WGAR: Working Group for Aboriginal Rights (Australia)
30 MAY 2009: COMPULSORY ACQUISITION OF ALICE SPRINGS TOWN CAMPS
WGAR website: http://wgar.info/
This newsletter: http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/wgar-news-compulsory-acquisition-alice-springs-town-camps-30-may-09
27 May 2009
INVITATION TO ATTEND HEALING FOUNDATION WORKSHOPS
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation Development Team is working with the Government between May and December 2009 to consult with key organisations and individuals as well as conduct community workshops across Australia to listen to community ideas for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation Development Team invite you to attend community workshops to hear from community organisations about what is required to support the process of healing.
The Development Team Terms of Reference and Membership are available on the Development Team’s website http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/healingfoundation as is a draft schedule of workshop dates and a Discussion Paper prepared by the Development Team. The Discussion Paper articulates some of the issues and questions around the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation.
If you are unable to attend the workshops you have the option of submitting your comments on the establishment of a Healing Foundation via the Development Team’s website.
Please contact Brenda Campe from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation Development Team Secretariat on 02 6121 4263 or by email healingfoundation@fahcsia.gov.au to confirm your attendance or if you have any questions.
* NOTE: This is not an Australian Human Rights Commission initiative. The information is being forwarded on behalf of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation Development Team and FaHCSIA.
Statement Opposing the Commonwealth’s Proposal to Compulsorily Acquire the Alice Springs Town Camps
“We recognize the right of Tangentyere Council and town camp residents to self-determination. Town camp residents have called upon governments to address overcrowding and poverty in their communities over several years. More often than not, their demands have been ignored.
We support the recent decision by the Council to reject the Commonwealth’s proposal that would transfer control of housing and tenancy management to the Northern Territory Government. Representatives from all town camps voted to maintain community control. This is vital because of a long history of neglect and indifference to the needs of Aboriginal people by Northern Territory Housing. People rightly fear eviction and rent-increases that are beyond their capacity to pay. It is critical that Aboriginal people have the power to shape their own destinies.
We condemn Minister Macklin’s proposal for the Commonwealth to compulsorily acquire the town camps of Alice Springs. We call on the Commonwealth to respect the independence of the Tangentyere Council and to act in good faith in all of its negotiations with the Tangentyere Council.
We recognize the long struggle for land by both town camp residents and Aboriginal land holders throughout Australia. We condemn the Federal Government’s policy of withholding funding for desperately needed housing in Aboriginal communities, before Aboriginal people relinquish control of their land.
It is disgraceful that the party who championed the first land rights legislation in Australia is holding impoverished Aboriginal communities to ransom. This Government has lost its moral compass. We offer our full support to the Tangentyere Council in their struggle.
Endorsements are requested from individuals and organisations. Please circulate amongst your networks. Please reply to stoptheintervention@gmail.com before 5pm on Thursday 28th of May to indicate support.”
http://rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com
TITLE: Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs | Towards a sustainable development phase:
PORTFOLIO: Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
URL: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/jennymacklin.nsf/content/future_directions_nter_21may09.htm
SNIPPET: Towards a sustainable development phase: Discussion paper on Future Directions for the NTER. The Government is moving the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) to a sustainable development phase to ensure measures will be effective in the long-term, including stronger engagement and partnerships with Indigenous communities. In moving towards the sustainable development phase the Government will maintain and improve core NTER measures including compulsory income management, alcohol restrictions and pornography controls, while placing a greater emphasis on community development and community engagement.
TITLE: Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs | SIHIP works underway in NT
PORTFOLIO: Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
URL: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/jennymacklin.nsf/content/sihip_underway_nt_21may09.htm
SNIPPET: SIHIP works underway in NT. SIHIP is a $672 million joint Australian and Northern Territory Government housing program and represents the largest investment by governments in Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory. The state of Indigenous housing across remote Australia is the most visible and enduring evidence of the failure of Governments, over decades, to address Indigenous disadvantage.
TITLE: Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs | NT Government’s framework for reform in remote areas
PORTFOLIO: Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
URL: http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/internet/jennymacklin.nsf/content/jm_mr_remote_area_reform_framework_20may09.htm
SNIPPET: NT Government’s framework for reform in remote areas. Under this new Remote Service Delivery Strategy, all governments have signed up to a concentrated, accelerated and coordinated approach to tackle deep-seated disadvantage in remote Indigenous communities. By developing 20 remote NT towns as central hubs, the NT Government is working to ensure outstation residents have access to a range of services and children have access to a good education.
