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Australian media clippings archive 2004

A selection of Australian media clippings from 2003. Having trouble finding something? Try ENIAR's search. It comes from Google, which indexes once a month and searches all the text — so you can find all but the most recent pages via search.

• Howard's memory of burning beds
  June 14, 2004 - Wondering why the Prime Minister said that his favourite Midnight Oil song was 'Beds are Burning' (from 'Diesel & Dust')? Webdiarist Mark Hayes in Brisbane does:
• Stolen Generations case may go before UN
  7 June, 2004 - Legal avenues are being explored to take the case of the Stolen Generations to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
• Letty Scott fights for the truth
  4 June 2004 - On June 18, the Northern Territory Supreme Court will hear an appeal to re-open the coronial inquest into the death in custody of Douglas Bruce Scott. The case has been lodged by his widow Letty Scott, who has been fighting for nearly two decades for the truth about her husband's death.
  • Black death in custody - The real story
• Aborigines win land recognition
  May 30, 2004 - Victoria's Aborigines will be recognised as the original custodians of the land in constitutional amendments to be introduced by the State Government. Premier Steve Bracks, announcing the plan at the ALP state conference in Melbourne yesterday, said it would be a step towards genuine reconciliation.
• Travelling a road paved with tears
  May 28, 2004 - Australia is a shared land. Aborigines accept this. It's time governments did too, says Patrick Dodson. Almost in a line that intersects the country of the Gooniyandi and the Walmatjarri is the ribbon of Highway 1 known in that part of Australia as the Great Northern Highway. On that road travelled thousands of the stolen Aboriginal children of the Kimberley - from their homes in the East Kimberley to the missions at Forrest River, Sunday Island, Beagle Bay and, in some sad instances, all the way to Moore River. We were assured it was "for their own good". But it was their road of tears. For many the journey back down that highway to their families and their birthright was never to eventuate.
• Beyond axing ATSIC, there is no plan
  May 28, 2004The Federal Government has introduced its legislation to scrap Australia's main indigenous organisation with no immediate plans to appoint a replacement. This is amid boycott calls from Aboriginal leaders and Opposition claims that the changeover is a shambles.
• Djerrkura educated Howard
  May 27, 2004 - One event more than any other crystalised the relationship between Djerrkura and John Howard. It was February 1998 and Djerrkura had invited Mr Howard to his traditional country at Yirrkala in Arnhem Land in what many believed was a vain attempt to engage with a Prime Minister who was bent on winding back an imaginary pendulum he said had swung too far towards Aboriginal rights.
  • Reconciliation pioneer Djerrkura dead at 54
• Aboriginal health needs $300m: AMA
  May 26, 2004 - The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has used the annual Sorry Day to renew its call for increased indigenous funding. The AMA is calling for an injection of an extra $300 million into Aboriginal health, with the government having committed just $10 million a year over four years in this year's budget.
• Song fest star raves
  25 May 2004 - What does Bulgarian and Aboriginal music have in common? Edwina Harrison. It was with Bulgarian and Aboriginal songs that Ms Harrison won first prize in the Third International Youth Festival Competition Folklore Without Borders.
• Black Voice catches ear of world
  May 23, 2004 - The initiative by Aboriginal writer, director and musician Richard Frankland to form a political party for indigenous Australians has attracted international attention.
• Rock painting one in a million
  22 May 2004 - Rover Thomas's only known painting of Uluru is expected to set a new auction record for Aboriginal art. "It's a painting of Australia's most iconic landmark by one of our greatest painters of the 20th century," Sotheby's Aboriginal art department head Tim Klingender said yesterday.
• UN told government backward on indigenous issues
  21 May 2004 - A senior Aboriginal leader has used a United Nations meeting in New York to condemn the policies of the federal government.
• Call to prosecute uranium miner
  20 May 2004 - Mining giant Energy Resources of Australia should be prosecuted after drinking water at its controversial Ranger mine became contaminated with uranium, a Northern Territory Government report has found.
  • Inquiry into leak at uranium mine finds more problems: minister
• Vanstone is dismantling the right to a fair trial for Aboriginal people
  May 20, 2004 - For an increasing number of Australians, legal aid is a precondition to their ability to use the justice system. This is a fact compounded for Aboriginal Australians by the recent decision of the federal government to outsource Aboriginal Legal Aid for competitive tender. Having worked as a criminal lawyer for both Australian Legal Aid and Aboriginal Legal Aid, I feel the need to comment on the planned tender and the encroachment that it entails upon Indigenous rights in this country.
