Legitimate representatives of First People to meet at National Summit of Traditional Owners

They have declared that the Prime Ministerial Indigenous Advisory Council led by Bandjalung man Warren Mundine is not only an embarrassment to First People but it is an insult to suggest itself as an advisory body representative of the First People of this continent. According to these icons of the freedom and rights struggles, the Indigenous Advisory Council, now one-year-old, has abysmally failed First People.

The National Summit will be held in November with a call out to all the legitimate representatives of First People to attend. It is expected that from the Summit an Assembly of First People representatives will be formed. There will be a representative for each Country speaking to their issues and hopes. This Assembly will then head to Canberra in the anticipation that the Federal Government – the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Tony Abbott will meet with them.

“It will not be possible for Prime Minister Abbott to refuse to meet with the duly elected representatives of every Aboriginal region of this land. To reject meeting with an Assembly of all our people, of all the people of this land, would be an insulting slap to the face to all our people, past, present and future. It would be an unbelievable act of racism,”

said Mr Sansbury, chair of the Narrunga People.

“The Indigenous Advisory Council has only one option, and that is to resign. If they have any dignity left, they should resign immediately. It is one year in office and they have not delivered a single outcome for Aboriginal people anywhere in the nation.”

“If you want to remain credible in the eyes of Aboriginal people you take the bottom-up approach, you elect people from the communities to represent their people. You do not do this handpicked approach of ‘advisers’ as the Prime Minister has, picking people only who will say and do the Government’s bidding.”

“Government is now a threat to small communities. They are looking at closing them down, moving people on into other hardships. This has been disastrous thus far, creating many social problems.”

“This whole agenda of moving our people around is what has led to so many of the current problems, the poverty, the arrests, the suicides.”

These three seasoned stalwarts of the First Peoples rights struggle each have more than forty years of fighting for their people. Now, they are bringing together representatives from all over the continent. In my travels around the continent of late, as word spreads of what these gentlemen are doing there is a buzz and people saying this is the way it should have been all along. If the Assembly of First Peoples arises from the National Summit many already believe it will be significantly historic, hugely supported and more than likely arrive as the greatest challenge this Government will face “in having to at long-last at least deal with our people.”