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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have occupied the lands and waters of Australia for millennia. Since the beginning of colonisation, Australia’s First peoples have defended their lands and waters and asserted their rights to their homelands.

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After years of struggle and lobbying, Lingiari was given back his land by Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1972. Following the failure of the Gove lands rights case, the Whitlam Labor Government instigated an inquiry into Aboriginal land rights (known as the Woodward Commission), which eventually led to the Fraser Liberal government passing the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

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Giving land rights back to Aboriginal Australians through the Native Title Act and a landmark legal case - Pathfinders

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Giving land rights back to Aboriginal Australians through the Native Title Act and a landmark legal case - Pathfinders

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Giving land rights back to Aboriginal Australians through the Native Title Act and a landmark legal case - Pathfinders

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In 2019, Aboriginal Australians won a groundbreaking case where the Ngaliwurru and Nungali communities were awarded AUD 2.53 million (USD 1.64 million) for past losses of native title when they surrendered their title rights to the Crown.1 These damages occurred when the government built roads and infrastructure over an area of land, which included the

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Land Rights

Land Rights refers to the struggle for legal and moral recognition of the ownership of the land and waterways that were home to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this country prior to the colonisation that occurred from 1788.

Why?

European invasion and colonisation of this continent was the force that dispersed and dispossessed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from and of their land.

This meant that the ecosystems were not able to be maintained, ceremony was not able to be performed and participated in, sacred sites were left unprotected and the means for sustenance and survival were removed.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do not perceive land in the title and property value sense but rather as a provider which in turn needs to be protected.

Historians have documented that animals were hunted conservatively, plants used sparingly to ensure they would regenerate and ceremony demonstrated respect for land and family.

Land is intrinsic to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and identity and so the struggle for land rights is tied to survival.

Invasion or Settlement?

In 1768, Lieutenant James Cook was instructed,

You are....with the consent of the natives to take possession of convenient situations in the country in the name of the King of Great Britain, or, if your find the country uninhabited take possession for His Majesty...

In 1770, Cook attempted several landings all along the eastern coast of Australia and on multiple occasions, the landing parties were repelled. Cook wrote in his journal in 1770,

..from what I have seen in the Natives of New Holland, they may appear to some to be some of the most wretched people on Earth..

Although instructed to take possession 'with the consent of the natives' - what followed was conflict and dominance exerted over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The prevailing legal doctrine is that Australia was acquired through settlement despite the presence of an established social and legal system of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The English common law at the time contained a definition of 'uninhabited lands' which considered lands uninhabited if they contained peoples 'uncivilised' by the 18th century English norms.

It followed then, that Cook took possession of the land pursuant to the doctrine of terra nullius and his subjective view of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people detailed in his journals.

The illegality of the actions of the Crown was clear even as far back as 1832 where the Chief Protector of Aborigines at Port Philip, George Robinson wrote;

I am at a loss to conceive by what tenure we hold this country, for it does not appear to be that we either hold it by conquest or by right of purchase.

Terra Nullius was a deliberate social construct designed to enable settlement, parcel of land at a time, to enable expansion of colonial settlements and to do so without any compensation to the lawful owners.

Origins of the Movement

The modern land rights movement dates back to 1963 when, on 13 March, the Australian government took more than 300 square kilometres of land from the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land so mining company Gominco could extract bauxite.

As so often was the case, work started without talking to the Yolgnu people about their land.

The Yolgnu people from the settlement Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land presented the Australian Parliament with a bark petition, commonly known as the Yirrkala bark petitions, protesting to have their land and their rights returned.

Wave Hill Walk Off

In this same period, what is referred to as the Wave Hill Walk Off to protest working conditions and payment - soon became about much more. In August 1966 Vincent Lingiari, of the Gurindji people, led his people to strike but then argued that the land they were working on in perilous conditions was in fact the land of his people and, rightly so, he demanded the return of the land.

After years of struggle and lobbying, Lingiari was famously given back his land back by Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam in 1972. Following the failure of the Gove Lands Rights case, the Whitlam Labor Government instigated an inquiry into Aboriginal land rights (known as the Woodward Commission), which eventually led to the Fraser Liberal government passing the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1972 which did have good intentions of returning land to the Indigenous people of the Territory and a large portion of the land has been returned.

Woodward Commission

On 8 February 1973 Gough Whitlam announced the Woodward Commission Inquiry into the appropriate way to recognise Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory and appointed Justice Edward Woodward as Land Rights Commissioner.

Justice Woodward was considered an apt appointment as he had argued his first land rights case in 1968 and was well versed in the struggle for land rights of Aboriginal people.

The Northern and Central Land Councils were formed in the same year to assist with the work of the Commission.

In the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission Report 1974, Justice Woodward recommended legislation to restore traditional land to the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory. Justice Woodward's report was the basis of the Aboriginal Land (NT) Bill, which was introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament in October 1975. However, with the dissolution of Parliament in November 1975, the Bill lapsed.

Following the change of Government, a further Bill was introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament in June 1976 - the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Bill 1976. It was passed in December 1976 and was proclaimed on January 26 1977.

In spite of the previous initiatives taken by state governments, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 ( ALRA) is the first real land rights settlement because of the rights associated with it and the amount of land transferred.

The Land Rights Commission Report also recommended;

A creation of a land trust to hold title to Aboriginal land;

A grant of inalienable freehold title to all Northern Territory Aboriginal reserves, the Hermannsburg and Santa Teresa mission areas, and several small portions of vacant Crown land near Darwin (about 19 per cent of the Northern Territory) to the Aboriginal people;

Lands Councils to act as agents for Aboriginal people on land claims;

Traditional owners to control mining and other activity on their land except where it is in national interest to explore or conduct mining;

In the event that mining does occur on Aboriginal traditional land, royalties to be distributed as 30 per cent to communities within the areas affected by mining, 40 per cent to the Land Councils, and up to 30 per cent to be available for the benefit of Aboriginal people throughout the Territory.

The intent of the recommendations of Justice Woodward and the subsequent ALRA was to have a national model for national land rights to provide uniformity and equity, however, opposition from State Governments and the mining industry defeated that objective.

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Land Rights refers to the struggle for legal and moral recognition of the ownership of the land and waterways that were home to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this country prior to the colonisation that occurred from 1788.

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The power of yindyamarra: how we can bring respect to Australian democracy

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The power of yindyamarra: how we can bring respect to Australian democracy

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This is a piece by Stan Grant, Professor of Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University, and Jack Jacobs, Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University, following the launch of the Yindyamarra Pledge for democracy: a call to reimagine Australian democracy.

Democracy is under siege.

In every corner of the world, it faces external and domestic threats that challenge its standing relative to alternative political systems.

China rises, an authoritarian power to threaten the West.

Russia invades Ukraine, its democratic neighbour, as the West rallies in support.

Autocracy is also on the rise within democracies. The United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, India and several European democracies are - or have recently been - led by populists fuelled by the discontent of the dispossessed: those left behind by markets that have for decades prioritised profits over people.

All this is inflamed by tribalism and a public debate deranged by the worst aspects of social media.

Not long ago, political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared liberal democracy the "end of history".

What went wrong?

The legacy of history and the myth of 'progress'

One place to look for an explanation is in history, in the Enlightenment myth of "progress" that has shaped our world since the 18th century.

From the French Revolution of 1789 to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, many philosophical liberals have been motivated by the idea that history has a forward movement: that human societies, though infinitely complex and diverse, are to be experimented on and redesigned according to rational, liberal principles.

This "illusion of destiny" - to invoke a striking phrase from Harvard University philosopher and economist Amartya Sen - has left tragedy in its wake.

Colonialism and coercive liberalism

Perhaps the most pernicious form of "progress" myth has been colonialism.

Throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, European powers struggled to subjugate once free peoples in Australia, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

In her recent book, Legacy of Violence, Harvard historian Caroline Elkins reminds us that in the British case, liberalism was used as a coercive force:

[...] violence was inherent to liberalism. It resided in liberalism's reformism, its claims to modernity, its promises of freedom, and its notion of the law - exactly the opposite places where one normally associates violence.

In places like Australia and India - from where these authors hail, respectively - the British promised freedom but delivered submission.

Speaking back to liberalism

What are we to do with liberal democracy, a tradition that makes a virtue of freedom yet has been imposed down the barrel of a gun?

To the colonised millions of the world, liberalism remains captured by Whiteness.

These people are speaking back to liberalism.

They have not always spoken the language of liberalism - they have their own traditions of tolerance, dignity, sympathy and respect - but have brought a powerful moral force to liberalism.

Edmund Burke, the 18th-century philosopher-statesman of Irish Catholic heritage, spoke back to liberalism when he impeached Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal, for betraying liberal ideals through colonialism in India.

Mahatma Gandhi, writing a century later in Hind Swaraj, spoke back to liberalism when he called on the English to honour their "own scriptures" and respect Indian freedom.

W.E.B. Du Bois spoke back to liberalism when he told a UN Peace Conference after the second world war that the West had "conquered Germany [...] but not their ideas" by keeping illiberal practices alive through colonialism in Africa.

These people shamed liberalism.

Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus and inspired a movement.

Powerful voices like Martin Luther King junior may have appealed to liberalism's dream of character over colour, but he had no illusions about an America that he had also damned to hell.

In Australia, Yorta Yorta man William Cooper sent a petition to King George VI to remind him of his moral duty to a people whose lands were "expropriated" by the Crown and whom the Crown denied legal status. He called for black seats in parliament to "prevent the extinction of the Aboriginal race".

And Pearl Gambayani Gibbs helped lead a day of mourning in 1938, proclaiming: "I am more proud of my Aboriginal blood than of my white blood".

These figures implore us to remember that liberal democracy is but one way of living and being.

Yindyamarra

Wiradjuri people have our own philosophy, yindyamarra. It defies simple translation but it grounds respect in all we do.

How do we bring respect - yindyamarra - to Australian democracy? Is our liberalism even capable of respecting the sovereignty never ceded of First Nations peoples?

Australian liberalism has passed from extermination to exclusion to assimilation but has stopped short of recognition.

After two centuries of broken hearts and shattered dreams, it is little wonder hope can appear delusional.

As Munanjahli and South Sea Island writer and scholar Chelsea Watego has said: "Hope is as passive as the social world we occupy insists we have to be".

Hope, or its absence, has been an enduring theme in talking back to history and political liberalism. Du Bois spoke of "a hope not hopeless but unhopeful".

A constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice offers its own version of what Noel Pearson has spoken of as radical hope.

Proponents of the Voice say it is a pathway to justice - to truth and treaty.

Political philosopher Duncan Ivison says it "prefigures a possible refounding of Australia".

But its modesty - a voice not a veto - risks losing faith with First Nations people. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already said it is a voice "nothing more, nothing less".

He says the parliament will set the composition of the Voice.

That begs the question: can the parliament meet the urgency of the demands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?

The challenge of the Constitutional Voice is to honour the unending struggle of those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander champions who have sought to prise open the locked door of Australian democracy.

With liberal democracy struggling under the weight of its racist and violent history, now is a time for our voices to add more weight to the scales: to demand liberal democracy is responsible, accountable, and fit for the 21st century.

Yindyamarra is a Wiradjuri voice; a voice for justice.

It is a voice inspired by Wiradjuri elders including my father, Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr, whose work has helped a new generation to speak Wiradjuri and speak back to power.

Yindyamarra is his gift to me, his son.

Yindyamarra winhanganha: calls us to build a world of respect grounded in our knowledge and being in a world worth living in

Yindyamarra is an antidote to Western nihilism and the worst of Western liberalism.

Yindyamarra is my father's Wiradjuri hope; a hope to be earned.

Yindyamarra dares this nation to build a democracy worthy of that hope.

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The power of yindyamarra: how we can bring respect to Australian democracy

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This is a piece by Stan Grant, Professor of Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University, and Jack Jacobs, Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University, following the launch of the Yindyamarra Pledge for democracy: a call to reimagine Australian democracy. Democracy is under siege.

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Crowds take to Australian streets for 'abolish the monarchy' protests on day of mourning for Queen

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Crowds take to Australian streets for 'abolish the monarchy' protests on day of mourning for Queen

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Crowds have gathered across the country for 'abolish the monarchy' protests on the national day of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II.

Anti-monarchy protesters say the Queen represents colonialism, dispossession and genocide

Some say media has paid a disproportionate amount of attention to the monarch's passing compared to Indigenous deaths in custody

An official ceremony commemorating the Queen has been held at Canberra's Parliament House

Many of the rallies were coordinated by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, which said in a statement it stood "against racist colonial imperialism and its ongoing effects on us as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".

"While they mourn the Queen, we mourn everything her regime stole from us: our children, our land, our loved one's lives, our sacred sites, our histories," the organisation said.

Organisers listed their demands as the return of land "to the rightful sovereign owners", an end to Indigenous deaths in custody, and truth, accountability and justice.

An official service was held for the Queen at Parliament House in Canberra, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton gave tributes to the late monarch.

Governor-General David Hurley acknowledged the Queen's death had prompted a range of reactions, and said the nation must complete its reconciliation journey.

Thousands shut down Melbourne streets

Thousands of people gathered at Birrarung Marr in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land, before moving through the CBD in protest against the day of mourning.

After a Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony, speakers addressed the building crowd along the Yarra River.

Aboriginal leaders spoke and called for recognition of Indigenous suffering as a result of colonisation.

Community members spread white ochre on the faces of attendees as a sign of mourning, not for the Queen, but for community members who had recently passed, and for the suffering endured by First Nations peoples across the country.

Organiser Tarneen Onus Williams said it was important for Indigenous people to come together to "reflect on the genocide and dispossession and colonialism that the Queen represented".

The Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta, Bindal, and Torres Strait Islander activist called for the abolition of the monarchy, and for land to be returned to First Nations people.

"We've had lots of black deaths in custody lately, the Queen's died and the media's been eclipsed by it," they said.

Aboriginal men Clinton Austin and Josh Kerr both died in Victorian prisons recently - Mr Austin in Castlemaine's Loddon Prison in September and Mr Kerr in Melbourne's Port Phillip Prison in August.

Sissy Austin said the policies which arrived with colonisation were still harming Indigenous people today.

"One major element of the colonial project was the removal of First Nations children and the policies that were designed and developed to colonise our children," the Gunditjmara, Keerray Wurrung and Djab Wurrung woman said.

"Deep in my heart today is our Stolen Generation mob, who are watching the rest of the country celebrate and grieve for someone who's led on policies that have quite literally destroyed their lives."

She said the community was also struggling with the recent loss of elders Uncle Jack Charles and Uncle Archie Roach.

After leaving the river, the crowd staged a sit-in at the busy intersection of Swanston and Flinders Streets, outside Flinders Street Station.

Some protesters removed the Union Jack part of the Australian flag and doused it in fake blood.

As the crowd moved from the sit-in towards State Parliament, it was met by a small contingent of 'freedom fighters' waving the Australian flag and the Eureka flag - which in recent years has become a symbol of anti-lockdown and anti-government protesters.

Some of the late arrivals said they were allies of the protest. Demonstrators told them to get rid of the flags before joining the march.

Victoria Police officers became involved in calming small skirmishes on Collins Street as the crowds moved.

The protesters again listened to speeches once they reached Parliament House.

Brisbane rally-goers turn up despite rain

The rally in Brisbane/Meanjin was interrupted by rain, but organiser Wayne Wharton was happy with the number of people who turned up in spite of the conditions.

Wearing an "Abolish Australia Day" T-shirt, the Kooma man said Australia needed a republic "based on fairness and responsibility".

"We can't fix the systems that were brought here by the British empire," he said.

"If you go back through the legal documents, and all the documents that incarcerated our people, it was her signature that was on them.

"She's not innocent, in no way shape or form.

"My mother chased her out of Brisbane here in 1988 and stopped her going to church, and I'm proud of my mother for doing that."

He said the mainstream media's wall-to-wall coverage of the Queen's death had been upsetting.

"To Aboriginal people, to myself, it's been nothing short of sickening and torture," he said.

Protester Kevin Yow Yeh said it was "important" people showed up despite the weather as a show of "resistance to the settler colonial nation state that is Australia and remind people that not everyone is mourning the Queen's death".

He said it was a "kick in the guts" the government could announce a public holiday for Queen Elizabeth II, but not for Aboriginal people who had been fighting for a day of mourning for decades.

Organiser Ruby Wharton said while there has widespread talk of constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people, there were other steps which needed taking first.

"We don't believe that that conversation can start until the sovereignty of Aboriginal people is acknowledged," she said.

"You can't have a Voice to Parliament and a monarchy at the same time. There is no equal sovereignty here - there is one group of people who oppressed and killed."

While the protest was largely respectful, the event became heated once it reached its destination.

An Australian flag was burned to the mixed sound of police sirens and cheers.

Sydney protest calls for recognition of impact of colonisation

Hundreds of people met on Gadigal Country in Sydney for that city's rally, accompanied by a large police presence.

Speakers outside Sydney Town Hall said it was an opportunity to amplify voices they said had been silenced in the wake of the Queen's passing.

The speakers told the crowd about a range of issues, with a focus on Indigenous deaths in custody.

Attendees pointed to the first national Indigenous rights protest in 1938, and the calls in the decades since to recognise the impact of colonisation and for basic human rights.

Following the speeches, the crowd moved through the city to Hyde Park.

Adelaide man banned from Government House for anti-monarchy message

An Adelaide man was removed from South Australia's Government House for holding up a sign which read "Abolish The Monarchy".

Government House had opened to the public to give people a chance to say a final farewell to the Queen.

Outside, the man told reporters he also signed the condolence book with the same abolition message.

He was banned from entering Government House for 24 hours.

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Crowds take to Australian streets for 'abolish the monarchy' protests on day of mourning for Queen

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Crowds have gathered across the country for 'abolish the monarchy' protests on the national day of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II.

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Australia moves to give Indigenous people a voice to parliament

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Australia moves to give Indigenous people a voice to parliament

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Australia's government says the Voice to parliament is a step towards improving the lives of Indigenous people [File: Steven Saphore/AFP]

Melbourne, Australia - The Australian government is planning a historic referendum which, if successful, would see Indigenous people permanently represented in government.

Termed a "Voice to Parliament", a "yes" vote in the referendum would constitutionally enshrine an advisory group to government made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders.

It would not only be the first acknowledgement of Indigenous people in Australia's constitution but also rectify the ongoing historical exclusion of Indigenous people from parliamentary processes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese released the draft wording of the proposed constitutional change, along with the draft question to be posed to the Australian public, via a referendum at this year's Garma Festival, where politicians and Indigenous leaders usually meet.

The festival - held in the remote Indigenous region of Arnhem Land in far north Australia - is often used as a site for serving governments to make announcements on policy.

Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney has since announced a "working group" made up of prominent Indigenous leaders to take the referendum process forward.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, Burney described the Voice to Parliament as "a once in a generation opportunity to make the much-needed structural changes that will lead to improvements in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."

"A Voice to Parliament is about improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country," she said. "It's about making sure First Nations people have a say on the issues and policies that affect them and that future governments make better and more informed policies that will make a difference."

Indigenous Australians experience vast inequalities compared to the non-Indigenous population, a result of ongoing colonisation and marginalisation.

Despite making up less than 3 percent of the country's population, Indigenous Australians make up more than a quarter of its prison population, according to official data, with many jailed for minor crimes. About a third of Indigenous Australians live below the poverty line.

"There is a long history in Australia of failed programmes and policies when it comes to Indigenous affairs," Burney continued. "A Voice to Parliament is about drawing a line on the failed policies and programmes of the past and doing things differently."

Need for truth and justice

Advocacy for a Voice to Parliament began when former-Prime Minister Julia Gillard established an expert panel in 2010 with the aim of furthering recognition of Indigenous Australians in the country's constitution.

In 2017, after consultation with a range of Indigenous community members and leaders, the Uluru Statement was launched, detailing the proposed Voice along with calls for truth-telling and treaty. But the right-leaning Scott Morrison, who was prime minister before Albanese won May's election, refused to support the proposal.

Still, not all the Indigenous Senators in parliament agree a constitutionally enshrined "Voice" is the right path forward for Indigenous Australians.

Lidia Thorpe - who represents the left-leaning Greens' Party - told Al Jazeera that instead of a Voice to Parliament, Australia needed to prioritise a process that would ensure more people knew about its past and the treatment of Aboriginal people.

"We need a national Truth and Justice Commission because this nation doesn't know its own history," Thorpe told Al Jazeera.

"A national Truth Telling process will empower people to make informed decisions in Treaty negotiations and constitutional recognition, because constitutional recognition can be decided through a Treaty process."

Unlike countries such as New Zealand and Canada, Australia has never had a successful treaty process with Indigenous people.