• How Indigenous women can take a greater leadership role
  May 20, 2004 - It’s impossible to write about being Indigenous, being a woman and the challenges of leadership without reflecting on my own feelings and experiences, the things that guide and inspire me, and the tough aspects of playing all these roles at the same time.
• The Senate must act to stop the erosion of Indigenous representation
  May 18, 2004 - From the moment the ATSIC Review was announced and its subsequent report released, the key test always was and remains whether and how Indigenous people¹s circumstances, rights and representation were to be improved and advanced. The government has failed that threshold test.
• 'Passing race' never so valued as now
  May 18 2004 - Unnamed and virtually unknown, the subjects face the camera with fixed poses, wooden and unmoving, surrounded by objects such as spears, nets, boomerangs and a dead kangaroo. The studio setting only heightens a sense of the bizarre: wilting gum leaves accompany the subjects in front of a universal, painted background. Australian Aborigines, their image taken by the German-born photographer John Lindt in Grafton in the 1870s, are now being offered for sale again by Bonhams in London.
  • Record price paid for slice of history
• Wit and wisdom from the concrete Dreamtime
  May 17, 2004 - Dr Anita Heiss is quick, clever, witty. Last year, on a lecture tour in America, she was asked by an anthropology student what was the biggest problem now facing indigenous women in Australia. "Finding a decent man," she replied
• Redfern, 90 days after the eruption
  May 16, 2004 - On a hot Sunday night three months ago, the inner-Sydney suburb of Redfern erupted in fury for nine long hours. It wasn't the first time and it probably won't be the last. But the raw intensity of the February 15 riot, its graphic portrayal in the media and its synonymity with the death of 17-year-old Thomas "TJ" Hickey guaranteed it would not be swept under the carpet.
  • Carr blamed for failing Redfern youth on drugs
  • Police ill-equipped to handle Redfern riot
  • Police get riot blame
  • More riots in Redfern, inquiry told
  • Police defend Redfern riot strategies
• Our paternalistic model of government
  14 May 2004 - Gatjil Djerrkura: Let me be clear. The Prime Minister has long refused to accept the fundamental difference of Aboriginal people in our community. He was never sympathetic to the principles on which ATSIC was based and founded. He has always rejected any suggestion of indigenous autonomy and self-determination. Even when the Prime Minister took up my invitation to visit Arnhem Land in 1998, he seemed incapable of understanding indigenous aspirations.
• Australian foreign policy should not be based on the Anglosphere concept
  May 14, 2004 - The Anglosphere argument is put forward by a number of prominent people, including Conrad Black, the Canadian-born peer and former media magnate; Robert Conquest, the distinguished Anglo-American historian; and James Bennett, an internet entrepreneur. It goes something like this: there is a group of countries which have so much in common – language, culture and values, democratic traditions, political and legal institutions, even a developed spirit of entrepreneurialism – that they should form some sort of closer association.
• Wanganeen 'honoured' at AFL life membership
  12 May 2004 - Gavin Wanganeen says he is ‘very honoured’ to be receiving AFL life membership for playing his 300th senior match ... Of being the first Aboriginal player to receive automatic life membership of the AFL, Wanganeen said: “It makes me feel very proud. Mum will be very happy and (so will) my clan over on the West Coast (of SA). I suppose I’m representing them as well, and they’ll be very proud of it also.”
  • Wanganeen collects another honour
  
• SA files court appeal against nuclear waste dump
  11 May - The South Australian Government is appealing the Commonwealth government's compulsory purchase of land for the low level radioactive waste repository, arguing it used urgency provisions inappropriately.
  • Report on N-dump scathing
• A healing from the past, for the future
  May 10, 2004 - Tom Murray and Allan Collins have a remarkable story, and they'd prefer to let someone else tell it. It's about a blackfella called Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda from north-east Arnhem Land. In 1933 this Yolngu tribal leader came across a policeman who had broken Aboriginal law by trespassing on Yolngu land. He had also chained up Dhakiyarr's wife. In accordance with black law, Dhakiyarr speared the policeman, Constable Albert McColl, through the leg. McColl died.
  • Dhakiyarr vs the King Study Guide (PDF 240kb)
• Celebration of an artist who took on the world
  May 10, 2004 - The man standing by the broken-down car in the red heat of the Western Desert was pleased to see his rescuers. "He'd been stuck there for three days," remembers Dr Vivien Johnson. "He needed to get a new gearbox." The man introduced himself - "I'm Clifford Possum" - and seemed surprised Johnson knew who he was. "This was back in 1980. Clifford was already the leading figure in the Papunya Tula movement. We gave him a ride into Alice." Not that the artist had been in danger. "He was quite comfortable being by the side of the road for three days. He'd been brought up in the bush. He referred to it as 'my supermarket'."
