Northern Land Council – Statement on the passing of the NLC Chairman, Dr Bush-Blanasi The following is a statement released this morning by the Northern Land Council Today we mourn the loss of Dr Bush-Blanasi. His mother was a Yolngu woman from the Blue Mud Bay region and he was raised by a Mayili man [...]
Koulla, Anna, Eirini Roussos (mum) with Emmanouel, George, & Maria This is a guest post by artist, curator and barrister-at-law Koulla Roussos* Here is a photograph of my first passport pic, taken in 1973. My mother and four siblings a few months before we went on our return trip to Greece. I can remember where [...]
NT Coroner Elisabeth Armitage at NT police HQ. Photo: Melissa Mackay, ABC In January 2012 Crikey published a piece I wrote ($) looking at the concerns expressed by an Aboriginal law and justice support group from the about-as-remote-as-you-can-get NT community of Lajamanu—800 kilometres southwest of Darwin and 900 hundred north-west of Alice Springs—in reaction to [...]
Concerns about the Northern Territory Police triple-0 communications system have been around for a while. This is a re-post of a piece I wrote for Crikey in January 2012 on problems with police communications in a very remote community in the Northern Territory. To see how little has changed since that time see this piece [...]
In June 2023 the four Northern Territory Aboriginal land councils met to sign the Barunga Declaration which addresses all Australians and urges them to support a Voice to Parliament. More than 200 representatives of the Northern, Central, Tiwi and Anindilyakwa land councils gathered on the traditional lands of the Bagala clan group at Barunga, south-east [...]
Guest post by Chips Mackinolty* While “we speak our mother’s tongue” is a universal truism, it is something often forgotten in the context of colonialism and the overt and extended suppression of Indigenous languages across what is now called Australia. How can a “mother’s tongue” be spoken if the children have been taken away? If [...]
Lately there’s been a lot of people demanding more detail about the Uluru Statement From The Heart. Over the years I’ve collected a bunch of foundational documents made by Aboriginal people that have called for land rights, a Treaty, constitutional recognition, redress for past injustices and much more. It is no coincidence that many of [...]
I have lived my song cycle … In remembering this extraordinary Aboriginal leader it is difficult to forget the meaning of his family name—Yunupingu—which in the Gumatj dialect of the Yolngu Matha language family means “the rock that stands against time”.Across so many decades, Yunupingu’s deeds and actions in the struggles for lands, seas, language [...]
I find it hard to put into words just how much this great Yolŋu man achieved and how much we owe him. When he first became Chair of the Northern Land Council in 1977, the Fraser Government had only just passed into law the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. He would be Chair [...]
The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP delivering the second reading speech for the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) Bill 2023 This is the Second Reading Speech for the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) Bill 2023 as delivered by Attorney-General The Hon Mark Dreyfus KC MP earlier today, 30 March [...]
