Plan for Indigenous People to Watch Cops

Plan for indigenous people to watch cops

• Staff | The Australian, July 13, 2017

Indigenous communities across Australia could be trained to expose police harassment with mobile phones and social media if a human rights group’s plan succeeds.

The Copwatch project will provide human rights lawyers and journalists to teach indigenous communities how to film and share interactions with police and authority figures.

Sydney-based National Justice Project is developing the program as a response to complaints of over-policing in indigenous communities.

Sixteen Aboriginal communities in NSW’s central west will put their hand up for Copwatch if it gets off the ground.

“The community shouldn’t be the ones monitoring the police behaviour but we have to because of ongoing abuse,” Murdi Paaki chair Des Jones told AAP on Wednesday.

“It will teach people their rights, how to use their phones. It’ll train them to be aware and when to lock-and-load their recording device.”

Mr Jones, whose organisation represents 16 communities, said he wants to put the experiences Aboriginal people have with police in front of human rights watchdogs.

NSW Police respects the rights of citizens to film in a public place, a spokesman told AAP.

He added that there were existing avenues to file complaints about the conduct of officers but did not comment on allegations of over-policing among indigenous communities.

Copwatch has raised more than $23,000 of its $50,000 goal through crowdfunding online at chuffed.org.

Australian Associated Press

[SOURCE]

San Carlos Apache Tribe Takes On Australian Resources Giants

PHOTO: Naelyn Pike, 16, says the Oak Flat campground is sacred to the San Carlos Apache tribe. (ABC News: Stephanie March)

Native American San Carlos Apache tribe takes on BHP, Rio Tinto over plans to mine sacred site

A group of Native Americans in Arizona are taking on two Australian resources giants to try to save a sacred desert campground from being destroyed by a huge mining development.

Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of Australia’s Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, plans to turn the area around the Oak Flat campsite in the Tonto National Forest into the biggest copper mine in North America.

Members of the local San Carlos Apache tribe said Oak Flat was a sacred place where they had held religious and cultural ceremonies for centuries.

“It is no different to what people can relate to about Mount Sinai,” Apache tribal leader Wendsler Nosie said.

The company has warned the underground mining operation could eventually cause Oak Flat to sink by 300 metres, making it inaccessible to the public.

“If this is destroyed it can never come back to us and that is the one thing I don’t think Resolution Copper understands or sees,” 16-year-old Apache activist Naelyn Pike said.

PHOTO: The company has started exploratory work on the site but will not start full-scale production for years. (ABC News: Stephanie March)

Campground lost in controversial land-swap deal

Ever since white settlement, Native Americans have struggled to hold onto their land, but the company argued the mine could coexist with the local community.

“We don’t have too much say in the location of the resource that we are developing,” Resolution Copper project director Andrew Taplin said.

PHOTO: Wendsler Nosie is trying to get Congress to repeal the legislation that could see the Oak Flat campground become a copper mine. (ABC News: Stephanie March)

The company acquired the land through a controversial land-swap deal approved by the US Government in December.

Under the deal, Resolution Copper will take control of more than 970 hectares of copper-rich land around Oak Flat, and the company will transfer more than 2,140 hectares acres of privately owned land across the state to the US Forest Service.

After failing to get the deal through Congress for years, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain attached it at the last minute to a “must-pass” spending bill — the 1,600-page National Defence Authorisation Act — late last year.

“It’s downright crazy, dirty [and] disrespectful,” Mr Nosie, who is spearheading the fight against the mine, said.

The company has started exploratory work on the site but will not start full-scale production for years.

PHOTO: The Oak Flat campground could sink up to 300 meters as part of the mining operations. (ABC News: Stephanie March)

Project would have benefits for community: miner

Opponents are lobbying members of Congress to pass the Save Oak Flat Act, a piece of legislation from Arizona Democratic Representative Raul M Grijalva that would repeal the land-swap deal.

Resolution Copper has already invested more than $1 billion in the development it says is one of the top five undeveloped copper resources in the world.

Project director Mr Taplin said the project would have huge benefits for the local community.

“The mine will have a life of 40 years and, over the life of the project, will develop over $60 billion worth of economic benefits,” he said.

That would include thousands of jobs — including for Apaches living on the nearby San Carlos Reservation, which has some of the highest unemployment levels in the state.

“Employment is something we are going to need on our reservation,” Mike Betom, an employee of Resolution Copper and a member of the San Carlos Apache tribe who supports the mine, said.

The company said 25 of its current employees were Apache, 15 per cent of the total workforce.

“I think it will eventually provide opportunities for [tribe] members, education benefits, scholarships, community partnerships,” Mr Betom said.

