Guest post – International Womens Day 2008 by Fiona Noble

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY MARCH 8, 2008

To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn…
There Is A Season, Turn, Turn, Turn…
There Is A Time For Peace, Turn, Turn, Turn.

My name is Fiona Noble. I do Treaty under the Sacred Treaty Circles of Oodgeroo of the Tribe, Nunuccal, I am a mother of four children, two of which have non-Indigenous fathers and two of which have an Indigenous father.

Oodgeroo advocated “Don’t hate, educate”, and she maintained that the only healing that could come about in this country was through Treaty. Her family continue to do her law in the face of ongoing genocidal practices.

I would like to begin here with a poem Oodgeroo Nunuccal (Kath Walker) wrote for her son Denis, and which I would like to read for all my children, but especially to my son, Djindu, whom I hope will grow to be a fine warrior for peace, as are and have been his fathers.

Son of Mine (To Denis)
 Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal, Custodian of the land Minjerriba. 

My son, your troubled eyes search mine,
Puzzled and hurt by colour line.
Your black skin soft as velvet shine;
What can I tell you, son of mine?
I could tell you of heartbreak, hatred blind,
I could tell of crimes that shame mankind,
Of brutal wrong and deeds malign,
Of rape and murder, son of mine;
But I’ll tell instead of brave and fine
When lives of black and white entwine,
And men in brotherhood combine –
This would I tell you, son of mine.

I am writing this letter because I am deeply disturbed with where women are at in this country, not only with the continuing difficulties all women world wide experience but more importantly with the role of the western mind set white women especially continue to uphold, continue to be in denial about, and which is essentially the root of the problems western women would consider to be universal to all women.

The society we see around us, the matrix in which we exist and often feel oppressed by, that which stems back to the Roman Empire, is based on a culture of man-made law as opposed to natural /God’s law, greed, self engrandisment, false idols, violence, and a lack of respect and understanding for spirit and country.

I am writing today to urge non-Indigenous women in this country to get real about who they are in this country, to be responsible for what has happened and what is continuing to happen. I urge all non-indigenous women who want to stop the Northern Territory Intervention, who want to see the social and economic conditions of Indigenous people improve, I urge you, to stop seeing your selves as saviours – you aren’t.

You are in fact the ones who need saving. Non-Indigenous people in this country are ‘rubbish people’ – no law, no dreaming. The only way this can be rectified is to acknowledge Aboriginal sovereignty, and to do Treaty, and I mean ‘do’ Treaty, not wait for it to come and get dropped in your lap. “Faith without action is blasphemy”!

I would like to express to you briefly my own experiences. I grew up on military bases around Australia and when I became an adult, I chose to put all my energy into ‘fighting for peace’ but as yet I have been unsuccessful in tearing down the military industrial complex. Then through my peace activities I became involved with women’s rights and issues. I worked in women’s refuges for many years, did anti-military actions with Women for Survival, helped set up Women Behind Bars ( Bris.) etc, etc .

The problem was, unfortunately I mistook feminism for women’s business which I have only in recent years come to fully appreciate. Through my activities with the peace and women’s movements I also became acutely aware of the prison industry. My reason for being then became to ‘raze the prisons’ to the ground – another unsuccessful mission I set for myself.

After many years of feeling like I was hitting my head against a brick wall, where nothing seemed to have changed and in fact, where things had even gotten worse – in my ego state – I became disillusioned. There didn’t seem to be any sisterhood in the sisterhood, the anarchists, with whom I ran with, either went turn- cote or became manic depressives, etc. etc. The point is – what I had been doing, was exactly that – hitting my head against a brick wall and then wondering why it hurt. We can all have ‘issues’ dear to us, things we want to change, but they will remain just that -‘ issues’- until we address the root problem, and that is our lack of spirit and connectedness to country.

Once you do acknowledge who’s land you are on, once you acknowledge you know nothing about this country, once you bow down, chuck away everything you think you know and realise that most of what you think you know is utter crap, then you can begin to learn.

I have heard comments from white fella’s who say they know about spirit and country because they can ‘intuit’ it, they can go into someone else’s country sit under a tree or whatever and ‘intuit’ Baiame and the rainbow serpent moving – just like that! We are all spirit and we all seek spirit but it doesn’t mean we know it, own it, control it. One woman said to me about such individuals – People like that are like leaves blowing in the wind, blowing around and around, eventually blowing right away. She said she’d rather be connected to the tree.

In 1998 through my prison activities, I met the father of my two youngest children. He was stolen from his Pitjanjatjara family in S.A. when he was three and grew up in institutions. I was on a huge learning curve. He used to say to me “Chuck away my political ism-schisms” or, similarly, as my other husband says “You have to come to this like a child”. And so I am passing on to you what I see is essential for non-indigenous people to do before they can effect any real change – whether it be for the environment, the military, domestic violence, whatever. We need to get the proper authorities and disciplines right firstly, with the restoration of elders in council – blood lines back to territory. We truly need to seek truth and spiritual oneness.

Australia has the highest youth suicide rate in the world, and that’s white fella’s. “Why is this so?” you might ask.The lack of spirit, respect, the ongoing lies and thievery, and the belief in white superiority, which everybody seems to want to deny, is taking its effect. You can’t commit genocide, and expect no consequences.

My family is currently in a state of total chaos at the moment because of the factors I have just mentioned. The two fathers of my non- Indigenous children, in their arrogance and ignorance, are committing genocide on my family as we speak.

Knowing full well the failure of the white police and judicial systems to address anything, knowing full well that police kill blackfellas in jail – they have decided to use the police and the state and my two daughters to ‘divide and conquer’ once again. They may say they are against the invasion of the Northern Territory but fail to see that their own actions give testimony to such genocidal practices. What they are doing is as the rest of white Australia is doing – pointing the finger at blackfella’s to divert attention away from their own insidious behaviour. They like the rest of white Australia don’t seem to want peace.

