Reconciliation Week 2011

Remember Eddie Mabo

Move on down the road
it leads to social justice
no more broken promises
Sing up Eddie Mabo.

Always blaming the victim
Still suffering curable disease
Time to end the genocide
remember Eddie Mabo.

Migaloo, keep your promises
cooperation or divided nation,
with the Land there’s hope
sing up Eddie Mabo.

Time for reconciliation
no more procrastination
move on down the road
remember Eddie Mabo.

Bureaucrats keep changing rules
for racist redneck fools
But Eddie Mabo knew the way
the true meaning of the Land.

Jinjirrie 1993

Eddie Koiki Mabo (c. 29 June 1936 – 21 January 1992)[1] was a Torres Strait Islander who is known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights and for his role in a landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius which characterised Australian law with regards to land and title.

@AboriginalOz It’s the last day of #ReconciliationWeek & exactly 1 year away from the 20th Anniversary of the Mabo Decision. 1 year to get the Vibe back! #

The Two State Horse is Dead, Why Keep Flogging It?

Oblivious to Nutanyahoo’s murder of the two state solution (again) this week before the US Congress, Australian politician Melissa Parke keeps flogging a dead horse. Melissa’s speech is notable though for its recognition of the oppression of Israel’s occupation, a rare occurrence in the Australian Parliament. She meanders down the fallacious imperialist/zionist path of the formation of two states being central to the US national security interest and further drags Australia’s national security interest into the mix.

Israel’s Zionist left urges Europe to recognize a Palestinian state too – when will the Israeli ‘left’ call for equal rights for all, an end to apartheid and the Occupation regardless of one or two states? Along the zionist spectrum, there is the vicious zionist right wingers, who are conflating support for a Palestinian state by the EU as tantamount to anti-semitism.

Is Zionism set to implode at last, unable to resolve its racist contradictions? The just rights demanded by Palestinian people in their call to boycott, divest and sanction apartheid Israel bypass and supercede the Israeli and western imperialists’ obsession with protecting racist privilege through a mythological quest for a ‘peace process’ focused on two states for two ‘peoples’, ignoring the facts that 20% of Israel’s population are not jewish, and there are half a million jewish settlers illegally squatting in the Occupied Territories. It is not the West’s ‘national security interests’ which are at stake here – how racist is it to place Palestinians’ human and political rights in the context of ‘national security’? – but credibility as purveyor of the enlightened values of democracy and human rights the developed world claims to embrace.

As Rae Abileah says: ‘Before we go preaching democracy abroad, we should make our own democracy more responsive to the public good, not the wishes of wealthy lobbyists.’ And by reference to this quote, I don’t just mean the zionist lobby, but the entire capitalist corporate lobby behemoth whose imperialist interests coincide.

Related Links

When will time run out for a two-state solution?
Collaborator Abbas to form unelected technocrat ‘government’ to sell out Palestinians and please the Quartet in June
Fact-checking Netanyahu’s Speech
‘The smallest minds and cowardliest hearts’: Is Congress clapping for apartheid? Zionist Walt misses the point about US support for Israel’s policies as usual. Still, he recognises Nutanyahoo’s assassination of the two state solution regardless.
Livni: Palestinian statehood isn’t a favor to Obama, it’s vital for Israel – Livni is Nutanyahoo-light, attempting to pander to all sides.
UK calls for G8 financial aid for ‘Arab Spring’ – racist Cameron is happy to pay bribes to stop hordes of invading Muslims.
Rashid Khalidi : ‘While this was not a good week for Barack Obama, and was a very good one for Binyamin Netanyahu, it also can be a salutary occasion for Palestinians and Arabs. It should finally cure those still infected with the diseased notion that they have anything to gain by bending to the importuning of American diplomacy.’
Francis Boyle responds vigorously to Goodwin-Gill’s opinion on the institution of a Palestinian state by the PA.
Palestinian Americans “unequivocally reject” PA’s UN statehood bid

‘We call on all Palestinian and Arab community associations, societies and committees, student organizations, solidarity campaigns, to reject fully and unequivocally the Statehood initiative as a distraction that unjustifiably and irresponsibly endangers Palestinian rights and institution.’

