The Palm Island Community Store – self determination and economic development or more government bullshit?

               

Palm Island background from Kalkadoon.org

Palm Island background from Senator Andrew Bartlett

 The Palm Island store is currently owned by the Queensland Government.  It charges inflated prices to subsidise the transport of goods to other Aboriginal communities in Queensland.    The government has recently announced that the store is to be privatised, and there are two competitors for the tender.  One is  the Palm Island Community Store Aboriginal Corporation (PICSAC) and the other is a gaggle of bureacrats and mainly non-Palm Islanders supported by the state government.

Please sign the open letter to the Qld. government in the following link to show your support for the Palm Island Community Store Aboriginal Corporation’s bid to manage the Palm Island store.

Please  distribute the link through your networks.

 https://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/an-open-letter-to-the-queensland-government-in-support-of-palm-island-community-control-of-the-palm-island-community-store/

Fascism and disability in Queensland – The Guardianship and Administration Act.

See also – Picket – Expose the Qld. Office of the Adult Guardian. Stop neglect and cover-up.
 

In Queensland, any one of us can have our rights of freedom of movement and association taken off us for a period of 6 months at a tribunal hearing where we or our representative are not present. There is no capacity to appeal or object to this and not even the Attorney General can demand information about this process.

If we want to complain about this, the only people to complain to, by legislation, are the very people who have done it.

The totalitarian institutions that have this power are the Office of the Adult Guardian and the Guardianship and Administration Tribunal.

Still laughing at “THE DISABLED”

The previous post looks at some of the theoretical issues surrounding the criticism of Michael Noonan’s film project “Unlikely Travellors”.

The following short clip is from Noonan’s work.  This is entitled “Unlikely Skipper”

This clip made me smile! 

 It is clearly the persons disability that is the focus of the humour – he is having difficulty with his task and gets frustrated.

I think it is groovy.

Laughing at “THE DISABLED” – power, perception and prejudice.

Background

A recent controversy at the Queensland University of Technology has has resulted in severe punitive action being taken  against two academics, Gary MacLennan and John Hookham who, in the name of speaking up for “the disabled”, publically criticised a Phd. Student, Michael Noonan and his Phd thesis “Laughing at the disabled (later renamed “laughing with the disabled”) for demeaning “the disabled”. The student is exploring the notions of “laughing at” and “laughing with” the disabled and is making a comedic film featuring two  men with intellectual disabilities.

Wow, You tube and prime ministers. My, how times have changed!

Paul Keating’s Redfern statement 10/12/92 

This post is not yet another pointless comment about technology changing and politicians’ adaption to it. This YouTube video of Paul Keating’s famous Redfern Statement on December 10 1992 shows how much indigenous policy and understanding of history has changed. Sure there was much howling of disapproval in some sectors about this statement, but the point is a prime minister was able to say it, it was a perspective that had finally and rightfully found its way into the mainstream discussion of our history and national identity.

But in the short 11 years of the Howard government Australia has forgotten this perspective. It has been marginalised, vilified and simply dismissed as a black armband view of history. The great reforms that arose at the same time as Keating’s consciousness such as ATSIC, Native Title and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody were all whittled away until nothing was left but the sound of the whittling knife.

Will Australia invade Poland before the federal election?

  

                                                       

I stole the above election posters from the Broken Left Leg.

The following is an article I wrote for the Dead Roo .  I have reproduced it here for no other reason than as an excuse to publish the posters.

Jackboots in Paradise – Police at Doomadgee

This  video on You-tube “The kidnapping of Gregory Brenton”  is of an incident at the Doomadgee Aboriginal community in North Queensland. It indicates a clear lack of respect by police for Aboriginal residents of the community. As the video shows the police just marched into a private home and grabbed someone, not bothering to state their reasons until after a scuffle had broken out. Connected to the police’s obvious disrespect for those they are “serving” is their casual disrespect for proper protocols and procedures such as informing someone why they are being arrested before they are arrested.As Doomadgee is not in Queensland this incident has nothing to do with the recent federal government police and military interventions into Aboriginal communities. It is an indication of the day-to-day, business-as-usual situation of policing Queensland’s Aboriginal communities. No matter what fine rhetoric is employed by Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, John Howard or Mal Brough this incident shows how ridiculous it is to expect Aboriginal people to turn to the police for help in situations such as child abuse or any other sensitive matter. Whatever the indigenous policy at a state or federal level it will certainly fail when the grass roots of the public service, especially the police administer the law and social programs with such an attitude of disrespect as shown by the police in this video.

Four people other than the man arrested in the video have been charged as a result of this incident showing how such poor relationships between police and Aboriginal people is a major and direct contributing factor to the over representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system.

More information about the Doomadgee incident on the National Indigenous Radio Service news site.

A dog is a man’s (and a woman’s) best friend

 I am expanding further into the bloggoshere and am now writing for “The Dead Roo”  http://www.deadroo.com/

This is something I wrote for the Roo……..

The ABC presently has a news story “Dingoes touted as wildlife’s saviour”  http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/12/1976539.htm

a quote from the article…….

“Dingoes should be reintroduced into large tracts of Australian sheep grazing country to control feral animals that would otherwise threaten native fauna, a wildlife expert says.

