20 January 12 -- A northwest NSW Aboriginal leader, Michael Ghillar Anderson, has condemned proposals for writing Indigenous people into the constitution as a treasonous act and serious fraud against Aboriginal peoples, because it does not represent their interests across the nation.
The proposals, handed to the Gillard government by a panel, fail to deal with the central and substantive issue of sovereignty and true land rights, the leader of the Euahlayi nation writes in a media release.
Anderson, of Euahlayi and Gumilaroi parentage, is the last survivor of the four young Aboriginal men who set up the Aboriginal embassy in Canberra in 1972 by ramming a sun umbrella into the lawn in front of what was then the parliament building, now Old Parliament House.
A large turnout from across Australia is expected for the 40th anniversary three-day corroboree of the embassy from 26 to 28 January.Aboriginal sovereignty would be discussed there “and we will take every possible step to assert our continuing sovereignty”.
“Australia has to take the sovereignty movement and the land rights movement seriously, and if they fail to talk with us and continue to work with their Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican private school educated Blacks, Australia will get its bloody revolution. You can kick a dog only so many times before it bites and what I know of the grassroots Aboriginal communities around Australia, they are ready to bite,” Anderson says in his release.
“How in the world can we, as Aboriginal peoples, support absolutely insulting language, such as ‘the original occupiers of this country’ when clearly scientific evidence proves without a shadow of a doubt that we have been here for more than 100,000 years.
“This is a country of many diverse Aboriginal nations speaking many languages and to establish a so-called ‘expert panel’ to write up a program of constitutional reform, while they themselves have no Aboriginal constituency to speak of, is an absolute insult of the highest order.
“Right throughout Australia, right now, a war is going on in our communities, shielded by the Great Dividing Range. Police have become much more brutal, white rural populations have grown even more racist and are now demanding greater police presence to protect them from the growing Aboriginal populations; prisons are overflowing with Aboriginal inmates, who in the main are serving sentences for non-payment of fines and/or driving without a license and other social disobediences.”
Anderson’s release in full:
This is a treasonous act and proposal against Aboriginal peoples, because it is not representative of Aboriginal interests across the nation. It fails to deal with the central and substantive issue of sovereignty and true land rights.
How can we take anything seriously or have confidence in a document coming from those key people who were on this so-called ‘expert panel’. Take for example, [co-chairman] Pat Dodson, who gave us an absolute failed and flawed reconciliation strategy, with his greatest achievement being that people walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge together.
Then there is Marcia Langton, who together with the likes of Noel Pearson, gave us a failed and treasonous Native Title Act, and to add salt to the wounds, Noel Pearson publically states that Aboriginal disadvantages are their own doing. Then there is [co-chairman] Mark Leibler, who is an active supporter of the illegal occupation of the West Bank in Palestine.
When we look at the history of these people we do have reason for concern. Nothing in this constitutional amendment proposal offers anything that could effect serious change to the current Aboriginal position. This is not a time to deal with a feel-good arrangement. This is time for serious legal and political change. We must get the government away from thinking about us as a child-like race, who have to be continually ‘protected’.
This is a country of many diverse Aboriginal nations speaking many languages and to establish a so-called ‘expert panel’ to write up a program of constitutional reform, while they themselves have no Aboriginal constituency to speak of, is an absolute insult of the highest order.
Community consultations around the country cannot and do not reflect Aboriginal interests in this matter. The community consultations in key centralised locations throughout Australia would have an Aboriginal input representing less than one percent of the Aboriginal population.
This proposed constitutional reform constitutes a serious fraud against the nation and Aboriginal nations in particular.
How in the world can we, as Aboriginal Peoples, support absolutely insulting language, such as “the original occupiers of this country” when clearly scientific evidence proves without a shadow of a doubt that we have been here for more than 100,000 years. Based on this the Peking and Java men were still evolving which gave us the European and Asian societies, at least this is what science tells us.
This is the greatest insult I have ever seen dished out to Aboriginal peoples and in the court of Aboriginal opinion Pat Dodson and Mark Leibler would be found guilty of treason, abuse of position and power. The true nature of Aboriginal people must be given voice at a national level, and that is our sovereignty.
The Fraser Liberal National party coalition government found merit that required proper negotiations for a treaty settlement – how have situations changed since then!
The question of Aboriginal sovereignty will be discussed at the Aboriginal Embassy 40th anniversary and we will take every possible step to assert our continuing sovereignty.
Australia’s ambition to gain a seat on the UN Security Council will be placed at risk if they fail to talk with us and seek positive solutions. We don’t want warm and fuzzy statements that falsely present to people that the constitutional amendments are real issues and will make a difference because they won’t.
