About 250 protesters gathered outside Redfern Community Centre on Australia Day to listen to Aboriginal leaders speak out against the Northern Territory intervention and ongoing attacks on Aboriginal self-determination. The event was organised by the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney, otherwise known as STICS (www.stoptheintervention.org). Speakers included Valerie Martin Napaljarra, based in Kalkaringi in the Northern Territory; councillor Irene Doutney of the Greens; and Graham Merritt of STICS. All said it was inappropriate and offensive that Australia's national day, January 26, celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 - a date which marks the beginning of genocide for Aboriginal people.
They suggested the day should be renamed Survival Day or even Genocide Day and be declared a national day of mourning. They noted that Australia's other big cities hold protests on Australia Day, but this was the first that had been organised in Sydney.
Elder Aunty Nora, from the Sydney suburb of La Perouse in Botany Bay - where Captain James Cook supposedly first set foot on Australia - described meeting New South Wales opposition leader Barry O'Farrell. "I asked him if he's ever been to La Perouse," she said. "he said 'no'." O'Farrell looks almost certain to win the state election on Saturday, March 26.
Police officers, some of whom observed proceedings closely from a marked police car flying the southern cross flag, expressed surprise at the size of the protest. “So much for only 16 people turning out,” said one.
The speakers and protesters then marched from The Block in Redfern to Yabun Aboriginal Festival in Victoria Park, on what the Bureau of Meteorology said was the hottest Australia Day in Sydney for 20 years.
At the end of the march, one Aboriginal protester shouted at the police: "I read the deaths in custody statistics the other day. Did you read them too? Or did you cause them?"
The protesters went on to enjoy a day of talks, workshops, cultural activities and Yabun’s best line-up of Aboriginal musical talent in the festival’s nine years, including Wilma Reading, Casey Donovan, Nekrofeist and The Medics.
More images of the day can be found at: Facebook
