Author: cottonward

‘Let’s sit around a fire’

Went to a workshop held by Richard Downs, one of about 30-40 Aboriginal Elders who took part in the Ampilatwatja walk-off in June last year – they walked away from their community in the NT to set up camp in the bush. He’s the spokesman for the Alyawarra people  living at the township of Ampilatwatcha, 350 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.

They’re planning to install a bore and make the camp entirely self-sufficient with solar energy and permaculture.

Richard Downs. Photo: The Juice Media

Everyone wants to go and visit the camp, but he said they can’t have visitors until they’ve got water. Now they’re carting water from the nearby township. They’re looking for donations and are getting some union funding.

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‘We don’t want your handout’

NT Aboriginal Leaders condemn Intervention, housing program failure

Alyawarr spokesperson and leader Richard Downs, from Ampilatwatja community in the Northern Territory,  condemns the ongoing rollout of the NT Emergency Response Measures. He and other elders walked off their settlement in June last year and started a community protest camp on his traditional country. They’re going to try and use solar power and perma culture etc to build a self-sufficient community, without any government support.

It was covered by the media in July 2009.

Went to see Sydney saint miracle

I went to see the Tannous family house where they say their son should be Australia’s second saint, after the recent go ahead for Mary MacKillop. You can read the background here and here. The home has a welcoming atmosphere and inside, where the oil on the walls is immediately apparent, there is a calm atmosphere. Outside there’s a pleasant grotto where the rosary is said every Fri night at 7.30pm.

I was there on a quiet day, as the house was officially “closed” on Wednesdays, but since a few had turned up, affable Catholic priest
Fr Michael Melhen did a tour for about 10 of us around the corridor and Mike’s bedroom. He sincerely believes that Mike is a messenger from God, who is showing us – via the rose-scented oil and other signs — the link between life and death.

There is more than just rose-scented oil oozing from the walls. It’s a full-on spiritual central. Fr Michael pointed out – using a torch in the corridor – that Mike has done oil drawings on the walls of a chalice (“emphasising the importance of going to Mass”), a ship of salvation, candles, and other religious symbols. And it’s not just Mike — the Virgin Mary had been busy too, appearing four times in the corridor where we were standing in the past few months. And a statue of Mary in Mike’s bedroom regularly weeps tears of oil.

Continue reading Went to see Sydney saint miracle

UN Human Rights Day

Professor Colleen Hayward at UN talk.

Went to the United Nations (WA branch) Human Rights Day recently and the guest speaker was Professor Colleen Hayward* on “The UN and Indigenous Peoples – Our Rights and Getting the Wrongs of the Past Righted’’.

Professor Hayward is a senior Aboriginal woman of the Noongar nation in the south-west of Western Australia and is Head of Centre of Kurongkurl Katitjin at Edith Cowan University.

She said the UN’s ideas on rights for all indigenous people are relevant to and could be used by Aboriginal people here as leverage to gain more recognition for past wrongs and getting those fixed.

Continue reading UN Human Rights Day