Land Sea & Water

The Northern Territory's Arnhem Land plateau has thousands of paintings amongst its myriad of rock shelters but a full survey of the exact numbers has not never been carried out.
Experts warn that it is now under threat from wild buffalo, fire and feral animals. The last First Nations clans moved down from the plateau in the 1960s, lured away from their traditional lifestyle by Western missionaries with tobacco, sugar and floor. Now there is no-one left to protect this vast library. [node:read-more:link]

Ancient rock paintings, standing stones and scattered artefacts had once been protected by their remote location, but mining activity that ramped up in the early 1960s had triggered "fears for the safety of sites of importance". Today the landscapes of the Pilbara and Kimberley regions are being extensively reconfigured in the era of GPS, aerial exploration and fly-in, fly-out workforces. Evidence of Aboriginal occupation is still scattered across those landscapes, lying in the path of planned roads, railways and mines. One mining tenement can hold thousands of such artefacts. The only plan the gov't has is to water down existing legislation. [node:read-more:link]

The men at the forefront of the Aboriginal tent embassy at Airds are frustrated their site was valdalised on Saturday night. Tents were torn in half and banners were burnt when the site was unattended for just one hour on Saturday when the incident occurred.

The tent embassy was established local indigenous men to highlight their concerns over the protection of land and wildlife in Airds as part of the Airds Bradbury Renewal Project. [node:read-more:link]

Do yourself a favour and watch this unreal video of historians Henry Reynolds and Bruce Pascoe speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival.

They speak on wars, memorials, the lack of commemorations, agriculture and the mainstream denial of the rich history of one of the world's great continents ... and the world's first bakers, with more than 12,000 years experience baking bread before any other country in the world. - ABC News 24 - 'Big Ideas'. [node:read-more:link]

A Territory government drive a train through the Land Rights Act if the Federeal government handed it over to them.

'So what', you may think, Land Rights as we know it is a farce, you might say. Well, thats all very well, but many of our brothers and sisters are locked into these contracts, and while they stay on country, they can't do anything about it. This article has some invaluable insights into how it was much better before John Howard smashed it, and how it can get much worse. [node:read-more:link]