Tag Archives: Land Rights

Everything Matters, Land is Precious!!

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I am currently reading Stan Grant’s book, Talking to my Country, an indigenous reporter who gave a remarkable speech about how his people had been treated for the 200 years of white occupation : The speech. It tells his story growing up black in white Australia, a country which did not count their indigenous as humans beings ILO flora and fauna until 27 May, 1967, it is a powerful read.

So how do we hold country around the world, I have selected some quotes from the new residents and the indigenous residents of the lands that make up the earth, lets go for a wander:

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1. François Fenelon  (6 August 1651 – 7 January 1715), was a French Roman Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet and writer. His best knowing writing is : A people is no less a member of the human race, which is society as a whole, than a family is a member of a particular nation. Each individual owes incomparably more to the human race, which is the great fatherland, than to the particular country in which he was born. As a family is to the nation, so is the nation to the universal commonweal; wherefore it is infinitely more harmful for nation to wrong nation, than for family to wrong family. To abandon the sentiment of humanity is not merely to renounce civilization and to relapse into barbarism, it is to share in the blindness of the most brutish brigands and savages; it is to be a man no longer, but a cannibal.”

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2. Whilst I am not a great supporter of Religious and Political orders, I like the choice of doing good as the ethics of his religion : Losing my Religion.

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3. “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” Albert’s take on it. What will the world make of white nationalists being appointed to the Trump administration.

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4. I was a year off being a draft dodger because I was definitely not going to Vietnam to serve Queen and Country: War, What is it good for?

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5. Captain Jack has the privilege to be able to point out the not so good sides of his country and be listened to.

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6. An icon of the protest movement worldwide, he believed that land was for everyone: This Land.

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7. William Lloyd Garrison (December 12, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he founded with Isaac Knapp in 1831 and published in Massachusetts until slavery was abolished by Constitutional amendment after the American Civil War. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He promoted “immediate emancipation” of slaves in the United States. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the woman suffrage movement. Back in that time he lived that his countrymen were mankind.

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8. For the love of freedom for his country, Gandhi taught his countries citizens the ethos of non violence, a feat that has not been repeated in the history of mankind at the cost of millions of humans : Gandhi Jayati Special song.

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9. A fact that most governments forget, that they are not the land of the country.

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10. Love and Respect for All, Everyone Included: Already Home, Already Free.

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11. Stan talks about his people’s attachment to the land, they do not own it , they belong to it.

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12. The beautiful music of Xavier Rudd, I honour that place he talks about his music coming from: Spirit Bird.

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13. The so-called winner gets to write history, how much is fact?

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14. When your tribe is humankind, and you do this, the planet and the land will have a chance: Stand By Me.

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15. Mainstream media has a lot to do with the resurgence of people of this ilk being elected as representatives in Governments. Look up Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, she can’t spell white supremacist. By the way this was years ago. She was wrong about the Asians, it has now become the Muslims.

So do you live on your land or in a country. Are you Australian, American ot part of the human race? We need a transformation to the latter for the killing to stop and see the rise of humanity.

Namaste until next time, my dear friends.

namaste2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go back to where you came From!!

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My country made a sad decision today, it legalised the right to keep children who were born in this country in prison camps on remote islands where known cases of child abuses take place because their parents are supposedly illegal refugees.

What does this word refugee mean, the definition of it is quite clear:

According to the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees [PDF], as amended by its 1967 Protocol (the Refugee Convention), a refugee is a person who is:

  • outside their own country and
  • has a well-founded fear of persecution due to his/ her race, religion, nationality, member of a particular social group or political opinion, and is
  • unable or unwilling to return.

Yet we in our own country use terms like border protection and lock up children for up to a period of over 12 months, I call this inhumane and not meeting the above guidelines.

What has been said about refugees over the ages, have we improved the way we deal with them. There are many famous refugees, I had no clue Freddy Mercury was one, fleeing after the 1964 Zanzibar revolution.

Here are Fifteen quotes I have chosen to look at more useful ways to deal with refugees.

