At Don Dale juvenile detention centre a 15-year-old orphaned Aboriginal boy took his life only days after being locked up for $90 worth of ‘crimes’. How many Australians have heard of Johnno Warramarrba? Johnno’s mother died when he was a baby. His dad was killed in a car accident when he was eleven. When he […]
Aboriginal Specific News – Australia – Page 2
As a predominately experiential researcher and journeyer to homeland communities, and having worked for more than two decades alongside the incarcerated, homeless and suicide affected I have looked at the national prison population numbers during the last two decades and disaggregated an estimated minimum 100,000 of First Nations people having been to prison. In comparing […]
Professor Marcia Langton has highlighted that Australia’s First Nations females are at least 34 times and up to 80 times more likely to be physically assaulted as a result of family violence. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has reported that First Nations females are at least 35 times more likely to be […]
The funding for child protection totals $4 billion and we have a predicament where state and territory governments spend only 17 per cent of it on family support services. Child protection and family services should focus on assisting vulnerable families as opposed to removing children. In early January I reunited a 14-year-old girl with her […]
In 1983, the town of Roebourne became to Western Australia what two decades earlier Birmingham had become to Alabama. Sixteen year old John Pat was killed by inebriated police and a few years later White prejudice acquitted the police. Two-thirds of Roebourne, on Ngarluma Country, was comprised of Aboriginal peoples, mostly impoverished, and this […]
Housing in the remote and regions for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples is a national disgrace. The majority of it is an act of racism. It’s horrific shanty living in both the remote and regions of Western Australia and an even worse abomination throughout the majority of the Northern Territory. A Northern Territory housing […]
Data can be anything one can want it to be. We are told there are nearly 800,000 people who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders. Despite an increasing population of people who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders, nationally one in 8 have been to prison. From a racialised lens that’s the world’s […]
The Northern Territory government is sort of accepting the 227 recommendations produced by the royal commission into youth justice following the disgraces exposed to the nation by the ABC’s Four Corners. Recommendations and findings are a dime a dozen. The government is giving in-principle support to 91 of the recommendations. Whether it’s in-principle or substantive […]
After 10 years the Close the Gap report tells us that most of the gaps are not closing. Life expectancy, school attendance, literacy, and employment are still reflecting First Nations disadvantage. The entire campaign is said to be in need of “refreshing”. In fact, the reason for the failure of the Close the Gap campaign […]
Last week I reunited a 14 year old girl with her biological mother. She had been removed from her mother at 12 months of age. Children removed from their biological parents are among the most elevated risk groups to serious aberrant behaviour and to suicide. On the day of her reunification she called me to […]
General News
- March 9, 2021
Australia’s governments must end health discrimination in its prisons. An incarcerated child must not be a second-class citizen. Nor any adult. We must ask, why are our governments dishing the vulnerable jailed, second-class healthcare? When evaluating the nation’s carceral system, we are […]
- February 2, 2021
When will the cries of the homeless be heard? Is there some sort of grotesque caste system in Western Australia? The anti-humanism is a brutal public spectacle. On the last day of January, the Western Australian Government actuated five days […]
- December 3, 2020
West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line […]
- September 22, 2020
There are many faces to homelessness. A 51-year-old woman walked into my Perth office. She has lived thirteen consecutive years street-homeless. Not long ago, she spent eighteen months sleeping her nights in the same park. She is weary, harrowed by […]
- September 3, 2020
Often beleaguered by international aid work I have lifelong been involved in; the increasing unmet needs, the mongrel injustices, I have argued the horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are countries […]
- March 10, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – In 2014, I disaggregated to the Kimberley’s First Nations peoples, the nation’s highest suicide rate, one of the world’s highest, at over 70 suicides per 100,000 population (First Nations), thereabouts seven times the national rate. Fortunately, although […]
- February 18, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – More than 51 months ago I wrote an article on the imperatives of forgiveness and redemption. This remains true. We journey together in one form or another, we can either salt the earth or jag the road, […]
- January 29, 2020
By Gerry Georgatos – Trae lost his eleven-year-old brother to suicide. Nine months later he lost his mother to suicide. Trae was the last to see his brother. Half an hour later he went looking for his little brother. In the […]
- January 21, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – Children as young as 9 years have been lost to suicide, three in fact in recent years. Australians should ask, why? Proportionally, more children aged 14 years and less have been lost so far this century compared […]
- December 10, 2019
Gerry Georgatos – A mother suicides, a father suicides, their child was a suicide. Not once has this occurred but untold times. Over the years I have warned of mothers and fathers that would be near certain lost to suicide […]
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