• Finding home amid the stolen memories
  May 8, 2004 - Larissa Behrendt greets me at her office in the University of Technology, Sydney, carrying a bundle of legal documents. There's no room on the desk and she sighs at the stacks of papers. Behrendt, 35, appears both confident (especially when discussing complex legal arguments) and slightly guarded. She is nervous, she says, about how her debut novel, Home, winner of the 2002 David Unaipon award, will be received.
• Clan leaders look for a way forward
  8 May 2004 - Leon Melpi says alcohol, drugs, gang fighting and a lack of basic services left the clan leaders of Wadeye fearing their children had no future. "One day we just decided enough was enough," says Melpi, a leader of one of 16 clans living in the town, at the edge of mangroves 350 kilometres south-east of Darwin. "We dug a hole and buried all the newspapers with the bad headlines about us," he says. "We decided we had no option but to bury the past and act to improve our lives."
• Reconciliation at the crossroads
  May 8, 2004 - History of sorts will be made later this year when the performance pay of several of the nation's most senior public servants will be decided, at least in part, on what they have done to reduce the suffering of Aboriginal Australia. It will be a difficult exercise, not least because, on a range of indicators, indigenous disadvantage has actually increased since John Howard decided to focus on practical reconciliation. The numbers of underweight babies and overweight adults have increased, while the income, employment, incarceration and life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has widened. But the pay plan will be a symbol of how serious the Government and those it employs to implement policy are about improving outcomes.
• Aborigines seek lost wages worth $350m
  May 5 2004 - Aboriginal leaders are preparing to launch a class action against the NSW government to recoup what they believe could be as much as $350 million in stolen wages. The move follows the government's declaration that potential claimants will have to provide evidence the money is owed to them, despite a secret ministerial report saying they shouldn't have to.
  • Who, how and how much - panel to assess return of Aborigines' stolen wages
• Child caged for 500km drive to jail
  4 May 2004 - An 11-year old Aboriginal boy was arrested, held in custody and transported 500km in a police utility cage. His crime? The boy and several of his friends had constantly clashed with police in Normanton for petrol sniffing and stealing. Aboriginal leaders and legal representatives are outraged at his treatment and allege police ignored all recommendations of the Black Deaths in Custody Royal Commission.
  • Mother told son’s 500km ride in cage ‘comfortable’
• Yorta Yorta win historic deal
  May 1, 2004 - The Bracks Government will enter a historic co-operative management agreement with the Yorta Yorta people covering public land, rivers and lakes in north-central Victoria. The unprecedented partnership gives the up to 6000-strong Yorta Yorta people a say in the running of their traditional country, which covers land including the Barmah State Park, Barmah State Forest, Kow Swamp and parcels of public land along the Murray and Goulburn rivers.
• UN to hear Aboriginal plight
  28 April 2004 - Aboriginal health workers will tell the world just how bad indigenous health services are in Australia at a meeting with the United Nations next month. The chairman of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) Tony McCartney said the group would raise its concerns about indigenous health during a major presentation to a UN sub-committee in May.
• March a show of unity
  28 April 2004 - The Australian and Aboriginal flags marched side by side for the first time in the Anzac march held last Sunday in Lightning Ridge.
  • Anzac Day march begins in Darwin - Coming in from many remote communities are the Indigenous soldiers who serve with the Northern Territory's reconnaissance and surveillance unit NORFORCE.
  • The Forgotten - To celebrate ANZAC day and pay tribute to the Indigenous men & women that have proudly served this nation ABC's Message Stick presented a twenty six minute documentary: The FORGOTTEN.
• Life of Aborigines second worst on earth
  April 28, 2004 - The quality of life of Australia's Aborigines is the second worst on the planet, according to a Canadian study of 100 countries. Only China performed worse, according to a United Nations index that measures human development.
• Indigenous affairs demands action, not more words
  26 April 2004 - Yes, just words, you might say. But given his high, and precarious, position, Deane was really doing something. He was shaping attitudes, the biggest hurdle to reconciliation. His is one arm of the battle: leadership. Brave speeches like his, and, to be fair, Keating's Redfern address, mobilise thought and create the climate. But we need the other arm - action.
• A quest for national decency
  April 24, 2004 - Sir William Deane: We have reached a sort of blind alley in the search for national Aboriginal reconciliation and it is no longer enough to talk about walking onwards. Rather we must now start to work together to build new pathways and bridges.