‘Like the BNC, the USPCN statement emphasizes that fundamental Palestinian rights, not “statehood” remain the core of Palestinian efforts:

As has been recently revealed, this initiative in no way protects nor advances our inalienable, and internationally recognized, rights—fundamental of which are our right to return to the homes and properties from which we were forcibly expelled, our right to self-determination, and our right to resist the settler colonial regime that has occupied our land for more than 63 years.

The Palestinian people, wherever they are, hold these rights. They are non-negotiable. No one can barter them away for false promises of “peace” and “stability.” The cynical irony of turning a UN resolution enshrining our right to return under international law (UNGA Res. 194) into a rhetorical ploy should give anyone pause. That it is being advanced at a time when the PA does not even have the political mandate of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza through Palestinian Legislative Council elections must also give us pause.;

‘Goodwin-Gill’s memo and an interview he gave explaining its implications have heightened concern among Palestinians about the PA’s ill-thought out and desperate step which comes after the complete failure of the US-sponsored “peace process” on which the PA bet all its cards.’

Virginia Tilley: Bantustans and the unilateral declaration of statehood

‘But more importantly, the South African comparison helps illuminate why the ambitious projects of pacification, “institution building” and economic development that the Ramallah PA and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have whole-heartedly embarked upon are not actually exercises in “state-building.” Rather, they emulate with frightening closeness and consistency South Africa’s policies and stages in building the Bantustan/Homelands. Indeed, Fayyad’s project to achieve political stability through economic development is the same process that was openly formalized in the South African

Samir Abed-Rabbo’s piece contrasting the One and Two state outcomes.
Abbas: I don’t want to declare unilateral statehood

He insisted in the interview that Palestinians would not be able to force the right of return for Palestinian refugees on Israelis within the context of a peace agreement, but that he seeks a “just solution.”

Samah Sabawi:

There are three major conditions needed for a free viable Palestinian state. The first is national unity – the Palestinian state needs to represent all Palestinians as one people whether inside or outside of Occupied Palestine. A second component is economic viability – a Palestinian state needs be able to make its own decisions on sovereign matters and not be held hostage to foreign aid and the will of donor countries. A third and major component of a Palestinian state is security – it needs to have the strength to claim the land and protect is people either through an army or some form of international guarantees.’

Sonja Karkar notes the tired Israeli strategy for deferral of Palestinian rights : ‘Negotiations are, in fact, a ruse to keep the old discredited paradigm of a two-state solution going for as long as it takes Netanyahu to achieve his goal of a Greater Israel.’
UN envoy Prosor: Israel has no chance of stopping recognition of Palestinian state
Legal opinion challenges PLO statehood bid : Al Jazeera’s Nour Samaha interviews Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill about his legal opinion about the dangers of the PA bid for fake Palestinian statehood which he says will threaten the rights of the Palestinian refugees.
Ashrawi: UN statehood bid no threat to PLO

Palestine / Israel Links

Imagine, Think! And Then Act to Change Things!
Support the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
U.S. ‘confident’ Egypt can provide good security at Rafah borderThis does not augur well — after the border is open, will the zionists bomb every square inch of the rest of the border to deal to the tunnels?
New hasbara plea! Israel must stop overplaying the Holocaust card
Mendes attempts to delegitimise criticism of zionism and Israel in a bundle of mendacious furphies
Knesset Education Committee chairman Alex Miller (Israel Beiteinu) announced on Wednesday that he has called an emergency meeting to discuss possible sanctions against Tel Aviv University after Islamic Sheikh Raed Salah’s recent controversial speech on campus.
One of the remarkable youth groups newly initiated inside Gaza is the Palestine Youth Advocacy Network “PYAN”— which is also a word in Arabic that could mean exposition, representation, rhetoric or radiance, all of which have to do with the nature of work the team undertakes.
U.S. Announces Sanctions Against Israeli Company
A Palestinian Revolt in the Making?
Two Palestinian Children Injured from Dud Bomb in South Hebron Hills
Bigotry in the Israeli media :

