Elderly woman forced to isolate under a tree in remote community due to lack of facilities

Quarantine facilities desperately needed in Yuendumu where Covid has ripped through community, relative says

A resident of the remote community of Yuendumu, who is caring for a toddler and a partner on dialysis, is pleading with the Northern Territory government to provide a local quarantine facility, after her Covid-positive elderly relative was forced to sleep outside on the veranda and spend three days under a tree in order to safely isolate from the rest of the family.

The Warlpiri woman, who has asked not to be named, says she is “stressed and worried” that her child and partner remain exposed to the virus while the relative remains in their care. She says communication with health officials has left her confused about whether her relative will be sent to quarantine elsewhere or asked stay at home.

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Boy who died after going missing from remote NT community was mauled by dogs

Police say three-year-old’s wounds were ‘consistent with an animal attack’

A young boy who died after going missing from a remote central Australian desert community was mauled during a “horrific” dog attack, police say.

The three-year-old’s family reported him missing on Friday evening after searching Hermannsburg, south-west of Alice Springs, for several hours.

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Federal government to pay out $2m to settle class action over ‘racist’ work for the dole program

Indigenous leaders argued participants faced tougher welfare penalties than those in other parts of Australia

The federal government will pay a traditional owners corporation representing some of the poorest communities in Australia more than $2m after settling a class action that argued the remote “work for the dole” program was racist.

The Community Development Program (CDP) has required about 30,000 jobseekers in remote communities to work up to 25 hours a week to receive the dole. Participants, 80% of whom were Aboriginal, were said to have faced tougher welfare penalties than those in other parts of Australia.

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Vale David Dalaithngu: the inimitable actor who changed the movies, and changed us

The star has left behind a profound body of work – and a permanent, inimitable impression on his industry

In the 1976 classic Storm Boy, the great Yolŋu actor David Dalaithngu delivers a line that became immortalised in Australian cinema. “Bird like him, never die,” he says, describing the pelican Mr Percival.

The substance of that line can apply to the man himself, who will live on through the light and shadow of the cinema, on to which he left a permanent and inimitable impression.

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‘Unapologetically truthful and unapologetically Blak’: Australia bows down to Barkaa

After overcoming personal tragedy, the rapper has clawed her way back – with a politically potent debut EP dedicated to First Nations women

Baarka didn’t come to mess around. Born Chloe Quayle, the 26-year-old rapper was a former teenage ice addict who did three stints in jail – during her last, five years ago, she gave birth to her third child.

Now the Malyangapa Barkindji woman has clawed her way back from what she describes as “the pits of hell” and is on the verge of releasing her debut EP, Blak Matriarchy, through Briggs’ Bad Apples Music. She has been celebrated by GQ as “the new matriarch of Australian rap”; and has her face plastered on billboards across New York, Los Angeles and London as part of YouTube’s Black Voices Music Class of 2022. (“I nearly fainted when I saw [pictures of it],” Barkaa says when we meet over Zoom. “The amount of pride that came from my family and my community ... It was a huge honour.”)

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Amnesty UK accused of ‘spreading false information’ about Northern Territory Covid outbreak

NT Aboriginal health organisation and Amnesty’s Australian arm ‘extremely disappointed’ by UK office’s statement

Amnesty UK has been accused of “spreading false information” about the Northern Territory’s Covid outbreak in an extraordinary joint statement from the territory’s peak Aboriginal health organisation and Amnesty’s own Australian operation.

Disinformation about the Covid outbreak in Aboriginal communities near Katherine, spread by third parties online, was on Thursday described by the NT chief minister as “conspiracy theories” pushed by “tinfoil hat wearing tossers”.

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The Wheel of Time actor Madeleine Madden: ‘As an Aboriginal woman, my life is politicised’

The star of the new Amazon Prime fantasy series and granddaughter of Charles Perkins discusses her ‘dream role’, multiracial casting and finding freedom outside Australia

When she walked into the London casting room of The Wheel of Time, Madeleine Madden scanned the faces – a sea of white – and thought, “Yep, standard.”

