Cultural safety matters – the conversation we need to keep having
I rang my dad over the weekend. We’d hardly begun yarning before he asked me: “What’s this about white nurses having to apologise to us for being white?”
I could have just said, “Dad, you should know better than to believe what the mainstream media says about us.”
We cannot wait another decade to take meaningful action
Ten years ago, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, rose in the Parliament and apologised on behalf of the nation to the Stolen Generations. He apologised for the impact of laws and policies that removed our children from their families and communities, acknowledging these past wrongs and their ongoing impact today.
It’s convenient to say Aboriginal people support Australia Day. But it’s not true
Opponents to Australia Day are invariably criticised in two ways. The first is a favoured manoeuvre for establishment media pundits: claim the focus on 26 January is trivial while more pressing Indigenous issues are neglected.
Australia Day – 230 years of grand theft and trespass
On 26 January, 1788 the British Crown contravened its own law – and prevailing international law– by laying claim to 7.692 million km² of land that was already inhabited and cared for by over 200 First Nations, each with a sophisticated and ecologically-focussed system of governance. And the trespass continues.
Why celebrate on the day that marks crimes of colonialism and genocide?
Aboriginal Peoples and Nations are subjects in international law: always was and always will be. We have held our relationship to country from time immemorial and we are still here today. We survive under the duress of an ongoing colonialism, but we continue to maintain our relationships with land and peoples to this day.
No, I Will Not Thank You For Your Invasion
I searched the Internet for my name on a fine January morning, it can be the only way to find reviews of my work. I found my name somewhere unexpected, in an article by Keith Windschuttle in Quadrant (“Australia Dystopia”, Quadrant, January/February 2018). He quoted me, which is OK although I would prefer not being used to further his vitriol. He also called me a ‘hypocrite’, which is not ok.
Our history of resistance involves revitalising our traditional languages
This year marks the bicentennial of John Oxley’s 1818 reconnaissance mission to the so-called ‘New England Tableland’ in New South Wales, which lay the foundation for two hundred years (and counting) of violent and stifling colonialism. The first squatter reached New England in 1832, and an intense period of frontier conflict accompanied the ensuing invasion and occupation.
Victims and Vultures – the profitability of problematising the Aborigine
As a health researcher I am troubled by the predatory possibilities of “the Aboriginal problem”. Many a mortgage has been paid off the back of knowing “the Aboriginal problem” or claiming to solve “the Aboriginal problem” as advancing new knowledge. Within Indigenous health research, people (and by people, I mean predominantly white people) make money from knowing “the Aboriginal problem” under the premise that a deeper understanding of “the Aboriginal problem” will somehow fix it.
Change requires courage: We need all Australians to walk with us
This week I appeared on #QandA as one of the questioner’s to the Prime Minister regarding the Uluru Statement from the Heart. He sought to defend his dismissal of a proposed First Nations Voice to Parliament by relying on the fact we already have Indigenous MP’s in Parliament.