Category Archives: Australian South Sea Islanders

Oxfam – Growing Food in A Changing Climate

(left) Lola Forester,Emelda Davis,Shirley Tokon (program manager Climate Change Adaption), Mala Silas (Adaption Officer) - University of Sydney presentation

(left) Lola Forester,Emelda Davis,Shirley Tokon (program manager Climate Change Adaption), Mala Silas (Adaption Officer) – University of Sydney presentation

Climate change is the single biggest threat in the global fight against hunger, and our neighbours in the Pacific are particularly vulnerable. Meet Shirley and Mala, two amazing women from Vanuatu who are working hard to build the resilience of vulnerable communities to climate change. They’re coming to Sydney soon, and we’d like to invite you to meet them at a very special event.

This seminar will provide a first-hand opportunity to hear from two people at the frontline of food security and climate change in the Pacific. Mala Silas is 23 years old and is currently employed as the climate change officer with CARE on Fortuna Island in Vanuatu. The CARE programs she is involved focus on food and agriculture including community gardens and nutrition.

Shirley Laban is currently working on Oxfam’s climate change program in Port Vila, has represented Oxfam at the UNFCCC and is a member of CAN Pacific. She also spent three months in Australia last year on a Prime Minister’s Scholarship. Both Mala and Shirley are working on a DFAT-funded Climate Change Community Based Adaptation program.

This seminar is being held in conjunction with Oxfam International’s Food and Climate Justice (FCJ) strategy and its GROW campaign. Oxfam International has been a global leader in campaigning for governments to respond to the inter-related problems of climate change and food security.

Oxfam argues that wild weather and unpredictable seasons are changing what farmers can grow and is making people hungry. Food prices are going up. Food quality is going down. Soon, climate change will affect what all of us can eat.

Australia’s neighbours in the South Pacific are at high risk from these developments. In this seminar, our two women speakers will tell of the impacts that climate change is having on the communities in Vanuatu and the ways in which people are working to adapt to these changes.

Show your support for climate action and RSVP to this free event now. Together, we can stop climate change making people hungry.

For more information, visit www.oxfam.org.au/grow or contact Debbie Hunt at debbieh@oxfam.org.au

LOST IDENTITY 2014

lost identity

Raechel Ivey has received citizenship in Vanuatu after finding documents proving that her great-grandparents were kidnapped in the 1800s to become slaves. Raechel’s great-grandparents James Tuku and Fanny Battingarra Contributed when Raechel Ivey first stepped foot in Vanuatu, she knew she was home. It has been a long journey for the Australian South Sea Islander to prove her heritage and regain her identity.

Raechel is one of the first South Sea Islanders to gain dual citizenship in Vanuatu and Australia. The Vanuatu Government recently made a change to its constitution allowing residents and indigenous ni-Vanuatu born overseas to hold dual citizenship. Raechel said her journey to be recognised as a citizen of Vanuatu wasn’t only for her, it was about giving her great-grandfather and great-grandmother their identity back, after it was stolen in the 1800s.

James Tuku and Fanny Battingarra were stolen from their respective homes in Vanuatu during the indentured labour trade that went on from 1847-1908. Her great-grandparents were taken to Sydney, where James’s last name was changed to Togo and he was made a gardener, while Fanny was a maid.

For Raechel, 55, it has been an emotional journey learning how her great-grandparents lost their identity, language and culture after being kidnapped. Raechel, who moved to Central Queensland more than 17 years ago from Tweed Heads in NSW, got documentation of her great-grandparent’s registration as “aliens” in Australia to prove that she is originally from Vanuatu.

In the early 1900s her great grandparents were set free and later wed and had children. While their family was raised in Australia, Raechel says she’s never felt completely at home here. “My birth certificate says I’m Aussie, but we know we were brought over here,” the Emerald woman said. “Being Australian doesn’t feel like my home; we’re not Aboriginal or Torres Strait. This documentation “shows that I belong somewhere.” After several trips to Vanuatu with documentation of her great-grandparents’ history, Raechel was granted citizenship of her home country. “I got a letter to say I’ve been approved, now I’ll go back to Vanuatu to do an oath of allegiance,” she said.

The mother of 10 plans to move back to Vanuatu in the future and begin to reconnect with family she’s found in recent years. Raechel said that while her people may have been stolen; “they didn’t steal the heart of who we really are”.