Instead, the continent was colonised by the British under the concept of terra nullius, a Latin legal term for "land belonging to no-one", which was embedded in Australian law and only overturned in 1992.

The recent death of Queen Elizabeth II, the British monarch who was also Australia's head of state, has reignited discussions of sovereignty.

"Treaty is an expression of sovereignty," Thorpe told Al Jazeera. "We also need to remove the Crown, to create a Treaty Republic. It will bring people together to figure out how we can live together, peacefully."

Also opposed to the Voice to Parliament is Indigenous Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who represents the conservative Country Liberal Party.

In her maiden speech to parliament, Price claimed the current Labor government's agenda was nothing more than "virtue signalling" and the Voice to Parliament a "quick fix."

"[The Voice] lacks detail and it lacks substance and it lacks the opportunity to allow for marginalised Aboriginal Australians to empower themselves," Price told Al Jazeera.

"It can't be guaranteed that this suggestion is going to work in any way to the betterment of marginalised Indigenous Australians. I think [the Government] need to prove that it can actually work first before there is any suggestion of going anywhere near the Constitution."

Price also said members of Burney's "working group" were "detached" from grassroots Aboriginal communities and unable to represent all Indigenous people.

"They certainly don't represent my people and probably [don't represent] a whole lot of Aboriginal Australians," she said.

Instead, Price said family violence in Indigenous communities should be the priority.

"The family and domestic violence issue should be the number one issue that we should be looking to tackle," she told Al Jazeera.

Advice not power

Non-Indigenous ministers from previous governments have also created confusion about what exactly the Voice entails.

When first announced in 2017, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull erroneously described the proposal as a "third chamber" of government, a statement he has since retracted.

More recently, Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton suggested the Voice will involve veto powers over issues such as mining concessions.

Cheryl Saunders, founding Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne University Law School, says that is entirely wrong.

The Voice "won't have power, it will be providing advice," she told Al Jazeera, adding it was "not a veto power at all."

"As a group of Indigenous people [the Voice] will have a view on matters relating specifically to Indigenous people and it will share that view with the government and parliament," Saunders said.

Under Australian law, the nation's constitution can only be amended by public vote and if successful, the referendum would lead to a constitutional amendment that would ensure such a "Voice" would remain embedded in the parliamentary process in perpetuity.

Historically, the Australian public have proved shy of constitutional change; out of 44 proposals put forward in 19 referendums, only eight have been passed by popular vote.

But the most successful referendum was on Indigenous rights when Australians in 1967 voted overwhelmingly in support of a constitutional amendment to count Indigenous people in the census and provide the federal government and not just state administrations with the power to make laws for Indigenous people.

While the detail of the referendum was often less understood than the popular sentiment of "Vote Yes", the referendum outcome of 90.77 percent in favour of the changes suggested huge support to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.

"1967 was different because it didn't come from the government initially," Saunders explained. "It came from a groundswell of pressure by Indigenous people talking to non-Indigenous people and getting ordinary people interested. And there is a sense in which this [current referendum proposal] is exactly the same."

Saunders acknowledges there are risks involved in amending the constitution to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

"I think that of course it is very important that the Voice itself work effectively but I think at equal risk is that the government and parliament won't pay it adequate attention," she said.

"I think once the amendment is passed and the legislation is enacted I think the really hard work of implementation begins. And that's true of any constitutional change - you can't just change the words and then assume everything is going to be fine."

While the government has not yet set a date for the referendum, Albanese recently committed to holding it between July 2023 and June 2024.

With a recent poll demonstrating 64 percent of Australians support an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Indigenous Australians may finally be recognised in the constitution, more than 200 years after the country was colonised.

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Australia moves to give Indigenous people a voice to parliament

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Melbourne, Australia - The Australian government is planning a historic referendum which, if successful, would see Indigenous people permanently represented in government. Termed a "Voice to Parliament", a "yes" vote in the referendum would constitutionally enshrine an advisory group to government made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders.

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We need your support to make the WA Government compensate Stolen Generations survivors

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We need your support to make the WA Government compensate Stolen Generations survivors

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We need your support to make the WA Government compensate Stolen Generations survivors - National Indigenous Times

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It is 25 years since the Bringing Them Home Report was released and many of the 54 recommendations have not been implemented. Two of the most important recommendations relate to compensation or reparation for Stolen Generations survivors. We believe that the time has come to say fair's fair and we are seeking your support for a petition to make that happen.

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Divisions Arise Over Australia's Plan for Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Peoples 

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Divisions Arise Over Australia's Plan for Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Peoples 

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Critics of Australia's plan to recognize Indigenous people in the country's constitution say it risks diverting attention from serious social problems in First Nation communities.

The recently elected center-left government in Canberra wants to hold a referendum to change the constitution to recognize the country's original inhabitants.

Australia has an indigenous history going back 65,000 years. The continent was settled by the British in 1788 and was initially a prison colony. Ever since, Indigenous leaders have sought recognition for injustices including mass killings, dispossession of customary lands and forced assimilation.

There is, however, disagreement about the benefits of a proposed referendum. Some critics have argued that constitutional recognition would simply be symbolic and would not address deep-seated issues.

Senator Jacinta Price, an Indigenous politician, said the plan was "dangerous" because of its lack of detail. She told Australian television that the referendum was being driven by "elites" with little regard for impoverished communities.

First Nation Australians suffer disproportionately high rates of poverty, imprisonment, domestic violence and unemployment. The problems have persisted despite years of state and federal government promises and policies.

Australia's independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that she hoped constitutional reform would bring about practical change.

"With the conversations around the aspirations of the proper acknowledgement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the founding document of this land is something that will help in our response to these other priorities that we have, that we have been dealing with every day for years and years and years. So, I think we are very capable of doing both," said Oscar.

The plan for a proposed referendum was unveiled Saturday by prime minister Anthony Albanese in a speech at an Indigenous festival in the Northern Territory. He said it was "an opportunity for us to demonstrate our maturity as a nation, to uplift our whole nation."

The vote could be held within three years before the next federal election. If approved, it would enshrine a so-called Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Canberra.

Experts have said that a successful referendum "would amount to an important message to Indigenous Australians about how [they] are respected and heard in Australia."

The Australian constitution, which came into effect in January 1901, does not refer to the country's First Nations people, who make up about 3% of the national population.

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Divisions Arise Over Australia's Plan for Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Peoples

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Critics of Australia's plan to recognize Indigenous people in the country's constitution say it risks diverting attention from serious social problems in First Nation communities. The recently elected center-left government in Canberra wants to hold a referendum to change the constitution to recognize the country's original inhabitants.

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First Person: Aboriginal Australians suffer from ‘violent history’ and ongoing ‘institutional racism’

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First Person: Aboriginal Australians suffer from ‘violent history’ and ongoing ‘institutional racism’

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First Person: Aboriginal Australians suffer from ‘violent history’ and ongoing ‘institutional racism’

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Decisions made at the UN can push governments to improve the rights of indigenous peoples, who still face discrimination, says Aboriginal Australian activist and human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade.

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‘Punitive’ rental laws condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, prison and death

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‘Punitive’ rental laws condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, prison and death

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Punitive rental laws are condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, child removal, prison and even death, a WA parliamentary inquiry heard on Monday.

Several Noongar advocates spoke to the Inquiry into the Financial Administration of Homelessness Services, including former residents of the "tent cities" that were established in Perth.

Also appearing were families who have been made homeless due to no reason or fault evictions, and relatives of people who have died homeless on Perth streets over the past two years.

New data published in August showed Aboriginal people remain radically over-represented in Western Australia's homeless population.

University of WA Centre for Social Impact director Paul Flatau said Indigenous people form 29.1 per cent of the homeless population, while making up 3.1 per cent of the general population.

The speakers told the inquiry self determination was critical to reversing the trend.

Noelene Garlett, a Noongar woman who helped found the Perth Tent City before securing public housing, said she was now doing what she could to help people on the streets.

After addressing the inquiry, Ms Garlett said she was a member of the Stolen Generations who had been made homeless by the need to escape domestic violence.

"The new laws banning us from the city centre and other places is a repeat of colonial law. We can't live under laws that restrict us from entering or doing cultural business," she said.

"They've got no respect for First Nation people. They still look down on us like we're nobodies here.

"They need to work with us and not look down on us."

Stacey Garlett, who was made homeless with her children in a no reason eviction this year, told the inquiry she has been pushed out of the private rental market by rising costs.

"I have got myself onto the Priority List for the Department of Housing and I was on the waitlist for two years with no properties being offered to myself," she said.

"I am currently living out of my car and couch surfing with no other option for myself and my two daughters - wherever you contact they all say they are full and also have a waiting list.

"You see all the stories all over the news on how they are supposed to be supporting the First Nations people... Where is all this money and funding going if we still can't even be housed?"

Melinda Williams said three generations of her family were homeless.

"Six months ago, the Department promised to house us through their special HEART homelessness squad and we're still out on the street and sleeping in parks," she said.

"What will it take for this government to give us what they owe us - somewhere safe and stable to bring our children home?"

Ballardong Noongar man Desmond Blurton, who was recently housed after years of homelessness, said after addressing the inquiry self-governance and self-determination was the key.

"We need to support networks and culturally appropriate programs," he said.

"It is terrible as First Nations people... it is breaking our spirit to know we are living on our own Boodja but we have no where to stay.

"It puts pressure on us, on our families, on us all - including the justice system, which is not the solution. Our homeless people, they need to be respected and to not be intimidated by the City of Perth or the WA Police."

Mr Blurton said funds from the Noongar Settlement should be used to support Indigenous-led solutions to homelessness.

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'Punitive' rental laws condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, prison and death - National Indigenous Times

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Punitive rental laws are condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, child removal, prison and even death, a WA parliamentary inquiry heard on Monday. Several Noongar advocates spoke to the Inquiry into the Financial Administration of Homelessness Services, including former residents of the "tent cities" that were established in Perth.

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Queen Elizabeth II leaves complex legacy for Aboriginal Australians

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Queen Elizabeth II leaves complex legacy for Aboriginal Australians

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Source: BBC

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Proudly displayed in Narelda Jacobs' childhood home in Australia was a photo of her father, Cedric, meeting Queen Elizabeth II.

"As a kid, I grew up looking at her in an aspirational way and thinking: 'Gosh, that's the Queen! And that's my dad receiving an [MBE] order from the Queen!'" the Aboriginal Australian television presenter says.

"She's someone that I always looked up to."

But as Ms Jacobs grew older, the meaning of the photo shifted.

When she looks at it now, she sees a sovereign standing in front of a man who dedicated his life to having the sovereignty of his own people recognised.

"And he died waiting for that recognition," the Whadjuk Noongar woman tells the BBC.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have spoken of complicated emotions after the Queen's death.

The oldest continuing cultures on Earth, they suffered greatly from colonialism. The arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770 set off events that dispossessed Indigenous Australians of their land. Massacres, profound cultural disruption, and intergenerational trauma followed.

When Queen Elizabeth II first visited Australia in 1954, First Nations people were not counted as part of the population, and children were still being forcibly removed from their families to be assimilated into white households. In some parts of her tour, Aboriginal Australians were actively hidden from view.

Much has changed since, but Indigenous Australians remain disproportionately worse off in terms of health, education and other measures compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

"We're still not doing as well... and that's because of colonial rule," Wiradjuri academic Sandy O'Sullivan says.

Mixed feelings

As a result Australia has struggled with the question of how to celebrate her life while acknowledging some of the country's darkest chapters.

A decision to lower the Aboriginal flag to half-mast in her honour - in line with other official flags - drew some criticism, as did the decision to suspend parliament for a fortnight. A promise to rename a Melbourne hospital from an Aboriginal word, Maroondah, to Queen Elizabeth II Hospital has been attacked as "tone deaf".

Controversially, the Australian Football League Women's decided against mandating a minute's silence for the Queen last week because it was Indigenous Round. But the National Rugby League fined and suspended an Indigenous player after she wrote an offensive post about the Queen that some defended as freedom of speech.

For University of Canberra Chancellor and Aboriginal elder Tom Calma, the Queen led a life of service "with a whole lot of dignity and humanity".

"She inherited, at a very young age, a whole lot of global challenges. We've seen a lot of change and she's been at the helm of that," says Prof Calma, a Kungarakan and Iwaidja man.

She seemed sympathetic, he says, to the desires of First Nations people - such as in 2000 when she called for the government to "ensure prosperity touches all Australians", pointing out many Indigenous people felt "left behind".

But some say the Queen's legacy in Australia is impossible to separate from the invasion and colonisation of the country.

Among them is Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe, who referred to the Queen as a coloniser while taking her oath in parliament earlier this year.

Indigenous people never ceded their sovereignty, the Djabwurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman wrote in the Guardian Australia last week.

"The institutions that British colonisation brought here, from the education that erases us to the prisons that kill us, are designed to destroy the oldest living culture in the world," wrote Ms Thorpe.

"That's the legacy of the Crown in this country."

For others, there is criticism of what the Queen herself didn't do. Many Indigenous Australians made appeals to her for greater support during her reign.

Among them was Ms Jacobs' father, an Anglican reverend and one-time National Aboriginal Conference chair. Though he was always "very fond" of the Queen, Cedric Jacobs had spoken to her about his people's desire for a treaty.

"Could there have been something that she could have done?" Ms Jacobs asks.

Prof O'Sullivan says: "I don't have a lot of time for people who want to celebrate the idea of somebody passing away."

But it's not fair to paint the Queen as simply a "kindly grandmother" given she was so influential and had "enormous wealth", the academic adds.

She used that power to be an "incredibly eloquent" advocate for some causes, Prof O'Sullivan says. "[But] she certainly didn't do anything to make our lives better."

Prof Calma argues the Queen inherited colonial tensions she had no part in creating.

"There's always an argument that more could have happened, but that's not always in the hands of the monarch," he says.

"We can't continually blame the Crown, when we've had our own constitution since 1901. It is the Australian government who has to step up."

'An opportunity'

Some argue an Australia that recognises the harm colonisation has done to First Nations people, cannot remain subject to a British monarch.

But a referendum on a republic looks at least three years away. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has committed to first holding a referendum on recognising Indigenous people in Australia's constitution and giving them a Voice to Parliament - a new advisory body.

And even if Australia becomes a republic it may not leave the Commonwealth, Prof Calma says.

Some urge the monarchy to embrace a new era.

"This is an opportunity for a clean slate," Prof O'Sullivan says. "I have a lot of a lot of hope."

Some Indigenous Australians want King Charles III to make an apology for the damage done by colonialism - like that offered to New Zealand's Māori in 1995.

There are also calls for reparations - financial compensation, the return of land and artefacts, and the repatriation of ancestral remains located in British museums.

The King could also consider lending his support to the campaign for the Voice to Parliament, some say.

All the BBC spoke to said they wanted the King to meet with First Nations people, and to listen.

"It is really frustrating. These are the same conversations that our leaders would have had with his mum," Ms Jacobs said.

"But I don't want anybody else to die waiting to have their sovereignty as a First Nations person recognised."

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Queen Elizabeth II leaves complex legacy for Aboriginal Australians

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Proudly displayed in Narelda Jacobs' childhood home in Australia was a photo of her father, Cedric, meeting Queen Elizabeth II. "As a kid, I grew up looking at her in an aspirational way and thinking: 'Gosh, that's the Queen! And that's my dad receiving an [MBE] order from the Queen!'" the Aboriginal Australian television presenter says.

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Since European invasion in 1788, race and racism have been foundational to the logic of Australian settler colonialism and the processes by which the lands we now call Australia were stolen and settled. Though racism in Australia is not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, they have a unique experience of racism as this continent’s First Peoples who continue to endure legacies of colonisation. Racism in Australia is not just historical – it continues to shape our society.

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In an Australian First, Victoria is primed for Aboriginal treaty negotiations next year

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In an Australian First, Victoria is primed for Aboriginal treaty negotiations next year

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When Aunty Fay Carter reflects on the possibility of treaty, she sees a historic chance to educate Victorians on her community's battles.

"Our whole history needs to be taught in schools, so that young people can appreciate what our history's all about, what has happened to our people," the Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta elder said.

"The pain and suffering that happened to our old people, that we are now trying to rectify these days."

Now in her late 80s, Aunty Fay has lived through several of those chapters.

She can still recall the day Queen Elizabeth II, the figurehead of a system that had dispossessed Aboriginal people, was shielded from seeing the reality of life for the Indigenous community living on The Flats near Shepparton in 1954.

Aunty Fay said she wanted to see treaty guarantee the full story of the state's history was known across the community, including health and education workers.

"So that they can then have a really good understanding of how to deal with our people," she said.

"There's so much lacking in education."

Treaty negotiation rules now in focus

It's now something she could see happen in her lifetime, as Victoria takes a momentous step forward in its journey towards state-based treaties.

On Thursday the state government and the First Peoples' Assembly will formally agree on a treaty negotiation framework - essentially, the ground rules for negotiations.

The framework confirms that it will be the Aboriginal Victorians on the next First Peoples' Assembly - which must be elected before November next year - who will sit at the table with government to negotiate a blanket treaty.

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Treaty in Victoria: What would it achieve?

In addition to the blanket treaty, the framework confirms that delegations can be formed by Indigenous communities to negotiate specific treaties for different areas.

And it lays out how those groups can access a self-determination fund, to ensure they're on an equal footing when negotiating with government.

The government has revealed it will make an initial investment of $65 million in the self-determination fund, which will be managed and administered by the First Peoples' Assembly.

Negotiations will be overseen by an Indigenous-led treaty umpire, known as the Treaty Authority.

The authority will have the important task of ensuring the negotiations are playing out in a way that upholds the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

It will also work to help bring local groups together as treaty delegations - a complex task in Victoria, where some communities have been deeply fractured by colonisation.

The framework is one of the final major pieces of work tasked to the first incarnation of the First Peoples' Assembly, and brings Aboriginal communities closer to the business end of deciding what should go into a treaty with government.

'We're going to stand strong and stand together'

At a recent Treaty Day Out event on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Bendigo, Indigenous and non-Indigenous Victorians came together to reflect on the possibilities of treaty.

Assembly co-chair Aunty Geraldine Atkinson told the community not to ask someone else what treaty was about - treaty is what you make it, she said.

Based on the community conversations held over the past few years, a statewide treaty is likely to cover issues across every facet of life, including cultural heritage, language preservation, law and order, the environment and education.

Assembly member Trent Nelson, a Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta man, said members felt the weight of responsibility to get the treaty process right.

Trent Nelson says he's honoured to be part of the assembly as it works to progress historic treaty talks.(ABC News: Joseph Dunstan )

"This will be something in history that we look back on ... all we know is that we're going to stand strong and stand together," he said.

"And walk together as well, it's really important with the non-Aboriginal community as well as our community.

"The biggest job for us is not to leave anyone behind."

Mr Nelson said looking to overseas examples was crucial to ensure genuine self-determination for Aboriginal people was realised.

"We take the good parts and the good knowledge that has come from those people, those First Nations people that are going through those processes now that are probably further down the track than what we are," he said.

'We need to be empowered'

Assembly member and Gunditjmara and Buandig elder Uncle Michael "Mookeye" Bell said treaty was a chance to address the harmful legacies of colonisation by putting the power back in Aboriginal hands.

"We've got to care for our community ... and we need to be empowered to do that," he said.

Uncle Michael Bell says generations of elders have fought to be given greater control over their affairs.(ABC News: Joseph Dunstan )

Non-Indigenous Victorian Hew Colebatch is passionate about seeing treaty realised.

But he said what went into it wasn't a question for him.

"That's up to the First Nations assembly, Indigenous communities, corporations within the state of Victoria," he said.

An Anglo-Chinese Australian born in Papua New Guinea, Mr Colebatch said he joined the army when he was 17.

Hew Colebatch says treaties must deliver on the priorities identified by Indigenous communities.(ABC News: Joseph Dunstan )

"And as I got older and got a little bit of nous and started to learn more and more about what was actually happening and had happened in this country, I thought 'holy crap, the way we've treated the Indigenous people is just so abhorrent for so long'," he said.

"We seem to just take two steps forward, one step back ... or one step forward two steps back a lot of the time as well.

"Supporting the treaty process, I'm 100 per cent on board, because I think we can do better ... we can, we must."

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Victoria takes a big step towards treaty today. For Aunty Fay, it's a chance to right 'pain and suffering' of the past

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When Aunty Fay Carter reflects on the possibility of treaty, she sees a historic chance to educate Victorians on her community's battles. "Our whole history needs to be taught in schools, so that young people can appreciate what our history's all about, what has happened to our people," the Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta elder said.

