Archive for October, 2007

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Maningrida: The place where the intervention changed shape

As Lauredhel noted this morning, the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation (BAC) will take legal action against the federal government’s Northern Territory intervention in the High Court in an attempt to stop legislative changes that would threaten the viability of Maningrida and other communities and their 32 outstations. The BAC operates one of the largest CDEP programs [...]

4 Comments » - Posted in Indigenous,Land,Law,Politics,The Intervention by

Wednesday, October 24th, 2007

More attacks on CDEP changes

On the ABC news website’s equivalent of a front page this morning, it was reported that the Northern Territory Family and Community Services Minister denouncing the NT intervention as an election ploy. As expected, Mal Brough has come out on the defensive, saying Marion Scrymgour doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister [...]

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Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Newsflash: Politician gives concise answer

How’s this for a resurgence of public debate? While the debate between Howard and Rudd was going on, Bob Brown and the Greens were holding their own ‘People’s Forum‘ in another room in Parliament House, and had asked for questions from the general public on their blog not long ago, some of which would potentially [...]

4 Comments » - Posted in Indigenous,Linguistics,Politics by

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Another Pseud-Apology

The Great Debate between Herr Howard and The Ruddster was tonight, and I do believe, unless I’m hallucinating, that I heard Mr Howard say he was sorry – and yes, it was in relation to Australia’s history with respect to Aborigines. Except, and this is the clincher, it was an apology that, rather than an [...]

6 Comments » - Posted in Culture,History,Indigenous,Linguistics,Politics by

Friday, October 19th, 2007

A Catch-Up Post

You might have noticed, or rather, I hope you will have noticed that I’ve been rather slack in writing lately. This isn’t because nothing has been happening, far from it, it’s just because I’ve had way too much stuff to do off-blog to spend any reasonable time writing posts. Here’s a quick round-up of some [...]

4 Comments » - Posted in Culture,Indigenous,Politics,The Intervention by

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Note to Self…

…When Google searching for certain phrase returns a very unlikely result of the form: www.DodgySoundingURL.nl/[your-exact-search-string] Don’t click it, lest you find yourself forced to spend your Saturday reinstalling Windows. Windows makes me homicidal.

3 Comments » - Posted in Nothing in particular by

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Culture Warriors

The National Gallery of Australia are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year with an exhibition of aboriginal art, both traditional and modern, produced in the last three years. The collection is called Culture Warriors and, according to the NGA’s website, is ‘designed to break aboriginal art stereotypes’. Here is one of the featured works, Treasure [...]

1 Comment » - Posted in Art,Culture,Indigenous,Languages by

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

More white exceptions to grog bans

It wasn’t long after alcohol restrictions were initially put in place in the Northern Territory that the various Recreational Fishing lobby groups threw up their arms in indignation, with the NT government firmly by their side: Look, a fisherman having a beer in the boat on the Daly River as he goes about his normal business is [...]

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Sunday, October 7th, 2007

Brough’s Logic

I just read an emotional and inspiring post at Will Owen’s blog about a speech that Mal Brough gave on Tuesday October 2, for the Alfred Deakin Lecture at Melbourne University. A recurring theme of Brough’s speech (reproduced in full at Will’s blog) is his outrage at the situation. Here is an extract of Will’s commentary: I, [...]

5 Comments » - Posted in Culture,Indigenous,Philosophy,Politics,The Intervention by

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

Innocuous Spam

Every so often I sift through the spam that Askimet catches to make sure there’s nothing legitimate in there, and there usually isn’t. But occasionally there’ll be an interesting little one-liner, buried among all the ads for drugs I’ve never heard of, that puts a smile on my dial. Apart from the glaring ungrammatical double [...]

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