First Fleet Back

First Fleet Back from NITV video on Vimeo

A comedy that throws us into a role reversal of Australian History. A hybrid documentary that catapults viewers into an alternate Australian reality and follows Arabunna Elder Kevin Buzzacott’s amazing strategies against racism and for self-determination - before he became the ‘Minister for Invasion Affairs’!

In a blend of cinema verite, blaxploitation and satirical reality TV, this film pushes the boundaries of documentary, offering thought-provoking insights into the past to build a post-colonial future together.

Be alert & alarmed – it’s your chance to vote them off the island – on the First Fleet Back to Europe!

Lex Wotton on Palm Island

Invited by the Indigenous Social Justice Association on August 10th 2008 Lex Wotton spoke in Melbourne prior to his trial relating to the riots in Palm Island. He was charged with inciting a riot and describes in his own words the events that day.

See Also:

Day three of Wotton trial begins with a splutter NATIONAL October 8, 2008: Day three of the trial of Lex Wotton - the accused ringleader of the Palm Island riots - has begun with a splutter. Most of the morning has been taken up with legal argument about several aspects of the trial. When a witness finally did take the stand shortly before lunch, she only lasted several minutes before she was stood down for more legal argument, and amid concerns for her health.

Wotton trial underway; court watches videos of rallying cries from Palm Islanders NATIONAL, October 8, 2008: The trial of Lex Wotton, the alleged ringleader of the 2004 Palm Island riots, has begun in Brisbane with jurors played video footage of a community grieving the loss of of one of its own.

Kevin Buzzacott: Aboriginal Tent Embassy (2005)

On January 2002, while the Aboriginal Tent Embassy celebrated its 30th anniverary, Aboriginal Elders led an action to reclaim the sacred totems of the Kangaroo and Emu from the Australian Coat of Arms. Ceremonies were then held to celebrate its return to Aboriginal peoples, and the coat of arms placed on public display in front of the ceremonial fire.

Elder Uncle Kevin Buzzacott was then accused of dishonestly appropriating a bronze coat of arms with the intention of permanently depriving the Commonwealth of its property.

This video documents the events.

Part of the Oceania Indymedia Newsreal 3 compilation produced by Engage Media.

Say Sovereignty not sorry, you genocidal land thieving racists

With all the gubba politics aside, just all the mobs converging in kanberra, together is a beautiful and powerful thing. Robbie Thorpe and mob left the Kulin Nations this arvo and are heading to join the Mob around that Sacred Fire at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

Stray Alien Invasion Day /Aboriginal Sovereignty 08

“The British colonisation of Australia began at Botany Bay in 1788. It was soon met with stiff resistance from the people of the Eora Aboriginal nation, the first people to be confronted by this invasion of ‘settlers’. Led by Pemulwuy, a clever strategist, they outfoxed and outwitted the colonist for several years.

When Pemulwuy was finally captured he said in his language: ‘You’ll never make me a white man you scum!” According to the Aboriginal history of the invasion, which has been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation, these were Pemulwuy’s last words. A British soldier summarily shot him dead. After he was shot, his head was severed from his body and sent to England to be examined, measured and analysed according to commonly accepted theories fashionable at the time.

About Aboriginal Sovereignty
Waratah Rose Gillespie

Because the invasion was illegal at international law, all white people are here illegally. Through recognizing Aboriginal sovereignty, their presence in this country can be legitimised.

Isabell Coe –Wiradjuri Nation

Was hot for sure 220 years after the genocidal, land thieving, boat people landed and invaded Aboriginal Nations. It was a day to remember & honour those who had fallen in the struggle. It was a day to remember the the current reality of colonial invasion was genocide and theft, and what thats means to us on a daily basis. Pretending that it didn’t happen is some form of pathological denial, but settlers are great at re-working history and settler state myth making.

Our whanau will refuse to take part or be silent beneficiaries of Aboriginal genocide any longer. The spirit of the day we had in Melbourne was fierce, Aboriginal people are on the move, Maori, Mohawk indigenous people around our planet are standing up. The recent cessation of the
Lakotah Nation from Amerikkka has given heart to Indigenous nations in struggle all over the world.

Catching up with and hanging out with the mob, hearing some choice sounds and other whanau was awesome.

Looks like we gonna have a busy year this year.

"Every breath we take is a breath of survival, every breath we take is the breath of resistance."

Mauri Ora

Ana

Sacred Fire and deadly speeches at Gertrude Street Fitzroy, urban Aboriginal heartland.

