BLACK AND WHITE UNITE FOR RIGHTS CONFERENCE

BLACK AND WHITE UNITE FOR RIGHTS - CONFERENCE, MAY 23-25
**SORTING FACT FROM FICTION IN THE NT INTERVENTION**
http://aboriginalrightscoalition.wordpress.com/

‘DAY OF MOURNING’ ANNIVERSARY FORUM 70th Year Anniversary
FRIDAY 23 MAY
6-8:30 pm, Australia Hall, 150 Elizabeth St Sydney
* Welcome to Country - Chika Madden
* MC Intro & Cultural Performance - Greg Eatock
* How far have we come? - Professor Larissa Behrendt
* Parliamentary Response - Senator Rachel Siewert (Greens, WA)
* Update on impact of NT Intervention - Barbara Shaw
Break & Acoustic Performance
* Human Rights Implications - Darren Dick HREOC
* Community Developed Approaches - Muriel Bamblett SNAICC (tbc)

SATURDAY 24 MAY
Redfern Community Centre, 29 Hugo St, Redfern
OVERVIEW OF ABORIGINAL HISTORY OF STRUGGLE
Welcome to Country - Chicka Madden
Conference Welcome - Millie Ingram

9:00-9.10am
Fifty Years of Struggle: Contextualising the Campaign - Greg Eatock

The Intervention Unpacked
9.10 – 10.45 am
The Intervention: grass roots impacts - Juni Mills, Chris Poulson, Lyle Cooper
Plus Speakers from the Floor, Individual’s experiences & Communities Input

MORNING TEA 10:45-11:00

PANEL - PATERNALISM REVISITED - The Intervention Unpacked (cont’d)
11:00am-12:00pm
Welfare Management, Land Legislation, CDEP, Mission Managers, grog & pornography controls, health & education, & the impact on Child Protection - Monitoring the Intervention (Aboriginal organisations & Communities Input)

The Expanding Intervention
12-12:30 pm
Qld’s Experience - Victor Hart
WA’s Experience - Natasha Moore
NSW Experience -
SA Update - Brian Butler

12:30-1:00pm Questions

LUNCH 1:00-2:00pm

Afternoon Sessions
WHY THE CHANGE IN APPROACH & WHERE’S IT HEADING?
Ideology Underlying Intervention, 2:00-2:15pm
What’s the thinking behind the NT Intervention? - Cathy Eatock

Which Way Forward 2:15-2:30pm
International Precedents & Evidence Based Aboriginal Developments - Muriel Bamblett (tbc)

Review of NT Intervention 2:45- 3:00pm
What’s planned next? - Larissa Behrendt

3:00-3:30pm Questions

AFTERNOON TEA 3:30-4:00 pm

STATE REPORT BACKS
4:00-5:00pm
State Report Backs
5:00-5:30pm
Alice, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melb, Tas & Sydney - ARC & Affiliated Organisations

Questions

6-9PM COMMUNITY BBQ & PERFORMANCE


SUNDAY 25 MAY
ABORIGINAL CAUCUS & CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS
9:30-12:30
Aboriginal Caucus
National Coordination, ARC Structure, Community Issues, Future Directions

Campaign Workshops?
Engaging Unions, Broadening Support, Managing the Media and Working with Students, and the International Campaign

LUNCH 12:30-1:30pm

BLACK & WHITE UNITE SESSION
Koori Caucus Outcomes
1:30-2:00pm
Future Directions Report Back: Where are we going & how do we get there?

Workshops’ Report Back
2:00-2:40pm
Workshop Recommendations: How the other 97.5% of the population can help!

Resolutions
2:40-4:30pm

Conference Close 4:30 pm

Black And White Unite! Aboriginal Rights Coalition National Conference 23-25 May!

70 years since the Day of Mourning.

Friday 23rd May: Opening forum
6:30 pm at Australia Hall, 150 Elizabeth Street, Sydney

Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th May:
Panels, Discussion & Workshops
Redfern Community Centre, Hugo Street, Redfern

Speakers include:
Larissa Behrendt
Vince Forrester
Heather Goodall
Sam Watson
Barbara Shaw

Conference sessions include:
*History of the struggle
*Unions and Aboriginal rights
*Resisting the new paternalism

Almost one year since the NT intervention began, there is a pressing need for the Aboriginal Rights movement to come together, consolidate recent gains and plan for the fight ahead.

