Black Nations Rising - ISSUE 3

issue #3

November 2015

www.facebook.com/blacknationsrising

a nation must fight for their

right to self determination

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B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G

contents Native mind - Ruby Wharton

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Let’s Return NAIDOC to its Activist Roots - Philip Winzer

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Food is medicine: Decolonise your diet - Stephen Thorpe

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Aboriginal Nationalism in Sport - Bogaine Skuthorpe-Spearim and Pekeri Ruska

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Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs - that simple! - C. Jetta

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From Goodes to Terra Nullius - Jarrod Hughes

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False trail of Native Title - Stuart Harradine

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Warrior Profile - Latoya Rule

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Why our freedom is bound in the chains of Aboriginal women - Merinda Meredith

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Aboriginal morality, consciousness, responsibilities and obligations - Dale Ruska

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Constitutional recognition - nothing will change - Michael Mansell

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We have a voice - Tony Birch

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Desecration of my sacred lands and photos - Paul Spearim

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Black Nations Rising (BNR) magazine is published by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) in both print and online. If you would like to contribute &/or subsribe to BNR send an email to blacknationsrising@gmail.com

printed and/or distributed by: Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy

We thank all who have made this publication a reality; the writers, photographers, Community Food Program Inc and artists, along with the organizations assisting with printing and distribution.

National Tertiary Education Union

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Co-editors: Pekeri Ruska, Jarrod Hughes & Anita Goon Wymarra

Queensland Council of Unions

Printing/ Distribution Coordinator: Merinda Meredith

Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Inc

Layout/ Design: Tahnee Edwards

United Voice

Front cover photo credit: Joora Diji Images (top), Marcus Salvagno (bottom)

Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance

B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G

Native Mind Ruby Wharton, Kooma / Gamilarray

I live in a land where I don’t belong Yet my forefathers have been here since the very first break of dawn.

They’ve survived through brutal warfare, seen their family killed, heard their sisters screaming rape!

And watched through a stream of tears as their children were taken away.

I wish for a day when this war will end, when I can go home back to heal with the land.

Oppression is something hard to live under when you’re forced to fit their wishes to forgive and forget.

But that’s hard, even if I’ve been hit in the head, so many times that I can’t comprehend who I am, where I come from and how I’ll get out of this mess.

We’re stuck in the loop, petty crimes, drugs, domestic violence, man do I got to be screaming for you to realise this!

They got us where they want us down that dark dead end lane, pointing a pistol at my forehead, while we’re wishing we didn’t get involved in this game.

But it’s too late.

We lost another brother, I guess the boy’s in blue still kill even if they’re undercover.

So we hit the streets screaming “they say justice we say murder” We’ve been screaming for so long when will someone finally hear us?

Australia crawl out of your ivory tower and realise the real lies!

The Royal Commission’s statistics say we’ll be burying another brother in just twenty-two days.

How many T.J Hickey’s have to die for people to help us fight for our lives?

I guess all I can do is cry till the bullet flies and takes my life…

But no I wont! I wont leave this world like this! I’ll stay standing and overcome it! I’ll fight for my people’s survival and revival of our culture, determined to make a future with our traditional style.

Don’t conform to their inhumane ways, stand up, make a difference man you can change the game.

Resist colonisation! Revive your songlines and decolonise your life and then you’ll see things finally working out right.

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B LA C K N AT I IOSNSSU ER I3S I N G

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Let’s Return NAIDOC to its Activist Roots Philip Winzer, Ngarabal

In November 1937, newspapers across Australia reported on plans by the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) to hold a ‘Day of Mourning’ on the 150th anniversary of white invasion on 26th January the following year. William Ferguson, organising secretary of the APA, demanded an end to the protection era, saying, “We have been protected for 150 years, and look what has become of us! It would be better for the authorities to turn a machine gun on us!” Douglas Nicholls from the Victorian Aborigines League said, “We do not want chicken food. We are not chickens; we are eagles!”

Delegations to the Prime Minister and Federal Parliament preceded this Day of Mourning, with topics of discussion including land grants and Aboriginal representation in parliament. In the days following the Day of Mourning, an Aborigines Conference was held, leading to the launch of a national monthly magazine for the Aboriginal movement. Mary-Jane Ardler, from Nowra, demanded selfdetermination and the right to find solutions for our own people, saying, “Ever since we were children, we have had to listen to white people saying what is good for us and what is enough for us.”

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Fast-forward to 2015, and the successor to the ‘Day of Mourning’, NAIDOC, is described as a week to “celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Where did the radical political focus of the Day of Mourning go, and how did it get swallowed up in the celebratory nature of NAIDOC as we know it today?

This has been no overnight change, but a gradual process.

While a lack of financial resources saw the work of the APA dwindle, the Day of Mourning became Aborigines Day, and continued to be commemorated on the last Sunday in January until the 1950s. In 1951, the Commonwealth and all the states adopted an official policy of assimilation; as Minister for Territories Paul Hasluck put it, in time, all Aboriginal people would “live like white Australians”.

As part of this assimilation policy, the Department of Native Affairs in 1957 provided support for the founding of the National Aborigines Day Observance Committee, which the Committee chairman, Presbyterian missionary Rev. V.W. Coombes, said would, in collaboration with churches, aim for Aboriginal people to “integrate with white society and become valuable working members of it”. National B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G

Aborigines Day moved to July, with a focus on raising awareness and celebrating the achievements of Aboriginal people who had assimilated into white society.

The year 1968 saw a return to the political activism that had marked the earlier ‘Aborigines Day’, with the Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders holding a march in Sydney to demand land rights. With the NADOC becoming an all-Aboriginal group in 1972, and, with Aboriginal political activism at its peak, themes for the week for the next 30 years would be dominated by strong political messages. Famous posters like ‘Chains or Change?’, ‘Treat us to a Treaty on Land Rights’, ‘White Australia has a Black History’, and, as late as 2001, ‘Treaty: Let’s Get it Right’ have become iconic images and slogans of the Aboriginal struggle. NADOC became NAIDOC to include Torres Strait Islanders, and was managed by ATSIC until that body was destroyed by the Howard government in 2004.

A quick glimpse at the NAIDOC themes and posters since 2004 shows how the destruction of ATSIC, just as it was reigniting demands for Aboriginal sovereignty, land rights and a treaty, also dampened the activist spirit of NAIDOC, at

Yorta Yorta activist William Cooper (1860-1941) petitioned the Australian government to deliver land rights and direct representation in parliament for Aboriginal people. Cooper was instrumental in organizing the 1938 Day of Mourning protest.

least at an official national level. Themes now follow trends of government policy or actions, like “Closing the Gap”, “Sorry”, and “Serving Country - Centenary and Beyond”, or focus on our responsibility to help ourselves, like “Change: The Next Step is Ours”. Themes honouring the 1972 Tent Embassy and Yirrkala Bark Petitions focused not on their continuing relevance to us today, but rather how we had benefited from the work of these past activists by being able to access Western education and employment opportunities and be recognised as the first occupants of the land.

Is the old activist spirit of Aborigines Day still necessary and relevant to us as Aboriginal people today? Some may argue it isn’t; more Aboriginal people own houses, are employed in the mainstream economy and are completing university degrees and TAFE qualifications than ever before. NAIDOC, they say, is now a time to celebrate our history, culture and achievements.

Despite these apparent advances, we do still need a NAIDOC with a strong activist political focus. Consider the most prominent Indigenous news headlines of 2015. Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion announced the launch of a work

for the dole scheme that will see 35 000 Aboriginal people across the country work 25 hours per week year round for as little as $5.62 an hour, with no penalties, superannuation or workers’ compensation.

Earlier this year, Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten held a meeting of handpicked Aboriginal delegates to continue the push to cement Parliament’s unencumbered power to make laws for Aboriginal people in the Constitution.

The 2015 NAIDOC theme was “We all stand on sacred ground: Learn, respect and celebrate”. Meanwhile, Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, approved the Shenhua Watermark Coal Mine, which will destroy thousands of hectares of Gamilaraay lands, destroy cultural heritage and sacred sites and block Aboriginal people’s access to their own lands and sites. The British Museum toured the country with stolen Aboriginal cultural artefacts, sponsored by environmental vandals BP, who decimated the Gulf of Mexico and are now drilling for oil in the Great Australian Bight despite fierce opposition from Aboriginal communities.

These things all happened just in the one week supposedly dedicated to celebrating our culture, history and achievements.

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All year round, we have people being incarcerated at astonishing levels by a racist justice system, dying at the hands of a brutal police and jail system, homeless at ten times the rate of non-indigenous people, and committing suicide at six times the Australian average. All year round we have Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their homelands and communities shutdown, funding stripped from Aboriginal organisations, and Aboriginal children removed from their families at the highest rates in history.