Front of the hikoi

Indigenous Solidarity

Mapuche & Maori sista’s

Unity Against colonialism in the Pacific

Aboriginal Groups to Protest on Gubbament's First Day

Aboriginal and community organisations have called for a National Convergence on Canberra
for the opening of Parliament on 12 February 2008. "We want to send a
strong message to the new government. The NT Intervention is an abuse
of power by the previous government. We as Aboriginal people need to
stand together to be heard as one." writes Barbara Shaw from Mt Nancy
Camp near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

"As a resident of a prescribed area and an active member of the
Intervention Rollback Working Group, I am trying to raise funds and
encourage as many people as possible to travel to Canberra for this
important event" she said.

She criticised the Government for so far failing to ratify the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

"I am asking all Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organisations to
please try and send representatives to this important gathering. There
will be workshops in Canberra on 11 February to inform people about the
impact of the intervention on people’s lives and about the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples." she said.

Details from a leaflet on the convergence follows:

Details on Why you should join the convergence

Howard’s racist intervention must be rolled back!

John Howard’s ‘Emergency Intervention’ in the NT, introduced in the
final months of his government, was a package of punitive, racist and
paternalistic measures aimed at controlling the lives and land of
Aboriginal people.

• The intervention suspended the Racial Discrimination Act and
  ignores ‘Aboriginal Land’ as described in the Aboriginal Land Rights
  Act (NT).
• Despite claims that the intervention was a response to
  ‘rampant child sexual abuse’, 700 pages of emergency bill legislation
  did not once mention ‘child’ or ‘children’.
• There has been minimal investment in providing new
  community-based services and instead, $88 million of the promised
  funding has been spent administering the welfare quarantining.
• The federal election revealed overwhelming opposition to the
  intervention nationally, with the ousting of both Howard and Mal Brough
  from their seats, and among Territory Aboriginal communities. When
  Labor MPs in affected areas emphasised political differences to the
  Coalition they consistently received over 80% of the vote; with 95% in
  the town of Wadeye.
• Aboriginal communities are calling for an end to the racist
  military and political intervention and for the creation of Aboriginal
  controlled services designed through extensive consultation.

Let’s push Labor to improve their policy!

Federal Labor has pledged some improvements. They have promised
to restore a ‘reformed’ CDEP (Community Development and Employment
Program) and permit system. Despite this, the ALP’s policy is
disturbingly similar to the Liberals:

• Discriminatory measures such as mandatory welfare quarantine,
  compulsory land acquisition and the presence of non-Aboriginal
  "business managers" with extraordinary powers are not opposed.
• There has been no commitment to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act.
• The demand for immediate review of the legislation from across the NT and Australia has been ignored.

Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs!

A vibrant, mass convergence on Canberra at the opening of
parliament will be an important step in challenging the lingering
legacy of Howard's racism. We can send a strong signal to the Rudd
Government to acknowledge the rights of Aboriginal people, to increase
the resources and services available to communities across Australia
and to respect Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs.

Initiated by the Aboriginal Rights Coalition, Sydney

Aboriginal people need the fires of reconciliation to be relit

Muriel Bamblett
December 11, 2007

Self-determination must be the way forward for a marginalised people.

TODAY is a historic day, not only in the life of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people but in the life of this nation.

Fifteen years ago today, a prime minister, Paul Keating, in plain language and without qualification, acknowledged the basic wrongness of colonisation and its negative impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

He did it in the heart of an urban Aboriginal community, a site of resistance for Aboriginal Australia, and he called on non-indigenous Australia to imagine what life had become for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in colonised Australia.

It was a beginning point for reconciliation that was never realised, not even by his government.

With the recent change of government and the end of the Howard era of denialism, we have another chance at creating a new relationship between our peoples.

It's as if a fog has lifted — but it still hovers above our heads and continues to threaten Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with its toxicity.

What we remain unsure of is whether our rights to self-determination will be realised.

The bipartisan support for the Northern Territory intervention raises the question of whether, for us, there has been any change at all.

Let me be perfectly clear: our fundamental concern is for the safety of our children.

But what makes Australia most unsafe for our children is the racism and cultural abuse that the Northern Territory emergency intervention acts represent. Overriding the Racial Discrimination Act does not make our children safe.

Suspending rights and community control of Aboriginal land does not make our children safe. Disempowering our communities does not make our children safe.

If you are going to tackle the causes of abuse, you must empower people, you must build a response on the basis of people's strengths, not their weaknesses.

