Aboriginal Voices from the NT

The shocking voices of those who are directly affected by the Australian Governments horrific NT National Emergency Response Legislation 2007

Stop the State Repression of Indigenous Peoples

"Global Oppression Intense as Indigenous Peoples Rise Up and Organize."

by Brenda Norrell
Narcosphere

www.narconews.com/

"Global oppression has intensified as Indigenous Peoples are organizing at the international level to control their resources and halt oppression. Maori leaders in the sovereignty, environmental and peace movements have been arrested. Tame Iti is in prison without bail. New Zealand authorities are attempting to brand the Maori as terrorists.
New Zealand is under international pressure to adhere to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the U.N., which recognizes the right of Indigenous Peoples to their ancestral lands. Earlier, New Zealand, the United States, Australia and Canada voted against the UN Declaration.

Just now, Wednesday morning (October 17) the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has announced it will revisit its ruling halting a plan to make snow from sewer water on sacred San Francisco Peaks, a place of healing ceremonies and healing plant gathering for 13 area Indian Tribes. The federal Appeals Court said it is responding to pressure from the United States and Snowbowl Ski Resort.

In the south, the military oppression is unabated in Chiapas and Oaxaca, while mining corporations crush communities in Central and South America.
All of this comes at the same time that Zapatistas are organizing at the international level and Indigenous Peoples are fighting the corporate destruction — copper and gold mining, oil drilling, coal mining, power plants, uranium mining and nuclear dumping & from the Andean highlands in South America to the Inuit in Alaska and Aboriginals in Australia, and uniting in solidarity.

At the same time in Canada, Indian Nations are rising up to protect their ancestral territories, resisting colonization and the seizure of their lands for uranium mining, housing developments and oil drilling, as the Bush administration rushes to seize the oil in the melting Arctic."

Solidarity in the Kulin Nations

Kia Ora Koutou Whanau, to all my Relations Greetings & Respect

In the Kulin Nations (Melbourne) we will be holding a solidarity rally on the 27th of October.At Federation Square at 12 noon.

This rally will also be a condemnation of the 4 settler grubbyments that refuse to acknowledge and affirm our rights as Indigenous peoples to exist, to self determination and to sovereignty.Our solidarity will also be extended to out brothers and sisters in Great Turtle Island, as this phenomena of state suppression on Indigenous peoples is nothing new and still a common daily occurrence.

Stop the State Repression of Indigenous Peoples

Solidarity with the Urewera 17! Free them now!

Free Political Prisoners/Drop the Charges

Drop the Charges against Lex Wotoon NOW

Free Tame Iti NOW

Drop the Charges against Shawn Bryant NOW

Free Leonard Peltier NOW

In the Spirit of Indigenous Unity & Solidarity

Respect and Regards to all from my heart.

Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou Ake Ake Ake
Always Was Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.

Sina Brown-Davis
Te Roroa, Te Uriohau, Fale Ula, Vava'u

+61 3 94058449
uriohau(at)gmail.com

Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou Ake Ake Ake

Gosh Uncle Rupene looks young there being dragged off by the pokaa at the Takahue reclamation, Chur.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgC53JNm-es

The sequences were shot during various political actions over the last couple of years including:
Waitangi day, (Flag raising) The M.A.I. Hikoi (Habour Bridge footage) The A.P.E.C conference in Auckland ( Getting arrested) The Takahue occupation (more arrests) The FSSB Hikoi. The footage was shot by a number of photograhers including Dean Whitehead, Amos, The NZ Police, Mike Smith .

What the UN Declaration Means

by Rudolph Ryser

It is our observation at the Center that there are from 6,000 to 7,000 nations that speak original languages and generally occupy territories in virtually every continent in the world. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII) claims that indigenous peoples come from some 70 countries and have a combined population of some 370 million. The PFII has a fairly limited interpretation of who are the indigenous peoples.

In the Peoples Republic of China alone there are nearly 300 million indigenous people—not counting the dominant Han. In northeastern India—in the so-called tribals area-there are more than 25 million not to mention the millions more indigenous people living in the subcontinent proper. There are more than 11 million Mayan related peoples in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The PFII is not apparently conscious of the different peoples in Eurasia (Komi, Evenk, Even, Chuckchi, etc.) or the more than 129 indigenous nations in Europe. We have estimated the number of people who might be identified as indigenous people world-wide at a minimum of 750 million and perhaps as many as a billion. This number may be too small.