By all means, let’s celebrate our history, our culture, our achievements during NAIDOC week and all year round. Let’s celebrate our successes and the survival of our people.

But let’s not pretend there’s not still a lot to fight for, and let’s not allow Australia to use NAIDOC as a week of collective backslapping and sweeping injustice under the rug. In the words of William Cooper of the Victorian Aborigines’ League, at that historic conference in 1938 following the first Day of Mourning, “After struggling for so many years, we are going to continue struggling. We must continue our struggle until we win our objectives.”

Philip Winzer (Ngarabal) is passionate about decolonization and the revival and survival of languages and culture.

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Food is Medicine Stephen Thorpe, Gunnai / Gunditjmara

Over the past few months I have reinvented myself and started my own revival journey. My focus has been on decolonizing my diet by removing foods introduced from the colonizer that are not good for my body. I have also stopped smoking, drinking and using drugs. It is the beginning of my spiritual and cultural journey. I have taken active steps to learn about the foods that this continent ordinarily provides. This includes learning about native meats and plants and how to best cook with them.

My interest in native foods has developed since I began working at Charcoal Lane, a restaurant that focuses on native flavor infusion in the old Victorian Aboriginal Health Service building in Fitzroy which my nan help set up. I’ve recently started cooking with kangaroo, wallaby, emu, crocodile and native limes. I’ve created my own spiced lime jelly which is a fusion between Asian and native food – using palm sugar, chili, lemon myrtle and native limes. I then cut the jelly into cubes and serve it with fresh oysters.

Growing up we were taught how to catch yabbies’ at Lakes Entrance and Bunyarnda (Lake Tyres Mission), both located on Gunnai country. I also spent time on Gunditjmara country (the land of my parents) where our ancient eel traps are located. As a young boy I remember hearing stories about how the eel catching system worked. Eels would swim into it but could not swim out of it. They are one of the oldest agricultural systems in Australia and have been radiocarbon dated to be at least 8,000 years old. We farmed the eels and traded them with other tribes.

It is important to use our fruit, vegetables and meats in our daily diet as they come from our land – they have been used by our ancestors for thousands of years for good reason. They are packed with amazing nutrients. For example, the quandong has twice the amount of vitamin C of an orange and is about 50 times smaller. Muntri berries are high in antioxidants and is similar in size to blueberries. I was once told that for every introduced fruit and vegetable to this country, there is a native replacement that we are not using.

I am still to find out if the eel traps are usable. I want to respect my ancestors by catching eel the same way they did.

I want to go and practice that piece of my culture as part of my healing journey and learn how to cook eel’s traditionally by smoking them in the trees. I would then like to experiment with ways to reincorporate eel into our daily diet.

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All native food is medicine as it nourishes our body – when our body becomes fatigued and needs energy there is a medicine to give back that energy and it is food. It is medicinal, it keeps us alive. Process introduced foods have us addicted to their properties – they get us

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on a high (eg. sugar). When we eat these foods we feel bad. If you eat vegetables and fruit (no matter where they are from) you feel better.

It is important that I learn about, use and eat native foods because it strengthens me as an Aboriginal man. It is the food that my people ate and it makes me feel alive. I’ve really started to fall in love with the food. You always see the same vegetables and fruits in the supermarket, genetically modified and from other countries yet we’ve already got all our own native foods right here.

Unfortunately native foods are not as accessible as introduced species. People don’t know about them and therefore do not support those that grow it. People need to try the foods and realize that they should and can be easily using them. We need to teach each other and encourage our children to learn about them also. We should research how to grow native foods in our gardens, rather than introduced species. It is important that we use as many native foods as we possibly can daily – it is a way in which we can begin to heal ourselves.

Stephen Thorpe (Gunnai and Gunditjmara) is passionate about native foods and is currently a Trainee Chef at Charcoal Lane in Fitzroy, Victoria.

Braised Kangaroo Tail Stephen Thorpe

Ingredients • 2x kangaroo tails • 4lts good quality brown stock • 2x brown onions • 2x celery stalks • 2x carrots • 100g tomato paste • Small bunch of parsley stalks • Bunch of thyme • 10-15 native pepper berries (or black peppercorns) • Pepper leaf branch (stalk and leaves) • 2x bay leaves

Preparing kangaroo tails'

• 50-100ml olive oil • Salt and pepper to season

Method 1. Clean the tails under running water with your hands making sure to remove any excess fur then dry the tails with paper towels or a tea towel; 2. Cut tails into 10-15cm long pieces (it is easiest to do this with a meat cleaver); 3. Dice onions, carrots and celery into 1cm cubes; 4. In a heavy based frying pan, sear the tails in the oil on a high heat until very brown (but not burnt); 5. Place the tails in a large pot (do not wash the frying pan at this stage as it has leftover flavours from the kangaroo); 6. In the same frying pan, saute the onions, carrots and celery until brown. Then add the tomato paste and cook for another minute;

Stephen Thorpe at Charcoal Lane

7. In the large pot add the stock, sauted onions, carrots, celery. Also add the parsley stalks, thyme, pepperberries/ peppercorn, bay leaves, pepper berry branch and bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer; 8. Simmer for about 2-2.5 hours or until the kangaroo meat is falling off the bone; 9. Carefully remove the kangaroo from the stock and remove the meat from the bone and set the meat aside; 10. Return the stock to the heat without the kangaroo and reduce until the flavour and consistency has developed (this can be determined by pouring the stock from a height with a ladle - the thicker the sauce becomes, the stronger the flavour); 11. When you are happy with consistency of your sauce, add the kangaroo back to your stock to heat it and then remove from the heat. Season with salt and pepper; 12. Serve with steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes

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ISSUE 3

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Aboriginal Nationalism in Sport Bogaine Skuthorpe-Spearim and Pekeri Ruska

NRL star Greg Inglis does the goanna after scoring a try, AFL twice Brownlow medalist Adam Goodes kicks a goal and does the war dance, Aboriginal boxer Damien Hooper wore the Aboriginal flag on his shirt when he walked into the boxing ring at the Commonwealth Games in London. Cathy Freeman carried the Aboriginal flag in her victory lap at the 2000 Sydney Olympics after winning gold in the 400 meter sprint.

In 1993, Nicky Winmar lifted his shirt and pointed at his black skin after ongoing racial abuse directed by spectators. These are all acts of Aboriginal Nationalism in sport. They are acts that reflect proud people, defiant in the face of being subjugated by media and the broader public.

Aboriginal nationalism in sport is important because it is rare – and when it happens people talk, mainstream media covers it. For example, take the recent Adam Goodes saga, his action generated the debate that brought racism to the forefront of Australia’s media scene, so much so it was trending on social media. He stood up against an issue affecting Aboriginal people daily and it was because of his status in the sporting arena, people listened. He shed light on the fact that Australia is a racist country and he, amongst many other people endure it daily. He fuelled the discussion that is otherwise swept under the rug. It directed a discussion that this country needs to have and continue to have. Standing up against racism needs to be normalized not condemned.

The Haudenosaunee Women’s Lacrosse team withdrew from the International Lacrosse World Championships in Scotland

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this year as the United Kingdom would not accept their Haudenosaunee passports.

This action depicted their pride, they stood staunch in their position of their identity and said ‘if we cannot travel because of our identity we will not compete.’ It was a huge sporting opportunity but it was not worth being recognized as another nation (Canadian) just to be let into the country.

It was a representation of Indigenous Nationalism in sport.

Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted in the army of the United States in 1967 stating that he would not travel, ‘ten thousand miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end.”

Authorities reacted by stripping him of his world heavyweight title but other African-American sports star followed in his footsteps at the reign of the black power movement with the establishment of the Olympic Project for Human Rights followed by Tommie Smith and John Carlos doing the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics.

Our Aboriginal sporting stars could go one step further and boycott their sporting code or their major sponsors. Aboriginal athletes could refuse to travel to the Olympic games or other major international sporting events because their Aboriginal passport was not accepted.

What if our sports stars refused sponsorship from major corporates and B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G

mining companies who are responsible for land destruction and the removal of Aboriginal people from their homelands.

For example, we are swamped with the Recognise campaign’s ‘R’ logo providing both subliminal and perceptible messages throughout our sporting stadiums and on our television. What if a sports star or team refused to be sponsored by Recognise?

Would it hinder their careers and chances with other more ethical sponsors? This type of sponsorship should be questioned; what is their overall agenda? Is it hush money?