They do not seek healing but ego gratification. They as white, wealthy, academics see them selves as superior to me and my family because they are white and they think they are men, and they think they know better. Like the Government is doing – they say sorry, and kick you in the guts again. And it’s not good enough.

The military invasion of the N.T. is in no ones interest except white Autsralia. I didn’t see activists running to the N.T. to stop the invasion. I saw people run to Shoalwater Bay for the military exercises – everywhere but the N.T.

. I was in Canberra for the convergence to ‘stop the N.T. Intervention . People from the N.T. weren’t there to hear “sorry, now off you go back home”. They want it stopped. This intervention is extending into other states. Whitefellas are now starting to experience some of the tactics of the oppressive regime. As James Baldwin said “if they come for me at night, they’ll be coming for you in the morning”.

So finally, I would just like to reiterate the need for non-Indigenous women to stop focusing on how right they are, to stop blaming everyone else for their problems, to stop being so self righteous and judgemental.

Put your right to be an individual aside for five minutes, and start listening to the Indigenous women and men in the communities.

There are those who do things for mammon and ego and there are those who do things for spirit. Who are you? There are those who will judge others and accuse others. Ask yourself, what are their motivations and what are your own?

Please prioritise in your lives redressing the ongoing genocide. Support the move for Sovereignty; support a Treaty process; support international condemnation of this Australian govt. and the culture of genocide.

If you are interested in doing Treaty and supporting the move toward Sovereignty, you can obtain further information by contacting me on 0402541548

email – moongalba1@yahoo.com.au.

Or you can support the Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra, which is desperately seeking support to drive Sovereignty, Treaty, and “Stop the Intervention”.

Peace, prosperity and healing,

Fiona Noble (Sacred Treaty Circles of Oodgeroo, Custodian of the Land Minjerribah)

Useful Readings….

Oodgeroo’s works

Germaine Greer – White Fella Jump Up,

Henry Reynolds – Law of the Land

Reflections on indigenous issues by a non-indigenous person for the consideration of non-indigenous people.

This is a post I have written for the blog “Public Polity” which is Run by Sam Clifford who is an active member of the Queensland Greens.  http://publicpolity.wordpress.com/   I will be writing regularly for Public Polity. 

 Firstly a note on vocabulary.  When I use the word “white” I am speaking of culture and worldview, I am not talking about skin colour.  White is a psychological, sociological and legal structure which dark skinned people can also be agents of, in fact this is the premise of our immigration policy and citizenship test.

 “Aboriginal” is not a matter of skin colour but of bloodline – a matter of family and that particular family’s connection to particular country.  There were no Aboriginal or Indian or native people in Australia before Captain Cook. There was just families, communities and nations connected to this land.   On this continent today there does indeed exist a colonial and an “Aboriginal” society. The Late Oodgeroo Noonucal coined the term “non-Aboriginal” to turn the colonial perspective around and  define migrant experience by its difference to sovereign Aboriginal Australian reality rather than define Aboriginality by its difference to “normal” colonial society.

The psychological, sociological and legal structure inherent in Aboriginal families and the Australian landscape is not exclusive of non-Aboriginal people.  It is in fact white Australia’s refusal to relate to Aboriginal Australia within the frameworks of Aboriginal society that has caused all the problems.

The history of invasion, genocide and colonisation is not just an Aboriginal story.  Aboriginal people have been the victims of this history but it is predominantly a history of what white people and governments have done.  The smallpox, massacres and poisonings, the missions and reserves, the slave labour, the stolen wages and the stolen generation are all part of mainstream Australia’s history every bit as much as Gallipoli, the Eureka stockade or Donald bloody Bradman.

It is important to understand the history to explain why Aboriginal Australia today is like it is.  But the history of war and colonisation also explains why white Australia today is like it is, how the forces of history built the new nation and our contemporary culture and structures.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Rudd’s apology and acknowledgement that we got it wrong in the past is overshadowed by his government’s indigenous policy and programs, or at least those that we have had a glimpse of so far.  They are a continuance of 20^th century Aboriginal policy paradigms and I am sad to say so are the Greens indigenous policy frameworks.

The radical departure from colonial bandaids that began with Whitlam and continued through the Fraser, Hawke and Keating years and is embodied in the U.N. declaration on indigenous rights appears to have been forgotten in the 21^stcentury policy framework of the ALP and the Greens.

Notions such as land rights and self determination have been sidelined as secondary considerations to the urgent priority of “Closing the Gap”, an inherently assimilationist campaign/policy that identifies the cause of Aboriginal problems to be inherent in Aboriginal society itself – ill health, not in the white society including government policy. 

  “Close the Gap” applies a bandaid to the symptoms that white society sees (usually on TV) but fails in any way to address the structural factors that cause and perpetuate illness and disadvantage.

The causal factors of Aboriginal suffering today  are inherent in white colonial society and are invisible to white colonial society, it is the background normality.

The problem lies in such things as institutional modes of health care, paramilitary (police) and prison deterrence modes of maintaining law and order, exclusive legal title to our own back yard, mining and European modes of farming, welfare programs etc.  All these things that are the front line of the continued impoverishment, ill health and deaths in custody in Aboriginal society are taken for granted by the colonial society.  They are the morally righteous agencies of democracy and market economy.  These things that bring death, disease and dispossession to Aboriginal Australia bring health and prosperity to colonial society.  It is not easy to identify our own sociology as a causal factor in Aboriginal trauma and crisis.

