[FlyinGenie]

FYI here's a letter a friend of mine got published in the Herald and the Fin review after the budget for Indig stuff was proposed recently by the Libs:

Today a child born in Bangladesh can still expect to live longer than an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander. Focus on the life expectancy improvements when all Australians live longer ignores the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders still die 17 years earlier than other Australians.

Prudent leadership on Indigenous Health means knowing the seriousness of the problems and treating them as such. Yesterday’s budget made small inroads by giving additional funding of $120 million over four years. However the AMA estimates that there is currently a $460 million a year short fall in Aboriginal primary health care alone. This is urgently needed if we are to going to start to close the gap in Aboriginal life expectancy.

Research from the USA, New Zealand and Canada shows that the morality rates of Indigenous peoples can be reduced by 30 per cent in tens years or less with sufficient political will as well as determined effort to fund what is needed. Australia is a wealthy nation running a record trade surplus. It is time we spent a little of that good fortune on improving the health and wellbeing of some of Australia’s most vulnerable people.

[Alive...]

inshaAllah!!

Was Salaam

[Alive...]

hey you heard that they gonna ban alcohol in all indigenous areas. I wonder how will this turn out.
not all will agree that's for sure but I also heard that the elders are saying yes please come in and do something, so inshaAllah this does some good.

Was Salaam

[Maisarah]

Genie perhaps you could direct me to some resources (books etc) where I could learn more about indigenous issues? JazakumAllah khayr

[*Slightly Deranged*]

^I second that!

Oh and Murisa it is my opinion that alcohol should be banned EVERYWHERE. As if that's likely to happen in our let's-try-to-stay-drunk-forever Society.

[Alive...]

I agree but they actually did that ages ago (in USA I think...) but it didnt work out.

Was Salaam

[FlyinGenie]

depends on what aspect of Indigenous Affairs and/or Culture you would like to know about?

[FlyinGenie]

this is a really good response to the current issue:

Below is the text of an article by Jennifer Martiniello which will be

forwarded to major newspapers in Australia. Please pass on to your

networks. Jennifer Martiniello is a writer and academic of Arrernte,

Chinese and Anglo descent. She is a former Deputy Chair of the

Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Arts Board of the Australia

Council for the Arts, and a current member of the Advisory Board of the

Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the ANU.





Howard's new Tampa children overboard are our Aboriginal children.



The Little Children are Sacred report does not advocate physically and

psychologically invasive examinations of Aboriginal children, which

could only be carried out anally and vaginally. It does not recommend

scrapping the permit system to enter Aboriginal lands, nor does it

recommend taking over Aboriginal 'towns' by enforced leases. These

latter two points in the Howard scheme hide the true reason for the

Federal Government's use of the latest report for blatant political

opportunism.



It has been an openly stated agenda that Howard wants to move Aboriginal

people off their lands, and has made recent attempts to buy off

Aboriginal people by offering them millions for agreeing to lease their

lands to the Federal Government, e.g. Tiwi Islands and Tangentyere in

Alice Springs. There was also the statement by the Federal Government

that it could not continue (?!) to provide essential services to remote

communities, which raised an uproar of responses in the press. The focus

on the sexual abuse of children is guaranteed to evoke the most emotive

responses, and therefore command attention, just like the manipulation

of the Tampa situation. But while the attention of the media and the

public is being emotionally coerced, what is being sneaked in under the

covers?



Two issues specifically - mining companies have applied for more

exploration permits in the Northern Territory, the Jabiluka uranium

mining operations at Kakadu have already hit the media because of the

mining company's applications to the Government to significantly expand

its operations, including establishing new mines at Coronation

Government has already mooted that nuclear waste should be dumped in the

Northern Territory, on Aboriginal lands. Aboriginal traditional owners

are absolutely opposed to this. We have a long history of deaths and

illness from radiation, from the atomic tests at Woomera in the 1950s to

the current high incidences of carcinomas in the community at Kakadu

near the Jabiluka site. The main obstacle to the Federal Government's

desired expansion of mining operations in the Northern Territory and

nuclear waste dumping is, of course, the Aboriginal people who have

occupancy of, and rights under the common law to, their traditional

lands.



