Women Speak Out Against NT Intervention
On today's program we listen to women from affected communities talking about the Northern Territory intervention. Earlier this year the Federal Government responded to the Little Children Are Sacred report, not by implementing any of its recommendations for tackling child abuse, but by taking control of all Aboriginal lands in the Northern Territory, quarantining welfare payments and funding an increased police and military presence.
We will hear from Olga Havnen from the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory; Rachel Willika, who lives in Eva Valley, a remote community in the Katherine region; and Eileen Cummings, who for 30 years was a policy advisor on Aboriginal and Women's Affairs to all Northern Territory Chief Ministers.
These women have been on a speaking tour around Australia supported by Women For Wik, and spoke at the National Congress of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) in Canberra on October 13.
Community Radio Network: Friday 19 October 2007
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Women on the line website
Northern Territory Intervention Threatens Australian Tourism
September 28, 2007
Dr. Jan Turek Today Dr. Jan Turek, (Institute of Archaeological Heritage, Czech Republic) in his Ian Potter Foundation Keynote Address, likened the Australian government's treatment of its Aboriginal citizens to the genocidal excesses of Stalinist Russia. Juxtaposing photos of historic Jewish Ghettos and Gypsy poverty in the modern Czech Republic with illustrations of the current plight of Australian Aborigines, Dr. Turek convincingly argued that the glossy guidebook representations of Native Australians are reminiscent of the infamous Potemkin Villages erected in Russia during WW II to conceal the truly appalling conditions of Russian Villages. According to Turek, recent legislation places Aboriginal communities at such risk that government whitewashing will no longer be able to convince foreign visitors to overlook the reality of suffering to enjoy a carefree Australian vacation.
Summarizing his reactions Turek commented, "If Stalin were alive today he would probably say his actions were intended to improve people's lives; the same thing Australian politicians are claiming about the intent of the Federal intervention in the Northern Territories" Symposium convener Claire Smith, President of the World Archaeological Congress and Associate Professor at Flinders University, said "Such publicity will be a terrible blow to the tourist industry, and rightly so. If our country allows this sort of abuse of its citizens we all deserve a hit in our hip pockets."
Turek's speech kicked off a two day conference on Cultural Heritage, Social Justice, and Ethical Globalization with participants from ten countries around the world. Representatives from Argentina, Poland, USA, South Africa, Nigeria, Poland, New Zealand, and Ireland have come together to consider how globalization and tourism affect both heritage sites, but also what UNESCO has called "intangible heritage" referring to vulnerable cultural knowledge. Although not originally aimed at discussing Australian politics, the situation resonated so strongly with the visiting participants that they spontaneously folded their symposium into a meeting of the grassroots Women for Wik movement. "Just look at what has happened to the tourist industry in New Orleans as a result of the terrible publicity surrounding the Bush Administration's failure to respond to the misery heaped on poor African Americans by Hurricane Katrina" commented Anne Pyburn, a conference delegate from the US. "Vacationers are slowly beginning to go back to what was one of the most popular tourist sites in the US, but its reputation as a carefree pleasure destination will never be regained."
Dr. Turek's talk followed a powerful performance by Steve Goldsmith who explained that to be Aboriginal in today's Australia is to be political. He underscored his points with a moving performance by the Kaurna dancers, exposing the audience to exquisite Aboriginal dancing but also to rarely noted Aboriginal achievements in technology and medicine. Friday's program included impassioned speeches by both community activists and ordinary people who are victims of the new government policies. The symposium continues another full day tomorrow (Saturday) in the State Library with increased emphasis on international heritage issues.
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Archeologists with an interest in social justice and ethics gathered in Adelaide in late September for a symposium run by the World Archeological Congress.
They heard from four Aboriginal women from the Northern Territory -- Olga Havnen, Rachel Willika, Raylene Rosas and Eileen Cummings - who were there to let people know about the impact of the Federal Governments 'intervention in the Northern Territory.
The international guests were struck by the great difference between the real experiences and fears of Aboriginal communities and the australia they read about in the tourist brochures. The international guests, who include Jan Turek, from the institute of Archeological Heritage in the Czech Republic, Anne Pyburn from Indiana University in the USA and Gabriel Cooney, from University College, Dublin in Ireland spoke to Paris Dean on Radio Adelaide's program Represent, Friday September 28.
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Czech Labels NT Intervention 'Stalinist'
ABC News | September 30, 2007
A Czech archaeologist in Adelaide for a conference on world heritage has described Australia's treatment of Aboriginal people as Stalinist.
Dr Jan Turek was the keynote speaker last night at the World Archaeological Conference which focuses on heritage and tourism.
He says the Australian Government's intervention plan in the Northern Territory sounds like a policy from communist Europe.
"To my mind, if one side, let's say the government, one responsible side is wanting to help someone, the help has to be agreed.
"The help has to be as a result of a consensus really between both sides."
See: ABC News
Indigenous Children Need Sympathy Too
Letters To The Age | September 1, 2007
The story about three-year-old Qian Xun Xue abandoned by her father, with the uncertain fate of her mother for whom she pines (The Age, 18/9), naturally evoked sympathy and concern for mother and daughter. However, readers' feeling of disquiet would have been compounded when they read Claire Smith's heartbreaking article (Opinion, 18/9) detailing the suicides of young Aborigines in the Northern Territory and expressing her disappointment in every Australian who does not do what they can to defend these young ones.
