Welcome to First Nations Telegraph

www.firstnationstelegraph.com

First Nations People empowering each other

It gives me immense satisfaction to be able to provide a free daily online First Nations news coverage and other stories of interest for our mob and our supporters.

Conceptually this is a project that I often thought about but due to other commitments it remained merely a notion that hadn’t been fulfilled.

With the assistance of close friends who saw the merit in my concept I was able to work ideas through with them from sketches on pieces of paper, scanned and emailed throughout the nation to collaboratively come up with this finished product. As an information technology dinosaur from the Baby Boomer era dealing with savvy IT youngsters I even managed to create a Skype account

and interact with them through this amazing new medium.

We have the same needs and aspirations as our mainstream counterparts and seek and demand instant information. The age of Facebook and Twitter not only introduced us to instantaneous messaging as a form of communication to individuals and groups of people but it inadvertently created a mindset of wanting things on-the-spot – not tomorrow or in a couple of days time – but now.

From a survey amongst family and friends of all ages I found that they crave fast and reliable information on a range of issues, but most notably they wanted to gain indepth and wide ranging Indigenous specific news.

I kept hearing the same questions like: “I wonder if that person in the news is Indigenous?”

“He certainly looks Indigenous but how do I find out for sure?”

“How many of our mob is on the run-on team for footy?”

“What’s the latest on native title?”

And so it goes on. It never ceases to amaze me that our mob have a propensity to shift their level of support – except for the diehard fans – to a sporting team contingent on how many of our mob are playing in that team. Teams like Hawthorne, Essendon, Fremantle in the AFL and Souths, Titans, Cowboys, and the Broncos in the NRL have a large Indigenous following. Even biased New South Wales rugby

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www.firstnationstelegraph.com

Sean Choolburra gave tips to FNT Editor Stephen Hagan on the rules of touch football during the recent ‘Close the Gap’ day in Toowoomba. Image: Rhonda Hagan

league supporters have confided in me, in closeted fashion, that they cheer for Queensland during the interstate series because they have more Indigenous players in their team than New South Wales.

That might all change this year with decorated Indigenous international, Laurie Daley being appointed the NSW coach to try and stop the all conquering Queenslanders winning an eighth successive series since 2006. Well at least give Nathan Merrit the sky blue colours to keep Greg Bird company.

I came up with the name of First Nations Telegraph after talking extensively over the years about the correct or most acceptable reference our mob wishes to make when talking about us all as a collective.

With an evolving term for our mob used predominantly by ‘others’ with varying degrees of offence Blacks, Natives, Aborigines, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Indigenous, to an acceptance in recent years of First Nations, I locked in the title of First Nations as the general descriptor of the title.

I talked to my family and friends and we played with News, Page 2

Chronicle, Journal, Narrative and a few other random words that we thought might work in with the title until Telegraph gained a general consensus. Comments of “Yeah, Blackfella Telegraph” seemed to resonate with those I talked to as a way of our mob communicating far and wide with each other.

With paid on-line subscriptions being the order of the day for black and white media businesses in search of increasing revenue I thought our mob deserve better and have resolved that the First Nations Telegraph will be free.

I suspect there are more iPhones, iPads, iMacs, iPods and myriad other small devices than there are First Nations people in our communities and it makes perfect sense that they deserve to have their insatiable appetite for information satisfied without the worry of a financial impost. Hence our news will be daily and free.

To make this business viable the money to pay for administrative and associated web costs will come from advertising. The more advertisers who come on board the greater the range of services on offer will come

into play. Those wishing to advertise can send an email to admin@ firstnationstelegraph to obtain rates.

This site has been created to provide all sections of our community to feel their stories are important and for them to feel valued. I encourage all First Nations people to send in stories that are of interest to them specifically or their community broadly and we will find room to share them with our national readership.

All you need to do is send in a story and a high-resolution image or good quality video and we’ll run it.

Whether you’re a First Nations Elder, blue-collar or white-collar worker, entrepreneur, unemployed, academic, primary, secondary or tertiary student or a stay at home parent, this free daily news service is yours. If you’re married into the family, a friend or curious First Nations supporter then this site is also yours to enjoy and learn from.

Now that you’ve clicked on to the site, welcome and please enjoy your first edition.

Tell a friend and let the word spread of your First Nations Telegraph.