Following the stages of the Howard Government's usual modus operandi

(defund, blame, eliminate), defunding of critical programs for remote

Aboriginal community projects began in July 2004, with coerced changes

to funding contracts, and monies for critically needed youth and health

programs in remote areas being the first dollars to go. Take Mutitjulu

for example, which was notoriously profiled by the ABC's Nightline

program. I say notorious because one of Senator Mal Brough's personal

staffers was the so-called ex-youth worker interviewed on that program,

and the content of that interview was laden with myths and mistruths.

The staffer in question failed to appear when summoned before a Senate

inquiry to explain and the Senator's office is yet to issue a statement.

When the community lodged a formal protest to Government, it was raided

and their computers seized. But the program did show the effects of the

Howard Government defunding of essential programs on that community, in

particular the youth centre and health centre. The people at Mutitjulu

also just happen to be the traditional owners of Uluru, one of this

country's most lucrative tourist attractions. The Howard Government

would not like us to ask who benefits by the people of Mutitjulu being

forced off their community. Under the amendments to Native Title made by

the Howard Government, once Aboriginal people have left their

traditional lands, forcibly or otherwise, their rights under the common

law that every other Australian enjoys over their land are significantly

impaired.



Progressive defunding of Aboriginal art centres has also begun, with a

range of community art centres not having their funding renewed by DCITA

in July 2005 and 2006 in the Northern Territory, from communities in

Arnhemland to mid and southern Territory communities. The art production

facilitated by those Aboriginal art centres are the only means through

which members of those communities can actually earn a living, as

opposed to being on welfare. But then, dependent people are easier to

control by means of that dependency. The Howard Government's failed

Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) have also been the catalyst for

further blame shifting and progressive defunding, take Wadeye for

example.



Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into dysfunction

and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political engineering, the

systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda. It is no accident

that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the urgency of the Little

Children are Sacred report's 97 recommendations was trotted out so very

quickly, and addresses so very few of those recommendations. It is sheer

political opportunism to advance an already in motion agenda, and to

score points in an election year. After all, The Little Children are

Sacred report is not the first of

such reports, nor are its findings and recommendations new. The Federal

Government has had the 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002 reports gathering

dust and deliberate inaction on its shelves. Perhaps Mr Howard has been

saving them up for a rainy election year? And of course Mr Howard's

scheme targets only Aboriginal communities, despite the fact that the

findings specifically state that non- Aboriginal men, that is, white

men, are a significant proportion of the offenders, who are

black-marketeering in petrol and alcohol to gain access to Aboriginal

children. What measures is the Howard Government going to take about

non-Aboriginal sex offenders, pornographers, substance traffickers and

the like? Nothing according to the measures announced, but then, they're

not Aboriginal and they don't live on the Aboriginal communities where

their victims live.