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Aboriginal man laid to rest in moving ceremony 90 years after he was killed by police at Uluru

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Aboriginal man laid to rest in moving ceremony 90 years after he was killed by police at Uluru

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The families of an Aboriginal man shot and killed by police at Uluru 90 years ago, have finally laid his remains to rest at the base of the rock in a deeply emotional ceremony, with his descendants calling for an apology and compensation from governments and police.

The partial remains of Pitjantjatjara man Yukun were repatriated to the place where he was shot and killed in 1934 by mounted constable Bill McKinnon.

In a ceremony on Thursday, Yukun's remains were carried to the site by representatives of the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide who offered their apologies for the past practices of taking and storing Aboriginal remains.

Abraham Poulson with the remains of Yukun, wrapped in the Aboriginal flag. Photograph: Dean Sewell/Oculi/The Guardian

A solemn file of around a hundred mostly Anangu [Aboriginal people] passed the box containing Yukun's remains, which was draped in the Aboriginal flag. Many wept during an hour-long service in which family members spoke and sang in Pitjantjatjara.

Addressing the service on behalf of the University of Adelaide, the dean of the university's dental school, Prof Richard Logan, said the keeping and use of Aboriginal remains for research and teaching "was entirely wrong" and the institution was sorry.

"In saying this, I recognise it does not undo the wrongs of the past nor remove the need for healing processes to occur," Logan said. "We deeply regret the situation that confronts the current generation of Aboriginal leaders and the decisions you have been asked to make about the return of your ancestors' remains."

In August 1934, Bill McKinnon was sent to investigate the killing of Aboriginal man Kai Umen near Mt Connor.

A few weeks into the search, McKinnon and his Aboriginal trackers, Paddy and Carbine, came across Yukun and five other men who were hunting. The men were travelling from the west, and were highly unlikely to have been involved, but were questioned and detained.

A week later they escaped and Yukun was shot by Paddy. Two men were recaptured, but the four others, including a badly wounded Yukun, headed for the sanctuary of Uluru.

Trackers found Yukun sheltering in a cave about 40 metres up, near the Mutitjulu waterhole. McKinnon told a subsequent board of inquiry that he shot Yukun from a distance and brought him from the cave. He died from his wounds several hours later and they buried him there.

But the historian Mark McKenna, who spent years investigating the incident for his book Return to Uluru, found McKinnon's journals in his daughter's Brisbane garage in 2019. In those, the constable admitted he had fired to hit Yukun, contrary to what he told authorities at the time.

A 1935 board of inquiry investigated the incident, ultimately exonerating McKinnon. But the board exhumed Yukun's remains and one of its members, Dr JB Cleland, took them to Adelaide. At some point later, his remains were stored at the University of Adelaide, and later the SA Museum.

Prompted by McKenna's book, a forensic search was made, but only Yukun's skull could be located, in 2019.

It was laid to rest in a deep but narrow grave, close to the site where he died in 1934.

Yukun's extended family said that while they were glad to be able to receive him home, they were saddened and deeply shocked - and want the government to offer them justice and an apology.

"It is really hard," Joy Kuniya, Yukun's great-niece said. "We feel it really deeply. We are focused on justice. It would cost billions to pay us compensation to the family to forget about it.

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"The policeman came with his gun and shot him in cold blood. He was hiding more evidence. He was maybe thinking, I am working for the government, and if I am going to tell the truth I am going to be punished for it, so he has been lying all the way."

The family learned only recently that Yukun's remains had been languishing in institutions for 90 years.

"My understanding is ... they buried him and then they came back and dug up his bones, which is really, really sad for us. We are disappointed and cross," Kuniya said.

Her aunt, Margaret Poulson, agreed: "That man, the policeman, was working for the NT government or the federal government so the government should wear the blame for this."

Richard Logan of the University of Adelaide (left) and John Carty of the South Australian Museum hand over Yukun's remains to Abraham Poulson. Photograph: Dean Sewell/Oculi/The Guardian

Abraham Poulson said they understood the parallels with the treatment of Aboriginal people by police today.

" The law, the white man's law, is still covering us like an umbrella in our remote community, our Indigenous culture," he said.

"It is the same from many, many years ago. They got law and rights, and now police are still doing stuff around Australia."

The ceremony was attended by McKinnon's great-nephews Alastair and Ross and Alastair's wife Ruth, who said they were "overwhelmed" at the generosity of the Anangu families, who came up after the service to hug and thank them for attending.

McKenna said it was "incredible" to see the impact of his research for the families involved.

"To be here again is overwhelming, the significance of the whole story for the families, but also just incredible as a historian to be able to follow this right through to this moment," McKenna said.

"And I keep feeling the whole thing is just bigger than all of us. Trying to take it all in is really going to take some time."

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Aboriginal man laid to rest in moving ceremony 90 years after he was killed by police at Uluru

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The families of an Aboriginal man shot and killed by police at Uluru 90 years ago, have finally laid his remains to rest at the base of the rock in a deeply emotional ceremony, with his descendants calling for an apology and compensation from governments and police.

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In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn't fight back

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In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn't fight back

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Source: The Conversation

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The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins.

Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.

The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil.

It sets out to understand why the war was never declared, why the British didn't follow their own laws, and the tactics and strategies Aboriginal people deployed defending their land and survival.

Perkins asks us to consider this difficult history, why there are only a handful of monuments to this warfare, and how it should be memorialised.

To ask these questions, Perkins deploys stunningly shot re-enactments, archives, artefacts, biography, expert evidence and uses place to great effect.

The series treats the viewer with the ability to critically reflect and ask why we still struggle to come to terms with this history.

The frontier wars

The " frontier wars" were the conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people over access to land the British sought to occupy exclusively without any agreement, treaty or settlement. This series emphasises Aboriginal people resisted these wars in multiple ways, including warfare. Aboriginal people are still resisting these wars today, in the courts.

The Australian Wars is an important contribution to truth-telling. Perkins provides a public reckoning with the means by which the British Empire - followed by independent democratic Australian governments - managed to grab the entirety of the land assets of the continent.

The dominant narrative of Australian settler colonialism was once sunny tales of possession, sustained by hard toil. Aboriginal acts of resistance, refusal and warfare were somehow miraculously omitted.

Only in recent decades has a more truthful account of the past emerged. New conversations and responsibility are slowly navigating the realities of the frontier, the shared history of "both sides" and how the past can be remembered.

Reconciliation Australia's "Reconciliation Barometer" survey identified only 64% of non-Indigenous Australians believed the frontier wars occurred. Some 30% of respondents were unsure and 6% rejected the factual accuracy of significant aspects of Australia's colonial history.

The Australian War Memorial, once tasked with considering how to reflect frontier wars in Australia's story, rejected any inclusion of the frontier wars in its exhibitions.

The documentary returns to the theme of rejecting this part of Australia's history and asks: how can the frontier wars be remembered and memorialised?

Perkins reminds us that as many people - both black and white - died in the frontier wars as did in overseas conflicts featured at the Australian War Memorial.

Read more: Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism's final encounter with the Barkandji

The moving frontier

The Australian Wars draws together experts of Australian history, detailed studies of the expansive colonial records, the oral testimony of survivors' descendants and new archaeological research.

With this trove of references, Perkins reveals the extent and breadth of violence, the global networks of military men and the strategies they honed on the frontier, and the technology that came to enable this.

Ultimately, we learn unfettered access to the land resource was the driving factor. The rule of law, claims of humanitarianism and Christianity were readily dispensed with in pursuit of land.

Perkins begins this story in the nation's capital at the War Memorial. She then follows the moving frontier from the Sydney settlement to Tasmania and crossing Bass Strait. The story then moves with rapid pace from south to north and across the top end to the Kimberley, as settlers expanded across landscapes in always violent encounters.

She dispenses with the abiding myth Aboriginal people didn't fight back.

In each location Perkins focuses on, we see different strategies deployed, tactical advantage held at times by Aboriginal people, the fear and terror struck in the settlers, and the military actors and strategy that underpinned the colonial settlements.

By the third episode, as the frontier heads north, settlers take lessons from Sydney, Tasmania and the New South Wales grasslands country. Moving with much greater speed aided now by horses, the settlers recruited skilled Native Mounted Police, used repeating rifles and developed systems and infrastructure to confine Aboriginal people to prisons.

But the Aboriginal peoples whose lands were being invaded were fast developing new tactics.

In Queensland alone it is estimated 72,000 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed.

How do we remember?

The series prompts us to ask: if not war, then what do we call the process by which the land, once all carefully delineated and peopled, is occupied by settlers?

How do we remember this and memorialise those who died?

Perkins tells us this violence was often very well documented. This violence was acted against people whose eyes you could see. Yet from Lake George, just outside the nation's capital, to the Sydney wars and massacres, Tasmania, Queensland and to the Kimberley, sites of violence are overwhelmingly unmarked, unobserved, save for colonial names: "Blackfellows Bones", "Victory Hill".

The silence continues.

Leading Australian historian Henry Reynolds says the frontier wars are our most important war because of where they were fought and what they were about: the outcome determined the ownership and sovereign control of a whole continent.

As he comments in the series "what can be more important than that to us?"
The Australian Wars is on SBS and SBS on Demand from today.
Read more: Friday essay: it's time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars

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In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn't fight back

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In her new SBS documentary, Rachel Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years.

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Source: NowThis World

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Source: Britannica.com

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By the time of European settlement in 1788, Aboriginal peoples had occupied and utilized the entire continent and adapted successfully to a large range of ecological and climatic conditions, from wet temperate and tropical rainforests to extremely arid deserts. Population densities ranged from roughly 1 to 8 square miles (2.6 to 20.7 square km) per person in fertile riverine and coastal areas to more than 35 square miles (90 square km) per person in the vast interior deserts. Estimates of Aboriginal population vary from 300,000 to more than 1,000,000.

More than 200 different Aboriginal languages were spoken (and hundreds of dialects; see also Australian Aboriginal languages), and most Aboriginal people were bilingual or multilingual. Both languages (or dialects) and groups of people were associated with stretches of territory. The largest entities recognized by the people were language-named groups, sometimes referred to by Europeans as "tribes." There may have been as many as 500 such named, territorially anchored groups. Their members shared cultural features and interacted more with one another than with members of different groups. These groups were not, however, political or economic entities, and, while language names may have been commonly used by groups as labels for one another, individual and group identity was grounded in much more locally oriented affiliations and memberships. There was no consciousness of a shared national identity. However, the worldview of Aboriginal peoples tended to be expansive, with a perception of society as a community of common understandings and behaviours shared well beyond the confines of the local group.

Just as there was no one-to-one relationship between language and tribe, cultural differences did not correlate closely with ecological zones. The blurring of such boundaries accords with strong cultural emphases on diffusion and the expansion of networks of relationships through kinship, marriage alliance, exchange, and religious activities. Greater emphasis on maintaining boundaries, together with higher levels of ethnocentrism and intergroup conflict, were more likely (but not invariably) to be found in resource-rich areas with higher population densities.

According to traditional scholarship, Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers who grew no crops and did not domesticate animals (apart from the dingo), so they were directly dependent on their natural environment. On the other hand, some historians and archaeologists in the 21st century argued that Aboriginal people employed agricultural practices that were far too sophisticated to be characterized as hunting and gathering. Nevertheless, the conventional interpretation holds that the Aboriginal people, though nomadic, had a very strong sense of attachment to sites and areas in their home territory, where most of their hunting and gathering was done. The need to balance population with resources meant that most of the time people were dispersed into small food-gathering groups. But several times a year, when food resources permitted, large gatherings would be organized, and much of the social and religious business of the society would be transacted over a two- to three-week period of intense social activity. This rhythm of aggregation and dispersal was fundamental, but over much of this dry continent ecological factors made dispersal the predominant fact of life.

The worldview of Aboriginal peoples centred on " the Dreaming," or "dream-time," a complex and comprehensive concept embodying the past, present, and future as well as virtually every aspect of life. It includes the creative era at the dawn of time, when mythic beings shaped the land and populated it with flora, fauna, and human beings and left behind the rules for social life. After their physical death and transformation into heavenly or earthly bodies, the indestructible creative beings withdrew from the earth into the spiritual realm.

As Aboriginal people understand it, the Dreaming beings retained control of all power and fertility, which they would release automatically into the human realm as long as humans followed their blueprint; this included the regular performance of rituals to ensure a continued flow of life-giving power. Spirit beings were used as messengers to communicate with the living and to introduce new knowledge into human society. Through dreams and other states of altered consciousness, the living could come into contact with the spiritual realm and gain strength from it. Diverse features of the landscape provided tangible proofs of the reality and world-creating powers of the Dreaming beings, and a rich complex of myths, dances, rituals, and objects bound the human, spiritual, and physical realms together into a single cosmic order. Despite the uncertainties involved in getting a living, Aboriginal people had a strong sense of self and a religious confidence in their ability to cope with and control their physical and social world.

Aboriginal society was the outcome of interplay between economic, ecological, social, and religious forces. An appreciation of all these forces is essential to an adequate understanding of Aboriginal social life. For example, religious responsibilities lay behind the operation of the "estate group," a major social unit that shared ownership of a specific set of sites and stretch of territory-its "estate." Kinship was also implicated, in that an estate group was often composed largely of people related patrilineally-that is, who traced connections to one another via descent through males, although various other criteria of affiliation (such as birth or initiation on the estate, a close relative who was buried there, or a demonstrable totemic link with major creative beings associated with the estate) generally existed and enabled others to claim membership.

The adult males of the estate group were the principal guardians of its sacred sites and objects and organized appropriate rituals to renew and sustain the land. Residence rules generally required women to move into the groups and territories of their husbands after marriage, so women's role in the affairs of their natal estate group was diminished, even though strong ties remained.

Ownership of land was nontransferable; estate group members held land in trust collectively by means of an unwritten charter deriving from the Dreaming. Most of the time, however, the estate group's members were scattered in bands across and beyond the estate on their "range" (the area covered by bands in the course of their frequent movements in search of food and water). Normally, a band's range would include its estate, but in times of prolonged drought a band could be forced into the territories of neighbouring groups. In the interior deserts particularly, boundaries tended to be permeable, and a variety of cultural mechanisms allowed bands to exploit the resources of their neighbours in hard times.

The band, consisting of two or more families, was the basic economic and face-to-face group (i.e., the group with which one normally travels and interacts on a daily basis). Flexible in size and composition, it was the land-utilizing group, highly mobile and able to respond quickly to altered ecological and social circumstances. The individual family, or hearth group, was the fundamental social unit; each family generally cooked and camped separately from other families in the band. The family could function self-sufficiently as an economic unit, but Aboriginal people preferred the enhanced sociality made possible by traveling and living together in bands.

In most of Australia people were also members of various kinds of social categories, based on a division of the society into two moieties, four sections or semi-moieties, or eight subsections. People were born into them and could not change membership. These categories, in addition to being useful as labels of address and reference, indicated intermarrying divisions, were basic to the organization of many rituals, and served as a useful guide in classifying distant kin and strangers. Also widespread, and interposed between the level of the band and the wider society, were clans-that is, groups whose members claimed descent from a common founding ancestor through either the male line (patriclan) or female line (matriclan). Patriclans were the more common form, and they played a very important social role in certain areas, such as northeast Arnhem Land.

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Australian Aboriginal peoples - Traditional sociocultural patterns

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By the time of European settlement in 1788, Aboriginal peoples had occupied and utilized the entire continent and adapted successfully to a large range of ecological and climatic conditions, from wet temperate and tropical rainforests to extremely arid deserts.

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Report Outlines Racism Toward Aboriginal Australians During Worst Bushfires on Record

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Report Outlines Racism Toward Aboriginal Australians During Worst Bushfires on Record

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Indigenous Australians experienced racism and unfair treatment during the catastrophic "Black Summer" bushfires, according to new research. It has found that First Nations communities suffered more than other groups because of failures by the authorities during the crisis.

Australia's "Black Summer" was its most intense bushfire season on record.

Between July 2019 and March 2020, the blazes swept across 24 million hectares of land. Thirty-three people died, and thousands of homes were destroyed.

New research released this week has found that large numbers of Indigenous people suffered "extreme trauma" from both the fires and the emergency response. They were turned away from evacuation centers and ignored in disaster management plans.

The study by the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research blames deep-seated racism and the lingering consequences of European colonization in 1788.

The study's lead author, Bhiamie Williamson, said that racism was often a factor.

"Aboriginal people did go to the evacuation centers only to be turned away because the staff there said we've helped enough of your people today; we've helped enough of your community members," Williamson said. "When you speak to people who are directly affected and you ask them why is that these things are happening to you, all of them connect it to historical racism and colonization. The most damaging instance that happens for people who have lived through these disasters and are still recovering is feeling like they have been forgotten."

Aboriginal Australians make up about 3% of the Australian population.

The university study asserts that disaster preparation plans also ignored the needs of First Nations communities.

Williamson said there are "scary similarities" between the way First Nations communities were treated during the bushfires of 2019-2020 and this year's devastating flooding in eastern Australia.

"We can look at another natural disaster that has recently occurred: the flooding, particularly in northern New South Wales - the Northern Rivers area," Williamson said. "We see a lot of the same issues happening. So, has practice changed? No. Are there people looking to change practice? Yes. But these are very big institutions. These are very big processes. It would require legal reform, and these are much longer-term changes that we need."

There has, so far, been no official government response to the Australian National University's study.

A Royal Commission into the Black Summer fires said that Indigenous bushfire techniques that use controlled burns to reduce the amount of vegetation could boost Australia's resilience to natural disasters.

The commission warned that global warming was inevitable, and that "compounding disasters" in Australia would become more frequent. The high-level inquiry, published in October 2020, said that natural hazards, including wildfires, floods and storms, could happen simultaneously or one after another.

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Report Outlines Racism Toward Aboriginal Australians During Worst Bushfires on Record

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Indigenous Australians experienced racism and unfair treatment during the catastrophic "Black Summer" bushfires, according to new research. It has found that First Nations communities suffered more than other groups because of failures by the authorities during the crisis. Australia's "Black Summer" was its most intense bushfire season on record.

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Why Australia's Indigenous People Fear the Police

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Why Australia's Indigenous People Fear the Police

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Advertisement
March 21 was the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which marks the anniversary of a horrific massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960, in which 69 innocent civilians were killed whilst protesting in Sharpeville. It is a widely recognized day that seeks to shape a more equal world, free from discrimination.

In Australia however, March 21 is only known as Harmony Day. Some in the media have argued that this is because acknowledging "the elimination of racial discrimination" would actually mean accepting its presence in the first place.

When it comes to the Australian justice system, the prevalence of systemic racism is hard to ignore. Cheryl Axleby, co-chair of Indigenous justice group Change the Record, is blunt in saying that the justice system openly discriminates against Indigenous people.

"Every year, Aboriginal people suffer racist or violent mistreatment and abuse by police," Axleby, a Narungga woman, told The Diplomat. "They don't report it for fear of reprisal. For those who do, complaints often take months, sometimes even over a year, to be investigated and resolved."

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The Northern Territory (NT) exemplifies Axleby's comments. A large, sprawling, and isolated expanse at the top of Australia, the NT contains just over 1 percent of the Australian population. Of its 230,000 inhabitants, the majority live in the port city of Darwin.

Whilst the Indigenous population in Australia sits at below 3 percent of the total, in the NT, members of the world's oldest civilization make up just over 25 percent of residents. It is no coincidence that the NT is also home to some of the most gruesome parts of Australia's bloody history.

Guardian Australia recently published "The Killing Times," an interactive map documenting the deaths of Indigenous people at the hand of Australian settlers. Dotted throughout the Northern Territory are tales of murder. In 1924, 20 Indigenous people were murdered for unknown reasons in the Victoria River District. A survivor later told of how his people "were run down and shot like dogs."
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Four years later, at Coniston, a "reprisal" by colonizers left up to 200 Indigenous people dead. Many Warlpiri and Yanmatjiri Aboriginal people were hunted down and murdered by police expeditions.

These incidents aren't isolated in Australia's history, but form a pattern that continues to repeat today. In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) was deemed to be a landmark moment in the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the justice system, but since that time, over 500 Aboriginal people have died while in custody. No one has been found guilty or faced prison time over these deaths.

Axleby is devastated by this. "It is hard to feel justice," she told The Diplomat, "when time and time again Aboriginal people are killed in custody, but no one is held accountable."

One Indigenous person, who requested not to be named, noted that an inherent fear of the police has been ingrained into many in the Northern Territory.

"I don't talk to the cops, it's a very scary thing to do," she told The Diplomat. "I avoid it all costs. Even my children are afraid of the police."

