Call-out for Aboriginal sit-in at the Australian parliament

Until our voice is heard

 

Respected Australian indigenous Elders and leaders of some of the most active First Peoples rights movements have called on supporters to join with them in a sit-in protest at Parliament House in Canberra from Monday 9 February. Organisers hope hundreds if not thousands will heed the call and join with them to confront the politicians of the national parliament to highlight the growing anger about their treatment and policies affecting First Nations People. Monday is also the day the governing Liberal Party (Australia’s conservatives) will vote internally whether to sack or keep Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who is perceived as performing badly.

 

 

 

 

Greek-born activist for indigenous rights and investigative journalist, Gerry Georgatos, quotes unnamed "sources in government" saying that the sit-in "will be seen as the final straw for Mr Abbott after a series of controversial decisions, gaffes and after a series of reductionist policies that have thumped Australians with hardship".


"The sit-in and the dumping again of another Prime Minister will at least give rise to the long overdue opportunity for First Peoples to have their say in the media on their own affairs and in the course of their destiny. With the fall of the Prime Minister of Indigenous Affairs so will go this portfolio and so will disappear too the useless Indigenous Advisory Council and maybe others too who influence Aboriginal affairs but who were never elected to Government.


"There will be a media scrum around the Sit-In. The numbers are primed to remove the Prime Minister. Hopefully all sides of Government will pick up their act in responding to the First Peoples of this continent."


 

 

More than 200 delegates and supporters marched on Parliament House on Tuesday 27 January, after more than 1,000 people had gathered

 

at Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy the day before on Invasion Day to protest at the federal government attack on First Peoples – attacks on culture, land grab threats, the dispossession of homelands.

 

 

 

 


Strong Voices will be covering the Freedom Movement “live” from Canberra on Monday the 9th of February when Journalist Lorena Walker and Video Journalist Danielle Young report from the country’s capital.  Tune into Strong Voices from 11am CST. http://caama.com.au/first-nations-freedom-movement-canberra-2015

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Background:

 

 

 

Understanding why Australia's First Peoples are so angry    |   The time is long overdue for genuine negotiation on treaties (video 8 min 23 sec long)   |   Background Info Web-Pages   |   Historical ethnic cleansing continues in Australia with removal from homelands   |  Australia's indigenous incarceration crisis   |   Return of land to Aborigines kills uranium prospects   | Climate change is the biggest threat to Black Australia   |  Roads and mining driving “retrograde and morally reprehensible” land grabs   |   Black Australia would be 'essentially free labour' under work-for-the-dole changes   |   "Over-representation of Indigenous Australians in prison a catastrophe"   |   Communiqué from the Aboriginal Freedom Summit   |   Uranium mining in Kakadu at a crucial point   |   Alice Springs 'Freedom Summit' urges youth to take up Indigenous rights fight   |  Protests against closure of 150 Aboriginal communities   |   Poetic injustice as bid for Indigenous recognition stalls   |   Mentally ill people jailed in Australia without being convicted of anything   |  Aboriginal leader calls for trade sanctions & boycotts against Australia   |   The disgrace of Western Australia's treatment of Aboriginal people   |   West Australian plan to close 100 remote and Indigenous communities 'devastating'   |     UN told Australian Indigenous deaths in custody Worsen   |   Lessons to be learned from atom bomb tests in Australia   |   "Stop stealing our children!" Aboriginal protest in Brisbane   |   Australian Aborigines to meet at a SUMMIT FOR FREEDOM in Alice Springs   |   Aborigines reject nuclear dump in Central Australia      |   One thousand demonstrate in Australia about Aboriginal deaths in custody   |   Eight-minute video history lesson about Australian mistreatment of Aborigines   |   Take an Aboriginal passport to show respect on your travels