Of course, in traditional Christianity and in Orthodox Judaism, hostility to gays exceeds the few vague references in the Qur’an. But Israeli writers, very much like classical anti-Semites, are so obsessed with their hatred of Islam and Muslims that they have to bring it in no matter what. Furthermore, openly or semi openly “gay” leaders (like Sultan Qaboos) have served as heads of state in Arab and Muslim lands but not in Israel.

Israeli police use new electrical stunning device on protesters
A queer confrontation with the Israel lobby
A Good Week for Bibi, a Bad Week for Barack, an Opportunity for Palestinians
1 December 1947: The partition of Palestine
Social media whore Palmor: “We have formulated some arguments that are relevant to what’s going to happen in September, even if we don’t know exactly what it will be. We began disseminating these arguments and statements, backed by links to documents and articles, among the relevant bloggers and social media members. From our perspective we’ve already begun the battle over publicity, though formally, nothing has begun. Our main argument is ‘Palestinian state yes, but only through direct negotiations.’ In events that we have to truncate the message to fewer characters, we say, ‘Let’s talk’.”
Michelle Chen:

‘the power of secular pro-democracy movements throughout the region now reverberate in Palestine as a validation of grassroots resistance.

If that feedback loop can be harnessed to reinvigorate the idea of Palestinian liberation, then we might finally see the ends and the means match up in the struggle to defeat imperialism, violence and dictatorship.’

Kirk boycott resolution scuppered by Israeli legal ‘intimidation’

Egypt Links

Egypt: #May27 Demands (in Arabic and English)
UK calls for G8 financial aid for ‘Arab Spring’
Relatonship between the Arab uprisings and literature.

Other Links

You know who else answered questions they were asked by the media…
Sarkozy’s government war on the internet

Boycott Max Brenner – Don’t Buy Israeli Apartheid Action in Melbourne

Related Links

Paul Simon, Don’t Break Cultural Boycott Again!
Resist Obamanations: Ilan Pappe “Throw a shoe at Obama’s betrayal”: One can continue to boycott Israeli goods and cultural representatives in France, even if there is a new law against it. If Palestinians in Israel can defy Israeli laws against Nakba commemoration, insidious European laws and regulations should be ignored as well.
Festival bans Israel boycott supporters

In a statement provided by the Shalom Institute program director, Michael Misrachi, organisers said they decided to rule out presenters who advocated the boycott because it undermined the event’s engagement with Israeli academic and artistic institutions and their representatives.

”This is not about censorship, nor are we seeking to stifle dissenting views. Limmud-Oz is proud of the principles of pluralism and inclusiveness which guide us and Limmuds around the world,” it read.

Mr Misrachi confirmed Dr Slezak and Ms Porzsolt’s names were removed from the list of speakers on the event’s website following complaints.

Two other speakers have since pulled out of the festival in protest at the ban, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

Ms Porzsolt, who said she would still attend the festival, told organisers in an email they had misrepresented the boycott, and asked them to reconsider.

”My proposed workshop was not even on BDS … The exclusion of me as a person for the ideas I hold generally, and not because of the topic of my workshop, smacks of excommunication,” it read.

The chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, said it endorsed the decision of the Shalom Institute.