Shared history honoured at Veresdale

Shared history honoured at Veresdale

Emotions ran high on Saturday when a sculpture honouring the history between Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI), the Mununjali community and Veresdale landholders was unveiled.

The six metre high two-tonne sculpture was hand-crafted from a fallen 200 year-old iron bark log, that was found at Mt Lindesay, by artist Kakae Pakoa who lovingly worked on the project for three months.

Mr Pakoa said his design reflected the past, the present and the future of the area. “The footprints symbolise the walk the South Sea Islanders did from Redbank Plains to Beaudesert in 1863, when it took them two days to get here to start work,” he said. “They also symbolise the future-moving forward and moving together.”

Mr Pakoa’s wife Natalie said the unveiling of the sculpture reinforced the love and healing she felt after her community’s history with the area was accepted and acknowledged by the Mununjali people. “Now when I come to Beaudesert I feel love in my heart, it is home,” she said.

Scenic Rim Regional Council Division Two Councillor Nadia O’Carroll said it was a “brilliant piece of art” and a wonderful addition to the region’s cultural heritage. Beaudesert and District Community Art Project along with council organised for the sculpture to be created as part of a legacy project of the 2013 ASSI 150 commemorations.

The sculpture sits at Hopkins Park, at Mt Lindesay Highway and Worendo Street, Veresdale on land owned by the Walker family.

Joe Eggmolesse, AO recipient 2014

joe eggmolesse

A Maryborough man has been awarded the Order of Australia medal for his service to the Indigenous community.Selwyn Joel Eggmolesse, better known as Joe, has devoted his life to community service, working for government organisations and non-for-profit groups.

Mr Eggmolesse said hearing of the honour was a great feeling, with “a little bit of excitement and pride”. “After all this time the government decided to say thank you,” Mr Eggmolesse said. “The majority of community workers work 24/7 and don’t get paid.”

Fraser Coast Mayor Gerard O’Connell said Mr. Eggmolesse’s recognition was a moment of enormous pride for the Fraser Coast. “Joe epitomises what living on the Fraser Coast is all about. It’s about giving to community and continuing to appreciate the value of people.”

Mr Eggmolesse was born in Nambour and was diagnosed with leprosy as a child. He was sent to live on Fantome Island for 10 years. Mr Eggmolesse, who proudly calls himself a Kanaka, said he began working in Aboriginal affairs in 1974 in Victoria.

In the 1980s Mr Eggmolesse began work in NSW as a health promotion officer and reported on the environment Aboriginal people were living in. He is also proud of his work on the $2.8 million Namatjira Reserve Project. Mr Eggmolesse returned to Queensland in the 1990s, working in health at the Princess Alexandra hospital in Brisbane, at Wide Bay region Indigenous Health co-ordinator and at Cherbourg Community Health.

Joe retired in 1999 but it didn’t last long. “Eight weeks after being retired I went back to work ,” Mr Eggmolesse said. He finished his career with Fraser Coast Health service in 2006. He said much of his work was convincing Aboriginal clients to get help. “It was our job to help people reach out to the services.” He said his best advice was to encourage people to be a humanist.

Mr Eggmolesse is an adviser to the Fraser Coast Housing Services Board and a former member of the Maryborough Aboriginal and Islanders Elders and Community Leaders Group.

Joe Eggmolesse, AO recipient 2014

Centrelink – A change is a coming.

Centrelink questionnaire included - Are you an Australian South Sea Islander

Centrelink questionnaire now including “Are you an Australian South Sea Islander ” & definition Question 18 & 19 which are optional and will not affect your payment. If you do answer, the information it will help us to continue to improve services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and Australia South Sea Islanders.

Australian South Sea Islanders are the descendants of Pacific Islander labourers brought from the Western Pacific in the 19th Century. Feedback on the above is welcome and appreciated.

Centrelink – A change is a coming.

Letter from Alex Greenwich

Letter from Alex Greenwich

Attached is a letter from Alex Greenwich (Member for Sydney) regarding census count for ASSI in 2016 (image)
Wantok Mackay 2014 – consensus was that we stay with the term Australian South Sea Islanders but provide drop down explanations / description yet to be decided.

Daniel Boyd has become the first indigenous/ASSI man to win the Bulgari Art Award

daniel boyd

Daniel Boyd has become the first indigenous/ASSI man to win the Bulgari Art Award, one of Australia’s richest cultural accolades.