So who are the real victims here, the silenced victims of John Howard's

scheme? Aboriginal children, of course, who will be subject to

physically and psychologically invasive medical examinations,

irrespective of their home and family circumstances, and who will deal

with the mental and emotional fall-out from that? Aboriginal men, too,

who become the silenced scapegoats, painted by default by John Howard as

all being drunken, child-raping monsters. Perhaps the fact that almost

every picture shown of Aboriginal men in the media these days shows them

drunk, with a slab, cask or bottle under their arms leads Mr Howard to

expect that one to pass unchallenged, irrespective of the fact that

statistics show that only 15% of Aboriginal people drink alcohol,

socially or otherwise, compared to around 87% of non-Aboriginal

Australians. The greater majority of Aboriginal men are good, decent

people. Perhaps the media would like to rethink its portrayals of

Aboriginal men? How about some photos of the other alcoholics, you know,

the white ones. There's more of them.And what of our communities? The

Howard Government also hasn't mentioned that the majority of Aboriginal

communities in the Northern Territory are already dry communities,

decided and enforced by those communities. But then that would spoil the

picture Mr Howard wants to paint of our Aboriginal communities. Other

large communities, such as Daly River, have controlled the situation by

only having alcohol available from the community's club and enforce a

strict four can limit. Also forgotten in the current politically

opportunistic furore is the fact that Aboriginal communities around

Tennant Creek and Katherine have been lobbying Governments and town

councils for decades to restrict the sale of alcohol on Thursdays, when

Aboriginal community people come to town for supplies. So far their

pleas have been rejected. Nothing in Mr Howard's plan to facilitate

that, either. Or about the control of alcohol when those people, once

forced off the communities into the towns, bring their problems with

them, child abuse or alcoholism and all the rest. of course that would

make access to Aboriginal children a lot easier for white offenders,

they won't have to go so far to find a victim.



One last word on focus of attention. In the famous Redfern Address, the

then Prime Minister, Paul Keating asked perhaps the most important

question for all Australians to consider. He said 'We failed to ask the

most basic of questions. We failed to ask - What if this were done to

us?' What if this were done to us - to Mr and Mrs Average Australian, to

our schools, youth centres, health centres, access to medical care,

communities, homes, children, grandchildren? After all, current national

health reports from a wide range of health organisations name sexual

abuse of non-Indigenous Australian children as a crisis area in need of

urgent attention. And the numbers of victims are higher. National

reports into mainstream domestic violence, alcohol and substance abuse

also call for urgent action, again the issues are at crisis level, and

the numbers of victims and abusers are far higher than in the Little

Children are Sacred report. None of the recommendations in all of those

hundreds of national health reports recommend compulsory sexual health

tests for every Australian child under sixteen. Not one of them

recommends that a viable solution is closing down youth and health

programs, in fact they all advocate that more are needed. None recommend

that the victims' or the offenders' communities and homes should be

surrendered to the Federal Government and put under compulsory lease

agreements, and none advocate processes which would lead to either the

victims or the abusers losing their rights under common law to their

property as measure to control or remedy the occurrence of abuse. Would

the Howard Government even dare to contemplate such as that? I think

not. It would be un-Australian, and the Government it would expect

immediate legal repercussions on the grounds of impairment of human

rights, extinguishment of rights under common law, discrimination, and a

raft of other constitutional issues. Besides, Mr and Mrs Average

Australian don't, for the most part, live on top of uranium and mineral

deposits or future nuclear waste dumps.



But seriously, the most critical question for all Australians to ask

themselves in the lead up to this year's Federal Election is just that -

What if it were done to us? With full acknowledgment of what has already

been done to workers, trade unions, student unions, public primary,

secondary and tertiary education, elderly care, palliative care,

medicare, crisis health care, nurses, teachers, multicultural affairs,

migrant groups, women, child care, small businesses and artsworkers,

among the many, through the exercise of policies of social engineering

and fear, your answer at the polling booth may just determine whether it

will be done to you, or continue to be done to you. As reported in the

Sydney Morning Herald 25th June, the Howard Government last week used

the military to seize control of 60 Aboriginal communities in the

Northern Territory, which are now under military occupation. This is not

Israel and Palestine. The Northern Territory is not Gaza or the West

Bank. This is Australia - but is it the Australia you thought you lived

in? Walk in our shoes, Aboriginal Australia's, and ask yourselves, what

would it be like to have this done to us? And then, walk with us.



Jennifer Martiniello

[Alive...]

SubhanaAllah!
For how long is this gonna go for?
i keep thinking about what that guy said in Thinking Ahead/we could get a group of people to join a political party...then we could literaly take over. Like imagine a group of people who are in for the good of Australians not for the gold and popularity!!
Id be all up for it but i have no idea about politics and whatever you're supposed to do etc.
Anyone else??

It's so sad where we're heading/may Allah protect us

Was Salaam