• The feather and the bone - a difference in approach to Indigneous issues
  April 22, 2004 - Sometimes pictures do tell the story. On Monday this week, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin met in Ottawa with First Peoples and was presented with a ceremonial Eagle Feather. The next day, Mr Martin's Australian counterpart, John Howard, was photographed leaving a community centre in the small town of Colac when Aboriginal elder Moopor, wearing traditional possum skin and tribal makeup, pointed a bone about 2.5 centimetres long at the Prime Minister, placing a curse on him.
• Aborigines get Jabiluka veto
  April 22, 2004 - Traditional Aboriginal owners signed off on a historic agreement ending their long struggle against the controversial Jabiluka uranium mine. The landmark deal gives the owners the right to veto the future development of the site in the heart of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory.
  • Kakadu traditional owners strike deal to stop uranium mining
• German proposes stolen generation film
  April 21 2004 - German film director Jo Baier wants to make a movie about Australia's stolen generation. Baier, who is visiting Australia for the first time as part of the German Film Festival, would like to make a film about a young Aboriginal girl fostered to German immigrants.
• PM `cursed' in Colac
  April 21, 2004 - An Aboriginal woman pointed a bone at Prime Minister John Howard yesterday, cursing him on his visit to Colac. The curse, intended to "torment" the Prime Minister, was made as members of the Aboriginal community turned out to protest against the abolition of ATSIC.
  • Why we pointed the bone - Wathaurong tribal member Allan Browning was standing beside Moopor while she cast the spell that made headlines around Australia and even rated a mention on American TV station CNN.
  Curse on PM could backfire - Geoff Clark has been attacked by fellow Aborigines for using his cousin to point the bone at Prime Minister John Howard. In revealing the identity of "Moopor" as Bernadette Clark, Mr Clark's second cousin, they have questioned her right to carry out the sacred ceremony.
• Hooded cop speaks out
  19 April  2004 - A Police officer facing dismissal after being caught wearing a white hood while speeding past a speed camera says he's sorry he confessed to the prank.
• Mainstreaming still unworkable
  17 April 2004 - EDITORIAL - Even with special focused services - such as Aboriginal medical services - designed to deal with some of the practical consequences of the gap in such consumption, net per capita assistance from government falls well below Australian averages, even the averages of comfortable middle- class areas such as, say, John Howard's own Sydney seat of Benelong.
• Howard silences Aboriginal advocates
  April 16, 2004- The Federal Government has ended the policy of self-determination which for three decades has taken the voices of elected Aboriginal representatives to Canberra, with the Prime Minister, John Howard, announcing he will abolish the nation's peak indigenous body.
  • Biggest scandal of all ignored
  April 16, 2004 - Symbolism, scandals and ideology have brought Australia's great experiment in Aboriginal self-determination to an end.
  • Anger at ATSIC abolition
  April 16, 2004 - Indigenous leaders have reacted with dismay and anger at government plans to abolish ATSIC and end direct political representation for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
  • PM jumps, ATSIC falls
  April 18, 2004 - By instinct a monoculturalist, John Howard has reluctantly got used to a multicultural Australia. But he has not come to understand or accept the importance of cultural identity to the country's indigenous people, which leads to their attachment to ideas of self-determination or self-management.
  • An indigenous voice stilled
  April 19, 2004 - Can Aborigines dare to dream of a better future for their children? Today I look at my eight-month-old daughter Nakaya - "bird song" in Gunditjmara - and I know that another sliver of hope has been removed from her future.
  • Letters to The Age
  21 April 2004 - ATSIC and apartheid are poles apart - Self-determination has not failed - Making 'em white
• Actor hopes to expose Australian racism
  15 April 2004 - Actor Aaron Pedersen says racism is rife in Australia and he hopes to expose the problem internationally on a federal and state government sponsored trip to the United States. "I don't want to go around tiptoeing anymore."
  
• Pearson condemns Howard's Indigenous plan
  15 April, 2004 - MAXINE McKEW: As the former head of the Cape York Land Council and a leading voice for reform in Indigenous affairs, Noel Pearson has in recent years been a strong critic of centralised bureaucratic control.
• Cathy's life in new lane
  15 April, 2004 - Cathy Freeman is still searching for what comes next. It has been almost a year since she walked away from her sanctuary of the running track and threw herself into the great unknown.
• Suffer The Children
  April 14, 2004 - Muriel Cadd couldn't believe it had happened again. As head of Victoria's only ­Aboriginal child protection agency, she was used to bad news. But when she got a telephone call last October alerting her that another two-year-old boy, Daniel Thomas, was missing, suspected murdered, she was devastated. Ten months earlier, she had taken a similar call when Mildura toddler Joedan Andrews vanished from a settlement just over the Victorian border in NSW.
