24th June - 'The Intervention Walk Off & Human Rights in the NT' - Richard Downs Community Forum

Richard Downs - Alyawarr Spokesperson for Intervention Walk Off

Visiting Perth from 21st June 2010 until 28th June 2010.

When: Thur 24th June 2010 / 6pm for 6:30 start

Where: Curtin University Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Bldg 211.

Many people around Australia have already been inspired by the Alyawarr people's walk-off. On July 14, following a great tradition from Aboriginal struggles of the past century, they walked off their community and set up a protest camp.

Their community had been compulsorily "acquired" for five years by the federal government, through powers granted to it through the NT Emergency Response legislation (the NT intervention).

The welfare recipients of Ampilatwatja all had their income "quarantined" — half their income replaced with a "basics card" that can only buy specified things at specified shops. This even applies to the aged pensioners who worked hard all their life, for rations and a little cash, opening up the country so the pastoral industry could exploit it.

With their pensions now quarantined, the elders felt they'd been returned to the rations days.

In February this year, a group of trade unionists and Aboriginal rights activists from Victoria, New South Wales and the NT joined forces with the Alyawarr people from Ampilatwatja community to help make history by building a "protest house" in contrast to the federal governments tardy attitude to building the housing infrastructure in Aboriginal communities.

When John Pilger spoke alongside Richard in April, he said;

"When I first heard Downs speak ... I knew that an exciting new chapter in the struggle of Indigenous Australians had opened... The issues which the Gurindji brought to light — the denial of basic human rights, the lack of proper living and working conditions and the racism — are no different in principle from those described by Downs and other Alyawarr elders since their own historic walk-off in July last year."

The public meeting is sponsored by Aboriginal Rights Coalition, Deaths in Custody Watch Committee (WA) Inc, Amnesty International, Curtin University of technology Centre for Aboriginal Studies, Greens WA and the Socialist Alliance.

*A Flyer for download is available below.