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Keywords: Sacred Sites

  • ENVIRONMENT

    The unyielding spirit of Uncle Kevin Buzzacott

    • Michele Madigan
    • 18 April 2024
    6 Comments

    An Arabunna man, Uncle Kevin Buzzacott devoted himself to the protection of that delicate, glorious country of north eastern South Australia with its Great Artesian Basin’s ancient waters threatened by the succession of powerful mining companies operating Roxby’s Olympic Dam.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fighting identities: Polarisation, nihilism, and the collapse of online discourse

    • Ben Rich
    • 17 February 2022
    11 Comments

    Today we see a resurgence of digital tribalism, a glorification of disingenuous engagement online and humiliating those of a different perspective. Everywhere we see simplistic and belligerent narratives of ‘us versus them’ over more nuanced explanations that might impart a greater sense of shared humanity and common purpose. So what happened?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Repatriating remains is an obligation not a gift

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 01 April 2019
    4 Comments

    The South Australian Museum is rectifying slivers of colonial damage by repatriating the remains of over 4000 Aboriginal people to their communities. This will be welcome news for Aboriginal communities, but also a reminder of the need to lobby against policies that deprive them of the right to a dignified connection with their ancestors.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's time for a native title reckoning

    • Kate Galloway
    • 27 March 2019
    5 Comments

    In the wake of the Timber Creek Decision, state and territory governments should be looking to implement negotiations with traditional owner groups around the nation to seek to settle the property claims — comprehending economic and non-economic losses. It is in no one's interest to engage in a court process for every single claim.

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  • RELIGION

    Supporting those on the margins

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 February 2019

    'We can do this better by breaking down the silos and binding together our concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.' Opening Keynote Address by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the Catholic Social Services Australia National Conference, Port Macquarie 19 February 2019.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Walking together for a better future

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2018
    3 Comments

    Frank Brennan's keynote address to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council Assembly entitled: 'Strong Faith. Strong Youth. Strong Future — Walking Together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future'. 1 October 2018, Technology Park — Bentley, Perth

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Moving from Uluru to Recognition

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2018
    15 Comments

    On such a journey, we will not find common ground except by compromise, unless of course there is agreement about the principles at stake, and agreement that there is only one way to apply those principles to the challenges at hand in the contemporary context. Even among Indigenous Australians there is no unanimity on that.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Treaty holds the key to robust environmental law

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 09 September 2016
    17 Comments

    When I read this week that Tony Abbott and John Howard will hear no talk of a Treaty with Aboriginal Australia, my first thought was 'Who listens to these blokes from ancient political history?' Abbott conceded that it is important to recognise Indigenous Australians were here first, 'But once it goes beyond that I think you open up all sorts of other things.' That is true, and those other things to be opened up are incredibly legally exciting and relevant to our times.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Bob Ellis and the other nuclear royal commission

    • Michele Madigan
    • 08 April 2016
    16 Comments

    The passing of Bob Ellis recalls his faithful accompanying of the 1984-1985 royal commission into the British nuclear tests conducted in South Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. His article on the Wallatina hearings described what he named as the commission's 'worst story of all': Edie Milpudie's telling of herself and her family camping, in May 1957, on the Marcoo bomb crater. Re-reading the Ellis article, tears stung my eyes. It's so good when truth is recognised and held up for our freedom.

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  • RELIGION

    Religious thought in sacred secular Australia

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 March 2016
    6 Comments

    I offer no public judgment of Pell, and unlike many other commentators I'll await the findings of the royal commission. I have however been outspoken about his right to a fair hearing and natural justice, not because I am a priest but because I am a human rights lawyer who cares about the universal application of the rule of law. It is when a representative of institutional religion like Pell taps into the generic religious sensibility or moral consciousness that the real work of Australian religious thought is done.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Contours and prospects for Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 October 2015
    2 Comments

    I acknowledge those Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who insist that they have never ceded their sovereignty to the rest of us. I join with those Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who hope for better days when they are recognised in the Australian Constitution. As an advocate for modest constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians, I respect those Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who question the utility of such recognition. But I do take heart from President Obama's line in his Charleston eulogy for the late Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney: 'Justice grows out of recognition'.

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  • The challenge of education for social justice

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 July 2015
    3 Comments

    I suspect Pope Francis had some of our Jesuit alumni in mind when he wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si: 'A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth... True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good. Political powers do not find it easy to assume this duty'.

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