PHOTO ESSAY: Tent Embassy anniversary (what the media didn't show)

January 26, 2012
Issue 

The real story of the powerful march celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was ignored by the mainstream media, which instead focused on misleading accounts of protesters confrontation of Australia's racist opposition leader Tony Abbott and PM Julia Gillard later in the day.

Abbott had provoked the incident by dismissing the historic Tent Embassy as irrelevant and adding that it should be closed down. About 1500 people joined the march on Parliament House and kicked off a three-day gathering at the Tent Embassy, which swelled into a colourful and well-organised tent village.





Photos by Peter Boyle

Comments

Looked like a great event, congratulations on all those who made it. Shame on the pollies who use police to brutalise protestors and then turn around and call the protestors violent.
Are you trying to say that he actually wanted it torn down. That is not the case. His sentiments were that it reason for its beginnings have changed and that the world should move on. There is a difference.
Now that you know that it was not Tony Abbott's words that provoked the anger of the demonstrators, are you going to correct the wording of your article here? Perhaps an apology would also be in order? Or is that asking too much?
Looks like a well run peacefull protest to me but the right wing media particuarly the Gobels/Murdock press will always foster devisive lies to try to divide and conquer us.
I don't agree with Mr Abbott. We should not move on but rather stop and reflect on what more needs to be done to fix the problems that have happened over the last 40 years since colonisation. And keep the tent embassy there until all the problems are fixed.
I am an indigenous man and a retired secondary teacher. I twice visited the tent embassy in the late 1970's I was young, angry and had a bachelor of education degree . The Australia wider Community was a very different society. It was widely feared and hoped that my precious Aboriginal people were "dying race" . Almost four decades after 27th/May1967 Aboriginal people were still in social,political, and economic shackles. In 2012 it is "the same old same old as was since 26th/January/1788. Everything has changed; but absolutely not much has changed. Each succesive Commonwealth Government has for the most part like the Indigenous Native Americacn saying "White man speaks with a forked tongue" . The Gillard Goverment readily spings to mind. "Blackfullas" don't know who to trust . I do not necessarily trust Tony Abbott but he is different in as much as he spends lot of his own personal time in remote communities helping indigenous chilren. I was taught by Catholic Nuns and Priests and my Father always referred to himself as a Socialist. Before we promote the ALP to sainthood how about we scutinise a little history. ALP inflates it's claim as reformist .The dole ,sickness benifits , child endowment , austudy and abstudy were legislated by the Liberal goverments as far back as Menzies. In conclusion I personally think that whatever we think of Tony Abbott he did not "badmouth" Aboriginals or demand the removal of the Tent Embassy .........Wongatha man, Milangka skin .Somewhere East of Kalgoorlie Western Australia. I have finished speaking
Australia is your country. Take your country back by educating your children.This will put them in positions of power.
Tony Abbott did not provoke the incident "by dismissing the historic Tent Embassy as irrelevant" as your headline says. He did no such thing. He was asked a question and talked about what he felt were real gains made, and then qestioned the role of it in contemporary Australia. Even advocates of the embassy talk about its future; those of the 1972 class are mature enough to talk about its potency on one hand and its relevancy on the other without being damned as provokateurs. Some argue for a commerative wall rather than an active protest site. I appreciate the role of the Green Weekly but you have a privelaged role not to demonise politicians or the mainstream media, but to inform also.

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