“I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through there; best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”
Lead Belly, Scottsboro Boys, 1938
Latest Papers
The working papers collection comprises historical papers as well as current ideas and works in progress on some of the major issues and topics of our times.
Ngarda Civil & Mining's Heavy Plant Operator Training (Oct 15-Dec 7) took Indigenous people who were unemployed into high quality employment in the mining industry. Of the 20 who started 19 were offered jobs. With editorials by Executive Chairman Barry Taylor the newsletters tell the story. A major final report is due soon.
Patrick Dodson ranks amongst the greatest of Australian men. For eleven long years his extraordinary presence and capacity have been lost to the nation. With the prospect of Kevin Rudd or Peter Costello as Prime Minister we have the prospect of this great figure returning to national service. The question for the nation and for Dodson is: how best can his destiny to be one of our greatest Australian leaders be fulfilled?
The model deal achieved by Gallarrwuy Yunupingu should be rolled out to all Indigenous communities in the North, the South, the East and the West. That is the test of the bona vides of Howard and Brough and the challenge for Labor. However the deal casts a shadow over the way Indigenous leaders work with each other. Out of the bad feeling, now only Patrick Dodson can pull all of the forces of Indigenous Australia together to form a strong national leadership group that is capable of lobbying for plans that benefit all Indigenous Australians, not just those who have a strategic negotiating advantage.
John Howard has become no little big man, just a little old man. The revelatory blow has come from his own comrades.
When I looked into the campfire I saw not only two hundred years of overwhelming sadness, but a thousand years of wisdom. The gift comes to me now whenever I like – in my dreams, in my thoughts. It comes to me through the people I know.
It was three o’clock on a Friday afternoon in the wealth creation capital of Australia and there he was stealing around the rubbish bins, searching for a half used cigarette, a bit of food - a modern day Fagin.
Former Macquarie Bank Chief Bill Moss' call for more incentives to invest in Indigenous Australia is a welcome one.
In his opening address to the 2007 Garma (“both ways learning”) forum, Gallarrwuy Yunupingu told us that he was “worried sick” about the effects of the current Northern Territory intervention legislation before the Senate.
We’re at that dangerous point in the political cycle when journalists think they determine the outcome of elections. However one ex-journalist does seems to be turning the tide.
Robert Kenny's remarkable book is the story of Wotjobalak man, Nathanael Pepper, who reaches the heights of religious acceptance and hope in the late nineteenth century and yet is doomed never to move beyond a certain level. When he dies at the age of 36, after an extraordinary life as an interpretor of two worlds, he has achieved only the status of ‘native helper’.
