Up to 150 ‘communities’ in ‘remote’ Australia are threatened with closure. But do such terms put a gloss on what is, in reality, the closure of people’s homes?
In the past decade, the number of people ending up in South Australian prison cells has grown at seven times the rate of the state population.
AAP/South Australian Correctional Services Department
Since 2004, the number of prisoners in South Australia has risen seven times faster than the state’s net population growth – and nearly doubled its rate of locking up Indigenous Australians.
We need policies that meaningfully include Aboriginal people in ways forward.
AAP Image/Amnesty International, Chloe Geraghty
Recently, Tony Abbott asserted the government couldn’t afford to fund the “lifestyle choices” of remotely-based Aboriginal people. But such communities could be key to meeting the demands of our future.
Among the early footsteps in Australia – The Mungo fossil footprints dating to 20,000 years ago.
Michael Amendolia
An Australian senator says the evidence on who should be recognised as the First Australians is only “conjecture”. So what does the evidence really say?
Roseina Boston onstage at the 2005 Melbourne International Arts Festival with the ensemble Pannikin.
(Courtesy Jon Rose, used with permission.)
The gumleaf is a wind instrument that comes with a steep learning curve. Today we celebrate the 80th birthday of one of its key proponents, Roseina Boston.
Inuit women carrying their kids in traditional hooded parkas. Indigenous midwifery programs have expanded across Canada and are linked to excellent health outcomes.
Spencer/Flickr
Tony Abbott spent most of this week in North East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. In the final of our Abbott in…
Bundilla elder Aunty Barbara Raymond with schoolchildren in Darwin last year, supporting the cause of Indigenous constitutional recognition.
AAP Image/Supplied by Richard Oppusunggu
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australia has been on the national agenda for a long time, but is back in the headlines with the news that the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader hope to release…
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott with kindergarden kids at Yirrkala in the Northern Territory. Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in the NT have the nation’s lowest retention rate, so it’s time to try more creative ways to fix that.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Tony Dreise, Australian Council for Educational Research
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Palmer United Party Senator Jacqui Lambie is willing to take a DNA test to prove her Indigenous heritage – but would that do any good?
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Palmer United Party Senator Jacqui Lambie recently created controversy by claiming in her first speech to Parliament that going back six generations, she is related to the renowned Tasmanian Aboriginal…
If you’re born underweight, like this little baby on the left, it can make a world of difference to your lifelong health.
Menzies Health
Gurmeet Singh, Menzies School of Health Research and Susan Sayers, Menzies School of Health Research
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion with students in the Tiwi Islands, Northern Territory. Research shows acting on overcrowded housing could greatly improve Indigenous kids’ school attendance in remote communities.
AAP/Neda Vanovac
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott (back left) with elder Wendy Marika (back centre) during a Welcome to Country ceremony on his arrival at Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula in North East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, yesterday.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
To imagine what “Australia” was like B.C. (“Before Cook”, or before colonisation), one needs to envision the entire landmass of this island/continent and most of its surrounding islands and waters as crisscrossed…
Rosie Tasman Napurrurla, Warlpiri 2002, Ngurlu Jukurrpa (‘Grass Seed; Bush Grain Dreaming’), line etching on Hahnemuhle paper.
Warnayaka Art Centre, Lajamanu, and Aboriginal Art Prints Network, Sydney
In 2002, Jeannie Herbert Nungarrayi, formerly a Warlpiri teacher at the Lajamanu School in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory, where I worked for many years first as a linguist and then as school…
The existence of a dispute tells us more than its adjudication is ever likely to.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
The Redfern Park Speech, given by former Australian prime minister Paul Keating on December 10 1992, was a speech worth fighting for. It captured harsh truths about Australian history; it used those as…
West Papuan refugee Amos Wainggai is on board the Freedom Flotilla, headed for Papuan shores from Australia. What will it mean for our relations with Indonesia?
AAP/Cleo Mary Fraser
Given the extreme sensitivity with which the issue of West Papua is viewed in Indonesia, the “Freedom Flotilla” heading from Australia to the Indonesian-controlled territory is sure to create tension…
Incorporating food prescriptions into the primary health care system would help highlight the importance of a healthy diet.
Rusty Stewart
Doctors should be able to provide subsidised “prescriptions” for healthy food to people in remote Aboriginal communities, says an Indigenous nutrition expert. Professor Kerin O'Dea, Professor of Nutrition…
The dingo appeared around the same time as new tool technology and Indian visitors, the researchers suggested.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogwen
A new study of DNA has found that Indian people may have come to Australia around 4000 years ago, an event possibly linked to the first appearance of the dingo. Australia was first populated around 40,000…
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University