Land

Forrest offered a capped payment to the Yindjibarndi of $4 million for access to their sacred land. After negotiating for six months, which is all that is required under the act, Fortescue was able to get its mining lease from the National Native Title Tribunal. Last month, the dispute returned to haunt Forrest when a Federal Court judge made a series of extraordinary findings about Fortescue's conduct in the native title claim lodged by Woodley and the Yindjibarndi over a stretch of land that includes the now-built Solomon mine. Included on this page is article, audio report and copy of the court report.

Our brains were our great evolutionary advantage, conferring massive memory, curiosity, inventiveness and observational powers ... By applying our acquired knowledge and insights, we could deliberately choose a path to avoid danger or trouble, and to exploit opportunities. I believe foresight was a huge evolutionary advantage for our species. And that's what is so tragic today when we have all the amplified foresight of scientists and supercomputers, which have been warning us for decades that we are heading down a dangerous path, but now we allow politics and economics to override this predictive power.

Indigenous land and sea rangers have called on the government to expand what they say is one of the most successful Indigenous jobs programs, caring for the huge swaths of protected land across the country. However, it falls on the deaf ears of racist and greedy governments who prefer to destroy the land with mining and sell the rest to China.
In doing so, they further damage the climate for everyone's children and grandchildren's future, including their own descendants.

Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Peoples have the potential to operate as an independent sovereign Nation state by virtue of the fact that they have an entry permit system (equivalent to a visa) and they have veto powers in respect to applicants seeking to come into their country. However, when the veil of power is lifted from their governance, it is evident that the Lawmen and women of the APY Executive Board do not understand the extent of their unlimited powers and most of their lands have been negotiated away through Indigenous Land Use agreements.

There must be thousands of reasons why many First Nations people haven't been able to live as comfortably in a 'white mans world' or establish themselves financially as well as their non-Indigenous counterparts, here is just one of those reasons.

Capitalism could not flourish without crushing the resistance of people who wanted to live differently ... wage labour and the drive to accumulate capital were incompatible with Aboriginal society. That incompatibility was the basis of the genocide. Across a vast stretch of northern Australia, extending at least from Borroloola to the Kimberley, Aborigines tell the tale of a murderous white man. He stands for whites in general, and is seen as an invader. As quoted in a paper by anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose; "shooting all the people [and] getting ready for the country, trying to take it away".