The new Rudd Government has made some important symbolic gestures - from the apology through to commitments to ‘Close the Gap’ in Indigenous health. But for communities in the NT, Rudd is now the face of an intervention which is causing a new wave of dispossession and, as argued by Mutitjulu elder Vince Forrester, “a return to Apartheid”.

Welfare quarantines, the destruction of Community Employment Development Projects (CDEP) and the compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal lands, businesses and services has forced thousands of people from their communities into urban centres. There they are met with racism and police repression - 190 people were taken into custody in Alice Springs on 4-5 April in an operation targeting “anti-social behaviour”.

The ideas of paternalism, assimilation and the free-market driving the intervention, and pushed so hard by the Howard government, are impacting on Aboriginal policy across the country. From the Queensland government’s decision to continue holding stolen wages “in trust”, the “mainstreaming” of Indigenous services which continues, through to the burgeoning national roll out of punitive welfare policies, a policy consensus has emerged in government and media against self-determination.

The new government is actively campaigning for retention and expansion of the explicitly racist intervention laws. They refuse to acknowledge the social break down taking place. They continue to deny Aboriginal people the basic human rights of protections against discrimination or rights to appeal.

2,000 people marched in Canberra on February 12, demanding an end to the intervention and campaign groups have been established iwn the major cities. Many trade unionists and activists in the broader community have recognised the need to actively challenge the racism of the intervention and renew the fight for Aboriginal rights around the country.

The upcoming conference aims to strengthen the networks that have been formed through this campaign. This conference will look to successful struggles from the past and hear from the strong communities leaders of today - to advance the politics of self-determination and forge demands and strategy for the ongoing campaign against the intervention.

Any groups wishing to become more involved in the campaign through organising and running a workshop at the conference are invited to register their interest with the organisers. For further information, please contact aboriginalrightscoalition@gmail.com

http://aboriginalrightscoalition.wordpress.com/

New nation-wide indigenous leadership body formed!

A new coalition of Aboriginal leaders from around the country formed a couple of weeks ago, and has released its first public statement, according to the National Indigenous Times article (reproduced below) A decade under Howard has been a living nightmare, says new black leadership group.

The new (but as-yet unnamed) group includes

• Pat Turner - former senior public servant, Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT
• Olga Havnen - ACOSS and ANTaR, Northern Lands Council, Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT
• Naomi Mayers - CEO Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service
• Dennis Eggington - WA Aboriginal Legal Service
• Sam Watson - Murri academic, activist and Socialist Alliance Queensland senate candidate
  
• Bob Weatherall - FAIRA
• Michael Mansell - Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, long-time activist and member of Aboriginal Provisional Government
  
• Michael Williams - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland
  
• Gracelyn Smallwood - Aboriginal health expert, political and human rights activist from North Queensland
• Nicole Watson - Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney
• Larissa Behrendt - Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology Sydney, Chairperson of National Indigenous Television
  
• Bradley Foster - community leader from North Queensland

PHOTO: TOP L-R: Pat Turner, Olga Havnen, Naomi Mayers, Dennis Eggington; MIDDLE, L-R: Sam Watson, Bob Weatherall, Michael Mansell, Michael Williams; BOTTOM, L-R: Gracelyn Smallwood, Nicole Watson, Larissa Behrendt and Bradley Foster.

This comes at a crucial time for indigenous Australia after a decade of fierce attacks from the Howard Government: the abolition of ATSIC, the undermining of Native Title, the invasion of indigenous lands held under Land Rights, the continuing deaths in custody and police racism, the return of assimilation and paternalism, the cuts in funding to essential aboriginal services, the ongoing denial of justice to the stolen generation, the stolen wages of generations and the refusal to say sorry.

All this 40 years after the referendum which overwhelmingly showed the support of non-indigenous Australians for a change in the treatment of Australia's first people. Yet what has changed? Not a lot - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are still massively over-represented in prison, still die 17 years earlier than the rest of the population, still suffer systematised diiscrimination, and are still denied the substance of a sovereignty never ceded.

