David Nason; 22/4/10 The South Australian government will consider a negotiated settlement of future Stolen Generations civil actions following the final Aboriginal victory in the Trevorrow test case. The state’s new Attorney-General, John Rau, made the concession while rejecting using a compensation tribunal to deal with 100 other potential such cases. Mr Rau’s comments came […]read more…
Trevorrow case settled.
Gavin Lower; 17/4/10; The South Australian government has decided not to appeal to the High Court against Australia’s only successful claim for compensation by a member of the Stolen Generations. Late last month, the Full Court of the Supreme Court dismissed the state’s appeal against a 2007 landmark judgment that found Bruce Trevorrow was taken […]read more…
Greens should not force poverty on traditional owners
Wayne Bergmann; 5/4/10 This is an edited extract of a speech by Kimberley Land Council executive director Wayne Bergmann given in Darwin last month. Kimberley Aboriginal people have a track record in environmental management and looking after our country. We also believe in looking after our heritage and creating a future for our kids. Our […]read more…
Rudd blasted over apology
Russell Skelton; 3/4/10 The Rudd government has provided a “pittance” to the stolen generations and has failed to do anything practical to help Aboriginal people removed from their families, says the former head of the intervention taskforce. Dr Sue Gordon, who was separated from her mother at the age of four, said the Prime Minister […]read more…
Ushered in, whisked out and promptly forgotten
Wesley Aird; 19/3/10 Wesley Aird is a member of the Gold Coast Native Title Group and a board member of the Bennelong Society. Once again, we are reminded there are things we should and shouldn’t say in relation to indigenous people. When Tony Abbott recently called into question the practice of the welcome to country […]read more…
Paternalistic reference
16/3/10 Christopher Pyne recently complained about too many references to Aboriginal people in the planned national curriculum and now Tony Abbott says it is “inappropriate” to publicly acknowledge their existence. It is a chilling glimpse of how Aboriginal people can expect to fare if the Coalition wins government. Elspeth McInnes, Adelaide, SAread more…
Indigenous ceremony proper ‘welcome’
Lanai Vasek; 16/3/10 Aboriginal elder Allen Madden thinks Tony Abbott’s views on traditional indigenous ceremonies are rubbish and to abandon them at the start of important gatherings amounted to trespassing. Mr Madden, who performs two or three welcomes a week to Sydney’s Gadigal land at $250 to $300 for each welcome, said the Opposition Leader’s […]read more…
Tony Abbott reopens culture wars over nods to Aborigines
Samantha Maiden; 15/3/10 T0ny Abbott has opened up a new front in the culture wars by declaring that Kevin Rudd and other Labor ministers demonstrate a misplaced sense of political correctness when acknowledging the traditional owners of land at official functions. Mr Abbott’s dismissal of the modern practice of acknowledging traditional owners as “out-of-place tokenism” […]read more…
Nurturing force of nature sang of Australia’s sorry past
Berbard Zuel; 22/2/10 Obituary: Ruby Hunter, 1955-2010 Ruby Hunter had plenty more work to do when she died last Wednesday. The Ngarrindjeri woman who began her life in the South Australian riverland before becoming one of the stolen generation always had work on the go, plans for more. It might be performance or a film, […]read more…
Ruby Hunter, minstrel for Stolen Generations, dies
Ashleigh Wilson; 19/2/10; (2 Items) Ruby Hunter, who died in the arms of her partner, Archie Roach, has been remembered as one of the nation’s most compelling musical storytellers, a strong role model and inspiration to other indigenous performers. The singer, songwriter and occasional actor died at home in Victoria on Wednesday surrounded by family. […]read more…
Tear Down The Barbed Wire Of Discrimination
Jeff McMullen; 15/2/10 In all of Australia’s modern history, the crime of silence accompanies the death, destruction and denial that obliterates the rights of indigenous people.Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s national apology two years ago was a long overdue admission that when a nation lives with officially sanctioned racial discrimination we are all diminished as human […]read more…
Sorry litany of misinformation
Robert Manne; 6/2/10 Keith Windschuttle accused some historians of supporting gross overestimates of the number of Stolen Generations Aborigines. Here, a reply from one of the academics he criticised. Late last year the third volume of Keith Windschuttle’s self-published magnum opus The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: The Stolen Generations, 1881-2008 appeared. From a political point […]read more…
Sorry not enough for stolen generations
Michael Gordon; 3/2/10 Reg Edwards was sitting at the breakfast table when he peered out a window and saw the empty Morris Minor begin to slide backwards down the driveway. He was barely in his teens, but clearly one of the biggest and strongest boys at the Orana Methodist Home for abandoned and ”neglected” children […]read more…
Subject to interpretation
17/12/09; The Australian, Letters; No Internet Text Leaving aside the issue of allegtions being exactly that and not roof of an event, Keith Windschuttle continues to ignore the fact that the documents he finds and the issues he raises are subject to interpretation (“Rabbit-Proof Fence grossly inaccurate: Windschuttle,” 14/12). Having sexual relations with a minor […]read more…
Fortified against the facts
16/12/09 As the granddaughter of Molly Craig and the daughter of Doris Pilkington-Garimara, I am deeply offended by the comments made by Keith Windschuttle. White station owners and itinerant workers often took advantage of young Aboriginal girls, many of whom were raped. Their punishment? Taken from their loving parents and their homelands to an alien […]read more…
Rabbit-proof defence from film’s creators
15/12/09 It’s a pity that Keith Windschuttle did not continue his research into Molly and Daisy’s removal (“Rabbit-Proof Fence grossly inaccurate: Windschuttle”, 14/12). He might have “discovered” the rest of the correspondence in this case. Yes, Mrs Chellow wrote to A. O. Neville complaining that the girls were “running wild with the whites”. Following this […]read more…