The Other Side of the Coin

Sovereign Union of First Nations is inevitable


Left to right: Michael Ghillar Anderson, George Gaymarani Pascoe, Dr. Djiniyini Gondarra

In a 'Sovereign Union' Media Release from Darwin, Michael Anderson said that he has completed discussions with Dr Djiniyini Gondarra and George Gaymarani Pascoe and they all agreed that a Sovereign Union of nations is inevitable, but it needs to grow from the grassroots and its success can only be achieved if the First Nations people want it.

"The Sovereign Union is about building a protective shelter while our people go through the hard long process of organising from the community level up," Michael Anderson explained. "Each of the sovereign Nations' sovereign independence dictates that they make their own rules about their own governance, while the Sovereign Union national unity government deals with national and international political agenda items that will be dictated to by the individual sovereign Nations.

WA under fire over stolen wages compensation

Stolen Wages

The West Australian Government is under fire over its compensation offer to pay lost wages to thousands of the state's Indigenous workers.

In March, the state government announced a six-month time period for former workers to apply for wages withheld by the government in what has become known as the stolen wages case.

Between 1905 and 1972, the government withheld up to three-quarters of the wages earned by workers on state-run Native Welfare Settlements.

The monies were put into government trust accounts with the promise that they would later be rightfully dispersed. But that never happened.

listen to ‘I worked for shirt, hat, boots’ on Audioboo

All charges against Musgrave fire defenders dropped on Aboriginal Sovereignty Day

The Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy celebrates the dropping of all charges against those arrested in Musgrave Park on May 16 attempting to stop Brisbane City Council desecrating the sacred fire.

This is a victory for all Aboriginal people and our pursuit to assert our sovereignty over the land.

The embassy press release states, 'This isn't over and we are looking at all avenues to get justice for this unwarranted attack on our culture and on a sacred place'. Under the Cultural Heritage Act it is crime to interfere with or damage a registered cultural heritage site. The maximum penalty for this crime is fines up to $1,000,000 and imprisonment for up to 2 years.

Townsville professor blasts Australia over land rights and Intervention at international conference

An international conference in South Africa last month heard an Aboriginal woman professor from Townsville, Gracelyn Smallwood, blast Australia over land rights and the Northern Territory intervention ...

In an interview with Noosa Community Radio Gracelyn said she expects her three talks, based on her PhD thesis to go feral internationally. The thesis is to be published by a London publisher Routledge "because it was too hot a potato for Australian publishers" she approached.

listen to ‘"Horrified about Australia's deep dark secret"’ on Audioboo

First Peoples nations still struggling for their rights

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UN processes are so slow it took two UN Decades for member states to reach an agreement on the political status of Indigenous rights. After the First International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples (1995-2004) failed to resolve contention over self-determination, the General Assembly had to expand the timeframe with a second UN Decade (2005-2015) under the theme "A Decade for Action and Dignity".

The controversy focused primarily on the practice of Indigenous autonomy - and its implications for state sovereignty. Most member-states reacted to Article 46 insisting that the declaration not be interpreted in any way that could impair the territorial sovereignty of states. Four governments voted against the declaration (Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US) out of opposition to the majority's interpretations of sovereignty.

As Indigenous protests gain momentum, most governments fail to practice what they have committed to internationally

Women gather for Cootamundra Girls Home anniversary


Cootamundra Training Home

ABC Riverina August 10, 2012

Indigenous women and their families from across Australia have started arriving in the Riverina for the centenary of the Cootamundra Girls Home.

Hundreds of girls were forcibly taken from their families and placed at the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls between 1911 and 1968, as part of the Commonwealth's assimilation policy. The girls were not allowed to contact their families and were later sent to work as domestic servants.

The governments said children had to be taken away from their parents because the influence of their own communities was immoral and they were in danger of abuse and neglect, but the real agenda then was to de-Aboriginalise them.

Originals fire hunting benefits small-mammals: Research

The Aboriginal Martu people of Western Australia have traditionally set small fires while foraging, leaving a patchwork landscape that proves a perfect environment for bilbies, wallabies, possums and other threatened mammals.

Stanford anthropologists have discovered that when these controlled burns cease, the desert rapidly becomes overgrown – and a single lightning strike can send wildfires tearing through hundreds of square miles of tinder-dry mammal habitat.

The paper, authored by Stanford anthropology Associate Professor Rebecca Bliege Bird, senior research scientist Douglas Bird, postdoctoral scholar Brian Codding and undergraduate Peter Kauhanen, appeared recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

UN says not enough community participation in 'Stronger Futures' decision

UN Commissioner Navanethem Pillay
UN's Navanethem Pillay

A letter obtained by AAP under freedom of information laws, from UN Commissioner Navanethem Pillay addressed to Jenny Macklin outlined UN's concerns regarding the proposed legislation.

The United Nations human rights commissioner fears the continuation of a federal government intervention program in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities won't benefit indigenous people.

The Labor government's racist Stronger Futures legislation, passed by parliament in late June, now continues for another 10 long years.

A crime to be proud of First Nations heritage


  Damien 'Super' Hooper

Indigenous leaders say the Olympic rules that outlaw Aboriginal flags at the Games should change, and have called on the Australian Olympic Committee to lobby for the longstanding protocol to be overturned.

Dual Olympian 110-metre hurdler Kyle Vander Kuyp, former world champion boxer Anthony Mundine, and former politician and activist Phil Cleary - who said recognising both flags at the Games would "affirm our real history and be a major act of reconciliation" - led the voices supporting boxer Damien Hooper who breached International Olympic Committee rules by wearing a T-shirt with the Aboriginal flag on it to competition in London.

"I would love to see the whole country embrace the flag more," Vander Kuyp said.

listen to ‘Damian Hooper's statement - comments by Prof. Waterhouse’ on Audioboo

Representatives of more than 30 nations see Aboriginal affairs at an all-time low

Delegates representing more than 30 nations attended the Sovereign Union gathering in Moree during the weekend (28-29th July 2012). Apart from focussing on important Sovereigty matters they all agreed that Aboriginal affairs is at its all-time low.

Issues such as incarceration rates, growing domestic violence matters, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, crime, child removals and school curriculums, poor housing and low incomes.

These serious issues are further compounded by the forced government programming of 'closing the gap', which is in effect measuring their assimilation objectives, that is, how far they are removing us from our culture and how successfully we have been absorbed into the white one through their reconciliation program.

The Sovereign Union now calls upon our people around this country to stop doing deals and signing away your sovereign rights.