Court date looms for Nth Lismore Plateau development

THE Torres Strait Regional Authority’s (TSRA) Badu Rangers and Land and Sea Management Unit partnered with Tangaroa Blue Foundation to host a Great Barrier Reef Clean-Up event last year.

The Great Barrier Reef clean-up is an annual event that is designed to remove marine debris from waterways and develop a better understanding of how debris travels and arrives in the region.

Tangaroa Blue Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the removal and prevention of marine debris and data on the marine debris collected will now be entered into the Australian Marine Debris database.

More than 100 people participated in the event including school students, My Pathway participants, Council Staff, community members, Elders and traditional owners.

ABORIGINAL men from Central Australia are coming together to help prevent domestic violence.

The ground breaking men’s group Uti Kulintjaku (to listen, think and understand clearly) Watiku (belonging to men) made up from Aboriginal (Anangu) men from the NPY (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantatjara Yankunytjatjara) lands are coming together to prevent family violence and talk and support young people’s wellbeing in remote communities.

The group was born from NPY Women’s Council’s (NPYWC) Ngangkari (traditional healing) program. 

NPYWC is one of Central Australia’s leading health, social and cultural service providers to the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in Central Australia. It is traditionally led by women’s law, authority and culture. Family and domestic violence programs and conversations are often the domain of women. 

Now respected Anangu men are entering into the conversation to learn and create impact in their communities.

DEVASTATING bushfires across Australia have sparked calls for for the urgent roll-out of a national program to reintroduce cultural fire and land management practices.

Proponents argue that the cultural burns practised for thousands of years by Aboriginal people could help prevent a repeat of the bushfires that have ravaged communities in past months, and resulted in the deaths of people and animals.

Meanwhile, grants have become available for Indigenous land owners and businesses to help secure properties and clean up after the bushfires have passed.

Leading the calls for the reintroduction of cultural burning is the Firesticks Alliance, an Indigenous led organisation that works with communities, land and fire agencies and organisations across Australia. 

Firesticks chief executive Oliver Costello told the Koori Mail that traditional custodians had prevented the types of uncontrolled fires that were devastating communities.

AURUKUN Mayor Dereck Walpo is calling for calm, after hundreds of people fled a riot sparked by an alleged murder in the Far North Queensland community.

Homes were firebombed on New Year’s Day when a group of about 200 armed people took to the streets of Aurukun on Cape York looking for “vengeance”, police say.

The violence followed the alleged stabbing murder of a 37-year-old man, for which two teens have been charged.

Police flooded Aurukun after the riots, but their presence wasn’t enough to prevent about 230 fearful people fleeing to a nearby bush camp and a neighbouring town.

About 110 people continue to hide out in the bush camp about 80km from Aurukun.

A community group is helping to feed, shelter and look after their sanitation needs, however, concern is growing for their health.

Traditional owners opposing a nuclear waste dump in their country say they have been denied a voice by the Federal Government.

Two sites near Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula and one near Hawker in the Flinders Ranges had been shortlisted as possible locations for the dump, which would be designed to take Australia’s low to intermediate-level waste.

But after local opposition, last year the Hawker site was ruled out.

But almost 62% of Kimba residents voted in favour of the dump being built on one of two sites near Kimba.

Barngarla Traditional Owners have released a film in which they claim they were excluded from the Kimba ballot, because TOs living off country were denied a vote.

THIS year Sydney Festival hopes to contribute to the conversation around Australia Day/Invasion Day by thinking about what life was like the day before the landing of the fleet 250 years ago. 

Sydneysiders will gather on the evening of January 25 at Sydney Town Hall to join the Procession through the streets of Sydney – a smoking ceremony, song and dance led by Aboriginal Elders. 

This new Sydney Festival event will occur through the streets of Sydney to Barangaroo to pay homage to processions like the first Day of Mourning meeting in 1938.

At dusk, they will arrive at Barangaroo to start The Vigil, an overnight opportunity to gather campfire-side, experience live performances by Indigenous artists, and reflect on who we are and how we got here as a country.