Rosalie Kunoth-Monks leads the way on culture and sovereignty and we must follow

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks asserting her position with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser listening. (Image NT News)

Kerry Blackman - June 2014

The time has come for the Sovereign people of this ancient land to roll back the layers of lies of theft, murder, pillage and rape and for the Nation to be built on a solid foundation rather than the blood from the massacres, lies and deceit.

Our lands were stolen and atrocities committed by guns for 100 years in this country against a Sovereign people. Then the Governments instituted laws to control our lives. In 1993 Native Title was birthed by the system to further control our lives.

The older I get the wiser I become and I now realize that Native Title and all that it represent is the 21st Century replacement for the guns that massacred our people when this Country was built of the lie Terra Nullius (empty continent).

That 'no man's land' lie and its policy fabrication gave the white man a gun and a license to steal, murder, pillage and rape our country in defense of 'their' Australia.

The Native Title rep bodies and its powerbrokers are the modern day 'native police' doing all the dirty work of controlling black fellas, by throwing crumbs off the table, for the racist white masters in government. A promise that the Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUA) will compensate our people for the theft of their land and will lead them out of poverty is the contemporary guise of bully beef and tobacco that was handed out in days gone by to appease our old people. They didn't buy that lie then and we won't buy it today.

Although I must sadly admit, some of our mob (the uncle Tom and aunty Jane 'so called' leaders) have gone along with this ILUA charade.

We should continue the Sovereignty push where the 600 tribes in Australia should put their own claim over their Sovereign Nations and clog the Courts and bring the system to its knees! That will make the Colonisers sit up and take notice and address the wrongs of the past through treaties or treaty - not gammon Reconciliation where we eat the crumbs off the masters table but true recognition that it was always Aboriginal land and always will be.

Kerry Blackman on loud speaker leading rally outside Santos House, Brisbane. (Image: First Nations Telegraph)

Paul Keating said in his Redfern speech of 10 December 1992: "It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters.

The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion."

Racism is a learnt behavior that starts in the home of every Australian and then practiced in the school playground by their children. We must understand our history and acknowledge the wrongs of the past before we, and our children, can go forward into the future!

Keating was the Prime Minister of the day at Redfern agreeing that past wrongs have to made right not with a band aid but by dealing with the heart of the issue; the injustice perpetrated against the First Nation Sovereign people whose land was stolen and atrocities committed.

Gough Whitlam once said: "Let us never forget Australia's real test as far as the rest of the world is concerned is the role we create for our own Aborigines. Australia's treatment of her Aboriginal people will be a thing upon which the rest of the world will judge Australia and Australians - not just now but in the future and the greater perspective of history."

Governments at all levels and including the Aboriginal leadership in this country need to dust off the final report Australia's Challenge of a 10 year long Aboriginal Reconciliation Council made up of all interest groups including Government which, when set up, had bipartisan support of both major political parties.

I highlight two pertinent recommendations from that report: Recommendation 5.

Each government and parliament:

• recognise that this land and its waters were settled as colonies without treaty or consent and that to advance reconciliation it would be most desirable if there were agreements or treaties; and
• negotiate a process through which this might be achieved that protects the political, legal, cultural and economic position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
  Recommendation 6.
• That the Commonwealth Parliament enact legislation (for which the Council has provided a draft in this report) to put in place a process which will unite all Australians by way of an agreement, or treaty, through which unresolved issues of reconciliation can be resolved.

We need to put the true test to the whole of Australia and see if they're big and ugly enough and old enough to man-up to the challenge and deal with the issue or to take the redneck line to walk away and continue living the lie passed on to them by their forebears.

Michael Anderson leanding a Protest March (Image:SMH)

A classic case in point on deceit, post an ILUA, is the case of Stradbroke Island sand mining where the Quandamooka people are taking the Newman Government to the High Court as their decision to extend mining on the island until 2035 is a decade after it was legislated to end.

Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation CEO Cameron Costello said, "What the extension does now is jeopardises our environment and jeopardises our cultural heritage sites."

They had an agreement with the Government under Native Title, which has now been overturned through a policy, not a gun!

We, the Port Curtis Coral Coast (PCCC) people, are facing the same battle as our brothers and sisters of Straddie as we had an agreement last year that has now been overturned through policy, not a gun, so the Government - who is broke - can steal our land again! State governments will always be broke because they have one big black hole to try and fill, we only have a gap, called closing the gap, which will never be solved through welfare but through just compensation where blackfella's set their own agenda through true self determination of managing our own affairs, not by a welfare controlling bureaucracy.

We need to rekindle the fire that has now been lit by our brave Elder Rosalie Kunoth-Monks - who shocked the nation by saying she's not the problem on ABC Q&A on Monday - to have a Statewide protest in Brisbane as well as on the streets in towns from Cape York to Straddie and west to Camooweal and south to Birdsville! We have survived - we will fight forever until the battle is won - because the truth conquers all!