Michaelangelica
09-02-2010, 08:43 PM
Indigenous walk-off spokesperson: ‘We need to take the power back’
6 February 2010
. . .
Richard Downs is a spokesperson for the Alyawarr people from the Ampilatwatja community in the Northern Territory. Last year, he travelled the country on a speaking tour to publicise the situation for Aboriginal people in the NT since the 2007 NT Emergency Response legislation (known as the NT intervention) was brought in by the previous Coalition government. Under the intervention laws, the military was sent into Aboriginal communities.
With the change to the Kevin Rudd Labor government, but with no changes made to government policy, the Indigenous people of the desert land have begun a campaign of resistance.
. . .
. .
That’s when we decided that we don’t want to be part of it. We thought: the country outside of the townships is our traditional homeland, we’ll move back out there.
I asked the old people again, “Is this what you want to do, because it’s not going to be easy?”
“No”, they said, “we want to do this. The way we feel now we feel we have gone back 50 years back to the welfare relations days, to the days of tea and sugar handouts.
“When you had Aboriginal protection managers based in all those communities, telling Aboriginal men, ‘you 20 men over there are going to going droving this season, we’ll pick up and take you there whether you like it or not’. They had total control.”
Our walk-off is aimed at the governments to show them that we can create a homeland. We will be focusing on building the communities with renewable energy and permaculture where people will live off the land in a way where people are comfortable and happy. Relying on government handouts allows greater control by the government.
When we walked off, we had over 250 people with us. We said to the younger generation that they should stay in the community because of the children who need to go to school. They can support the old people by visiting regularly. Also the old people wander back and forth.
We are now planning to build a new community in our traditional homeland. We are working on getting buildings up and once we get the bore drilled for our water, more people from the towns will come out and live, deserting the towns.
The young men go hunting kangaroos, turkeys and bush birds for meat, bush food is collected and when the permaculture food gardens are established, we will rely less on the shops.
Our protest camp is on Honeymoon bore. Our presence in this area goes back hundreds if not thousands of years. This was our watering hole long before it was built into a stock-route bore about 80 years ago. It’s part of my mother’s country, my dreaming, that’s why I’m part of the custodianship for this country.
This action is about our self determination. We want to show the government and the Australia people, both blacks and whites, that you can walk out of controlled conditions.
That you can set up a sustainable homeland with solar power, wind turbines and permaculture systems. That you can build your own mud brick hut, recycle water using dirty water to flow back through a pond system, where the frogs and the birds come to, and you create a little green oasis, where the water is reused on the gardens and so on.
This is going to happen at the protest camp as a statement on climate change, on moving away from fossil fuels, using clean energy. We want the site to be a model where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can say, “well, if it’s happening there then why can’t it happen here”. And it’s about telling the government to take up the challenge of climate change.
It’s about going back and living with the Mother Earth in a way that is not about greed, about digging up everything we’ve got, for short term benefit and for big business.
. . .
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2010/825/42450
6 February 2010
. . .
Richard Downs is a spokesperson for the Alyawarr people from the Ampilatwatja community in the Northern Territory. Last year, he travelled the country on a speaking tour to publicise the situation for Aboriginal people in the NT since the 2007 NT Emergency Response legislation (known as the NT intervention) was brought in by the previous Coalition government. Under the intervention laws, the military was sent into Aboriginal communities.
With the change to the Kevin Rudd Labor government, but with no changes made to government policy, the Indigenous people of the desert land have begun a campaign of resistance.
. . .
. .
That’s when we decided that we don’t want to be part of it. We thought: the country outside of the townships is our traditional homeland, we’ll move back out there.
I asked the old people again, “Is this what you want to do, because it’s not going to be easy?”
“No”, they said, “we want to do this. The way we feel now we feel we have gone back 50 years back to the welfare relations days, to the days of tea and sugar handouts.
“When you had Aboriginal protection managers based in all those communities, telling Aboriginal men, ‘you 20 men over there are going to going droving this season, we’ll pick up and take you there whether you like it or not’. They had total control.”
Our walk-off is aimed at the governments to show them that we can create a homeland. We will be focusing on building the communities with renewable energy and permaculture where people will live off the land in a way where people are comfortable and happy. Relying on government handouts allows greater control by the government.
When we walked off, we had over 250 people with us. We said to the younger generation that they should stay in the community because of the children who need to go to school. They can support the old people by visiting regularly. Also the old people wander back and forth.
We are now planning to build a new community in our traditional homeland. We are working on getting buildings up and once we get the bore drilled for our water, more people from the towns will come out and live, deserting the towns.
The young men go hunting kangaroos, turkeys and bush birds for meat, bush food is collected and when the permaculture food gardens are established, we will rely less on the shops.
Our protest camp is on Honeymoon bore. Our presence in this area goes back hundreds if not thousands of years. This was our watering hole long before it was built into a stock-route bore about 80 years ago. It’s part of my mother’s country, my dreaming, that’s why I’m part of the custodianship for this country.
This action is about our self determination. We want to show the government and the Australia people, both blacks and whites, that you can walk out of controlled conditions.
That you can set up a sustainable homeland with solar power, wind turbines and permaculture systems. That you can build your own mud brick hut, recycle water using dirty water to flow back through a pond system, where the frogs and the birds come to, and you create a little green oasis, where the water is reused on the gardens and so on.
This is going to happen at the protest camp as a statement on climate change, on moving away from fossil fuels, using clean energy. We want the site to be a model where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can say, “well, if it’s happening there then why can’t it happen here”. And it’s about telling the government to take up the challenge of climate change.
It’s about going back and living with the Mother Earth in a way that is not about greed, about digging up everything we’ve got, for short term benefit and for big business.
. . .
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2010/825/42450