i think this is ludicrous bob

WGAR News: Kimberley Land Council to ask UN forum to condemn Indigenous community closures: Calla Wahlquist, The Guardian

https://indymedia.org.au/2015/04/10/wgar-news-kimberley-land-council-to-ask-un-forum-to-condemn-indigenous-community-closures

Contents:

* Video: Rachael Thornton, The Feed, SBS: Indigenous communities facing closure [Featuring Aboriginal people from WA homelands]
* Personal Story: Samantha Martin, Sunday Style, news.com.au: It’s more than just a ‘lifestyle choice’, it’s my home
* Analysis / Opinion: Calla Wahlquist, The Guardian: Kimberley Land Council to ask UN forum to condemn Indigenous community closures
* Analysis / Opinion: Michelle Lovegrove & Andrea Booth, NITV: Indigenous MP Linda Burney condems WA remote community closures

* Analysis / Opinion: Bridie Jabour, The Guardian: SA Indigenous figures fear funding dispute could lead to ‘cultural genocide’
* Analysis / Opinion: Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese: Funding Cuts to Remote WA and SA Communities Will Destroy Aboriginal Life
* News Analysis: Natalie Whiting, ABC News: Remote SA Aboriginal communities reassured they will stay open in face of national funding cuts
* Audio: Natalie Whiting, The World Today: SA Aboriginal groups assured communities won’t close

* WGAR News: Breaking News – 10 April 2015: Over Thirteen Thousand People Shut down Melbourne: CAAMA

* Poster: Stop the Forced Closure of Aboriginal Communities in Australia, facebook: “We would like to confirm that that 2nd National Call of Action will be held Friday 1st May 2015.”
* Facebook: Stop the Forced Closure of Aboriginal Communities in Australia

* WGAR Background: Plans to close Aboriginal homelands / remote communities in WA and SA

WGAR News: Nearly 200 organisations outline concern for UN over Australia’s declining human rights performance: HRLC

https://indymedia.org.au/2015/04/08/wgar-news-nearly-200-organisations-outline-concern-for-un-over-australias-declining-human

Contents:

* Audio Interview: CAAMA: National Congress lobbying for first peoples human rights [Featuring Les Malezer]
* News Analysis: Human Rights Law Centre: Nearly 200 organisations outline concern for UN over Australia’s declining human rights performance
* Submission: Australia’s Human Rights Score Card: Australia’s 2nd Universal Periodic Review: Joint NGO Submission on behalf of the Australian NGO Coalition
* News Analysis: Max Chalmers, New Matilda: Australia’s Human Rights Community Has Dobbed Us In To The United Nations

* Background & Key Dates: HRLC: Universal Periodic Review of Australia

WGAR News – Working Group for Aboriginal Rights (Australia)

In the case of Utopia a coordinator position will be created but at what cost $360,000. It seems that the government is the one which is responsible for creating a level of bureaucracy which is taking tax payers money away where from where it should be going.

In northern Queensland mining companies have persistantly done there best to take minerals and provide minimal funding to local communities. Giving them access to income flow such as exists with Indian tribes in the US which would allow them to be strong once the minerals have been exhausted.

$3.m million dollars is a trivial amount of money to pay given that suicide rates however you look at them are ridiculously high. I can’t recall of hearing about people living in urban areas having trouble getting to sleep because the youth have been sniffing paint and other toxic substances because they have no future. They can’t even afford ‘main stream’ drugs which we have on the streets in places like Perth or Sydney.

The aborigines are poverished but so is the information which we get about them. Nice article.

Hi Roslyn, agree with you on so many counts. On the spend on disadvantage you may be interested in reading this: http://thestringer.com.au/25-4-billion-spent-on-aboriginal-disadvantage-is-a-lie/#.U5Q0Lyhhvqw

The policy of supporting traditional aborigines in being separate from the greater community has been as much of a disaster in Australia as it has in Canada and the US. If quality of life is to be improved and to reach that of non-traditional Aboriginal Australians then Aboriginal Australians need to move into the broader community and assimilate.

The policy of land rights has patently not worked and even former extremist radicals like Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson are now saying that the only answer is jobs – and that means joining the broader Australian community and forcing Aboriginal parents to send their children to school as happens with non-Aboriginal Australians, or, as Pearson suggested, taking children away from their parents and sending them to boarding schools so that they will have a future.

Traditional Aborigines have been treated leniently by comparison with non-Aboriginal Australians in terms of domestic abuse, child abuse and domestic violence, alcoholism and living in unsanitary conditions. We now have, despite the billions of dollars, generations of brain-damaged and dysfunctional people and another generation on the way.

Only a fool keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Being colonised is traumatic but it has happened to people in every nation on earth. The ongoing dysfunction has arisen in those groups which have been encouraged to remain separate, chasing some delusional notion of ‘holding on’ to a long-gone, supposedly traditional way of life. Nomadic life was brutal and as the earliest records show, Aboriginal society was violent toward other tribes, war and fighting were constant; men were violent toward women and children and the realities of living as a nomad necessitated cruelties which have no place in a modern world.

If other colonised peoples, have managed to survive and maintain the best of their culture as they assimilate then so can and must Aborigines. As an Australian I would have been absolutely delighted to see the separate development Aborigines were told they wanted, work, and I would not have cared how much money was poured into the issues if they brought a better quality of life. But they have not and they will not and now it is time for change.
For most Australians every one of their ancestors has had to assimilate and in the doing created Australia and Australians. Aborigines are no different if they are to have the quality of life which most Australians have.

The difference is that Aboriginal people in poverty are in poverty in a first world country, and therefore it is an utter disgrace that some communities are living in horrific conditions. And they are closer to us.