Drew Grant and the Organisasi Papua Merdeka
Firstly I want to dispel any illusions that my heading might have created about Mr Grant being in any way connected to the Organisasi Papua Merdeka. The connection between the…
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June 12, 2011
Neo-Colonialism in the Torres Strait
An interesting advertorial appeared in last Friday's The National in Papua New Guinea. This advertorial appears to be a copy of a letter written by Mr Niwia Sawabarri, Chairman of…
June 10, 2011
Reconciliation week: a joke played by ‘white’ Australians on Indigenous Australians and the international community!
Racial discrimination against Indigenous Australians is as alive and well in Australia today as it ever was. In fact, under the lost years of opportunity known to history as the…
May 29, 2011
Derision, lies and the death of OUR DEMOCRACY
I lived in Australia for a year and was astounded at the level of casual racism in all walks of Australian life. The term 'wog' is used by many people…
May 15, 2011
Who owns history, who owns the truth?
In an opinion piece published in the Age newspaper, Yorta Yorta man Paul Briggs (2006) angrily rejected a proposal by Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough that Aboriginal culture be…
April 27, 2011
Accountability / Corporate profit / Corporate responsibility / Corruption / Culture / Discrimination/Racism / Equality of opportunity / Human Rights / Propaganda / Respect / Rule of Law / Shared humanity / Yindjibarndi
Is Native Title worth the paper it’s written on?
At the request of one of the people mentioned in this post it has been taken down. We will review this situation and keep you informed of any progress as…
April 10, 2011
Superfluous People
For today’s post I’m borrowing a theme from Turgenev, specifically from The Diary of a Superfluous Man. As readers of Turgenev will know, much of his fiction is associated with…
April 1, 2011
The life of a culture depends on its transmission across generations
Following is the second installment of David Harrison’s story from member of the ‘new’ stolen generation to disaffected adult to fully fledged social activist. Over to David breaking the connection…
March 20, 2011
The `Stolen Generations’ and Cultural Genocide
Mr David Harrison is a member of the ‘new’ stolen generation and a former colleague from Canberra. I asked David a while ago if he would write a piece about…
March 16, 2011
Shades of hypocrisy
Some observations on the realities of being and Aborigine in 21stcentury Australia by an observer who isn’t. One of my piano teachers was the sole child of Polish Holocaust survivors.…
January 22, 2011
William Westbrooke Burton
Introduction In an interview with Sydney radio personality John laws in October 1996, then Prime Minister John Howard observed that “… the emphasis should not be on past wrongs but…
November 13, 2010
The times they are a-changin’ … or are they?
I’m going to start this post by quoting from an inspiring speech delivered by an Aboriginal woman, Christine Fejo-King, at the launch of the book “This is What We said”…
October 4, 2010
The subtleties of genocide
Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin were at best clumsy amateurs when it came to genocide. If a political group wants to rid itself of a troublesome ethnic minority,…
September 26, 2010
The here and now of racism in Australia
A recurrent theme in Australia’s history has been how to deal with the perennial ‘problem’ of the Aboriginal population. Assimilation, as policy for much of the twentieth century and continuing…
September 12, 2010
Negated rights
This post by Kim at Frog Ponds Rock demonstrates how the almighty dollar is being over-ridden by the West Australian Government. It's not long. Go read, click on the link…
September 11, 2010
A Day In The Life Of An Aborigine
PROLOGUE Before we can truly understand another person, we must walk a mile in their moccasins. Before we can walk in another person’s moccasins, we must first take off our…
September 10, 2010