Aboriginal people driven from their land

Emma Murphy writes that Aboriginal people driven from their land.

Driving Aboriginal people off their land will rob them of their areas of wealth and expertise: their connection to, and knowledge of, country, maintenance of their languages, cultures and oral histories.

Aboriginal people living on their homelands are also often at the forefront of struggles to protect country from extractive industries: this is the case around the world. In the NT, Indigenous leaders are focusing on environmental struggles, as the NT government seems intent on digging up and selling some of the most ecologically significant parts of the continent.

Clans at Borroloola and across the Roper region are gearing up for a fight against fracking on their country. And leaders of the Muckaty campaign, with their supporters across the country, had a big win last year when the federal government withdrew plans to store radioactive waste on their country.

The strong grandmothers leading the current fight against Aboriginal child removals need our respect and support, as do the many Aboriginal activists around the country who have taken the baton, rekindled the fires of resistance and kicked off 2015 by taking the fight to Canberra.

While there are many issues being raised by these activists, there are also many ideological threads that join them together. They are struggling for the right to assert and control that which is theirs, and that which white Australia has tried so long to take from them, whether it is their children, their land, their language or their identity.

While Tony Abbott’s “Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs” title becomes more of a joke as his inaction continues, Aboriginal people themselves are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and setting the agenda.

Emphasis Mine

Here racism is being used in the service of the mining and fracking industries. With Aborigines out of the way, the miners and frackers have free reign.

It doesn't matter that people's lives are devastated as along the All Ordinaries stock index continues to rise and the profits keep rolling in.

In supporting the Aborigines to live in dignity and with respect, we become more human. We need to learn to see beyond the myopia of Capitalism, and see the human community within the ecosystem.