Sovereign Union | Non-governmental organisation (NGO)

Sovereign Union

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25.01.2022 Looking at the ties between Australia and China fast unravelling from an outside Australia perspective. Imran Khan discusses this issue with Einar Tangen, a political analyst specialising in China affairs and Pauline Loong, managing director of Asia-analytica, a research consultancy firm

24.01.2022 David Rowe cartoon

23.01.2022 MACQUARIE SET THE TONE FOR ALL THE MASSACRES Governor Lachlan Macquarie's regiments were ordered to pursue and fire upon any Aboriginal people who attempted to escape apprehension as the soldiers scoured the settled and unsettled areas about Sydney. The governor declared that Aboriginal men shot and killed during such encounters were to be hung from trees in prominent positions, to strike fear and terror amongst the surviving Aboriginal population.... For example, in his instructions to Captain Schaw of the 46th Regiment, Macquarie stated: "On any occasion of seeing or falling in with the Natives, either in bodies or singly, they are to be called on, by your friendly Native Guides, to surrender themselves to you as Prisoners of War. If they refuse to do so, make the least show of resistance, or attempt to run away from you, you will fire upon and compel them to surrender, breaking and destroying the spears, clubs, and waddies of all those you take Prisoners. Such Natives as happen to be killed on such occasions, if grown up men, are to be hanged up on trees in conspicuous situations, to strike the Survivors with the greater terror. On all occasions of your being obliged to have recourse to offensive and coercive measures, you will use every possible precaution to save the lives of the Native Women and Children, but taking as many of them as you can Prisoners." The bodies of slain warriors were also decapitated, though in secret, and their heads sent off to museums in Europe. Camps were created to house those people captured, whilst prisoners were transported to penal establishments such as Port Arthur and children were taken from families and tribes for re-education. Gatherings of six or more Aborigines were declared illegal, customary practice was outlawed, as was the carrying of spears, and the non-Aboriginal civilian population was granted permission to shoot and kill those Aborigines who did not adhere to the tenets of the various proclamations issued by government. The campaign - or "service" as Macquarie called it - was to be executed with "secrecy and despatch" (Organ 1989). This brutal and barbaric action on the part of the authorities was also to make it clear to the rest of the population that the Aboriginal people were to be treated in a manner which would ensure the security of the ever expanding settlement. TEXT SOURCE: 'Secret Service: Governor Macquarie's Aboriginal War of 1816' by Michael K. Organ - University of Wollongong Available Online (with references) in PDF format: https://goo.gl/95qWHm IMAGE SOURCE: The top part of the plaque is from a photo taken of the description at base of a statue of Lachlan Macquarie at the southern end of Macquarie Street, Sydney. The bottom was photoshopped by Sovereign Union to include an excerpt of one of Macquarie's orders and an image of Governor Macquarie.

22.01.2022 On October 16th 1968 the US athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest against racism in America during the Olympic Games medal ceremony. The two US athletes received their medals without shoes, but wearing black socks to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride, Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with all blue-collar workers in the US and wore a necklace of beads "for those indiv...iduals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the Middle Passage". Both athletes were vehemently condemned at the time, and received numerous death threats in the aftermath. Smith had won the 200m race with a World Record time of 19.83, but as punishment for the protest he was never allowed to compete for the US national team again. The Australian silver medallist Peter Norman was also severely punished for his role in the protest. He wore the same human rights badge as the two US athletes, and he was the one who came up with the idea of Smith and Carlos wearing one black glove each after Carlos forgot to bring his pair. Norman was blacklisted by the Australian Olympics committee, and denied a place at the 1972 Olympics, despite repeatedly bettering the qualifying time. None of the three athletes ever raced at another Olympic Games. When Norman died in 2006, Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his funeral. He received a posthumous apology from the Australian government in 2012. Immediately after the protest Smith said that "if I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight". The moment has gone down in history as one of the greatest sporting protests. It's just a huge shame that the three athletes involved were ostracised and abused for taking a stand against racism. EXCELLENT VIDEO IN COMMENTS

22.01.2022 Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) made history in 2018 as one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, along with Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas). Now, dozens of tribal leaders are urging President-elect Joe Biden to make history again by picking Haaland to be his secretary of the interior.

22.01.2022 Still at it with their Cowboy Hazard Reduction burns and this one got out of control. When are they going to wake up to Aboriginal slow burns?

