International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

Thank you for signing the petition for #TreatyNow. There is a growing and undeniable groundswell of conversation about Treaty happening now in media both traditional and social. Tuesday August 9 is an important day to keep that conversation going: it is International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. See: http://www.un.org/en/events/indigenousday/ While this petition hovers close to 200 signatures as I write, I’d like to urge you to share the petition again and help build this important moment in time. Help support our people of the first nations to find true equality, freedom to choose the way they live and to be unshackled from government that shames and oppresses their choices. I know it’s hard to put your name on the line, and then to let your friends know how you feel, but we will never be free of hate and racism until we all work together and speak out about the injustices and shameful acts inflicted on the people who originally owned this land. Don’t bury history – stand up for change. #TreatyNow Australia is the only Commonwealth country that does not protect the rights of its Indigenous people in a Treaty of understanding. The explorers who found this country and declared it Terra Nullius where quite obviously wrong. We know now that the people Indigenous to this land, now called Australia, have lived on a vast island country for many thousands of years. People in many smaller nations and kinship groups hunted, fished and cultivated the land, and they were protected and nourished culturally, physically and spiritually by the land. A Treaty would define this original ownership in a legal recognition, bestow equality of human rights and acknowledge and enshrine Indigenous people’s relationship to country. p.s. There’s another great article out today by Prof George Williams who is Dean of Law at the University of New South Wales. See the link below.