“There are a number of other things that can happen between the mining company and the San Carlos reservation if they ever decide to come to the table and talk.”

Arizona is one of the most heavily mined parts of the United States. The region where the Resolution Copper project is underway has been home to mining operations for over a century.

As part of the development, the company is rehabilitating large tracts of land previously damaged by mining operations.

The company said it would continue to consult with the community as it went through the permit process, but Mr Nosie said he and his supporters would not give up their fight to stop the project.

“This time we are going to hang onto the land, we are going to hang onto what God created, we are going to hang onto the spirituality of this place,” he said.

PHOTO: Fifteen thousand Native American Apaches live on the San Carlos reservation in Arizona. (ABC: Stephanie March)

Source: ABC Online‎

 

Land Chief Threatens To ‘Kill’ Tourism Industry

The remote Aboriginal community of Pandanus Park, in the Kimberley.

The New Daily

Kimberley Land Council has made the announcement in protest against closure of remote Aboriginal communities.

The head of the Kimberley Land Council has threatened to “kill” Broome’s estimated $141 million annual tourism industry in protest against the closure of remote Aboriginal communities.

Anthony Watson said he would be happy to move his own community to Cable Beach and “camp for weeks and months” to ensure the Western Australian Government involved Aboriginal people in its discussions about the future of remote communities.

He said he was unconvinced by the State Government’s promise that it would consult extensively with Aboriginal people and keep them fully informed.

“We’ve always been out of sight, out of mind and pushed away,” he told ABC’s Four Corners program.

Anthony Watson, chairman of the Kimberley Land Council.

“Consultation is due to start in May, but we are yet to see any details.”

In a statement this week, Mr Watson said the State Government’s reforms were a “blatant PR and marketing exercise that will tell us nothing”.

“What we need is change of attitude across the board, where Aboriginal people are trusted to control their lives,” he said.

The CEO of the West Kimberley’s Winun Ngari Corporation, Susan Murphy, said she did not believe any of the communities deserved to close, but conceded some were facing massive challenges with drugs and alcohol.

Ms Murphy said problems in remote Aboriginal communities could not be solved by governments alone.

“We have to start standing up, we’ve got to be responsible for our own actions and our own decisions and if we want the same as we get in a town, we need to start fighting for it,” she said.

“But we’ve also got to start showing governments – that’s local, state and Commonwealth – that we can do it.”

Town struggling to cope with homeless itinerants

Even without community closures, the Broome Shire Council said the town was struggling to cope with the impact of a growing number of people from remote communities who come to Broome and have nowhere to stay.

Broome Shire president Graeme Campbell said about 150 people were sleeping rough in the town’s parks, on roadsides and in shop fronts each night.

Mr Campbell estimated mass closures of remote communities could add another 200 homeless people a night.

Broome’s Chamber of Commerce said the homeless visitors had become a security risk and it had advised shopkeepers to install CCTV cameras and be careful locking up at night.

Chamber of Commerce president Rhondda Chappell said alcohol restrictions in a number of Kimberley towns made Broome, which has few liquor restrictions, a magnet for people from remote communities.

“We have itinerant people on the streets. A lot of those are affected by alcohol and so therefore are often violent and angry,” Ms Chappell said.

Police unable to protect children in remote communities

Problems of excessive drinking and drug use underlie much of the debate around the closure of remote communities.

Mr Watson pointed out that communities have not only become vital as safe havens, where families can raise children away from the drugs and alcohol which pervade many towns, but have also become refuges.

A neglected playground in the remote West Australian town of Djugeriri.

“I know that families, when they do break down, they go back to the community and lift themself up again and try to go and face the world again,” he said.But others argue drugs, alcohol and poor management have made some communities dysfunctional.

West Australian Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan told Four Corners he knows of communities in the Kimberley where “children are being sexually abused every day”.

Commissioner O’Callaghan declined to name any specific communities but said there was “no significant way of protecting children in communities where there is no police presence” as there would be in a metropolitan area or larger country town.

He said police in the Kimberley told him they could not sleep at night, worrying about what was happening in some communities.

“The same applies to me,” he said.

“Knowing what I know, it’s very difficult to sleep at night, knowing that we cannot protect these children in any effective way.”

West Australian lawyer John Hammond was involved in an inquest into a spate of deaths at a now closed remote Indigenous community and said he believed there were other communities that should also be forced to close.

The Kimberley community of Oombulgurri was closed several years ago after a coronial inquiry found it to be in a state of crisis, with high suicide rates, sexual abuse, child neglect and domestic violence.