To announce her presence, she politely inquired, “The Wheel of Time?”

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Australian corporations’ treatment of Indigenous customers to be investigated by inquiry

String of scandals involving some of Australia’s biggest business names prompts parliamentary probe

After a series of high-profile cases of corporate failures, the way big businesses in Australia treat Indigenous customers will be examined by a parliamentary inquiry.

The destruction of Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto was one of the most recent inexcusable acts, but it is not alone. Woolworths was forced to abandon plans to build a liquor warehouse near three dry Aboriginal communities. Earlier this year, Telstra was fined $50m by the federal court which found it had exploited Indigenous customers by signing them up for phone contracts they could not understand or afford.

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‘It hurts and it’s wrong’: family of Aboriginal woman shot dead by WA police officer speak out after acquittal

Supporters of JC say 30 years after the Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commission there is still ‘no equality’

The family of a Geraldton woman shot dead by a Western Australian police officer has said there is “no equality” and “no justice” for Aboriginal people after the constable was acquitted of her murder on Friday.

“In terms of Aboriginal people, we don’t get no fairness, there’s no equality and this is evidence with what’s happened here,” Bernadette Clarke, the sister of the victim, known as JC for cultural reasons, said on the steps outside Perth’s district court.

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Police officer who shot dead Indigenous woman on WA street found not guilty of murder

First-class constable also acquitted of manslaughter over 2019 death of woman known as JC in Geraldton street

A police officer who shot dead an Indigenous woman carrying a knife on a suburban West Australian street has been acquitted of her murder.

The first-class constable faced a three-week trial in the WA supreme court over the September 2019 killing of the 29-year-old woman, known as JC for cultural reasons, in the state’s Mid West.

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Indigenous man dies during ‘violent struggle’ with Queensland police

Two men are on the run after fleeing the scene in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, while two police officers have minor injuries

An Indigenous Queensland man has died during a “violent struggle” with police that also left two officers with minor injuries.

Two other men were on the run after fleeing the scene of the incident in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, after midday on Thursday.

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Queensland police refuse to remove traditional owners occupying Adani’s coalmine site

Miner says group is ‘trespassing’ but police have acknowledged their cultural rights under human rights act

Queensland police have told a group of First Nations people occupying the site of Adani’s Carmichael coalmine for the past five weeks that they have no intention of removing them from the area “at this time”.

The group of Wangan and Jagalingou traditional owners opposed to the coalmine project began an ongoing cultural ceremony within the boundary of Adani’s mining lease in late August.

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Indigenous traditional owners win back Daintree rainforest in historic deal

The world’s oldest rainforest will join landmarks like Uluru and Kakadu, where First Nations people are custodians of world heritage sites


Eastern Kuku Yalanji people will take formal ownership of the world heritage-listed Daintree tropical rainforest in northern Australia, after the Indigenous traditional owners reached a historic deal with the Queensland government.

The Daintree national park is part of 160,108 hectares (395,467 acres) of land that will be handed back to the traditional owners at a ceremony on Wednesday at Bloomfield, north of Wujal Wujal.

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‘Loving ourselves is an act of defiance’: tender and heartbreaking letters to fathers and sons

The historical oppression of Indigenous men has shaped perceptions of First Nations masculinity. A lovingly curated book of letters challenges stereotypes

When Wiradjuri woman and Miles Franklin-winning novelist Tara June Winch met Torres Strait Islander author and activist Thomas Mayor at last year’s Perth writers’ festival, she implored the dad of five to write about fatherhood.

With three adult children from his first marriage and two, aged seven and 10, from his ongoing relationship, 44-year-old Mayor, while “thinking about all my flaws as a father and as a man”, was a reluctant starter.

