Sovereign Union

Transcript from World News Australia Radio - SBS (January 2014) There were concerns a review of the national curriculum could re-ignite the so-called history wars about Australia's past. One particular area of contention is how Australian children should be taught about the early interaction - and often conflict - between Indigenous people and European settlers. Christopher Pyne, the eurocentric M...

Audio source: ABC Radio National 'Hindsight' 2013 marked two hundred years since the death of Bennelong - that well known Wanggal leader and 'ambassador' to the Sydney colony. Bennelong has long been cast as a tragic figure, a traitor to his people, a damaged character from countless Australian histories, novels and narratives. But as more information about him and his contemporaries comes to ligh...

Indigenous convicts: Khoisan, Maori and Aboriginal exiles - ABC Radio National - Hindsight The convicts left to rot in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) didn't all hail from Britain. There were Australian Aboriginal freedom fighters, South African and even Moari convicts. If you hang the Freedom Fighters (Trouble-makers) you are left with a body (evidence), but if you transport them to a penal colony,...

A leading Western Australian suicide prevention and healing advocate has condemned the state Government's decision to push ahead with the forced closure of up to 150 homeland communities. Robert Eggington (pictured) from the Perth-based Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation is calling on Premier Colin Barnett to reverse his decision. Mr Eggington says any closures will lead to trauma, anger, dysfuncti...

Proposed WA remote community closures labelled "ethnic cleansing" - National Indigenous Radio Service The CEO of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (ALSWA) has described the state Government's decision to close about 150 remote communities as "ethnic cleansing". The WA Government flagged the closure of homeland communities after the Commonwealth shifted responsibility for remote mun...

MARK COLVIN: For the first time in Australia, Indigenous women from around the world are meeting this week, to talk about domestic violence in their communities. The shocking rates of domestic violence in Aboriginal families, is mirrored in communities in New Zealand and North America. A Global Indigenous Domestic Violence conference in Cairns has heard that Indigenous victims won't speak up, unle...

Breastfeeding is important for the development of a child. But what happens when the mother is in prison. Recently an Aboriginal boy was born to a mother who was a prisoner in Queensland. Ideally the mother could have her child with her, but purpose-built cells are few. The pair were separated and the mother was not given a breast pump so that she could provide milk to the child from prison. Suppo...

One of the most familiar names in the story of Australian colonisation is that of the Tasmanian Aboriginal woman 'Truganini'. But for most people the story begins and ends with a single, very famous photo, along with a label describing her simply as the last of the full-blood Tasmanian Aborigines. Not only was that label deeply misleading, we now know that Truganini's life is one of the most signi...

Five of the last Tasmanian Aboriginal people were shipped to the Victorian mainland to help the 'Aboriginal Protector' civilise the blacks - instead they gave the settlers such a fright, burning their houses and their money etc, that many of the settlers families left their 'stolen properties' and moved closer to Melbourne for protection. After a major hunting spree with mobs of police and settler...

The Social Justice commissioner Mick Gooda has tabled his 2014 report calling on the Prime Minister and his Government to try harder to engage with Indigenous communities. He's also joined with the Law Council of Australia in labelling the rates of Indigenous people in jail as a national crisis. Both have called on the Government to introduce specific justice targets in efforts to close the gap of...

Phillip Adams from ABC 'Late Night Live' interviewed Tauto Sansbury, Michael Mansell & Rosalie Kunoth-Monks on the 2014 Freedom Summit in Alice Springs - Image by Gerry Georgatos

ABC PM with Mark Colvin THE TRANSCRIPT MARK COLVIN: A national campaign to stop mentally disabled people being jailed without a conviction is gaining momentum. The Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign estimates more than a hundred people are in that predicament around the country and about half of them are Indigenous Australians. Lawyers, academics and justice and welfare groups met in Melbourne...

Audio report from Anna Vidot ABC PM - Katrin Long and staff reporters A petition with more than 1,600 signatures protesting against planned changes to the Aboriginal Heritage Act has been presented to Western Australia's Parliament. They presented the petition to the Opposition's Aboriginal Affairs spokesman Ben Wyatt and Nationals member for the Pilbara Brendon Grylls. Port Hedland Nyamal elder D...

Indigenous elders have welcomed a new agreement between France and Australia on the repatriation of Indigenous remains. Michael Kenny - World News Radio 20 NOV 2014 (Transcript from SBS World News Radio) Indigenous elders have welcomed a new agreement between France and Australia on the repatriation of Indigenous remains. They say they hope it sets a precedent for similar agreements with other cou...

Radio National 'Drive' program on 19 November, 2014 Picture: Lex at G20 - Deaths in Custody March - Speaches

There are fears that a West Australian Government decision to scrap funding for an interpreting service could deny justice to some Aboriginal people in the Kimberley. The Kimberley Interpreting Service helps Aboriginal people navigate the technical English of police interviews and the courts. And the state's chief justice says Government should be increasing funding for Indigenous interpreters, no...

The 3 Stooges: Marcia Langton, mining magnate Twiggy Forrest and the Coalition Parliamentary Secretary, Alan Tudge hatch a plan for the employment of First Nations people. A key player in the Abbott Government review into Aboriginal and Islander employment says both incentives (Mining Companies) and disincentives of the welfare system (First Nations people) are in their plans. Alan Tudge, who is i...

A First Nations health service in South Australia says claims of an ice crisis in remote Indigenous communities are overblown and could harm the fight against drugs. The APY Lands in the far north-west of South Australia, the Nganampa Health Service covers eight remote clinics and the director says if the drug ice was being widely used in the region, the clinics would probably know. 12 November 20...

Archives: National Indigenous Radio - "Now people are just going back into the corrugated irons that they came out of in the '50s and '60s. Concerning their policies, we're going backwards." Pastor Stokes from the Kalgoorlie region in Western Australia, is also calling for unity amongst Indigenous people to improve their standing in Australian society. He has lashed out at Australian governments f...

Prof John Maynard's book, 'True Light and Shade' is based on the incredible paintings by convict artist Joseph Lycett (See cover photo above). Lycett captured many intimate landscapes featuring the First Nations peoples lives during the settlement of New South Wales, especially within the vicinity of Newcastle. He brings to life the rich cultural life of the peoples that belonged to the land and t...

Keischa Haynes-Jamieson reveals part of her life at the National day of Action, Justice for Ms Dhu, Canberra - Introduced by Lara Pullin

There are calls for the man who reviewed the national English curriculum to lose his University of Sydney job over emails he sent to colleagues that are considered racist and misogynistic. The university is investigating whether Professor Barry Spurr's emails are a breach of the school's code of conduct. The Opposition wants the Education Minister Christopher Pyne to explain whether the curriculum...

Sovereignty Union Founder Ghillar Michael Anderson speaks about many things relating to First Nations Sovereignty, past plans, present and the future. Source: Sovereign Voices Broadcaster Shane Mortimer on 2XX FM Canberra - 10 October 2014

Sovereignty Union Founder Ghillar Michael Anderson speaks about many things relating to First Nations Sovereignty, past plans, present and the future. Source: Sovereign Voices Broadcaster Shane Mortimer on 2XX FM Canberra - 10 October 2014

First Nations people from across Western Australia will travel to Rottnest Island, or Wadjemup, to remember their ancestors who were brought there in chains. The island's former prison, 19 kilometres from the Perth coastline, incarcerated thousands of people from as far as the Kimberley, Pilbara, Western Desert and across Nyungah lands. It's believed at least 370 and possibly up to 700 men and boy...