• Aboriginals' significant role in WWI revealed
  13 April, 2004 - The names of more than 400 Aboriginal soldiers who served in World War I have been uncovered -- and many were from Tasmania's Bass Strait islands. Canberra-based historian David Huggonson, who has spent 20 years researching the Aboriginal contribution to Australia's military campaigns, announced his findings yesterday.
• Uranium drinkers say mine cut them loose
  April 5, 2004 - Australia's biggest uranium miner has gone into damage control 12 days after workers drank large quantities of water containing 400 times the legal limit of uranium following a leak at the Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park. Three of the men say they have been suffering from vomiting, diarrhoea and lethargy and were forced to pay their own way to leave the Northern Territory to seek medical treatment in their home state.
• Institutional racism in Australian healthcare: a plea for decency
  5 April 2004 - The way forward that we propose is recognising and addressing institutional racism. This would provide a framework for improving Aboriginal health. We believe, however, that acceptance of the need to address such racism can only come about through building a more compassionate and decent society.
• Athens to see Aboriginal art
  April 3, 2004 - An Aboriginal art collection would be shown in Athens to mark the 2004 Olympic Games, the NSW government said today. NSW Tourism Minister Sandra Nori said the exhibition - Our Place: Indigenous Australia Now - was the first indigenous Australian exhibition to be seen in Greece.
• The art of saying sorry
  April 3, 2004 - When we were growing up, my generation knew nothing and cared less about Aboriginal culture. Indeed, those two words - Aboriginal and culture - seemed a contradiction in terms, a classic oxymoron. The view from the Melbourne suburbs? Aborigines were a dying people and a dead issue.
• Putting black beauty up in lights
  April 1, 2004 - Politics permeate Brook Andrew's art but he is wary of being pigeonholed "Aboriginal", writes Ashley Crawford. Brook Andrew's latest exhibition is a sensuous grouping of large-format Cibachrome photographs, a number of which feature gorgeous nudes, both male and female. They are works that could appear in any space as technically adept and downright gorgeous images. But Andrew is slightly uncomfortable.
• Rabbit-Proof Fence , Relational Ecologies and the Commodification of Indigenous Experience
  April 2004 - When Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence (Miramax 2002) premiered in a remote East Pilbara schoolyard in Western Australia, on January 28, 2002, the Melbourne Sunday Age proclaimed that this was 'the night Hollywood came to Jigalong' (Quin 2002). '[F]or a moment... I was back there on Hollywood Boulevard,' Noyce recalled of the evening in which the mechanisms of a global industry and the specificities of a local community were brought together to deliberate effect
• Indigenous health 'below third world standards'
  March 30, 2004 - Key health standards for indigenous Australians were below those of poor countries such as Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nepal, the Fred Hollows Foundation said today. The medical aid group said Aboriginal health standards were not improving and, in some areas, declining, despite years of national prosperity.
• Labor would abolish ATSIC: Latham
  March 30, 2004 - Opposition leader Mark Latham said today a Labor government would abolish Australia's peak indigenous body ATSIC - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Mr Latham said the executive agency the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS) would also be abolished.
  • Apology to Aborigines back on political agenda
  30 March, 2004 - Federal Labor leader Mark Latham yesterday reignited the debate over Aboriginal reconciliation, saying he would expect an apology if his family were split up.
  • Labor's new ATSIC plan
  30 March, 2004 - MARK LATHAM, OPPOSITION LEADER: I'm here with Kerry O'Brien to announce that the Labor caucus this morning decided that a Labor Government will abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ATSIC, and the executive agency of ATSIS.
  • My 'sorry' story
  March 30, 2004 - Leaked copies of the draft speech showed Mr Latham had intended to tell the Labor faithful that Australia was "big enough to say sorry" to Aborigines, but the words were removed from the final version.
• Slave descendents sue British insurance company
  30 March, 2004 - In a case set to test the bounds of the legal definition of "pain and suffering", the American descendents of Africans forced into slavery have launched a legal action against the British insurance company, Lloyds of London. And here in Australia, indigenous groups are watching the case with interest.
• Indigenous tour push
  March 28, 2004 - Darwin's rich archeological heritage is being documented as part of a nation-wide conservation and tourism project to develop Indigenous tourism in Australian cities. Hundreds of shell midden sites - including one 7m high - and examples of Aboriginal rock art and stone artefacts have been registered with NT Heritage Conservation as part of the project.