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1. I work in a place who dealt with the first wave of Asylum Seekers in Australia, many of them Iranian. I will give an examples changing his name. Ali worked as an airport Manager, his younger brother was accused of political dissent. Ali was called in by the police and tortured for two weeks  and on release told next time he would not leave alive. He fled the country, leaving everything behind the following day. It took him 9 months to get to Australia, and yes he came by boat.

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2. Name calling by the media, used to demean not empower or open people’s hearts to these people who have suffered unimaginable atrocities that people who live in area of war do. The only way I can relate to the effects of it are when I was in Leningrad and our guide said to imagine what happened here in a 2 year period kill 1 in 5 of the people you know and that is what occurred here.

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3. I saw the drone shots Russia took of the cities of Syria, as this quotes states refugees often have no choice, there is nothing to go back to. We are just very lucky to have never experienced this in our country.

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4. Probably the worlds most famous refugee is Einstein. A German Jew, his work was discredited by the Nazi Party. He was one of the lucky one who got out early in 1932 and went out to make some of the most significant scientific discoveries of the modern era.

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5. Tonn Benn served in the British parliament for 47 years as was seen as being the most left wing member of his party. He did not hold back in stating what he saw as the dangers of his right wing opponents, this is one of his most famous quotes.

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6. Famous for We turned back the boats and Team Australia sometimes our politicians forget and let their heart slip out, this was one such occasion.

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7. Go back home, to what?

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8. I love the poster of two earth’s , one with all the flags over it and the other as it actually is , One planet. Then no one would be illegal.

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9. They say that the strength of your team is measured by your weakest link, what does that say about planet earth and its treatment of our refugees.

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10. This picture speaks to the UN convention relating to the status of Refugees, designed to do exactly what it says. Delivery, Comfort and Mercy.

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11.  “Refugees are people like anyone else, like you and me. They led ordinary lives before becoming displaced, and their biggest dream is to be able to live normally again. On this World Refugee Day, the 20th June let us recall our common humanity, celebrate tolerance and diversity and open our hearts to refugees everywhere.”

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary of The UN pointing out with there is no such thing as Us and Them.

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12. Taken from the glorious song by Leonard Cohen Anthem. to me means that we give love as though like we have lost our country and are stateless, a pure love of mercy.

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13. This is being questioned with the current refugee crisis sweeping Europe. perhaps they need to send the political leaders on a holiday to Syria for a week or two and it would be put in perspective.

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14. This poem was written by a Somali refugee commenting on what happened to his country and how he thought before the war and after the war when he became one.

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15. A sign that says it all, not needing the political or economic commentary, just the humane one. Please when commenting on they should go back home, remember this, especially in our country where a great majority of our immigrants were refugees.

I had to stop halfway through writing this, we had a U.N. Interfaith Harmony Week event, the ethos if this week is Love of God, and Love of the Neighbour. They has youth speakers from six different faiths, aged from 12 to 20 they all spoke of love and compassion. This gives me great hope for the future of refugees.

Namaste until next Monday my dear friends.

 

 

 

 

Forgive and Forget, Is it that Easy?

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I was recently talking to a friend outside her house discussing what publicity I could help with for an event she was involved with to receive a discounted ticket when I recieved an SMS from my bestest friend asking me if I was off the airwaves.

I SMS’d her back and explained what I was doing or at least I thought I did. I then received another SMS asking where we still going out that night. I sent one back saying that going out with her was my main priority. The reply I received was not what I expected, It was that she had not felt that way for a long time and felt I was being negative to her.

After the initial shock of receiving such a reply I realise that we needed to discuss the difficulties we had been having in catching up and forgive each other and re- establish our friendship to what it had been when we first started going out with each other.