Palestine / Israel Links

About 8 minutes into the archive, Rae Abileah speaks from hospital about need to rise up against war criminals like Nutanyahoo and perfidy of the vicious AIPAC thugs from the audience who assaulted her. No charges are being pressed against her.
Witness the Shocking Denial and Ignorance About the Occupation of Palestine by AIPAC Delegates
Americans protest Netanyahu AIPAC speech:
Constitution Committee Approves Bill Discriminating Against Those Who Did Not Serve in the Army
Complicity in Oppression: Do the Media Aid Israel?
MOVE OVER AIPAC: A view from the street
Another existential threat which frightens Israel : Palestinian infant close to death as Israel denies him medication
Netanyahu: Israel ready for painful compromises – If a thief is asked to return stolen property, is this a ‘painful compromise’ except to other thieves?
Tim Llewellyn, bias and the BBC
Netanyahu’s end game

There is a breaking point for Palestinian patience and Netanyahu is making sure that we reach it soon. Clouding the issues will not change the fact that millions of Palestinians in the territories are under occupation and siege. Their national aspiration for liberation has not died down nor will it recede. Netanyahu may have buried the peace process but he has brought back to life the Arab-Israeli conflict, this time in a changing Arab world!

May Nutanyahoo lose the end game and everyone win!
Izbat al-Tabib village resists land confiscation, demolition orders
Nadia Hijab: ‘Israel needs to be a state in which all citizens are equal’

Whatever outcome there is, whether one or two states in the land that was Palestine until the conflict began in 1948, all citizens must enjoy equal rights, whether, they’re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, whether men or women. … Until President Obama is willing or able to use U.S. leverage with Israel to hold it accountable under the law, then Israel will continue to colonize Palestinian land, and the Arab world will continue to hold America responsible.

Protestor who disrupted Netanyahu in Congress attacked, hospitalized, arrested
To Friendly Crowd, Netanyahu Repeats Criteria for Peace

In the West Bank, Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, called the speech “a declaration of war against the Palestinians.”

“This is an escalation and unfortunately, it received a standing ovation,” he told The Associated Press. He noted that Mr. Netanyahu had rejected Palestinian demands on issues as central as future borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of refugees.


Mr. Netanyahu said that the Palestinian leader must do what he has done: “I stood before my people and I said, ‘I will accept a Palestinian state.’ It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say, ‘I will accept a Jewish state.’ ”

He added: “Those six words will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace. With those six words, the Israeli people will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise. I will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise.”

@avinunu I am Israel, I expel you, oppress you, deny your history, accuse you of having a culture of hate, then demand that you recognize & love me.
Shir Hever: ‘The prospect of a democratic state in which Palestinians will be equal citizens is more threatening to the Israeli government than an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and because of that the Israeli government will implement, and has already began to implement, mechanisms by which to turn the PA into a subcontractor of occupation.’
Obama admin pleased that Netanyahu refuses to acknowledge Zionist racism
Disagreement is treason: VIDEO: AIPAC Attendees Say Jews Who Criticize Israel Are Traitors, Demand Loyalty To Netanyahu

BDS in Australia is Unstoppable!

Samah Sabawi, introduced by Reverend Dave, speaks on the case for BDS at Dulwich Hill, New South Wales on May 13.

Former Greens parliamentarian, Sylvia Hale, discusses the NSW Greens’ stand for BDS and the struggle around the Marrickville Council position.

Antony Loewenstein outlines the unstoppable trajectory of BDS demonstrated ironically by the desperation of efforts to stop it in Marrickville.

Palestine / Israel Links

Israeli Human Rights Record Slammed In Amnesty International’s Annual Human Rights Report

the report, which described the human rights revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa as “inspirational”, has condemned Israel’s conduct in multiple areas including the justice system, the Gaza blockade, human rights accountability, housing demolitions and settlement activity, torture and excessive use of force, freedom of movement and freedom of speech.

Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation : Evidence from the London Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine
Israeli Troops Shoot U.S. Student in Head with High-Velocity Tear Gas Canister
More despicable lawfare and greasy tactics by the ziolobby ‘Holland financing groups calling for Israel boycott’
Israel Police’s Facebook page rife with racist comments
Armed with lies, Nutanyahoo prepares for battle against Palestinians’ rights
The land theft continues : Israel turned the Nakba into a 63-year process – Amira Hass
Former Israeli soldiers break the silence on military violations
Israel actions “surpass barbarism of apartheid South Africa,” group says after Na’eem Jeenah deportation

Those of us who lived through and struggled against apartheid South Africa consider the actions of the Israeli state to surpass even the barbarism of apartheid South Africa. Isreal is already considered a pariah state in the eyes of most of humanity. It should be treated as such. We therefore support the BDS campaign wholeheartedly.

South Africa intervening to bring home Na’eem Jeenah after Israel deports him to Turkey without passport

Other Links

Journalist’s Facebook arrest: transcript of police interview

Remembering Al Nakba 2

Dramatic video shows Palestinians, Syrians entering Israeli-occupied Golan Heights
RT @avinunu: Reminder: UN Sec Council Res 497 (1981) declares Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan to be “null & void” http://is.gd/4DDQQ5
Interactive map of Palestine villages destroyed in Nakba

Related Links

A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895 – 1947
Legitimization or Implementation: On the UN Partition Plan The Paradox of the 1947 UN Partition Plan
Interactive Map: Escalation of settler violence
Nakba: Why did Israeli historians whitewash an artillery attack?
Tracing All That Remains Since Nakba
FAQ on Plan Dalet
Refugees and Zionist propaganda
Nakba Day 2011: The Other Exodus
Ethan Bronner’s Nakba denial in The New York Times

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces began in late 1947, so that by 15 May 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already been expelled from their villages and cities before a single soldier from any Arab army had intervened. The exodus from, for example, Jaffa began in early 1948 after Zionist terrorists belonging to the Stern Gang set off a massive car bomb destroying the Jaffa municipality building on 4 January (this is all well-documented in books by right-wing Israeli historian Benny Morris, among others). Many villages in the north of Palestine were also depopulated around that time.

Rightwing group publishes Nakba denial booklet
Occupation & Nakba: Interview with Ariella Azoulay & Adi Ophir
New video shows Israeli soldiers firing as mass marchers enter Golan
Pro-Palestinian rallies turn deadly on Israel’s borders : the ABC Radio Australia should be ashamed of its bias toward the zionist entity in this zioshillery.
Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Haifa exposed
Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine by Walid Khalidi

‘Looking at what was happening on the ground during December 1947-15 May 1948 was teh first track we followed in examining the Israeli version of the events of this period; the second track was to challenge the Israeli lie of evacuation orders head on. If the orders were broadcast as the government of Israel, its top leadership and the Kimches et al. insisted, and if these orders reached hundreds of villages and a dozen towns causing their evacuation by hundreds of thousands, surely some tract or echo of these orders should be on record. The obvious place to look was the back files of the Near East monitoring stations of the British and American governments (the BBC Cyprus listening post and the CIA-sponsored Foreign Broadcast Information Service), both of which covered not only all the radio stations in the Near East, but also the local newspapers as well. I therefore checked the BBC monitoring archives at the British Museum, London, and published the result in my article “Why Did the Palestinians Leave?” (Middle East Forum July 1959). Not only was there no hint of any Arab evacuation order, but the Arab radio stations had urged the Palestinians to hold on and be steadfast whereas it was the Jewish radio stations of the Haganah and the Irgun and Stern Gang which had been engaged in incessant and strident psychological warfare against the Arab civilian population.’