Aboriginal sports stars have been chosen to be the face of this campaign to imply that it is a good thing for Aboriginal people.

Let’s continue to encourage our sporting greats to be outspoken because it truly echoes pride and hope to our people when our own mob stand up in the face of a society that continues to try and destroy us.

Let’s hope that the courage portrayed by stars like Goodes can transpire to other Aboriginal sporting icons to be more outspoken, not just about racism but all issues our people face. Bringing light to the ignorance of the broader Australian population will take us one step closer to educating the masses.

Bogaine Skuthorpe-Spearim is a Gamilaraay, Kooma and Murrawarri man passionate about resisting colonial oppression and revival of his language and culture.

Pekeri Ruska is from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) and is co-editor of Black Nations Rising.

Standing up against racism needs to be normalized not condemned

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B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G

Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs that simple!

C. Jetta, Pindjarup, Nyoongar

We were alerted just a couple of days prior of the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs’ visit to our college. As an Aboriginal education representative, I would be one of the staff to meet him. I wasn’t sure what to think. Why was he coming? What would he want to know? The students who had been chosen to welcome him were nervous.

‘Don’t be nervous’ I told them. ‘These people are coming to your school and to your Country, stand tall, look them square in the eye and be proud.’ They smiled and puffed their chests out a little.

All of my past observations of politicians told me that this was not a random, good willed drop-in, but a strategic part of his campaign trail.

I wasn’t wrong. Nigel Scullion made no attempt to hide the title on the file sitting in front of him - ‘Bi-election campaign’. I’m not sure why he requested background information about our Aboriginal staff prior to his visit. He had no real interest in talking to them or hearing their perspectives.

He arrived without much ado and very few staff, and even fewer students had any idea who he was. ‘Which one is Nigel?’ they’d whisper.

He began our meeting by criticising our Aboriginal student attendance and national testing data. There it was. He was here because our school is red-flagged and making him look bad. He wasn’t interested in hearing about what we’re doing to

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address these issues or what we believe he should be doing. He was happy to lay the blame squarely on Aboriginal parents.

He spoke of how dysfunctional and difficult some of their home lives were. ‘Yet many still prefer to be at home than at school that should tell you that for many, school is an uncomfortable experience. That should raise alarm bells for you.’ I said. He nodded.

He continued, ‘we are aware of the fact that some parents are not active enough in supporting their kids to come to and stay in school, poverty factors contribute also, but that is only one side of the coin. On the flip side, our parents mostly had awful experiences at school, our grandparents were excluded altogether. Many Aboriginal people are yet to be convinced that school is an inclusive and supportive place for their children. At present our kids are trying to cope with a foot in each world.

A national and consistent approach to Aboriginal education would be a great start.

At present, the approach to Aboriginal education is tokenistic, ineffective and sends a very clear message to our Aboriginal students that their knowledge, history, languages and perspectives are not valued enough to be included in the curriculum with any rigour or consistency.’

Scullion interrupted. He said something about not playing a blame game and stated that ‘we can’t change the wheels without stopping the car, and education isn’t

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something that can just stop’. I shot back.

‘If we can manage mandatory religious studies for all students in many schools, surely an Aboriginal studies lesson isn’t out of the question?’

While he thought on this, I raised the next issue I wanted to address. ‘The media in this country also needs to be held accountable. We are 3% of the population and it is hard to get our voices heard.

We are constantly misrepresented and demonised in the mainstream media. For example, the forced community closure protests that happened all around the country... ‘’They’re still happening’ he interrupted.

‘I know, I was at the most recent one,’ I replied.

I was about to tell him that the average Australian had no idea these protests were going on because of a deliberate media boycott and preoccupation with smear campaigns - Scullion’s Vegemite grog scandal being one of the most recent. But before I could, he agreed that, yes, the media had run with the forced closures story (the exact opposite to the point I had tried to make) and then continued to tell me that this was fabrication, there was no agenda to close remote communities and we were all protesting needlessly.

The principal called time on the meeting so we could break for lunch. If I’d had time

Photo credit: Mark

to get to the food bench first, I would’ve placed a jar of Vegemite in the middle. No such luck.

I began chatting to one of the men who had accompanied Scullion on his visit.

Nigel then appeared at my table, he hadn’t grabbed any of the food made in his honour. He interrupted the conversation and started his own. I felt shame that there were several staff members waiting to speak with him and that he ignored them and only spoke to me.

‘What are your thoughts on Constitutional recognition?’ He asked. I didn’t hold back.

‘It won’t change our lives or address the many disadvantages, so what’s the point?

It means nothing to me to be included in some document, most of our people think it’s trickery and the millions of dollars and the effort being poured into this campaign could be better used to address real issues like suicide and incarceration. Instead, services to address those issues are being cut.’

He guaranteed to me that there was nothing sinister or underhanded about constitutional recognition. It was a gesture of goodwill and a preamble to future discussions about reconciliation. I replied by noting that ‘our people find that very

hard to believe considering every time Abbott opens his mouth he says something offensive and ignorant about our people - sparsely settled country? Life style choices?’

Nigel did his best to convince me that the public perception of Abbott was inaccurate, that he has been misunderstood and misrepresented. I told him that, ultimately, Abbott’s words represent total ignorance.

Before leaving, Nigel addressed the group of Aboriginal students who had catered lunch. This is what he said, amongst a few other things: ‘I never thought I’d be the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. I’ve had loads of different jobs - a fisherman, a bouncer... and then one day, I find myself one of the 19 people running this country.’

I understand that he was attempting to impart on the students that nothing is impossible, but I found it insensitive. I know some amazing Aboriginal leaders who work tirelessly for our people throughout their lives. These leaders aren’t considered when it comes to Federal political representation of our people. Yet this man, who had no prior interest, experience or desire to work with and for our people can just stumble into the role? How can that be?

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He made a few suggestions for addressing Aboriginal school attendance - none that I believed had been developed in collaboration with our people. Just more of the same: here’s some money, here’s a program, now fix it.

This experience demonstrated to me that we as Aboriginal people need to firmly assert sovereignty and take our own matters into our own hands. Until then, it will continue to be about money, numbers, election votes, band-aid solutions and failed programs that are used to justify the government’s efforts to intervene and ‘save’ us.

Scullion requested my business card before leaving and said that he was interested in hearing how I could apply his ideas on the ground in a pilot program. If he does email, I will be raising the exact concerns and thoughts that I have shared with you here. I will tell him that we as Aboriginal people should be making the decisions on the future of our young people and not have it dictated to us by some man who stumbled into his role.

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From Goodes to terra nullius: the continuing denial of the existence of Aboriginal people Jarrod Hughes, Taugurong

The controversy surrounding Adam Goodes, which had been building since he pointed to the girl who called him an ‘ape’ and which climaxed in mid-2015, led to the public airing of many popular attitudes towards Aboriginal people that tend to remain private in Australia’s modern social democracy. The Goodes moment ruptured the liberal veil and allowed us to see things as they actually are.

We saw the AFL’s well-resourced and cleverly constructed façade of inclusiveness and acceptance exploded by the old guards – Sam Newman, Dermott Brereton and Eddie McGuire amongst others – whose free flowing derision of Goodes proved to observers that, when challenged, the AFL will revert quickly to the defence of the status quo of white male hegemony or will acquiesce by failing to condemn racism and support proud Aboriginal sportsmen. It was the AFL’s acquiescence that was one of the most upsetting parts of this saga. I had wholesale accepted the AFL’s promotion of the sport as a forum for Aboriginal people to thrive and excel. I felt enraged that the AFL had sold out our mob and was re-inflicting many of the prejudices that Aboriginal people experience in the broader society: why don’t you just get over it (racism); you are being provocative by being all Aboriginal; aren’t we all the same anyway; your culture is primitive and threatening, etc.

The response to the booing of Goodes saw the public divided into two camps: the denialists and the Goodes supporters. I use

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‘denialist’ deliberately because many of the arguments made against Goodes’ conduct could only be advanced or accepted by a person who refuses to accept basic truths.

Aboriginal people throughout Australia found themselves explaining how it is racist to call Goodes an ‘ape’, no matter the occasion or the age of the perpetrator. We heard over and over again the brainless argument that, as other Aboriginal footballers are not booed, the booing of Goodes is not racially motived, even though it is undisputed that the booing of Goodes commenced the moment he took a stand against racism.

