IT wasn’t until he was in his 70s that Omborrin first started painting. Before then, he worked as a stockman across the Kimberley and the Northern Territory, and only retired because of a hip injury.
Now aged in his early 80s, Omborrin is a dedicated artist, based in the Kimberley. And through his work, he tells stories about his culture and the traditions that very few - if any - remaining members of his community still know.
INDIGENOUS university students are set to discuss establishing a national group to create a student support network that would extend through university and into professional life.
The National Union of Students will hold its inaugural indigenous student conference on Thursday July 31 at the University of Sydney to share their experience and discuss what works and what doesn’t when it comes to promoting successful indigenous participation at university.
PROMINENT Aboriginal activist Ivan McPhee, a central figure in the battle to stop US mining giant Amax drilling for oil on Aboriginal land at Noonkanbah station, has died after a long struggle with his health.
McPhee and other activists, including Bob Hawke’s son Stephen, made world headlines in 1980 when they formed a blockade to try to stop Amax entering the remote cattle station in far-north Western Australia in a dispute that became synonymous with Aboriginal land rights.
INDIGENOUS people who secured native title agreements could be forced to ensure the long-term benefits of land tenure were enjoyed by future generations, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said yesterday.
Mining bosses, lawyers and indigenous leaders met Ms Macklin in Canberra yesterday to begin the process of radically rewriting native title law.
The Ngaanyatjarra Shire Council has asked the proprietors of a Laverton roadhouse to consider selling Opal fuel instead of normal petrol.
The fuel has low levels of an ingredient which can give people a high when sniffed.
Marion Scrymgour says action is needed urgently.
The Northern Territory Arts Minister says the Federal Government must respond to new accusations that Indigenous artists in central Australia are being exploited.
The Northern Land Council (NLC) Chairman, Wali Wunungmurra, has welcomed today’s High Court decision confirming that traditional owners of the Blue Mud Bay region in north east Arnhem Land – together with traditional owners of the entire Northern Territory coastline - have exclusive rights regarding commercial and recreational fishing in tidal waters overlying Aboriginal land.
“We are overjoyed by this decision – it is a landmark victory for traditional owners – and we have waited for over 30 years for our sea rights to be legally recognised,” said Mr Wunungmurra.
The clock is ticking. Eight weeks and waiting, Inuit filmmaker
Zacharias Kunuk still hopes to learn why International Polar Year
Canada rejected his internet project;
On the heels of the Prime Minister’s historic Apology to Inuit and
Aboriginal Canadians for a century of government assimilation, Kunuk,
an Officer of the Order of Canada and recent recipient of an honorary
Doctor of Law degree from Trent University, was shocked at how his
proposal was dismissed. ‘First I got a form letter,’ says Kunuk. ‘You
know, "I regret to inform you…a large number of excellent proposals
were submitted…" But when I saw what they funded I wrote to ask why
we got nothing.
Then I got a second form letter, a little longer than
the first. I knew this was another form letter because they sent me
the wrong one! Mine was addressed to somebody else who complained
too!"
Kunuk’s rejected project would have trained a dozen young Inuit to
make short films about climate changes in their home communities, and
given prominent Inuit spokespersons including Sheila Watt-Cloutier,
former nominee with Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize, Mary Simon,
former Arctic Ambassador and now president of Inuit Tapariit
Kanatami, Peter Irniq, former Nunavut Language Commissioner and Hon.
Louis Tapardjuk, Nunavut Minister of Culture, Language, Elders and
Youth, a forum to discuss the changing Arctic from the perspective of
Inuit human rights.
Ms. Simon and Mr. Irniq both were invited by the
Prime Minister to join him on the floor of the House for his June 11
Apology, at the same time their contributions to IsumaTV were being
refused by IPY Canada.
"Up here in Baffin Island," Kunuk explains, "we have a $4 billion
iron mine planning to run giant tankers right through the walrus
calving ground. Hunters are falling through thin ice. Southern
scientists tell us polar bears are becoming extinct.
If the Northwest Passage opens up we might see Russian, Danish and American warships on
our front doorstep. Our government should be asking for our knowledge
through the internet, not refusing it. We’re still here. Doesn’t
anyone want to know what we think?"
IsumaTV already contains Kunuk’s 2001 Cannes Festival winner;
Despite IPY rejection, IsumaTV will grow in 2008-09 as an interactive
media and networking platform for Truth and Reconciliation, where both
Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians can work together on common
urgent issues of social change and global survival in the 21st
century.
Arctic Climate Change from the Inuit side.
Since its start-up last December, Kunuk’s new website www.isuma.tv
shows hundreds of user-generated videos in sixteen Indigenous
languages by Inuit and Aboriginal filmmakers across Canada and
worldwide. When Canada’s International Polar Year Office called for
proposals for communication, training and outreach in the north,
Kunuk offered IsumaTV as a new platform for discussion of Climate
Change from an Inuit point of view, enabling Inuit to contribute to
Canadian understanding of the Arctic as a front line of Global
Warming.
On May 28, IPY Canada Executive Director, Kathleen Fischer,
announced $5.2 million in grants for 17 projects but nothing for
IsumaTV. Instead, IPY funded an IMAX film for the Sudbury Science
Centre celebrating Canadian IPY research; another documentary about
IPY research on seabirds; and a third about the early 19th century
arctic travels of a National Museum of Canada biologist. Atanarjuat
The Fast Runner, the well-known TV series Our Dene Elders,
first-person testimonies by Inuit and Aboriginal Residential School
survivors and a growing collection of films, music and blogs by
individual filmmakers and Indigneous film festivals in Canada, the
U.S., Mexico, Australia and others.
In its first six months IsumaTV
has emerged as a global blockbuster, with almost three million hits
from thirty different countries.
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The ACT Government says it will take on board the recommendations of a report into the high number of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system.
The report, Circles of Support: Towards Indigenous Justice, has been compiled by the ACT Council of Social Service (ACTCOSS) and the Aboriginal Justice Centre.
A 54-year-old man has pleaded guilty in Alice Springs Magistrate’s Court to charges for carrying out work on a registered sacred site.
The court heard Stephen Alan Carson contracted Heavy Duty Firewood sales to lop branches from an ironwood tree that was damaging his Alice Springs house in 2006.
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