• Ken Colbung
  26 March 2004 - Ken was born at Moore River settlement in 1931. After the death of his mother, he was taken to Sister Kate’s Home for Children at the age of 6 years. Ken’s profile enabled him to lobby the prime minister in 1997 in London for the return of Yagan’s Head with the result that in September of that year Yagan, a Nyungar leader, returned to his homeland.
• Native title over sea areas: court
  March 24, 2004 - The Federal Court has decided native title exists over some areas of the sea in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria. In a decision handed down yesterday it said it recognised that native title existed over areas of sea surrounding the Wellesley Islands in the gulf.
• Aborigines to demand royal commission into youth policing
  March 24, 2004 - Aboriginal groups will march on NSW Parliament House today to call for a national royal commission into the policing of indigenous youth. They also want a NSW royal commission into the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey, who died last month after falling off his bike and becoming impaled on a metal fence.
  • TJ's mother makes plea for justice
  • Police hold Redfern in 'state of siege', Pilger tells rally
  • Demonstrators go out, demolishers go in
  • Tell the World
  • Notice to the Australian Government and the People of Australia
• BBC blast for 'white' Australia
  March 21, 2004 - A BBC documentary into the Redfern riots promises to give Australia a "very uncomfortable" hour's viewing. British reporter David Akinsanya, who made his name with TV programs about his own tough life in British institutions, said of the film: "As a black man I feel I am treated better in Britain as a stranger than Aborigines are treated in their own land."
• Moves to save dying languages
  15 March, 2004 - HAMISH ROBERTSON: According to UNESCO, more than half of the world's 6,000 languages are in danger of dying out, ranging from native American languages in the United States to Scottish Gaelic, which is now spoken by only 60,000 or so mostly elderly people. Well, with growing concern about the rapid disappearance of so many languages around the world, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission is beginning a study of Aboriginal languages in Australia.
• Redfern meeting denounces racist police violence
  March 10, 2004 - “The views of the Aboriginal community in general, and residents of the Redfern Block in particular, have fallen on deaf ears since the death of TJ [Thomas Hickey]", Redfern Aboriginal leader Lyall Munro told a meeting of 100 people at the South Sydney Leagues Club, organised by the Socialist Alliance, on March 4.
  • Redfern Block community defiant
• The inherent flaw in the concept of 'practical reconciliation'
  March 9, 2004 - The Howard government says Indigenous Australians will be assisted by what it terms, “practical reconciliation”, rather than by pursuing what Co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia Fred Chaney calls “the symbolic aspects” of the Indigenous struggle. The Government claims that it is a pragmatic government and demands that Indigenous Australians put to one side the déclassé concept of a rights-oriented reconciliation process. Any discussion of a treaty is totally verboten.
• Journalist sacked over Redfern report
  March 5, 2004 - A US journalist who made up the source for a disparaging quote about Aborigines in a report on last month's Redfern riots has been sacked by his paper.
• Racist police email blasted as 'filth and disgust'
  March 4, 2004 - Senior NSW police apologised today for an email containing racist slurs against Aboriginal people which was found circulating in stations in the state's west. The contents of the email, found in four regional stations including the troubled towns of Bourke and Dubbo, were described as "filth and disgust" by Deputy Commissioner David Madden.
• The Redfern Block vs developer greed
  March 3, 2004 - The attacks on Redfern are occurring in the context of a big push for more inner-city private redevelopment. Housing prices have been escalating in the inner-city for more than a decade. The creeping privatisation of public housing has been contributing to the fragmentation of long-standing communities.
• Where are the stolen wages?
  March 1, 2004 - Something stopped the NSW Government from paying back money it took from the earnings of Aboriginal workers for 70 years. Debra Jopson exposes the mystery.
  • Aborigines treated like Nazi slaves, says report
• Rabbit-proof myths
  February 29, 2004 - The truth of Australia's past is hard enough to face, and untruths and exaggerations now will only divide us. Phillip Noyce claims his new film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, is a true story. The Hollywood director's publicity blurb repeats the boast: ``A true story.'' Even the first spoken words in the hyped film, which opens next week, are: ``This is a true story.'' Wrong. Crucial parts of this ``true story'' about a ``stolen generations'' child called Molly Craig are false or misleading. And shamefully so.
  • Rabbit-Proof Fence writer Christine Olsen regading some of the 'fact' statements made by Andrew Bolt
• The fatal error
  February 28, 2004 - Could white Australia have averted many problems by signing early treaties with the Aborigines? Treaties would not have resolved all issues between the first Australians and the European settlers, any more than the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 settled all differences between Maoris and European settlers in New Zealand. However, Waitangi guaranteed Maori tribal chiefs land and other rights in return for British sovereignty over the country and any Australian treaty would most likely have provided a similarly useful foundation document. The chances are that the relationship between black and white would have been put on a happier basis than it was.
