By Diet Simon
The Northern Territory Intervention is breaching Indigenous human rights, especially the rights of children, a recent international conference in Adelaide has heard.
Amy Cleland, a lecturer at the University of South Australia’s David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research, challenged many government claims of widespread sexual abuse of children in the Northern Territory.
The 12 April Tribal Voice aired Amy’s presentation, which you can hear in three parts.
The program also previewed local Aboriginal woman, Samantha Martin’s film series about bush tucker, previewed the four-hour celebration of local Indigenous culture Booin Gari, aired an interview with Pomona Indigenous painter, Jandamarra Cadd and spoke to a campaigner against nuclear dumping at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory.
Statistics disprove sexual abuse claims
Amy maintains that while the claims of rampant child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities were used as the prime justification for the Intervention, statistics refute it.
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Amy says child welfare authorities are ignoring Indigenous children who are not having their basic needs of food and shelter met because the authorities seem to view that situation as normal.
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Listing Australian breaches of United Nations conventions it has signed up to, Amy argues that Intervention measures have denied Indigenous people the rights, resources or adequate opportunities to protect children and to build upon strengths of family, kinship and community.
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We might all need bush tucker some day!
Tinbeerwah-based West Australian Aboriginal woman, Samantha Martin and her partner, Michael Butler, have produced a series of films about bush tucker. The couple have been commissioned by the National Indigenous Television to add a few more episodes so they’ll soon be on walkabout to distant places to do that. Before they go, they’ve premiered what they’ve already got at four screenings in the Tinbeerwah Hall on the 16th and 17th of April. Previewing that presentation, Samantha told me how important bush tucker is to her people and how important it might become to all of us some day.
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Pomona painter Jandamarra Cadd competed for the Archibald Prize
Pomona based artist Jandamarra Cadd competed for Australia’s oldest and best-known visual arts award, the Archibald Prize for portraiture, this year. (The 50-thousand dollar prize went to NSW artist Ben Quilty with his painting of esteemed artist Margaret Olley.) Jandamarra entered a portrait of Indigenous activist, Bob Randall, a former Indigenous Person of the Year.
Tribal voice replayed the interview he did with Sherry Corcoran
At age seven, Randall was removed from his family in the vicinity of Uluru and taken to Alice Springs. His song, “My Brown Skin Baby They Take Him Away” is sometimes described as an “anthem” for the Stolen Generations. Here he is playing it, as presented on the Internet.
Pilbarra follow-up and anti-coal song
On the 5 April Tribal Voice we yarned with Michael Woodley, the
Chief Executive Officer of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, in the Pilbarra, Western Australia, where the Fortescue Metals Group is trying to rip up lots more sacred Aboriginal land to mine iron ore. A splinter group of the Yindjibarndi want to go along with the plans, but the majority oppose them. The majority have published a video they’ve called “FMG’s Great Native Title Swindle” which they describe as a record of a supposed ‘native title’ meeting staged by the iron ore miner. They say it shows how FMG, its agents, a lawyer and an opportunist splinter faction tried to destroy the unity of the Yindjibarndi people and give open slather to FMG for its Solomon Hub iron ore project. The video is posted at http://yindjibarndi.org.au/yindjibarndi/.
While on the subject of unscrupulous mining, here’s a song about it – mainly coal mining – by a trained environmental engineer who says he spends the better part of a year teaching Aboriginal musicians modern recording techniques, which put him in touch with environmental problems. John Gordon with “Australia, Whore of the World”.
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Preparing for anti-nuclear demo in Tennant Creek
“Draconian” and “sordid” were federal Labor’s pre-election words for the Howard government’s radioactive waste management legislation, which it promised to repeal. Labor has done a backflip, legislating practically a carbon copy, the centrepiece of which is to dump the waste at Muckaty Station in the Top End. A majority of the Yapa Yapa traditional owners oppose the plan. They have filed a case in the Federal Court, have been lobbying pollies in Canberra and are preparing for a big community rally in Tennant Creek on the 7th and 8th of May. The Beyond Nuclear Initiative is one of the groups supporting the opponents and their project officer, Lauren Mellor, talked to me from Alice Springs.
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You’re welcome to email Tribal Voice at tribalvoice@noosacommunityradio.org”>tribalvoice@noosacommunityradio.org
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