All indigenous populations are located inside the boundaries of existing states (we don't use the inaccurate term "nation-state" since there are really only a few such states in the world—Vanuatu for example. The United States, Brazil or Australia are not nations, but rather they are actually states. A nation is "a people" that shares a
common culture and/or language, heritage, history, etc. Alas, the United States is a state with decedents of settlers and immigrants established on top of the territories of the original nations. A modern state originates with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 when the Catholic Church defined the state as having a centralized authority that is "sovereign," has recognized boundaries, exercises universal laws within those boundaries, has a policing force or military, and is an entity recognized by other states.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is properly referred to as a "Declaration." Just as the United Nations adopted the University Human Rights Declaration December 10, 1948 it has now adopted a Declaration concerning the rights of indigenous peoples. The United Nations uses such "declarations" as a device to facilitate international consensus on a controversial topic. "Declarations" are used to education and change opinion, or focus attention on a subject to elevate it to a level of international importance. The present UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a statement of "minimal standards" and specifically states that it is not intended to limit present or future rights. What this means is that the international community is now encouraged to
formulate new international laws based on the principles contained in the Declaration. States' governments are encouraged to adopt new domestic legislation that takes into account the principles contained in this Declaration. Indigenous nations are encouraged to adopt new laws that take into account the principles contained in this Declaration.

In other words, the UN Declaration is a statement of principles on which there is wide consensus. It does not confer rights or authorities, it merely notes that the principles best state the international community's understanding of the standards that should guide formulation of new international law and conduct. A great deal
of work lays ahead to give meaning to the principles on which consensus has been established.

In 1994 I served a a Special Rapporteur in the development and initialing of the International Covenant on the Rights of Indigenous Nations. This document has been circulating in the indigenous world ever since as a commitment between nations.

I look upon the Declaration (on which I worked with perhaps a thousand other people from 1985 onward) as a very minor first step toward a much more fruitful, but difficult period of political conflict between indigenous nations and states' governments. The central conflict is over land (wealth) and control (power). The United States and Canada have objected to the "consent clause" in the present Declaration and as these terms were promoted because they assume original ownership of territories and resources in indigenous peoples. This requires that each state "negotiate" in good faith with indigenous populations over access to land and resources the state assumes it already owns by virtue of it's state identity. This rather weak state claim is only challenged by indigenous peoples and their original occupation of territories predating the existence of the state.

I anticipate a major struggle between nations and states over control and use of lands and resources. Violence has been the response of many states or their surrogates (corporations or militias) to indigenous nations obstructing access to land and resources (oil, timber, gold, diamonds, bauxite, and you name it). The whole "terrorist" conflict appears to be transforming into the nation and state conflict. Nations will need to carefully advance their political power to avoid the violence. It is already apparent with the conflicts raging in the world involving "tribes" (read: Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Sudan-Darfur, Bruma-Karen, Indonesia-West Papua, Nigeria-Ijaw, Russia-Chechnya, etc) that "oil" is a major bone of contention. The UN General Assembly's adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples signals the expansion of land and resource wars between states and nations. It is to be hoped that negotiations informed by a better understanding of Fourth World Geopolitics will be substituted for violence. War will be evidence of human failure.

http://fwe.cwis.org/2007/09/19/what-the-un-declaration-means/

“Policing the neighbourhood”—Australia’s new para-military police

Part 1

By Mike Head
27 September 2007

This is the first in a two-part series on the Australian Federal Police.

At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Sydney this month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, initialled a highly significant agreement. Made under the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation signed by the two governments in Japan earlier this year, the agreement established that the Australian Federal Police would train Japanese police to serve in “international hot spots”.

The AFP’s training program highlights the growing interest in foreign capitals in a new model of para-military intervention, developed by the Howard government, around the AFP’s International Deployment Group (IDG).

