As part of the Native Spirit Film Festival last week, I watched the Our Generation documentary about the relationship between the Australian government and Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

In June 2007, the Howard Government launched its controversial ‘Emergency Intervention’ into Aboriginal communities in Australia’s remote Northern Territory. All in the name of protecting children from child abuse, the Intervention took away all existing Aboriginal land rights, suspended the Racial Discrimination Act and placed over 70 communities under compulsory government control.

No Aboriginal leaders living in these communities were consulted. Subsequent government measures have had little to do with directly improving the wellbeing of children, but instead have disempowered traditional owners, opened up access to Aboriginal land rich in minerals, and have increased social dysfunction in Aboriginal communities.

When Kevin Rudd came into power in 2007 he apologised publicly to Aboriginal communities for atrocities suffered to the Stolen Generations (also known as stolen children) – the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, something the Howard government had refused to do.

I for one shed tears when I watched Rudd’s speech, thinking that this would be the start of a new wave of politics in Australia that would finally support the Australian Aboriginal struggle for their land, culture and freedom.

However, despite condemnation by the United Nations, most recently by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Northern Territory Intervention and other discriminatory policies remain in place. Whilst Howard is an out-and-out bigot, Kevin Rudd is just a spineless hypocrite.

Injustice against Indigenous Australia continues, hidden from the world’s media. However, protest in Australia has been increasing. As public awareness has grown, so has the public outcry, including from eminent Australians such as the former Prime Minister Hon. Malcolm Fraser, John Pilger and Germaine Greer.

A movement is building to stand up to genocide against the oldest living culture on Earth. OUR GENERATION is at the heart of that movement – an urgent message stick from Indigenous Australia to the world.

Please take time to visit the site and learn more about the movement. http://www.ourgeneration.org.au