“Share our pain, taste our spirituality”

Elders

Very little is known outside Australia about the hideous treatment of its Aboriginal people in the remote Northern Territory by restrictions placed on them in what is called the “Intervention” here.

 In fact very little is known about it even by the vast majority of Australians – out of sight, out of mind – and few care. 

 On February the 7th a group calling themselves “Concerned Australians”, invited eight prominent Elders from the Northern Territory and Western Australia to the Melbourne Law School to hear from them the truth on how the Intervention is impacting.
I have broadcast condensed versions of what those senior Aboriginal leaders of their communities had to say in a weekly programme I do on Noosa Community Radio. The original posting is here. 

Rage, compassion, sadness and shame that this is happening in my country kept a lump in my throat almost throughout the broadcast.  

You can hear it by clicking here. It will take you about an hour.

 

Last December an international seminar about Indigenous issues was held in Adelaide which heard powerful expressions of how Australian Aborigines are being mistreated. Those speeches can be accessed by clicking here.

 

I recommend the Aboriginal activism site "Treaty Republic".

 

I also recommend as a background source the bi-weekly newspaper, Koori Mail, which has just published its 500th edition in 20 years and is having its entire output, except always the latest four months, put on the web. Extracts of its latest coverage are here.