At 10:00am today (15th August 2012) in Gladstone Square, Pt Augusta, South Australia, the Gugada Original Sovereign Tribal Federation will be establishing a new embassy.

"We, the Gugada Original Sovereign Tribal Federation have not, as yet, acquiesced Our Sovereignty," said Sandra Dingamen.

"In the spirit of the 40 year anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, it has been decided, in the interest of the law of this land, that we, the Gugada Original Sovereign Tribal Federation, say no to the Constitutional Reform and acknowledge that it is the time for Respect and Recognition and Treaty."

"The way forward is not a tokenistic inclusion of Aboriginal people in the Australian Constitution, which has underpinned a political system founded on the fiction of Terra Nullius, but through the recognition that Aboriginal sovereignty has never been ceded, and the development of treaty based on this recognition."

 Sovereign Embassies List  

The 370 million Indigenous people spread across 70 countries are rapidly losing control of their land and natural resources as states continue to issue orders and amend laws leading to systematic dispossession and displacement of Indigenous populations.

The 2012 U.N. Forum noted that dispossession doctrines have led to a situation where states have "extinguished" the rights of Indigenous peoples to their lands, territories and resources, their right to self determination, their languages, religions and even their identities.

... and according to the United Nations, a native Aboriginal child born in Australia today can expect to die almost 20 years earlier than his or her nonnative compatriot. In countries where Indigenous peoples are in sizeable numbers, they still fare poorly as compared to dominant societies. Chronic malnutrition, for example, affects 8 in 10 Indigenous children in Guatemala.

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

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.

 Dan's Video Blog - Cootamundra

An extremely racist Facebook page which has over 4,000 likes is still active (Wednesday 08/08/12) after hundreds of people reporting the site to Facebook. The material breaches two of Facebook's own rules - section 3:7 and section 3:10.

There is now an online petition against the site which is addressed to Facebook and has around 2,500 signatures at the time of publishing this page.

The Facebook page encourages people to add racist, hateful captions to images of First Nation Australians for humour: "Aboriginal memes".

Posts on this page include such disgusting racial hatred as "How do you kill 1000 flies at once? Slap my face" and repeatedly makes a joke of the disturbing prevalence of petrol-sniffing in remote communities.

 The racist site: [Controversial Humor] Aboriginal memes

The spin doctors did an impressive job distracting from the hypocrisy of former prime minister Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations in February 2008.

Hundreds of thousands watched the live broadcast as Rudd apologised "for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians ... for the breaking up of families and communities ... and for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture..."

... By extending the Intervention with the "Stronger Futures" legislation", Labor is now responsible for what will no doubt be the subject matter of a future prime minister's apology, to the tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians being violently aggrieved as we speak. - Emma Purdy writes

This is not a debate about the legitimacy of either or. This is a debate about the need to conclude a messy and genocidal history. It is about working together to get it right and to settle grievances and disputes in a fair and just manner. It can become ugly, but only if the dominant society rejects outright our legitimate claim to continuing sovereignty and dominion over our lands, natural resources and the naturally occurring biodiversity. We can prosper if we commit to protecting Mother Earth, which must be one of our pre-negotiation agreements and commitments.

The family of Arabana man, Peter Clarke, issued a call today for the Northern Territory Government to launch an independent enquiry into his death in Alice Springs Hospital. He was 56 year old.

Mr Clarke died on Tuesday 3 April 2012. He'd been due for parole on 26 March 2012 but was hospitalised on 19 March.

When Peter Clarke's younger brother Wayne and sister Gladys visited the hospital, they were shocked to find their brother cuffed by the ankle to the hospital bed. A Corrections Officer was also standing guard at the door. He was kept like this for the first two days he spent in the Intensive Care Unit. Clarke's eldest daughter, Kylie Hampton, who is the family spokesperson, described this treatment as "appalling and inexcusable."

After the death, a doctor told the family a Coroner might need to do an autopsy as the death could be treated as a death in custody. But the death would not be investigated.

Day 4: Police have arrested 13 people during an anti-nuclear protest at South Australia's Olympic Dam mine, where activists and officers were involved in two confrontations.

In the first incident two women and four men were taken into custody as they staged a "breakfast not bombs" event on a road near the mine site on Tuesday. Protesters blocked the road.

Police said those arrested, including a 66-year-old NSW man, were charged with either failing to comply with a reasonable direction or loitering.

In the second incident activists again took to a road to play cricket. Six men and a woman were arrested after a scuffle with police.