilities, mental illnesses, Alzheimer’s disease, drug- and alcohol-related disorders, suicide and homicide, were all very unfavourable when indigenous and other Australians were compared.  (more…)

  • The apology ten years on

    Today we mark the tenth anniversary of the National Apology.  All of us remember where we were that day when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd read the words of the parliamentary motion moved by him and seconded by Brendan Nelson, the Leader of the Opposition:

    ‘The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

    ‘We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

    ‘To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.’  (more…)

  • PETER BUCKSKIN. Closing the gap on Indigenous education must start with commitment and respect.

    There were angry rumblings at last week’s meeting of Indigenous leaders and the Prime Minister and in the Close the Gap Campaign Steering Committee Report. They will get significantly louder with today’s release of the 10th Annual Closing the Gap Report.  (more…)

  • GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. Ode to Australia Day.

    Ode to Australia Day

    (In tribute to the late John Hirst and his masterpieces Freedom on the Fatal Shore)

    The heroes of famed Waterloo
    Or great Nelson’s mighty crew,
    If chance had gone a different way,
    Might well have peopled Botany Bay.
    The Duke himself, he called them “scum”
    Kept under by the lash and rum,
    Not from Eton’s playing fields
    But from poverty’s seething yields,
    So, too, our founders, if truth be told
    Soldiers and convicts – “undesirables” manifold.

    So Dutton, Hanson: shame on your smear
    Better than you have by boat come here.
    “True patriots all, for be it understood”
    “They left their country for their country’s good”. *
    Their founding service you might emulate
    Improve this nation – and emigrate.
    No good you do by staying here,
    Purveying hate and feeding fear.
    What of Australia do you really know,
    Of migrant waves who’ve made us grow,
    Since Phillip Britain’s flag unfurled
    To take possession of a stolen world?

    Graham Freudenberg
    26 January 2018.   (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. Memories and Massacres- A REPOST from July 10 2017

    The release by Newcastle University’s Centre for 21st Century Humanities of a map of colonial frontier massacres has attracted a burst of media attention. It draws national interest back to those questions that were highlighted during the history wars of a decade and more ago.

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  • MICHAEL LAMBERT. Overweight and Obesity Part 2: The indigenous Australians Impact

    Part 1 of this two-part post provided a global and broad Australian perspective on the pandemic of overweight and obesity. This part sets out the position for indigenous Australians and argues that this pandemic is a significant part of the health gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and that the way forward must involve interventions to address the problem at childhood and adolescent stages. (more…)

  • MICHAEL LAMBERT. Overweight and Obesity Part 1: A Global and Australian Perspective

    In part 1 of this two-part post Michael Lambert sets out the broad position on overweight and obesity as both a global development and the Australian situation, the costs involved and the case for national action . The second part of this post will focus on the position with indigenous Australians, its contribution to the health gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and the need for action to target overweight and obesity in indigenous children and adolescents. (more…)

  • SPENCER ZIFCAK. Australia elected to UN Human Rights Council – despite international condemnation.

    Two weeks ago, Australia was chosen as one of two new member nations on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Before one gets too excited about this achievement it is worth noting that our country’s election was uncontested. There were three countries vying for two positions on the HRC – Australia, Spain and France. France dropped out of the race just weeks before the election was due to be held. Spain and Australia, therefore, walked unopposed into the two spots that remained. It was just as well that there was no contested election. This nation’s human rights record is nothing of which we can be proud. And as it happens, the UN itself has been sharply critical of several aspects of Australia’s human rights performance in the three months before, and the two weeks after, the country’s success. (more…)

  • JIM COOMBS. Doing right by our First Peoples needs a little understanding but a LOT MORE RESPECT.

    As my Dad, “Nugget” Coombs, said in his Boyer Lectures years ago, though still ringing true, we are all demeaned by our treatment of our aboriginal people. Even back then, he implored our leaders to consult with, listen to and empower our first peoples to have not just some say, but some control over their destiny.  (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. Thinking about memory and monuments.

    The controversy about confederate monuments in the southern states erupted in May this year while I was in the United States. I was impressed by the extent and the vigour of the debate. In the back of my mind I wondered if a similar controversy would eventually emerge in Australia. It did and with a speed that surprised me. But it was not simply a matter of reactive emulation. There are interesting similarities between American and Australian history and the way it has been remembered. And on the other hand there are instructive contrasts.  (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. Citizenship and English proficiency and indigenous people.

