This was photographed in the front window of one of Australia’s largest variety store chains.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to use the week to “celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples” when this sort of agitation seems to be the main thrust of it.
NAIDOC week sure as shit won’t be celebrated in this household while they have this attitude.
The younger “blak” generation in this part of the world are being raised in an air of smoldering resentment. “Aboriginal by blood, not by choice” is the latest slogan.
Following an outbreak of crime – stealing cars, robberies from farms, burglary – the criminals were Aboriginal youth – one of the “elders” declared it just showed that the whitefella will never break the spirit of these young Aboriginal warriors.. NAIDOC week? “Reconciliation?” What are they?
“Reconciliation.”
“Hey, whitefella, I know you! You used to be in the (Eastern Wheatbelt.) My brother’s young bloke got in trouble with the cops there – they wanted to give him nine months in gaol. You and the other whitefella’s told the magistrate he was a good shearer and gainfully employed, so they suspended the sentence. He’s a gun shearer, now, never been in trouble, since.”
‘Highly complex’ truth-telling inquiry asks for an extension
By Callum Godde
July 4, 2022 — 6.27pmAustralia’s first truth-telling commission wants two more years to deliver its final report, as it moves to focus on modern injustices perpetrated against Indigenous people.
To mark NAIDOC Week, the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s interim report was tabled in Victorian parliament on Monday after it met with 174 local elders across the state and another seven in Melbourne-based public hearings.
While too soon to make findings and recommendations on substantive issues, the Victorian inquiry has asked Governor Linda Dessau to extend the due date for its final report from mid-2024 to mid-2026 and sign off on additional resources.
“Establishing Australia’s first truth-telling commission is highly complex,” chair Eleanor Bourke said.
“Yoorrook’s mandate spans more than 200 years of historic and ongoing injustices. Time is needed to ensure the best process, right for community, so that we can create a more complete public record for all.”
The commission was beset by COVID-19 lockdown delays in 2021 and Treaty Minister Gabrielle Williams and First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria co-chair Marcus Stewart both recognised the size of its mandate to create a public record of Indigenous experiences since colonisation.
The other initial recommendation contained within the 103-page document is for the Victorian government to protect Indigenous data sovereignty through new legislation before the end of 2023.
The inquiry wrote to Williams in February over concerns current royal commission laws may not allow First Nations people to choose how their information is protected, reducing the strength of Yoorrook’s assurances their knowledge and stories will remain safe in the future.
In a statement, Williams said the government will consider the report and its recommendations in consultation with the First Peoples’ Assembly.
Based on insights gathered during the elders’ “yarning circles” and public hearings, Yoorrook identified 11 central themes, ranging from dispossession and dislocation to a colonial education system and injuries to body and spirit.
Elders spoke of discrimination and segregation in the medical system, healthcare institutions continuing to act with racism towards Indigenous people, and changing Victoria’s school curriculum to include Aboriginal perspectives and history.
“The Aboriginal history side will be introduced as a compulsory subject, as is maths and English, and the truth of this country and Victoria,” Uncle Alan Marden told the commission.
Others outlined how dispossession of land, resources and wealth has been reinforced and repeated through government-imposed barriers, and described methods used by police to target Aboriginal communities with surveillance and violence as well as criminalise their youth.
“To quote my cousin: ‘Governments, you made me the criminal I am’,” said Nirai Bulluk elder Uncle Larry Walsh.
The report revealed the commission’s next phase will focus on two priority areas: the state-sanctioned removal of Indigenous children from their families and ongoing injustices to First Nations people in the criminal justice system.
Despite acknowledging both issues have been subject to past inquiries and recommendations, Yoorrook noted Indigenous Australians are still dying in custody and their children continue to be removed in record numbers.
“The continuing systemic failure to stop these forms of harm demands that the commission prioritises these issues with urgency,” it said.
With its final report potentially delayed, the commission plans to submit a second report in early 2023 with recommendations to inform treaty negotiations.
Why do I get the feeling that “Yarning circles” are the new “welcome to country?
The Yoorrook Commission down here in Danland has the powers of a royal commission and, according to its letter patent, a two-year budget of $44.4 million. It has just failed to make its June 30 report deadline and is asking for another two years and, presumably, another $44.4 million. Good work if you can get it, eh!
Interestingly, oppressed indigenes can make submissions about their racist subjugation via the web site. As this entire affair is a monumental joke, the puckish might be tempted to plumb the depths of straight-faced absurdity with their submissions.
“My greatgrandmother, a proud Itzy-Bitzy woman, was cultivating her native grains and tending to the eels when the troopers arrived. They forced her to have sex with not one but all of their horses, then urinated on a sacred birthing tree and disparaged Adam Goodes as a stager for free kicks.
“For this reason, and this reason among many, her great-great-grandson is serving time for stealing cars from white c***s.”
Not that I’m urging Cats to fill the submission queque with rancid nonsense. No, never!
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