Content area
Full Text
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- An indigenous panel of leaders urged passage of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and lessening the stranglehold of the corporate media, as they encouraged indigenous people to rise up with self-determination and self-actualized identity.
Reminding indigenous students at Northern Arizona University that they are the seeds of the consciousness of humanity, indigenous from Australia and the Americas said it is time to proclaim their indigenous citizenship and demand human rights from the governments of the world.
Sonia Smallacombe, Torres Strait Islander from Australia, joined Aztec, Onondaga and Maya on the indigenous peoples panel.
Smallacombe told the story of the late Vincent Lingiari who led the Gurindji Aboriginals to strike for wages at a cattle station and then to demand the return of their land in Australia. It became the premiere movement for land and human rights in the 1960s and 1970s for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.
Aboriginals were receiving no wages and living in shanties at the Wave Hill cattle station owned by a British Lord, in the Northern Territory, in 1966. Gurindji workers were paid with flour, sugar, tea and jam. "That is why so many Aboriginals have diabetes today," Smallacombe said.
The Gurindji demanded wages of $25 a week as they camped by a riverbed and maintained their strike. When the cattle rancher finally agreed to pay wages, Lingiari said, "You can keep your gold. We want our land...