• Different treatment may have led to riot, says PM
  February 27, 2004 - Prime Minister John Howard has suggested that the Redfern riot was partly the result of a policy of treating the indigenous community differently to the rest of Australia. Mr Howard said the riot arose from a combination of factors including a "total breakdown in family authority within Aboriginal communities".
  • Redfern leader says PM out of touch
  • PM accused of racism over Hickey
• Busker set to battle Beattie
  February 26, 2004 - An indigenous rights campaigner and renowned inner-city busker today announced he would stand for Premier Peter Beattie's seat in the Queensland election.
  • Queensland Premier meets his match
  • Mall busker plays new tune
  • Queensland candidates stand for stolen wages
• TJ Hickey remembered
  February 24, 2004 - A funeral has been held in northern NSW for the Aboriginal teenager Thomas Hickey, whose death sparked Sydney's Redfern riot. The young man's family had appealed to mourners to remain calm and the funeral in the town of Walgett went ahead peacefully.
• An 'intolerable' sickness
  February 21, 2004 - A new indigenous health initiative might have been more appropriately launched this week in Redfern than at Government House but the Governor, Marie Bashir, pointed out that Aborigines were among the healthiest people in the world when the first governor stepped ashore down the hill.
• Amanda Vanstone: The political quick fix is not the solution to Aboriginal problems
  February 20, 2004 - The problems facing indigenous Australia are many and varied. And they are very long term. They did not happen overnight and they will not be solved quickly. There is no magic wand. I don't say that to thwart the hopes of indigenous Australians who want improvements and want them soon. Nor do I say it as an excuse for turning a blind eye to current events.
• Fred Chaney: The lessons of Redfern
  February 19, 2004 - The warning signs about Redfern were already apparent in the early 1980s. What had seemed a good idea at the time was not producing the kind of outcomes we had anticipated. All of us, white and black, who were involved over that period should feel a sense of personal responsibility for not asking some of the hard questions or being sufficiently critical of our own well-meaning efforts, and those of successive governments.
• No easy answer to the Block's plight
  February 19, 2004 - Bring in the bulldozers is the solution that John Brogden favours for the problem that is the Block ... For the moment, redevelopment of Redfern, and of the Block in particular, has to be done in a way that is sensitive to its political and historical significance. It cannot be as simple as kicking out the residents, bulldozing the place and allowing developers to take over. Besides, the last thing that Sydney needs is yet another enclave of bland yuppiedom.
• Aden Ridgeway: Boiling point after a decade of tension
  February 18, 2004 - I do not excuse the events of that night. But they come as no surprise to me or any person who is familiar with the volatile dynamics of Redfern, and the wider issues of indigenous politics in this country.
• 'Alcohol, heat, grief triggered the riot'
  February 17,2004 - The Premier, Bob Carr, and the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, have blamed alcohol, grief over a boy's death and the unrelenting heat for the Redfern Aboriginal riot and announced three inquiries into the rampage.
  • Ongoing tensions helped fuel riot, academic says
  • No excuses can exonerate Redfern riot
• Chased or not, TJ had reasons to run
  February 17,2004 - Within a few days of his arrival, say his mother, aunt Virginia and uncle Michael West, he was beaten up in a mistaken identity arrest by a group of police in the Block, a claim police would not comment on yesterday.
  • Back on Eveleigh Street it's still us versus them
  • Despair the reality for a race lost in the alien space of Redfern
  • Violence blamed on 'softly-softly' approach
  • Rage, boredom and peer pressure fuel Redfern's youthful violence
  • School system has let down many boys like TJ
• Black leaders lay the blame on politicians
  February 17, 2004 - Indigenous leaders yesterday accused state and federal governments of failing to tackle the problems faced by young Aborigines living in the suburb they called a "national embarrassment".
• The politics of Redfern's Block
  16 February , 2004 - There are now to be several inquiries into Thomas Hickey's death, and into the subsequent riot that surrounded it, but today the politics of dealing with the social issues of the Block took centre stage, with New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, saying that he had full confidence in how the police dealt with the events of last night. Meanwhile NSW Opposition leader, John Brogden, has suggested clearing the area out altogether.
