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Only four members of the UN voted against the Declaration on Indigenous Rights in 2007: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Three are members of the Commonwealth.
Of the 53 countries which now make up the Commonwealth, only two of the smallest (Dominica and Fiji) have ratified the 1989 international law recognising indigenous and tribal peoples' rights.
The Commonwealth - and Britain's wealth - was partly built on the dispossession of indigenous peoples but the UK refuses to sign, in part explaining that this is because there are no indigenous peoples in the UK. That has not stopped countries such as the Netherlands from signing. The UK also does not recognise 'collective human rights' despite recognising that countries such as Canada and Australia are right to recognise them!
One hundred and fifty-eight members of the UK parliament have rejected the government's argument and asked it to sign the law.
The point of the declaration, says the UN, is that it does "represent the dynamic development of international legal norms and it reflects the commitment of the UN's member states to move in certain directions ... an important standard for the treatment of indigenous peoples that will undoubtedly be a significant tool towards eliminating human rights violations against the planet's 370 million indigenous people and assisting them in combating discrimination and marginalisation."
This is obviously not what the UK, representing commercial interests and not human rights, wants.
In the Malaysian rainforest at the moment, recession et al, Novotel are building a hotel. And they are building it at the expense of the local indigenous peoples.
The Malaysian Interhill Group in collaboration with the French ACCOR Group are the corporations working on what's called the Novotel Interhill Kuching project. Interhill has a track record of destroying tropical rainforests in Sarawak and violating the native customary rights of the local indigenous communities.
The Penan of the middle Baram region, in particular, are accusing Interhill of using gangsters to intimidate them and to break their resistance to the depletion of their natural resources.
Blockades have been set up by the Penan of Sarawak (Borneo, East Malaysia) since the late 1980s as a means of protesting against the logging of their rainforests and as a tool for negotiating with logging companies and government officials.
For twenty years, the Malaysian Interhill logging company has been destroying the Penan's rainforest in Borneo and thus threatening the habitat and culture of these indigenous people. The French ACCOR Group is now helping Interhill to further boost the profits obtained from destroying the rainforest through a big hotel project.
Please help the Penan highlight their struggle against Interhill and sign the online petition.
Is your furniture certified? Find out.
Here's something you won't read, er, anywhere:
One year after the UN General Assembly approved the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Britain and four of its former colonies have not shaken off their reputation as leading opponents of tribal peoples’ rights.From Survival International. THE most vulnerable peoples in the world. And Miliband/Brown will stamp all over them. In your name.
The four countries which voted against the declaration – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US – are all former British colonies. And the British government continues to resist calls to sign up to ILO Convention 169, the leading international law on tribal peoples.
In addition, many of the companies in the spotlight for targeting tribal lands are based in Britain, Australia, the US or Canada. Perhaps the most controversial is UK-based Vedanta, which is planning a massive bauxite mine on the sacred hills of the Dongria Kondh tribe in India, despite their steadfast opposition.
Other mining companies mired in controversy are US-based Freeport McMoran, operators of the world’s biggest gold mine at Grasberg, in Papua, Indonesia, and Canadian TVI Pacific, whose mine in the Philippines has been fiercely opposed by the Subanen people. Norway’s government has recently sold its shares in British company Rio Tinto, a joint venture partner in the Grasberg mine, due to ‘a risk of contributing to severe environmental damage’.
Stephen Corry, Survival’s Director, said today, ‘For centuries the colonial policies of Britain and other European countries were directly responsible for the deaths of millions of tribal people around the world. How tragic that today Britain and its former colonies are exporting another kind of misery – commercial exploitation under the guise of ‘development’.’
The Pope is in Sydney at the moment and one man has flown out from London to greet him.
Anthony Foster is an amazing man and father whose daughters were raped by a Catholic Priest, Kevin O'Donnell, when they were in primary school. Australian Cardinal George Pell stalled the family's compensation claim against the Church when he was archbishop of Melbourne. It's part of a pattern of abuse which the Church is being forced by some very heroic people to deal with.
Foster's eldest daughter, Emma, committed suicide after a long battle with drug addiction. His second daughter, Katherine, developed a heavy drinking habit, and was hit by a drunk driver in 1999 and left physically and mentally disabled and requiring 24-hour care.
They were raped over five years by O'Donnell when they attended Sacred Heart Primary School in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh between 1988 and 1993.