The Cairns-born, Sydney-based artist received the $80,000 award from Italian jewellery brand Bulgari for a work based on a 19th-century photograph from Vanuatu. The luxury brand was guided by the Art Gallery of NSW which, under the terms of its partnership with Bulgari, acquires the painting for $50,000.

Boyd receives that money, plus $30,000 for a residency in Italy. “It’s very humbling,” the artist said after Tuesday’s announcement. “I’m very grateful to be seen in the company of the previous winners,” Boyd added, referring to Michael Zavros and Jon Cattapan.

In the award-winning piece, Untitled 2014, Boyd bedecked his large, predominantly black painting with glistening droplets of transparent glue, which he refers to as “the cultural lens”. “My use of dots references the idea of the cultural lens and the fact that we all have different points of view,” he said.

Boyd’s current series of history paintings investigates the hidden and mysterious histories that took place during the colonisation of the Pacific Islands. Pentecost Island in Vanuatu was home to Boyd’s great-great-grandfather before he was brought to Queensland to work in the sugarcane fields – a practice known as “Blackbirding”.

Many South Sea islanders were brought to Australia to support this industry between 1863 and 1904, and worked for little or no pay. The 31-year-old artist, who left Cairns to study at the Canberra School of Art, also belongs to the Kudjla/Gangalu people from far north Queensland.

Interview with Prof. Gracelyn Smallwood – Nelson Mandella

Interview with Prof. Gracelyn Smallwood - Nelson Mandella

Interview with Prof. Gracelyn Smallwood – Nelson Mandella

Interview with Prof. Gracelyn Smallwood – Nelson Mandella a humble freedom fighter / Torres News By MARK BOUSEN.

The late Madiba Nelson Mandela was a humble freedom fighter who promoted truth, justice and reconciliation with violence, a prominent world, human rights figure has said.

Professor Gracelyn Smallwood, who last month received a United Nations Award for her 45 years of work and service for national and international health and human rights, told the Torres News at the Australian South Sea Islanders (ASSI) forum at Tweed Heads on the weekend.

Professor Smallwood, who lives in Townsville, met Mr Mandela in 1997 when she and Dr Chris Sarra were VIP guests of the South African President for the 20th anniversary of the death in custody of the late Steve Biko. “We were among the millions and we were waving the Aboriginal and Torres Islander flags near Mr Mandela. “The flags were spotted by Mr Mandela’s good friend Kwame Ture, the former Black Panther who was previously known as Stokely Carmichael, who was seated next to Mr Mandela. “Mr Mandela sent one of his guards who was carrying a machine gun and with a dog to invite us to sit in a vacant chair next to him. “As there was only one seat, Dr Sarra and I decided to take a rain check and would meet the President at a small function that night.”

Professor Smallwood, who has family in the Torres Strait, recounts that President Manela was accompanied by journalist Donald Woods, who promoted and assisted with the movie Cry Freedom, the movie based on Biko’s live and death. “Mr Mandela made a humble statement about obtaining reconciliation with the truth. But in Australia, we’re trying to have reconciliation without the truth. “President Mandela also played a prominent role in the mediation with (Libyan leader) Colonel Gaddafi over the Pan Am incident (also known as the Lockerbie bombing).

“In a sense, my father, Archie Smallwood, did in Australia what President Mandela did in South Africa about human rights.” The day following the celebrations in South Africa and Professor Smallwood and Dr Sarra travelled to Libya via Malta to attend a human rights conference where Professor Smallwood talked about how the land rights fought for and won by the late Eddie Koiki Mabo were being watered down in Australia. “This created a massive breakdown and disharmony in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.”

Professor Smallwood said there will be harmony only when reconciliation is achieved with truth. “Reparation and reconciliation needs to be made to the First Families, Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders/South Sea Islanders as this country has, in the last 230 years, become one of the wealthiest countries in the world on the back of black slavery.”

Professor Smallwood is a registered nurse and midwife, prominent figure in Indigenous Mental health and holds a Master of Science Degree in Public Health, as well as a PhD in First Nations Australian health and human rights. “The United Nations Award is a real honour as I have retired, but it also reflects on my parents, particularly my father who was from the Juru Birrigubba homeland (in the Bundaberg district) and was sent to the infamous Palm Island at a young age under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protection Act,” she said.

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