Australian Human Rights Commission – Thursday, 21 February 2009
“Ministers and others really have a duty to take a good look at the benefits of Homeland living, and genuinely consult Homeland residents and their representative bodies, before moving too rapidly to shut them down. This would conform with the spirit of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
The Working Future policy announced by the Northern Territory Government yesterday appears aimed at reducing support to Homelands and driving these residents to move to the 20 proposed Hub Communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said today.
“Homelands are places where we Aboriginal people can exercise our fundamental right to live on our country of affiliation and maintain language, custom and cultural practices. This has enabled us to be the oldest continuous surviving culture in the world,” Commissioner Calma said.
“The Homelands movement is a powerful expression of Aboriginal self-determination and self –governance. Government should be assisting these communities in their quest to control their lives and their future rather than undermining these efforts.”
“A long reflection on the dynamics that led to worldwide ethnocide, its different “masks”, its history and, according to him, one of its earliest manifestations, monotheism, led Robert Jaulin to a complete reappraisal of the phenomenal and conceptual fields polarized by the notion of ethnocide.
This reassessment took its final shape in the 1995’s work, L’univers des totalitarismes : Essai d’ethnologie du “non-être” (in free translation: “The Universe of Totalitarianisms: An Ethnological Essay on “Non-Being””). In this book, the notion of “totalitarianism” (which should not be mistaken for Hannah Arendt’s concept of totalitarianism) depicts the underlying dynamics of which ethnocide becomes a manifestation among others.
Robert Jaulin defines totalitarianism as an abstract scheme or machine of non-relation to cultural otherness characterized by the expansion of “oneself ” (“soi”) through an election/exclusion logic.
The totalitarian machine operates by splitting the universe into its own “agents” on the one side, and its “objects” on the other, whether they be individuals, families, groups, societies or whole civilizations. It proceeds by depriving the later of their quality of cultural subjects through the erosion and finally the suppression of their space of tradition and cultural invention, which mediates their relation with themselves, i.e. their reflexivity. With the mutilation of their “field of cultural potentialities”, as Jaulin calls it, the totalitarian dynamics transforms its “objects” into new “agents” of expansion, reduced to a mock self-relation defined by the horizon of a potential election.”
“NT upgrades 20 towns to tackle disadvantage
* May 21, 2009
THE Northern Territory Government will turn 20 towns into regional hubs under its new homelands policy, with the aim of helping indigenous people “live life like other Australians”.
But there’s a catch. In order to share in the $160 million plan, selected communities will have to sign over their land.
The Government says it needs secure land tenure to underpin growth and investment, but it is yet to determine the length of leases.
The Federal Government has previously announced it will only fund new housing if Aboriginal land councils grant minimum 40-year leases. It is giving priority to 26 remote communities across the country Fifteen are in the Northern Territory.
The Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, said yesterday the homelands policy would improve education outcomes, boost development and create jobs.
“We have real aspirations for indigenous people to live life like other Australians,” he said.
The Territory Government will continue to spend $36 million a year on the Territory’s 500-odd homeland communities. A policy statement says it “will not financially support the establishment of new outstations” but it is “not opposed to Aboriginal people using their own resources to live in remote locations”.
The Northern Land Council said the policy’s targets were commendable, but it needed more detail.
The federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, said the Territory’s focus on 20 “growth towns as central hubs” was an important step in tackling disadvantage.
(from http://www.smh.com.au/national/nt-upgrades-20-towns-to-tackle-disadvantage-20090521-bfuh.html)
Dear friends of IWGIA,
NEW BOOK OUT:
The Indigenous World 2009
Editor: Kathrin Wessendorf
The textile industry was one of the first manufacturing activities to become organized globally, as mechanized production in Europe used cotton from the colonies. Africa, the least developed of the world’s major regions, is now increasingly engaged in the production of this crop for the global market, and debates about the pros and cons of this trend have intensified.
This yearbook contains a comprehensive update on the current situation of indigenous peoples and their human rights, and provides an overview of the most important developments in international and regional processes during 2008. Over 60 indigenous and non-indigenous scholars and activists provide their insight and knowledge to the book with:
- Region and country reports covering most of the indigenous world.
- Updated information on international and regional processes relating to indigenous peoples.
The Indigenous World 2009 is an essential source of information and indispensable tool for those who need to be informed about the most recent issues and developments that have impacted on indigenous peoples worldwide. It is published in English and Spanish.
Read more and buy at: http://shop.iwgia.org
Best from
IWGIA
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs
Classensgade 11E, 2100 Kbh, Denmark
tel.: 0045 35270506
fax: 0045 35270507
website: www.iwgia.org
webshop: shop.iwgia.org
