View previous stories
	The hatred and greed of the frontier wars still drive race politics today by Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, agencies Australia   The hatred and greed of the frontier wars still drive race politics today. How little things change, writes David Marr for Guardian Australia   For 20 years squatters campaigned for an armed force to go with them into the bush and clear the land of its Aboriginal owners. The big wool men cajoled and threatened three governors until they got their way.   The Native Police began killing in the hinterland of the Darling Downs in 1848. My great-great-grandfather, Reg Uhr, and his brother, D’arcy, were officers in the force a few years later as it fought the bloodiest campaigns on the Queensland frontier.   The records of the Native Police are missing, presumed destroyed, but modern scholars calculate that over the 60 years these Aboriginal troopers led by white officers slaughtered upwards of 40,000 people from the northern rivers of New South Wales all the way to Cape York.   Those who still defend the massacres of those years say people were different then. If only that were so. Pare away the 19th-century rhetoric and the hatred and greed that drove those killings can be seen driving race politics in today’s Australia – more clearly than ever since the sluice gates were opened in the referendum campaign for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.   No one is excusing massacres now – Native Police riding all guns blazing into a sleeping camp at dawn – but the attitudes of the massacre times are with us still.   Before I began writing Killing for Country, I thought virtue signalling was an insult invented in the culture wars by Republican thinktanks. But in the Sydney press in the 1830s it was doing the same work it does now – belittling decent people who stand up to cruelty and injustice.   The Sydney Herald mocked “wailers after Aborigines” as “desirous of acquiring a reputation for humanity”. It denounced “philanthropists, who sit at ease at home to talk and write of the ‘poor aborigines’ … and look upwards, praying pardon for those who are engaged in the work of exterminating a people from the face of the earth. Why, it is in the order of nature that, as civilization advances, savage nations must be exterminated sooner or later.”   As one war was fought on the frontier, another was fought in town – between those newspapers supporting the squatters and those condemning the slaughter. Bishops didn’t give the sheep men much trouble in the press or the pulpit. They found endless reasons for the land being taken from its original owners.   The voices the squatters set out to silence were those of editors, writers and journalists who from decade to decade continued to attack the slaughter in the bush. The attack in reply is infinitely familiar still. After virtue signalling comes the accusation of groupthink.   “It is quite evident that the sentimentality and ravings of a parcel of European ‘canters’ have had their effect on the minds of many mistaken men in this Colony,” wrote the squatter’s trumpet, the Sydney Herald. Such deluded creatures “lament over a slain savage, while they disregard the safety of the lives and property of the white inhabitants! But is not this spurious humanity? Is it not moral injustice?”   The claim the bush knows best shapes contemporary Australian politics profoundly. And it’s as old as New South Wales. The squatters demanded city folk shut up because they could never know the challenges of the bush. Those who dared back then to call the killings murder were dismissed as “humbugging maniacs and hypocrites who write and prate of matters of which they know nothing whatever”.   On the frontier, the law counted for nothing for most of the century. Squatters were left to do what they felt needed to be done. That sense of standing to one side of the law hasn’t disappeared in the bush. There are laws but there are needs – say if you want to blow up a gorge or clear native vegetation or drain the Murray Darling.   The meanness of the squatters is with us still. They were taking every square inch of the lands of the native peoples, giving nothing back for the territory on which they now made their fortunes. But they howled if a little government revenue found its way into Aboriginal hands.   When the Imperial government sent out a band of men to be “Protectors of the Aborigines” – to live among them, learn their languages and be advocates in their disputes with settlers – the squatters condemned the plan as impractical, ultra-humane, proof of London’s ignorance and, above all, expensive, for the colony was footing the bill.   The Sydney Gazette called this “a piece of downright-jobbery” and joined the squatter press condemning the scheme as “one of those disgraceful channels through which the public money is drained into the pockets of a parcel of greedy sinecurists”. And of course, the money was said to achieve nothing: “The Protectors of the blacks of New Holland might as well be the protectors of the Esquimaux, for all the good they do.”   Forget the protectors and rejig the rhetoric a little and that argument lies at the core of the no case, repeated every day in this long referendum campaign – that billions are being wasted year after year on ungrateful Aborigines with nothing to show for it.   Paying to police the blacks has always been another matter. Revenue for welfare was unthinkable. But the colony shouldering the cost of the Native Police – £318,278 by 1880 – was not. In cash-strapped Queensland, that was a fortune.   When Queensland broke away from NSW, the Native Police moved north. Any restraint the force had shown in its early years was stripped away. No law was ever passed to sanction its killings. It was openly acknowledged they were not police but a semi-military force – indeed the armed wing of the Queensland government.   