The common Australian notion of reconciliation is a white myth.  Inherent in this myth is the assumption that white and black Australia must find some middle ground, shake hands and begin negotiations.  A simple formula but one that is no more likely to succeed than Palestinian Muslims finding a common ground with Israeli Jews while the state of Israel exists.  All Middle East so-called peace negotiations are not good willed, open-minded exchanges; they are power games where the dominant military and economic power – The U.S. – determines the framework and parameters of negotiations and raw power is played against raw power in the process. 

The whole “peace” process and the management of conflict in negotiations is tightly controlled by the vested interests of the U.S. who designed and maintains the state of Israel in accordance with U.S. interests.

So too with Australia’s reconciliation movement.  It has been designed and managed within the worldview of white Australia, the illegally imposed British state and its entrenched colonial society.   The meetings, petitions and bridge walks of the last 2 decades have been predominantly manifestations of white Australia.  Apart from the Aboriginal spokespeople and committee members, Aboriginal Australia has largely not joined this movement.  The reconciliation process has been a white commentary on black Australia, perhaps easing some of White Australia’s anxieties but it has not connected in any meaningful way to Aboriginal Australia.

The reconciliation movement has achieved no positive change in Aboriginal Australia, except of course for the Apology, which while spiritually significant, does nothing to address issues of Aboriginal poverty, disadvantage and ill health. 

This is a stark contrast with the land rights and self-determination movements of the 60s. 70s and in particular the 80s leading up to the 88 bicentennial protest. This movement was lead exclusively by Aboriginal people and the meetings, marches and other events were well attended by Aboriginal people including tens of thousands from Around Australia gathering in Sydney in 1988.

The early land rights movement of the 60s and 70s, while consistently promoting land rights as the primary agenda, built independent, self managed Aboriginal medical centres, legal services, housing services and childcare services to tackle the exact same issues that we are faced with today. 

As well as struggling for funding for these welfare crisis responses the movement forced on structural reform such as the native title act and ATSIC and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.  However, despite the existence of the reconciliation movement, all the gains of the 20^th century s have been deconstructed. 

 The mode for engaging in indigenous affairs that the reconciliation movement and presently the Greens and ALP operate in defines both the problem and a prescription for a solution totally within white notions and frameworks.  The essential task of facilitating and empowering the agencies of Aboriginal perspective has been reduced to allowing Aboriginal input into the decisions, policies and programs owned by the white government.

 At present Aboriginal people are only allowed to be part of white programs and policies, there is no funding or support for anything else.  The dominant mode of engagement with Aboriginal people is  “consultation” where Aboriginal people are told what the white policy and program is and are given advice and assistance as to how to conform to it.  The new ALP government and the Green’s policies do not suggest any change to this mode.

The challenge for us non-Aboriginal people, whether we are policy writers or grass roots activists is not to try and develop solutions to Aboriginal problems.

We non-Aboriginal folk should try and solve the problems of white Australia that cause the problems in Aboriginal Australia.

The challenge for indigenous policy and action is to allow and resource Aboriginal people to deal with their own problems within their own cultural frameworks and authorities and in accordance with their own priorities.  – self-determination.

The challenge for the Greens and the ALP, who both enthusiastically endorse the signing of the U.N. declaration on indigenous rights, is to develop policy in accordance with the core principles of the U.N. declaration – land rights and self determination.

Real reconciliation is about the colonial invader society paying reparations for the damage it has done and continues to do, when somehow and somewhere some land, wealth and power is transferred back to the people it was  stolen from.

Bandaids such as “Close the Gap” just won’t stick.

 

Kevin Rudd’s Sorry statement has to say why the government is sorry – press release from Michael Anderson

Press release:  Michael Anderson, Goodooga, NSW, 29 January 2008

In a statement from Goodooga in NW NSW, Michael Anderson said today:

“In our family’s experience, my grandmother taken from Angledool, NW NSW in 1914 and had to find her own way home. She always wanted recognition of the government’s cruel judgement to breed out the colour and culture of Aboriginal people.”

“For an apology to be meaningful, there is a lot of history that PM Kevin Rudd has to admit to. He has to say why the Prime Minister and government is sorry and the public has to accept that the sorry statement is necessary for Australia to move forward.”

“In 1937, State and Federal governments convened aconference in Canberra to decide on a policy of what to do with ‘the Aborigines’ – the resulting policy objective was for the complete annihilation of a race of Peoples. The principle method to achieve this was to remove Aboriginal children from their parents and from the influence of customs, traditions and Law/Lore. The primary objectives were to de-Aboriginalise these children and to expunge their colour, because Australia was working towards an Aryan race.”

“It is important to remember that, in 1901, the first Federal Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, argued for a continent that could be free of ‘contamination’ by foreign and unwanted racial impurities. When he led the debate in the House of Representatives on the Immigration Restriction Bill 7 August 1901, he quoted Professor Pearson a noted social commentator of the time by saying: ‘The fear of Chinese immigration which the Australian democracy cherishes … is in fact, the instinct of self-preservation, quickened by experience … We are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilisation .… The day will come …when the European observers will look around the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the yellow and black races. It is idle to say that if all this should come to pass our pride and place will not be humiliated. We are struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a world which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan race; and to the Christian faith; to the letters and arts and charms which we have inherited from the best of times.”

“Many in mainstream cannot plead ignorance as it was a common agreement between State and Federal governments with the policy finalised in 1937 in Canberra. There are many Australians still alive today, who voted and trusted the governments to do right thing, but never questioned what was going on. The policy was genocidal in intent and practice – to create a white Australia without colour.”

“In almost every other country in the world, where colonisation has taken place, reparations in various forms have enabled survivors of gross violations of human rights to locate their niche in society. Reparation funds have made it possible for those indigenous groups to maintain identity, restore dignity, develop strategies and an economic base.”

“Reparation programs have to ensure there is not a white bureaucracy having control over us. We have to get away from mission managers. We do not want to be treated as children. We have never been given opportunity to manage our own affairs without a white bureaucratic ceiling of control and an expectation of assimilation.”