22.01.2022 Well, we're at it again! Dry lightening storms are causing headaches for us across the Warddeken IPA. This photo captures how our teams work a fire line - using... blowers to create mineral earth breaks and back burning from those breaks when conditions allow, all the while patrolling them to ensure the flames don't break our containment line. As always, top work by our incredible rangers. See more

21.01.2022 CALL FOR STATUE OF APPALLING COLONIAL MAN REMOVED There has been a call for the large statue of William Crowther in Tasmania, the man that mutilated the remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal First Nations man William Lanne (Lanney) and removed his skull and sending it to London in 1869. More below ... WARNING - DISTURBING INFORMATION... William Lanne was the youngest child in the last family taken to the Aboriginal camp at Wybalenna on Flinders Island in 1842. In 1847, he temporarily moved to Oyster Cove, and was sent to an orphanage in Hobart until 1851 and later worked on whaling boat. He died on 3 March 1869 from a combination of cholera and dysentery. Following his death, Lanne's body was dismembered and used for scientific purposes. An argument broke out between the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal Society of Tasmania over who should possess his remains. A member of the English College of Surgeons named William Crowther, applied to the government for permission to send the skeleton to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, but his request was denied. Nonetheless, Crowther managed to break into the morgue where Lanne's body was kept and decapitated the corpse, removed the skin and inserted a skull from a white body into the black skin. The Tasmanian Royal Society soon discovered Crowther's work, and decided to thwart any further attempts to collect "samples" by amputating the hands and feet. Lanne was then buried in this state. Crowther claimed that, because Lanne had lived much of his life within the European community, his brain had exhibited physical changes, demonstrating "the improvement that takes place in the lower race when subjected to the effects of education and civilisation." Several bodies of Crowther's collection were donated to the anatomy department at the University of Edinburgh. In the 1990's, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre believed Lanne's skull to be among them, and requested its return. It along with some other remains were ultimately returned and reburied. This is just an outline of an unbelievable and disgraceful story. FURTHER READING: Wikipedia: https://goo.gl/fv9y5V The mutilation of William Lanne: (pdf) https://goo.gl/99WqWX Monuments leave out dark side to colonial past http://tiny.cc/fccoqz See less

20.01.2022 Biden should think again if he thinks the Federal government had anything to do with Australia's success regarding the virus, the state and territories had to fight the feds tooth and nail to keep their borders closed and maintain the necessary lockdowns. The Federal border control boss was one of the first people to bring the virus into the country and his department let a ship load of cases disembark in the middle of the largest city a few days later - and the tracing App he provided was a total failure.

19.01.2022 Governor Lachlan Macquarie's regiments were ordered to pursue and fire upon any Aboriginal people who attempted to escape apprehension as the soldiers scoured the settled and unsettled areas about Sydney. The governor declared that Aboriginal men shot and killed during such encounters were to be hung from trees in prominent positions, to strike fear and terror amongst the surviving Aboriginal population. For example, in his instructions to Captain Schaw of the 46th Regiment, ...Macquarie stated: "On any occasion of seeing or falling in with the Natives, either in bodies or singly, they are to be called on, by your friendly Native Guides, to surrender themselves to you as Prisoners of War. If they refuse to do so, make the least show of resistance, or attempt to run away from you, you will fire upon and compell them to surrender, breaking and destroying the spears, clubs, and waddies of all those you take Prisoners. Such Natives as happen to be killed on such occasions, if grown up men, are to be hanged up on trees in conspicuous situations, to strike the Survivors with the greater terror. On all occasions of your being obliged to have recourse to offensive and coercive measures, you will use every possible precaution to save the lives of the Native Women and Children, but taking as many of them as you can Prisoners." The bodies of slain warriors were also decapitated, though in secret, and their heads sent off to museums in Europe. Camps were created to house those people captured, whilst prisoners were transported to penal establishments such as Port Arthur and children were taken from families and tribes for re-education. Gatherings of six or more Aborigines were declared illegal, customary practice was outlawed, as was the carrying of spears, and the non-Aboriginal civilian population was granted permission to shoot and kill those Aborigines who did not adhere to the tenets of the various proclamations issued by government. The campaign - or "service" as Macquarie called it - was to be executed with "secrecy and despatch" (Organ 1989). This brutal and barbaric action on the part of the authorities was also to make it clear to the rest of the population that the Aboriginal people were to be treated in a manner which would ensure the security of the ever expanding settlement. SOURCE: 'Secret Service: Governor Macquarie's Aboriginal War of 1816' by Michael K. Organ - University of Wollongong Available Online (with references) in PDF format: https://goo.gl/95qWHm

18.01.2022 The only massacre of white people is going to be a major movie.

18.01.2022 About 200 people rallied in Brisbane to protest the Labor government's recent decision to raise police funding by more than $624 million. Protesters instead called for the police to be defunded and abolished. "Police don't make you safe," one speaker said. Led by First Nations people, protesters marched to Queensland Police headquarters and then to Queen St Mall in a highly passionate and moving demonstration.