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Australia’s Covid vaccine challenges have been ‘overcome’, Scott Morrison says

PM’s assertion comes as national death toll since pandemic began surpasses 1,000 and states seek more Pfizer amid Delta outbreak

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has declared the government has “overcome” the challenges of the national vaccine program, despite the states crying out for more mRNA vaccine supplies to curb the Delta outbreak tearing through NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

The prime minister’s assertion came as the country marked the grim milestone of the first Indigenous death from a Covid-19 case, in western NSW, and as the national death toll surpassed 1,000 since the pandemic began in early 2020.

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‘Favouring industry’: protesters demand stronger Aboriginal heritage bill to protect sacred WA sites

Proposed law comes after 46,000-year-old rock shelters destroyed but traditional owners say it doesn’t do enough

Traditional owners and their supporters have marched on Western Australian parliament to demand the government halt its controversial new Aboriginal heritage bill, saying it favours mining and isn’t strong enough to stop another disaster like the destruction of Juukan Gorge.

More than a hundred people, many of whom traveled to Perth from the Kimberley and the Pilbara, protested on Thursday about “fundamental flaws” in the draft law, which they say still leaves control of Aboriginal heritage in the hands of mining companies.

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Police officer charged with murder of Kumanjayi Walker allowed to argue he was acting in ‘good faith’

A Northern Territory supreme court ruling will allow Zachary Rolfe to argue he is immune from criminal liability under a clause in NT law

A jury could potentially find that a Northern Territory police officer accused of murdering a young Indigenous man during an outback arrest is immune from criminal liability, judges have ruled.

Constable Zachary Rolfe, 29, shot Kumanjayi Walker, 19, in the remote community of Yuendumu in November 2019, according to assumed facts released by the NT supreme court.

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Two decades of Indigenous photography: the work of Wayne Quilliam – in pictures

For more than 20 years, Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam has captured significant Indigenous events across Australia, from the national apology to the Stolen Generations to the Garma, Barunga and Yeperenye festivals. In his travels through country, Quilliam often visits communities to teach Indigenous youth how to capture their own lives through a lens. His book, Culture is Life, is a modern, photographic celebration of the diversity of Indigenous Australians

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Australia Covid live update: NSW reports 24 local cases and Qld two; second Sydney hospital worker tests positive

Gladys Berejiklian says half of new cases were active in the community while infectious; Simon Birmingham admits Australia is ‘back of the queue’ for Pfizer vaccines; Atagi co-chair says AstraZeneca should only be used by under-40s in ‘pressing’ circumstances; Follow latest updates

Ahead of the daily health press conference in Victoria, premier Daniel Andrews has said he is “determined” to avoid another lockdown in the state, and part of that will be arguing in national cabinet on Friday for a reduction in the number of people able to return through hotel quarantine.

He repeated that it was better to lock out a small number of people than lock down whole cities or states, particularly while Victoria will not have a dedicated quarantine facility up and running in Mickleham until January.

Talk to your doctor, talk to your pharmacist. They’re the people to talk to, because whether it’s Atagi or others, there can be very broad statements made. Safety is always a concern – they are risk averse, they need to be. But everyone’s individual circumstances are different, and many people come to this question of ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ when, what vaccine with pre-existing conditions, with all sorts of other issues. So the best thing to do is not to be getting your epidemiological or your vaccination advice from politicians.

Talk to your GP, that’s what I would ask Victorians to do.

NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller is up now:

In the last 24 hours, 65 personnel infringement notices were issued. One of those of concern was a hairdresser in Auburn in the shopping area of Auburn.

In the last 24 hours, 65 personnel infringement notices were issued. One of those of concern was a hairdresser in Auburn in the shopping area of Auburn.

What police will be doing is matching our taskings to those areas and places of concern on the health website, but in particular today I want to send a very clear message that we will double our efforts in terms of visibility and compliance in south-western Sydney, in particular, around that Auburn, Bankstown area, in those shopping areas, the central business areas, and also back to the eastern suburbs as well. The message is quite clear – police continue to be visible in the community, on public transport. We are stopping and proposing many people and, again, it is just disappointing that infringements continue to be issued.

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