“Aboriginal Peoples can do without the welfare handouts. Our nations have to restore their territorial integrity and Australians have no reason to fear this.”“We must set our own objectives. We have a right to do this. The recent UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms our rights and responsibilities. In Australia, Greeks, Italians, Macedonians have own clubs, churches, languages,schools while integrating into Australian society. Why is it different for us as Aboriginal Nations and Peoples in our own land?”

“If Rudd and his labour government are serious, the detail of a sorry statement must include the true horror of the genocide that was planned against Aboriginal Peoples and what was carried out.”

“To alleviate the Australian governments’ fears of separate development through reparation, they only have to look at US and Canadian models, where the sovereign identity of individual nations is maintained. In the Mabo case, the High Court alluded to the fact that sovereignty can continue to exist among Aboriginal Peoples and we assert that it does. We only ask that this be respected and that we can have co- existing sovereignties.”

N.T. Aboriginal Intervention extended to Qld’s Cape York

“The Federal Government has thrown its support behind a plan to quarantine the
welfare payments of families in some Queensland Indigenous communities.”   From ABC news Govt backs Indigenous welfare quarantine

PRESS RELEASE
from Queensland Aboriginal leaders Les Malezer, Terry O’Shane, Bob Weatherall, Jacqui Katona, Victor Hart

ABORIGINALS TO FIGHT QUEENSLAND INVASION
21 December 2007

We will join with other Aboriginal leaders in Queensland to fight the
introduction of forced income control over Aboriginal families in
Queenland. This is no less than an extension of the Northern Territory
invasion into Queensland, as designed by Noel Pearson in conjunction
with Mal Brough of the former national government. We will fight for
the human rights of our people in Queensland, especially in Aurukun,
Hopevale, Coen and Mossman Gorge.

The Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and
federal Minister, Jenny Macklin, have imposed their first big deception
on the Aboriginal people of Australia by disguising their support for
the Noel Pearson welfare plan and secretly planning its implementation
without due regard for human rights.

This racist action will be subject to legal challenge in the Queensland
and Australian courts and, if the government defies our rights by
suspending the Racial Discrimination Act, we will take it to the United
Nations. Our opposition will not be armchair opposition because we
will protest on the streets to oppose the spread of racism by the Labor
Party of Australia.

This is clearly a case of where one law should apply in Australia. If
welfare payments are going to be withheld by a Families
Responsibilities Commission from the most needy families then let it
apply under federal law to everyone in Australia without discrimination
on the basis of race. There should not be a race divide in Queensland
on the promotion and exercise of universal and fundamental human
rights. We know that will never happen because unions and political
parties will not let innocent people be punished for the guilt of
others. Somehow Aboriginal people, according to governments, are
judged to be guilty by race alone.

Any and all problems with substance abuse and anti-social behaviour in
Aboriginal communities is not our fault but the problem associated with
continued alien domination in our lands, sustained poverty and failure
to remedy injustices. Increased control by alien government and
bureaucrats will only exacerbate the situation.

We are very disappointed with Premier Bligh because of the deceptive
way in which this announcement has been masked and kept from community
discussion, especially after clear indication the Alcohol Management
Plans (AMPs) in communities have failed.

The Aboriginal people in this State virtually guaranteed the Labor
Party a victory in the federal elections in a clear vote against the
Brough racism. In the voting for the federal elections they rallied
against the Pearson plan for control of incomes. Now Bligh and Rudd
betray the trust of these people. It seems that governments change but
Australia’s racism against Aboriginal people does not.

The federal government can overnight commit the nation to climate
change reforms, can overnight commit to gay reforms but cannot bring
itself to face to face honesty with Aboriginals.

We demand the Queensland Government publicly disclose its secret
negotiations with Noel Pearson and the government’s AMP outcomes and
achievements in Aboriginal communities. We also call upon Noel Pearson
to present himself face to face with the Aboriginal communities to
explain why he should be cutting payments to needy families while he is
on a government payroll of $200,000 per year.

(Contact:Les Malezer: 0419 710720; )

SIGNED: Les Malezer, Terry O’Shane, Bob Weatherall, Jacqui Katona,
Victor Hart,

Aurukun rape, gaol and customary law

It saddens me greatly to see the chorus of Aboriginal people calling for the Aurukun rape perpetrators to be sent to gaol.  Some of those same spokespeople were calling for Aboriginal people to stay out of gaol in the 90s.  The dominant colonial paradigm has only offered gaol or total neglect as the options to deal with such things as child rape or anything else in Aboriginal communities, despite the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody such as the strengthening of customary law,  non custodial corrections options and Aboriginal corrections facilities.

Sending perpetrators to gaol will not heal them but make them worse through their gaol experience, which is a key source of the consciousness of rape and predatory sexuality.  The prison sex ethic is reinforced and then sent back to the community upon release, eventually.  This is not a new phenomenon, prison sexuality has been a big factor in Aboriginal communities for a long time, it is taking its toll today.  Sending perpetrators to gaol is just perpetuating the cycle of violence.  Increased sentences such as Rudd, Bligh and the Aboriginal leadership are calling for is no solution at all.

  The youths involved in the Aurukun rape should be subjected to customary law men’s business and resolution, not gaol.  Current law makes elders liable to charges of kidnap   and child abuse if this were to occur.

All the focus is on the perpetrators and the poor little victim is offered little except counselling and detachment from family, community and culture.  She needs to go through customary law womens business for her healing too, as a much greater priority than punishing or healing the perpetrators.

But in our continued denial of the history of the country we have outlawed customary law.  We continue to insist that more police, prisons and the army- the colonial mode –  intervening into Aboriginal lives will somehow deliver justice.  But it makes things worse, it will just perpetuate the cycles of violence.