• Redfern riots a 'tragedy for all': Mick Mundine
  February 16 - I suppose it's got a history you know. It's been very bad between our people and the police because they really gave our people a really hard time in the early '70s, '80s, they were really very vicious in them days
• Exclusive interview with the block residents
  February 16 2004 - "Remember in the paper and that when they said about one hundred and fifty Blacks pelted police with stones and bottles and that there? Well when they chased the young fella into the house there was a baby laying on the bed. The police stepped all over the baby. That's why they fuckin' bottled them fuckin' coppers. They do everything the wrong way. Bringing the riot squad down after ten year old boys, you know what I mean, that's wrong."
  Mother angry over son's death
  16 February , 2004 - I was terrified and that. Wild and that. I wanted to go up to the police station and smash the police station up, that's how wild I was. My 17-year old boy was just coming down to get money off his mother and then these dogs here, fucking end up killing my son. How does a fucking 17-year old boy end up on the fucking fence?
• New techniques record ancient art of ancestors
  February 16, 2004 - Deep in the Grampians, Ricci Marks perches on a ledge in an Aboriginal rock shelter ... Once, indigenous history was told by word of mouth - ancient stories passed down the generations. But that is now being complemented by other ways to read the past.
• Give back stolen wages!
  February 11, 2004 - Calls for a national levy from former governor-generals and prime ministers, headlines in two states’ Sunday papers, supportive candidates in the Queensland state election, renewed grassroots support in Townsville and a furore over missing, unpaid and underpaid wages in New South Wales have all given a boost to the “stolen wages” campaign in the last month.
• 'Stolen wage' case sparks court protest
  February 6, 2004 - Relatives of a leading Aboriginal boxer of the 1940s and 50s will find out next week if they can sue the State Government for $18 million in allegedly "stolen wages".
• Marjorie awaits her back pay, 62 years late
  February 5, 2004 - All Marjorie Woodrow ever got back from the NSW Government trust fund holding four years' worth of her wages was £5. "It was for the material for my wedding dress," said Mrs Woodrow, one of more than 11,000 former state wards who could be owed a total of up to $69 million by the Government.
• Aboriginal Australians owed millions
  4 February , 2004 - A leaked New South Wales Government report shows that Aboriginal people in the state are owed tens of millions of dollars. There are also fears that some of the money has been rorted by public servants and employers for many years. It's estimated that more than 11,000 indigenous Australians could be entitled to a share of the funds, amounting to as much as $70 million.
• Invasion Day rally demands `repay stolen wages'
  4 February, 2004 - The demand to repay the stolen wages of Aborigines who worked under successive Queensland governments from the 1890s to the 1970s was the central focus of this year’s Invasion Day rally, held at Emma Miller Place (Roma Street Forum) on January 26.
• Rising dollar threatens to end boom in Aboriginal art
  February 1, 2004 - The booming international market for Aboriginal art is set for a slump this year as a result of the high-flying Australian dollar. Traditional Aboriginal work has been the big success story of the Australian art market in recent times, with record sales of $7.5 million at Sotheby's annual Aboriginal art auction last July.
• 'Practical reconciliation' ignores the problems of Indigenous identity
  January 26 2004 - Pat Dodson: Hopefully, at some time on the Australia Day long weekend most Australians would have reflected on what it means to be Australian. And although most non-Indigenous Australians are content with - indeed proud of - their national identity, the circumstances of Indigenous Australians allow no such easy certainty.
  • Australia Day: a celebration for some but sorrowful reflection for others
  February 04, 2004 - Australia Day means different things to different people and this is especially true for the First Australians. For many Indigenous Australians 26 January is an occasion to reflect on past loss and suffering.
• Bradley banks on Aboriginal players making their mark
  January 25, 2004 - Prime Minister's XI batsman Matthew Bradley believes it is only a matter of time before more Aboriginal cricketers are representing Australia. Bradley, whose mother is a Wiradjuri woman and comes from central NSW, will represent ATSIC in the Prime Minister's XI game against India at Manuka Oval, Canberra on Wednesday.
• Inspiration for 'Rabbit Proof Fence' passes away
  15 January, 2004 - A great outback saga came to an end in a remote desert community in Western Australia this week. Though many did not know her by name, Molly Kelly Craig achieved fame as the woman who inspired the film 'Rabbit Proof Fence'. One of the most powerful symbols of the stolen generations debate, Molly Kelly Craig died on Tuesday, aged 87.
• Aboriginal tourism
  13 January, 2004 - Aboriginal tourism gives Indigenous people the chance to tell their story in their way, to share cultural insights, traditional practices and contemporary concerns with non-Indigenous Australians and international visitors. Indigenous communities view tourism as a means of both educating others about Indigenous culture, and creating employment and training opportunities at a local level.

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