Remote Aboriginal settlements to be shut down

Australia with Northern Territory highlighted

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Australia Labor government moves to shut down remote Aboriginal settlements

By Susan Allan
27 June 2009

"The federal and Northern Territory (NT) Labor governments last month unveiled a series of free-market measures that will deepen the poverty and suffering in indigenous communities.

Working Future, announced by the NT government on May 20, seeks, under the auspices of the federal government’s NT intervention, to force the estimated 10,000 Aboriginal people living in some 580 remote “homeland” settlements into 20 special settlements or so-called “economic hubs”. The homeland communities have been defined as “non-viable”.

hildren playing at a homeland settlement near Alice Springs

Echoing both the former Howard government, and the current Labor government, which has adopted Howard’s 2007 police-military intervention as its own, NT chief minister Paul Henderson claimed that his government would end “indigenous disadvantage” by creating “reservoirs of opportunity” in the 20 hub towns.

In reality, Working Future is aimed at clearing the way for mining, pastoral and tourism interests at the direct expense of Aboriginal communities. The policy flows directly from the Rudd government’s earlier decision to prioritise 26 indigenous communities across the country for new housing and infrastructure, marking a drive to shut down many settlements."

Read more of this article by World Socialist Website

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• Helping Aborigines 'to take time' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Sina Brown-Davis : Australia promises to end racial discrimination - editor.novajoservo@gmail.com (angryindian.blogspot.com)
• Australia backs indigenous rights (news.bbc.co.uk)

Australian Aboriginals state their rights in Darwin meeting

Image by pierre pouliquin via Flickr

Aboriginal people of Australia held a recent meeting where they summarized their rights and complaints. Reading this makes clear how Aboriginal people are still being treated as lower-rank citizens. Their history has been one of being oppressed by the dominating population of Australia, who are really only immigrants. Here follow some quotes from their statement.

"We members of the Prescribed Area Peoples’ Alliance have made the following statement from our June 18-19 meeting in Darwin

Everybody else has their rights. Aboriginal people aren’t recognised. They don’t want to listen to us because they want our land. We are our own leaders, passed down through our families. We don’t need leaders in parliament to speak. We can use our own voice. The government says they support the declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples but they haven’t made it legal. The government has to make it legal. All Aboriginal people are being treated as second class citizens."

 

"We shouldn’t have separate Aboriginal policies. Racism cuts us away. It feels like we’re not citizens of Australia. People discriminate against us in every way. We don’t have our rights.

We went through racism and hardship at school in the old days, and today our children are still going through that. There is still a lot of prejudice. The government is running us down altogether under the intervention. It’s demeaning to us."

"Homelands are our traditional country. It’s where we teach our kids about our culture. It’s been handed down from generation to generation. We need to keep the traditional ties to our land.

People are healthier and stronger living on homelands. Eating traditional foods. It’s the right environment to raise kids.

Everybody pays rent but there are no basic services like running water for our homelands. The government says no more funding for services.

If people are forced to leave off homelands they will lose everything, their identity. When the communities are empty the bulldozers will come in. Why would we give it up now, after what our old people went through to get it?"

Quotes taken from http://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/8158

Read more

-- Intervention has stolen our rights: elder - ABC Online 

--Protest heads to Darwin -Northern Territory - ‎Jun 16, 2009‎