Lajamanu — NT police communications back to the Stone Age
Concerns about the Northern Territory Police triple-0 communications system have been around for a while. This is a re-post of a piece I wrote for Crikey in January 2012 on problems with police communications in [...]
Smoke signals
Image: Alf van Beem By Mark Butler “YOU’LL smoke and drink and wear sandals, grow a beard and be a beatnik, you won’t believe in marriage and you’ll bring your children up the same way [...]
Essential documents from Aboriginal Australia: 11 – The Barunga Declaration – June 2023
In June 2023 the four Northern Territory Aboriginal land councils met to sign the Barunga Declaration which addresses all Australians and urges them to support a Voice to Parliament. More than 200 representatives of the [...]
A fantasy weather competition for the Top End?
Photo: University of Arizona Recent news that the good folks at the University of Arizona’s Institute for Resilience have extended their Southwest Monsoon Fantasy Forecast game for a third year got me thinking about how [...]
Spoiled Sports
By Mark Butler This is the second of an occasional series of articles by contributing authors under the general title of FARRAGO*. MY initiation in 1956 as a seven-year-old into the realities of sporting fervour was [...]
A reflection on a dictionary’s long-awaited birth
Guest post by Chips Mackinolty* While “we speak our mother’s tongue” is a universal truism, it is something often forgotten in the context of colonialism and the overt and extended suppression of Indigenous languages across [...]
Memoir of a footnote
Tranter’s death came out of the blue and, to the ABC’s undying shame, was not noted by its gutted and gutless news service.
Ten essential documents from Aboriginal Australia
Lately there’s been a lot of people demanding more detail about the Uluru Statement From The Heart. Over the years I’ve collected a bunch of foundational documents made by Aboriginal people that have called for [...]
Tribute. Yunupingu, 30 June 1948—3 April 2023
I have lived my song cycle … In remembering this extraordinary Aboriginal leader it is difficult to forget the meaning of his family name—Yunupingu—which in the Gumatj dialect of the Yolngu Matha language family means [...]
Vale. A great great Yolŋu man, father and leader
I find it hard to put into words just how much this great Yolŋu man achieved and how much we owe him. When he first became Chair of the Northern Land Council in 1977, the [...]