We request the refunding for critical support services and counselling for criminalised women pre and post release prison in North Queensland by the LNP who cut the funding last week.

Why is this important? Criminalised women have the highest rate of sexual and physical abuse perpetrated against them in our community. Due to this horrendous abuse women turn to self medication with illiiegal drugs and / or alcohol. Nearly 60% of the women have a mental illness.

In Townsville women’s prison over 80% of women are Aboriginal and over 90% of the women cannot read and write. These issues have to be addressed, so that women when released into the community can move on with their lives and not return to drug and alcohol abuse and offending to feed their addiction.

Housing is also a fundamental part of their success on release. The support of our services assists women in healing their traumas and practical needs so when released they can reconnect with their children and families and move towards their goals and being a part of their communities.

(via Save Sisters Inside | CommunityRun)

Sister’s Inside is founded and run by primarily ex-inmate women and some lawyers. It’s been an internationally recognized success model of a service that helps;

- inmate mothers and their children re-establishing or maintain functional relationships during/after imprisonment.

- improved prospects of literacy, safe accommodation and finding work on release.

Allowing how many female inmates in Qld are ATSI women being punished for defending themselves in domestic violence situations, or arrested for petty ‘offences’ related to homelessness, this being top of the list for service shut down tells you exactly where real state priorities are.

Probably not coincidentally: they host the Is Prison Obsolete? Conferences, being one of the few regional public forums about changing the overall high imprisonment of marginalized people, not just services.

Oz folk - pls. signal boost on your other networks, not many politics Oz folk on tumblr.  Non-Oz folk - ATSI = Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Native + Black.

The traditional owner, an older woman with a tough grace, welcomed us to her land. Her words were plain and her voice was tinged with a sense of pride. Her group was one of the few in southern Australia to obtain a native title determination recognising the members as native title holders.  (via Reading the Constitution out Loud · Meanjin)

Marcia Langtons’ article on the history, process &  issues around constitutional reform for recognition of Aboriginal Australians.  Photo: Untitled (Marcia Langton) 2002, detail, Christian Bumbarra Thompson.

(via Anita Heiss - Author, Poet, Satirist, Social Commentator)

I’m Aboriginal. I’m just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be.

What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate campaigner for Aboriginal literacy, was born a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school. She is Aboriginal - however, this does not mean she likes to go barefoot and, please, don’t ask her to camp in the desert.

After years of stereotyping Aboriginal Australians as either settlement dwellers or rioters in Redfern, the Australian media have discovered a new crime to charge them with: being too ‘fair-skinned’ to be an Australian Aboriginal. Such accusations led to Anita’s involvement in one of the most important and sensational Australian legal decisions of the 21st-century when she joined others in charging a newspaper columnist with breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. He was found guilty, and the repercussions continue.

In this deeply personal memoir, told in her distinctive, wry style, Anita Heiss gives a first-hand account of her experiences as a woman with an Aboriginal mother and Austrian father, and explains the development of her activist consciousness.

Read her story and ask: what does it take for someone to be black enough for you?

(via A sinking feeling in the Torres Strait - Background Briefing - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation))

There are six islands in the Torres Strait facing inundation from tidal flooding. The encroaching sea is slowly washing away everything from building foundations to ancestral graves, and mosquitoes are thriving. One island has had its worst malaria outbreak in 50 years. There is a temporary solution—building seawalls—but the federal and state governments are showing little interest in paying for that, and in the meantime these island communities have a sinking feeling that relocation may be the only option left for them. Reporter, Hagar Cohen.

Laws that prevent people from voting, owning property or even working in certain professions on the basis of race are still permitted by our Constitution. Ours is likely the only country in the world whose Constitution still contains a ‘race power’ [section 51(xxvi)] which allows Parliament to enact racially discriminatory laws.

Today the Expert Panel appointed by the Government has handed down its final recommendations for recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution. This historic proposal for a Constitutional referendum would:

• Add a statement recognising the prior occupation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and their unique and significant contribution to the life of this nation.

