A GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION - STOP THE FORCED CLOSURE OF ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES IN AUSTRALIA

Aboriginal communities in Australia announce

a global call to action.

Rally from Aboriginal Tent Embassy to Parliament House,

Thursday 19 March.

Assemble at Tent Embassy 11.30am 

for a 12.00pm march to Parliament.

12.30 - 2.00pm speakers.

Kimberley Aboriginal communities have declared a GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION to stop the forced closure of Aboriginal communities in Western Australia amidst the growing campaign by State and Federal Governments to withdraw their support and remove Aboriginal people from their traditional homelands.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has whipped up a great amount of fear, anxiety and doubt amongst the already marginalised First Peoples, when he said that: 

“What we can’t do, is endlessly subsidise choices, if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have”.

Editorial Note: Please see this ABC 7.30 Report
for video, transcript, and discussion.

Abbott’s statement was in support of the declarations made by Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, in a press statement released 12 November 2014, suggesting that the State could no longer support 150 Aboriginal Communities, flagging the prospective removal by the end of 2015.

We who live in the remoter areas of Australia do not believe it is a lifestyle choice but an intrinsic fundamental human right to live in our own communities and our own country. We hold significant cultural obligations to our Ancestors to maintain Sovereign ties to our lands. After successive breaches of Human Rights conventions and the forced removal of the Aboriginal Community of Oombulgurri in 2014, we maintain a vote of no confidence in both the incumbent State and Federal Governments in their actions toward Aboriginal people.

On Thursday 19 March 2015, Australians across the Nation are being asked by governments to acknowledge ‘Close the Gap’ Day – but for many of our countrymen the ‘gap’ has been significantly widened, placing increasing pressure and trauma on our people. Starting in the Kimberley at 10am, we will march not for this Government agenda, but instead to show our objection to the threatened proposed closures to Aboriginal communities.

We stand in solidarity with all other regions in Western Australia and South Australia who have the veil of threatened remote community closures hanging over their lives. We understand that the precedent for a National attack by Government toward Aboriginal people living on their homelands, has already been set in the Oombulgurri closure. We ask the national and international community to stand with us in this action, and the subsequent actions that will ensue as we mobilise effective campaigns to secure our cultural right and entitlement.

Canberra media inquiries: 

Amy McQuire: 0487 427 207 

Alice Haines: 0447 097 659

www.sosblakaustralia.com 

www.facebook.com/sosblakaustralia I Twitter: @sosblakaust

Official Hashtags:

#SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA 

#NOconsent #Lifestylechoice

email: blaksoscanberra@gmail.com 

For further information see the website:
www.wgar.wordpress.com

Editors' note
- as well as this, take note of conservative State and Federal Governments
attempts at social control of the mainstream population: Medicare co-payments;
dismissal of the NDIS, treatment of people with disabilities -
particularly those young people who end up in nursing home aged care
because there is no place for them anywhere else;
education policies; cuts to social welfare payments to the elderly and the unemployed.
The question to be asked is why is it that Australian governments are still  unable
to treat Aboriginal people as citizens with equal rights to the goods and services
which other citizens receive.
This is the 21st Century after all - we put people in space -
we have more money awash in Australia than at any time in our history.
But we still can't meet the needs of our original inhabitants
whose land we stole.