17.01.2022 Frydenberg will be remembered as the inventor of the two-class tax cut. Those travelling first class get a big tax cut that’s permanent and will show up in their bank account in a few weeks. Those in second class get a small tax cut that’s temporary, and they won’t see it until the second half of next year which is when it will then be whipped away, leaving them paying more tax, not less.

15.01.2022 THE TRAGIC STORY OF MATHINNA Mathinna, the daughter of a Port Davey chieftain, Towtrer (also written as Towgerer) and his wife Wongerneep.Mathinna was born on Flinders Island, Tasmania in 1835. When she was about five years old, Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin visited Flinders Island and took a fancy to Mathinna and decided to adopt her and took her back to Hobart.... The Hobart Mercury's report of Mathinna, one of the very few written records of the girl, said Mathinna arrived at Government House with a kangaroo skin, a rush basket, some shell necklaces and a pet possum. Mathinna shared a governess with the Franklin's own daughter Eleanor and was regularly seen sharing a carriage with Lady Franklin, but when the Franklins were called back to London in 1843 they left little Mathinna behind. She was sent to the same orphanage where the sister she never met had died. Mathinna was in the orphanage for about a year before she was sent back to Flinders Island, now aged about nine. Fanny Cochrane Smith later said she was treated very badly by the preacher of Wybalenna, whose house she shared with Mathinna, but no record is known of Mathinna's time there. Mathinna never seems to have settled into any community after her experience with the Franklins. Mathinna didn't have long to live in her nether world. She did what many who feel they don't fit in anywhere do, she turned to alcohol abuse. The most reliable account has her leaving a pub down in North West Bay and then drowning in a puddle in 1852 by which time she would have been 17 years of age. The story of Mathinna is one of many thousands of stories, who all have their own individual accounts of gross abuses during colonisation and beyond. IMAGE: Thomas Bock's portrait of Mathinna painted in 1842 when Mathinna was about seven years old

15.01.2022 Rupert Murdoch has funnelled Foxtel out of News Corp Australia to a mysterious entity in the secrecy jurisdiction of Delaware. Michael West reports on the secret transactions which appear designed to sell News Corp’s Australian media business. This sheer brazenness of Rupert Murdoch or perhaps it is his son Lachlan reshaping the group is but part of the changing News Corp picture, one part in a radical restructure of the Australian assets whose purpose appears to be cleaning up the Murdoch house for sale.

15.01.2022 More than 15,000 hectares was today handed back to the Ngiyampaa people, significantly increasing the size of protected land at Mount Grenfell. The newly reserved land will be called the Mount Grenfell National Park and the Mount Grenfell State Conservation Area, together forming a protective ring around a culturally significant art site.

14.01.2022 Yaama Yaama this is a poem that my neice Raelene wrote for me in our fight to save our rivers #yaamangunnabaaka

12.01.2022 Thousands marched across the United States on Saturday to protest Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and to call for his defeat in the 3 Nov...ember election. The rallies were inspired by the first Women's March in 2017, a huge anti-Trump rally held a day after his inauguration. In Washington, a smaller counterprotest was also held in support of Judge Barrett. Read more here: https://bit.ly/2TgWmEd (: AP) See more

11.01.2022 The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative, based in Detroit's North End, is an all-volunteer, non profit sustainable agriculture project that produces free organic ...food for people within a two mile radius. The aim is to use urban agriculture as a platform to promote education, sustainability, and community in an effort to empower urban communities. learn more: www.miufi.org Join our Leaf of Life group https://www.facebook.com/groups/leafoflifecommunity/

09.01.2022 The Northern Territory Labor Government introduced the laws primarily to expedite a decision on a large Dan Murphy's outlet, which had previously been rejected by the NT's independent Liquor Commission on public health grounds. The legislation means decisions about four licence applications, including Dan Murphy's, will be taken out of the hands of the independent Liquor Commission which was set up by the Government of Chief Minister Michael Gunner and the Government's director of liquor licencing will instead be ordered to decide on the applications in 30 days.

