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".
Mick Dodson, an indigenous Australian and a Permanent Forum member attended these early meetings and he said "If you closed your eyes and forgot the accents and just listened to what people were saying, you would have though you were at home, because there was such a commonality of problems and issues that indigenous people elsewhere in the world were confronting. He further stated "You’d hear the same stories at any community meeting in Australia; issues about rights not being respected; human rights not being acknowledged. It’s a common problem for indigenous peoples worldwide.
I am honoured to have been given this 2010 NAIDOC award. I remember like it was yesterday being in the audience at this event in 2007 when my former colleague Jack Ah Kit spoke after receiving the same award. It was only weeks after John Howard and Mal Brough had made their shock-and-awe Intervention announcement in 2007.
The Bush Turkey Tjukurrpa is one of two major Tjukurrpa to pass through the country of the Spinifex People. It is a Tjukurrpa that is seen by other Western Desert people as belonging to the Spinifex people...The Wati Kipara...involves the travels of an old Bustard who attempts to steal the world's fire and drown it in the ocean at Madura. The Wati Kipara Tjukurrpa involves excruciating physical punishment, murder, betrayal, sex, deceit and intrigue, but the details of these events remain secret and privy only to senior men.
"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.
The penalties for the unauthorised possession of wildlife in the NT are high - for an individual the maximum penalties range from $65,000 to $130,000 and are of course much higher for corporate offenders.
Bedrizzled with rain he sits without a move; Among the rippling waters he sits without a move. Bedrizzled with rain, a reddish glow overspreads him; Among the rippling waters a reddish glow overspreads him. The sky is clouded with water-moss; The sky sends down scattered showers.
To my mind this Income Quarantining is a bit like the old days when they used to put Aboriginal people under the “dog license", where they had to grovel to the government for permission to do all kinds of things. People need to stand up and say “No, this is not right for Australia. What kind of country are we living in?”
I’ve been working with really strong community members, people who have been given well-deserved authority and respect by their communities and who have been completely overlooked by governments. I just cannot understand why this government continues an approach that completely disengages communities and individuals. Particularly when you look at the cumulative impact of that continual disengagement and the return to the top-down approach. Eventually the government must finally realise that this approach just isn’t working.
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.
