The daily reality of living in Australia is the institutional racism that imbues every level of our government provided services. This impacts many of us, but those who are most impacted are Indigenous Australians, and it is some fucking bullshit. Today at No Award: some reading, and a request that you donate to Girl Academy, which empowers young Indigenous mums.

Gurrumul Yunupingu went to hospital and racism occurred:

Killing Gurrumul, what Australia really fails to Recognise

A fair point, how did they not Recognise a multi award winning artist, the 2009 Northern Territory Australian of the Year and one of the most famous Indigenous Australians in the land. The reason they did not Recognise even the most famous of Indigenous faces that nearly left Gurrumul to die is the very reason that Ms Dhu, Mr Ward, TJ Hickey, Mulrunji and many hundreds if not thousands of others around the country have died. Their humanity was not Recognised. Let me say that quite clearly again, the humanity of all Indigenous Australians is not Recognised. Even the most famous Indigenous people can be seen but their humanity totally denied.

Is the NT Health Minister fucking with us? Gurrumul racism claims a ‘publicity stunt’: minister

Gurrumul Yunupingu: is this a case of racial profiling or a symptom of rushed medicine?

Last week, the talented and multi-award winning Aboriginal singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu made the news for another reason when his nephrologist alleged that his patient’s care at Royal Darwin Hospital was compromised by the assumption that his chronic liver disease was related to alcohol abuse rather than hepatitis, from which may have followed other medical decisions when he presented very unwell to emergency.

Not quite, but nearly: what happened when a Maori woman was mistakenly recorded as an Indigenous Australian.

Give money to this:

You have a few days to donate to this amazing thing: Girl Academy: Empowering Indigenous Teenage Mums

The Cape York Girl Academy is the first of its kind in Australia – a dedicated school for Indigenous teenage girls and their babies.

The Girl Academy philosophy is simple and powerful…

“Our mission is to create effective and confident mothers, happy and confident children, and provide young Indigenous women with opportunities for growth and success in every aspect of their lives”.

Our students are Indigenous girls who are mums or have become completely disengaged from their communities. The girls can go to school in an environment that is nurturing for them and their children. They build the knowledge, ideas and skills they need for life and work, with the space and time to look after themselves and their babies.

HOW FANTASTIC IS THIS PROJECT?!

Other stuff about Australia’s racism:

This piece by Luke Pearson is GREAT, about institutional racism and our terribleness: Karmaphobia or: How to be a racist but still be a good person

You’ve probably heard that this information though, because whoever told you that probably qualified it by telling you how not racist they are. How they went to school with an Aboriginal person. How some of their best friends are Aboriginal. Or how it’s only ‘those sort of Aborigines’ they hate, and that if they could just be like the ‘good Aborigines’ they know then there’d be no problem. Traditionally in Australia, the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Aborigines often took the form of hatred towards ‘full-bloods’ or ‘half-castes’ and ‘quadroons’ and one of those groups was exalted for either maintaining their identity or for assimilating better, respectively. As these oversimplified classifications fell out of fashion we have found other ways to still say the same basic thing, but avoid the racist language that goes with it.

You’ve also probably heard about those poor white people who are too scared to speak the truth about any of this for fear of being called racist. Even how the police are too scared to arrest Aboriginal criminals because they are scared of being called racist.

Utopia And The Intervention: Australia’s Dirty Secret

“There’s asbestos in many Aboriginal homes, and when somebody gets a fibre of asbestos in their lungs and develops mesothelioma, [the government]doesn’t care. When the kids have chronic infections and end up adding to these incredible statistics of Indigenous people dying of renal disease, and vulnerable to world record rates of rheumatic heart disease, nothing is done. I ask myself: Why not?”

When Rosalie phoned me from Utopia, she said, “It’s not so much the physical starvation as the traumatising of my people, of whole communities. We are duped all the time. White Australia sets up organisations and structures that offer the pretence of helping us, but it’s a pretence, no more.