In 1996 O'Donnell was convicted of abusing 11 boys and one girl, aged between 8 and 14, between 1946 and 1977, and sentenced to 15 months in prison. He died after his release in 1997.
Initially offered A$50,000 (£24,000) by Cardinal Pell under his "Towards Healing" program, the Fosters pursued their case via the legal system for eight years, culminating in a six-figure settlement with the church in 2006 - one of the largest of its kind in Australia. Money which will be used for Katherine's care.
In 1998, when Emma was 16, Cardinal Pell wrote to her, saying: "It is my hope that my offer will be accepted by you as a preferable alternative to legal proceedings and that it too will assist you with your future."
"On behalf of the Catholic Church and personally, I apologise to you and to those around you for the wrongs and hurt you have suffered at the hands of Father Kevin O'Donnell. I offer you my prayers."
Foster says that this apology was removed by lawyers for the church in 2002 during the court case over compensation.
"Emma carried the pain of her abuse for all her life until it ended recently," he told the ABC. "We really want to make sure that in her name and her memory something is done for other victims."
Pell, like other Catholic bureaucrats around the world, has a history of obstructing sexual abuse cases, presumably on the advice of lawyers.
"I want them to set up a system that provides a life-time help to victims, that begs forgiveness to victims," Foster says.
"An apology is not enough unless it is backed up with action, unless he removes all obstacles to continuing support for victims."
"They should come to us and beg for forgiveness."
Last week I posted a video about the role of the church in the genocide of Canada's indigenous peoples. The same thing happened in Australia, and so this is another part of their history which the Pope will apparently be apologising for in Sydney. As this very brave man Anthony Foster is trying to explain, apologies are not enough.
Canada's "dirty secret" - the planned genocide of aboriginal people in church-run Indian Residential Schools - and a clergyman's efforts to document and make public these crimes. An excellent, extremely moving and educative film.
This brought tears to my eyes.
Canada's conservative PM, Stephen Harper, in the House of Commons, formally apologising on behalf of the government for the federally-run Indian residential school system, which forcibly took 150,000 children from their families and stripped them of their culture and heritage, often subjecting them to physical and sexual abuses. The apology comes after the government agreed to pay out $C billions in compensation payments for survivors.
Earlier this year Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, issued an apology for similar policies in Australia. It came without $ recompense and it did not move me like this does.
Our government, the British government, continues to refuse equality for indigenous peoples in international law and accept Britain's historic role in their condition.
Despite the best efforts, largely on the backs of aboriginal culture, the success of 'Australian culture' has always been going - shall we say? - against the grain?
This week came a rather traditional backlash, confirmation of the dominant grain, as an art gallery in Sydney was raided (a major one, the RoslynOxley9 Gallery) for 'child pornography' images by the world renowned photographer Bill Henson.
Of course they weren't 'pornographic' except in the eyes of the prudish. But there was a 'beat-up'.
Beat-upThe PM, Kevin Rudd, weighed in:
Australian slang - meaning: an exaggeration, big talk about nothing, often found in the media
"Absolutely revolting. Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly, I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."Henson has had numerous shows involving nudes before - no reaction.
"We should remember that an important index of social freedom, in earlier times or in repressive regimes elsewhere in the world, is how artists and art are treated by the state."
"The intention of the art is not to titillate or to gratify perverse sexual desires, but rather to make the viewer consider the fragility, beauty, mystery and inviolability of the human body.
"The work itself is not pornographic, even though it includes depictions of naked human beings. It is more justly seen in a tradition of the nude in art that stretches back to the ancient Greeks, and which includes painters such as Caravaggio and Michelangelo."
"If an example is made of Bill Henson . . . it is hard to believe that those who have sought to bring these charges will stop with him."
"Rather, this action will encourage a repressive climate of hysterical condemnation."
Did you know that the Labour government is failing to support international conventions for indigenous peoples?
It's not at all publicised but the UK Foreign Office is one of the world's most bankrupt when it comes to looking after indigenous peoples. That's you, master Miliband.
Well, there's a new push to get them to change their tiny minds
ILO 169 is the only international law for tribal peoples. It will become the world’s benchmark when more governments agree to it. Those that don’t ratify it make it weaker.
