There is a battle going on in this country, one the majority would rather ignore. It is a battle for equality between anything to marks a person as not conforming…
My mind has been drawn to another of Rilke’s poems – Dreaming: This my labour: crowned by desire to wander the paths of days. Then sturdied, strong, send rootlet streamers…
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought of golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would…
Racial classification today is commonplace; people routinely catalogue each other as members of this or that race, and seem to assume that everyone can be thus classified Bernard Boxill, "Introduction"…
Following on from the discussion of belonging and what the Australian flag represents to many Indigenous Australians, this post gives consideration to the current debate about acknowledgement of Australia's Aborigines…
On the request of a friend, this post offers some insights as to why someone would wish to burn the Australian flag as an act of protest. The events in…
Today’s news article that Dr. Charlie Teo addressed racism as part of his speech to the Australia Day Council has raised hackles within the local community. Andrew Bolt and Steve…
A fire that devours fire; a fire that burns in things dry and moist; a fire that glows amid snow and ice; a fire that is like a crouching lion;…
What is self-determination? The notion of self-determination as a universal principle, whether viewed through a political, moral, or legal lens, has been and continues to be imprecise and in dire…
There’s been significant debate in the past year about the introduction of ethics classes in public schools in New South Wales. The St James Ethics Centre was tasked with developing…
“Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians are part of our community we’re not nameless, faceless people who live on the margins of society. We deserve the respect and the…
The National Tertiary Education Union ("NTEU") has released the findings from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander member survey ‘I’m Not Racist But … Report on Cultural Respect, Racial Discrimination,…
Dear Creative_Canberran, Please forgive my tardiness in responding to your racist, defamatory and provocative insights into my research and writing abilities. No, your infantile rant on RiotAct has not escaped…
A few months back I penned an article about the plight of Marlon Noble, an Indigenous intellectually disabled man consigned to the correctional justice system for a crime of dubious…
While discussing the competing merits of Australia’s subtle forms of genocide it employs against its indigenous people versus Indonesia’s more direct and brutal methods it employs in West Papua with…
Recurrent themes in Australian politics since the events of 9/11 and the beginning of the euphemistically though erroneously named ‘war on terror’ have been national security, border protection and exporting…
One of my pet issues on Blak and Black is what befell the former Commissioner for ACT Revenue (“the Commissioner”), a Wiradjuri and member of the Stolen Generation(s), which made…
An interesting comparison drawn from the Bolt judgement. Yesterday marked a line in the sand in Australian journalism. It’s just one line, but a significant one, with the finding of…
“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris” (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.) I have long loved John Donne’s Meditation XVII; it remains pause for…
Callahan and colleagues (2002)[i] suggested that organizations must focus on three trust-building tactics – accountability, reliance, and aspiration – to cultivate helpful internal whistleblowing procedures. These principles provide people and…