08.01.2022 A recurrent theme in many Kimberley Aboriginal oral history accounts are the white colonist’s racist dismissals of any form of Aboriginal humanity and the subse...quent apparent guilt-free ease with which they were killed. Here Yungngora/Walmadjari man Ginger Ngaanawilla, who was born in the early decades of the 20th century on Noonkanbah pastoral station, describes what the ‘Gudia’ [also Kartiya, Gardiya - white colonists] did. We see common themes: pacification of the Aboriginal workforce, the abduction of Aboriginal women followed by Aboriginal reprisal followed by killing. And here you see other disconcerting ways that colonists used to hide the body and subsequent bones. Why? No bones = no evidence = no investigation = no death. Ginger also witnessed a brutal attack on his father at Quanbun station by the station owner where he was tied to a tree and bashed with a rock, crippling him, for leaving the station. There appeared to be no limit to the pettiness of an incident that would provoke a killing. In the early 1920s the notoriously brutal pastoralist Jack Carey ‘threatened most Aboriginal people he met’ and shot and burnt large numbers of men, women and even children. He once shot three stockmen dead because they had left a goat yard gate open. Cherrabun, Christmas Creek and Bohemia Downs are pastoral stations formerly known as Gogo Station owned by Isodore Emanuel; and Quanbun was owned by A.J. Rose - places notorious for Aboriginal killings.

07.01.2022 The Federal representative of the Cook electorate

06.01.2022 The crooked Coalition thought it could prop up its budget position by extorting hundreds of thousands of Australians. Yes, we noticed. So arrogant is the Morr...ison Government, they didn’t listen to the warnings. They even ignored the deaths of everyday Australians under their own illegal scheme. Who is accountable? We need a Royal Commission into Robodebt.

06.01.2022 A monumental Indigenous art site in remote western Queensland has been officially opened to the outside world. Ancient paintings and etchings of megafauna, emu symbols and the traditional Indigenous Seven Sisters story cover the towering cliffs at Turraburra. "The story wall goes for about 200 metres and it is filled with tens of thousands of engravings, of paintings and petroglyphs," said Iningai woman Suzanne Thompson.

04.01.2022 The fire on the world’s largest sand island, also known as K’gari, has been burning for six weeks and is encroaching on areas with 1,000-year-old trees

03.01.2022 The world’s no.1 miner announced in June that would place on hold part of its $3.4 billion expansion plans for South Flank, which would have destroyed dozens of sacred aboriginal sites. The move followed a national backlash over Rio Tinto’s blasting of a 46,000-year-old indigenous site.

02.01.2022 THE 200 YEAR COLONIAL TRIBUTES CONTINUE ... 'Goulburn 2020' features a dramatised play which 'commemorates' two hundred years since Governor Lachlan Macquarie and his party passed through the Goulburn Plains in 1820. His visit marked the beginning of European settlement who murdered and dispossessed First Nations people. Although some Europeans had previously claimed the Plains were too cold for Aboriginal people to live, the area was a bountiful food source with evidence of Aboriginal firestick farming, resulting in rich "treeless plains".

02.01.2022 Exclusive: data from Ceduna, one of the trial sites the Coalition wants to make permanent, finds the card has had ‘no substantive impact’ The cashless debit card has had no substantive impact on crime, gambling and drug and alcohol abuse in one of the trial sites the government wants to make permanent, according to a new study.

01.01.2022 More than 15,000 hectares of land is being given to a national park to form a "protective ring" around some of the most significant Indigenous rock art and artefacts in Australia. For Auntie Elaine Ohlsen, an elder with the Ngiyampaa people of north-western NSW, the transfer of the former grazing property to a national park under their control to protect the Mt Grenfell historic site has taken decades of activism.

01.01.2022 This weeks Firesticks film features Gumea-Dharrawal (Cabbage Palm People), Yuin man Jacob Morris speaks about the special relationship between Casuarina trees, ...cultural fire and the Black Cockatoo. ‘Nowra means Black Cockatoo Our mountain Cambewarra, is the home of his creation.’ Jacob Morris - Gumea-Dharrawal (Cabbage Palm People), Yuin Mudjingaalbaraga Firesticks Team ‘If he doesn’t have that place to eat then he starts to go away. And he’s being forced away from his own country.’ Jacob Morris - Gumea-Dharrawal (Cabbage Palm People), Yuin Mudjingaalbaraga Firesticks Team Filmed at the National Indigenous Fire Workshop at Bundanon Trust on Yuin Country in 2018. @VeraHong & @CraigBender