Messages of Support
Video Message from NRL player Joe Williams
Video Message from Black Comedy’s Elaine Crombie
Video Message from Black Comedy’s Steven Oliver
Message from Nova Peris
Indigenous former athlete and politician Nova Peris sent this message via Dylan Voller to be read to the conference: “We as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people need to stand together in solidarity. The Northern Territory Intervention was seen by many, particularly those living on community, as an act of “war” declared by the Australian government on Aboriginal people.
We do no need constitutional recognition in an English founding document, we have never been lost. Eddie Mabo took on the High Court for ten years to prove our inherited responsibilities of over 50,000 years and to disregard the lie of a Terra Nullius.
The Northern Territory Intervention was partly about a land grab under the guise of other things that demonized us all as a race of First Nations people. We, as Aboriginal people are much more powerful that what the powers that be want us to believe.
We are sovereign people, our power is beyond measure, we need to understand this and use it to our advantage. As Vincent Lingiari once said, “power and privilege cannot move the people who know where they stand, stand in the law”. As sovereign people we need to start wielding and asserting our constitutional 116A power of religious and spiritual freedom, which we have sustained for over 50,000 years”.
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