Three decades on, the death of Douglas Scott remains unresolved

Douglas Scott

Mr Scott's death was one of the 99 cases examined by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1989. Mrs Scott were shown photographs of Mr Scott hanging in his cell by two lawyers assisting the Commission in the Northern Territory. Mrs Scott said the photographs showed him suspended inches from a grate in the nine-foot-high ceiling with his feet dangling two to three feet from the floor, the noose around his neck made from a plain and tightly twisted sheet that was neatly tied in multiple knots which were tight and close together. She did not believe her husband made the noose.

Genocide in Australia: Crimes against Australias First Nations peoples


Australia's Genocide Record

The genocidal practices perpetrated against Australian Aborigines were the outcome of policies adopted and implemented by all Australian governments from British settlement in 1788 until the present. A people who had virtually no contact with the outside world, were suddenly confronted with a hostile and alien force. Aborigines were forced out of their traditional homes, hunted like wild animals, poisoned or shot, and confined to the harshest and most desolate climes. The effect of British settlement upon these people led to near extinction within 120 years.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies has published a report detailing this history. Entitled Genocide in Australia, it was written by Professor Colin Tatz, director of the Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies at Sydney's Macquarie University.

Victoria's silent shame

Australia's head in the sand approach to 'contact' on the Australian frontier is also legendry. 200-odd years on and Australian children are still denied the truth about the so-called 'founding' of this nation. That said though, a few paragraphs of this Footprints story about contact in Victoria and you can perhaps see why ignorance and silence was widely practiced.

White invaders had come ever so close to extinguishing Tasmanian Aboriginals all together and most Australians wouldn't have a clue one of the world's most horrendous mass murders took place on home soil.

Govt's Gift to Australian First Nations people - 'A brand new stolen generation'

Since the Northern Territory Intervention began in 2007, the rate of child removals in the NT has increased by 80 percent. In Queensland the number of children removed from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island families has increased by 42 percent since 2007.

Nearly half of these children taken by the Department of Community Services have been placed with non-Indigenous foster families or carers. In the NT, nearly two-thirds of the children removed have been placed with non-Indigenous foster families.

Conspiracy Of Silence' - Blood baths of the past by Dr. Timothy Bottoms

As Europeans moved into new lands in Queensland in the 19th century, violent encounters with local Aboriginals mostly followed. Drawing on extensive original research, Timothy Bottoms tells the story of the most violent frontier in Australian colonial history.

He says he debunks "the pioneering myth" that Australia was settled in a peaceful manner.

"This is an important, well researched book: challenging, compelling and controversial. It is a must read for anyone interested in Australian history." - Henry Reynolds

Coranderrk: First Nations Farmers and Market Gardeners

Coranderrk was a First Nations Australian mission station set up in 1863 to provide land under the policy of concentration following European dispossessed.

The people at Coranderrk successful ran an enterprise selling wheat, hops and crafts to the growing market of Melbourne. Their produce won first prize at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1872.

Because of the faming success, the Aboriginal Protection Board started moving people away from the land. This was supported by the general community as "the land was too valuable for Aboriginals".

Inside the killing fields of Queensland

Illustation: Michael Perkins Source: The Australian

Richard Fotheringham The Australian
06 October 2010

The discovery of a memoir by Steele Rudd's father sheds light on the murderous collision between settlers and Aborigines on the Darling Downs

Euopean settlement in Australia was bloody brutal. The idea that on small or imagined provocation you had to kill Aborigines indiscriminately was tacitly acknowledged throughout the immigrant rural communities: "how else could the land be made safe for settlers and their families?"

Here is a book review that reveals a few historical records of southern Queensland's frontier wars. An uncomfortable silence still hangs over the most controversial issue in Australian colonial history.

How Bob Hawke killed land rights


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Gary Foley speaks of the period between 1983 and 1996 when the Hawke-Keating Labor government killed off the move for national land rights

He said in a 'Tracker' article that one of the greatest acts of political bastardry in Australian history, Bob Hawke personally removed land rights from the national political agenda in 1984.

It remains one of the greatest acts of political bastardry in Australian history and he did it at the behest of, arguably, the most corrupt politician in recent Australian history.

Langton slams thinking people and praises mining giants

Indigenous leader Marcia Langton and the ABC have defended a lack of disclosure over last year's Boyer Lectures, despite tens of thousands of dollars in cash for Langton's academic research being sourced from resources giants Rio Tinto, Woodside and Santos.

The Five Boyers were delivered late last year by Langton by the ABC and beamed around the country on Radio National.

They argued the boom had substantively benefited indigenous communities, with Langton lauding the work of a number of corporate giants for providing job opportunities and friendly chop-outs.

One lecture featured a full frontal attack on the "conceit" of anti-mining greenies.

Original sovereign man wrongly arrested and force fed medication

Police arrested an innocent First Nations man and dropped him off at a psychiatric institute in Western Australia who shot him up with so many drugs he had to be taken to a hospital in dire need of medical attention.

The Graylands Psychiatric Hospital staff didn't bother checking him out properly and gave him very powerful anti-psychotic medications which caused the man to develop severe adverse reactions and was treated for medication poisoning.

listen to ‘First Nations man falsely arrested and treated for schizophrenia’ on Audioboo