The UK has refused to ratify ILO 169 on the basis that there are no tribal peoples in the country. But this ignores the impact of British companies and development projects on the lives of tribal peoples across the world. Never mind our historic responsibility.
Act Now
Put pressure on the government to ratify ILO 169. There are several ways you can do this:
I, alongside many Aboriginal Australians, was actually quite cynical about the new Labor Australian PM Kevin Rudd and his well-trailed apology to the Stolen Generations earlier this year.
Unlike the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, who said he wept as he watched it on CNN (I didn't weep, been there, done that). But now he's done something which is really, truly significant.
The plight of indigenous Australians will be detailed by the Prime Minister each year in Federal Parliament to measure the success or failure of the Government's pledge to increase Aboriginal living standards.
Announcing this in London of all places, Rudd said that on the first parliamentary day of each year he would report on the progress of his promise to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians by 2030.
The Government plans to guarantee indigenous people will get health services equal to those of the rest of the population within 10 years.
The time has come for the debate to move on from intentions and focus on outcomes, because in this endeavour outcomes are what really matters [too right, mate]. This annual statement will greatly increase pressure on my Government to make progress towards closing the gap.The other elements of the new annual statement would detail the progress or otherwise on closing gaps in infant mortality, literacy and numeracy.
Australia, a successful developed nation with a modern and prosperous economy, should not accept a 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.The point being that they don't have equal health services at the moment (or sewage or lots of other basic things Aussies take for granted - that's the legacy). Pretty basic, but it has taken years for these facts to become accepted or not blamed on Aborigines themselves. There are millions of Australians who want this shame to end - finally, they seem to have some leadership. (And it is worth noting that Boris Johnson has the spinmeister responsible for continuing this shame running his team).
There is no reason that indigenous children in Australia should have less opportunity for education or health care than the opportunities provided to non-indigenous kids. This gap has no place in a modern Australia.
My father, whose life had been shaped by his experience in a home and his mother’s removal from her family, did not live to hear the apology. He died before he could hear the kind of acknowledgement of his experience that Kevin Rudd offered, that John Howard denied.
This alone can forgive the occasional smugness which accompanies the deep satisfaction in knowing our nation has finally moved on.
Jack P has blogged about Tibet, writing that people should boycott Chinese-made goods and suggested that:
If you know of anyone who was due to compete in the Beijing Olympics this year, ask them to consider what is more important: taking a stand against ethnic cleansing, or their own personal achievement.
Now I can remember the only really successful boycotts, of Moscow and then Los Angeles in 1980 and 1984, over Afghanistan. People said much the same about British athletes who went to Moscow, one of whom was Sebastian Coe.
This time though, the Tibetans, through the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet Campaign, aren't calling for a boycott.
This year, the Chinese people are proudly and eagerly awaiting the opening of the Olympic Games. I have, from the very beginning, supported the idea that China should be granted the opportunity to host the Olympic Games. Since such international sporting events, and especially the Olympics, uphold the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, equality and friendship, China should prove herself a good host by providing these freedoms. Therefore, besides sending their athletes, the international community should remind the Chinese government of these issues. I have come to know that many parliaments, individuals and non-governmental organisations around the globe are undertaking a number of activities in view of the opportunity that exists for China to make a positive change. I admire their sincerity. I would like to state emphatically that it will be very important to observe the period following the conclusion of the Games. The Olympic Games no doubt will greatly impact the minds of the Chinese people. The world should, therefore, explore ways of investing their collective energies in producing a continuous positive change inside China even after the Olympics have come to an end.
Here is his full statement about the Tibet events.
As Britain has become a fellow custodian with China of the Olympic ideal, Free Tibet Campaign is calling upon the UK Government to commit to a special initiative that will secure a negotiated settlement for Tibet and improve human rights in China before the Beijing Games of 2008.Jack also suggest that people boycott Chinese-made goods, but recognises how difficult this might be.
"If our Government really wants to make Britain proud, it will back Tibet," said Yael Weisz-Rind, Director of Free Tibet Campaign. "We have no doubt that London is capable of hosting a truly great Olympics, but unless there is substantial progress on Tibet and human rights in China, the 2008 Games in Beijing will be badly tarnished."
China is emerging as a powerful country due to her great economic progress. This is to be welcomed, but it has also provided China an opportunity to play an important role on the global stage.