Cheering Netanyahu’s Intransigence
Excellent history of Herzl’s zionism and British scheming: Victor Kattan “From Coexistence to Conquest”
The Population Transfer Committee: November 1937
By the close of 1937, the JNF-linked Jewish Agency had established the Population Transfer Committee, and in 1940, director of the JNF Lands Department Yosef Weitz wrote:

It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples.… If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us … There is no room for compromises … There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for Bethlehem, Nazareth and old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe … For this goal funds will be found … And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.[89]

Land Without a People – by Michael Palumbo

‘There is no hope that this new Jewish state will survive,
to say nothing of develop, if the Arabs are as numerous as
they are today.” So spoke Menahem Ussishkin, at 75, one of
the oldest and most respected Zionist leaders. His audience
on the afternoon of 12 June 1938 was the Executive Commit-
tee of the Jewish Agency, which was considering a plan by
the British administration to divide Palestine between
Arabs and Jews. For decades there had been strife between
the two ethnic groups in the mandate territory and now the
British administration was considering partition as the
best way to end the conflict between the Jewish colonists
and the indigenous Arab population. But partition would
leave over 200,000 Arabs in the proposed Zionist state, and
the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine was
grappling with the problem of how best to get rid of them.

None of the members of the Executive disagreed with
Ussishkin when he stated: ‘The worst is not that the Arabs
would comprise 45 or 50 per cent of the population of the
new state but that 75 per cent of the land is owned by
Arabs.’ This land was desired for the waves of Jewish immi-
grants who would populate the Jewish state. There were many
other reasons why the Zionists wished to get rid of the
Arabs. Ussishkin claimed that with a large Arab population
the Jewish state would face enormous problems of internal
security and that there would be chaos in government. ‘Even
a small Arab minority in parliament could disrupt the
entire order of parliamentary life.’

The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement By Itzhak Galnoor

In late 1937, a Population Transfer Committee was established in the Jewish Agency to prepare material for the hearings of the Woodhead commision. The main document suggested two goals: reducing the Arab population in the territory intended for the Jewish state, and freeing agricultural land for Jewish settlement. I talso contained a detailed plan for the voluntary transfer of about 100,000 Arab farmers to the Gaza district, Transjordan, and Syria. The committee found it very difficult to reach clear recommendations and made do with the general declaration that “the transfer of Arab population on a large scale is a precondition for establishing the state.”

A Critique of Benny Morris by Nur Masalha

Video: Tel Aviv exhibit features testimony by Nakba perpetrators

The Common Archive aims “to create an audio-visual online archive of Jewish executor’s testimonies of the 1948 crimes with cross references to testimonies of Palestinian refugees and other historical visual data (maps, photos, etc).”

Palestine / Israel Links

Palestine Papers: Why I blew the whistle Ziyad Clot:

The “peace negotiations” were a deceptive farce, whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU capitals. Far from enabling a negotiated fair end of the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process has deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far for preserving the land on which to build a State, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, proved to be instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions amongst Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the 7 million-Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months spent in Ramallah confirms in fact that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.

Israelis attack Palestinian funeral
Palestinian & jewish voices speak at Sydney conference for BDS against Israeli occupation & apartheid
Israel is not an island : The Arab Revolution is knocking at Israel’s door
Australia, where ‘human rights’ festivals ban protest art against Israeli oppression
Bloody Sunday as Israel kills 21 in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria
Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk asks court to cancel his ‘Jewish’ status
Arab Spring headaches for Barack Obama : “When Israel kills demonstrators is that the same as when Syria or Libya does the same?”

Other Links

Australia is now in the business of turning away refugees.
The “dodgy dossier” : the truth will out

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq’s weapons programme was drawn up “to make the case for war”, flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister’s chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government’s claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs needs to be Indigenous
Existence, Validity, Recognition :

Recognising Indigenous Australians as the first Australians is set to become next great debate on the national agenda. Acknowledged as a “Once in 50 year opportunity” by Prime Minister Julia Gilard it is with reserved optimism and nervous anticipation I, like many Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians await the 2011 government proposal and subsequent 2013 Referendum. With only 8 of the past 44 constitutional amendments being successful, it will take a movement at the ballot boxes reminiscent of the 1967 Referendum in which more than 90% of Australians voted in favor of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders being recognised as Australian citizens.