Both Labor and Liberal have promised the world, and failed. Or worse, lied and manouevered, and tried to condemn indigenous Australia to the dust-bin of history. At the UNSW Indigenous Legal Centre's National Forum on July 20, two sentiments was repeatedly expressed - that both the major parties have failed; and that the re-invasion of the Northern Territory needs to be to the Indigenous rights movement what WorkChoices has been for the union movement - a catalyst to action.

On Friday August 31, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy set up in Victoria Park in Sydney again, and the same night politics in the Pub packed the Gaelic Club to the rafters (the Wombats counted over 130 people) in a discussion on the fight for indigenous rights. ANTaR, Oxfam, the Greens, the Socialist Alliance, ReconciliACTION, the newly re-formed "Women Against Wik", and many more groups are getting ready to take the fight to the next level.

But the leadership has got to come from the indigenous community. It's time.

It's time to get more than angry - it's time to get active!

A decade under Howard has been a living nightmare, says new black leadership group
National Indigenous Times
Thursday, 23 August 2007

By Chris Graham

NATIONAL, August 31, 2007: A new coalition of Aboriginal leaders from around the nation has released its first public statement since forming a fortnight ago.

And the group, which has yet to adopt a formal name, has come out swinging, issuing a release that is written in the vein that the group intends to continue fighting… with plenty of aggression.

Describing the past decade under the Howard government as “a nightmare” for Aboriginal people, the group attacks both the Liberal and Labor parties for creating policies which “blame the victims”.

The group includes former senior public servant Pat Turner, Olga Havnen (ACOSS and ANTaR), Naomi Mayers (CEO, Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service), Dennis Eggington (WA Aboriginal Legal Service), Sam Watson (Murri academic and activist), Bob Weatherall (FAIRA), Michael Mansell (Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre), Michael Williams , Gracelyn Smallwood (North Queensland), Nicole Watson and Larissa Behrendt (both Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University Technology Sydney) and Bradley Foster (community leader from North Queensland).

It formed a fortnight ago in response to the federal government's 'emergency intervention' into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

“A decade under John Howard has seen native title made harder to get with his 'bucket loads of extinguishment' legislation,” the statement reads.

“The elected body ATSIC was sacked; the Reconciliation Council dumped; paternalistic funding conditions imposed, such as being asked to wash hands and attend school to get Commonwealth monies.

“The Northern Territory Land Rights Act has been amended to increase access for mining and now vulnerable Aboriginal communities in the NT are invaded by troops.

“It has been a nightmare decade for Aboriginal people.

“We have been reduced to beggars in our own country.”

The group accused the Howard government of selective listening when it came to hearing Indigenous people.

“Any dissenting voice is ignored by a Government that selects "yes" people to promote its own agenda, and the select few are tragically held out as the voice of Aborigines,” the statement read.

The group accused both the Coalition and the ALP of 'blaming the victims' and launched a scathing attack on the NT intervention plans, which are endorsed by both major parties.

“The Howard and Rudd response to policies that have kept families and whole communities destitute is to blame the victim.

“Those victims, long denied a real chance to make a go of it, will now have their income stolen and must go to the local store with food vouchers: those vouchers will have a list of purchasable items on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

“The balance of family incomes will never be seen by the "beneficiaries" because the bureaucracy keeps it to pay "other" costs.

“This demeaning approach will create greater dependency and strip the last form of human dignity from those subjected to a destructive policy.

“The increased police presence in community areas with "dob-in desks" is designed to humiliate, not rehabilitate.

“Portraying all Aborigines as paedophiles and drunks, and taking land away, undermines the remaining virtue we have: our dignity.

“We cannot watch developments in silence any longer. Our people deserve better.”

The group says the new coalition will seek to “represent the unrepresented Aboriginal communities” from around the nation and it promises to never align with any political party.

“We believe we bring experience and sincerity to the national political landscape.

“In our quest, we will not favour any political party as we see Aboriginal issues as being above party politics. Our single aim is to improve the lot of our people.

“We see our culture and people as an asset, not a liability.

“If we cannot persuade governments, then we will take our case to the court of public opinion - to the Australian people, to give us a chance to create a better future.”

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