in this issue

* Aunty April’s October Editorial

*Australian Senate enquiry into Stolen Wages

*Palm Island 2004 Watch house death. Qld. Coroners findings

*Land claims in Cyberspace

*The Purple Shirt

*The BOO Factor!

Subscribe here and get a short notice about once a month, or if something urgent comes up, letting you know a new edition is on the website and a few clues about what’s in it.

If you cant figure out how to subscribe from the link, send an email to homeland@kalkadoon.org with clear instructions that you want to be put on the newsletter list, and we will fix it up from our end. (dont be shamed, one of our techno-experts needed help too)

If you are looking for past articles you can find them in the Archive links or through the search function.

Well Aunty April is officially taken over the October edition bare naked and ready to romp
I finally get some time cause I missed you all so much and cyberintercourse is were its not orally but a message stick with a kick in it
Everyone intercoursing in cyber so I don’t want to be left out you know you can never get too much of that and john that other editor has been too b usy intercousing that’s why he walks around with a big smile on his dial all the time

Getting down to business now my neice baganun Kuritityin and john have a band which is called the BOO factor and they are looking for some work they been rehearsing and rehearsing it drives you crazy so I told them I’d manager them and get them
A gig cause they put their little hearts into their rehearsal doon’t wich way
So if any wants to book them just give me a tingal as their manager ill take a small commission for managing them make sure they got water on stage, massages and syke the up thearpy a manger work is never done . Sometime I got run to the shop at last minute while they on stage with a cup of tea they don’t care about me I’m just their slave. As I’m older they don’t have to wory about the sex bit but everyone else can worry for it like to clean out the washing once in a while .
So don’t foreget the gig so that we can have a feed

So the gimmie gimmie tribe and fukawy tribes are at war and I’m n the middle who to back up because most of my mob the bogaling mob are from the fukawy tribe but they are still gimmie gimeie tribe through blood ties they both drive a hard bargin especially the gimmie mob everything they see they want and the fukawy mob don know who they are half the time

I put a link to Senater Andrew Bartletts indigenous info pages because the colour purple always turns me on not because I’m asking you to vote for him

a recent photo of the senators purple shirt. (while at a stolen wages meeting in Rockhampton recently with the Fitzroy Basin Elders. The senator is the one in the middle)

If you want to talk to John Tracey he has an article on murris in cyberspace with an open forum on it so you can a good orgasism with him
If you want to talk to aunty arpril or baganan sent email straight to me

Please address to Aunty April CONFIDENTIAL
homeland@kalkadoon.org

To all the mothers who have lost their children in jail may your healing be prosperous and peacful

love Aunty April
link to my other website

photo of my mum eva creed (on right) and freinds in front of the dormitory on palm island where the girls who wer stolen lived and work for no wages and were requiered to go to Fantome island and do the laundry at the leper colony for no wages - Baganan

To the
Committee Secretary
Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee
Department of the Senate
Inquiry into Stolen Wages

Submission from Theresa Creed and John Tracey
on behalf of kalkadoon.org

We support the present terms of reference of the Senate enquiry. It is important
that the facts of the matter be established. However we would urge the senators to
also seek solutions to the problem as well as simply analysing it. With this in mind
we refer specifically to reccomendation “I”
“whether there is a need to ’set the record straight’ through a national forum to
publicly air the complexity and the consequences of mandatory controls over
Indigenous labour and finances during most of the 20th century”

We suggest that any future action by the senate or federal government be directed to
finding realistic solutions to the problems identified by the enquiry, not simply public
acknowledgements of the problem.

Our legal advice is that Baganan Kurityityin Theresa Creed, one of the writers of
this submission, and her family are descendents of the victims of crime who have
passed away have no claim in the courts to the stolen wages, nor a right to claim from
the present Qld. Compensation offer. Yet it is these descendents such as Baganan
who bear the burden and carry the consequences of the systematic impoverishment of
Aboriginal people through the “protection” era.

A simply legalistic response from governments at all levels will not address the real
issues of Aboriginal disadvantage or more importantly strategies of rebuilding
aboriginal prosperity and health.

We suggest that solutions, including realistic compensation for stolen wages lie in
good willed negotiation and creative planning by all range of government and
Aboriginal authorities. The process of inquisition, blame, prosecution, defence and
lawyer-created outcomes will simply be a waste of everyone’s time and the taxpayer’s
money and not advance policy goals such as the advancement of Aboriginal society or
of reconciliation and resolution in the hearts and minds of the victims and their
families.