She noted that police are often stationed at liquor stores, checking the IDs of Indigenous patrons and subjecting them to further questions, sometimes including their address. All of this results in an ingrained anxiety.
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Cases like the recent trial of Zachary Rolfe, which ended with the police officer being acquitted for the murder of an Indigenous teenager, have emphasized to people like Cheryl Axleby the stark contrast in justice for police as opposed to Indigenous people.

When an Indigenous person dies, "too often findings are 'inconclusive' due to insufficient evidence." But at the same time, "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are the victims of police misconduct face huge barriers to justice."

Another Indigenous activist told The Diplomat that "our people have always been criminalized because of the color of our skin."

The reality of the systemic racism faced by Indigenous people in the justice system is highlighted by former Chief Justice of Western Australia, the Hon. Wayne Martin AC:
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Aboriginal people are much more likely to be questioned by police than non-Aboriginal people. When questioned they are more likely to be arrested. If they are arrested, they are much more likely to be remanded in custody than given bail. Aboriginal people are much more likely to plead guilty than go to trial, and if they go to trial, they are much more likely to be convicted. If convicted, they are much more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal people, and at the end of their term of imprisonment they are much less likely to get parole than non-Aboriginal people.
Is Change Happening?
In 2008, the Australian government released a framework, titled "Closing the Gap." The report alluded to the large discrepancies in key factors such as life expectancy, incarceration rates, and health issues between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

This year, the Law Council to Australia released a statement clarifying that a lot of these aspirations had yet to be fulfilled.

"It is now more important than ever to grapple with what Closing the Gap will mean in practice," said Law Council of Australia President Tass Liveris. "Because whether as accused people, offenders or victims, outcomes for First Nations peoples in the criminal justice context clearly continue to worsen."

It is widely accepted that the forced removal of children from their families, under a government-mandated movement now known as " The Stolen Generation," has resulted in long-lasting trauma, which has heavily contributed to Indigenous over-representation in the Australian prison system.

In the Northern Territory, home to the highest percentage of prisoners in the country, Aboriginal people make up 84 percent of the inmates, despite representing around a quarter of the total population in the state. One of the key recommendations from the RCIADIC was that the dramatic and unique trauma that was inflicted on the Indigenous population needed to be taken into account when sentencing.

Too often, this simply isn't done. The Law Council of Australia has implored the federal government to work with First Nations groups directly to progress reforms such as Closing the Gap, noting that currently the plight of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the justice system "is a national tragedy."

Any progress has been notoriously slow, however, and is often mired in debates around merit.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart, a campaign led by many prominent Indigenous leaders, has called for a dedicated Aboriginal voice in Parliament. They say this will allow the first people on the land to have a direct, political say in the way Aboriginal people are supported in the various communities. Laws that directly and often only impact Aboriginal people would, for the first time, be reviewed and recommendations given by a dedicated Aboriginal representative. "We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country," the statement said.

Such a reform, however, has been consistently opposed by most members of the current government.

Change the Record has called for more funding for Indigenous health care groups, especially for Indigenous women, who are 32 times more likely to than non-Indigenous women to be hospitalized as a result of domestic violence.
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Change the Record's report made 12 recommendations, including an Indigenous research group to look at systemic racism in health systems.

Other recommendations included an increase in the welfare rate, which was refused by the federal government, and more access to housing, with overcrowding becoming a serious issue throughout the country.

Sadly, most of these changes have not been implemented. And to many activists, the limited reforms that have been made do not have any lasting impact on the everyday safety of ordinary Indigenous people.

For Cheryl Axleby, real change needs to come from the top and be universal. "Governments need to start addressing the underlying drivers of inequality and injustice in our communities instead of just throwing money at police to respond," she said.

When asked why there doesn't seem to be much tangible change, she doesn't mince her words: "There is still not the political will or leadership to end the injustice, discrimination, and disadvantage that hurts our people."

Until this happens, discrimination and injustice will continue unabated for many of Australia's original inhabitants.

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Why Australia's Indigenous People Fear the Police

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Advertisement March 21 was the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which marks the anniversary of a horrific massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960, in which 69 innocent civilians were killed whilst protesting in Sharpeville. It is a widely recognized day that seeks to shape a more equal world, free from discrimination.

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Aboriginal people are calling for more recognition of Australian Frontier Wars

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Aboriginal people are calling for more recognition of Australian Frontier Wars

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Aboriginal people are calling for more recognition of Australian Frontier Wars | The Point | NITV

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Aboriginal Australians, facts and information

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Aboriginal Australians, facts and information

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Source: National Geographic

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Who are Aboriginal Australians—and why are they still fighting for recognition?

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They could be the oldest population of humans living outside of Africa—yet Australia has still never made a treaty with its Indigenous people.

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There are about 500 different Aboriginal peoples in Australia, each with their own language and territory and usually made up of a large number of separate clans.

Archaeologists believe that the Aboriginals first came to the Australian continent around 45,000 years ago.

Aboriginals themselves, however, trace their creation back to the Dreamtime, an era long past when the earth was first formed. One Aboriginal man explained it thus:

'By Dreaming we mean the belief that long ago these creatures started human society, they made all natural things and put them in a special place.

'These Dreaming creatures were connected to special places and special roads or tracks or paths. In many places the great creatures changed themselves into sites where their spirits stayed.

'Aboriginals have a special connection with everything that is natural. Aboriginals see themselves as part of nature ... All things on earth we see as part human. It is true that people who belong to a particular area are really part of that area and if that area is destroyed they are also destroyed.'

Aboriginals' land was invaded from the end of the 18th century onwards, with catastrophic consequences for them.

How do they live?

Before the invasion, Aboriginal people lived throughout Australia, although the highest population density was along the coast. Here, people seem to have moved seasonally between permanent settlements near the sea and others at the headwaters of the coast rivers.

Evidence suggests that these communities managed their environment carefully to ensure a steady supply of food, bringing wild yams into gardens which they irrigated, for example, or building artificial dykes to extend the range of eels.

Those Aboriginal tribes who lived inland in the bush and the desert lived by hunting and gathering, burning the undergrowth to encourage the growth of plants favoured by the game they hunted. They were experts in seeking out water.

Today more than half of all Aboriginals live in towns, often on the outskirts in terrible conditions. Many others work as labourers on cattle ranches that have taken over their land.

Many, particularly in the northern half of the continent, have managed to cling on to their land and still hunt and gather 'bush tucker'.

What problems do they face?

Ever since the British first invaded, Aboriginal peoples have had their land stolen from them or destroyed. Until 1992, when it was finally overturned, the legal principle governing British and then Australian law regarding Aboriginal land was that of 'terra nullius' - that the land was empty before the British arrived, belonged to no-one, and could legitimately be taken over.

Most has still to be returned today, and the loss of their land has had a devastating social and physical impact on Aboriginal peoples.

The initial invasions also sparked huge waves of disease that killed thousands - many others were massacred. In just over one hundred years from the first invasion of their land, their numbers were reduced from up to an estimated one million to only 60,000.

During much of the 20th century, outright killings were replaced with a policy of removing Aboriginal children from their parents and giving them to white families or placing them in mission schools, to eradicate traces of Aboriginal culture and language.

Today they still face racist attitudes, and there are periodic incidents of violence towards them, particularly affecting those in police custody. Their generally poor living conditions mean that Aboriginal people have a far higher infant mortality rate and suicide rate and a lower life expectancy than the rest of the population, and they make up a disproportionate section of the prison population.

A landmark High Court judgment in 1992, known as the Mabo case after the lead plaintiff, threw out the racist 'terra nullius' principle on which Australian legal attitudes to Aboriginal land rights had been based. The decision recognized for the first time the existence of Aboriginal 'native title' over large parts of rural Australia. Many Aboriginal groups, such as the Martu of western Australia, have used the ruling to have their ownership of their ancestral lands recognized in law. Others, however, have failed to overcome the many legal hurdles placed in their way by the government's land rights legislation.

In 2007, publication of a report into sexual abuse and violence amongst Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory caused huge controversy. The government's response to the report was to launch the 'Northern Territory National Emergency Response' later that year. Many of the measures in this programme, such as the removal of Aboriginal communities' right to control access onto their lands, and the compulsory acquisition of some communities, stirred a great deal of resentment amongst Aboriginal people.

How has Survival helped?

Survival provided funds for some "homeland" projects, whereby Aboriginal people return from towns to their ancestral land.

Survival also supported the campaign of the Mirarr people in the Northern Territory against a proposed uranium mine on their sacred land. This campaign succeeded in persuading the mining company not to go ahead.

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The Aboriginal peoples, together with the peoples of the Torres Strait Islands who are ethnically and culturally distinct, are the original inhabitants of Australia. Archaeologists believe they have been there for around 40-60,000 years.

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Capturing Aboriginal Australia and its diversity on camera - BBC News

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Capturing Aboriginal Australia and its diversity on camera - BBC News

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Capturing Aboriginal Australia and its diversity on camera - BBC News

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Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

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Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

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It's best to find out what individuals prefer to be called, rather than making assumptions.

Today, the term 'Indigenous Australian' is used to encompass both Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people. However many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do not like to be referred to as 'Indigenous' as the term is considered too generic.

When used in Australia, the words Indigenous, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander are capitalised, as would be the name of any other group of people. It is best not to resort to the acronyms of ATSI or TSI.

Aboriginal people have referred to themselves for example as Koori, Murri or Nunga, which is relevant to the greater region they are connected to. Aboriginal identities can also directly link to their language groups and traditional country (a specific geographic location), for example, Gunditjamara people are the traditional custodians of western Victoria, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation are from Sydney, and the Yawuru people are the traditional custodians of Broome in Western Australia.

Another way Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people might describe themselves, which again relates to their country (including the waters), is 'saltwater people' for those who live on the coast, or 'freshwater', 'rainforest', 'desert' or 'spinifex' for people who live in that ecological environment.

Torres Strait Islander people prefer to use the name of their home Island to identify themselves to outsiders, for example a Saibai man or woman is from Saibai, or a Meriam person is from Mer. Many Torres Strait Islanders born and raised in mainland Australia still identify according to their Island homes.

In Australia, there are a range of specific grants, scholarships, university courses or government programs directly intended for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. To access these programs or services, which have generally been established to address the historical social, health and educational disadvantage of Indigenous people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples may be asked to confirm their Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage. This help ensures that the specific programs or grants or scholarships intended for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reach and are used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

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Indigenous Australians: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

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Australia's Indigenous peoples are two distinct cultural groups, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

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Source: Travel Outback Australia

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Travel Outback Australia : Indigenous Aboriginal Culture

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A real history of Aboriginal Australians, the first agriculturalists  | Bruce Pascoe | TEDxSydney

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'Waiting for too long': Why Miriam Charlie photographs overcrowded Indigenous housing

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'Waiting for too long': Why Miriam Charlie photographs overcrowded Indigenous housing

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he Northern Territory government has spent $2.65bn over the past 15 years to improve the quality of housing in remote Indigenous communities, but overcrowding remains a problem and many houses need repairs.

Under the national partnership for remote housing Northern Territory policy, the government was supposed to improve housing conditions and reduce overcrowding in 73 remote communities and 17 town camps around Alice Springs. But the most recent data on overcrowding in remote communities managed by the national partnership reveals it has only been reduced by 3.2% in five years.

None of this is new to Miriam Charlie. Since 2015, the Yanyuwa Garrwa artist has been capturing the state of housing across all four town camps at Borroloola, with her Polaroid camera.

"All them houses, they're too small, overcrowded," she says. "So I went around and took photos of everybody's houses. What part wasn't fixed and what part was fixed."

Top: Miriam Charlie photographing her eldest daughter, Jade, and other family at Yanyuwa camp
Bottom: Miriamphotographing her grandmother, Dinah Norman, who waited more than 10 years for a new home at Yanyuwa camp

In February, an Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report found the national partnership had been only "partly effective" in improving housing conditions and showed "significant weaknesses".

After a six-year court battle with the NT government, in which the people of Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa) argued inadequate and inhumane housing was due to failures by public housing authorities, the NT court of appeal upheld a ruling in February that state-owned housing must be considered habitable.

And in 2019, Ltyentye Apurte residents won an estimated $350,000 after they sued the state government on the basis their homes were uninhabitable due to neglect.

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Borroloola, a town of about 900 people located in Gulf country in the NT, lies within Charlie's traditional country and is home to Yanyuwa, Mara, Garrwa and Gurdanji people. In 2020, when Charlie had her first solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) in Melbourne she called it My Country No Home, "because we had country, but we didn't have houses."

"I went to my grandmother's house and there was white ants there, on that ceiling," Charlie says. She says she asked her grandmother: "Has anybody come to fix?" Her grandmother replied: "No, nothing."

Charlie's grandmother, Dinah Norman, was represented in one of her photographic series in 2018, describing the major structural issues and repairs needed in her home at Yanyuwa camp. Norman waited about 10 years before she was given a new house, which was one of the first built since 2006.

In an essay published by Overland in 2020, Charlie said, "it's that waiting business. You've got to wait so long. They'll build it this year and you get it next year. Old people are getting older; they'll die soon. A lot of people are going to die waiting for houses. We have been waiting for too long."

Darwin-based researcher Liam Grealy, who collaborates with Charlie and recently co-authored an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report on sustainable housing in regional and remote Indigenous communities, says the lack of maintenance, and lack of clarity over who is responsible for it, "significantly affects the standard of housing and community wellbeing".

"Miriam Charlie's photography captures how houses disassemble, or the material outcomes of underfunded and reactive maintenance programs," he says.

Angus and Nancy Kidd, one of the families Charlie photographed at Garrwa 1 town camp, had not had repairs on their home since the mid-1980s, waiting about 40 years for one week's worth of work to be completed.

"The house hasn't been renovated since a very long time," Angus Kidd says. "There was a hole in the wall, the ceiling was coming down, water was leaking in during the rain, and in my room the water was dripping down from the wall.

"Looking at it now, we have a thick wall but there were holes all along here, so now it's really good. The shower had a concrete floor, but now they put a tiled floor in there. There was a hole in this wall here, there was a crack, it had a very thin layer, see, and they made it thick, and now I'm living like a prince."

Darilyn Anderson, one of Charlie's nieces, and her family, photographed by Charlie in front of their old home in 2016

The chief executive of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation (NACCHO), Pat Turner, said in an interview with the Australian in March the standard of housing in remote communities underpinned several targets in Closing the Gap and outlined that if the targets are not achieved, it would be because governments had not "invested the necessary resources in programs and services to support our people".

State and territory governments will be required to ensure all remote Indigenous housing meets minimum standards by 2031.

Darilyn Anderson, one of Charlie's nieces, used to live in a two-bedroom house with her partner and at least five of their foster children in Garrwa 1 camp. Now they live in a four-bedroom house replaced by the NT government under the program. "It was a two-bedroom house, not enough room they always jammed up and they had nowhere to put the table and chairs," Charlie says. "Now they've got room to sleep in."

A fraction of the houses Charlie began photographing in 2015 have now been replaced or had necessary repairs made. When Charlie went back to Borroloola for a visit she felt a big relief. "To look at it now just brings joy to my heart, it really makes life much easier for people," she says.

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'Waiting for too long': Why Miriam Charlie photographs overcrowded Indigenous housing

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he Northern Territory government has spent $2.65bn over the past 15 years to improve the quality of housing in remote Indigenous communities, but overcrowding remains a problem and many houses need repairs. Under the national partnership for remote housing Northern Territory policy, the government was supposed to improve housing conditions and reduce overcrowding in 73 remote communities and 17 town camps around Alice Springs.

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In the US it's called an epidemic. In Australia we don't even keep count

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In the US it's called an epidemic. In Australia we don't even keep count

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This is a crisis hidden in plain sight: the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women across Australia.

First Nations women are being murdered at up to 12 times the national average. In some regions, their deaths make up some of the highest homicide rates in the world.

We are about to show you a snapshot of what this tragedy looks like. A warning to First Nations readers: there will be names and faces shown of women who have died.

Four Corners can reveal at least 315 First Nations women have either gone missing or been murdered or killed in suspicious circumstances since 2000.

But this is an incomplete picture. We will likely never know the true scale of how many First Nations women have been lost over the decades.

This is because there is no agency in Australia keeping count, and there is no standard way of collecting this important data in each state and territory.

Canada calls it a genocide. The United States considers it an epidemic. But here in Australia, we're only just waking up to the scale of the crisis.

She fought to keep others safe

You may not know her name, but you should.

Ms R Rubuntja, a funny and fiery mum and grandmother, had begun using her own story of survival to raise the alarm in her hometown of Alice Springs.

She was speaking out about the severe levels of violence in Central Australia, where close to 70 Aboriginal women have been killed in the past two decades.

"It's gotta stop, it's not only for me, it's for everyone, stop the violence," Ms Rubuntja told a documentary filmmaker in 2017.

Her home was a safe space for women who had been assaulted.

In 2018, she went all the way to Canberra with a small collective of grandmothers known as the Tangentyere Women's Family Safety Group.

They staged an emotional sit-down inside Parliament House, trying to get federal politicians to do something.

"She was so excited and she came [back] and said, 'Oh I went to Canberra. I walked around Parliament House'. She was trying her best to change things," her daughter Sarah Rubuntja says.

Ms Rubuntja's friend Chay Brown says it showed her strength of character.

"She was standing up strong against family violence ... often at great personal cost, because she'd lived through and survived domestic and family violence before. But she did it anyway," Dr Brown says.

But while Ms Rubuntja was working tirelessly to keep other women safe, few people close to her knew that her new partner, a man named Malcolm Abbott, had begun abusing her.

On a hot afternoon in January 2021, Ms Rubuntja and Abbott went out to meet relatives at a club.

Over several hours, he terrorised and shouted at her, demanding she hand over money she'd won at the pokies.

When she told a security guard she felt frightened, Abbott was kicked out. But not long after, the club also ordered her to leave.

Her abusive partner was waiting outside and the pair drove around town. Ms Rubuntja told her daughter over the phone that Abbott was "half killing her".
The following contains confronting descriptions of violence.
Just before 9pm, when Abbott pulled into a service station, Ms Rubuntja managed to get away and walk across the street towards the Alice Springs Hospital.

"I believe she went to the hospital because she believed it would be safe," Dr Brown says.

Ms Rubuntja sat down on the footpath as Abbott began to circle the car park, calling out to her. He then deliberately lined her up and drove directly into her, accelerating and reversing over her multiple times, dragging her around the car park.

Ms Rubuntja died of catastrophic injuries.

Four Corners can reveal that although Northern Territory Police had been called 18 times over the course of their two-year relationship, Abbott had never been charged with offences related to her allegations that he had been abusive.

In April, he was sentenced to 25 years for the murder of Ms Rubuntja.

In court that day, her family learned Abbott had previously killed another woman.

In 1996, during a violent stabbing spree, Abbott killed a woman and injured two others, including his then-partner.

He had spent half his adult life in prison for violent crimes.

"Looking at the history, which we only knew afterwards, we all could have seen this coming. It was the slowest-moving catastrophe ever. There were so many opportunities to intervene early," Dr Brown says.

She is adamant her beloved friend's death should have been a wake-up call for Australia.

"There are other advocates in our nation that we can all think of and that we admire and we respect ... had that happened to one of them, would the nation have responded with silence?"

"The rest of the nation just goes on as though nothing has happened. There are no responses. There's no speeches in parliament ... there are no social media campaigns. There's just silence."

She pleaded for help

There is an alarming pattern of what's known as "under-policing" of Indigenous women who end up dead, says Noongar academic Hannah McGlade, a member of the United Nations permanent forum on Indigenous issues.

Research published by the British Journal of Criminology this month shows that almost 75 per cent of First Nations women who were killed "experienced police reluctance and inaction following domestic violence".

Roberta Curry, a 28-year-old mother of three, grew up in remote communities in the Northern Territory but dreamed of travelling the world as a model.

"Every time she walked through the door, she would just put that smile on her face," her sister Julieanne Raymond says.

Ms Curry thought she was finally free of her violent ex-partner, Lorenzo Deegan.

He'd just spent two years behind bars for bashing her neighbour during a jealous rage which left the man with a traumatic brain injury.

Early in their relationship, Deegan had been fined and convicted for beating Ms Curry until she lay unconscious.

Just 12 days after getting out of jail in March 2019, Deegan started hunting her down while he was supposed to be completing rehab and domestic violence education.

"Roberta if you don't come Katherine, I'm coming up there and I'm gona smash the f*** outta you, you motherf***er, keep hanging around Darwin you dog, you wait Roberta I'll be there," he texted her.

A non-contact order was imposed to keep Ms Curry's neighbour safe, but there was nothing for her.

