by A. Odysseus Patrick
SYDNEY — An 11-year-old boy (click here) charged with murder has come to epitomize Australia’s great shame: the plight of its Aboriginal citizens.
The boy is one of the youngest people to be charged with murder in Australia. He was part of a gang of seven or eight boys, teenagers and young men who roamed the remote city of Perth late into the night on Australia’s national day, Jan. 26.
Equivalent to the United States’ Independence Day, Australia Day has been dubbed “Invasion Day” by some Aborigines who resent the colonization of their lands by the English starting in 1788.
Around 3 a.m., the boy’s gang got into a fist fight with another group in the city’s downtown. But some of the gang members were armed with wooden stakes, screwdrivers, glass bottles and metal fence pickets, and they chased 26-year-old Patrick Slater into an alcove of a tram stop. Slater, also an Aboriginal, was left bleeding from fatal wounds to his head, chest and leg.
The 11-year-old, who cannot be named under Australian law, was arrested nine days later....
The Aborigines are native to Australia. They are equivalent to the Native American in the USA. They are Australia's minority population. The Aborigines also struggle to keep their land in Australia.
By Norimitsu Onishi
Joseph Roe at James Price Point, a site that has spiritual significance for his Aboriginal people.
Broome, Australia — Australia (click here) is experiencing a natural resources boom, driven by China’s headlong modernization, that is often described as a once-in-a-century phenomenon. It has minted billionaires out of businessmen who deal in iron ore and coal, and it has enriched many Australians by increasing the value of their homes and creating well-paying jobs.
But it has conspicuously left out Aboriginal Australians, whose home ownership and education levels fall below the national averages. High unemployment and widespread alcoholism have continued to debilitate isolated Aboriginal communities here in northwestern Australia, on the other side of the continent from the major cities along the eastern coast.
As resource companies push ever deeper into Australia’s remotest areas, however, Aboriginal leaders are leveraging their rights as traditional landowners to negotiate deals with companies and governments that are seeking to develop their holdings. They say the potential windfall — hundreds of millions of dollars — will rescue their communities from their long dependence on welfare and state subsidies....
This is a rather interesting parallel with the USA. Could it be a visual difference that is insensitive to the person behind the skin color?