Smith's call to shame our politicians into making the care of Aboriginal children an election issue will be ignored unless the public is shaken by images far more devastating than a little girl standing alone on a railway station, such as photographs (with permission) of the teenagers who ended their lives of despair. In this regard, The Age has an honourable role to play.
Keith McEwan, Bendigo
Simplistic Messages
It is a crying shame that views aired by Claire Smith highlighting the Howard Government's fundamentally flawed response to the indigenous child health crisis are not shared by our present Government. Instead, we have witnessed a bunch of bureaucrats marching into remote indigenous communities to champion the Government's simplistic key messages surrounding this issue: that children must be saved from further abuse and that this plan is a fail-safe way to achieve this; that there is only one legal system relevant in an Australian context, and that indigenous Australians living in remote communities need to learn how to live like "the rest of us".
Three themes sorely lacking from the Government's response to the Little Children are Sacred report: empowerment, community consultation, respect. Let us hope that after the election, someone like Smith can advise government on the way forward, with a depth of knowledge gleaned after years working within indigenous communities. If only Mal Brough also gained this level of understanding after his time spent in Mutitjulu before recommending such a radical, grossly short-sighted and counterproductive response.
Sara McMillan, Balaclava
See: The Age
Wik women sign up for a new battle in Territory
Debra Jopson | September 1, 2007, The Sydney Morning Herald
HUNDREDS of women, including Lady Deane, the wife of the former governor-general, have pledged their support to the lobby group Women for Wik, which its organisers reactivated a week ago to oppose the Federal Government's intervention in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
Lowitja O'Donoghue is among the elders who have joined the campaign. Tamie Fraser, the wife of the former prime minister Malcom Fraser, has also offered her support, organisers say.
"It is up to the women of Australia to get our country back on the path of reconciliation," Lady Deane says on the group's website.
Dr O'Donoghue says: "The Northern Territory intervention is patronising and unworkable. We need policies that will take us forward, not backwards."
Formed a decade ago to oppose the "buckets of extinguishment" in the Government's 10-point native title plan, Women for Wik had the backing of more than 100,000 people at its height in the late 1990s, including Hazel Hawke, Germaine Greer, Elizabeth Jolley, Faith Bandler, Ruth Cracknell, Dame Roma Mitchell and Marie Bashir, before she became NSW governor.
The group held rallies supporting native title rights and calling for an apology to the stolen generations. Six of its members appeared in chains outside Parliament House protesting against the Northern Territory's mandatory sentencing laws, now repealed.
The president of the World Archaeological Congress, Claire Smith of Adelaide, said yesterday that she and the Sydney filmmaker Christine Olsen had decided to kick-start the network last Friday after conversations with ordinary women who felt impotent over an intervention they saw as well-intentioned but flawed.
"It's a fantastic opportunity to make an enormous, long-term substantive difference, and the way the Government is going about it is wasting that by not spending the money in the way it needs to be spent," Associate Professor Smith said.
Describing the reformation of the organisation as "a kitchen-table-over-the-internet kind of thing", she said it would be bipartisan and would educate Australians by recording on its website the voices of Aborigines affected by the intervention. There could also be rallies in future.
Associate Professor Smith said she had worked in Northern Territory communities for 20 years and was appalled at the lack of respect shown for community organisations struggling with paltry monetary resources to find solutions.
"The pretext of the intervention was child sexual abuse," she said. "Now they've taken away the permit system and advertised these communities as vulnerable. Is that going to increase or decrease the level of pedophilia in these communities?"
Olsen, who wrote the screenplay for Rabbit Proof Fence, said that concerned citizens and the Government had dropped the baton on Aboriginal affairs since the walk for reconciliation across the Harbour Bridge seven years ago, but there was a fresh groundswell.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wik-women-sign-up-for-a-new-battle-in-territory/2007/08/31/1188067367886.html
New Invasion
Brad Ruting, Woolloomooloo | September 3, 2007, The Sydney Morning Herald
I applaud the revival of the Women for Wik group in response to an indigenous policy that is again on the wrong track (Wik Women sign up for a new battle in Territory - Sept 1-2)
The way the Howard Government has treated many of its citizens over the past decade is utterly disgraceful, and further erosion of their rights and dignity will not fix anything in the long run. Surely the state of remote indigenous communities should be beyond cynical politicking.
I hope more Australians stand up against an uncaring Government that is unwilling to try anything other than the (re)- invasion of Aboriginal Australia.
Community Radio - The Daily Interview
Interview by Annie Hastwell with Raelene Rosas and Olga Havnen.
"Aboriginal women from the Northern Territory are travelling around Australia providing a grass roots perspective on the Federal Government Action in the Northern Territory.
Olga Havnen is the coordinator of the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory, and Raelene Rosas is from the Bulman Community.
They talk with Annie Hastwell about how the intervention is affecting them and their communities."
Byron Shire Echo September 25, 2007, Page 14
Dear Editor,
Readers concerned that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory may not be getting a fair go under the recent government intervention, can contact Women for Wik at www.womenforwik.org. As disquiet grows both nationally and overseas, the group which has had the support of hundreds of thousands of women in the past, has reactivated to independently monitor the implementation of government policies within remote communities, and give Northern Territory women a voice.The brutish disavowal of the rights as citizens, of the Territory's indigenous people under the latest legislation is intolerable, racist and shameless.
Whatever the ostensible motive of eradicating child abuse, the ends used here do not justify the means, and will serve only to besmirch even further Australia's recent reputation within the world community.
Jill Keogh
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