Family and domestic violence support services:

"Who was helping Roberta, who was at such high risk? Nobody. It was very clear that she needed a safety plan put into place for her," Dr McGlade says.

In June 2019, Deegan lied to his parole officer and travelled to Darwin under the pretence of seeing his children. He was really there to kidnap Ms Curry.

Deegan forced her to go to Katherine with him but she managed to briefly escape, telling her sister Ms Raymond: "I want to leave this man. I don't want to be with him, he's a violent man".

While Ms Curry persistently tried to get away from Deegan in Katherine, he tracked her down.

On one occasion, he screamed at her and then beat her savagely in broad daylight outside a Centrelink office. It wasn't reported to police.

Another time, he found Ms Curry staying at a friend's house and threatened her while he was drinking - in clear breach of his parole conditions.

She called police for help.

We have obtained recordings of what happened next from the Northern Territory Coroner's Court.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Police respond to Ms Curry's triple-0 call.

Ms Curry told officers Deegan had injured her.

An internal police report later tendered to an inquest found neither officer followed protocols, including looking up his record on their database.

Constables Maverick Carver and Andrew Schwede wrote in their formal responses that they believed Ms Curry could be "unreliable in her account of the version of events" and "had made false allegations" previously.

On the night, they searched for Deegan for 10 minutes before being called to another job.

Ms Curry made a second triple-0 call, but police didn't turn up, concluding "no new incident had occurred".

On an urgent third call to triple-0, she told the operator:

"He keeps coming around and threatening ... he's intoxicated and he's threatening us ... Lorenzo Deegan and they're all fighting out there ... seriously! Come on!"

Police returned to the house but Deegan wasn't there. Constable Carver shouted at a man who answered the door, that Ms Curry should "stop calling".

"If you're getting angry at us coming, stop calling. Easy as that.

"I'm gonna go now, OK. Stop calling. You obviously don't want us here."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Police officer says Ms Curry should "stop calling"

Ms Curry never called police for help again.

"She was warned off. The police made it clear to her she wasn't important, and she needed to just go away," Dr McGlade says.

Five days later, Deegan found Ms Curry again and took her back to his home, where he punched her in the chest, breaking one of her ribs.

With a lacerated spleen, she died of internal bleeding, lying in agonising pain on the floor.

"We do need to look closely at her death and the deaths of each and every Aboriginal woman through a proper review process and start to reveal the true circumstances of their deaths and their killings," Dr McGlade says.

Ms Raymond can never erase the memory of the moment she found out her sister was dead.

"I just felt like I couldn't even breathe. I felt like my heart [was] going to stop," she says.

Deegan will be eligible for parole in under three years' time - his initial murder charge was downgraded to manslaughter when he agreed to plead guilty.

Four Corners has obtained an internal Northern Territory Police report submitted to the NT Coroner which reviews the officers' conduct on the night Ms Curry called triple-0. Its conclusions are scathing.

The report says both officers were informed their conduct towards her was "negligent, inefficient and careless" and "subsequent police actions may have led to sufficient evidence to prosecute Mr Deegan and may have prevented Ms Curry's death from occurring".

In their responses, Constable Schwede and Constable Carver admitted failings and regret.

Both officers said they were facing stressors in their lives at the time and were formally cautioned in writing. They are still serving officers in the Northern Territory Police Force.

Every day, Ms Raymond reflects on what might have been done differently for her sister.

"I'm still grieving right now ... she should be here with us."

Northern Territory Police did not answer detailed questions from Four Corners on the cases of Ms Curry and Ms Rubuntja.

Disappearance and deaths 'not taken seriously'

For generations, scores of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families have been mourning missing mothers, sisters and daughters.

The absences of these First Nations women "are still felt all across this country ... never forgotten," says Darumbal and South Sea Islander writer and academic Amy McQuire.

"You talk to a lot of mob all around the country, they will have anecdotal accounts of cases where Aboriginal women have been killed or have been deemed missing, and there's been no justice."

Tarita Fisher's sister-in-law Constance Watcho went missing in 2017.

Ms Fisher says when an Aboriginal woman disappears, there is a deep sense of hopelessness.

"It's hard to put it in words, but you have this emptiness. It's not a story that any child should experience."

Ms Watcho's body was found almost 10 months later.

Her dismembered remains were discarded in a sports bag which lay undiscovered metres from a popular riverside park in the heart of Brisbane.

No one has been charged over the death. A coronial inquest is currently underway.

Ms Watcho's family were shocked to learn police had classified her disappearance as "medium risk" despite nobody having seen her in months.

"Did they come and ask us about what kind of risk that she's in? No. And we would've told them it's serious business," Ms Fisher says.

Ms Watcho's body was discovered just 200 metres from where she was last seen alive.

Ms Fisher says the family believes the Queensland Police investigation into Ms Watcho's death was inadequate.

"You have trust in someone doing their job. But I don't know, you lose faith and you lose hope, you lose trust."

Ms Watcho's daughter Rose says her family needs justice.

"I do see a lot of things on the news, white women going missing, getting found, proper investigation into what happened and it's not like that with my mother. I think that is a big factor into this."

Queensland Police told the inquest that it had invested significant resources towards the case, when she was reported missing and during the subsequent suspicious death investigation.

In Queensland, this year alone, the state's coroner has investigated the cases of three Aboriginal women who were reported missing by their families - Monique Clubb, Ms Bernard and Ms Watcho.

In each of those women's cases, their relatives have said they feel police investigations had let them down.

"There are many cases similar to these sister girls," Ms Fisher says.

Four Corners has established 49 cases of Indigenous women who have been reported missing since 1941. In 30 of those cases, a coronial inquest has determined that the women are now dead.

But this is likely to be another vast underestimation because Australia has no reliable count of how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have disappeared over the decades.

"The state has a duty to prevent violence to women. Now, actually knowing the extent [and] recording it is a part of that duty," Dr McGlade says.

Tasmania Police have acknowledged to Four Corners that their figures are unlikely to be an accurate reflection because they may not have determined the Aboriginality of the long-term unsolved missing persons cases.

In New South Wales, the Indigenous status of a person is not recorded unless they can self-identify, which is impossible for a woman who is dead.

Prior to January 2022 it was not mandatory for New South Wales police officers to ask for the Indigenous status of victims.

In Victoria, the state knows of 454 listed missing persons which have no recorded cultural identity - it's unclear how many of those are Aboriginal women.

South Australia is the only state to categorise someone as "missing but likely murdered".

Ms McQuire says Indigenous families have to go to greater lengths to be believed when a woman is reported missing.

"There are all of these colonial logics at play that 'she might have just gone walkabout, she might have run off with another man, she might have overdosed'," she says.

"All of these things that deny the existence of a potential perpetrator."

Dr McGlade says the growing number of murdered and missing black women has been "suppressed".

"The sooner that we realise the critical place that Aboriginal women hold in Australia, I think we will be able to come to a better place in our country. This is causing so much pain."

Credits

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In the US it's called an epidemic. In Australia we don't even keep count

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This is a crisis hidden in plain sight: the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women across Australia. First Nations women are being murdered at up to 12 times the national average. In some regions, their deaths make up some of the highest homicide rates in the world.

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Ex-wharfie turned First Nations rights advocate: Thomas Mayor takes Voice campaign to Australian Geographic

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Ex-wharfie turned First Nations rights advocate: Thomas Mayor takes Voice campaign to Australian Geographic

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Growing up immersed in a bitter battle for workers' rights, Thomas Mayor's life was one inevitably drawn to standing up for First Nations people.

The Torres Strait Islander man born in Garramilla (Darwin) worked as a wharfie from a young age and became a passionate advocate for workers' rights.

Mr Mayor started work on the docks as a 17-year-old and was a wharfie during the 1998 Patrick Stevedores dispute.

"I witnessed the very purposeful tactics the Prime Minister, John Howard, used to soften up the Australian public before doing that reprehensible act, an attempt to destroy the workers' voice," he said.

"His aim was to go after the whole union movement."

At a young age Mr Mayor learned about the history of the workers' struggle and the philosophy and skills of organised labour.

As an official with the Maritime Union he developed negotiating and organising skills which he soon applied to fighting for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, ultimately becoming a signatory to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Following the Uluru Convention, Mr Mayor carried the sacred canvas of the Uluru Statement and embarked on an eighteen-month journey around the country to build support for a constitutionally enshrined First Nations voice, and a Makarrata Commission for truth-telling and treaties.

"I transferred that advocacy for my own people and it helped me to see this great deficiency in our advocacy was that we have been purposely divided and lacking a structure from which to practice unity," he said.

"My inspiration in supporting the Ulu r u Statement and referendum, is the knowledge of the history of First Nations struggle and the history of representative bodies that have been silenced, and statements and petitions that have been ignored.

"If you understand structure and unity, you see the importance for us to seek a constitutionally enshrined voice."

Mr Mayor, author of Finding the Heart of the Nation - the Journey of the Uluru Statement towards Voice, Treaty and Truth and lifelong advocate for justice, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Australian Geographic Society's 2022 Awards.

"Australian Geographic is a very widely read magazine and an important platform," he said.

"It was a logical place to inform people about Uluru Statement and the opportunity that the referendum can provide the nation."

The Australian Geographic Society Awards, to be held in Eora (Sydney) on October 28, are back after a two-year hiatus and recognise conservation and adventure achievements.

Mr Mayor is also the author of Dear Son and the children's books Finding Our Heart and Freedom Day.

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Ex-wharfie turned First Nations rights advocate: Thomas Mayor takes Voice campaign to Australian Geographic - National Indigenous Times

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Thomas Mayor, author of Finding the Heart of the Nation - the Journey of the Uluru Statement towards Voice, Treaty and Truth and lifelong advocate for justice, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Australian Geographic Society's 2022 Awards.

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The Aboriginal Australians: The First Inhabitants Of Australia Were Black People

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The Aboriginal Australians: The First Inhabitants Of Australia Were Black People

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Bilal Morris is the senior editor at NewsOne. He is based in Atlanta and covers Black folklore, politics, and race. He also specializes in SEO and evergreen content. Bilal was hired by Interactive One in 2021, but has worked for the company for over 10 years. He started at Radio One in 2010 as an Online Editor in Richmond, VA. Before his time at NewsOne, Bilal was the Regional Online Editor In Atlanta, GA. He has also worked at iHeartRadio in New York City. He is a professional photographer, dog lover, gamer, and has quite the green thumb. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter. @blogzworth

When you think of the people from Australia, you rarely think of Black people, and for good reason; most of the continent is white. But what if I told you that it didn't start that way and that the first people to roam the lands of Australia were Black migrants who arrived on the continent almost 80,000 years ago. These people are known as the Australian Aboriginal peoples.

The Aboriginal Australians are indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland, as well as many of its small islands. Scientists believe they range from Asian to African descent.

Data from the 2016 Australian Census revealed that Indigenous Australians comprised just 3.3% of Australia's population. Although small in numbers, their story is very important in understanding the history of global blackness.

Most people believe slavery is the reason Black faces have spread all across the globe, but that is just not true.

Some scientists believe the ancestors of the Aboriginals migrated from parts of South East Asia and Africa during the Pleistocene, also known as the Ice Age. Due to lower sea levels, the Aboriginals were able to live on large sections of the Australian continental shelf.

For years most scientists believed the Australian Aboriginal people largely descended from Southeast Asian countries. But in 2011, Morten Rasmussen extracted genetic DNA from an early-20th-century lock of an Aboriginal person's hair and found although it was likely they migrated from South Asia, the modern Aboriginal Australians were the direct descendants of the eastern wave, who left Africa more than 75,000 years ago. These travelers made their way through South Asia before settling in Australia.

The findings also suggested that the Aboriginals have occupied the same territory longer than any other human population outside of Africa.

Life for the Aboriginals centers around hunting and gathering. But some scholars also believe the evidence proves they also built lives around agriculture and farming, as well as aquaculture, raising and harvesting fish.

During the early periods of Australia, there were more than 250 different Aboriginal languages with more than 800 varying dialects. Now, only about 13 traditional languages remain.

Similar to African traditions, Aboriginal culture is shared through song, dance, and art. Although Aboriginal culture may vary depending on the region, most of their beliefs are centered around Dreamtime, also referred to as The Dreaming. The Dreaming is a collective telling of the story of creation. In most regions, it refers to a spirit that created the earth and then told humans to treat the animals and the earth in a way that is respectful to the land.

Today, there are an estimated 300,000 to more than 1,000,000 Aboriginals that still occupy parts of Australia. Like Black people all over the world, life for modern Aboriginals is not easy. Due to historical trauma, Aboriginal Australians are disproportionately affected by socioeconomic disadvantages such as higher suicide rates, and inadequate access to health care and education.

Although life presents challenges for the Australian Aboriginals, they are a true testament to the resilience of Black people around the globe.
SEE ALSO: The History Of Black People With Blue Eyes Ireland's Earliest Inhabitants Were Black People With Blue Eyes

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Written By Bilal G. Morris , Senior Editor Posted May 24, 2022

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The Aboriginal Australians: The First Inhabitants Of Australia Were Black People

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Bilal Morris is the senior editor at NewsOne. He is based in Atlanta and covers Black folklore, politics, and race. He also specializes in SEO and evergreen content. Bilal was hired by Interactive One in 2021, but has worked for the company for over 10 years.

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How 'closing the gap' may close doors for First Nations women in new plan to end violence

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How 'closing the gap' may close doors for First Nations women in new plan to end violence

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The ten-year National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children was launched this week.

It is without doubt an important policy for shaping the actions and priorities of all governments to work across four main areas of prevention, early intervention, response, as well as recovery and healing.

The National Plan states there are key government strategies and policies that need to be engaged to progress this work to address family violence. One significant strategy mentioned is Closing the Gap. The National Plan states,

Addressing the disproportionate rates of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is an urgent national priority, which is why the commitments in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap are embedded across the National Plan.

Closing the Gap already has an existing target to address family violence. However, according to the Productivity Commission, there has been no new data on this target's progress since the baseline year, 2018-19.

The current proposed alignment between Closing the Gap and the National Plan therefore has the potential to be problematic - partly due to Closing the Gap's current lack of reportable progress in addressing family violence, but also because linking the two plans could potentially limit access to family violence services for First Nations women seeking help.

Read more: Could the Senate inquiry into murdered Indigenous women and children prevent future deaths?

What does the National Plan say about First Nations people?

Little is known so far about the specific Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan contained within the National Plan. Action plans detailing how the National Plan's vision will be enacted are forthcoming, likely in the next year.

The details released so far indicate the plan will respond to the disproportionate rate of violence experienced by members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and the specific drivers that contribute to this. These include rising rates of child protection involvement linked to family violence, and women increasingly being misidentified as perpetrators of violence when they seek assistance.

Navigating these multiple forms of oppression and discrimination add to and worsen Indigenous women's experiences of violence. Indeed, this speaks clearly to the need for a standalone action plan, and Aboriginal women have been calling for this for some time.

The National Plan acknowledges the significant leadership First Nations people have provided in the development of past plans to address violence in our communities, and the roles we will play in the implementation of the National Plan in our communities.

This is an important acknowledgement, given it has not always been recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been at the forefront of responding to family violence in communities. Despite the heartache that comes with the rising numbers of our women and children dying, Nannas, Aunts, mums, sisters, and also menfolk are providing care and support to those in need when services are unable to do so.

In its intention to align with Closing the Gap, the National Plan aims to directly and indirectly support six Closing the Gap targets in the areas of justice and out-of-home care systems and suicide reduction.

This strategy for addressing violence against Indigenous women and children with two national plans coming together to meet the one overall objective could lead to more sustainable long-term services and programs in this area. This has been requested of government for a long time. As a Gunbalunya resident stated in the Little Children are Sacred report , "We have a 20-year history of six-month programs." However, there are also limitations to be considered.

It's a good idea, but there needs to be caution

We have misgivings about aligning the Closing the Gap strategy with a national plan to address violence against First Nations women and children because Closing the Gap has different objectives to the national plan.

The Closing the Gap objective is to "enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and governments to work together to overcome the inequality experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and achieve life outcomes equal to all Australians." However, the latest progress report shows a lot of these objectives aren't on track to be achieved by their deadlines, and the data on the progress of addressing family violence isn't even listed. There is a danger the target to end family violence is being, and will continue to be, lost in this list.

Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney claims the National Plan will be "committed to putting the voices and aspirations of First Nations women and girls at the centre of plans to improve family safety". This requires a more specific approach.

Currently, the family violence services sector is competing for funding. Although Closing the Gap could get select organisations extra funding, it could mean First Nations women get no choice but to be funnelled into Indigenous-only services. This lack of agency could risk women feeling discouraged from disclosing or escaping violence because these services might not work for them. This is based on a range of factors including access to services, safety and privacy in the aftermath of violence.

The Monash Stakeholder Report speaks to this,

For the National Plan to be successful [...] it needs to be something that upholds and preserves the dignity of women. And we do that by centring her as the expert in her life and stepping away, stepping out of the way and allowing her to have choice and agency, that is essential.

This is why we must ensure mainstream services are accessible and culturally safe for First Nations women and children.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council on family, domestic and sexual violence is currently charged with the responsibility of drafting the First Nations Action Plan. They have been provided with advice from a recent public statement from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar AO and delegates at a recent policy forum.

The advice reiterated the importance of Indigenous self-determination. This includes guaranteeing Indigenous women lead in the development and delivery of a standalone plan. Also, the plan should include the voices of First Nations women, gender diverse people, and our families in all their diversity.

Associate Professor, human rights lawyer and Kurin Minang Noongar woman Hannah McGlade has been leading the charge for a standalone strategy for First Nations women for years. She has advocated strongly for this noting,

We will not stay silent. Our lives matter, Black women's lives matter. Stop this genocide of Indigenous women in our lands and country

The National Plan states it will promote partnerships to ensure culturally safe mainstream services. To achieve this will require Indigenous-led, trauma-informed approaches to working with Aboriginal families. If we're wanting to end the violence against First Nations women, our voices need to be included in how we do this.
BJ Newton, Senior Research Fellow in Social Policy and Social Work, UNSW Sydney and Kyllie Cripps, Scientia Associate Professor, School of Law, Society & Criminology, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney, UNSW Sydney This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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How 'closing the gap' may close doors for First Nations women in new plan to end violence

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The ten-year National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children was launched this week. It is without doubt an important policy for shaping the actions and priorities of all governments to work across four main areas of prevention, early intervention, response, as well as recovery and healing.

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Australia’s indigenous people say they’re still suffering legacy of British colonialism - BBC News

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Australia’s indigenous people say they’re still suffering legacy of British colonialism - BBC News

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Australia’s indigenous people say they’re still suffering legacy of British colonialism - BBC News

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'We make the best art on this continent': Meet the Indigenous artists winning big in the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships

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'We make the best art on this continent': Meet the Indigenous artists winning big in the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships

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The Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships are not as well known as other arts grants or awards, which is peculiar, because they are incredibly lucrative.

Artists and practitioners who are awarded the fellowship are given $160,000 to spend over two years, with the only caveat being that they spend most of those two years practising in Australia.

The fellows are selected on two criteria, outstanding talent and exceptional courage, and the money is not tied to any specific outcome.

Effectively, they're given free cash.

This year marks a decade of the fellowships, which have seen 100 artists receive $16 million between them - no small feat of philanthropy.

It's an unusual model, giving out money to artists in the hope they'll continue to produce great work, but director of the Sidney Myer Fund, Andrew Myer, says it's successful.

"There are so many programs that are dedicated to justifications," he tells ABC RN's AWAYE!.

"When we created these awards, we determined that it would be better to allow artists to make choices around their own art and life, as grown-ups.

"It sounds cliché, but when you're onto a good thing, you stick to it."

Embracing diverse talent

And onto a good thing, they are.

Past recipients include Merindah Donnelly, SJ Norman, Jonathan Jones, Alexis Wright, Ellen Van Neervan, Eric Avery and Vernon Ah Kee, to name a few.

Not only are they respected artists, but they are all Indigenous.

This year, five of the 10 recipients are First Nations: Alethea Beetson, Fred Leone, Carly Sheppard, Ghenoa Gela and Vincent Namatjira.

Myer says that while there is certainly significant interest around the fellowships within the Indigenous arts community, the frequency of Indigenous winners speaks to a broader cultural shift.

"Indigenous practitioners [are] utterly dedicated to their work, and [are] often not recognised for their outstanding output," he says.

"[Recently] there has been more and more recognition of the absolutely extraordinary calibre of Indigenous artists in all art forms."

Beetson, who was awarded the fellowship for cultural leadership, has her own take on why so many First Nations people take away these awards.