Professor Chris Dickman, of the Institute of Wildlife Research at the University of Sydney, also says it may be time to consider pulling down the dingo fence that was built in the 1880s to keep dingoes from livestock in south-east Australia.

National day of Action for Aboriginal Justice 14 July 2007

               

 I will try and get details of other places and include them on this post.   If you know of other events on July 14 please post the details in the comments section. 

Brisbane 

14 Jul 2007 – 11:00am

 11am Queens Park (Cnr George & Elizabeth Sts)                                                          Ph Sam 0401 227 443.

Black Friday – NAIDOC activities 13 Jul 2007

Family fun day, 9am-5pm. Musgrave Park, South Brisbane.

Evening event, Elders Dance with performances from Archie Roach & Ruby Hunter, and Musgrave Murris. 7pm Souths Leagues Club, West End. $10/5.

Melbourne

14 Jul 2007 – 12:30am                                                                                                     City Square,
cnr Swanston & Collins Sts,
City

For more information:
David Dryden: 0419-662-812
Cheryl Kaulfuss: 0401-806-331
Kanga Menzies: 0429-860-006
ISJA – Melb: 9388-0062

Sydney

14 July  10:00am, the Block (next to Redfern Station), Redfern

Canberra

14 July 12:30pm, Garema Place, Civic
Contact Tanya on 0402 555 007 or Kim on 0408 249 760

Perth

14 Jul 2007 – 1:00pm    Wesley Church Corner, William St. Perth Ph Chris 92189608

Adelaide

 Fri 13 July NAIDOC march
10:30am, Tarndanyangga (Victoria Square) to Elder Park
Contact Janine Haynes on 8367 0783 or jhaynes [at] caesa.org

Doing Battle with the Devil 2: denial, ignorance and the psychology of racism

There is currently a discussion thread on the “Online Opinion forum” called “Entitled to sympathy but not an apology”  http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6079

This article contains insights suchs as

“The Dreamtime also exerted a powerful inhibition to experimentation.”

“By 1788, Indigenous Australians and Europeans had the same intellectual potential but their brains had some very different neural networking.”
“As this continent’s occupants were tribal, a tribe moved over a loosely defined range of land. In stark contrast, the colonists had a strong concept of an individual’s title to a measured allotment of land.”

“While acknowledging the inevitability of colonisation, the activists should also acknowledge that the Aborigines were fortunate that it was 18th century England which did the colonising. They would have been enslaved and worked to death if it had been 16th century Spain.”

Doing battle with the devil – what? Has he gone crazy and turned Christian or something?

DANGER – The devil lurks amongst us trying to convince us of our own illusions.

Ommmmmmmmmm 

I may have gone crazy but I have not turned Christian.   I am just enjoying the license to be idiosyncratic which is the privilege of a blogger.   If you read beyond the post titles on the following 3 bible studies published recently on Paradigm Oz, you will notice a respect for the ancient stories of the bible but a disdain for the Christian church and its ideology since they were created by the Roman empire a few hundred years after Jesus.

Sunday Sermon – Jesus in the wilderness

If you are not a christian or a bible student then the  link at the end of this post “Led by the Spirit into the wilderness” is probably not for you.  It is by U.S. theologian Ched Myers, reflecting on his time spent with Aboriginal christians in North East Victoria and the bible story of Jesus’ sojourn into the wilderness.  It is very long and boring and assumes of the reader a respect and basic knowledge of the bible.   You wont go to hell if you don’t have these things but you will probably struggle reading it.   But some may find it valuable.

The history of the christian church since the emporer Constantine has been one and the same with global imperialism.  Before Constantine, the radical indigenous Palastinians of the Jesus movement were killed or imprisoned by the Roman empire for continuing to practice their culture and religion.   After Constantine it was illegal not to be a christian and you could be imprisoned or killed for that.   However the new theology of the Roman empire and today’s bible have nothing to do with the spirit, ancestors, law and theology of the Hebrew peoples of the bible.

Pig City and “the good old days” – it’s a Brisbane thing!

                                                                     Me and Wayne Bennett, the coach of the Brisbane Broncos (on the left) in the good old days.

There has been a bit of discussion of the good old days in Brisbane on a couple of my favorite blogs, so I thought I’d better have my say on the matter too. The upcoming Pig City concert has got a lot of people remeniscing.

What’s the plan? – I mean, really, what is it?

Photo from ABC online

also from ABC

* POLICE SUPPORT INDIGENOUS PERMIT STATUS QUO  http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/07/1972552.htm

“Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough is pushing ahead with his plan to abolish permits needed to enter remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.”

“Now the Territory’s Police Association is expressing concern, saying the permits help police officers in the bush with their efforts to keep alcohol and drugs out of communities that are supposed to be dry.”

Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

Shock and Awe 1897 style – “The Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the sale of Opium Act”.

“A bill to make provision for the better protection and care of the Aboriginal and Half–caste inhabitants of the colony and to make more effectual provisions for restricting the sale and distribution of opium”

link to the act (PDF)

  http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/qld5_doc_1897.pdf

This is the Queensland law used to incarcerate Aboriginal people in concentration camps or send to white homes and farms as as slave labourers – all for their own good?