We have a right to be self-determining as sovereign nations and the governments around this country will hear this in 2012. We need to stop the Labor party and the National Liberal party coalition from being tyrannical towards Aboriginal peoples.
Our lives, our identity as a distinct race of people and the oldest living culture in the world are at risk right now. No type of constitutional reform can change who we are. We have a right to exist as distinct, identifiable peoples within Australia and the world and no amount of constitutional reform will take away our sovereignty and our dominion over our lands, waters, natural resources and biodiversity.
Right throughout Australia, right now, a war is going on in our communities, shielded by the Great Dividing Range. Police have become much more brutal, white rural populations have grown even more racist and are now demanding greater police presence to protect them from the growing Aboriginal populations; prisons are overflowing with Aboriginal inmates, who in the main are serving sentences for non-payment of fines and/or driving without a license and other social disobediences. Compared to the white population there can be no ratio markers to compare.
Australia has to take the sovereignty movement and the land rights movement seriously and if they fail to talk with us and continue to work with their Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican private school educated Blacks, Australia will get its bloody revolution. You can kick a dog only so many times before it bites and what I know of the grassroots Aboriginal communities around Australia, they are ready to bite.
Previous releases by Michael Anderson (scroll down to right-hand column)
Feel free to circulate this far and wide.
Michael Anderson can be contacted at 02 68296355 landline, 04272 92 492 mobile, 02 68296375 fax, ngurampaa@bigpond.com.au, ghillar29@gmail.com
Comments
Blindsided
The Federal Court recognised Aboriginal women's business during the Hindmarsh Island Bridge controversy yet the final report of the Expert Panel on the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution makes no mention of women's business, or equality between women and men at foundation of the Aboriginal tradition, or male privilege which informs the Constitution.
Experts on Aborigines indifferent to women's business, and on the Constitution incognisant of male privilege, are laughable.
There's an industry of men blindsided by their own ambition who can't seem to summon the courage to participate in a conversation about privilege.
The upside is they've had their say so the rest of us can get on with the work at hand, provision of a women's legislature.
What is it about men and their "bloody revolution" when the obvious solution is a women's legislature in the Constitution?
20 January, 2012
philip
8 out of 21 women
Eight of the 21 panel members are women, so it's not just men who had their say.
Granted, 11 or more out of 21 would have been better, but these odds look better than on most other issues.
Most indigenous Australians live in cities, don't want your war
I have a problem with the idea of aboriginal sovereignty and self determination. I'm not sure if the implications of this are understood, or what the ramifications of "dominion of the land" means. Indigenous societies had a relationship with the land that did not include ownership. It was the arrival of europeans that created the idea of ownership of aboriginal land. Indigenous Australia lost it's rights when it lost the war. The land was taken from them. Historical fact.
We do not need this divisive and delusionary path of seeking aborignal sovereignty, self determination and dominion over the land. This will indeed create a war mentality. It is not in the nation's interest, not is it in aboriginal Australia's interest.
Two centuries have past. The old laws no longer hold. Certainly there are remnants of this old law, and they ought to be recognised and protected. But aboriginal communities do not have the right to control and "own" their land for material profit. They have a different relationship with the land. This is what makes them special.
The voice of the black man and woman can only be diminished by this war between them. You are calling fellow aboriginals treasonous. Is this not itself treasonous? Where are the nations you refer to? Scattered in the wind! Remnants remain, not nations, but squalid communities riddled with drug abuse, alcoholism, child neglect and abuse, gambling, disease, and hopelessness. What you purpose is to further divide this divided people. You do not propose solutions, you propose war.
Indigenous Australia cannot win this war. The policies developed by this group are not adequate, and need to be worked over very much in order to produce what is needed, but it is doubtful if even this will see the light of day. Constitutional reform is historically defeated, particularly when the hysterical right and the conservative country based states determine much of the debate and discussion that leads up to any constitutional reform.
Nonetheless constitutional reform is required. Wanting to start a war is not helpful, it diminishes the hard work of indigenous Australians who are not traitors, but people concerned for th every people you purport to stand up for.
Where are these voiceless nations you speak on behalf of? Where is their history? What remains of the nations they once had?
Most indigenous Australians live in cities. They are not concerned with your war, what they want is an end to discrimination, an end to indiscriminate incarceration for minor offences, health and education and housing for their families, a future for their kids, hope and health and harmony with white Australia. You kid yourself if you believe anything else.
The greatest challenge you face is to educate your people and stop them taking the drugs that whites have foisted on them. Addiction is the death of hope.