It is still O.K. for Australian police to kill Aborigines

The 2004 Palm Island death in custody, where an Aboriginal man was unlawfully arrested and died of massive internal injuries inflicted while in police custody, remains unresolved. The arresting officer and the person who delivered the fatal blow was aquitted on charges of manslaughter but the deceased’s family is still pursuing civil charges and compensation for the death.

The charges against the police officer were not laid by the Queensland Director of Public prosecutions as a result of the coroners inquest into the death, which put responsibility for the death with the police officer. The charges were only laid after a huge public outcry for justice.

However, it is not just Queensland’s criminal (in)justice system that tolerates the killing of Aborigines by police.

In the Northern Territory  

“Policeman who shot Wadeye teen won’t face charges”
N.I.T. Tuesday, 4 December 2007

“Constable Robert Whittington was “in a blind panic” when he “made a fatal error of judgment” and killed Robert Jongmin on October 23, 2002, Northern Territory coroner Greg Cavanagh said yesterday.”

“Senior Const Whittington was originally charged with committing a dangerous act, but the charge was dismissed last year because the prosecution had not been brought within the required two-month period for police.”

In Western Australia

“Coroner clears police of death in custody”  West Australia 28th November 2007  (cultural caution! This article contains a photo of the deceased)

In this case a man died of a heart attack while being arrested. The police claim they did not assault him

Dead prisoner ‘bruised all over’ West Australian 18th October 2007

“An autopsy on the body of Carl Woods, who died minutes after being arrested, showed that he had bruises and abrasions all over his body, from head to toe.

And some linear bruises detected on the small of Mr Woods’ back and on the back of his legs were consistent with blows from a police baton or torch, forensic pathologist Gerard Cadden told a Coroner’s Court inquest yesterday.”

“But evidence has been given by all four of the officers who took several minutes to overpower and handcuff 35-year-old Mr Woods inside a house in Parmelia in April last year that no one used a baton or torch during the struggle. Two police torches were found in the house after the arrest.”

“Dr Cadden then went through a detailed report on the injuries he found on Mr Woods’ body.

He had lacerations to his lips, two lower front teeth — with jaw bone still attached — had been knocked out and a third tooth was also missing. An upper tooth had been jammed into his upper jaw and three other teeth were fractured. Dr Cadden said he understood Mr Woods had been kneed in the face, adding: “It would take considerable force to bring about that degree of dental damage.”

The Carers Alliance – election message

The following message is from Robert Gow, Qld Campaign Manager of the Carers Alliance. The Carers Alliance are running candidates for the senate around Australia
more info – http://www.qld.carers.org.au/

Hello all,
Many thanks for the support you have all given, the election draws near
 and we are getting many contacts from carers who are desperately
 seeking a better deal.

Carers are asking questions, like:
Why will Indonesian Orang-utans receive several thousand dollars each
 over 4 years when Australian Carers will only receive an average of
 $15.38 each per annum for the next 5 years according to the government’s
 promises.

Carers days are numbered at the rate of interest that governments are
 showing. Will they join the ranks of endangered species though sheer
 neglect by government?

Have you seen our You Tube Video?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZHkrgNlk9w

When you visit it please click on the favorite’s link. This will
 promote the clip and therefore the issue onto the political agenda and may
 gain us some more much needed press before Saturday.

Over the last two weeks we have published stories of difficulties that
 Carers are having with Centrelink. Many other carers have contacted us
 regarding their problems with the same body. There have been three
 overriding themes emerge:
• The officiousness and inflexibility of Centrelink staff
• The rudeness and flippancy of Ministerial staffers, and
• The non-responsiveness to issues raised by carers with Ministers,
 Shadow Ministers and local Federal members (not even the courtesy of a
 reply)

It has become clear that carers are a home grown endangered species.
  We are a finite resource – we will not live forever. We cannot continue
 to be exploited as a perceived cost effective alternative to a
 properly funded community support system. Governments are consigning carers
 and our sons, daughters, family members who require support and
 assistance, to the scrap heap.

Many of the 2.6 million Australian Carers and the other people that
 they influence (estimated to exceed 6.5 million) will ask “How do I make
 my vote ensure a future for our carers if neither party is serious about
 the issue?”

There is only one option; send a carer to Canberra and force government
 to take notice. A vote for the Carers Alliance Party is the only
 course of action for voters that want to influence the next government to
 make critical changes before carers are extinct in our population.

Without support Carers will become an extinct sub-species of the
 Australian community. Most are at breaking point and many are desperately
 beyond. At current rates of neglect many of the 2.6 million carers will
 join the ranks of those who need care. It will become a vicious circle
 and where does that leave the country?

Once again, please forward this to your mailing list and request that
 they do the same.
Don’t forget to visit the web site, http://www.qld.carers.org.au. We
 have had over 80,000 hits this month alone.

so many thanks,
Robert Gow,
Qld Campaign Manager
Carers Alliance

The Progressive Spirituality movement.

This post was inspired by the recent ABC Compass program on the Uniting Church in Australia, “The Uniting Church” highlighting a divergence of opinion within the church between conservative Christian traditionalists and a new movement emerging called “progressive spirituality” (P.S.).  P.S. is challenging traditional Christianity at its core by questioning key doctrinal concepts such as the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus and the church’s rejection of homosexuality.

I don’t believe the Compass program did justice to the ideas of either faction in this schism and seemed more interested in highlighting the existence of conflict within a church that calls itself “uniting”.

The Compass program did touch on what I consider to be a major issue which did not appear to be aimed at either side of the debate, and then dissapointingly did not return to it.  The Uniting Church’s modus operandi in its mission to the poor, oppressed and marginalised is a bureaucratic/welfare mode by way of welfare institutions. “But this work has become more professionalised, congregations have become less directly involved” according to Compass. I shall return to this issue.

