Indigenous

On February 14, I went to the seventh "Remember TJ Hickey" rally at Redfern. TJ Hickey was a 17-year-old Aboriginal boy who was killed in a dangerous police pursuit in 2004. The state government and the NSW police moved to cover up their role in TJ's death. A coronial inquest exonerated the police involved. But the inquest ignored important evidence, including witness accounts that said police had chased TJ moments before his death.

Below is a eulogy to Mark Fordham, an Aboriginal activist and Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union member from the Northern Territory, released by: Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney; Brisbane Aboriginal Rights Coalition; UQ Students for Indigenous Rights; and Sydney University Anti-Racism Collective. ****

Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered the federal government’s third “closing the gap” report on February 9. The report is an annual review of national efforts to address the mortality gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. In an outrageous denial of the government’s failure, Gillard called for Aboriginal people to accept the blame for critical crises in health, education, employment and housing and chronic community breakdown.

More than 400 people attended a February 7 forum that condemned the federal government’s intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The forum was organised by Concerned Australians. It coincided with the launch of a public statement addressed “to the people of Australia” by seven Indigenous elders. The statement asked for support to “help to put an end to the nightmare that Northern Territory people are experiencing on a daily basis”.

Socialist Alliance candidate for upper house in the coming NSW elections Bea Bleile expressed her continuing support for family of TJ Hickey, who are still fighting for justice following his death in 2004. TJ Hickey, a young Aboriginal man, was killed during a police chase. He was impaled on a spiked fence in Phillip St, Waterloo. In 2006, the NSW coroner exonerated the police involved from any wrongdoing. Yet a large amount of evidence was not included in the hearing. The family has called for the inquest to be reopened.

Based on Psalm 137 By the waterholes of Mother Country we slung down our yidakis, and cut our bodies and drugged our minds in grief, as we remembered the dreamtime. And the settlers demanded from us a corroboree performance and a jail sentence, mutual obligation and a souvenir boomerang for the gift shop. How could we dance and perform sacred traditions for their markets? We have become aliens and inmates, invisible in this eternal land.

The Australian Museum hosted a debate on January 23 on the topic: “Is the 26th of January the most appropriate date to celebrate our national identity?” Sixty people attended the debate, which pitted historian and educator Nigel Parbury against Brisbane indigenous leader and Socialist Alliance member Sam Watson. Parbury put the affirmative case and said that Australia Day had changed over the decades to better reflect the country's multicultural community. But he conceded that much more change was needed in future.

About 250 protesters gathered outside Redfern Community Centre on January 26 to listen to Aboriginal leaders speak out against the Northern Territory intervention and ongoing attacks on Aboriginal self-determination. The event was organised by the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS). Speakers included Valerie Martin Napaljarra, based in Kalkaringi in the Northern Territory; Greens councillor Irene Doutney; and Graham Merritt of STICS.

About 120 people marched in Melbourne on January 20 to commemorate the lives of two Aboriginal freedom fighters. On January 20, 1842, Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were led to the scaffold and killed before 5000 people in the first public judicial execution in Melbourne. Their bodies were taken to the Aboriginal cemetery that lies under the Victoria market.

The NT government has failed to change its policy of "First Four Hours" of English in remote Aboriginal schools, despite the trial period expiring in January. The policy was introduced in January 2009, supposedly as a way to improve English literacy for Aboriginal students. The policy mandated that schools teach only in English for the first four hours — the most productive hours — of school, leaving teaching in local language to the last two, least productive, hours of the day. It effectively banned Aboriginal language in the classroom.

iNTervention Intervention Curated by Teena McCarthy & Brendan Penzer The Vanishing Point gallery 565 King Street, Newtown, Sydney January 13-30 “The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.... “We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country....

Three years after Aboriginal elder Mr Ward was cooked to death in the back of a prison van travelling from Laverton to Kalgoorlie, charges have been laid against the four parties found responsible by coroner Alistair Hope. The parties prosecuted are the Western Australian Department of Corrective Services, the private prison van contractor G4S (formerly GSL) and the two drivers of the prison van. State government workplace safety agency WorkSafe laid the charges under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.