Wikipedia defines Forgiveness as follow –

Forgiveness – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//

Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which a victim undergoes a change in feelings and attitude regarding an offense, lets go of negative emotions such as vengefulness, with an increased ability to wish the offender well.[1][2] Forgiveness is different from condoning (failing to see the action as wrong and in need of forgiveness), excusing (not holding the offender as responsible for the action), pardoning (granted by a representative of society, such as a judge), forgetting (removing awareness of the offense from consciousness), and reconciliation (restoration of a relationship).[1]

In certain contexts, forgiveness is a legal term for absolving or giving up all claims on account of debt, loan, obligation or other claims.[3][4]

As a psychological concept and virtue, the benefits of forgiveness have been explored in religious thought, the social sciences and medicine. Forgiveness may be considered simply in terms of the person who forgives[5] including forgiving themselves, in terms of the person forgiven or in terms of the relationship between the forgiver and the person forgiven. In most contexts, forgiveness is granted without any expectation of restorative justice, and without any response on the part of the offender (for example, one may forgive a person who is incommunicado or dead). In practical terms, it may be necessary for the offender to offer some form of acknowledgment, an apology, or even just ask for forgiveness, in order for the wronged person to believe himself able to forgive.[1]

I have chosen quotes from across the Ages to see what our society has to say about it, Here we go –

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1. In our love relationships we will always come across things that make us arc up. This enables us to practice the noble art of forgiveness on a daily basis to restore the deep state of Love that we committed too when choosing those particular people to fulfil these roles in our life.

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2. When we are ruminating on the past and blaming others or being the victim of circumstances in our lives, it is valuable to realise tht we cannot change events as they occurred but we can drastically lessen the effect they will have on our future by uttering the words, silently or out Loud, I foryou you, me , them etc. etc.

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3. Lissa Rankin, Author of the ground breaking book The Fear Cure points to that a major percentage of disease is caused by False Fears. On reading the books I discovered that a lot of these fears come from things and events where you have not forgiven ,even to the point of Heart Attacks, here is the link to her page about it – The Fear Cure .

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4. Self Forgiveness is an important part of Self Love, a state that is required to allow other Love into your life. Be courageous in admitting that even you make mistakes.

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5. Holding on to interactions and events that play on your minds days and years later is very bad for your mental health research shows. Converting these from a bitter experience to a valuable lesson will free you from the debilitating illnesses that often follow the practice of blame and shame.

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6. Every Tuesday the local Council come and collect the rubbish I have been unable to recycle. If is was as easy to clear the mind of holding of things from the past that clutter up our lives.

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7. The vow goes I will love and cherish, whether in Good Fortune or adversity. Its not always plain sailing on the good ship Matrimony. Moments of forgiving occur every single day as we journey down this sacred path.

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8. How long have you sentenced yourself to. I had one shadow belief that was from the age of four. It only took to the tender age of 60 to realise what it was costing me, the world looked very different after letting this one go. I suppose there was no internet and Facebook when I took it on.

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9. World Peace Day is 21st September, It is dedicated to world peace, and specifically the absence of war and violence, there have been a total of 26 days of peace since 1945, the end of World War 2, the War to End all Wars. Oops got that one a little eschewed.

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10. Be in the Now, Moment to moment, Discipline – all words that point to what is needed to live in the state of the dignity of True Forgiveness.

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11. Any you an anyone or a butterfly? Butterflies have beautiful colours and character and fly lightly in the wind because they are not carrying their past burdens around with them.

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12. Two steps forward, three steps back doesn’t get much done. When you grant yourself and others the precious gift of forgiveness you free your feet from work-boots to the latest Nike runners and you have the ability to Just Do It!!

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13. Promises, Promises was a minor hit for the band Naked Eyes in the eighties. What they sung in the 80’s. Its about how much value we place on them. When you forgive it better be of a reasonably high level.

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14. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a fantasy about a man who grew younger not older. He grew smaller the longer his life went on, do you by holding on to those grudges?

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15. Finally, the words you use in your life is what gives you your power. In Australia we are known for saying sorry for the simplest of things. So when you have cut someone deep those words have little effect, Try on Will you forgive me?

We had a frank and moving discussion that night when we went out and restored the relationship to nearer what it had been. I didn’t sat please forgive me. I will next time I see her.

Namaste until next time , my dear friends

Namaste

We live on Her, sometimes we Forget

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I just went to this fascinating seminar on the weekend Free Humanity lead by entrepreneur Jeffrey Slayter His website who has got in contact with his conscious as well as his business side. Most business seminars do not have drumming ceremonies and lengthy discussions on the need to be in contact with Mother Nature to heal our souls.

