Your “I wanna!” doesn’t trump cultural sensitivities

I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God, nor do I believe there is any inherent supernatural reason not to walk on Uluru. However, I do believe there are excellent cultural reasons not to walk on Uluru. I also believe that human rights are important. However, I don’t believe that your choice to do something [...]

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Mabo – what it means, what it doesn’t mean

Most Australians would be aware, at least, of the High Court’s decision in Mabo, which was handed down on 3 June 1992. Many would also recognise the phrase terra nullius and would know that it has something to do with the Mabo decision. However, there has historically been a lot of misinformation about the meaning [...]

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Stereotypes and assumptions

The theme for this year’s Reconciliation Week is “See the person, not the stereotype”. A couple of months ago, I noticed some ads around the city. Each ad had two faces, and a question (eg “Who would you want to work with?”), and then the words “We’re hoping you couldn’t answer that” and url reconcilation.org.au. [...]

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Discrimination in the provision of education

You’ll probably see some of the themes of my posts during this week, Reconciliation Week, being revisited in my posts for NAIDOC Week in a month or so. That’s because, as I mentioned in my previous post, Reconciliation Week sort of snuck up on me, and that means I don’t have a great deal of [...]

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Reconciliation Week and NAIDOC Week

National Reconciliation Week started on Wednesday, two days ago. It finishes on 3 June, next Wednesday. It kind of snuck up on me, I have to admit. I had already decided that I am going to blog every day during NAIDOC Week (5-12 July this year), and to ask a few other people to do [...]

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Dying languages; languages coming back to life

I knew about the enormous loss of language that has happened on this continent over the last couple of centuries, but whenever I read or hear something specific about that loss, it makes me very sad. The page I’ve linked to is a transcript to an ABC program, Hindsight, to an episode called “Holding our [...]

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A little activism against the Intervention

Fire Fly has more detail. Basically: Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, has announced that there will be a compulsory acquisition of Alice Springs town camps. She has wonderful [that's sarcasm] timing, today being the start of National Reconcilation Week and all. Fire Fly has a good roundup of information, including the text of a statement [...]

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There’s a reason I don’t read Andrew Bolt

ETA: I highly recommend Hexy’s post about this. It is much more comprehensive than mine, much more passionate, and you’ll learn a lot more about the relevant issues. It’s a long post, but well worth the time. Robbo’s post alerted me to Andrew Bolt’s latest ignorant tirade about how Indigenous people aren’t doing what he [...]

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