In opposition to the denialists were the Goodes supporters. Goodes was well backed by Aboriginal people and certain sections of the commentariat. Perhaps the most prominent and well-circulated defence of Goodes was delivered by Waleed Aly. Aly argued that Australians are unable to accept when minorities act outside their prescribed roles. He said that by calling out racism, performing culture during sporting events and challenging accepted ideas about Australian history as Australian of the Year, Goodes refused to act as a “supplicant” for the expectations that Australians have for Aboriginal people, or more specifically, Aboriginal sportsmen. To draw out the implications of Aly’s argument, the booing of Goodes represented the public enforcement of racial expectations. AFL crowds throughout Australia took it upon themselves to let Goodes know that he had transgressed, to punish his transgression and to prevent

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further transgressions by silencing him. The crowds succeeded in silencing Goodes in the short-term, but he is slowly making a return.

In a moment that allows us to see things as they actually are, we can gain confirmation of the things we suspect to be true but are concealed by social structures and norms, such as the mainstream prescription to political correctness regarding race. The Goodes moment led to many truths being confirmed for me, principal amongst them, the truth that at the core of the Australian psyche is a burning drive to deny Aboriginal people the right to exist.

In response to the Goodes controversy, Eddie McGuire felt compelled to contribute to the conversation. Unperturbed by universal criticism of his earlier comment linking Goodes to the promotion of the film King Kong, McGuire stated that “had we known before the game that…Goodes or the indigenous players were planning to do some sort of war cry, we could have been able to educate and understand the situation”.

Unpacking McGuire’s comment, he appears to be suggesting that Goodes’ war cry would have been more acceptable to the public if he had sought prior approval from the AFL, the media and any other interested party. Unpacking McGuire’s comment further, there is a clear implication that performances of Aboriginal culture will only be tolerated if they are previously sanctioned by the

coloniser society. McGuire’s comment has frightening parallels with the ban on the practice of culture and use of language on the missions. McGuire is assuming the role of the mission protector, asserting that Aboriginal people will only practice culture on his terms. Like the missions, under this arrangement Aboriginal people are denied agency or subjectivity and are cast as mere objects of the coloniser society.

This arrangement seeks to deny Aboriginal people the right to exist as anything more than mere objects of the coloniser society, unable to derive meaning or agency from the free expression of culture.

This drive to deny Aboriginal people the right to exist can be traced through many of the social and political developments concerning Aboriginal people from invasion to the present day. In the current debate around constitutional recognition, the conservative opposition has assembled around the argument, made prominent

by Andrew Bolt, that as all people are nominally equal, racial groups should not receive special treatment and that any special treatment is itself racist. This is a typically small-l liberal argument which, through a false appeal to racial equality, is actually denying the possibility of racial or cultural diversity. Aboriginal people are expected to conform to Australian social and cultural norms and forget that there is anything special or unique about being Aboriginal. This is an assimilationist ideology 13

(with genocidal roots) and it runs through much of the present day commentary concerning Aboriginal people.

The stolen generations policy is an overt example of the coloniser’s drive to deny Aboriginal people the right to exist through the abduction of Aboriginal children and strict adherence to race theory. The genocidal principle that underpinned the stolen generations policy – that Aboriginality can be obliterated through inter-breeding – is still firmly upheld by the coloniser society.

Aboriginal people whose complexion does not meet the coloniser’s standard of an Aboriginal person must confront this genocidal mentality and continually justify their right to exist as an Aboriginal person.

Through this process, the genocidal intent of the stolen generations policy is upheld and enforced. The most prominent recent example is again provided to us by Andrew Bolt, who made the degrading assertion in a number of articles that “fair-skinned” Aboriginal people identify for purely selfserving reasons.

The frontier wars provide yet another example of the colonisers drive to deny Aboriginal people the right to exist, this time through military conflict. The full extent of the frontier wars are becoming increasingly known and have been explored in these pages by Jidah Clark. As Clark points out, there is a silence in Australian society

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regarding these wars and a complete failure to memorialise them. As Clark states, “one of the main reasons that Australians find it difficult to acknowledge this war is because it goes to the very heart of the foundations of sovereignty and ownership of this great land”. To acknowledge these conflicts would require the coloniser society to recognise the subjectivity of Aboriginal people as sovereigns defending sacred lands. The failure to recognise the frontier wars is a perpetuation of the coloniser’s refusal to recognise the subjectivity or agency of Aboriginal people.

This all leads back to Australia’s foundation myth, terra nullius, which denied that Aboriginal people ever walked this land.

Though no longer legally operative on account of the High Court’s judgment in Mabo, the foundation myth of terra nullius continues to pervade the inner depths of the Australian psyche. Australian identity was not formed on the shores of Gallipoli but on the shores of the east coast of Australian in 1788 when it was decreed that Aboriginal people did not exist. From this point onwards, all interactions that the coloniser society has had with itself, with the land or with Aboriginal people have proceeded on the premise that Aboriginal people do not exist.

The real value of Goodes’ actions was his ability to show to the coloniser society, in a forum that they consider sacred, that Aboriginal people continue to exist and exercise agency as sovereign peoples with pride in culture, and not as mere objects of the coloniser society. When performing the war cry, Goodes embodied selfdetermination, casting off the shackles of the coloniser’s expectations and realising his identity on his own terms.

Jarrad Hughs is a Taungurong man and co-editor of Black Nations Rising 13

The False Trail of Native Title: A Cautionary Tale Njakutakarwil Marungu (Stuart Harradine), Wotjobaluk

On a warm day in December 2005, a ceremony was held on the banks of the Wimmera River near Dimboola in the South East of this great continent now commonly known as Western Victoria. This ceremony was to celebrate the signing of the Wotjobaluk Native Title Settlement, the culmination of over 10 years of grinding negotiation and the first ‘successful’ Native Title claim in the occupied territory of socalled Victoria.

The emotions of the Wotjobaluk people were running high this day. The Wotjobaluk are a people small in number and not prominent in the affairs of the broader Victorian Aboriginal community but nonetheless we had done what many thought what was impossible. After the disaster and injustice of the High Courts ‘Yorta Yorta’ decision of 2002, we the Wotjobaluk people proved that Native Title still existed in the invader state. Dressed proudly wearing Wotjobaluk flag t-shirts, we felt empowered by what seemed to be a defining and unifying process resulting in the realisation of a ‘dream’; our recognition

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by the state of Victoria as the Traditional Owners and Native Title holders over parts of our traditional country.

This was to be a new beginning, a revival of Wotjobaluk identity, a stepping stone to economic and community empowerment, a unifying outcome for all Wotjobaluk people.

I had been a great believer in Aboriginal Reconciliation and saw that Native Title was a vehicle to recognition and acceptance by the state, the Commonwealth and the white community in general. With Native Title, we the Wotjobaluk people could finally take our place in society and be proud Aboriginal Australians, moving forward together with our white brothers and sisters. However, it wasn’t as it seemed. Ten years on from that seemingly defining moment for my people, it would be fair to say that the Wotjobaluk Native Title ‘experiment’ has been a failure and a massive disappointment for the Wotjobaluk people themselves.

A few years after the establishment our Native Title Corporation, we began to see incidents of internal issues arising.

As someone who had been a part of the

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Wotjobaluk Native Title claim from almost the beginning; I witnessed first-hand the power plays, bullying, harassment, interfamily conflict and intimidation that plagued the organisation. Financial mismanagement was rife with dodgy operators coming into positions of power. Money went missing and when the alienated members approached the state to step in and sort out the corruption, they were met with silence and inaction. Now we see several deeply entrenched divisions amongst our mob and so-called ‘Full Claim Group Meetings’ hardly attract more than a handful of members due to fears of conflict.

What should have been a representative corporation looking after the interests of the people has now driven us apart.

I began to question why things had gone so badly with our mob since the settlement of our claim. Why were we fighting each other? Why were a few using their positions in the organisation to benefit themselves and cutting out the majority from any involvement? Why wasn’t the state doing something about it? Over the last 5 years I

have sought answers to those questions, taking me through a process of selfeducation and awareness about the deeper truths of our status as the original peoples of this land. My conclusions were simple yet shattering; that agreeing to the Native Title Settlement was a major mistake.

I had to learn the hard way and confront my ingrained denial. I realised that thinking we could find true justice under the invader system was naive; that the invader system isn’t interested in what we want, only how it can incorporate us into their system and legitimise itself at the same time. Native Title is not about recognising our rights, but about getting us to legitimise the invaders power to govern us and give us watered-down rights that will always be inferior to white interests. By accepting this deal, we accepted the invaders corporate governance systems which are incompatible with our traditional decisionmaking systems, ultimately causing power struggles and conflict. We accepted a deal that gave us woefully insufficient funding, jobs, resources, and guaranteed internal competition and conflict. We adopted the invader system of ‘power to the few’ and were unable to resolve grievances that had risen from the inevitable internal conflict that followed.

