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Keywords: Uluru

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Pilger's cheap shots won't ease Indigenous oppression

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 February 2014
    13 Comments

    Rabble-rousing Australian journalist John Pilger is prone to hyperbole. He refers to a 'concentration camp' located on Rottnest Island and proceeds to denounce the atrocities that occurred there. He conducts a vox pop amid flag-waving Australia Day revellers, goading them with questions about the white invasion with predictably cringe-worthy results. He may have good intentions, but he's not doing Aboriginal Australia any favours.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rock's radical Australia Day message

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 23 January 2013
    14 Comments

    As a social and political activist since my teens, people ask me what motivated me early on. A few factors shaped my values, including my Irish Catholic background and my public housing upbringing by a widowed mother on welfare. But it was a rock song that brought it all together. 'Someone lied,' it declares: 'Genocide.' 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to re-imagine the Australian flag

    • Philip Harvey
    • 11 May 2012
    50 Comments

    The readiness of Australians to design a flag that is agreed to and honoured ought to be on the agenda of any forward-looking party. Otherwise a day will come when a design will be foisted on us that no one likes and has no distinctive meaning. One only has to listen to the national anthem to know Australians are capable of embracing second best.

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  • RELIGION

    The Pope in Alice: 25 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 29 November 2011
    19 Comments

    Protocol dictated that he could not wear Aboriginal colours. But local custom won out when he donned a black, red and yellow stole given to him on the track. His speech put strong challenges to the Church, but offered too optimistic a reading of the prospects of Aboriginal Australians taking their rightful place in it.

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Indigenous Australia in 2031

    • Lea McInerney
    • 20 July 2011
    6 Comments

    In 2012, the settler people of Australia finally made their peace with their Indigenous brothers and sisters. With this came the discovery of what had been lost, what was missing, what needed to be restored. There was much work to be done and together they made a plan.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Wattle Day should be our national day

    • Paul W. Newbury
    • 23 January 2011
    37 Comments

    Indigenous antipathy to Australia Day is deeply entrenched. Wattle as a symbol offers an alternative because it is native to this place, and it is not a memorial of our ties with Great Britain. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Oprah and Australia's 'socialist' health care

    • Susan Biggar
    • 16 December 2010
    18 Comments

    Were she to suffer a broken leg or burst appendix and find herself a customer on the doorstep of our excellent and equitable healthcare system, America's best-known mouth might go home peddling a message that could change her society.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The trouble with free speech

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 March 2009
    2 Comments

    A French satirical paper was sued for portraying Muslims as terrorists and labelling them 'jerks'. The editors would have us believe it's a case of free speech versus censorship. But there's more to it than that.

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  • RELIGION

    WYD mass crosses cultures

    • Carmel Pilcher
    • 18 July 2008
    17 Comments

    The organisers of the WYD opening mass did not attempt to integrate Australian elements into the mass, but included them as added extras. The ritual structure of the mass requires creativity to make it connect with different audiences.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Pope invokes 'spirituality of the land'

    • Chris McGillion
    • 16 July 2008
    3 Comments

    Australians see themselves more as a sunburnt people than as people of a sunburnt country. The Aboriginal smoking ceremony during the Papal Mass introduced a distinctive spirituality where reflection upon the physical environment is key. (April 1995)

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Heartfelt account of life in Mutijulu

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 August 2006

    Aided by stirring imagery of the Central Australian outback, Uncle Bob’s melodic vocal tones draw the viewer deeply into his description of the indigenous concept, “Kanyini”—a holistic sense of “connectedness” that encompasses family, belief system, spirituality and relationship with the land.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    On country

    • John Sendy
    • 06 July 2006

    John Sendy reviews Words for Country: landscape & language in Australia, Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths, eds.

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