I think people should be aware of the conditions under which much ‘Made in China’ imports are produced - they have been compared to modern-day slavery.
Organisations involved in this, again, suggest that protests be directed closer to home - to the British retailers who don't ask about those conditions as well as politicians who don't consider labour issues in trade relations with China.
The Free Tibet campaign has a number of ways in which people can get involved in some way, including spending your money on some lovely goods like this teeshirt over the web :}
Postscript: Jack P has responded to my post. To which I added these points:
From my previous work with Aboriginal people as well as past anti-Apartheid work, I do think it's important to take a lead from the people themselves: those you want to help.
Unfortunately, writing to your MP and/or Gordon Brown and/or the Olympic Authorities is often seen as boring. However this is what they - the Tibetan leaders - say they want: pressure at home. It's also, from my experience, part of the long-haul thankless process by which change happens.
Survival - which works tirelessly for ignored indigenous people around the world - has issued a new international award for 'The most racist article of the year’.
The winner will receive a certificate inscribed with a quotation from Lakota Sioux author Luther Standing Bear: ‘All the years of calling the Indian a savage has never made him one.’
The article, published in the Paraguayan newspaper La Nacion, compared Paraguayan Indians to cancer and described them as 'Neolithic', 'out-of-date' and 'filthy'.
The award marks March 21, the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The award is part of Survival's 'Stamp it Out' campaign which aims to challenge racist descriptions of tribal people in the world's media.
Stamp it Out is supported by prominent journalists such as the BBC's World Affairs correspondent John Simpson, Sandy Gall and George Monbiot.
Survival’s director Stephen Corry said:
Racism often underpins, or is used to justify, abuses of tribal people, whether it’s stealing their land, exploiting them or even killing them. This article makes it clear that in the media such racism continues to exist, even among people who are supposed to ‘know better’. This isn’t about political correctness – it has very real consequences for tribal peoples’ livelihoods, land and, ultimately, their lives.This isn't just in Paraguay. Here's a Daily Mail article called 'Public School Savage' which refers to tribal peoples as 'Stone Age'.
It was the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on Saturday night. For those who've never heard of it (must be a few), around 700,000 watch the parade for a mile and a bit up one of Sydney's main drags, ending at the Showgrounds where the party's held. Several thousand participate and there are over 100 floats and marching groups.
The parade assembles in the city centre then turns into the main drag, Oxford Street — 'Dykes on bikes' lead, doing teaser runs up and down, warming people up— that moment when you hit the drag is like hitting a wall of ecstasy. The next two hours is a continuous rush.
Lots and lots of straight people both participate and watch — it's truly an event for all Sydney. The party had to introduce 'prove you're gay' measures one year because the party was so popular.
I was in a dozen parades, so have a few memories :]
There was the 'indigenous' year, when local Aboriginal elders led the parade in a very fancy old sports car. We made thousands of 'healing hands' and the reception was astonishing. Some of the national Aboriginal leaders participated, very butch blokes, but they had a wail of a time alongside Aboriginal drag queens. People always do. Politicians often come and I suspect it's for the good time rather than the votes. Seeing how they dress for the occasion is often fun. Even the evangelicals who pitch up with their banners have smiles on their faces.
There was the year we did a 'live' broadcast, which amounted to using phone boxes along the way (this was pre-mobiles!). At the party, where we took the DJ feed, around 4am I had a break and one nutty volunteer came on and ranted about the organisation - a Sydney tradition. I didn't find out until a pugnacious Board member complained :[
There was the year I pushed a very heavy robot all the way (not recommended). One year I watched from a prime spot and that year it poured down. Rain doesn't stop it because it's so warm and the spirit so high.
There was the year Julian Clary MC'd and spoilt things by being a bitch (maybe he was jetlagged). Rural groups always participate and they weren't quite as polished: doesn't matter, Clary totally missed the spirit of the thing. You rarely see these mobs in the pictures which go around the world, but they're the heart of it in many ways. It's wonderful to see 'community' in action: Muscle Marys alongside fat old queens alongside elder lesbians alongside asian drag queens: all encouraging each other.
What else? Imelda Marcos' shoes was a classic which everyone who saw it remembers. One hundred shoes on poles chased by a giant papier-mâché head of Imelda. That was the genius of David McDiamid and Peter Tully, gay artists lost to AIDS. David was inspired by the Mexican 'day of the dead' and did a very edgy but successful entry in the height of the crisis with "Dance of Death" puppets.