"[As an Indigenous creative] you do get to tap into a richness and a vibrancy, something that is much more timeless than perhaps some of the other arts methodologies and frameworks you could use," she says.

"We're so deadly ... Mob are excellent - we make the best art on this continent."

Making 'bigger and better' work

Working out of the remote Aboriginal community of Indulkana in South Australia, Vincent Namatjira believes remote living shouldn't be a barrier to success.

He says the fellowship money will allow him to keep working in remote Australia, and will offer an opportunity to be "explosive, bigger and better".

Over the next two years, he wants to be more experimental with his art, do more residencies and have more overseas exhibitions.

He plans to spend his time between the remote communities of Indulkana and Hermannsburg while he works.

Brisbane-based Beetson says the money will allow her to "think more critically about the work that I'll accept into the future".

She'll also be investing her money into BlakSocial, an arts management business she created.

In time, she wants it to become "self-sustaining for community, and potentially even grow to a point where it invests back in the ethical models that I know lots of mob are developing".

For dancer and choreographer Carly Sheppard, the fellowship money offers something simple: security.

She says it will change the lives of her and her son, allowing her to start projects she had to "put on the shelf in exchange for the roof over our heads".

"I'm excited," she says.

"I feel like I'm about to be shot out of a cannon."

'A blink of liberation'

For Butchulla songman Fred Leone, his winnings will be split into three music projects, two sung completely in Butchulla language, and the third a contemporary soul album that focuses on Black deaths in custody.

He says the money has given him "the ability to concentrate on the more important things, and to have more time to do that".

Ghenoa Gela, who was awarded for storytelling, dance and theatre, will spend next year touring her show, My Urrwai, internationally.

"It means that as a blackfella and specifically a Black woman who's constantly navigating various difficult, sometimes horrendous spaces ... I will actually experience a blink of liberation," she says.

"And I will proudly take this blink of a moment and celebrate the heck out of it."

For some, the fellowship money will help them recover from the effects of COVID-19 on the art community.

Namatjira says his art was integral to his wellbeing during the pandemic.

"It was difficult for me as an artist, but when I was actually painting ... it was like the pandemic never existed," the Archibald-winning artist says.

"That's what kept me going, I was just painting, painting, painting."

"You can feel it out there, you can see it in the major spaces, the negative impact this pandemic has had," Beetson says.

Her winnings will offer her space and time to create.

"It feels like there's a breath you can take, that you haven't been able to take in a really long time."

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Why this art fellowship gives out cash, not grants

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The Sidney Myer Creative Fellowships are not as well known as other arts grants or awards, which is peculiar, because they are incredibly lucrative. Artists and practitioners who are awarded the fellowship are given $160,000 to spend over two years, with the only caveat being that they spend most of those two years practising in Australia.

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For Australia's aboriginals, indigenous language is health

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For Australia's aboriginals, indigenous language is health

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For Australia's aboriginals, indigenous language is health

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For Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, their indigenous languages can be a matter of life and death. Preserving these ancient cultures isn't just right - it's smart, too.

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Chelsea Watego and her team called it the bunker - a cramped workspace directly opposite the toilets at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Up to eight members of staff would squeeze into two rooms, rat traps at their feet. A long bench running along the length of the wall provided desk space, and the printer was often jammed. Poorly insulated, the rooms that the university had assigned to them in 2018 were cold in winter and hot in summer.

Watego, an Indigenous-health researcher and Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman, had just won a prestigious grant for early-career researchers from one of the country's major research-funding agencies, the Australian Research Council (ARC), and she would soon become an associate professor. With the funds, worth some Aus$400,000 (around US$300,000 at the time), she planned to study the role of race in Indigenous public health.

Then, in 2020, Watego won an even larger ARC grant, worth nearly Aus$1.8 million, to establish a new field - Indigenist health humanities. She and her team moved to an old building that leaked, into an office up three flights of stairs. Her space was still nowhere near the school or the faculty to which she belonged. When a woman of colour in a neighbouring office revealed that she had previously filed a discrimination case against the university, it clarified Watego's views on the accommodation. The university, she says, was sending her a message: "There's no space for us in these institutions."

A legal battle

Watego says that she detailed the poor working conditions in a 2019 race- and sex-discrimination complaint against the University of Queensland, which centred on her recruitment to a leadership position. The university told Nature that it would not comment on individual staff matters. It outlined its initiatives to increase diversity, but acknowledged that it needed to do more to foster "opportunities for and research by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a supportive environment". As of 2021, just under 1.2% of academic staff members at Australian universities have an Indigenous background - that's less than half the proportion of Indigenous people in the wider, working-age population.

Last year, Watego says she dropped the case against the University of Queensland ahead of it going to court. She says that was mostly because of a lack - in her opinion - of legal support from her union. The National Tertiary Education Union did not respond to specific questions about the case, but, in a public statement last year, it said that it disagreed with Watego's characterization and that it had given her "considered and professional advice" on her claim. Watego says she eventually quit the University of Queensland and joined Queensland University of Technology (QUT), also in Brisbane, where she feels included.

Watego's scholarship on Indigenous health gives language to the "insidious ways in which racism has an impact on our lives", says Lisa Whop, an epidemiologist and Torres Strait Islander at the Australian National University in Canberra, who is a collaborator on the 2020 ARC grant, and calls Watego a friend and sister. "She is the thought leader of our generation."

"Chelsea has, both intellectually and personally through her politics, been an exemplar of the anti-racist researcher," says David Singh, a long-time collaborator who studies race and racism in public health, also at QUT.

A physical toll

But by tackling racism head on, Watego says her work seems to pose a threat to the institutions that house it. And, she says, her research must address race as an intellectual project. "I have a responsibility to my own people," Watego says. Singh says that the backlash faced by researchers who "take the fight to their oppressors" can be fierce, exerting a serious toll on their physical and mental health, and can even lead to burnout.

Watego has faced strong resistance, and devising strategies around that is exhausting, she says. She is sometimes seen as a 'radical' researcher or a 'difficult' and 'antagonistic' person, and at the University of Queensland, she says she was excluded from regular staff meetings and Indigenous events, such as sashing ceremonies for graduating students. She describes several instances in which she was invited to write articles for a journal, but after peer review and legal scrutiny, the works were not published, and she had to find new venues for them.

In her writing, Watego often describes how her experience of racism in academia wore her down. "I bought into the idea of academic excellence offering some protection from racial violence in the workplace. And I would come to learn that that was not the case," she says. "That's what broke me."

The stress manifested in many ways - in weight gain, high blood pressure and a tendency to grind her teeth at night, to the point that one fell out. It has also cost her her marriage, and the separation from her husband took a toll on her five children. But, she says, those experiencing racial violence outside academic institutions have it much harder. And now, at QUT, Watego finally feels her work is valued, especially by the Indigenous leadership. She and her colleagues have their own office space, with extra desks to invite new staff members and students. "I don't feel like I'm a problem to be managed," she says. Instead, "there's proactive planning around creating space for growth".
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03267-6

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'There's no space for us': an Indigenous-health researcher battles racism in Australia

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Chelsea Watego and her team called it the bunker - a cramped workspace directly opposite the toilets at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Up to eight members of staff would squeeze into two rooms, rat traps at their feet.

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The Australian War Memorial's intransigence on depicting the frontier wars speaks louder than words

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The Australian War Memorial's intransigence on depicting the frontier wars speaks louder than words

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he Australian War Memorial's recent vague commitment to a "much broader, a much deeper depiction" of colonial violence against Indigenous people risks being compromised by an absence of detail and sound historical context.

In late September Brendan Nelson, the chairman of the memorial's council, said the organisation had decided on a "much broader, a much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people, initially by British, then by pastoralists, then by police, and then by Aboriginal militia".

Note: Nelson did not say the memorial was committed to a broader and deeper depiction of the "frontier wars". That is because he and others associated with the memorial - while acknowledging frontier violence against Indigenous people by military regiments, police, pastoralists and militias - do not accept that the violence equated to "war".

Instructively the minister for veterans affairs, Matt Keogh, also chose his words carefully. He said: "I think it's important to recognise that the war memorial already has some recognition of frontier conflict, and I'm aware that as part of the expansion program there will be some greater reflection on that."

"I think that the recognition and reflection on frontier conflict is a responsibility for all of our cultural institutions, not just here at the war memorial."

No mention of frontier wars there either. The most interesting thing about Keogh's remarks was his assertion that the responsibility for reflecting frontier conflict ought to be spread among the war memorial and other cultural institutions. While this is true, it seems to ignore the fact that all of the other major Canberra-based national institutions have for decades already significantly and meaningfully reflected the frontier wars and conflict against Aboriginal people, which killed by conservative estimate at least 60,000 Indigenous men, women and children, upon which the white Australian federation was founded.

The plain truth is that the war memorial has long been the obstinate outlier in that space. It has pushed back under the directorships of Nelson (director for seven years before leaving and recently returning as council chair before outlining his departure at the end of 2022 to become president of weapons manufacturer Boeing International) and others, against widespread suggestions the institution ought meaningfully reflect, as part of its mandate to chronicle the Australian societal impact of warfare, frontier "conflict" and "war".

Nelson, current director Matt Anderson and the memorial more generally defend what they insist is a record of chronicling frontier violence by pointing to the institution's collection of 63 artworks that reference the issue. But the truth is that few such items are often displayed and that merely having such works in the collection does not translate to a meaningful depiction of frontier violence, war or conflict (call it what you will - sound research doesn't hide behind semantics!) in the context of Australia's martial history.

Nelson had also consistently insisted that the story of frontier conflict was the duty of the National Museum of Australia, not the memorial.

Precisely what the memorial intends to do in this space has been subject to quite some verbal contortion. As the Honest History organisation recently pointed out, Anderson, in his appearance on Rachel Perkins' remarkable documentary The Australian Wars, said: "what we [the memorial] seek to do is to tell the story of frontier violence in the way in which it affected the men and women who joined the Australian Imperial Forces and went away".

This makes little sense at all, in my view. It is as nonsensical as the memorial's attempts in the past to use the story of "Black diggers" (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have served Australia in the defence force) as some sort of fig-leaf for its intransigence on frontier wars.

I started writing about the memorial's intransigence on meaningfully representing frontier violence as part of Australia's military history well over a decade ago. I still recall the response I got nine years ago when I asked the memorial if, under then newly appointed director, Nelson, the memorial would consider depicting frontier conflict.

I got what might be called a "look over there"-type response.

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Indeed, back then a spokeswoman responded that the memorial "holds a rich collection of material related to Indigenous servicemen and women from the first world war".

"This includes embarkation information, prisoner of war records, Red Cross files, personal letters, service details, works of art, photographs and medals. We also have a significant project under way. 'The Guide To Indigenous Service Collections at the Memorial' will identify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who served during the first world war and display records and collection material related to their individual service."

It is little wonder that right now, while the war memorial figures out precisely how it might chronicle frontier conflict or war or violence, it finds itself simultaneously challenged from progressives and somewhat besieged by conservative defenders of what many consider to be a "sacred" institution that should, they believe, dedicate itself solely to the equally sacred (and white) story of Anzac.

Apparently echoing Anderson from The Australian Wars, the RSL Australia president, Greg Melick, recently said: "While some frontier conflicts have been featured in Australian War Memorial galleries and touring exhibitions, these have been mounted to provide some context to the subsequent service of First Nations personnel in the ADF. The Australian War Memorial honours the sacrifice of those who have served our nation in armed conflicts and peacekeeping operations, and it is right and appropriate that this is exclusively maintained."

So, any meaningful shift in the war memorial's policy on frontier conflict under the Labor government will need to amount to more than acquiring and hanging new artwork in a dedicated space. It must memorialise those 60,000-plus Indigenous people killed on the frontier in the same way as it does the 100,000-plus Australian personnel who died on overseas operations.

In the words of Henry Reynolds, the living Australian historian who has perhaps done more than any other to reveal the extent of Australian frontier violence: "We will certainly know that we are entering a new era when a tomb of an unknown warrior is placed next to the grave of the unknown soldier in the Memorial's inner sanctum."

Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

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The Australian War Memorial's intransigence on depicting the frontier wars speaks louder than words | Paul Daley

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he Australian War Memorial's recent vague commitment to a "much broader, a much deeper depiction" of colonial violence against Indigenous people risks being compromised by an absence of detail and sound historical context.

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Australia's nuclear waste is growing as battle over dump site heats up

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Australia's nuclear waste is growing as battle over dump site heats up

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Australia is accumulating more intermediate-level nuclear waste than previously thought, a new inventory has found, as the battle over a nuclear waste dump heats up.

After 40 years of different governments talking about a national nuclear waste facility, the Morrison government chose a site near the town of Kimba in South Australia. But the local Barngarla people are united against the plan, and have vowed to keep fighting to stop it happening.

The federal resources minister, Madeleine King, said the waste "cannot continue to build up" and she would continue to work with the Barngarla people to protect the cultural heritage of the site and deliver economic benefit to the traditional custodians.

Opponents of the site hope the new Labor government will be more likely to abandon the plan, but King said the government was committed to "progressing the facility".

Timeline
The development of a national nuclear waste facility in Australia

Atomic tests are conducted at Maralinga, Emu Fields and the Monte Bello Islands. In 1958, the Lucas Heights reactor opens.

Consultative committee established

The legal wrangling continues

Thank you for your feedback.

Most of Australia's nuclear waste is low-level waste (LLW), which tends to be items such as paper and gloves from laboratories that emit small amounts of radioactivity. The rest, intermediate-level waste (ILW), comes from the production of nuclear medicine - which is used, for example, in imaging, scanning and radiotherapy. It emits more radiation, breaks down more slowly and needs stricter shielding measures.

The Australian Radioactive Waste Agency (Arwa) recently updated its inventory of waste, to inform the development of the Kimba facility. It found there was 2,061 cubic metresof intermediate-level waste in 2021, compared to 1,771 cubic metres in 2018. And it projects 4,377 cubic metres in the next 50 years, compared to 3,734 cubic metres projected in 2018.

Arwa notes that more waste categories and holders were included in 2021, increasing the current levels of waste, and that estimates for future years were revised.

Currently waste is stored in more than 100 places around the nation, but most of it is held at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) facilities in Lucas Heights, Sydney.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and others argue that Ansto should be expanded to become the national storage site.

The chief executive of Arwa, Sam Usher, wrote in the report that Kimba would be used to dispose of Australia's LLW, and to hold ILW temporarily while a permanent solution was found.

"To ensure the facility has capacity to house Australia's current and future waste holdings, Arwa has undertaken extensive work to provide an updated national inventory of radioactive waste," he wrote.

The Kimba site was announced after an Australian Electoral Commission ballot found the majority of the people in the council area were in favour. However, that ballot did not include Aboriginal people who count the area as part of their traditional lands.

The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation chair, Jason Bilney, said his people were never consulted, and they are unanimously opposed.

"We were excluded," he said. "Unanimously, we do not want it on our country.

"We'll keep fighting this."

Bilney said his people were organising a rally in Port Augusta on Saturday to remind people what is happening. He said his concern was that the site would start accepting waste from outside Australia. He also said it made more sense for the Lucas Heights facility to expand into waste storage, because the proposed Kimba site was only meant to be temporary storage for ILW anyway, with a permanent site yet to be determined.

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"Why would you keep kicking the can down the road?" he said.

There was an ongoing court process with Barngarla people fighting for access to government documents, and King said she would not "pre-empt" the outcome of that. She said nuclear medicine, which most Australians benefit from at some point, produced radioactive waste.

"We need to be responsible for the waste we create, and this includes developing permanent disposal solutions," she said.

"I will continue to work with the Barngarla people and the local community - those for and against the proposal - as we move forward.

"While there is no native title on the site, the government is committed to progressing the facility in a way that protects cultural heritage and delivers economic benefit to the traditional custodians."

The site is freehold, but on the traditional lands of the Barngarla.

Dave Sweeney, the ACF's nuclear free campaigner, said there was room at Lucas Heights, and pointed to $60m awarded to Ansto in 2021 to expand its storage.

"That's approved," he said. "It's been through the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa)."

"Arpansa has said that it's consistent with international best practice and that means that material can be safely stored there for decades to come. So they've got the capacity, they're actually growing the capacity."

The South Australian Labor premier, Peter Malinauskas, supports the Barngarla people, and says he will try to influence the federal Labor government.

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Australia's nuclear waste is growing as battle over dump site heats up

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Australia is accumulating more intermediate-level nuclear waste than previously thought, a new inventory has found, as the battle over a nuclear waste dump heats up. After 40 years of different governments talking about a national nuclear waste facility, the Morrison government chose a site near the town of Kimba in South Australia.

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Police interactions with Aboriginal people are scarred by Australia's violent frontier history 

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Police interactions with Aboriginal people are scarred by Australia's violent frontier history 

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any Australians have little pause to deeply consider their interactions with police. But for many First Nations families, interactions with police and the judicial system are imbued with violent and often deadly experiences handed down through the generations and correspondingly documented by the white state.

A critical final finding of the Colonial Frontier Massacres Digital Map Project - that half the massacres of Aboriginal people on the Australian frontier were carried out by government forces, including police - reinforces how contemporary Indigenous deaths at the hands of state law enforcement agencies are part of a history of violence that began with European invasion in 1788.

Memories of terrible massacres perpetrated by police on the colonial and postcolonial frontier remain at the forefront of the sensibilities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Until recently the survivors of some of the most brutal attacks were still alive; the Central Land Council's remarkable Every Hill Got a Story project documents the disturbing first-hand oral accounts of some, including the 1928 Coniston massacre in the Northern Territory.

Is it any wonder, then, given the frontier experience and the ongoing shame of Aboriginal deaths in custody, that so many First Nations people harbour a deep suspicion and fear of police. Non-Indigenous Australians should dwell on this as they contemplate the latest findings of the massacre map. Denial - of the collective conscience, of national misdeeds of the past - is succoured by wilful ignorance. Knowledge and understanding are the fuel of ongoing reckoning. And reckoning is at the heart of the massacre map project.

Part of that reckoning is understanding that some police forces have at their genesis a purpose to "disperse" (a genteel white frontier euphemism, along with " tranquilise ") the troublesome "native" or "aborigine".

Kamilaroi elder Polly Cutmore. The Kamilaroi community in Moree began commemorating the anniversary of the Waterloo Creek Massacre almost a decade ago. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Take the New South Wales mounted police unit, established in 1825 by the then colonial governor, Thomas Brisbane, after the Bathurst wars with the Wiradjuri to further quell Aboriginal resistance. You will struggle to find mention of that in the proud NSW police writing of its history. But the state mounted police involvement in the notorious Waterloo Creek massacre of 1838 and numerous other orchestrated killings is firmly established history with a disturbing resonance for some Aboriginal people (and their defenders).

The Northern Territory police has its own shameful history of acute violence against Aboriginal people that manifests in the profound contempt many NT Indigenous people have for the force.

Some individual NT police - beginning with Paul Foelsche - stand out for their barbarity and for the historical stain their actions bequeathed to the NT mounted police (which evolved into the territory's chief law enforcement agency). Today Foelsche would be called a gun-nut for his obsession with firearms, and a ghoul for his twin fetish for Aboriginal ethnology and penchant for collecting Indigenous human remains.

The outback justice historian Tony Roberts wrote of Foelsche, who was in charge of the NT force from 1870 until 1904: "... the man who masterminded more massacres in the territory than anyone else was Inspector Foelsche. A former soldier he was cunning, devious and merciless with Aboriginals ... Some considered him an expert on Aboriginals, not knowing that the skulls he studied were not merely collected by him."

Foelsche is celebrated in territory history as a rough, resilient pioneer. So much so that a street was named after him in Darwin.

Mounted Constable William Willshire oversaw 20 years of outback reprisal against the local Aboriginal people. Photograph: Wikimedia

His contemporary William Willshire, a constable posted to Alice Springs in 1882, oversaw 20 years of disproportionate outback reprisal against the local Aboriginal people. He detailed some exploits in several books, not least The Land of the Dawning, which point to the psychopathy that led him to be charged with murder and, perhaps inevitably, pardoned. The settlers all but mutinied in his defence and he was not dismissed from the force. He resigned in 1908 - the first but not last territory police officer to be charged with murdering an Aboriginal person.

It seems imponderable that he could write The Land of the Dawning in 1896, while still a serving police officer and while continuing to mete out extreme violence. He writes of encountering a big group of Aboriginal people at Victoria River: "... camped amongst rocks of enormous magnitude and long dry grass ... They scattered in all directions, setting fire to the grass on each side of us, throwing occasional spears, and yelling at us. It's no use mincing matters - the Martini Henry carbines at this critical moment were talking English in the silent majesty of those great eternal rocks."