We acknowledge that state governments are not able to pay proper compensation in
cash terms and we encourage all governments to look to “out of the box” ways to
settle justice for stole wages.

We advocate a compensation package based on a joint venture of federal, state and
local governments.

We suggest that public housing budgets and stolen wages compensation funds be used
to engage in real estate developments that supply private house and land packages to
Aboriginal families as compensation for stolen wages and other tragedies of history.

We suggest that an “average Australian family” would have used money such as that
stolen from Aboriginal people to secure a family home if they had the opportunity to
do so. We see the provision of family homes as being a realistic compensation to all
Aboriginal people who are today living with the consequences of stolen wages and
other systematic obstacles to prosperity.

We refer the senate enquiry to a model of real estate development framework
identified in the attached “Out of the Box” report.

Please find following

“Out of the Box”
Architecture and town planning to facilitate prosperity in remote Aboriginal
communities.
A discussion paper produced by kalkadoon.org
For The “Gunya 21 Link Tank”
July 2006

John Tracey
Baganan Kurityityin Theresa Creed
On behalf of
kalkadoon.org

contact
kurityityin@yahoo.com

Full Kalkadoon.org submission

all the written submissions to the enqiry

Aunty April says I talk too much and am only allowed one article this newsletter. Who am I to argue? I am just the editor.
So this is it.

As from next year (2007) kalkadoon.org will be publishing from Palm Island. Up until now kalkadoon.org has been run by a small group of people and only two regular writers, Baganan and myself. Now aunty April has decided she is an editor too! Next year kalkadoon.org will remain the sole and exclusive property of Baganan, (don’t tell Aunty April that though) however we fill invite other Palm Islanders to contribute writing, art and photos regularly. We have not yet caught up with the possibilities of pod casting – music and video on the website, but we are looking in that direction.

The following is a non-Aboriginal perspective of the possibilities of the Internet. Why is culture an issue? Quite simply – most whitefellas are on the Internet and most blackfellas aren’t. This is not just an economic or a technological divide, it is also a cultural divide as the Internet is a major maker of culture in the same way as television or books are.

Whitefellas, in general, are developing new ways of communicating with ourselves and finding information. We are no longer relying on a handful of commercial media outlets to get our news, we can go direct to the source and find out for ourselves. The new “blog” revolution means not only does information get delivered from many perspectives, we can also discuss and criticise these perspectives in an open and independent forum – the “blogosphere”. The word “blog” is short for web log, meaning a diary or a log on a website that is updated regularly. Most blogs have a comments function that allows readers to contribute their ideas and responses to what is written.

In the 70’s a bloke called Paolo Friere set up adult literacy programs in various places around South America. Instead of using childish techniques of teaching such as children’s books with children’s language (often outdated hand-me-downs from a more affluent place), he based his pedagogy (way of teaching) on things like letters to politicians, filling out forms, taking minutes, writing articles etc. Instead of learning how to read and write before using the skills, Friere taught people the skills by actively engaging in the areas that needed the skills and developing them through ongoing social action. As a result, people who were previously invisible to powerful people or anyone else now had a voice and the opportunity to engage with governments, corporations, aid and social justice groups and the public in general.

When, and not until, most Aboriginal people have regular access to the internet, preferably in their home just like the white fellas, then I believe the whole world, including non-Aboriginal Australia will get a much better understanding of Australian reality than at present, when Aboriginal people freely roam the blogoshere. There are plenty of Aboriginal websites at present, such as kalkadoon.org. But you the reader can say “wow that was fascinating” and move on to the next fascinating website without exploring or clarifying the implications of that which is fascinating. On a blog discussion, issues can be explored deeper than a journalistic overview. Questions can be asked and challenges put. It is the process of thrashing through an idea that demands an open mind – just to try and understand what is being said. There is no open mind in just reading an article, just a simple judgement of “Yeah, I agree” or “that fella’s a fruitloop”. Having made an assessment, the process stops.

Remote Aboriginal communities such as Palm Island are “out of sight and out of mind” as far as the governments and mainstream society is concerned. The recent media interest in Aboriginal community violence and native title, including much discussion on blogs, has been mainly a discussion amongst non-Aboriginal commentators (such as myself) totally within non-Aboriginal understandings, logical frameworks and basic knowledge without input from Aboriginal Australia who, with the exception of negative media hysteria, is still swept under the carpet.