Then there was their giant Fred's Head on a giant platter — this was the local evangelical state senator, with a perchant for leather from his biker days, who protested every year. David and Peter's genius inspired a later float which spiked Pauline Hanson's monoculturalism. 'Fred's Head' actually survived and was brought out for the 20th Parade.
Individuals could make just as much of an impact. 'Miss New Zealand' achieved this with a floral print dress, flowery hat and a 'New Zealand' sign. Very Antipodean 1950s. My friend Brenton Heath-Kerr did this at the party with the most astonishing, inventive costumes I have ever seen such as his famous Tom Of Finland, the classic butch cartoon fantasy figure. He 'wore' the cartoon and was completely covered. He looked exactly like a cartoon. He also did Imelda. And Liza. And 'Wood Woman', a bizarre woodland creature, completely ... wood.
The party's is 20,000 or so past dawn. The Showgrounds ("where the country comes to town") is now sound stages for film but in the 80s you could wander into the pig stalls and the rest. Much shenanigans (or so I've heard ;] ) The party goes on until Monday. There's a tradition of the morning after gathering behind a pub which I don't know still goes on but the 'after parties' are legendary.
After 2000 there was a year when it was thought under threat. A giant Arts Festival had grown up around February, with massive corporate sponsorship. This ended up collapsing and possibly taking the parade with it. Mass 'no! ways!' stopped that. The show will go on.
I did a London Pride parade when I came back in 2000. Depressing. Very little music, the fun stuff was spotty and subdued. I did a version of Fred's head on a platter with friends. We made a papier-mache Tony Blair and posters of Blair as Pinocchio - this was before he'd got around to gay law reform. But it was all a bit sad after Sydney.
I just read the BBC Sydney correspondent's take on the Australian government's apology to the Stolen Generations on his blog. Nick Bryant is new-ish to town, so I wanted to make a few points to him. But of course I can't. No feedback as blog comments don't work.
So here's what I said, Nick, and maybe from the link back you might pick this up. Sigh.
Nick - and what about the UK? We have never apologised to Aborigines but we have to the Irish and others.
Who started this? Who's the ultimate responsible party? We are and the UK continues to work against indigenous interests internationally. Here is the UK government's attitude:
"The use of the term 'indigenous peoples'... cannot be construed as having any implications to rights under international law".
Ask your colleagues about the Uk establishment's attitude, Nick, and you may be shocked.
Regarding the Rudd apology, it was carefully couched. Compensation is off-the-table as is any talk of genocide - they won't even discuss it but it clearly was cultural genocide and that needs to be understood.
I think this is a late, partial move in the right direction and Labor has bad form with actually sticking up for aborigines - Rudd himself has bad form and certainly needs to do much more before he's Nobel material [some have suggested this]. He could start by bringing the remote aboriginal communities up to the same standard of basic services which their white neighbours enjoy - I have seen for myself what this means in practice and also seen many Australians preferring ignorance about their fellow citizens situation.
[Note: I had a friend in the Northern Territory who was doing round-trips of several hundred kms several times a week for dialysis. Many Aborigines need this but the service isn't there for them because of the legacy of past, racist service provision. Many, many communities lack services, like dialysis, that other Australians take for granted].
When I lived there the ABC showed Frontier, the first real attempt to document the war of occupation. Despite a star-studded narration it got terrible ratings and I very much noted that even my 'right-on' friends didn't watch it. The massacre sites [estimates range up to 1300 with the last documented from 1928 ] remain largely unmarked and unknown or even denied and to my mind this says everything about Australian attitudes.
Confronting the past is hard and the apology is one baby-step only down the road which Australia must take.
Kevin Rudd with Nana Nungala Fejo, the Northern Territory great-grandmother named by the Prime Minister in his historic apology to the stolen generation
The apology by Australia's new Labor Prime Minister to the Stolen Generations [Aborigines removed en masse from their parents] was a well-hyped moment. Coming at the beginning of the new Parliament it was received by large crowds of Aboriginal people who descended on Canberra.
It's way over due. Way past Canada or New Zealand or Brazil in their approach to their indigenous citizens. And it comes with - deliberately - no compensation (although the courts may see more compensated, it's unlikely because the evidence trail is cold), unlike those other countries. Plus there is still large scale opposition and complete denial, in particular to anyone raising the concept of 'genocide'.