Of Indigenous women, Willshire mused: "Men would not remain so many years in a country like this if there were no women, and perhaps the Almighty meant them for use as He has placed them wherever the pioneers go ... what I am speaking about is only natural, especially for men who are isolated away in the bush at out-stations where women of all ages and sizes are running at large."

Willshire has a street named in his honour in Alice Springs.

Then, of course, there was George Murray - the former Anzac who became an NT constable and orchestrator of the 1928 Coniston massacre where, according to the accounts of some Indigenous witnesses, up to 170 people were killed. Murray, also revered at the time and for decades after as a heroic frontiersman, was cleared in a government inquiry.

Bill McKinnon was the NT cop who murdered the Anangu man Yokununna at Uluru in 1934 and in so doing drove his people away from their home around what was for many years renamed Ayers Rock. McKinnon also lied to an official inquiry to cover his tracks, though his evil was exposed decades later, after his death, by the archive he left.

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the territory police's history of violence against Indigenous people. In the context of that bloody history, the tortured sensibilities and emotions of so many during and after this year's trial of police officer Zachary Rolfe are easy to understand.

NT cop Bill McKinnon murdered Yokununna at Uluru in 1934, driving his people away from their home. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

A jury acquitted Rolfe of murder last Friday over the 2019 shooting of Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu. The court heard that Walker was shot three times, with Rolfe arguing he had acted to protect his and his partner's safety.

There is no suggestion that the events outlined in the Rolfe trial mirror the course of massacres and murders in the 19th and early 20th century referred to above.

But there is no doubt that the anguish of the Warlpiri people of Yuendumu at the verdict has its roots in that traumatic history. Not least because the 1928 massacre of Warlpiri at nearby Coniston is still very much alive in familial memory around Yuendemu, where distrust and suspicion of police has a very long tail.

Now, with the findings of the massacre map project, there is a national paradigm through which to view such simmering suspicion and distrust.

First Nations people have for 200 years seen police across this continent shoot Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - and face few, if any, consequences.

After the Rolfe verdict Scott Morrison said he respected the decision of the "justice system".

But frontier history tells a different story when it comes to the police killing of Aboriginal people - and justice for those victims and their families.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the UK Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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Police interactions with Aboriginal people are scarred by Australia's violent frontier history | Paul Daley

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any Australians have little pause to deeply consider their interactions with police. But for many First Nations families, interactions with police and the judicial system are imbued with violent and often deadly experiences handed down through the generations and correspondingly documented by the white state.

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Racism continues to plague the lives of Aboriginal people

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Racism continues to plague the lives of Aboriginal people

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Are Australians racist?

Are Australians truly as open-minded and open-hearted as the world perceives them? Or does a multicultural mentality hide racism? They say that racism always feeds on fear and anxiety...

Read on to discover that racism in Australia is alive, it's only hidden behind a friendly mask.

Racism is a learned behaviour.

Racism is still alive and evil in this country, I can assure you.
- Colin Markham, former NSW parliamentary secretary for Indigenous affairs

How can you tell someone is racist?

Do you think you're a casual racist?

11,674 votes, Sydney Morning Herald

Overt racism is easy to recognise, for example a person is denied a job or access to housing because of the colour of their skin.

Australians are "casually racist"

"There certainly is a very strong element of casual racism in Australia," says Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Between June 2012 and June 2013, racial vilification complaints to the commission increased by 19%.

Australians tolerate jokes or statements by those who don't realise they are causing offence. But if just one person is offended by a joke, it is racist. Such jokes typically start with "An Australian, an Irishman and a South African walk into a bar..."

Racist slurs are general, derogative remarks about a group of people based on their race. Upon close inspection, most claims are incorrect.

Racism and racist remarks serve to bond with people who have the same opinion. Many people who have racist opinions somehow know that these are not accepted in mainstream society so they join political groups who share their racist views.

Casual racism includes racist insults, disrespectful treatment and mistrusting people from another ethic background. How media portray Aboriginal people can significantly influence people's views.

Casual racism often starts with "I'm not racist, but..."-see next section for some examples.

NSW Anti-Discrimination Board president Stepan Kerkyasharian believes casual racism does not help Australians find a mature response. "We tend to deal with some of these issues casually and then, when we realise that it has crossed the line, we tend to panic and go into 'Oh my god' mode to re-establish that this is not something we support," he says.

Realising that we might have racist elements within us is very hard and uncomfortable and not many people are able to admit that, especially in public. It is much easier to pretend that something or oneself is not racist, to preserve the illusion of a perfectly just society, and move on (particularly if you don't regularly experience racism).

Being passive can also be a form of racism. "The majority of Australians are not racist per se," says Gerry Georgatos, a journalist writing for The Stringer, "however passivity is a layer of racism and that should always remain solid in everyone's thinking."

Examples include remaining passive when someone tells a racist joke or not responding when someone discriminates against Aboriginal people. Dealing with racist people is not easy and can be very challenging, especially if you are the victim.

"At school, it was OK for me to be Aboriginal when it benefited the school such as during NAIDOC week or for a Welcome to Country," recalls Marlee Silva, a young Kamilaroi and Dunghutti woman. "But when I talk about January 26 or about issues in my community, my [peers] are very dismissive."

60% of surveyed school students in NSW and Victoria in 2019 said they had witnessed racism. 40% of Aboriginal and from ethnic minority backgrounds said they'd been racially discriminated against by their peers. More than a third of Aboriginal students reported experiences of racial discrimination from wider society.

Until 29 November 2021 you can watch the free SBS documentary Is Australia Racist? - an hour-long investigation with real-world experiments covering people of colour, muslims and Aboriginal people in Australia.

"I'm not racist, but..."

How often have you heard someone starting a sentence with "I'm not racist, but..."? And what followed was an opinion you thought was racist.

Andrew Johns, assistant coach of the Parramatta Eels rugby team, called an Aboriginal player a "black c**t" but "denied that he was racist" .

Mal Brown, an Australian rules footballer, described Aboriginal people as "cannibals" but "declared himself... not racist" .

Eddie McGuire, president of the AFL club Collingwood, suggested on radio that an Aboriginal footballer should promote a King Kong musical, but declared "I am not a racist" .

No wonder that, after migrating to Australia, South African woman Sisonke Msimang observed: "The levels of racism amongst many white Australians seem to match the levels of denial about their being racist."

American expat, Robbie Blowers, a legal practitioner in Melbourne, offers another outside perspective. "One thing I've learnt about my adopted home is that its problem with racism is similar in many ways to America's problem with guns: it is so culturally ingrained that its perpetrators can't even see that it's a problem."

To be racist you don't have to be extreme. "If you are being racially vicious in your remarks about other races, that's racist," says Timana Tahu, an Aboriginal rugby league player with the Parramatta Eels who sparked a nationwide discussion about racism when he walked out of the coveted NSW Origin team camp after Andrew Johns' remarks .

"We need to... move away from the standard Australian response of denying racism," says Priscilla Brice, the managing director of anti-racism charity All Together Now. "By acknowledging that racism exists and learning how to speak up about it, young people can become great role models for the rest of society."

Some people think that using racist slurs is being playful or assume racist words are slang. Racism in Australia is often cloaked by "larrikinism", and Australians are very casual with racism.

Almost 50% of white Australians believe Aboriginal people are given unfair advantages by the government.

One in five people say they would move away if an Aboriginal Australian sat next to them.

Almost 10% of non-Aboriginal people admit they would not hire an Aboriginal jobseeker.

More than a third of people surveyed conceded they believe Aboriginal Aussies are "sometimes a bit lazy".

Brandon Jack has been a teammate of Adam Goodes for many years. He recalls what happened in the change room when his team discussed the persistent booing that eventually let Adam quit the AFL.

"After training this week with my university football team, I was sitting in the change rooms with some of the guys and the topic of racism and Adam came up. One player said that they didn't think it was racist. His view was that the best players have always been booed. That it was a badge of honour.

"As I prepared to respond, something happened. From the other corner of the room a voice called out: 'He said it was hurting him. He felt it was racist. He was made to feel small and isolated and was bullied for standing up against racism. So yeah, I think it was racist.'

"The conversation that followed didn't tear us apart. We were still teammates who would run out alongside each other on the weekend and, in that moment, we were Australians discussing what we wanted to stand for.

"This documentary is so important because it gives us a voice to respond to racism. To say, no, this wasn't just another occurrence of football barracking. That this was tainted by deeper animosity. That this was different. That in Australia, we have become far too accepting of casual and even blatant racism."
Can you have such an open discussion?
Give Nothing To Racism

In this cheeky video, New Zealand's Human Rights Commission tells how many small bits of racism add up and calls to stop casual racism from growing into something more extreme.

Are Australians "the most racist people"?

Are Australians racist?

2,551 votes, Sydney Morning Herald

For Victorian academic and writer Lillian Holt racism is "the gangrene of the soul of this nation which slumbers under the smug surface of this lucky country." . She labels it a "spiritual disease".

Stephen Hagan, Aboriginal film-maker and author, confesses "I'm on public record as saying Australians are the most racist people in the developed world for their treatment of the First Australians and I make this claim comfortable in the knowledge that I am sufficiently supported by incontestable statistical data."

And statistics seem to confirm Stephen's view. The SMH (data above) asked its readers in 2012, and a survey by Western Sydney University in 2016 found that Australians had 'negative' feelings towards Muslim Australians (32%), Middle-Eastern Australians (22%) and Aboriginal Australians (9%). About a third of respondents experienced racism at work, their place of study, public transport or shopping centres. 80% acknowledged that there is a problem with racism, very close to the number the SMH found.

Stewart Levitt, a lawyer for an Aboriginal man, moved his client's trial to Brisbane after he found "entrenched racism in the Townsville community against Palm Island Aborigines" and double standards in Queensland .

For Aboriginal elder Uncle Allan Brown racism are "the under-handed snide remarks". People hide racism "more than anything" and don't want to know about it .

While filming in Australia, American presenter John Oliver noticed that racism in Australia "is undeniably specific" . Australians complained to him "about all the 'Lebos' in the country", using a derogative term for Lebanese people which is similar to what they use for Aboriginal people ("Abos").

Writer Kelly Briggs says: "No one is born racist. Racism is a social construct, it is taught through schools, parents and structurally through the court system in this country."

Questions

Do you agree with Kelly? Why? Why not?

Describe three situations where you were 'taught' racism. Can you think of a new response next time this happens?

How can the court system teach racism?

Some good news

"I do think things are changing," observes Dennis Eggington, head of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia . "For one thing we have a more informed group of young people coming through," he says.

Interest in Aboriginal culture has risen significantly in recent years, partly driven by better integration into the school curriculum. Students' knowledge and self-confidence helps contribute to, with the words of Eggington, "the changing face of Australian people [which] means the old entrenched colonial racism is being driven out."

A series of disturbing incidents made the Australian Football League (AFL) develop policies for its players, a policy to deal with on-field racial vilification, as well as introduce player and staff education . It contributed to lift the share of Aboriginal players from 5% to 11% between 1996 and 2011.

The National Rugby League in August 2010 announced "tough new measures to combat racism". Any player caught would be stood down immediately and charged with contrary conduct.

Recommended reading

I'm Not Racist But... by Aboriginal author Anita Heiss is a collection of social observations, thoughts and conversations.

The book will challenge you to consider issues of Aboriginal identity, reconciliation and issues around saying 'sorry', notions of 'truth' and integrity, biculturalism and invisible whiteness, entrenched racism and political correctness.

The following story was told by Diat Alferink, daughter of Daisy Alferink, the 'Truckie Fighter' .

"My mum was known as the truckie fighter. She used to punch out drivers for being racist in the front bar of the Lyndhurst pub.

"She's this big, strong [Torres Straight] island woman so whenever they said something racist to her, she'd just go, 'puck you' and knock them flat.

"Mum was strong because she'd had to fight all her life as a black woman in this country. I have a memory of this truck driver being flat out on the floor in his singlet and stubbie shorts.

"It's been said that the last thing he heard before he passed out is a voice in a strong Island lilt warning, 'Don't mess with Daisy, baby!'"

Here is an idea: We need to do some raisism: raising strong and resilient children in the face of racism.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation

One of these political parties was the One Nation party, founded by Pauline Hanson in April 1997. Let's have a brief look at some excerpts from her maiden speech to parliament in September 1996, and why they are racist.

I have done research on benefits available only to Aboriginals and challenge anyone to tell me how Aboriginals are disadvantaged when they can obtain 3 and 5% housing loans denied to non-Aboriginals.
- Pauline Hanson

Racist statements like this show a lack of information and balance. If Hanson had done her research properly she would have found out that Aboriginal housing conditions were nowhere near what the average Australian enjoyed. At the time Hanson spoke, more than 9% of the Indigenous population in rural areas lived in "caravans, shacks and improvised accommodation" and 9% of Aboriginal people's rural homes did not have a toilet .

20% of Aboriginal people lived in "dwellings which had eight or more residents" . Compare that to the total Australian population where less than 1% had to live in such overcrowding houses.

I draw the line when told I must pay and continue paying for something that happened over 200 years ago.
- Pauline Hanson

This comment shows a lack of empathy and compassion for other people's situation.

Many opponents of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations thought likewise. 'Why me?' they asked. But this misses the point entirely. Rudd didn't apologise because he was guilty personally, he apologised because he felt sorry for what these people had to endure and how they suffered. For Aboriginal people this was a giant leap forward towards healing.

Racist people have trouble putting themselves into the shoes of others. When talking about land rights for Aboriginal people, Hanson said, "Well, where the hell do I go? I was born here." She doesn't even try to understand where Aboriginal people come from, what land means to them. Racism and egotism walk hand in hand.

What are the effects of racism?

Anyone who is exposed to continuous racism suffers, no matter if this racism occurs at a young age at school or later in adult life.

Poor health

93% of the people who took part in a three-year study of the Flinders University's Southgate Institute in South Australia reported experiencing racism, particularly within the justice and education systems. Experienced regularly, racism leads to poor health the study found.

It causes stress and negative emotional/cognitive reactions which have negative impacts on mental health as well as affecting the immune, endocrine, cardiovascular and other physiological systems.

"We found that Aboriginal people do not primarily have a higher rate of illness because they lack knowledge of what behaviours are good for their health," the study's chief investigator, Dr Anna Ziersch says. "Compared with the general population, twice as many Aboriginal people did not drink and most exercised regularly-and yet they had worse physical and mental health."

"We saw evidence that said about 10% of the Australian population in 2004 was reporting regular occurrences of individual acts of racism and that that has now [in 2014] doubled to being close to 20%... We then saw evidence that the consequences of this are increased psychological illnesses. Psychological illnesses tied directly to a person's exposure to racism and discrimination," reports Martin Laverty, Chair of the Social Determinants of Health Alliance, a group of Australian health, social services and public policy organisations.

Unhealthy coping strategies

Causing poor health, racism also exposes Aboriginal people to other risk factors associated with ill-health, such as junk food, toxic substances, dangerous goods.

Coping mechanisms - especially for young adolescents - tend to include unhealthy activities such as smoking, alcohol and drug use.

AFL player Adam Goodes knows this only too well. "We've had to put up with a lot [of racism] unfortunately... you become quite tolerant because if you don't you become very angry and you do things you probably don't choose to do," he says. Anger, and indeed rage, is common in people who experience racism daily and builds up over time.

"I have family members who can't take it as well as I can. They react with violence, with drinking, drugs. These types of things are a coping mechanism because people don't understand how much racial abuse can hurt people. It can put people into depression."

At the same time Aboriginal people stop healthy activities like sleep, exercise, or taking medications.

Ultimately, racism contributes to Aboriginal people committing suicide.

Not using public services

Aboriginal woman Zeritta Jessell from Kununurra, WA, graduated from high school but never went to college because she feared more racist taunting like what she had experienced at school. And Nakkiah Lui, from Mount Druitt in Sydney's western suburbs, nearly quit school because of racist taunting and only continued on because of her mother insisted.

Racism through health care providers or health workers can be a "second layer", and Aboriginal people can be so traumatised they would rather become sicker than return for treatment. One in three Aboriginal Victorians surveyed by VicHealth reported experiencing racism in a health care setting.

Expectant mothers are more likely to have poorer birth outcomes, including babies with a lower birth weight.

Trauma

Racism can easily trigger childhood traumas. Adam Goodes, an AFL player, was taken back to "school stuff" when a fan racially abused him during a match. "I felt like I was in high school again, being bullied, being called all these names because of my appearance," he said.

A 3-year-old Aboriginal girl who was traumatised after she was racially abused in a shopping centre tried to scrub her body to remove her black skin.

Samara was in a queue with her mother when another mother and her two daughters began to verbally abuse the young girl, making comments about her black skin.

"I asked the woman what she meant by the comment and then one of the woman's young daughters screwed up her face, she pointed at Samara and said 'you're black and black is ugly'," recalls her mother.

Samara became upset and started to cry. She refused to attend Aboriginal dance classes and starting taking baths daily in a bid to scrub off her black skin.

"She was requesting to bath every day and she was soaping up to make herself look white" until her skin was red, says her mother.

"She had her Aboriginal dance classes to attend but she didn't want to attend them. I asked her why and she said, 'because black is ugly."

Other effects

Other effects of secondary racism can be

poorer self-reported health status,

lower perceived quality of care,

under-utilisation of health services,

delays in seeking care,

failure to follow recommendations,

societal distrust,

interruptions in care,

mistrust of providers, and

avoidance of health care systems.

Ongoing racism can lead to heart disease, premature birth, hypertension, mental illness, physical illness or suicide.

Institutional racism (systemic racism)

Many people experience racism by another person. If companies, organisations or government bodies act in a racist way, either deliberately or indirectly, it is called institutional racism or systemic racism.

For example, when the South Australian government refused to fund Aboriginal legal aid the head of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc called the government's refusal institutional racism .

Another example is if the structure of a particular government program might work for 80% of the population, but because the circumstances of Aboriginal people or people from migrant communities don't fit the profile that was used to create the program, their access is limited .

The media is another culprit. Many journalists fail to properly research stories and end up reinforcing existing racial stereotypes.

The impact of systemic racism is similar to that of personal racism. People can be (re)traumatised because they are rejected, or even die if they don't receive the health services they need.

Racist stereotypes continue to persist in Australian's minds, even if they are magistrates, as the following story shows .

A man struck a woman with his car while she was lying on the ground in a parking lot. He was told by bystanders that she was drunk and would be okay.

The man proceeded his journey with the woman left on the pavement where she later died.

In the Magistrate's Court the man received a A$400 fine and was allowed to keep his driver's license.

In sentencing, the magistrate said: "It's clearly the case that an Aboriginal person in the dark on the bitumen or other places is extremely hard to see... It's easy to imagine how such an accident could happen."

The magistrate obviously had no notion about the diversity of Aboriginal people's skin colour.

Reverse racism

Reverse racism is racism against members of a dominant or majority group, that is racism from Indigenous people against non-Indigenous people.

Reverse racism seems to be far less than racism against Aboriginal people. "I've never heard a black player use the same language [as non-Indigenous players use] about a white player," says Timana Tahu, an Aboriginal rugby league player .

Microaggression

Microaggressive remarks can often come in the form of back-handed compliments.

For example, "She's gorgeous for a big girl" or "I would never be able to tell you're gay!". Speaking really slowly when talking to a non-native speaker is another example.

Often microaggression requires well-meaning people to reflect on their own bias and privilege. They may object to racism, but not be at all aware that their remarks hurt the other person.

Microaggressions usually stem from misunderstanding or innocence, or may even be well-intentioned, but have the same effect as deliberate discrimination and racism. It is like death by a thousand cuts, however small each one might be.

Video: Too Little Justice

Watch Too Little Justice, a five-minute-video about racism against an Aboriginal youth directed by Dean Francis. Note how an "innocent" comment sparks the altercation, common in real life experiences of racism.

Australia's politicians fail on racism

If you haven't already done so read the quotes by successive Australian prime ministers at the top of this page. They are tale-telling proof that politicians have lost touch with reality.

Both politicians and Australian police commonly argue that many of the assaults on people of different ethnicity are 'opportunistic' rather than racist .

Australia hasn't had a multicultural policy for 15 years. The Race Discrimination Commissioner is part time, his other responsibility is as the Disability Discrimination Commissioner.

"Our politicians are fixed in denial... Politicians believe there are electoral costs and no benefits to acknowledging racism," says Prof Kevin Dunn, an expert in human geography and race and ethnic studies at the University of Western Sydney. Dunn collected the "most comprehensive data on racism in Australia" .

No wonder that Prime Ministers continue to offer glimpses into their true reality, as Tony Abbott did when he stated Australia was "unsettled" before British invasion .

Should we keep a product named 'Coon'?