The Japanese government’s interest in using heavily-armed police agencies in overseas operations is particularly noteworthy. Japan’s post-World War II constitution formally forbids the establishment of military forces, and there has been deep opposition within the population to the involvement of the country’s so-called “self-defence” military units in the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But interest in the IDG is not confined to Tokyo. According to a recent series in New Matilda, an on-line liberal magazine: “The expansion of the International Deployment Group will see the AFP operating significantly outside its original mandate—in areas that would seem to be a more natural fit for the military, NGOs or aid agencies—and is attracting considerable global attention as the first of its kind.”

The Howard government established the IDG in February 2004, seven months after sending more than 2,000 troops and police to the Solomon Islands in 2003. The specific role of the hundreds of AFP officers was to form the backbone of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which took control of key aspects of the small country’s administration, including the police, legal system, prisons and finance ministry.

The deployment marked an unprecedented new phase in the life of the AFP, which has traditionally been a small domestic force, primarily responsible for enforcing federal criminal law, policing the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and guarding diplomatic and other official buildings. Under the Australian Constitution, the far-larger state police forces carry out most internal policing.

The AFP was only established in 1979, through a merger of the ACT Police and the old Commonwealth Police. The amalgamation resulted from the still-unexplained 1978 bomb explosion outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel, the venue for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting. The blast became the pretext for the conservative Fraser government to declare that the “age of terrorism” had arrived in Australia, requiring a dramatic boost to the size and powers of the federal police, intelligence and security services.

Today, the “war on terror” declared by the Bush administration after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, is being exploited by the Howard government to enlarge and transform the role of the AFP. By the end of 2008, the IDG will have grown to 1,200 members, equipped with advanced military-style weaponry, including armoured personnel carriers, and consuming one-third of the AFP’s annual budget. In 1979, the AFP’s personnel numbered some 2,952. By next year, the force will have more than doubled.

The IDG already has teams in 10 countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Cyprus, Cambodia, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru and Tonga. The AFP also has trainers or exchange personnel in other locations, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Micronesia.

To date, the IDG’s main operations are concentrated in the Solomons, where about 230 officers dominate RAMSI and the local police force. The next largest contingent of 60 is in East Timor, where some 200 police accompanied the hundreds of Australian troops deployed last year by the Howard government as part of its efforts to secure the removal of the Fretilin administration of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

The IDG is designed to provide a “rapid response” capacity to aid the military in the event of popular unrest. Its role as a regional policing agency was underscored last November, when 64 IDG members were sent to Tonga after riots in the capital Nuku’olofa. Three AFP “advisers” are still there.

Neo-colonial agenda

The AFP’s submission to a current Senate committee inquiry into “Australia’s involvement in peacekeeping operations” pointed to the neo-colonial character of these operations. It also outlined the rationale for police, rather than troops, to occupy the front line against the local population—at least after the initial show of military force, as happened in East Timor and the Solomons.

“Sovereignty, respect and understanding of host nation culture and laws will assist in the acceptance of police contributions. Sovereignty will however be used in a variety of circumstances to obstruct change which may reduce the benefits of police interventions or capacity building missions as they threaten the status quo enjoyed by local elites,” the submission stated.

In other words, paying lip service to “host nation culture and laws” helps legitimise the operation in the eyes of the local population, but “sovereignty”—i.e., national independence—remains a barrier to enforcing Australian interests. While the “police interventions” are presented as humanitarian or “capacity building” missions to assist impoverished populations, their real purpose is to assert Australian strategic, diplomatic and economic domination over the entire South Pacific region.

The submission said the AFP was “revolutionising its approach to offshore operations” for two reasons. One was a turn away from the “bygone era” of “traditional peacekeeping”, based on UN or multilateral operations—with the consent of warring parties—to unilateral interventions, often in so-called “failed” or “fragile” states.

This shift is bound up with growing conflicts between the major powers, particularly the US, Europe, China and Russia. In the Asia-Pacific region, backed by the US, Canberra is intent on establishing unchallenged hegemony, which means not only ousting regimes regarded as obstacles to its interests, but also combating the influence of rival powers, especially China.

The other reason given by the AFP was the need for a long-term presence, lasting well beyond the normal span of a military engagement. Although the submission’s language was cautious, it pointed to the need to establish new regimes—basically puppet administrations—which would require armed police backing. “In the power vacuum that frequently exists, the international community may be required to establish transitional administration authorities that provide traditional government functions including executive policing.”