Real change requires dialogue, not threats or accusations of treason. I'm not friend of Noel Pearson, but nor am I a friend of division and defeat.
HER MIRENO HORA CIRTIK ERZENO!
DOGANAY, I have removed your text, which appears to be a poem, because hardly anyone is likely to know what it is about.
One of our criteria for removal is "Language other than English".
As a compromise, you can re-submit, stating what language it is in and including a summary of what it is about.
One of the collective's editors
Our rule on this in full:
Posts in languages other than English, unless there is a member in the editorial collective maintaining posts in the language. However, please feel free to publish reports in the language of your choice providing that they include a full translation into English language, or, at least, a comprehensive summary in English about what the posting is about.
Divide and conquer
Divided?
We already are Noel !
in more ways than the most obvious.
John Pilger sums up the current state of affairs, here and abroad in this article -
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28753
If Michael's roots are down further than yours, then who are you to critcise him?
You are called an Australian and regard yourself as such 'but' many Aboriginal people see themselves differently, they are Guringai,Gumilaroi etc .
They do not accept the tag imposed on them nor do I and I am a whitefella, I see myself as a christian first and foremost, my birth certificate mentions nothing about 'Australian' citizenship.
This Australia you speak of and for is a lie, a government of hypocritical thieves and murderers who rule by nature of violence and force wrapped in a facade of righteousness and legality = tyranny.
their time is almost over, their judgement shall come from above for as it is written- judge not lest you be judged - or - Who are you ? oh man who thinks to judge another ? The Lord is Judge and executioner, not some frauds dressed as santa claus bowing towards the false religion of their god, their high church and their high court.
You talk about christian judgement? I'm afraid...
You talk about christian judgement? I'm afraid...
Claim the only attainable sovereignty - over one's own actions
The legal industry that flourishes wherever there is interaction between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal in Australia is the one constant in the history of Australia since colonisation. Dominated entirely by the elite, it is a sham. Nothing of substance will come of this, it is yet another diversion. Not to worry, while this diversion continues, Aboriginals will be assimilated and eventually become no more than history. Nothing new about that. Colonisation just keeps on keeping on and it's winning, no doubt at all about that.
Anderson's article - too emotional. Lost me when he suggested there would be a revolution. Not likely, thank alcohol for that. The elite still has the best weapons, they'll keep winning. Fullstop.
The frontier eats up good people, don't get caught up in it. Anderson - rights, sovereignty, revolution... pfff. We non Aboriginals don't even have sovereignty, it is an debateable concept is all. Such arguments are deeply intellectually stimulating and satisfying but dangerously diversional. Know those concepts but get on with leading.
No judgment intended, but if the Aborigines out on communities would just see that they've got all they need for a better life, some real change would start taking place. It comes from within. Inspiration is what it's all about, not drinking, fighting, humbugging and dragging each other down. Again, no judgement intended.
Sovereignty schmovereignty, rights, schmites...pah! Don't we know how to spell and maybe even pronounce some big words? It is embarrassing, the ease with which they are bandied about as if they were in the vernacular. Beware the concepts, they are not necessarily tangible nor real.
The social disobediences leading to jail, now there's a story. The industry, the celebrity. The magistrate with the spotted satin bow tie, the upcoming lawyers with hard ons, perving on their own CV's getting fat. (Anderson, on this one, you treat your own people like children. Alcohol, one of the weapons, is tearing your people apart. Time for some individual sovereignty over what happens in personal domain. Claim the only sovereignty that is actually attainable, dominion over ones own actions).
Constitutional change, what constitutional change? Turning my head the other way, casting my eyes towards reality.
Deleted because of...
"conceited wanker".
We will not tolerate slagging.
Pity, because otherwise this was a nice post.
An Editor
Michael Anderson alleges threats on his life
Bowraville, Mid North Coast hinterland of NSW, 22 January 2012
The last survivor of the four young Black Power men who set up the Aboriginal Embassy in 1972, Michael Ghillar Anderson, says he has received intelligence that there is a move to destroy him personally and the Aboriginal sovereignty movement in which he plays a large role.
Anderson makes the allegation in a media release from Bowraville, where he is meeting and has met previously with Aboriginal elders of Mulli Mulli (Woodenbong).
His statement:
I have been given intelligence coming out of Sydney that there is a move to destroy myself and the Aboriginal sovereignty movement. I am taking this intelligence seriously because of past incidents and threats.
In 1972, after the Aboriginal Embassy had been put up, I returned home as a matter of urgency because my younger had been hospitalised. On my arrival my mother and the Aboriginal family next door (the Cain family from Coonabarrabran) told me they had been receiving in the mail correspondence with words cut from magazines and pasted on foolscap paper “Shut your f……. son up and get him out of the Aboriginal movement or you will learn of the consequences” or words to this effect.
