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Keywords: Naidoc

  • RELIGION

    NAIDOC Week homily

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 July 2017

    There is no point in proceeding with a referendum on a question which fails to win the approval of you, the First Australians. Neither is there any point in proceeding with a referendum which is unlikely to win the approval of the overwhelming majority of the voting public, regardless of when they or their ancestors first arrived in Australia. Given that you Indigenous Australians have spoken strongly through your representatives at Uluru in support of a First Nations Voice, it is now for the Referendum Council to recommend to government a timetable for constitutional change with maximum prospects of a 'Yes' vote.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    NAIDOC: Languages matter because people matter

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 June 2017
    11 Comments

    The theme of the week is 'Our Languages matter'. It lies at the heart of the Uluru statement. It also poses questions about the way in which we conceive our identity as a nation. In Australia we communicate in many languages. English is the language of business and public life, but many other languages, both Indigenous and introduced, are the primary languages of groups of Australians. Language is much more than a means of communication. It is an emblem of our tribe. It shapes how we interact.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A time for all Australians to nurture Indigenous heritage

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 July 2015
    4 Comments

    This year's NAIDOC Week theme calls on Indigenous Australians to value their inheritance and to nurture it. It also challenges other Australians to be curious about the heritage of their Indigenous brothers and sisters, and to respect it in the uses to which their lands are put to.

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  • RELIGION

    Delma's big wide sigh of pain

    • Steve Sinn
    • 09 July 2014
    9 Comments

    She was walking up and down the middle of Roslyn Street, wailing. I put my arms over her shoulders: 'It's all-right Delma, its okay.' She turned and looked at me: 'Don't tell me it's all-right. It's not all-right'. It was for all the wrongs, all the anguish, the suffering, the pain, the separation from her family, land, culture, her children. I couldn't leave her. I called an ambulance. As she was carted out, she looked up from the stretcher: 'You betrayed me.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hearts in the right place during NAIDOC Week

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 July 2014
    8 Comments

    The prime minister stumbled last week when he said: 'I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um scarcely settled, Great South Land.' His Indigenous advisor Warren Mundine said: 'I know his heart is in the right place.' With hearts in the right place, we can all forgive and be forgiven.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dusty feet on the road to reconciliation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 July 2013
    8 Comments

    150 years ago the David McIver entered Hervey Bay carrying 404 immigrants, including my great great grandmother Annie. Some of the crew rowed to shore, where they were met and helped by two Aboriginal men. Who'd have thought that over a century later, one of Annie's great grandchildren would be a judge in the landmark Mabo native title case.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stronger futures, stolen futures

    • John Falzon
    • 02 July 2012
    4 Comments

    • We passed this law in the night time of your mourning. We listened but you said nothing. We watched but you did nothing for yourselves.• Today we are crying but today and tomorrow, we are ready to take back the future you stole from us. But not with all the love in our bodies and our skies will weever be able to take away the shame from you.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Indigenous Australians taking the next step

    • Brian McCoy
    • 06 July 2011
    4 Comments

    I have just returned from visiting friends in remote Aboriginal communities. It was a sad trip. A large number of young people have died in recent years, some close friends. They represent the trifecta of young peoples' deaths: car accidents, suicides and chronic disease.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2010: Other unsung Indigenous heroes

    • Myrna Tonkinson
    • 14 January 2011

    Not yet 40, she must live in Perth, hundreds of kilometres from home, to receive dialysis. She is currently in hospital recovering from spinal surgery, and so is separated even from her city-based loved ones. Yet she appears always with a beaming smile.

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  • RELIGION

    Speaking for country, speaking for self

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 July 2010

    Fr Frank Brennan's address to the Melbourne College of Divinity Centenary Conference, Trinity College, University of Melbourne, 6 July 2010.

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  • RELIGION

    Letting Aboriginal Australians speak for themselves

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 July 2010
    11 Comments

    Kevin Rudd stood in the forecourt of Parliament House Canberra and recalled with great emotion the morning on which he had welcomed the members of the Stolen Generations. There was no mistaking his sense of solidarity: he knew there and then what it was to be dispossessed, alienated and outcast.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Other unsung Indigenous heroes

    • Myrna Tonkinson
    • 07 July 2010
    1 Comment

    Not yet 40, she must live in Perth, hundreds of kilometres from home, to receive dialysis. She is currently in hospital recovering from spinal surgery, and so is separated even from her city-based loved ones. Yet she appears always with a beaming smile.

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