• Remove the ability of States and Territories to disquality people from voting on the basis of race (section 25).

• Remove the right of governments to make laws to the detriment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

• Create a new power to make positive laws with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

• Add a new protection against discrimination on the basis of race, colour or ethnicity.

• Recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages as the original Australian languages.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite behind real change. It’s time to bring our Constitution into the 21st century.

Send a letter to key MPs and party leaders via this link

Hello Ozbods, online letters don’t seem popular in these parts, but just this once send anyway pls.??? Only takes a minute.

re: arguments that the ‘race power’ has existed since Federation and ATSI civil rights ‘happened’ anyway, so it’s to symbolic and irrelevant to invest resources in changing now;

• Symbolism is politically relevant.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights did not ‘happen’, they were fought for and are currently regressing in key areas e.g health, imprisonment rates.
• Conservatives can use outmoded racist powers like this to undermine contemporary ATSI rights advocates; by pressuring them into expensive, time consuming court battles over legal interpretations, draining resources from other goals.
• The NT Intervention proved that political will exists to revive and abuse this power. 
• Why defend hanging onto a ‘race power’ if it’s so irrelevant??

This week we’re looking at the role that Indigenous people have played and still play in Australia’s pastoral industry. As you might have heard, we’ve just marked the 45th anniversary of the Wave Hill walk-off. The anniversary was a celebration of the Aboriginal stockmen and their families, mainly Gurindji people, who in 1966 walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory as a protest against work and pay conditions.

Their determination started a process that ended in bipartisan support for the recognition of the rights of Aboriginal people to land, fair wages and a brighter future for their children. The efforts of the Wave Hill stockmen and their families changed the lives of all Australians forever. They were typical of the men and women around Australia who contributed so greatly to the establishment of Australia’s pastoral industry. Seventy-five-year-old Herb Wharton is one of the old drovers who contributed so much. He was born in Cunnamulla in Queensland, where he began his working life as a drover, and he’s gone on to become a celebrated author and poet. He told Newslines’ Trevor Ellis about the importance of Indigenous men and women to the pastoral industry in the early days.

via indigenous.gov.au » Newslines Radio: Indigenous stockmen and women

rachelstewartjewelry:

Here’s more information on the Yimpininni women of Australia: 

•Sistergirls don’t like to be referred to as “gays”. They prefer the term “women”. They also reject a lot of the myths about them, both from the mainstream and from Indigenous society. Firstly, they reject the claim that they are “unnatural”. A Sistergirl is born, not made. It is clear by the age of two or three if a person has been born this way, and when they get to the age of six, parents give them to older sistergirls to look after because they’re in that special category. 

•Sistergirls are distinct from the wider homosexual community, as they have their own internal law. They have their own customs, rituals, rules and leadership, and as such are a separate cultural group rather than part of an undifferentiated “gay” category defined by broad definitions of lifestyle or sexuality choices. 

•Sistergirls reject early anthropological studies of Tiwi society, which omitted their identity from the texts. Transgenderism has been a part of Tiwi custom since time out of mind, but in the old days the Sistergirls were called “Yimpininni”, and were honoured, rather than subjected to the rape, violence and marginalisation that came with western colonialism. These horrors continue to plague them, and are only increasing with each year that passes.

A lot has changed since the Australian Constitution was written in 1901. Many Australians may be surprised to know that the Constitution — the basis for all laws and the political system — still includes the possibility for discrimination based on your race and ignores Australia’s first peoples and their role as custodians of the world’s oldest continuing culture. A constitutional referendum could change this, but first the government wants to engage Australians in a nationwide discussion. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to share your opinion on constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

Do you support constitutional change to recognise Indigenous peoples? Tell the You Me Unity Panel your thoughts and have your comment delivered to Government. Join the conversation and make your voice heard.

via Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Peoples: Have Your Say - The Petition Site

Oz followers: this wraps up in September, clicky click!