Here's what this means in practice:
I do not know if Rikki Davis (Letters to the Editor, NIT Issue 144 ‘In defence of Brough’) is Aboriginal or non Aboriginal but this is exactly what I mean; no such thing as cultural genocide indeed? I know there is, cause I can’t speak MY language or practice MY culture because some whitefulla told my grandfather that he cannot do that “it is the old way” and to ensure he never did he was beaten every time he spoke one of the five or so more languages he could speak.Like many Indigenous Australians, I couldn't get too excited. It's just (carefully calculated) words.
So he had to do it in secret, never to pass it onto his children for fear he would “hold them back”.
He also had the fear of a foreign god forced into his psyche to aid the cultural genocide policies of the times.
From ENIAR:... or try their hardest to. But:
Story about a group of Care home workers who started an online campaign about their pay.
Their bosses cried 'defamation' and because the default is 'take-down' when pressured with such talk, their ISP, 1&1, complied and took the site down.
Fortunately, the workers could call on a big stick - their union, UNISON - and got the ISP to reverse. This was after the workers website had been mirrored on overseas servers.
Defamation is a great tool for silencing people. You need lots of money or good, free legal to defend yourself against the rich and determined. ISPs have a business to run.
I notice that they used an Australian non-profit host (SocialChange).
A decade ago I did a website for an Aboriginal group which was trying to stop a sacred site being developed over. The developer's lawyers used defamation law extremely well (amongst other tactics, chiefly lying) to try to silence them. The site got chased from four hosts, around the world before I found another Aussie non-profit (GreenNet) who would take the risk.
So said the author of the report which provided the excuse for Australian PM John Howard to take-over Aboriginal communities.
Health worker Pat Anderson (right), co-authored the Little Children are Sacred report about child abuse.
"What the Prime Minister (John Howard) and federal Indigenous Affairs Minister (Mal) Brough have done is just a further form of abuse," Ms Anderson told a gathering of peak physicians convened in Sydney to address Aboriginal health.
"What we have is a prime minister and his ministers who don't have a heart."Their approach isn't going to nurture any kind of development ... nothing."
Speaking via telephone hook-up from Canberra, Ms Anderson, an Aboriginal health worker, said the Government's emergency interventions had left her "depressed and disheartened".
"I just don't know what to say to you people."
Ms Anderson's report, co-authored with Rex Wild QC, was used by the government to justify its dramatic intervention, but the authors say none of their 97 recommendations have been addressed.
One of the standard responses from many Aussies about the Aboriginal situation is 'all in the past mate' - all those massacres, stolen children and cultural destruction is assigned to history.
Well this is coming out of your taxes. Mate.
$525,000 - the price of one stolen life
An Aboriginal man taken from his family as a baby has been awarded more than [A]$500,000 compensation [£211,000].
Bruce Trevorrow was 13 months old when a neighbour drove him on Christmas Day in 1957 from his Coorong family home, south-east of Adelaide, to the Children's Hospital with stomach pains.
Hospital notes tendered to the South Australian Supreme Court show staff recorded that the child had no parents and was neglected and malnourished.
Two weeks later, he was given under the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board to a woman, who later became his foster parent, without the permission of his parents. He did not see his family again for 10 years.
His mother wrote in July 1958 "I am writing to ask if you would let me know how baby Bruce is."
The board knew it lacked the legal power to resist a request for Bruce to be returned, so it lied, writing back to say her son was "making good progress" but doctors needed him for longer.
Thereafter they prevented his mother from making contact with him or from finding out where he was or by what process he had been removed.
By the age of two he showed signs of psychiatric disturbance including trichotillomania, a compulsive hairpulling disorder, and a speech defect. As a boy he also chewed his clothing, damaged books and stole.
He spent eight years growing up in the belief he was the child of a white family living in Adelaide. His dark colour was explained by references to relatives overseas who were darker skinned.
When he was returned to his Aboriginal family he was told he would be visiting them but was instead sent home.
In his late teens he took an overdose and slashed his wrists. Under questioning he admitted to never having felt close to anyone, including his wife, whom he treated "roughly" and "badly". He told the court he did not have the skills to be a father to his children and had never hugged or cuddled them.