The P.S. Movement is not confined to the Uniting Church. it has members and curious followers from all Christian denominations, it struggles with the word “Christian” as it excludes other faiths. However despite welcoming invitations to members of other faiths the movement is dominated by Christians or ex-Christians. The P.S. Movement is infinitely diverse, it cannot be pigeonholed as a particular tradition, philosophy or theology. It actively challenges preconceptions of religion and spirituality and as such is incapable of articulating a party line. It is indeed a post-modernist movement that sees respect for difference as part of the essence of their movement.

The P.S. Movement seems to have defined itself by way of adherence to the writings of radical theologians such as Bishop John Shelby Spong who recently visited Australia and invigorated this movement.

The movement holds scholarship in very high regard and its main spokespeople have been academic theologians which has its blessings and its curses.

Amongst the blessings of a theologian lead movement is a direct connection to the tradition and knowledge of ancient scriptures such as the bible and gnostic gospels. The cultural illusions that have been the substance of modern Christendom are stripped away with great authority and scholastic accuracy. This deconstruction of traditional Christianity has opened the gates to authentic spiritual experience without the constraints of artificial and outdated modes enshrined as holy and eternal. The scholars have assisted in liberating the captive Christian mind.

However the curse of scholastic spiritual leadership is the same as of academia in general in that the root or base experience of all (or most) knowledge is the written word.

I wonder if literacy itself is an obstacle to spiritual reality?

I am no anti-intellectulaist. However I am concerned that spiritual experience and knowledge is contained when it is a product of a book (or website). This would perhaps be my major criticism of traditional Christianity, in that it has demanded that the book, the bible, be the only source of knowledge of god.

Very few of the main characters of the bible got their wisdom through books, that was predominantly the domain of the often despised religious authorities. The new testament church taught spirituality by way of active engagement and participation in the Jesus community, through the oral tradition of story telling and through engagement in ritual such as baptism – bathing in the waters of a healing sacred site. Spirituality was a historical reality that people – all of them, body and all,  participated in, not an idea or a thought or anything contained in text including holy scripture..

Western industrialised society, not just the church has made literature the basis of our entire educational system from preschool to PhD. However literacy – the monotonous, one dimensional experience of shape recognition on a piece of paper or computer screen that triggers memory of pre-existing concepts in our mind by way of chemical and electrical impulses does not get to the truth of the matter.

Learning through literacy is a secondary, represented reality instead of a direct engagement with the subject being studied.

Spirituality is not an ideology but a lifestyle and the consciousness that grows from that, a holistic connection of physical and mental and of ourselves to everything else. Spiritual wisdom is the experience of living a holistic lifestyle, not a rational justification or idea that has been read in a book.

The greatest spiritual tradition this continent has ever known is Aboriginal culture. This is of course relevant to this P.S. Movement and indeed all Australians. However knowledge of this tradition cannot be gained through reading books but only by direct engagement with Aboriginal people, culture and sociology.

I believe that spirituality is a non-rational, subconscious reality on a dimension different from literacy and the experience of reading. Spirituality is multi dimensional and holistic but literacy is not holistic and just a simple exercise of our visual senses impacting on our intellectual capacity.

We all learn of spirituality and the depth of human experience when we encounter death. Our understandings of life that flow from the grieving process can barely be articulated in text and cannot be taught to another through text, yet the spirituality of life and death is the most profound of all. The funeral of a loved one is an intensely spiritual experience, whatever religion or ideology. It is this reality without language, from grief to joy to dialogue with the devil in the desert, that we find and share and teach spirit. Life, death and spirituality are all “lived” experiences not book-learned ones.

And this is where I return to bureaucratic/welfare modes of mission or engagement in the world. Can the P.S. movement incorporate service to the poor within a spiritual framework? Can this mission itself be a generator of spiritual experience for them?

The poor and marginalised’s direct experience of the church, by way of welfare agencies is of an empty structure while the congregations are having their own spiritual experiences and journeys somewhere else, in church on Sunday, social groups or theological colleges.

 I do not believed detached welfarism is the model of engagement with the community that occurred in the historical church of the bible.

I have seen nothing (yet) in my searchings to suggest that the P.S. Movement has a vision for any other modes of engagement with the poor other than managing, or in other ways engaging bureaucratically with, welfare or social justice agencies – the traditional church model.

This I believe is the challenge of the P.S. Movement, to explore a spirituality, lived experience and social engagement that is not so much outside the theology of the traditional church but  actively and intentionally outside of the culture of the traditional church.

I believe that the P.S. Movement could develop, on the one hand as a distillation of mainstream, secular consciousness and morality and engage with society on that level. On the other hand it could embrace a spirituality similar to the radical Christian community movement of the 1970’s which emphasised an alternative communal lifestyle (of different sorts) and real and active connection to the poor. This movement existed within traditional theology but lived a holistic spirit that had little to do with the institutional church and its Sunday services.

Can a new, liberated spirituality of the Progressive Spirituality movement get beyond a theological/academic tradition and evolve into a lived, daily experience and social reality that is accessible and relevant to those in need as well as church members?

 The emerging awareness that we have to relate to the Earth differently, for theological or ecological reasons, provides another reason to re-engineer the culture and lifestyle of the church, for its own sake and to have some positive relevance to the wider society.

 More info –

http://www.progressivereligion.org.au/ Centre for Progressive Religious Thought

 http://commondreams.org.au/ “Common Dreams”

http://www.progressivespirituality.net/index.htm Progressive Spirituality Network – Brisbane

Maori and peace activists rounded up in N.Z. anti terror operation

                                                           Maori Sovereignty activist Tame Iti was one of the 17 people arrested yesterday.  Background on Tame Iti here

Yesterday New Zealand Police broke into several houses, raided a Maori community and arrested 17 people including peace activists and charged them with various firearms offences.