    So we have the anomalous situation of a projected citizenship test which large numbers of indigenous people could not pass. (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Captain Cook.

    For months we have had to endure war on all fronts – the class war, the gender war, the religion war, the equality war, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war against political correctness, the war on the ABC and of course the perennially convenient war on terror.   (more…)

  • FREYA HIGGINS DESBIOLLES. The politics of public monuments: It’s time Australians looked at what, and whom, we commemorate

    Recent events in the US have seen Confederate Civil War monuments pulled down and painful histories revisited. Comparing these acts to those of the Islamic State terror group, Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill evocatively called this an “Orwellian war on history” and a “Year Zero mentality” on the march.  O’Neill also took aim at Australia’s Yarra Council for its recent decision to no longer celebrate Australia Day on January 26.  This is a result of ongoing calls from Indigenous groups to change the date of the national day.  This is because it marks the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay and is thus, in their view, “invasion day”.  O’Neill is wrong.  It is not a matter of erasing history but a question of whose history is told.  In Australia, it has been called the “the Great Australian silence”, following W.E.H. Stanner, as we stubbornly refuse to tackle these issues. (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. That day again

    Controversy about Australia Day intensifies. The ABC’s Triple J is consulting its listeners about moving the popular Hottest 100 Countdown from January 26th. Debate is taking place in council chambers across the country. Melbourne’s Yarra Council was savaged by Prime Minister Turnbull in parliament last week because the councillors had decided to cancel official ceremonies on January 26. But this week neighbouring Darebin Council voted 6 to 2 to follow suit to be similarly chastised by the federal government. (more…)

  • TONY SMITH. After the high hopes of Garma, disappointment sets in.

    Last weekend, Indigenous leaders gathered at the Garma festival in north east Arnhem Land. The coverage on NITV showed a distinct slide from initial politeness and hope to disappointment and anger. (more…)

  • HENRY REYNOLDS. January 26?

    When we examine the violations of law when the British took possession of eastern Australia in 1788, it’s little wonder that a growing number of people are seeking a date other than January 26 to celebrate Australia Day.
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  • Hidden in plain sight: Aboriginal massacre map should be no surprise

    Lyndall Ryan’s work on mapping the massacres of Aboriginal Australians builds on earlier work which has been ignored or glossed over by settler Australians. Perhaps this time, finally, we can make the link between Indigenous dispossession and the position of Aboriginal people today.  (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. Will the forgotten people be heard at last?

    The crusaders of the far right have already delivered their sentence: the Uluru statement is to be dead, buried and cremated before it can infect the fairness and decency of the ignorant masses.   (more…)

  • MUNGO MacCALLUM. The Uluru Statement.

    It is fitting that the Uluru Statement from the Heart celebrated the triumphant referendum of 1967: “In 1967 we were counted; in 2017 we seek to be heard,” the statement declared.   (more…)

  • FRANK BRENNAN SJ. Uluru: Take Time to Get This Right

    Fifty years on from the successful 1967 referendum, we have all heard the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Aboriginal and Torres Strait representatives have told us that ‘in 1967 we were counted, in 2007 we seek to be heard’. Australians of good will acknowledge that sovereignty is a spiritual notion for Indigenous Australians and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration and separation of children are indicators of ‘the torment of (their) powerlessness’. We affirm the aspiration of the Indigenous leaders gathered at Uluru: ‘When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.’   (more…)

  • JUDITH CRISPIN. Indigenous Elders to Tackle Youth Suicide Using Mobile Technology

    A groundbreaking collaboration between Walpiri Elders, cultural historians, technologists and a clinical psychologist aims to tackle youth suicide using traditional knowledge and mobile technology.   (more…)

  • STEVE GEORGAKIS. Gilchrist and Australia’s national sport, Cricket?

    Until recently cricket is a sport that has rarely engaged other minority cultures, such as Indigenous Australians or newly arrived migrants. In fact, unlike other sports such as Australian Rules football, cricket has been resistant to broaden its base. … The more multicultural Australia became, the more insular cricket became. … The integrity stops with the baggy green and the sport sells its soul to the junk food and alcohol industry.   (more…)