I think that this is a long-term strategy but that what is inevitable is that we will see the end of prohibition policies. They are unsustainable. There is a global trend now to re-examine the policy of prohibition of drugs. It has been an abject failure. I think it will happen in Australia. It will be an incremental change and it'll happen over the next decade. But it is inevitable.
"Warlpiri people are not slaves, yet many in ‘mainstream’ society persist in claiming some sort of ‘ownership’ of Aborigines. They arrogantly have opinions as to what Aborigines should or shouldn’t do, and believe they have some sort of right in deciding what is best for them. Warlpiri have no power over their destiny. No say in their future. No say in how they should run their lives." Frank Baarda, Yuendumu 2010
Omar Musa: Where do we go when we are dead? I have no idea. I cannot even begin to fathom it. I understand this idea of heaven and hell because I was raised in a strict Muslim family but...I know where I want to be buried though. I want to be buried next to the Molongolo River in Queanbeyan. I have such a strong connection to where I grew up in Queanbeyan. I guess that is spiritual.
Young people, feeling hopeless, began to tell each other to follow their ancestors and kill themselves like Purrukapali. But the real story said something else. The true story was about creation, how our first man died to create the Curlew, from the spirit of our first woman, his wife, and how the moon was created from the spirit of Purrukapali's treacherous brother. This was the real story. How can we sort it out?" he asks. "How can we change the ending of the story?"
I do not wish to use the conference as a “soapbox,” nor do I wish “hijack” the world championships. I will not and cannot discuss events or circumstances related to the ongoing investigations and lawsuits involving Lance Armstrong and certain of his current and former business associates and teammates, including what I saw and heard during the relevant time periods.
I can’t think of a single incident in the past in which the Warlpiri residents of Yuendumu have not respected non-Warlpiri residents’ neutrality in such matters. They respect our right to be kept out of it. This respect is not reciprocated by “mainstream” society, that has the arrogant belief that it is entitled to interfere and dictate to remote Aboriginals how they should live their lives. The Intervention epitomises this arrogance.
John Liddle: Like most Aboriginal males in Central Australia I am sick of going to funerals and seeing our courts, jails, health clinics and hospital filled with brothers and sisters who have been involved in family violence. It is time that Aboriginal males stood up both morally and culturally, taking positive action and a zero tolerance approach to stop the excessive violence in families, communities and towns, a crisis that is having a devastating effect on community members of all ages and genders, especially the children.
In evidence given to the Committal proceeding in the Alice Springs Magistrate's Court in December 2009, one of the campers told the Court that the "words exchanged" included "You black cunts - fuck off out of this Todd River" and "Get out of the Todd River, you motherfuckers".
"In painting, an artist conveys his sense of form, topic, and perspective. A painting may express a clear social position, as with Picasso’s condemnation of the horrors of war in Guernica, or may express the artist’s vision of movement and color, as with “the unquestionably shielded painting of Jackson Pollock": United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the matter of Steven C. White v the City of Sparks, Nebraska.
Most of the people working for the intervention are Kardia (non-Aboriginal) - there is not much work for Yapa from the Intervention – most of those jobs go to Kardia people. When they come in with all their flash new cars, flash Toyotas, that makes us feel down. What the Yapa are thinking is that all the Kardia are "moneyfaces" (that they only care about money). And some people think like it was a hundred years ago and is still happening now.