The blogoshere is uncensored territory in Australia (and does not have the restrictions of native title law), Aboriginal people claiming their slice of it will allow the world to see things from an Aboriginal perspective.

People who cannot yet read and write in the English language do not face any barriers to joining the blogosphere, as it is simple to post photos of people, places, artwork or anything. Such things would be much more interesting to the world community, most of whom do not speak English and would have no interest in even the most brilliant articles, such as those on kalkadoon.org. However the artwork on the site, we hope, makes it more fascinating than just words.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. You can get a blog for free. There are many. If you go to my website, John Tracey’s articles, essays and other writing, which is a free one, and look at the strip at the very top you can follow the links to set up a “blogspot” blog.

On my website is an article called”Sex, Political Dinosaurs and the Evolution of the Bloggosphere” which gives an introduction to the blogosphere. It makes fun of our good friend and supporter, Drew Hutton – a regular visitor to Palm Island. Drew and I were discussing the possibilities of the Internet and it became apparent that neither of us knew how to use it politically. That conversation has triggered a keen interest in how the Internet can facilitate connections on Palm Island. Not just politically but also educationally and economically.

That’s all from this deposed editor until next edition, unless aunty April hangs around longer than she promised.

I would like to acknowledge the Master of Australian indigenous cyberspace – Dr. Gary Foley, who discovered cyberspace before many whitefellas and a long way before this one. He has lead the mainstream in developing web based resources, especially the documentation of history. His websites offer a much deeper and realistic understandings of Aboriginality than any tourist advert or white commentary. His facilitation of other Aboriginal websites has launched a first fleet of indigenous cyber-colonists claiming the truely terra nullius territory of cyberspace.

Please feel free to post your comments on John Tracey’s Soapbox

forget about all the words, look for the photo of the senator in a purple shirt and Murrundoo Yanner as well. I couldn’t resist. - Aunty April

*Baganan’s August message

* Gunya Gossip Aug 26 An evening of discussion, music, poetry and dance

* Racism in Townsville and the Palm Island riot court case

*Young Beyond Blue

* “Out of the Box” a vision of housing

*The Boulia Stone House Museum

All artwork in this edition by Baganan

Subscribe here and get a short notice about once a month, or if something urgent comes up, letting you know a new edition is on the website and a few clues about what’s in it.

If you cant figure out how to subscribe from the link, send an email to homeland@kalkadoon.org with clear instructions that you want to be put on the newsletter list, and we will fix it up from our end. (dont be shamed, one of our techno-experts needed help too)

If you are looking for past articles you can find them in the Archive links or through the search function.

Hello and hi to everyone out there

There are some interesting and informative happenings in the newsletter

Beyond blue has made a break through and has now contacts all over the nation which is good to hear as people don’t usually want anything to do with anyone in that condition but there is a network of people who know what its all about so if you feel that you cant be understood because your beyond blue then give them a call.

Racism in Townsville article shows that things are still going on in the deep north nothing has changed as us mob who grew up there can tell you ,and when you see teenagers getting run down on the streets and left to die . My symphthey goes out to their parents and brothers, sisters and all the family of these children. That should never have happened and in the 21st century when race relations has supposed to have come all long way we still see this happening.

I was privileged to have meet up with the parents and family of one of the racial hit and run victims in Townsville and see how much strength they have to go on despite this horrible thing that claimed the life of their loved one. They are asking people to help in any way they can so that this doesn’t happen to anymore Aboriginals in Townsville.
We have seen a lot of people fall victim to racism over the past 30 years let alone the 200 years.
No wonder the palm island court case is changed to Brisbane as the defendants risk being hit and run in Townsville before they get to court

“Out of the box” housing report includes ecological housing for extended families and answers some of the too hard basket questions of where and how to house everyone. There needs to be more home grown vegetables and bush tucker to be planted around these houses so that they can enhance the landscape and be more self sufficient and be healthy. And water tanks too!

Sometimes the white bureaucrats need to ask the Murries (Qld. Aboriginal people - ed.) how to do things because the bureaucrats don’t understand and they never will understand what it is to be Aboriginal because they are not Aboriginal.

Murries need a glimpse of what life was like without or before the “Qld Act” and mission system (Qld.’s laws that made all Aboriginal people wards of the state - ed.) , then we can let our spirit be free. Murries haven’t been able to dream because the mission system dictated to us what we can and can’t do. But we are not under the Qld act and mission system any more so we should embrace prosperity, peace and healing.

see ya soon
Baganan Kurityityin