Assimilation & Oppression

When languages die, especially indigenous ones, a large part of culture and history disappears along with it

High rates of economic growth are a driving factor behind global language extinction, with one-quarter of all native tongues classified as "threatened," a new report has said.

Out of around 6,000 languages around the globe, 1,705 fit the criteria for "threatened" status. [node:read-more:link]

We have seen enough of the poverty in our communities when the rest of Australia are growing rich on the proceeds of genocide through the loss of our homelands through real estate and mining.

We have seen enough of the self-medicating blocking out from our trauma and grief and the dysfunction this brings. We need our own healing camps and safe places for the community to come to in times of despair. [node:read-more:link]

So many of the First Nations women in prison have been physically abused and/or have substance-abuse problems. One of the reasons these women make up such a disproportionate part of the prison population is that magistrates are required to follow sentencing guidelines; someone who has been arrested a certain number of times for, say, being drunk in public is required by such rules to spend time behind bars. Beyond that, Professor Baldry argues, some magistrates take an inappropriately paternalistic view that time in prison will be beneficial in blocking a woman's access to substances. [node:read-more:link]

In a tragedy that has again ­invoked the shameful record of black deaths in custody in Western Australia, the Aboriginal woman — about to see a doctor for a suspected leg infection when arrested earlier this month — had begged to be hospitalised instead of kept in jail.

This is another appalling example of a young person in her prime, murdered by a system where justice means disrespect, punishment and torture to harmless people and billions to the rich. [node:read-more:link]

When this country is built on truth it will lay a solid foundation for the nation to come to maturity and accept the past, deal with it, and then find it within their hearts to pay respects to the First Nation people as equals and not an imitation of the 1901 model of the master and slave relationship.

Kerry Blackman, First Nations Justice Leader, writes about the Constitution Recognition farce. [node:read-more:link]

When it comes to First Nations people, the government never does anything without having a very devious agenda. So following 100 years of a deplorable lack of respect and disregard for First Nations soldiers, then there is suddenly recognition, beware.

The intensive propaganda campaign is designed to whitewash the real nature of WWI, drown out opposition to war and boost military enlistments. [node:read-more:link]

It was 1943, I was two years old and my mother - an Aborigine - was married to a white Australian when he went and gave his life for our country.

My father was a soldier and was killed on the Kokoda Track and instead of giving his wife a war widow's pension, the bloody government came and took his children away. Because of my mother's Aboriginality. There were four children at that point in time and I was the third. We were split up, the four of us, we were split. [node:read-more:link]