Not a Southern Cross tattoo in sight

Hundreds of protesters gathered at the Redfern Community Centre on Australia Day to call for an end to the Northern Territory Intervention and other Government policies that obstruct Aboriginal self-determination.

“It’s not Australia Day, it’s Invasion Day,” said Aunty Norma Sims, an Aboriginal elder from La Perouse, near Botany Bay where Captain James Cook sailed into Sydney.

Australia Day marks the colonisation of Australia by the British and as such is seen as day of mourning for many Aboriginal people.

The rally was organised by Aunty Shirley, a leader on The Block together with the Stop the Intervention Sydney (STICS) collective.

“It’s about time that we had our own intervention,” said Aunty Shirley as she urged the Aboriginal community to continue their struggle.

Jean Parker from STICS also spoke to the crowd: “The thing I wanted to stress was this phrase ‘cultural genocide’ because we are here today 223 years after the invasion and the beginning of the occupation of Australia by colonial forces.”

“While the initial phases of that occupation were explicitly about the genocide of Aboriginal people, a lot longer of that 223 years has been about cultural genocide, and that is why we are marching here today against the NT Intervention,” she said.

“I think it’s really powerful that we are here today, on Invasion Day, to mark the resistance that Aboriginal people have continued against this occupation and the genocide.”

Other speakers included Greens Councillor Irene Doutney, Valerie Martin Napaljarra based in Kalkaringi in the NT, Graham Merritt of STICS and Monique Wiseman, also from STICS, who read a statement from Tjanara Goreng Goreng, who blew the whistle on the government’s plans for the intervention.

The rally also called for an end to black deaths in custody, noting the death three years ago of Aboriginal elder Mr Ward who died in the back of a prison van travelling to Kalgoorlie.

Following the speeches, protesters took the streets with banners that read “Sorry means you won’t do it again” and “No racist intervention”. The march went from The Block in Redfern to Yabun Festival in Victoria Park for a day of talks, workshops and live music celebrating Indigenous culture.

BY KATE AUSBURN