Ultimately, our mistake was typical of any group subjected to invasion, colonialism and multi-generational trauma – we looked to the colonisers to legitimise our existence.

We needed the invader to recognise us, like we couldn’t be whole and authentic if they didn’t call us ‘Traditional Owners’ and ‘Native Title Holders’. We pursued Native

Title as the tool for our salvation and didn’t realise it was actually an instrument of our subjugation to the invaders. We became ‘corporate blacks’ as a means of governing ourselves like white people rather than respecting and practicing our sovereignty through our traditional systems. And though I can argue against it, I fear that some would say we have sold out our sovereignty for the modern equivalent of trinkets and beads instead of keeping the flames of resistance alive for our future generations.

Criticizing the Native Title Corporation and the Native Title Agreements is not about blaming individuals in our mob. I have come to realise through experience that it’s an expected outcome of the colonisation and assimilation processes, part and parcel of brainwashing us and making us fit into the invader system which runs counter to our natural and traditional ways of life. We were set up to fail and it shows. By accepting the Native Title Settlement, we chose to have faith that the state of Victoria would do the right thing by us, empower us, resource us properly and help us achieve our aspirations.

I now see our short-term desires got in the way of what should have been a longer-term commitment to the Aboriginal resistance and staying true to our ancestors and our sovereignty. We were disadvantaged by our lack of political savvy, as we were deceived by not only the invader state but also Native Title Services Victoria (NTSV), the Native Title representative body set up to advise us.

They were more interested in taking credit for a successful Native Title outcome under

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white law rather than advising us of our inherent sovereign rights.

Despite the excuses, we have fallen into the assimilation trap and this will be hard for us to get out of. As for myself, having formerly felt great pride in our achievements, I now feel regret and sadness for being part of the push for a Native Title agreement and perhaps betraying our ancestral legacy of freedom and sovereignty. I hope to redeem myself by supporting the Aboriginal sovereignty movement and becoming part of a small but growing group of Wotjobaluk countrymen dedicated to protecting our sovereignty and rejecting the agreements.

In my view, our resistance continues.

It’s clear to me now that we will never achieve true equality and parity with nonAboriginal peoples unless our sovereignty is acknowledged, reparations for damages are given and a treaty is made that resolves our conflicting differences. We must understand that Invader legal constructs like Native Title are just false trails with pitfalls, diverting us from the ‘black track’ and our true destiny of independence and freedom. Going down those other paths may be easier and quicker but lead only to subservience to the illegitimate invader system and the loss of our rightful inheritance. So take it from one who has been there. Be true to your ancestors, stay strong, don’t be misled, and keep to the black track!

Njakutakarwil Marungu (Stuart Harradine) is a Wotjobaluk Traditional Custodian

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warrior profile Latoya Rule, Wiradjuri / Nagti Porou iwi

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1. What is your name and who is your mob?

2. How are you involved in Aboriginal resistance?

My name is Latoya Aroha Rule. My father is a Maori man from the Nagti Porou iwi of Aotearoa. My mother is a Wiradjuri woman from Sydney. Though, I have been raised in Adelaide on Kaurna land where I continue to reside.

I’m currently on the university student council as Indigenous student’s officer at Flinders University in Adelaide. This position has given me the opportunity to work with executive staff, such as the Vice Chancellor of the university, to have our sovereignty as First Nations peoples recognised. I have influenced the Aboriginal and Torres Strait flags to fly at the front of our main campus. I have also raised and acted on issues of compulsory Aboriginal curriculum that have appeared in first year topics for degrees such as Social Work.

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I have worked with different Elders in Adelaide on hosting local forums on First Nations issues and more recently hosted a national summit in Mparntwe.

The latest issue I have been working on has been resisting the Adelaide City Council dry-zones in our west and south terrace parklands. South Australia has a high rate of population mobility between the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and Adelaide city, especially for individuals who need to stay for healthcare and community who are supporting their family during treatment. Many reside in the parklands and over the past 20 or so years have been subject to ridiculously high fines and incarceration rates, racial discrimination, police brutality and suicide; simply for being homeless.

3. Why did you get involved?

To be honest, being involved in Aboriginal activism makes me feel connected to my culture and ancestors, upholding what I believe I was called to do – break the chains that oppress First Nations peoples. My father was estranged from his culture because he was taken away from his Maori mother and was adopted out to a pakeha (white) family because they wanted a black baby. My mother was isolated from her culture through her family being separated in different ways. I was brought up in the Christian church where I was indoctrinated, although since coming away from the church I have needed to decolonise my mind from much of the manipulation of such a western construct. I feel accepted and that I am serving the right purpose when I am with other First Nations peoples.

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4. Why is it important that other Aboriginal people get involved in the causes you stand for?

6. What have you learnt from your old people that you would like to share with others?

There are many different areas of injustice that need warriors to stand up against. Resisting colonialism in various ways allows us as First Nations peoples to influence the agendas of the wider societies, to create better outcomes for our communities. I strongly believe in being self-determining; we need to see ourselves as strong women and men that can not only resist, but lead. I believe we should be aiming to be the leaders of our own lives, conducting our own healing and medicinal programs, social services etc.

One of the most significant things that an Elder has told me, and something I have struggled with a little, has been, “people will love you and people will hate you, but none of it will have anything to do with you”. I think this is a quote from somewhere else, but I’d like to think she was the first to say it. I have realised that there are many people who you will think are coming to fight alongside, but in actual fact they are coming alongside you because it allows them to advance their own agenda.

Then there are those people who will come alongside you purely to ‘learn from you’, but these people just want information about you as an Aboriginal person – they don’t actually want to know anything else about you. There will also be those people that hang around you simply to voice their racist opinions – you can’t change these people’s views, I’ve tried, it’s a waste of time.

5. What do you see as the biggest issues facing Aboriginal people today?

I would say the biggest issue facing us today is the way many see us, and the way some of us see ourselves, as disenchanted and disempowered individuals.

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Why our freedom is bound in the chains of Aboriginal women Merinda Meredith, Kuinmurrburra / Dharumbal

There is something about the ‘F’ word that is confrontational, intimidating and evokes hostility. The ‘F’ word and ‘F’ concept make men and even the strongest of women recoil. Feminism isn’t something we should be afraid of. Feminism is not a dirty word.

The oppression of all is bound in the chains of oppressed Aboriginal women.

If we as Aboriginal people wish to free ourselves from the chains of oppression we must confront and begin to understand the importance of equality for Aboriginal women. We must begin to understand feminism.

Mainstream feminism has traditionally focused on gender inequality which largely ignores the issues faced by native and coloured women. Intersectional feminism focuses on how various forms of oppression interrelate and are bound together. Oppression based on gender, race, class, disability, sexuality and religion do not act independently from one another and all form part of a bigger picture of discrimination and disadvantage.

For Aboriginal women, gender based oppression cannot be separated from racism and colonialism.

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It’s often debated that the feminist movement originally derived from Indigenous culture by white women coopting and whitewashing elements of Indigenous social structures. It’s important to recognise that pre-colonial Aboriginal society was not a perfect matrilineal paradise as some describe. Aboriginal women still suffered under a system that favoured male dominance however we also had a complex system of sacred law that acknowledged the strength and wisdom of Aboriginal women. Through song, story and responsibility relating to both men’s business and women’s business, it could be seen that there were two very defined yet separate roles that held a degree of equality and importance within the tribe. Colonialism brought with it a highly patriarchal society that sought to oppress and obliterate all Aboriginal people.

This system has pushed and continues to place Aboriginal women at the very bottom of social hierarchy. The oppression of Aboriginal women was a deliberate tactic of the coloniser to aid in the attempted genocide that occurred on Aboriginal land all over the continent.

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Why is feminism important in our fight to free ourselves from oppression?

Firstly, we must understand privilege. You may have heard the terms white privilege and male privilege and both of these play a very important role in the oppression of Aboriginal women. Most people however are both simultaneously oppressed and privileged in various different degrees.

White heterosexual men sit in a position of despotism at the top of the hierarchy being the dominant oppressor. We know through male privilege and white privilege that this is the ultimate dominator of both women and Aboriginal people; however white women who are oppressed by white male privilege can also be oppressors of Aboriginal men.

Aboriginal men are oppressed by white privilege yet are can also be oppressors of Aboriginal women through male privilege.

Add in other complex social and cultural categories such as sexuality, non-binary gender, disability and religion; the scale of privilege is constantly shifting. Aboriginal women however are almost always consistently at the bottom of the hierarchy, the polar opposite of the white man. By dismantling the structures that impose the

Photo credit: Ali Bakhtiarvandi

greatest amount of brutality on the most oppressed, we begin to loosen our own shackles.