If people feel in control over their lives they have a greater sense of the future — beyond the next drink or the next hit or the next sniff of petrol.

That word "empowerment" is the critical one. Unlike the previous federal minister for indigenous affairs, I took seriously the recommendations of the Little Children are Sacred report concerning child abuse in the Northern Territory.

The authors of that report summarised their 97 recommendations in that one word — "empowerment".

They understood that what caused child abuse in Aboriginal communities — as well as the non-indigenous perpetrators the Government ignored in their response — was a lack of self-determination and a sense of despair about the future.

It is clear self-determination requires respectful partnerships and capacity-building processes.

Investments in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led solutions must be made so that the community capacity can be restored.

Responses must be informed and led by local Aboriginal communities.

It is only by strengthening the capacity of families and communities to protect and nurture children that the problems will be resolved. Aboriginal ownership and control of land and access to communities are critical to success.

As visiting American trauma expert Dr Bruce Perry pointed out, indigenous communities that are empowered and able to embed culture into their programs are more likely to be effective in dealing with the impact of trans-generational trauma.

Empowerment is all about being treated as self-determining peoples and not client communities.

We need to pressure the Rudd Government to use the financial resources their predecessors committed to Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory and reshape the intervention to one run by Aboriginal communities and agencies.

We need a new approach to indigenous affairs that is human-rights based and focused on understandings of social inclusion and social investment.

Deep listening is required to heal this nation of the scourge of colonisation.

Deep listening is the way through to curing family dysfunction and child abuse by curing the causes — disconnection from culture and land and the lack of self-determination that feeds into a sense of helplessness.

If we begin with listening we can relight the fire of reconciliation.

But as a young member of my staff at VACCA reminded me — we must not only keep that fire lit, we must keep it burning.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have our many warriors for truth who keep that fire alive in our hearts every day.

Non-indigenous people have the embers of the Redfern speech and the reconciliation walks that need to be relit and not only occasionally warm your faces but become a fire in your hearts too.

Then the road to real reconciliation with its signposts of "sorry" and "treaty" can be travelled by all of us and the re-imagining of a new nation that respects and treasures the sovereignty and self-determination of its first peoples with justice and honour can begin.

Muriel Bamblett is chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency. This is an extract of her speech at the "Self-determination, not Invasion" forum at the Melbourne Town Hall yesterday.

Rock Against Racism

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is, an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo

"Unarmed truth is the most powerful force in the universe."

Interview with Arthur Ridgeway

A brief interview with an elder of the Yuin people, who recently served an eviction notice to protect the Gulaga National Park. See http://www.tilbalogging.com/

DECLARATION:ABORIGINAL TENT EMBASSY 2002

We the Aboriginal Nations of Australia, declare our sovereignty over the country to which we belong. Each Nation lived as one with the land, respecting the rights of other nations, and observing Aboriginal law and protocols, from the Beginning.

Our world was shattered by the violence of the Invasion which began when the First Fleet of British Boat people arrived in 1788. Our people were decimated, as the invaders stole our country, imposed their own laws and systems of government on our peoples, forcing our people into concentration camps called “missions”.

Our people resisted the invasion, and continue to resist to this very day. Aboriginal sovereignty, the sovereign rights of each and every surviving Aboriginal Nation, continue to this day. Aboriginal sovereignty has been impeded by invader violence, but never extinguished.

We hereby reclaim our sovereignty, our inherent right to be governed by our own laws and protocols, in harmony with the land to which we belong. We are taking our rightful place in our ancestral lands, which are our birthright, our sacred inheritance, handed down from generation to generation since time immemorial, from the Beginning.

The invasion of our lands was illegal under international law at the time of the arrival of the First Fleet. This invasion involved the perpetration of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and theft of our homelands. Each Aboriginal Nation has the right to speak for the country to which that Nation belongs, and no one else.

This is Aboriginal Law

Each Aboriginal nation is sovereign in its own right. Each sovereign nation has the right to enter into treaty negotiations with other sovereign nations. Sovereignty is the ultimate assertion of our right to Self Determination. Our right to Self Determination is enshrined in the International human rights covenants, and is written into international law, the law of nations.

Sovereignty rights include the right to be governed by our own laws, in our own country. We call for the restoration of our homelands, which were stolen from us, so we can build a new future, in harmony with the land and with all the peoples who live in this land.

OperationLandGrab

Commandante Buzzacott & the Black Army reclaim Stolen Land.