The raids were the culmination of a police operation which had been underway for some time including surveilance and phone tapping. The operation was co-ordinated through the prime minister’s office and is the first time the N.Z. suppression of terrorism act has been used.  According to police they had uncovered a terrorist training camp and a terrorist plot.

The story on  “Stuff”

I don’t know enough of the Maori struggle to give any substantial comment on this development.  However I do know enough about terrorism hysteria and neo-fascism to say the new international anti-terrorism regimes are desperately intent on finding targets to justify their existence, creating hypothetical and just plain false hypotheses to investigate and prosecute. 

I also know enough of the nature of the colonial state to say it will always use the force of the police to repress indigenous power when it begins to threaten colonial interests.

Tame Iti has been previously charged for the ceremonial use of firearms in accordance with tribal protocol.   From nga korero o te wa ……

“Mr Iti had been found guilty of two counts of possessing a firearm in a public place after he fired a shotgun during welcomes for the Waitangi Tribunal at Ruatoki in January 2005.

The court said the prosecution failed to prove any criminal harm from Iti’s action.

Mr Iti says the case was brought because of the grandstanding of former ACT MP Stephen Franks, and he has no grudge against the police for taking it.

“Tuhoe tikanga or any other iwi hapu tikanga always will be in conflict. As long as the judicial system continues to marginalise indigenous people of this country, we always will be in in conflict with it,” Mr Iti says.

He says over the past 15 years he has discharged shotguns on Tuhoe marae in front of a prime minister, a governor general and a police commissioner with no complaints.”

John Howard’s referendum on assimilation

Yesterday John Howard announced that he will, if re-elected, hold a referendum to amend the preamble of the Australian constitution to include a “statement of reconciliation” and to “recognise indigenous Australians”

The first thing to note about the proposed change to the constitution is that it is legally meaningless. The preamble of the constitution contains no specifics and is not a basis for any legal framework. It is just a – preamble. It cannot be referred to to make or amend laws as the rest of the constitution can.

The key legal issues of land rights, customary law and sovereignty will not be included in Howard’s (or copy-cat Rudd’s) “acknowledgement”.

Howard’s media comments today included recognising Aboriginal people as the first “inhabitants” of Australia, which even James Cook and Joseph Banks “acknowledged” on the Endeavor voyage. But like Cook and Banks, Howard is incapable of acknowledging indigenous sovereignty or customary law, not even considering the possibility of “prior” sovereignty.

John Howard says constitutional change would include indigenous Australia’s “special, but not separate place within a reconciled and indivisible nation.”

Since the 1967 referendum allowing Aboriginal people to be recorded in the census and empowering the federal government to make laws about Aboriginal people, white Australia has been prepared to accept Aboriginal people as equal citizens; equal to white people, equal subjects of the crown. The racial discrimination laws of the 1970s gave full rights of white Australia to people of all cultures, and outlawed the removal of these “equal” rights, but they did not acknowledge any indigenous rights such as Aboriginal land rights or Aboriginal customary law which are not rights enjoyed by all Australians. The anti discrimination laws are also Terra Nullius assimilation laws.

When Eddie Mabo proved to the High Court that his family owned their block of land since before Captain Cook the court accommodated this in terms of English common law. It refused to acknowledge any legal rights or interests inherent in Torres Strait customary land law and how it connects to all other areas of life. White land law gave white notion of land rights (native title) and black law remained invisible and repressed.

The Howard government has thwarted any possibility of land rights by wrecking native title law, has essentially outlawed customary law and has very recently opposed the U.N. declaration on indigenous rights. What is left for Howard to “recognise”?

Having smashed all legal acknowledgement of indigenous rights this constitutional amendment will be a celebration of the victory of white supremacy, an arrogant assertion that indigenous people now have nowhere to go except into the white mainstream. This is certainly not reconciliation.

Hearts and minds

As readers may know I am an occaisional writer for the greenish leaning “Dead Roo” blog. I have also begun writing for  “Leftrights”, a leftish leaning blog.

My first post on Leftwrites is entitled “The Eurocentrism of Australian Socialism”

Here is my most recent comment on that discussion……

The point of real connection with Aboriginal Australia is spirituality, not ideology. It is about the heart not the head.

Free Burma!

Today is international bloggers day for Burma. 

Thousands of bloggers around the world are simultaneously publishing posts entitled “Free Burma”.  More information here – www.free-burma.org

Michael Noonan controversies continued…..

As many may be aware there have been new complaints about Michael Noonan’s film work.

I have been reluctant to publish them until now but since Noonan has now publically responded to the allegations  I am re-opening the discussion.

Background to the controversy here

Aboriginal Elder Ted Watson, acting on Behalf of May Dunne, the Aboriginal woman in Noonan’s Boulia Pub scene has accused Noonan of not seeking permission to use the footage of May and her husband, of fabricating permission forms and breaching research protocols.

The accusations can be found here – Laughing at Aborigines

Michael Noonan’s response to the allegations are at the end of this post.

As I have said before I do not believe the footage is a negative image of May or Aboriginal women.  I reached this conclusion after talking to my Partner Baganan, a Kalkadoon and Pitta Pitta woman about her perception of it.  She has also offered her perspective on the “An Aboriginal Woman’s perspective”/thread.

However our perceptions of the footage is indeed a different matter to whether May and her husband’s involvement was based on informed consent or not, a question that is now to be played out in various courts and committees it seems. 

There are some very serious issues relating to the representation of Aboriginal people by non-Aboriginal media workers as well as protocols for negotiaiting involvement in film projects, all of them very relevant to this situation.

The academic ethical framework that QUT film research uses, and Noonan is being judged by,  is a template for health and medical research which is generalised in principle but not specifics to other disciplines of research.