Aboriginal men can’t be afraid to challenge oppressive social structures such as colonialism and white dominance. By confronting and challenging these social structures, we begin to weaken the system.

Men must begin to acknowledge their own power; male privilege and the position this holds over women. Again, this self awareness begins to weaken the restraints.

However, the complexity of tackling systemic oppression is not simple. Men must also take action. It means challenging sexist and derogatory behaviour. It means being an ally to women, by not speaking for women but standing with women.

We don’t need to look far to see what liberated Aboriginal women can do for our movement. It was my Melbourne WAR sisters alone who brought the city of Melbourne to its knees with multiple actions that shut down the city in 2015.

I’m proud to be a part of Black Nations 19

Rising where the majority of staff are young Aboriginal women. I’m even prouder that as a magazine, our first two issues have staunch Aboriginal women on the front cover. There are many more examples of grassroots resistance all over the continent where women are leading the fight. Aunty Jenny Munro tirelessly defended The Block in Redfern and Aunty Karen Fusi along with the Sovereign Grandmothers Against Removals have tirelessly fought against the forced removals of Aboriginal children.

It’s the strong black women in my own family who I look up to; my staunch aunties who teach me my language, culture and country.

Aboriginal women have a long road ahead in the struggle. The rates of domestic violence against Aboriginal women are appalling. At only three percent of the population we comprise of almost 20 percent of domestic violence homicides.

This rate is unchangeable whether Aboriginal women have white or black partners and illustrates that this is a

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patriarchal problem and not an Aboriginal problem. Our paternalistic and racist government continues to break the sacred bond between Aboriginal mothers and children by forcibly removing our children at a rate higher than the peak of the stolen generation. We are not only fighting for the issues that mainstream white feminism fights against such as sexism, pay equality and westernised unattainable beauty standards. We are fighting for our right to sovereignty and self determination. We are fighting for our right to women’s business, our right to mother our children and land, our rightful place in our law, our right to be free Aboriginal women.

When our mothers give birth, they spill their blood for country. Our warrior women continue to give their heart and souls to this movement and these sacrifices must not go unnoticed. It’s time for our strong men to take a stand and cut the chains that bound us all. By freeing Aboriginal women from oppression, we are overthrowing colonial culture and values. By liberating Aboriginal women from oppression, we will free all Aboriginal people from oppression.

Merinda Meredith is a Union Official with the Queensland branch of United Voice and is the Printing and Distribution Manager for Black Nations Rising.

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Aboriginal morality, consciousness, responsibilities and obligations Dale Ruska, Goenpul

Aboriginal morality derives from our ancient connection to our lands.

Throughout our long occupation and enjoyment of our lands, we developed a sophisticated system of custom and law. Through these systems, we inherited responsibilities and obligations relating to ourselves and our lands. This morality provided for how we lived, what we believed, our culture, our kinship and our custodianship of our land and its resources.

This morality, with its obligations and responsibilities, was accepted and respected across our many nations.

The evidence of this is clear when we consider our kinship, ceremonial practices, languages and creation stories.

The extent and strength of this morality is apparent when we consider the inherited ownership of lands and all aspects of custom and culture that related to that land. We developed sophisticated biological management systems that ensured our ancient occupation was sustainable and balanced with the environment. No man ever intruded upon another man’s land without permission of the owners of that land. No man spoke on behalf of another’s land, he could only speak on behalf of the land he was connected to through ancestral blood.

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This moral responsibility was accepted and respected without question and if it was abused or disregarded, the consequence of the law, which was common across all nations, involved severe punishment.

In recent times, which represent a small fraction of our ancient history, everything about who and what we are has been disrupted. For the first time in our history, as a result of colonial invasion and unauthorised exploitation of our lands, we were confronted with immorality.

We were confronted with the unauthorised invasion and occupation of our ancient lands, which was immediately followed by the abuse of our ancient principles of obligation and responsibility to the lands, its resources, and to our customs and culture. We were forced to accept, for the first time, the abuse of our dignity. We were forced to observe and were victims of colonial brutality and acts of genocide. This led to our resistance to colonialism and our proud warriors fighting across our nations in the frontier wars. Though the power of the colonisers overwhelmed our people. The evidence of this time is abundant when you visit the hidden archives of most state museums and observe the many weapons and shields that are riddled with bullet holes.

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The first assertion of colonial law was the doctrine of terra nullius, which enabled laws condoning the expansion of colonialism to follow. One of the very first laws written following invasion was the Mineral Fossicking Act of the early 1800s which was identified in Josephine Flood’s book, “Archaeology of the Dreamtime”.

This Act stated that any fossickers looking for land to lease had the right to disperse and exterminate groups of Aboriginal people with firearms. This law facilitated the first 50-70 years of colonial attitude and occupation.

Colonial ‘compassion’ first occurred in 1897 when the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act was introduced. The purpose of this law was to guarantee our people’s protection on the provision that we accepted being administered under the Act, which included living on missions and abiding by a foreign morality.

This legislation forbid us from being all that we ever knew. It forced us to disregard ancient ways and adopt new language, diets, religious beliefs and social organisation.

This time was followed by the development of new policies, including assimilation, which was based on the Darwinian theory of specie superiority which provided that, over time, our people and our ways could be assimilated out of existence.

This time also involved continued unlawful displacement and massacres. We maintained our resistance throughout this period by secretly retaining and transferring customary values across generations. We also made efforts through social lobbying and letter campaigning to improve our treatment at the hands of government.

In 1967, the question of Aboriginal citizenship was addressed at Referendum. For many, 1967 meant a lot more than citizenship. It represented a new beginning which involved us having freedom of thought and opinion. This era involved growing resistance, which placed pressure on the coloniser to recognise our special rights. It started with the 1972 Tent Embassy in Canberra which led to the establishment of land rights legislation, which was followed by Mabo and the abolition of the doctrine of terra nullius.

Throughout the last 50 years, our people have been subject to high rates of incarceration, deaths in custody, increased youth harming and suicide, increased preventable diseases, ongoing child removal, assimilation policies, relocation and dispersal of communities and drug and alcohol abuse. These issues force our people to take to the streets in mass protests to express our dissatisfaction.

All too often, our discontent falls upon deaf colonial ears. To many of us, it is apparent that many of our people are inheriting cultural trauma. This is evident through the alarming statistics but yet it is not given adequate address.

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When we seek recognition of our Aboriginality, we are forced to do so within the confines of the colonial system. We are required to establish organisations and cooperatives to lodge claims for our land under legislation such as native title – processes that are totally controlled and administered through colonial law.

The history of colonisation forced many of our people to become submissive and socially compliant. It led to the creation of a barrier to our self-expression as Aboriginal people, known as the ‘moral fence’.

We are now faced with new questions and challenges. We must decide whether we are Aboriginal Australians, and if so, we must accept that we are a small minority within the Australian nation. If we take this path, we may be accepting that the cost of colonialism incurred by our ancestors and our lands are simply collateral damage of colonial conquest.

Do we believe that the worth of our ancestors and our lands is more than collateral damage and all that continues to occur to us as a result of colonial control is genocidal and constitutes a complete disregard of our ancient rights.

Through our desire for freedom and justice, we must mobilise on mass. We must mobilise on mass in response to the many injustices continually caused against our people, such as the Australian government providing its authority to remove entire communities from their ancient homelands. If our national identity has any moral priority for us, are we able to give proper, just and truthful meaning of our reason to our organization through mass mobilization?

signatories, bound by our morality. We have to utilize our mobilization by way of protest reacting to give proper meaning to our organized reason. If we do not, Australian law and its parliaments will continue to do what they have always historically done by responding to our national mobilized actions with their organized solutions and interpretations of our reasons.

We have mobilized many times, all for meaningful reasons, we have been organized and united for millenniums.

Bound by the responsibilities and obligations of our national morality, only we can take back full control of our national morality, unity and organization.

As Australia’s Aboriginals or Original peoples we should consider amongst ourselves our desires, aims, and objectives for justice and freedom as first peoples. We can reestablish our ancient laws and customs through a treaty amongst ourselves, the many nations of the original people.

For us to move forward as a people, we must dismantle the moral fence. In dismantling the fence, we will be able to consider equality, truth and righteousness in their true meaning as a free people.

It will enable us to retain and respect our Aboriginal morality, consciousness, responsibilities and obligations to our places and to each other.

Dale Ruska is a Geonpul man from Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island).