Summoned by squatters, white officers like my great-great-grandfather rode out with eight or 10 Aboriginal troopers to revenge the spearing of a cow, the death of a shepherd – many died on the frontier – or to disperse peaceful gatherings of blacks squatters feared might get out of hand.   A note on the language: to “disperse” meant shoot to kill. Newspapers often put the word in inverted commas to make the meaning absolutely plain. Other euphemisms for slaughter included “swift justice” and “few bullets were fired in vain”.   The Native Police dealt with their victims in the bush. Only rarely were prisoners brought in for trial. Courts were so pedantic: they asked for proof of wrongdoing. That didn’t worry the Native Police. They killed anyone they could find. Guilty or innocent, their deaths were thought to teach the rest a lesson.   From among the survivors of these massacres, the troopers took women for themselves and the officers kidnapped children who ended up as servants – or worse – in white households. Despite loud and long complaints, kidnapping of Aboriginal children continued into the 20th century unpunished in Queensland.   Protests led to inquiries. This is where we honed our national skill in ventilating disgust without taking any useful action. In the first century of settlement, inquiries were held into everything agitating the colonists – from bushrangers to scab in sheep. But no issue was inquired into so often as the condition of the Aboriginal people and the workings of the Native Police.   So appalling was the behaviour of the Native Police in early Queensland that the government was compelled to hold an inquiry into the force in 1861. It was expertly hobbled. The terms of reference were vague. Sitting on the committee were seven squatters who between them held more than 1.4m hectares (3.5m acres) in the bush. The Native Police officers lied. Everyone was exonerated.   How little things change. Australians are beginning to face the question of what it does to the soul of a country that its foundations rest first in conquest and then in crime. I hear those crimes being defended in the referendum debate as the yes campaign is condemned as woke, ignorant and expensive – while the voice is attacked as a privilege Aboriginal Australians don’t deserve.   Behind it all I hear old familiar voices growling that nothing is owed to the native peoples of Australia, nothing at all for the continent we took from them. Absolutely nothing   http://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/01/the-hatred-and-greed-of-the-frontier-wars-still-drive-race-politics-today-how-little-things-change   Oct. 2023   The ongoing impacts of colonisation in Australia   The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: “Colonisation has had a devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and culture. Violence and epidemic disease caused an immediate loss of life, and the occupation of their lands by settlers and the restriction of Aboriginal people to ‘reserves’ disrupted their ability to support themselves”.   “Together with the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities, Indigenous Australians have suffered ongoing inter-generational trauma. These factors are recognised as having a fundamental impact on the disadvantage and poor physical and mental health of Indigenous peoples worldwide, through social systems that maintain disparities”.   Researchers from the University of Western Australia's School of Indigenous Studies highlight the impact of colonisation was "far more catastrophic than physically taking control of Country and its Indigenous people".   "It is the traumatic actions and events that continue long after the initial takeover of lands, like the unprecedented spread of Western diseases that caused death to many communities and/or mass killings of Indigenous peoples during the frontier wars and more," they said. "Colonisation has a flow-on effect to everyday Australian life, such as law, systems and organisations."   Researchers point to a number of research papers that found Indigenous Australians who had been subject to policies of colonisation such as the forced removal of children and elders from families and communities consistently suffered adverse outcomes as a result.   A 2018 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), for example, found that members of the Stolen Generations were "more likely to be worse off than other Indigenous Australians of the same age on a range of health and socioeconomic outcomes". Their descendants "were also consistently more likely to have experienced adverse outcomes over a broad range of health, socioeconomic and cultural indicators".   Dr Tracy Westerman, a clinical psychologist with 25 years of experience in Indigenous trauma, suicide and mental health says academic research highlights the ongoing impact of historical trauma due to colonisation on Indigenous young peoples. a 2016 review of scientific literature found "general consensus that the impact of colonisation on the health of Indigenous people manifests negatively … [and] is experienced intra-generationally and inter-generationally".   Elsewhere, a 2022 report published by the AIHW stated that "colonisation has had a devastating impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and culture".   "Violence and epidemic disease caused an immediate loss of life, and the occupation of land by settlers and the restriction of Aboriginal people to 'reserves' disrupted their ability to support themselves," the report, Determinants of Health for Indigenous Australians, found.   "Together with the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities, Indigenous Australians have suffered ongoing inter-generational trauma."   A fact sheet published by the Centre of Best Practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention concurs.   "The combined effects of colonisation and oppressive policies and practices have had a profound and enduring impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' health and social and emotional wellbeing," the fact sheet states.   Jon Altman, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University (ANU), says the colonial legacy was "a key explanator" of the disparities between Indigenous Australians and the remaining Australian population.   "The exclusion of Aboriginal people from the mainstream provisions of the welfare state until the 1970s, left a deep legacy reflected in socioeconomic disparity". This could be seen in differing outcomes for measures such as life expectancy, education and employment, says Professor Altman.   He noted the impact of other factors; these included remoteness, ongoing neglect, demographic differences and "cultural priorities", such as a desire to stay connected to ancestral lands where governments did not provide services and where there may be no employment prospects. "So intergenerational disparities in themselves generate poverty for many," he said.   http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043659620935955 http://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/indigenous-australians/stolen-generations-descendants/summary http://healingfoundation.org.au/aihwchildrensreport/ http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020872819870585 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0138511 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12546-016-9164-1 http://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/social-determinants-and-indigenous-health http://cbpatsisp.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Fact-Sheet-4-2023-Version.pdf
	Indigenous human rights activists should be protected not criminalised by OHCHR, COICA , Rights & Resources   For indigenous human rights defenders, standing up for rights, protecting their land, culture and way of life often leads to harassment, criminal charges, even murder.   “The indigenous peoples of Colombia are at risk of physical and cultural extermination and on the threshold of genocide, because we continue, despite the peace agreements, to experience the systematic nature of the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples,” said Aida Quilcue Vivas, a human rights counsellor of the National Indigenous Organizations of Colombia.   Vivas is a member of the Nasa peoples, one of the 115 recognized groups of indigenous peoples living within the country. She told the Human Rights Council that these continued attacks on indigenous peoples amount to genocide. Vivas was one of the panellists taking part in a discussion on the protection of indigenous human rights defenders during the Human Rights Council.   Panellists discussed the various ways that these “extraordinary people representing some of the most vulnerable communities in the world are additionally endangered now,” said UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif.   “The global challenge of COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, exposing … pre-existing structural inequalities,” she said. “Indigenous peoples were already disadvantaged in terms of their health and access to quality health care prior to the pandemic. The crisis has only made this situation worse".   "Reports of increased conflict and encroachment over indigenous land in recent month’s point to yet further negative outcomes for indigenous people. The short and long-term social and economic consequences of COVID-19 are unlikely to improve their lives.”   One of the reasons that attacks and killings of indigenous human rights defenders is so prevalent is that perpetrators enjoy almost total impunity, said Andrew Anderson, Executive Director of Frontline Defenders, a non-profit that helps to protect human rights defenders.   “In fact, in the past three years, we have documented the killing of 240 indigenous peoples’ rights defenders, over a quarter of the global total of human rights defenders killed,” Anderson said. “A shockingly high statistic, given that Indigenous peoples make up only an estimated 5 percent of the global population.”   At the heart of many of these disputes is land. Indigenous people find time after time their territories and ancestral places are carved up and sold off, often with little or no consultation. Those who resist are brutally handled, with many being left homeless or killed.   Such is the case for the indigenous forest Pygmy peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), said Joseph Itongwa, Chairman of the Indigenous Peoples Network for the sustainable management of forest ecosystems in the DRC.   “Several external threats weigh on these indigenous lands, often marked by cases of land dispossession frequently accompanied by violence, forced expropriations and relocations, land conflicts and expulsions of indigenous Pygmy peoples from their lands, without consent or consultation,” said Itongwa. He called on the DRC government to enforce human rights law, nationally and internationally, for which it is a signatory.   Indigenous people who do try to stand up for their rights, often find themselves treated as criminals, said Vivas. Her organization has documented more than 10,000 cases of victimization and violent acts against indigenous human rights defenders in Colombia, many happening while people are protesting, she said.   “That is why today I also want to clarify and say that because we have had to resort to resistance to enforce our rights, the governments’ strategy is to treat us - indigenous peoples, students and civil society - like terrorists, criminals,” Vivas said.   Thus, States must be held better accountable in protecting the lives of indigenous human rights defenders, said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a member of the Kankanaey Igorot peoples of the Philippines and former Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.   Citing a report, she presented to the Council in 2018, Tauli-Corpuz made several recommendations for State actions including undertaking impartial and prompt investigations to provide effective reparations to victims of criminalization and extrajudicial killings, as well as enacting laws that expressly support the protection of human rights defenders. She also urged businesses looking to work in indigenous areas to adopt the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as a benchmark for ethical behaviour.   “There should be more constructive dialogues between indigenous peoples and the states as well as the private sector at all levels from the local up to the national up to the global levels if the private sector, for instance, is involved there should also be processes which they install that will allow for that kind of dialogue to take place,” she said.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Indigenous-HR-Defenders.aspx   Apr. 2021   Declaration of a Human Rights Emergency of Indigenous Human Rights Defenders in the Amazon Region - COICA Board of Directors & Coordination Council   The following is a Human Rights Emergency Declaration for Indigenous defenders of the Amazon written by Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and endorsed by its member organizations.   It is a call to action for governments of the nine Amazonian countries, international human rights organizations, and organizations and allies of human rights defenders including the United Nations (UN), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).   The alarming and systematic murders of our Indigenous brothers and sisters in Amazonian countries demonstrates a clear violation of human rights which has been aggravated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The strength and survival of Indigenous Peoples and the protection of the Amazon is being threatened.   In 2020, 263 murders of human rights defenders were recorded in Latin America, 202 (77%) of which occurred in countries in the Amazon Basin (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru).   Also in 2020, 69% of the murders were of leaders working to defend the environment and the rights and territories of Indigenous Peoples.   The first quarter of 2021 alone recorded 19 murders of Indigenous brothers and sisters (Colombia and Peru) who were defending the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Mother Nature.   Behind the murders of Indigenous Peoples advocating for human rights and Mother Nature, there are structural problems directly linked to the progress of extractive activities that align with the interests of corporations with state agreements that promote hydrocarbon extraction, indiscriminate mining, aggressive deforestation, drug trafficking, increased militarization, and the continuation of an armed conflict that has been diplomatically silenced, thus threatening the physical and cultural integrity of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities.   Since most of the murders have occurred as a result of defending territory and carrying out actions in favor of land titling, the lack of titling of Indigenous territories represents one of the greatest threats.   The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) has established that this loss of leaders damages the social fabric of Indigenous Peoples and represents an expressed will to silence voices, thus disrupting the organization and organizational structure because it hinders the ability to express concerns about issues affecting communities.   The right to life is the most important human right since it is on the basis of this right that all other rights are realized. It is enshrined in Article 4 of the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).   Thus, IACHR establishes that the right to life is a “fundamental human right, the enjoyment of which is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of all other human rights. If it is not respected, all rights are meaningless.”   In accordance with ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, Article 2 establishes that “governments, with the participation of the peoples concerned, shall assume the responsibility to develop coordinated and systematic action to protect the rights of these peoples and ensure respect for their integrity”.   In Article 7, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), states that “Indigenous individuals have the right to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of person.”   It further determines that “Indigenous Peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.”   COICA is an organization of international convergence representing more than 511 Indigenous Peoples (including 66 in a situation of isolation and initial contact) that focuses its efforts on the promotion, protection, and security of Indigenous territories in line with specific ways of life, principles, and social, spiritual, cultural, political, and economic values..   * Access the full statement:   http://rightsandresources.org/blog/declaration-of-a-human-rights-emergency-of-indigenous-human-rights-defenders-in-the-amazon-region/ http://www.forestpeoples.org/en/inter-american-human-rights-system-un-human-rights-system/news-article/2021/amazonian-indigenous Visit the related web page
	View more stories