“There are other Oombulgurris and I have visited them. They have the most depressing living conditions imaginable. They are a disgrace to Australia and to all of those who have a prosperous way of life,” Mr Hammond said.

 

Australians Protest Indigenous Community Closures

The Western Australian government says it can’t afford to provide basic services to many remote Indigenous communities. | Photo: Peter Boyle/ Green Left Weekly

teleSUR

Australia’s major cities have been inundated with protesters infuriated by a proposal to cut basic services to remote Indigenous communities.

Thousands of Australians marched nationwide Friday to protest proposed shutdowns of remote Indigenous communities.

In Melbourne, the city center was filled by an estimated 10,000 protesters frustrated by the proposed closures, according to activists.

“Every so often, the beast of Australian genocide rears its colors in full light of day. The forced closure of (Western Australian) Aboriginal communities is one such moment,” activist group Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance said in a statement.

Similar rallies took place in all of Australia’s major cities.

A spokesperson for the organizers of the Perth rally said the protests had also received international support, with solidarity protests cropping up in New Zealand and outside the Australian High Commission in Ottowa, Canada.

“Overwhelmed, overwhelmed with support,” SOS Black Australia representative Della Rae Morrison told SBS.

Friday’s rallies were the second wave of nationwide protests against the proposed closures, which could see between 150 and 274 Indigenous communities across the state of Western Australia lose access to basic municipal services like water and electricity.

Alarm bells first rang in late 2014, when the federal government said it could no longer afford to maintain infrastructure in remote communities, and handed responsibility to the states. Western Australia’s government responded by stating it too would be unwilling to cover basic utility costs. Despite receiving around AU$90 million (US$68 million) from the federal government in exchange for taking responsibility for the communities, the state government says many communities may soon be scuttled.

The state’s premier Colin Barnett has responded to backlash to the proposed closures by arguing the government hasn’t decided how many communities could lose services, though he conceded, “I would expect there’d be a significant number.” “No person will be forced from their land.

No person will be forced from their community but the state will not be able to provide services across that many communities,” he told ABC.

Speaking to teleSUR in March, Western Australian Indigenous community organizer Jodie Bell said the impact on communities has been trivialized by the government.

“We know we are dealing with a very stubborn Western Australian premier – he has shown this on many occasions, over many issues. However we need to keep the pressure on him until he consults with communities, and at least allows communities a seat at the table to discuss this issue rationally,” she said during an exclusive interview.

Bell continued, “Our spiritual and cultural life is intricately linked with our country and we have fought hard in the past 30 years to regain the ability to live in our country following years of displacement as a result of government policies.” “We will not move, we cannot move,” she said.

This content was originally published by teleSUR

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Australians-Protest-Indigenous-Community-Closures-20150501-0004.html.

Maori Solidarity: Haka Against Forced Evictions Of Remote Aboriginal Communities (Video)

Protesters say Indigenous Australians are facing displacement from Sydney’s Redfern to Western Australia’s remote communities. | Photo: Pip Hinman/ Green Left Weekly

By Red Power Media Staff

Māori based in Sydney joined forces with those who marched against the closure of over 100 remote Aboriginal Communities.

On Friday, supporters of the Indigenous communities affected by the impending closures rallied in Sydney and Melbourne and other areas of Australia to show opposition to the decision of the Western Australian government, a decision supported by the Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The opposition to the proposed closure of the remote communities has grown drastically both online and on the ground.

Hey @9NewsMelb @7NewsMelbourne @TenNewsMelb, were 10k.. not "hundreds"

(pic by @Utopiana)

#SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA #AusPol http://t.co/vIpS9T9dcU—
Mark ✌ (@WorldOfMarkyD) April 10, 2015

A haka was performed at the Sydney event to showcase the support Māori have for the Aboriginal people, which was shared on Facebook.

Video: Solidarity Haka against forced evictions. Hundreds have turned out in Sydney, it is time to stop the systemic abuse of the first peoples of this country!

New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key has remained tight lipped on the issue refusing to comment saying, “this is a matter for the government of Australia.”

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is preparing to visit New Zealand next Monday

Tony Abbott is preparing to visit New Zealand next Monday for the Dedication of an Australian Memorial at Pukeahu Park in Wellington.

A number of rallies have been organized across New Zealand over the coming weeks to show support for the Indigenous communities of Australia battling to save their remote communities from closure.

To find out more about the upcoming gatherings follow the links below.

Saturday the 18th April: https://www.facebook.com/events/1377563769237233/permalink/1379938748999735/

Friday the 1st May: https://www.facebook.com/events/1560990274154721/