In 1998, Mr Trevorrow sued the South Australian Government for pain and suffering, alleging he had lost his cultural identity, suffered depression, became an alcoholic and had an erratic employment history after being taken as a child from his family.
Mr Trevorrow left court saying he would pay off his house with the money. "I thought that we would never get there," he said. "But the day's come when I've got the peace of mind to start my life."
A spokesman for the South Australian Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, said the [Labor] Government would seek legal advice before deciding whether to appeal.
The former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission chairwoman, Lowitja O'Donoghue, said the judgment was "a great victory".
"It is time to understand there was a stolen generation, instead of all these history wars [see the 'black armband view of history']."
This is the first ever such payment.
Two previous stolen generation claims from the Northern Territory were defended by the Australia Government in the High (Supreme) Court and were defeated because they were out of time.
At least 100,000 children were removed from their parents
Nationally we can conclude with confidence that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from approximately 1910 until 1970. In certain regions and in certain periods the figure was undoubtedly much greater than one in ten. In that time not one family has escaped the effects of forcible removal (confirmed by representatives of the Queensland and WA Governments in evidence to the Inquiry). Most families have been affected, in one or more generations, by the forcible removal of one or more children
Bringing them Home
Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families
TechPresident: Morra Aarons: Women Online: Facts, Figures, and the 2008 Election
Similar in concept to Flickr.com (for photos) and YouTube.com (for videos) Docstoc.com will be the online community for sharing all types of documents.
Our aim is to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.
So far they've got 144. The Guardian did something similar in 2005:Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city has at least 50 non-indigenous communities with populations of 10,000 or more. Virtually every race, nation, culture and religion in the world can claim at least a handful of Londoners.London: the world in one city
Interactive: Use our scrollable map to see which ethnic communities live where in London.
View this map as a pdf
Key to the mapLondon by religion
Map: Counting the capital by religion.
London by religion: analysisLondon by ethnicity
Map: Counting the capital by ethnic group.
London by ethnicity: analysisWhat the maps don't show
Factfile: Tower Hamlets has the lowest proportion of ethnic Indians of any London borough; 5.1% of Kensington and Chelsea's populatino are Americans. And many more facts and figures.
That's John Howard on the right and ALP leader Kevin Rudd on the left• John Howard's fake MySpace page
• A Little Beef - Howard/Bush mashup by Red Symons
• GetUp's ad starring Max Gillies as Howard
• GetUp's site for spoof election ads
• What's in the Box? (spoof ad)
· The educational sector is pretty communal, there’s lots of sharing of ideas and word of mouth, so plenty of organic growth.
· It’s a very large, well defined sector that will create a large user base very quickly.
· Most importantly, what do we trust most as users? We trust what we know. As human beings, we don’t typically like change. When we’re getting educated, we use the tools we’re presented with because we don’t know anything else. When we leave education, we want to use those same tools that we’re comfortable with.
This strategy, often called ’seeding’, produces exceptional results in the medium to long term, but you need a lot of funding to survive the investment period (like Google, for example).
The videowall aggregates all the latest YouTube videos about the ‘08 candidates in a full screen total immersion experience. I’ve found it very useful in tracking down debate clips, anonymous oppo hits, and other cool stuff I’ve missed. Voter generated content is mixed in with media clips and official candidate videos to provide a 360 degree view of the campaign.Does take time to load :/
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I can't put better than Richard Ackland in The Guardian what is happening in Australia with Aboriginal people.
For 10 years [Prime Minister John Howard's] government did little other than dismiss the suffering of Aboriginal people in the past as an invention of leftwing academics in the present.BBC:Under Howard, federal government support for black Australia slowly dried up. Services were slashed, native title restricted. By 2000 official figures revealed that more than 41% of indigenous women and 50% of indigenous men could expect to die before they reached 50. Still nothing was done. The condition of many Aboriginal communities - frequently and accurately described as third world - grew only worse. The dreamtime was a grog-ridden nightmare. In the last few years black leaders, government agencies and welfare bodies have been talking of a growing crisis in traditional communities and calling for immediate action. But not until last week did Howard, less than six months out from an election and facing polls pointing to, in his own words, "electoral annihilation", discover this "national emergency".
 Alcohol and poverty have blighted Aboriginal communities |
All Aboriginal children in the territory will be medically examined.
