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May 17, 2013
Round up the usual suspect cliches, the dubious documentarian will need them all by the time he has turned his camera on pallid Australia's oppression of Aborigines. He'll be so busy, ib fact, he may have no more than a few moments to be feted on Q&A and other ABC programs
Read more...May 9, 2013
Sexually mutilated infants, toddlers raped, children sodomised, women so badly beaten they come to envy dogs. Stripped of cant and buck-passing, beyond a patronising and indulgent judiciary, remote Indigenous communities are being eaten alive by the cancers of grog, misogny and endemic violence
Read more...May 8, 2013
One hears much of Aboriginal suffering from those who would pin the blame on "invaders". Politically expedient as those excuses may be, they omit a richly documented record of appalling sexual violence and mutilation
Read more...May 7, 2013
It is fashionable to excuse the current and appalling levels of Indigenous violence on dispossession and oppression, but the unpalatable truth is that it has been a feature of Aboriginal culture since long before the First Fleet
Read more...May 6, 2013
Death, disease, degradation -- that is what the enormous expenditure "close the gap" is buying. That and a bureaucracy which wraps its failures and waste in the management-speak
Read more...March 4, 2013
Despite its improbable plot, critics are hailing a semi-autobiographical play by "emerging" Indigenous artist and grant recipient Nakkiah Lui. What a pity she didn't omit the tired cliches of black victimhood and simply tell her own story
Read more...March 3, 2013
By all accounts, The Monthly's John van Tiggelen was a picture of gentlemanly decorum at the launch of Stephanie Jarrett's brave new book on the roots of Indigenous violence. Back at the office, however, the bile poured forth
Read more...February 18, 2013
Few now remember the Indigenous Family Resettlement Scheme, an astonishingly successful pilot program to help Aboriginal families start new lives in urban centres. Billions of squadered dollars after opponents of assimilation saw it scrapped, the simple and cost-effective scheme is well worth reconsidering
Read more...February 15, 2013
Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott agree our nation's foundation document needs tweaking to recognise Indigenous Australians. Having found common ground at last, they are both on the wrong side
Read more...January 28, 2013
A frank and distressing exchange with author and academic Stephanie Jarrett, whose book, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence, voices a ground-breaking demand that policymakers abandon their fuzzy cliches and patronising indifference and implement realistic remedies
Read more...January 24, 2013
Senator-to-be Nova Peris may be better qualified than many of her detractors believe. After all, what better training for Canberra than a series of lucrative and well-intentioned contracts that did very little to achieve their goals?
Read more...January 23, 2013
To understand where Nova Peris stands on matters political, one place to start is Andrew Denton's 2003 Enough Rope interview. Her reluctance to say anything against ATSIC's scandal-plagued leadership must surely be a comfort to our Prime Minister
Read more...August 15, 2012
Dallas Scott: “I watched young, white identifiers roundly proclaim their connection to, and knowledge of, their 'culture', then turn around not five minutes later and abuse Aboriginal culture by speaking over an Elder.”
Read more...June 13, 2012
The rewriting of Eddie Mabo as a saint in a saintly cause is a gross rewriting of history, if the 1990 findings of facts in the Mabo case by Justice Moynihan are our guide.
Read more...May 15, 2012
It may be the debate we are not allowed to have, but are they claims we are not allowed to check?
Read more...May 7, 2012
Anita Heiss: "I am incredibly proud to be part of a thriving organisation and to lend my name and time to NASCA, which is fully governed by an all-Aboriginal board. From what I understand, we are the only organisation in the field who can claim that."
Read more...April 11, 2012
The issue is whether those benefits designed to assist Aboriginal people out of their desperate poverty should be more sharply targeted at those with a genuine need.
Read more...March 30, 2012
Except for the missing warfare, the relationship between these two towns is eerily similar to the animosity between Israel and Gaza.
Read more...February 20, 2012
An important book now available in an electronic edition with a new introduction to the 2012 edition by Gary Johns.
Read more...February 15, 2012
Should Australia recognise Aboriginal customary law? In this clearheaded essay the late Kenneth Maddock explores a subject which has grave implications for modern Australia.
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The Quadrant Book of Poetry: 2001 - 2010
edited by Les Murray
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