There are also protocols produced by indigenous academics that concentrate on anthropological research involving traditional knowledge and intellectual property which, like health protocols, are inadequate to cover issues faced media workers, in particular documentary makers except for when they do represent traditional knowledge.

Part of the problem with this latest controversy, it seems to me, is inappropriate academic research guidelines  for media studies and research. 

Outside of academia there are protocols and guidelines produced by indigenous media workers, for example SBS’s indigenous protocol.   http://www.sbs.com.au/sbsi/documentary.html?type=6

This protocol has the same essential principles as the health and anthropology protocols but has specifics directly relevent to media workers.

 I fear however  that the clarification of these issues  will now be sidelined by the sensation of another high profile QUT scandal.  The focus of the sensation will become the question of whether Noonan’s signed permission forms are real or fabricated.

If Noonan’s documents are authenticated the ambiguities of the present protocols will be exploited by both sides of the dispute in adversarial courts and little will be resolved in anybody’s interest.

 Here is Michael Noonan’s response to the allegations……..

This is Michael Noonan.

The video “Laughing at Aboriginies” contains many errors of fact:

my comments here are to set the record straight about the most significant – in particular, the allegations that the research approval regimes I implemented were flawed and corrupt. My study was approved by the QUT Ethics Committee before any filming was undertaken.

Subsequently, and in response to the concerns raised by John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, my study was subjected to a full ethics audit by a committee of review, which included one expert member external to QUT.

That committee found I had not breached the relevant ethics guidelines.

All documentation was shared with the audit committee, including the appropriate consent and release forms. I have this documentation for all 33 people who participated in the film production. The accusations that appropriate consent was not gathered or was gathered under duress or fabricated after the event are not true and will not stand informed scrutiny.

There are many other errors of fact in this video – my film crew was not even in Boulia 18 months ago as claimed and there was no hostility to us at any time from Boulia residents.

Reluctantly but proudly, I made my film rushes available for public review to counter the innuendoes and untruths maliciously propagated over the depiction of disability in my film and also to set the record straight about the scene in the hotel at Boulia.

It had been obnoxiously misrepresented from the beginning and was hysterically reported in The London Times that James had been ‘severely beaten’ by an aboriginal woman – a vile and unsubstantiated slur.

I hoped that releasing my footage would destroy the negative stereotypes invoked by so many uninformed commentators. I am distressed to hear of the claim that May feels ‘hurt and shamed’ by that footage. Acknowledging this may be the case, and out of respect for her, I have written to the media outlets hosting my film rushes and asked them to remove those rushes from their websites.

I am happy to be held to account for my actions and my study in any properly-constituted space but I do not recognise Youtube, which has no means of testing gossip, innuendo and lies, as the forum in which to deal with these serious matters. I am prepared to discuss my study and its impact in any properly-constituted place and with any person of good faith – if this applies to you and you have genuine concerns, please send me an email.

The Carers Alliance – A new party contesting the senate election.

“Our purpose is represent, raise and monitor issues affecting unpaid family Carers through the representative participation of Carers as candidates in Federal and State parliaments. The Carers Alliance will represent the rights of unpaid Carers of people with disabilities, mental illness, chronic illness or issues of frail age who need assistance at differing times in their lives.”          – from the   Carers Alliance website.

The Carers Alliance has recently been registered as a political party and is in the process of putting together it’s national senate team for the upcoming federal election.

I have had the privilege of meeting their Queensland lead senate candidate, Felicity Maddison at the recent picket against the Queensland Adult Guardian.

Like all the Carers Alliance candidates, Felicity is herself a carer, looking after a family member with high support needs.

The Alliance states its task as follows…….

“We will be the watchdogs for the Australian people, ensuring the issues that affect families have political representation and caring families are not missed in the process”.

As I see it, the Carers Alliance is essentially an exercise in visibility. On so many fronts the needs of disabled, frail, the elderly and their carers are neglected and misrepresented by politicians and public servants.

Federal and State governments appear to dismiss the urgency and crisis that exists in so many Australian families who survive (and sometimes they don’t) without adequate or appropriate support services.

Disability is still a hidden issue in Australia even though it effects us all at some stage.

Issues of funding for disability support agencies  as well as  the financial security of carer’s including pension, taxation and superannuation justice, are not amongst the nation’s political  debate and rarely in any debate at all, except within the families at the front-line of these issues.

Thousands of families suffer terribly in isolation but their suffering has not yet been acknowledged as a significant political issues.

News of the Carers Alliance registration as a party and its senate campaign has been widely publicised amongst disability, aged and carer’s networks around Australia. This network may well generate a significant vote for the new party.

Although the single issue of disability and carer support is amongst many important issues in the election,  and it hasn’t the sex appeal or sensational profile that some other issues do,  those families who suffer because of inadequate and inappropriate services will no doubt have the issues on their minds on election day, as they do every other day of their life.

Family first won a Victorian senate seat in the last federal election despite being a new minority party. The weird and wonderful process of senate preference distribution could also see the Carers Alliance fluke a seat somewhere. Unlike Family first which campaigns on vague and ideological notions of family, the Carers Alliance is campaigning on real, concrete issues that hundreds of thousands of real families experience.

In the probable event that the Carers Alliance does not win a seat, their preferences will be crucial in determining who actually does win in some states. In this sense they cannot fail in their goal of raising the profile of disability and carer’s issues.

They are now a force to be reckoned with, whoever forms a government after the election.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Media release from the National Aboriginal Controlled Community Health Organisation – NACCHO

A TIME TO CELEBRATE?

Last night the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous peoples around the world are celebrating but not in Australia said Mr Councillor, Chair of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation which represents over 140 community controlled health services.

The vote in the 192-member assembly was 143 in favour, four against and 11 abstentions. The four against were Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US. Once again this government has shown its true racist colours.