For decades, Coon was a staple in the fridge section of Australia's supermarkets. Since 1931 it was the name of a cheddar cheese. But for a long time its name also caused heated debate.

'Coon' is an insulting term for Aboriginal people and is believed to come from the 1850s Portuguese term 'barracoons' which describes a place of temporary confinement (usually a cage) for slaves or convicts in which they had to wait before being sent away to the places they were due to work.

It could also have meaning as a shortening of 'raccoon', a Washer Bear native to North America. The black eye masks and nocturnal habits of raccoons, along with their tendency to steal, paralleled the characteristics of typical robbers and thieves.

Is a call for Coon cheese to change its name political correctness gone mad?

Yes, people need to get over it, it's just a name

No, there's a reason we can't use words like that any more

2,390 votes, news.com.au/heraldsun, October 2008

No matter what you believe personally, results often depend on how you ask the question. The Herald Sun in its online poll asked "Is a call for Coon cheese to change its name political correctness gone mad?"

Note how there's no mention of the name being racist. No mention of Aboriginal people being offended by the name. The Herald Sun asks if it is overly political correct to ask for a name change. From this angle many people might agree, given the fact that the brand has been around for quite some time.

Note also how the options given to the users of the poll suggest that one should "get over it" and move on and doesn't explain what the reason is why we cannot use "words like that" anymore. For the passing surfer this poll is totally useless in the absence of context to the question.

Coon becomes Cheer

Cheese manufacturer Saputo Dairy Australia says its product 'Coon Cheese' (sold only in Australia) was named in 1926 after Edward William Coon, an American who patented a process used to manufacture cheese. For many years, the company refused to rename its product, resisting a decades-long campaign by Aboriginal man Stephen Hagan, who first made the request in 1999.

Then came 2020 and the 'Black Lives Matter' movement, triggered by the death of a Black American man at the hands of US police, which sparked massive protests worldwide.

Bye, bye, Aunty Jemima and Uncle Ben

US company Quaker Foods has also long been criticised for its Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix that shows an African American woman's head and uses a name from a character of minstrel shows. After the protests, the company promised to "make progress towards racial equality" and redesign and rename the product, a promise it followed through also in July 2021 when the brand was renamed to Pearl Milling Company.

Also inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests, Rice company Uncle Ben's vowed to remove the image of a black farmer which it has been using for its iconic rice packages since the 1940s. It also considered changing the company name. The new brand, first available in May 2021, is called Ben's Original.

And confectionary giant Nestle renamed its Allen's brand Red Skins and Chicos lollies to Red Ripper and Cheekies. The word "redskins" is a derogatory term used to describe Native Americans while Chicos is the Spanish translation for "boy" and can be offensive to people of Latin-American descent.

Racism in the arts-a window into the past

In 1957 Rolf Harris, then 27, wrote the song 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' which became a number one hit in Australia. The song was originally made of seven verses and the chorus. The sixth verse went as follows :

Let me Abos go loose, Lou,
Let me Abos go loose.
They're of no further use, Lou,
So let me Abos go loose.
Altogether now!

'Abo' is a derogatory term for Aboriginal people. In the context of the song the above verse becomes even more racist because almost all other verses are about animals which are to be let lose after the drover's death the song is about.

Because of the racist term used the song was banned in Singapore. In some versions 'Abo' got replaced with 'emu' .

Harris' lyrics, as innocently as they might have been conceived, offer us an insight into the horrific practices of bush men in the 1920s. Xavier Herbert, born in 1901, reveals them in an interview he gave in 1984 . Note the racist use of expressions like 'gin spree'.

"We used to go up to Broome for our holidays and I knew, all through Western Australia, black velvet was the thing. It's changed a lot in recent years but the perfect mate for the bushman was the black girl... The pearling industry was established in Broome and the pearlers used to go up into the Kimberley country and steal the young [Aboriginal] gins to work as pearl divers. Of course, they used to rape them, too, and when they got too pregnant they'd chuck them overboard.

"Stockmen used to go out for a ' gin spree', too. They'd run the blacks down and take the young girls [who'd] sit down and fill their fannies with sand."

Recommended movie

The movie Spinning into Butter (USA, 2009) is one of the rare works to pick up racism as a topic for a feature film.

It's a powerful film about a series of racist incidents on a campus which shake the community out of their equal opportunity sleep. The film shows how difficult it is to address racism on both a personal and community level, but also that there are no easy solutions.

Aboriginal hip-hop rapper Caper wrote a song about racism and discrimination that he has experienced in Australian society throughout his life.

Racist place names changed

When settlers named places in Australia they sometimes used names we consider racist today. Most of these place names have quietly been changed to less offensive ones, however, some can still be found today and some Aboriginal people campaign against them.

E.S. 'N-g-er' Brown Stand

Stephen Hagan fought for almost 9 years for a rugby league stand's name to be changed. It read E.S. 'N-g-er' Brown Stand.

Stephen Hagan took his case to the Federal Court (where he lost) and finally to the United Nations, where the Council for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) agreed that the sign should be taken down.

His campaign came at an enormous cost for him and his family. Not only did he have to invest a lot of money, but he was also personally assaulted and threatened. In September 2008 however, the stand was torn down and the mayor promised not to name the new building with the same name. Hagan's wife Rhonda directed a film about her husband's fight called N-g-er Lovers.

Racist Victorian place names

For decades a mountain in north-east Victoria, called Mt N-g-erhead, fuelled a heated debate about its name. In December 2008 the landmark was renamed to Mt Jaithmathangs after one of the traditional languages of the area .

This renaming, however, is not without controversy with one of the Aboriginal groups involved claiming that part of the mountain belongs to their country and its new name was offensive.

Racist place names in Queensland

In Queensland's Alton Downs, near Rockhampton, people are debating if they should rename Black Gin Creek Road. White Australians used to call an Aboriginal woman a 'gin', often implying that they were used for sexual services by the white men. Another Black Gin Creek Road is near Bambaroo, 60kms north-west of Townsville, Queensland. N-g-er Creek near Wondecla, QLD, is yet another example.

More to be done

Australia is littered with places waiting to be reviewed, if not renamed.

For example, Gins Leap in Boggabri, NSW-said to be where a young Aboriginal woman took her life. Or Coon Island in Lake Macquarie. Or Poisoned Waterhole Creek on the Sturt Highway near Narrandera. Massacre Island on the Murrumbidgee. The list goes on.

Contemporary racism

A subscriber to an Australian newsletter made the following observations :

"If you want to find out about Australia put a sticker supporting Aboriginal causes on your car. Young blokes are usually the main problem as far as abuse goes. The reconciliation stickers seemed to be OK, but anything stronger than that eg Treaty or Land Rights causes a hostile reaction. I have even been abused for having a sticker advertising radio station Triple A Murri Country on my car."

"There's an extremely strong undercurrent of racism in Australia, although, on the evidence, mainstream rather than undercurrent is probably more accurate."

"The fact that politicians , police etc are afraid to call it what it is, suggests that a majority of Australians do not class this behaviour as racist and will vote anyone out who calls it racism."

"If you want to be a person of influence in this country you steer well clear of issues like Australian racism." -which confirms the quotes from the beginning of the page.

"Every Indigenous Australian has a story of racism," observes Amy McQuire from the National Indigenous Times . She argues that "most non-Indigenous Australians have a story in which racist thoughts were uttered or acts occurred."

Racist experiences

Here are some examples how racism permeates everyday life, from ordinary people, to police, to federal ministers. Sadly, I could quote many more.

"Don't worry love, these things happen."

During a rugby league game a fan racially abused Aboriginal players and supporters, calling them 'monkeys' and 'blacks'.

When an Aboriginal witness asked for the manager she was told "Don't worry about it, it's football, these things happen."

However, in this instance the fan was tracked down and banned for life.

"I'm of a large build. Not fat and black."

Queensland Police commissioner Bob Atkinson later apologised to the victim.

Showcasing Aboriginal people

In July 2006 as part of an employment scheme then Aboriginal Affairs minister, Mal Brough, proposed 'showcasing' Aboriginal people for tourists in five-star hotels by having them work 'front of house' on reception .

Racism at 17

Tjimarri is a 17-year-old and tells his experience with racism .

"As a young Aboriginal sports player, I have experienced racism. When I first joined a club about six years ago with my two cousins, we were sitting down watching because we were too shy to participate first.

"A parent member called the police complaining that we were 'hanging around the club probably looking to go through people's bags'."

Ranu from Queensland contacted me and sent me the following story which I offer here with permission.

"We have just recently moved to QLD much to my fear! I am of Papua New Guinea Australian descent and I have always been fearful of racism. This is something I have experienced regularly while coming here for school holidays.

"I also grew up in Adelaide in the 70's and spent every day at school dealing with awful racist taunts, then my parents moved us to Darwin where I was much less exposed to it.

"My daughter (12) had an incident at school today where a guy in her class said "My project is about Abos". She has never come across such blatant racial remarks like this and I guess didn't know how to deal with it so she walked up to the guy and she kicks him. He said to her "What was that for?" and her remarks back to him were "for being racist". He says "What, Abos isn't racist," so she says "Yeah. It is. Look it up looser!"" [...]

"On the weekend after visiting my husbands family [...] my father in law (who does indeed refer to his Ford Falcon as the 'foul coon') looked into our car where we had our seats arranged so the girls could comfortably sit with their legs out stretched and commented "What's this!? Blacks in the back?!" and so began 3 days of me trying to express (not very well) to my husband why I find this all so offensive.

"As an adult I have found it really difficult to deal with racism as I find it always raises for me again those feelings of hurt, insecurity and aloneness that I felt as a child trying to deal with it as the lone 'coloured' kid in my primary school."

"I don't like n-g-ers"

This is a true story conveyed to me by the mother of the Papua New Guinean girl.

While at school a young Papua New Guinean girl was sitting with her friends-a lovely group of middle-class anglo Australian girls. She had a packet of honey-flavoured Tiny Teddies and one of her friends had a bag of chocolate-flavoured Tiny Teddies.

When her friend saw what the Papua New Guinean girl had she said "Oh! Can I swap with you I don't like n-g-ers," at which the Papua New Guinean girl snapped "What! What did you say!?". Her friend repeated, "Can I swap with you I don't like n-g-ers."

The Papua New Guinean girl exploded. "Hey! You can't say that! I have black people in my family, and you can't say that!".

Her friend began backpeddling and said "No, I didn't mean it like that, it's just that I don't like these biscuits." Still angry, the Papua New Guinean girl said "Well say that then! You can't say that word it's offensive. I have black people in my family how dare you say that!"

The other girls in the group also spoke up and said "Yeah, you shouldn't say that it's not right!"

"They pay good money to get my skin colour"

Another true story as told to me first-hand:

"I was standing in a post office in what I like to now refer to as country red neck Queensland. The sales assistant has a chat with a young female customer in front of me.

I hear her saying '...did she like her spray tan?' and the girl goes 'Yeah, but her boyfriend said he didn't want to marry a coon.' They both laugh, and as she leaves they realise I'm standing behind them.

I give them the death stare and they drop their eyes in shame as they should.

They pay good money to get my skin colour and they still insult us!"

Taxis refuse fare to Aboriginal actors

In May 2013, a group of prominent Aboriginal actors were repeatedly refused fare by taxi drivers in Melbourne when they tried to make their way back to work .

The group included eminent actors such as Tom E Lewis, Rabbit-Proof Fence star Natasha Wanganeen, Redfern Now actors Jada Alberts and Rarriwuy Hick, Chooky Dancer Djamangi Gaykamangu and Ten Canoes actor Frances Djulibing.

Four separate cabs booked to pick up the group refused the fare once they arrived and saw the passengers.

Only after the non-Aboriginal company manager hailed a taxi were the actors able to return to their hotel.

''They would just pull up, see us and drive off,'' Hick said. ''By the fourth one I just had it by then and kind of broke down and was in tears. We had to get someone to hail a taxi for us who was non-indigenous and we would hide around the corner and by the time she got the taxi we would bolt over, open the door and jump in.

Racism in the press

The press shapes how many people think about other ethnicities. Journalists have a responsibility when they write about Aboriginal culture. They are bound by the Racial Discrimination Act while the freedom of speech gives them a certain liberty.

Tip: Read these tips for journalists on how to write about Aboriginal topics.

Racist headlines

'Black' in general is deemed racist. Which does not mean we cannot find it nowadays. Check out the newspaper article in the image which is taken from The Australian newspaper of May 17, 2006. Aboriginal people confirmed to me that this headline is offending. I found this headline in an online search in less than three minutes. Searching The Sydney Morning Herald online did not turn up any similar headline.

Journalist found guilty of racial discrimination

In 2011 journalist Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun newspaper wrote two articles about Aboriginal identity. In questioning how some Aboriginal people "selected" their Aboriginality over other parts of their heritage, he addressed a common stereotype: Aboriginal people of mixed descent want to profit from benefits even though they are not "fully" Aboriginal.

One of the Aboriginal women Bolt targeted took him to court over his articles, alleging racial discrimination. In September 2011 the court confirmed that Bolt's articles had breached the Racial Discrimination Act .

Judge Bromberg ruled that he had "not found Mr Bolt and the Herald & Weekly Times to have contravened section 18C [of the Racial Discrimination Act], simply because the newspaper articles dealt with subject matter of that kind. I have found a contravention of the Racial Discrimination Act because of the manner in which that subject matter was dealt with." .

Judge Bromberg found that Bolt's articles "conveyed offensive messages about fair-skinned Aboriginal people, by saying that they were not genuinely Aboriginal and were pretending to be Aboriginal so they could access benefits that are available to Aboriginal people". "None of them 'chose' to be Aboriginal," the judge remarked.

"I am satisfied that fair-skinned Aboriginal people (or some of them) were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed by the newspaper articles."

He further explained that "at the core of multiculturalism is the idea that people may identify with and express their racial or ethnic heritage free from pressure not to do so. People should be free to fully identify with their race without fear of public disdain or loss of esteem for so identifying. Disparagement directed at the legitimacy of the racial identification of a group of people is likely to be destructive of racial tolerance, just as disparagement directed at the real or imagined practices or traits of those people is also destructive of racial tolerance."

The articles, the judge found, "contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language."

The articles could have an "intimidatory effect" on young fair-skinned Aboriginal people or those who do not have a firm view on their identity because "racially prejudiced views have been reinforced, encouraged or emboldened".

But Your Skin Is White

Why do we as people cry when they say you're not black your skin is white
Yes this day I hear again they tried, but it's time yes time to squash this lie
Is it done to cover up mistakes or just for fun yes it's a damn disgrace
For 200 odd years you've made this mistake at our expense
We've been pushed and shoved and totally displaced you pull down things
 that are sacred to our race, you dig up then place a barbed wire fence
It's a safety measure for you at our expense
And when we go for food they say these blacks they're not wanted
Here on my land but whose is it really is it really yours I say
You cannot recompense us for all the wrongs you've done
Or bring back a parent a daughter or a son
Yes it's just not right I hear you say these blacks are white
Just look at their face
Yes it's no longer right for it's free speech you say
We've done no wrong so why should you pay
It's always them white blacks that push the limit
It can never be you yes it's always them
Yes those white blacks you say 'cause there's money in it
They just want their pay
Yes I want to tell you a story although my skin may be white
Look at my heart it's from the dreamtime I come
Yes I am daughter a father a son
I am the mother of these ones
The trouble makers with the white face the ones that 200 years
Can never disgrace...

Poem by A G Hayden . Read more Aboriginal poetry.

Carelessness leads to racism outrage

"I didn't realise it would be so bad," a careless white man said after he had sparked an outrage in Western Australia's Kalgoorlie .

The man had participated in a car race and named his car 'Foul Coon' because "we have always called Falcon cars 'foul coons'". What he considered to be "just a saying" deeply angered and offended local Aboriginal people. To add insult to injury some other team members had painted themselves black and wore red headbands, traditionally worn by senior and respected initiated Aboriginal men.

'Foul Coon' is used colloquially in car forums around Australia. The forum profile shown here seems to confirm what the CEO of the Goldfields Land and Sea Council, Brian Wyatt, told newspapers: "They think that beer and naked girls behind the bar... are the way of life around here, and saying and doing whatever you like when you like."

Aboriginal people allege hotel racism

A group of Aboriginal people took the former owners of the Newcastle 'Sydney Junction Hotel' (NSW) to court for allegedly denying them access to the hotel because they're Aboriginal.

In a similar incident in March 2008 a group of Aboriginal women were asked to leave the Haven Backpackers in Alice Springs . The group attended a lifesaving training and were told that they were "unsuitable" guests and were asked to leave shortly after checking in, because Japanese tourists were "afraid of Aboriginal people".

Is this racism? Two views

When you read articles in any media be mindful that even they can express just the viewpoint of that particular publisher or writer.

Below is one such article and the personal viewpoint of an Aboriginal man about it. Compare the two and ask yourself:

Newspaper article

Aboriginal perspective

WA cops accused of racism for closing pubs

West Australian police have been accused of racism for closing pubs in regional communities when a funeral is in town.

Liberal MP Barry Haase told federal parliament WA police were closing pubs during funerals because they were concerned about indigenous Australians drinking too much.

Mr Haase said this was racist towards Aborigines and unfair to pub owners.

He said the West Australian police force was either misguided or unable to maintain law and order in the communities concerned.

"In the Middle East we are trying to establish democracy, across the globe we are trying to stamp out racial practices and yet when there is an indigenous funeral to be held in my regional centres in Western Australia ... they impose their draconian attitudes," he said.

"It is not acceptable, we must not kowtow to the tiniest group of the community simply because of the tree huggers' attitude when it comes to the consumption of alcohol."

Democracy and freedom of trade needed to be returned to communities, Mr Haase said.

He said businesses had the right to keep their doors open and make a profit.

"We are finding that because authorities have no satisfactory explanation for the consumption of alcohol to excess in our communities they shut establishments down and simply send the guilty elsewhere to purchase their alcohol at inflated prices at the penalty of the innocent who are denied the opportunity to buy a legal substance," he said.

This is not racism

I'm with the cops and their precautionary measures on this one. I'm sick and tired of people bleating that anything they like (or dislike) can be put under the label of racism, sexism etc.

Coming from a small country town I know how these funeral wakes can get out of hand. Firstly, wakes are Wadjula [whitefella] culture, not blackfullas culture. Blackfullas have seemed to make them their own in recent years though, with many people celebrating somebody's life and death by getting wasted. I could never understand the mentality of this tradition.

The cops just mainly want people to stay safe, not start any trouble and then let everybody got their own way in safety afterwards.

Wakes can get very much out of control. One boy just got murdered after one in my town recently after they had just buried a girl who had been murdered by a man. Payback is a big part of our law and culture and wakes can make some people sitting targets.

Publicans only want their pubs open so they can make a killing at the bar. It sounds all very parasitic to me, but certainly not racist.

A Liberal MP of all people would put this put there. Haase shows just how ludicrous society has come to and how easy it is make comment, albeit reckless yet commonplace, than for leaders in our society to come out and actually show the way forward.

Antithesis: Australia is not racist

Some argue that "Australia is among the least racist countries of the multicultural developed world" . They claim that Australia

has the highest rates of social mobility--many Australians were born overseas (Sydney has more than London or New York),

has the highest rate of mixed marriages in the world, and

has ethnic communities which are less likely to cluster into ghettos with all its follow-on problems.

Racism is used to explain what are in fact "multi-layered human motives". One such motif is the sense of "fairness for all Australians", sometimes brought forward by other migrants.

Actual racism, so the claim, is based on racism of the past, but today race is no longer a "significant disadvantage". Differences might just be due to class or socio-economic background. Racial prejudice becomes one of many factors.

When Aboriginal students underperform at school it is "more likely due to poor parenting, peer-group pressure and an inability to be responsible for their own behaviour." Rather than giving them the "discourse of the victim" these issues should be challenged.

"The more protection and measures there are to promote racial equality, the higher the risk of encouraging people to engage with each other not as individuals,... but in terms of our ethnicity," says Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist .

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Are Australians truly as open-minded and open-hearted as the world perceives them? Or does a multicultural mentality hide racism? They say that racism always feeds on fear and anxiety... Read on to discover that racism in Australia is alive, it's only hidden behind a friendly mask. Racism is a learned behaviour.

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Discussing "Australia Day" with Indigenous people 

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It’s that time of year when Indigenous people get a harsh reality check on how deep casual racism can go 

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It’s that time of year when Indigenous people get a harsh reality check on how deep casual racism can go 

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It’s that time of year when Indigenous people get a harsh reality check on how deep casual racism can go | Djallarna Hamilton

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So many of us are riding an emotional rollercoaster of pain, anguish and frustration