In other correspondence the Cain family received similar letters: “Tell your next door trouble-making black bastards to stop that Black Power man or you will feel the consequences.”
These letters were given to the Criminal Bureau of Investigation in Sydney who placed phone taps on my mother’s phone and the Cain’s phones, so that any threatening conversations could be recorded.
My mother then went on to tell me that she did not want to cause concern, because she knew of my commitment to fight the fight. But recently she did say that I should be concerned. She told me that prior to the letters coming, a steel bar had been thrown through her ground-floor window in Surrey Hills and was driven through a mattress where it was thought I had come home to stay.
Within three weeks after this incident my mother and her Aboriginal neighbour’s houses were blown up in Surrey Hills and the blast shattered the windows for three blocks around. My mother and her neighbours were put under police watch and relocated to another suburb for the next twelve months.
I was also threatened at a hotel in Sydney on the eve of going to an Aboriginal conference in Woollongong and the car that I was travelling in almost killed me, two children and the driver, who was the Newcastle Student Union President, Anne Coombs. I remember trying to successively slow the car down by running it into the side of the mountain, crashing it down Bulli Pass. The police investigation showed the brake lines had been cut.
In another incident, I recall Isobelle Coe and myself returning from Moree, Narrabri and Wee Waa to Sydney, where I attended the Clifton Hotel. From within the Black Power movement I was confronted by fellow Black Power colleagues, who told me I was no longer wanted at the Aboriginal Embassy. So I returned to Walgett and during Christmas 1972/3 I went to Wee Waa to work on the cotton fields with aunties, uncles and families from Goodooga and Walgett.
I recall that one week after 1973 New Year I was asked by the Aboriginal working community in Wee Waa to help fight for higher wages in the cotton industry. I arranged for a strike within the cotton industry for all workers and led them to a successful outcome within three weeks.
Within this three weeks, while I organising the strike, my auntie and uncle Isabell and Jo Flick told me I needed to get out of the Tulla Dunna camp because my life was under threat. On the evening I relocated from my tent at the cotton chippers camp to their house in Wee Waa, the people on Tulla Dunna Reserve thought I was killed in my tent, because a 4WD had pulled up and two shot gun blasts were fired into the tent and the people said a white 4WD had sped off into the darkness.
Today’s intelligence coming out of Sydney suggests I need to be very careful during the Aboriginal Embassy 40th anniversary, because the source is saying that the threats to my safety are coming from the same group of people, who attempted to cause injury and take my life previously.
Recently, during a visit by my mother and sister to Goodooga, my mother warned me that I need to be very well protected, because the government will find Aboriginal people to cause disruption to the sovereignty movement and threaten my life.
I have a very good idea of where the trouble will come from, as police intelligence is aware of the threat to my life and the sovereignty movement and that the people involved will commence a campaign to first character assassinate me to win support to reject me, thereby nullifying the sovereignty movement, by creating enormous divisions; which would permit the Australian government to say publically: Aborigines will never come together as a united body to fight for their sovereign status.
The Australian government knows what is at stake and will resort to any attempt to divide and conquer, because they know how easy it is to do so. They know that hate and jealousy within the oppressed people are so easy to promote and exploit.
In other words: feed them enough information to character assassinate and they will divide themselves.
I am seriously considering the threat to my life and safety and will consider whether my safety is worth the risk, because the government is seeking to destroy the sovereignty movement.
What stimulates me to stay the course is the fact that this sovereignty movement belongs to the people and is not owned by any family or group.
Michael Ghillar Anderson
Michael Anderson can be contacted at 02 68296355 landline, 04272 92 492 mobile, 02 68296375 fax, ngurampaa@bigpond.com.au, ghillar29@gmail.com
Make sure parents raise their kids properly
"Right throughout Australia, right now, a war is going on in our communities, shielded by the Great Dividing Range. Police have become much more brutal, white rural populations have grown even more racist and are now demanding greater police presence to protect them from the growing Aboriginal populations; prisons are overflowing with Aboriginal inmates, who in the main are serving sentences for non-payment of fines and/or driving without a license and other social disobediences. Compared to the white population there can be no ratio markers to compare."
If your going to have a rapidly growing population, please make sure that the parents take the time to bring their kids up properly, send them to school and then onto University or further education so that they can grow up with a suitable education to contribute to Australia rather than continue to create a cycle of welfare dependency that will ultimately destroy Australia as surely as almost every country in Africa (as well as many other countries around the world) has been destroyed by over population.