Such “executive policing” would require a greater use of weaponry and lethal force than normally involved in Australian domestic policing. “These environments are volatile and have resulted in a shift, in the case of police, in the authority to bear arms and use deadly force,” the submission stated.

Drawing on the experiences of Timor and the Solomons, the AFP said the command of the intervention could fluctuate. During the initial stages, “an effective military response” would be primary; followed by a policing focus, with the possibility of transferring back to military command “in certain forms of crises”.

As a result, the line between the military and the police is becoming blurred. A feature of the IDG is closer “interoperability” with the military, including the “embedding” of AFP officers in “Joint Operations Command and the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre”. The submission predicted: “Joint operations with the Australian Defence Force as part of national offshore crisis response will become more frequent and increased interoperability will be necessary”.

Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra last October, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty spoke of “policing in a new paradigm” in which the police became “the new deployable arm of Australian government policy”. “If a government wishes to intervene in the issues of another state, it has traditionally been achieved through the deployment of military force to deliver on the government’s objective,” he noted. But because of the political sensitivities involved, the AFP was being transformed into a “pseudo-gendarmerie”.

Keelty drew a parallel with the formation of “Special Weapons and Operation style teams in Australia”. Over the past 20 years, para-military police units have been established in every Australian state, operating with sub-machine guns, armoured vehicles and riot gear.

Among the witnesses testifying at the Senate inquiry was Flinders University law professor Andrew Goldsmith, the lead researcher in “Policing the neighbourhood”—a three-year Australian Research Council-funded study, in partnership with the AFP, of the AFP’s experiences in East Timor, the Solomons and Papua New Guinea. He emphasised the need for the “management of perceptions” in IDG operations to overcome local hostility.

“Australia faces an almost inevitable perception in the region of being a kind of symbolic big brother, and that poses a number of legitimacy problems,” he advised the senators. Later, he added: “Australia’s involvement in oil and gas with Timor has coloured our ability to operate as effectively as we would like in Timor-Leste.”

Goldsmith’s testimony illustrates one of the central preoccupations behind the Senate inquiry’s ongoing deliberations and the work of the IDG: how best to camouflage the underlying economic and strategic interests of the Australian political and corporate establishment, including control over the lucrative oil and gas reserves under the Timor Sea, throughout the region.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/afpo-s27.shtml

To be continued

See Also:
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 1
[21 February 2007]
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 2
[22 February 2007]

Kolumbus Day in Amerikkka

Robbie Thorpe Black GST/Camp Sovereignty NDA Melbourne Press Release

The Howard Settler Governments invasion of the Northern territory is land-grabbing racism nothing more. This invasion is part of the neo liberal structural adjustment programme of Intuitions such as the World, Bank, the IMF & APEC to diminish and extinguish Indigenous rights forever.

It is no surprise to see that the four countries that are blocking the passage of the Draft Declaration of indigenous rights through the United Nations, Australia, New Zealand, United States & Canada, they are the same four states that as part of APEC are raping the marine ocean environment in the Pacific, and are further oppressing & eroding the hard won rights of their Indigenous Nations & Peoples through out the world and within their own countries.

What is happening to our brothers and sisters in the NT, is part of that process, part of that genocide.

On the 14th July Indigenous peoples worldwide stand united in their opposition to these agenda’s, invasions and to the unending dispossession & disrespect shown to our peoples.

To my Brothers & Sisters of the Four winds, who replied to our call for Unity & Solidarity. United and strong, together we can defend what is ours for our generations to come. Deepest respect.


As the Indigenous Peoples of Australia, we weren’t afforded civil rights and as such we weren’t recognised and we’ve missed that process for the last two hundred years. I don’t think you can have any laws that are appropriate for Aboriginal people in this country until you have a treaty, which ends the war. Before you have a treaty you have to have an end to hostilities. Before those processes take place, you can’t talk about having a civil rights society.

One of our rights being breached is the right to consent. Aboriginal people haven’t consented. If you do things without consent, it’s considered rape. Now, a lot of crimes have been committed against Aboriginal people. There is a history of denial, which has gone on, and these crimes are continuing.

