2010

1. 12 June Sport

   Timana Tahu, an Aboriginal player of the Sydney-based Parramatta Eels Rugby League club, walks out of the NSW Origin team camp in response to racist comments by the team’s assistant coach Andrew Johns, sparking a media debate about racism against Aboriginal players and people.

2. 21 June Northern Territory Intervention

   The government passes legislation to re-instate the Racial Discrimination Act by extending compulsory income management nationwide. The administration is estimated to cost taxpayers $350 to $400 million dollars over the next four years, or about $4,000 a person a year. Reports indicate that people under income management feel "severely demoralised". ^[1]

   Re-instating the [Racial Discrimination Act] restores dignity and helps Indigenous Australians to take ownership of their lives and to drive change in the NT.

   — Jenny Macklin, Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister ^[1]

3. 24 June Politics

   Julia Gillard, previously Deputy Prime Minister, becomes the first female Prime Minister of Australia after Kevin Rudd lost the confidence of his party. Rudd served the shortest period of any Prime Minister so far.

4. 27 June

   French-born tourist Alizee Sery, 25, outrages Aboriginal and non-Indigenous people by walking to the top of Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) and performing a strip show which she sees as a ‘tribute’ to Aboriginal people. ⇒ Threats to Aboriginal land

5. July Remains repatriation

   The National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA returns Aboriginal remains taken from their burial places during the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) ^[2].

6. 29 July Prison

   The West Australian government approves $3.2 million, one of the largest ex-gratia (voluntary) payments ever made in Australia to the family of an Aboriginal Elder who died of heatstroke in the back of a prison van in 2008. ⇒ Aboriginal deaths in custody

7. 27 August Treaty

   The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination releases its Concluding Observations following a review of Australia’s compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Among other things the committee recommends that the government "consider the negotiation of a treaty agreement to build a constructive and sustained relationship with Indigenous peoples". ^[3]

8. 28 August Politics

   The UN Committee on the Eliminiation of Racial Discrimination (CERD) delivers a damning report on Australia’s failure to meet international commitments on eliminating discrimination.

9. 8 September Recognition

   NSW becomes the third Australian state, after Victoria and Queensland, to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their Constitutional preambles. The Aboriginal flag is also permanently hung in the NSW Parliament.

   We are enshrining today fundamental truths, the truth that Aboriginal people are the first peoples of NSW, the truth of the spiritual, economic and cultural ties that bind Aboriginal people to the land.

   — Kristina Keneally, Premier of NSW ^[4]

10. 30 September Arts

    The National Gallery of Australia opens 11 new Indigenous galleries and art spaces that will house the majority of the gallery’s huge collection of Indigenous art, reportedly the largest collection of its kind in the world. ⇒ Aboriginal arts

11. October Remains repatriation

    The ancestral remains of an Erup (Darnley Island) child return, 161 years after they were taken to the UK. The remains were first acquired by Captain Owen Stanley in 1849 during a visit to Darnley Island, then passed on to an antiquarian who gave them to the Norwich Castle Museum in 1854. Finally, the World Museum Liverpool received the remains in 1956. ^[5]

12. 9 October Arts

    The opera Pecan Summer premieres telling the story of the Cummeragunja Aboriginal walk-off of 1939. It is the first opera to be partly sung in Yorta Yorta language.

13. 15 October Land & land rights

    The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) announces it had purchased the Ayers Rock Resort at Yulara, near Uluru (Ayers Rock). The deal covers all resort hotels, accommodation and infrastructure. The ILC is an independent statutory authority of the Australian government, established to assist Aboriginal people to acquire and manage land to achieve economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits.

14. 14 November Arts

    Poet and author Dr Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Sykes dies aged 67. In the 1980s she became the first Aboriginal Australian to attend Harvard University, gaining a PhD in education, and in 1994 was awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal. Sykes also was the executive secretary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

15. 25 November Recognition

    Aboriginal author and lawyer Larissa Behrendt is named NSW Australian of the Year in “recognition of her passionate and articulate advocacy for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders”.

16. 7 December

    The Salvation Army apologises to survivors of Salvation Army Girls and Boys Homes of Australia, the “forgotten children”. They lived in orphanages and homes until the early 1990s, and many were abused. 40% of them were Aboriginal. ^[6]

17. 16 December Politics

    The USA is the last country to sign up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Canada joined on November 12, 2010.

18. 31 December Northern Territory Intervention

    The Racial Discrimination Act is partially reinstated. Activist groups pledge the full reinstatement of the RDA.

2011

1. The government introduces new legislation to extend key Northern Territory Emergency Response measures for a further 10 years. ⇒ The NT Intervention

2. Chris Bourke (ACT Labor) becomes the first Aboriginal person elected to the ACT Legislative Assembly, representing the seat of Ginninderra in the ACT.

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References