Working Papers

Building value-adding information services for Indigenous organisations and people is about more than just taking a grant from government and putting up a "dead website". Should there be a code of practice for Indigenous website development? How can the very best and latest information thinking link up with Indigenous community leaders and leading Indigenous commercial and social businesses?

New songs from the studio of life. If you listen you will hear dogs barking, children playing, the answer and call of the Yolngu language. No sterile recording studio here. People come and go from their temporary accomodation close to the Gove Aluminium refinery. Midst the chaos and uncertainty, the beautiful purity of the Galpu women striving for a better life for their children and their families rings out. All proceeds from the sales of these songs go back to the Galpu community.

New songs from the studio of life. If you listen you will hear dogs barking, children playing, the answer and call of the Yolngu language. No sterile recording studio here. People come and go from their temporary accomodation close to the Gove Aluminium refinery. Midst the chaos and uncertainty, the beautiful purity of the Galpu women striving for a better life for their children and their families rings out. All proceeds from the sales of these songs go back to the Galpu community.

At the beginning of the month I was camped on the banks of the Mary River in Western Arnhem land along with one hundred other Aboriginal and Islander peoples who had met to discuss issues related to the use and management of the water resources across Northern Australia. The Mary River as it is known to non Indigenous Australians is on the land of the Limilm Ngari people who are living on and sustaining their land and waters in the traditions of the forebears while endeavouring to develop a tourism enterprise that is framed around sharing their country with visitors from Australia and other lands from across the sea. In that country on the edge of Kakadu where the great rivers of the north make their way from the majestic Arnhem land escarpment across vast flood plains and on into the Arafura Sea, Aboriginal people are seeking to play their role in the sustaining of the resources that have been entrusted to them from their fathers and mothers and those before them... The full text of Patrick Dodson's speech to launch the Indigenous Policy Dialogue and Research Unit at the University of NSW.