We could do this by having all those who consciously understand our morality, making a united declaration of identity, documenting our reason and First Nations positions, supported by formal

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Constitutional recognition will change nothing Constitutional recognition is based on white supremacy and will change nothing for Aboriginal people Michael Mansell, Pakana

It looks like the people intended to get a benefit from constitutional recognition could finally get to have a say. Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten agreed to fund Aboriginal community meetings around the country to be held later this year and only time will tell if Turnbull will follow through. This is risky business for Australia’s political leadership. It is on the cards the Aboriginal meetings could reject recognition in favour of more substantive change. Abbott and Shorten have nailed their flags to the recognition mast, and community rejection of recognition might be seen as poor judgement by the two leaders.

Until now, the public have only been asked if they supported recognition. Naturally, mild mannered people will say yes. But if they or Aboriginal meetings were asked to rank recognition alongside other possibilities such as uniform national land rights, or a national body to handle the $25 billion indigenous budget, or designated seats in the national parliament, or a treaty, would the support for recognition remain or dramatically drop away? At the heart of these community forums will be two questions: how can recognition confer a real benefit to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and is it better than the other options listed above?

When I recently asked Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda, a devoted supporter of recognition, who is also on a decent annual salary of $374 000, how recognition could really benefit Aboriginal people he could only say he thought it would produce benefits, though he was unable to give an example.

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Now Tasmania has set up its own enquiry into recognition of Aborigines in the Tasmanian constitution and faces the same problem – where is the benefit? How much more meaningless recognition will we be asked to swallow before we demand real benefits?

The Australian parliament passed the Act of Recognition in 2013. Nothing came of that. The States of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have all given ‘recognition’ to Aborigines in their constitutions. Not a single benefit flowed from it. Western Australia is also thinking of following suit, despite former Liberal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Chairman, Fred Chaney making the case against it on the grounds that it is a distraction from the real issues.

I cannot but wonder why Aboriginal people need to be ‘recognised’ at all. We have always been here, and have never really needed to be recognised by anyone to establish that historical fact. The inference is that unless Aboriginal people are somehow proclaimed by white people, we are not legitimate. This has a tinge of white supremacy about it. What is it about some Aboriginal people, many of whom have done well from white Australia, who feel insecure and need white acknowledgement all the time?

Real changes are the best way to recognise Aborigines. Aborigines had been hunted down in the bush of Lutruwita (Tasmania) and the remnants of thousands of people only survived by moving to the remote Bass Strait islands such as Truwana (Cape Barren). Even then, whites kept up

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the attacks through the press. On 30th May 1883, Aboriginal elders John Smith, John Maynard, Thomas Mansell, George Everett, Henry Beeton and Phillip Thomas were forced to defend their people’s existence on Cape Barren from continual attacks. In a letter to the Examiner, the elders pointed out: “We are under no obligation to the Government. Whatever land they have reserved for our use is a token of their honesty, inasmuch as it has been given in lieu of that grand island (Tasmania) which they took from our ancestors.”

Even today, the best interests of Aborigines are not determined by Aborigines but by white officials. The Federal and State Minister for Aboriginal Affairs is always a white person, never elected by Aborigines.

Yet he or she has authority to make decisions on behalf of Aborigines, and they call it democracy. This is after 225 years! If Aborigines were not allowed to decide their future in 1803 when Lutruwita was invaded, nor in 1883 and still not in 2015, when will the time be right?

Whites who slaughtered Aboriginal men, women and children have bridges (Batman Bridge) or streets (Goldie St, Patterson St) named in their honour. There are no monuments to honour the Aboriginal fallen in defence of their lands and people.

In one form or another, mainland Aborigines have legal interests to around 30% of Australia. In Lutruwita, Aborigines have less than 1%. Aborigines in Victoria are no better off. Blacks in NSW have lots of money but very little land. South Australia has land rights in the north but little in the south.

There is no self-determination. In June this year, Federal Attorney General George Brandis transferred responsibility for delivering Aboriginal legal aid in Lutruwita to the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS), which willingly accepted. The wishes of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community were completely ignored by Brandis and the small cabal at VALS. Aboriginal heritage around the country is effectively owned and managed by government departments. In Lutruwita, apart from former education Labor Minister Paula Wriedt making the courageous decision to build a school on Truwana/ Cape Barren, Aboriginal education remains stagnant. There is no decent fund to enable Aborigines to collectively participate in the economy.

Yet Tasmania took small but significant steps with land rights in 1995-2003. And Tasmania remains the only State to have compensated the victims of the stolen generations (in 2006). Clearly these steps, while positive and welcome, are not enough. Premier Hodgman is now talking of resetting the relationship with Aboriginal people while remaining determined to reopen four wheel tracks on the west coast that will destroy a hundred kilometres of cultural sites.

An economic base could be established in the States by copying the 1983 NSW precedent of setting aside land taxes for Aboriginal people. That money could be reinvested by the Aboriginal community.

State governments would be effectively banking the money until it is regenerated within the local economy.

designated seats in parliament treaty land rights

Apart from token gestures, there is no value in simply recognising Aborigines in any constitution. The Australian constitution is the source of Australian democracy. It distributes power between the national and State parliaments, the executive and the courts, and guarantees elections. It is the white people’s political platform for their nation. In many respects, Aboriginal calls for recognition in the constitution show how far we have gone backwards as a movement.

There is hardly any political consciousness raising in the black movement. The few who grovel to government seem to lack any understanding of how their behaviour affects broader Aboriginal interests such as self-determination and sovereignty. Would the Palestinians want to be recognised in the Israeli constitution?

Apart from originally excluding Aboriginal people from being counted, the national constitution does not grant Aboriginal people a particular place in Australian democracy. There is no national Aboriginal body practising self-determination. There are no designated parliamentary seats.

There’s not even a treaty.

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Aborigines are left to compete as a minority whose interests are subordinate to those of the current 23 million Australians. The makeup of parliaments should reflect the people they govern. There has never been an Aboriginal representative in the Australian Parliament in the sense of being put there by their own people. Under the weight of numbers, it is impossible for Aborigines to elect one of their own.

Recognition will not alter this situation.

Nor will symbolic words that merely acknowledge well-known facts such as ‘Aborigines were here first’.

A proposal that confers a benefit on Aboriginal people will always be viewed favourably by Aboriginal people. Those who support recognition are well-meaning but our collective energies are better spent on doing things that make a difference.

Michael Mansell (Pakana) is a longtime activist, lawyer and Secretary of the Aboriginal Provisional Government.

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‘We Have A Voice’ – a story of courage.

Tony Birch, Aboriginal, Barbadian, and Irish descent

The violent ‘intervention’ in the Northern Territory by the Howard government in 2007, and the more recent attempts to shut down Aboriginal communities in Western Australia have been reported as ‘new initiatives’, both in the media and by spokespeople supporting the recent attempts of genocide. These are not new initiatives at all. Such violence has a long history, as does the resistance and protests of Aboriginal people fighting for land and home. As with other government policies attempting to exterminate Aboriginal communities, precedents to current action exist in south-eastern Australia, particularly in Victoria, where many racist policies against Aboriginal people have been tested, before moving north.

The Framingham Aboriginal community, located on Girai wurrung land near the boundary with the Gunditjmara, is one of many culturally strong and politically active communities fighting against repeated government interventions and closures for over 150 years. The original 3,500 acres of the Framlingham reserve was gazetted in 1861, in an area of the western district witness to the widespread murder and

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attempted dispossession of Aboriginal people beginning with the arrival of the Henty brothers from Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) in 1804. The Hentys, who have statues honouring their ‘legacy’ dotted across Aboriginal country, were directly responsible for the murder of Aboriginal people, the theft of land, and the resulting imprisonment of people on the Framlingham reserves. Indicative of the strength of the community, they were able, within the space of a decade, to turn a site of incarceration and violence into a place of cultural revitalisation, a situation that created panic amongst colonial authorities desperate to fulfill the murderous fantasy of ‘the passing of the Aborigine’.

Framlingham remained officially open until 1889, when the Board for the Protection of Aborigines (BPA) legislated to close it with support of white farmers who wanted access to richer segments of land. The community had 3,000 acres taken from them, left with only 500 acres on which to survive. Despite the difficulties they faced, they did more than survive, becoming a politically active voice for Aboriginal people across the state. In response to this political

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agitation in 1916 the Victorian government moved to steal the remaining 500 acres of land, and through its ‘concentration’ policy forced all Aboriginal people in the state to move to Lake Tyers Reserve in eastern Victoria, where it was about to establish an even more punitive system of control of movement. The 1916 regulation declared that ‘all quadroons, octoroons, and halfcastes’ would leave the reserves, as they were about to be magically re-classified as ‘white citizens’. Aboriginal people would be banished from home and family in an attempt to destroy the cultural and political fabric of communities.

