Indigenous

Aboriginal children are currently being removed at five times the rate they were in 1997, the year when the Bringing Them Home report was brought down by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.

TJ Hickey’s mother Gail Hickey led a march through Redfern to NSW parliament on the 15th anniversary of TJ’s death on February 14.

A bucket of dead fish was emptied outside NSW minister for regional water Niall Blair’s office on February 7 as part of a protest to demand swift action on the water crisis affecting regional communities. The protest was organised by Fighting In Resistance Equally (FIRE).

Staff at the Rorkes pub in Darwin walked off the job on January 22 after refusing to follow the owner’s orders to ban Aboriginal patrons from the premises.

If you want to celebrate January 26 by all means do: just be clear that you are celebrating those with so much wealth power that they will never need, nor want to, invite you to feast with them.

An online crowdfunding campaign set up to help Aboriginal women in Western Australia avoid jail for unpaid fines has raised $230,000 in its first four days and already settled the debts of 30 imprisoned women, with another 50 expected to be free in coming weeks.

In recent years there has been an important revival of Invasion Day marches on January 26. Together with the issues of Aboriginal sovereignty and ongoing injustices against First Nations people, Raul Bassi writes that a focus of this year’s protest will be Black deaths in custody.