1967 Referendum- still nothing to celebrate : Melbourne Indymedia

“It’s time to put Aboriginal rights at the top of
election issues, by voters demonstrating that we are
committed to positive change and an end to the
oppression of Aboriginal Peoples.

"It is shameful that Australia is one of the key
countries in the lead to prevent the adoption of the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from
being adopted by the UN General Assembly in New York."

Eleanor Gilbert continues: "Today we are circulating
Kevin Gilbert's speech that he made exactly fifteen
years ago at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, where he lit
distress flares as an international SOS call. The same
could be said today."

Kevin Gilbert, transcript of a speech at the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra Day of Protest and
Mourning for the 25th Anniversary of the 1967
Referendum, 27 May 1992:

It's twenty-five years since we Aboriginal People have
had Australian citizenship imposed on us, very much
against the will of Aboriginal People, for we have
always been Australian Aborigines, not Aboriginal
Australians.
We have never joined the company. We have never
claimed citizenship of the oppressor, the people who
have invaded our country.
Twenty-five years after this citizenship, which was
supposed to give us some sort of rights and equality
we see that instead of lifting us to any sort of
degree of place or right it has only given us the
highest infant mortality rate, the highest number of
Aboriginal people in prison, the highest mortality
rate, the highest unemployment rate.
And, after twenty-five years, we still have Aboriginal
children and people dying from lack of clean drinking
water, lack of medication, lack of shelter.
We have still had twenty-five years of economic,
political and medical human rights apartheid in
Australia. And it hasn't worked for Aboriginal People.
At the end of twenty-five years, we have seen the
Australian Government and the Australian people try
and get off the hook of responsibility by saying, ten
years down the track, we'll have Reconciliation.
And Reconciliation doesn't promise us human rights, it
doesn't promise us our Sovereign rights or the
platform from which to negotiate, and it doesn't
promise us a viable land base in which we can heal our
people, where we can carry out our cultural practices.
It is ten more years of death! There must be something
better.
Australia is calling for a Republic and a new flag, a
new vision. It cannot have a vision. It cannot have a
flag. It cannot have a Sovereign nation until it
addresses the rights of Aboriginal People, the
Sovereign Land Rights of Aboriginal people.
You cannot build a vision, you cannot build a land,
you cannot build a people, on land theft, on massacre,
on continuing apartheid and the denial of one group of
Aboriginal people.
We have committed no crime, we have done no wrong
except own the land which churches and white society
want to take from us.
It must change.
And we can never become and we never will become
Australian citizens. For we are Aboriginal People. We
are Sovereign Aboriginal People.
We fly the flag at half mast, in respect for Alice
Dixon, the mother of the boy who died in custody,
Kingsley Dixon, and for all the Aboriginal people who
died in custody and have been murdered in custody.
And for all the Aboriginal people in gaol. And for all
the children who are dying. A mark of respect and
mourning for those who have died in the struggle,
because Australia still has not had the maturity, or
the vision, or the guts, or the will, or the humanity,
to come to justice, to come to terms, with our rights,
as Sovereign Indigenous People.
Today is not a day for rejoicing, not a day of pride
for Australia. It's a day when we hold our flags at
half mast, in respect for Alice Dixon, and all the
people who have died in custody, all the children who
continue to die, even as we talk, through economic and
political apartheid in this country.
We are still dying. Nothing has changed.
And white Australia and the politicians, are trying to
avoid the responsibility, by pushing it off ten years
in the future, where it promises nothing.
It has to change.
The Aboriginal vision for this country, Aboriginal
Land Rights, is right for everyone. It meant you
cannot build any nation without integrity. You cannot
build it without justice. You cannot build it without
humanity. You cannot build it without compassion.
These are things which have to be addressed. We have
to go forward with a vision. We have to go forward
with a justice for everyone. That vision, that
justice, that integrity, must address Aboriginal
Sovereign rights, reparation, so we have an economic
and political voice.
We can't be done any more. Australia is not going to
get away with killing us any more. This type of
apartheid has to be addressed.
If the Referendum hadn't been passed, we would have
been further advanced, because white Australia would
not have fooled the world into thinking that
something positive was being done.
The international world would have looked much more
closely at us, much sooner. They are now, but it would
have advanced our cause by at least fifteen years.
We are now going to light our international distress
flares. And we are going to signify with these
distress flares the position Aboriginal People are in,
and we want to signify to the world, that we need
international aid, that our arms and legs have been
taken from us, and we ask the International World to
help restore our legs . And we need our arms.

Contact: Eleanor Gilbert 0421 795 639