In 1918 the BPA visited Framlingham, explaining that the reserve was to be closed and residents would be ‘dispersed’ (banished) within the wider white community. The Framlingham mob immediately lodged written protests which were dismissed ‘on the grounds of sentimentality, long association, and by reason of the fact that their relatives were buried there.’ This brutal response was indicative of a colonial society refusing to accept the legal and cultural rights of Aboriginal people. Holding no fear of the

BPA, the community continued to politically organise and agitate. In a deliberate act of vengeance, in 1926 the BPA began a new episode of bureaucratic violence, when it attempted to force people from Framlingham by leasing the remaining 500 acres of the reserve to white farmers.

People on the reserve wrote to the BPA expressing their right to the land. In October 1926, John Egan, wrote:

Dear Sir We have just heard that our land is to be taken from us...I thought that I would write to you and ask if it is true...I would rather do without my rations, clothes etc. than have my little bit of land taken from me.

(In the second letter, written a week later, he added):

I am just writing to you asking permission to retain sufficient land for two horses and two cows, (for my sister and myself)...you know yourself that in a few more years I will cease to be trouble to you. The years I’ve spent in the hospital are telling their own tale. I am past my 40th year … before I die I want this land to be our own Helen Whyslaski similarly reminded the government that Aboriginal people had been encouraged to settle at Framlingham with the promise that ‘the land was given to us older ones until we die...could you not wait until we are all dead and gone’.

A similar point was expressed by Jessie Alberts, who had been farming eighty acres of land for twenty years. It was about to be stolen and she wasn’t about to let it happen:

My piece of land containing eighty acres was given to me by the Board over twenty years ago for my own use, and I was told by the Board that it was to be mine as long as I lived.

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The fight for Land Rights continued into the 1930s. In December 1933, The Star newspaper, writing about Framlingham, highlighted the ‘appalling squalor’ the community suffered as a result of the abuses of the BPA. Neglect included an almost complete lack of sanitation and running water, derelict housing conditions, and unfit or absent education and health facilities. This was a deliberate attempt of the Victorian government to destroy the viability of the community by stealth; a practice we witness across Australia today, whereby Aboriginal communities are overtly neglected in an attempt to justify their destruction.

During the 1930s only eight people at Framlingham came under the official ‘care’ of the BPA. Others, described in the racist language of ‘half and quarter-bloods’ were not legally entitled to live on the reserve, although many had been born there, their families lived there, and were the traditional owners of the land. The fact that only eight of more than 100 people were under the control of government was an outcome of the culturally destructive Aborigines Act of 1886, a legally sanctioned attempt at genocide; legislation that was supposed to ‘finish the job’ of earlier forms of violence, including murder and rape, land theft and the control and imprisonment practices of the reserves and mission system.

As the severe economic conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the situation at Framlingham became more precarious. In 1934, when the BPA was in the process of attempting to lease the remaining land, the state government actively sought to disenfranchise the community by yet again relying on racist categories of identity. One member of the government warned the parliament that if ‘half-castes’ were granted recognition as Aboriginal people ‘we should soon have, not only quadroons and octoroons, but other people on our hands, who were onesixteenth aborigines, and so on.’

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The BPA made a final and futile attempt to break up the community soon after.

On the orders of the Chief Secretary’s Office a TRESPASS NOTICE was posted at the entrance to the reserve, in reality an attempt to prohibit the majority of the residents from entering their own land and home. The BPA was blunt as to the purpose of the order:

The more these people can be separated and mixed with the white members of the community as individuals, the better it will ultimately be for themselves and their children, rather than that they should congregate and breed their own poor type…the Local Guardian has evidently been neglectful in allowing settlement to proceed to the present extent.

Chief Secretary’s Department order, 1934.

Like previous attempts to destroy the Framlingham community, the 1934 order failed. The tenacity of Aboriginal people throughout Australia is evident in this story. The Framlingham experience has been replicated time and time again. It is an ongoing battle. On one side we have state and federal governments stuck in a colonial mindset, dependent on forms of violence as a sole strategy. On the other side, we have Aboriginal nations refusing to cede sovereignty to an invader. The battles take place on the streets, in the courts, and often around kitchen tables, where Aboriginal people, most often women, take up pen and paper, raised fists, and a mighty big voice. It is vital that we listen to, respect and be inspired to action of our own by this collective voice.

Tony Birch is a Bruce McGuiness Research Fellow at Victoria University.

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The Desecration of my Sacred Lands Paul Spearim, Gamillaraay

Coal Seam Gas, or what it is commonly known as fracking, is evil at its most daring.

My once sacred and traditional Gamillaraay land is being destroyed on a daily basis.

This unique and once pristine landscape followed ancient traditional dhunbarran (pathways) that criss-crossed our sacred lands. It flourished with ancient scar trees.

The desecration of my sacred land has meant we can no longer see our scarred trees that gave us messages. They told us not to venture any closer, as there may be a burial ground, a woman’s birthing ground or more importantly a buurra ground close by. These ancient and sacred trees have been cut down, never to be seen again.

They will never be able to warn the next generation of Gamilaraay what is awaiting them when they cross their sacred country.

Within our nation we followed strict cultural protocols that enabled us to protect the trees, the land, the rivers, the mountains, the animals and more importantly, our people. This ensured that we always maintained a spiritual connection to Gamilu

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Bid Wii (creation). Now all we see is total destruction of my sacred lands and there is little left but a great big hole.

With the high number of mining approvals being made by the state and federal governments, including a number of approvals involving corrupt dealings between ministers and mining companies, our sacred lands are likely to be completely covered by mines within the next 20 to 30 years. The government and the mining companies are not taking into account the psychological, physical and emotional damage this is doing to our people. Their only concern is the amount of wealth and profit they can create from the destruction of our land. When all resources have been removed from one mine, they simply move to another part of Gamilaraay, until that is destroyed.

My family and my Gamilaraay people once lived an idealistic lifestyle made up of tradition and respect for one’s ability to believe and belong in a system that accepted them as a member of a family, a

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clan and a nation. Now my land is covered with poisons of the most dangerous magnitude, poisons killing my land, killing my animals and killing my Gamilaraay people.

My family have always followed their traditional practices and protocols, which have been past down to them since Gamilu Bidi Wii (creation). My once pristine land is now almost barren, with poisons leaching into every thought of my Gii and Dhuwi (heart & soul). I know in my heart that my father, mother, my grandparents and ancestors will be shedding tears of sorrow for what is happening to there beautiful, sacred land.

The Gamilaraay Nation like many other sacred lands is unique but my amazing land was once made up of four very rich sustainable eco systems, towards the east is the great dividing ranges with its temperate rainforest and once rich gold and precious gems laden lands. In the west is the semi-arid, red soiled plains, now made famous (sic) for the cattle and sheep

Photo credit: Paul Spearim grazing industry. To the north is the black soiled plains now known as the food bowl of Australia and in the south is the flood plains which is now known as the capital of the cotton industry.

Since this illegal occupation of my once striving landscape began, the famous Guwaydir River, which once stretched from one side of Gamilaraay to the other is almost dry. The Namoi River, which is the important sacred marker for Gamilu Bidi Wii (big and little light) is now slowing to a very small trickle. The once crystal clear waters of the Barwon the resting place of the underground Seven Rivers is now like a stream and the very large raging Condomine that once proudly flowed into the Wiradjuri Nation is disappearing.

These were once major waterways and now they are almost dying, because of the introduction of sheep and cattle, the farming industry, cotton, coal, coal seam gas and mining.

But with the resilience of my people, we will ensure that we never forget about Gamilu Bidi Wii because it is strong and our

once beautiful environment will always be sustainable forever.

I know that there are many of my Gamilaraay people today who are feeling the same sorrow as my ancestors. We have had enough of our sacred lands being destroyed and we are calling for all proud Gamilaraay people to stand up and join us in our struggle against the mining industry.

What I and other Gamilaraay people have found in our struggle to protect our sacred lands is not that we are simply fighting against the state and federal governments and the mining companies, but we are also fighting against our own mob.

Hopefully one day all us Gamilaraay people will be able to live in a land that is not destroyed.

NGIYANINGU MARAN YALIWUNGA NGARA-LI, BALU-GI NGIYANINGU BUWARR GAMILARAAY DHAWUN/ WALAAY! (Our ancestors are always watching get out of our sacred Gamilaraay lands!)

ISSUE 3

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Next global day of action against the forced closure of Aboriginal communities: Friday 27 November 2015

Photo credit: Marcus Salvagno

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