The new proposals follow a report last week which found evidence of abuse in each of the territory's 45 communities.
The report blamed high levels of alcohol and poverty for the situation, which Prime Minister John Howard has described as a national emergency.Ackland: For 10 years the trauma at the heart of Australia had not only been denied, but exacerbated. Now there was a damburst, a national outpouring of despair and anger.The subsequent comments detail a litany of experiences of Australian racism and I'm sad to say that is my experience of most Australians (I lived there for fifteen years): they are either overtly racist or in denial, thinking 'sorry' is enough. There are a lot of people who actively support reconciliation but they're the minority. Even 'left' parties support racist policies. This isn't surprising though as Aboriginal people are largely invisible - most Aussies wouldn't know one - and effectively segregated. Most Australians in my experience are ignorant of their own history.
For Howard the aborigines are the problem. His response is not to send teachers and doctors, his response is to send the army and the police. He is a risible human being and unfortunately the rest of my fellow australians that support this policy are just as disgraceful. But Howard has now won a number of elections appealing to them, and this is just another attempt.
I agree with Ackland that Howard is "a risible human being", but so are the Aussies who continue to support him and his policies. The Australian Aboriginal situation should shame Australia and Australians. It says volumes that it obviously isn't and the more who say this loudly to Aussies, the better.We believe we are the only western democracy with a significant indigenous minority that has no elected representation of any kind. Trachoma, the leading cause of blindness worldwide, is entirely a disease of third-world countries – except for Australia where it is the scourge of remote Aboriginal communities. Our governments pretend to be generous with aid to the third world. There is a third world living within Australia, to Australia’s shame.
We can be pleased that the Government accepts there is an emergency which requires action. But their first step needs to be a broad-based approach based upon respect, upon self esteem and on the recognition of a real partnership.
Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser Prof Lowitja O’Donoghue Mr Brian Butler
Malcolm Fraser and Lowitja O'Donoghue are Co-Patrons and Brian Butler is the Chairman of Stolen Generations Alliance.
Recommended reading - Greer gets to the heart of remote communitiesJune 28, 2007 7:50 PMI'm from New Zealand, and this really disappoints me. Despite what you may have heard, and apart from sporting rivalries and poking fun at each other, New Zealanders tend to like Australians.
But there's a big difference between the two countries when it comes to race relations. New Zealand is far from perfect, and has its share of people with racist views, yet these views are rarely reflected in electoral results. For example, in the last general election, the leader of the conservative party attempted to copy Howard and attack "special privileges" for Maori people. After a brief surge in the polls it was back to normal, and he ended up losing. In the end, while they may be perturbed about many things, New Zealanders won't put up with out and out racism. Another example: in Australia, Howard basically refuses to deal with Aboriginal land claims. In New Zealand, there is a government agency set up to deal with them, and many claims have been settled. Again, a lot of New Zealanders aren't happy with this, but it hasn't prevented the government from engaging in the difficult, and ongoing, task of sorting out past injustices.
I often wonder why there is so much racism in Australia. Perhaps it is because most Australians do not personally know any Aboriginals. In New Zealand Maori people are everywhere. We all go to school and work together, and I personally have many Maori friends. That's not to say that Maori are not overrepresented in poverty and crime statistics, but there is no "separate society". Non-Maori New Zealanders deal with Maori all the time.
Part of it may be that Maori have been heavily involved in the political life of New Zealand. For the last 140 years Maori representation has been guaranteed in the New Zealand Parliament, with a set number of seats set aside for them in proportion with their share of the population (although in the last few decades Maori people have been free to choose to vote on the general or Maori roll, and the number of seats has been adjusted accordingly). Maori issues are always front and centre in New Zealand politics, often because Maori members of parliament are vociferous in defending their interests.
I can't understand why this cannot be the same in Australia. Believe me, this latest news could be very very bad for Australia. As some other posters have noted, Australia has not loomed large in the global consciousness as a racist state, whereas countries like South Africa have. It seems to me that this latest crisis may well change that. Many people are finding themselves taking another look at Australia and Australians, and this cannot be good.
I guess it's now up to the Australian people to do something about it. They better do something, or they will end up as pariahs, which would be a shame, because Australians are generally nice, fun, informal and outgoing people.
The views expressed here are my own. You may disagree. Post a comment. Views may or may not represent those of my employer.
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