They won’t take the fundamental steps towards establishing a civil society. They need to have a treaty; they need to end the war against the Aboriginal people. We know we’ve had a war here, but they can’t tell you what day it ended. That may be the national day this country could celebrate.

Until they have that treaty with Aboriginal people we can’t talk about making laws for Aboriginal people or applying it to them. The treaty will give them that basis of law to do it.

They’ve had 200 years in isolation from the rest of the world to do exactly what they wanted to do. They’ve lied all the way - terra nullius - they’ve said they lied about that. They’ve admitted that they stole children: that’s article (e) of the Genocide Convention. They’ve had an inquiry into the deaths in custody, killing members of the group. They’ve caused mental stress on Aboriginal people - and everything that’s in the Genocide Convention, Australia’s breached. I can’t believe that it gets swept aside each time. It’s like you’re talking to a brick wall.

Well, the treaty gets written by our people, and signed by white-fellers. Our elders are to put it into place. Our people write the treaties, and the white-feller signs it because he’s on our land, and that’s the deal. We write it. We write it in aboriginal language, we write it in white-fella language, and we write it in Latin if you want it. We’ll get the interpretation deadly, because we’ll do it. We’ll interpret it; it’s our treaty. We’re allowing it to happen; it’s up to us to consent to this. You know what I mean? Otherwise they’ll remain the illegitimate bastard-child of England, Australia. That’s what they are.


"Today we are remembering our eldest elders, those who initiated the long struggle of resistance against the arrogance of Power and the violence of money. They, our ancestors, taught us that a people with pride are a people who do not surrender, who resist, who have dignity." - from Our Word Is Our Weapon


Robbie Thorpe: Black GST & Camp Sovereignty

Robbie Thorpe: 0437 967 039

Robbie Thorpe is from the Krautungalung people of the Gunnai Nation, the traditional owners of Lake Tyers


Stop the Genocide on Stolen Aboriginal Land

* End Aboriginal deaths in Custody! Justice for Mulrunji and all killed
in custody.
* Implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody!
* Land rights not mining rights! No new mines, no new dumps!
* Fund community controlled services, not troops, cops and martial law!
Social well-fair, not social control!
* Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs! Treaty NOW!
* International Day of Action

Saturday July 14th Kulin Nations (Melbourne Australia)

International Indigenous Unity

Aboriginal Australia

Black GST

Camp Sovereignty

Aotearoa

Te Ata Tino Toa

Conscious Collaborations - Global indigenous Network

Mana Wahine

Komiti Pasifika

Whakaminenga o Te Paatu

Aocafe (Aotearoa Cafe)

IA Imagine Native Action

Indiginz

Hone Harawira, Maori Party MP Te Tai, Tokerau

Te Ururoa Flavell, Maori Party MP, Waiariki

Metiria Turei List MP Green party Aotearoa/NZ

Great Turtle Island

American Indian Movement

Leonard Peltier Defense Committee

MNN Mohawk Nation News

Mapuche Solidarity Coalition

Indigenous activists face police at roadblock

MEDIA ADVISORY
for immediate release
July 2, 2:45 pm

Indigenous activists face police at roadblock

First Nations activists are continuing the days of action with a
blockade in Saanichton at this hour. Around 30 people are risking
arrest on West Saanich Road between Stelly's Road and Mt. Newton Cross
Road. (See map link below).

Members of the Tsartlip Band, other First Nations and their supporters
are preventing traffic from passing as they protest injustice against
native people.

"This is an action in solidarity with other First Nations across
Canada," Victoria activist Rose Henry said by phone at 2:30 pm Monday.
"We are tired of the poor living standards, tired of poverty, tired of
having no housing, and tired of the treaty process."

"The police are here now. More police are arriving," Henry said. She
requests supporters bring friends to help and bear witness, water,
banners, and other supplies for the protest. Henry said the protest
will go on until 5:30 pm today, assuming police don't move to break it
up before then.

Contact: Rose Henry 250-812-0199 cell
Map:*
tinyurl.com/ywcjbv*

ZoeBlunt (at) gmail.com

earth_first (at) resist.ca
250.361.1876