Having not been out of my urban environment for quite a while and traveling out of the city for four days next weekend this made me think about what our relationship to Mother Nature is and its importance to humanity.

Wikipedia gives the following definition of Mother nature :

Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth-Mother), is a common personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother.

It has been a popular subject over time and here are the 15 quotes I have chosen to exemplify her importance

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1. Language is an interesting concept, Before written languages there were the languages of nature, the wind, the rivers, the animals, the birds.

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2. Since we have arrived on the planet we have chopped a lot of these down to make things without realizing they are our lungs and healing spaces. There is no anger or greed in a forest.

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3. Author of the best selling Wikinomics Anthony Douglas Williams attributes great healing powers to Mother nature, we in the west appear to have forgotten this.

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4. If you wish to be reminded of the power of nature, look to your children. They see the fairies, the beauty of plants and the glory of the night sky, Life is still a wonder to them.

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5. As you hustle off to your income generating job on a crowded train or highway it is easy to forget the beautiful planet that we live on. Whoopi Goldberg points out that she doesn’t feel that way towards us.

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6. My friend Kavisha  Mazzella the singer/songwriter with the voice of an Angel, hear her here An Angels Voice, says that the power of music is in the silence after, very much like the beauty of the sound of walking in a pristine forest.

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7. It is said a week in a forest is recuperative as a month in hospital, I know which one I would prefer.

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8. Do the words Tsunami, Earthquake and Perfect Storm bring up pleasant associations for you. Mother nature is mild and calm until she is woken from her sleep and then her rage can be devastating. Be nice to her.

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9. Jeffrey said at his seminar this powerful one liner, as we get older we become more of a student, less of a teacher. You cannot read in books or hear in talks what mother nature can teach you, you just can’t

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10. Where are the invisible spaceships that are being built to exodus us from the planet when it become uninhabitable for humans. Oops, that’s right they’re not being built, damnation.

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11. The humorous quote, most of those sounds you hear in nature are mating calls not unlike the pickup lines that are heard in the beer caverns that fill our cities.

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12. David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, points us back to our origins with a poignant reminder that we still need them, because with out them we will not be here either.

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13. Lao Tzu, one of the great thinkers, slows us down to remember that everything is accomplished in nature, and not at the breakneck speed that humanity is rushing along at.

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14. The fascination of language, the two words left out of this quote that seem to be relevant are corporate greed, shame really the influence they have on our current situation at the moment.

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15. Karolina Kurkova, listed in the top 50 most beautiful women reminds us that we come from Mother Natures loins as well. We are all a beautiful offspring of the stardust that makes up our planet.

One could write on this subject for time immemorial, which is how long she has been around. I felt my heart open writing this, thank you Mother nature for that gift.

Its time to say Namaste until next time my friends, thanks for reading my quirky output, Love you all.

Namaste

It goes to my Heart.

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My empathic traits are returning big time. Recently a friend posted a picture of her self with her girlfriends on Facebook and all the quotes were gorgeous, stunning,powerful women etc, etc. I felt like crying for her because all I could feel was the immense sadness emanating from her body. She had just returned from overseas and had posted how she was having difficulty assimilating back after separating from her lover who lives in another country.

so you know I like lists and the number 15 so here are 15 quotes or sayings about empathy and being an empath.

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1. Is being an empath a good thing or a bad thing, you can shut your eyes and block things out but when you feel it in your heart it doesn’t go away, light or shadow.

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2. Seeing Listening and Feeling, the three major skills of an empath that allow you to heal others and let them know that someone else relates to what they are going through.

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3. Our intuitive streak, Empathy, gut feeling when all our logical sensibilities are telling us to go the other way, yes you are an Empath and the former win out most of the time.

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4. We speak our truth, this may be after a very rocky journey, See most of humanity doesn’t and you can see it.

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5. Blessed are the few, and when we hone in on the suffering of the planet it sometimes feels like a curse. It takes inner strength to be an Empath.

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6. As an empath you can help heal other people with one word or one touch or lots of words or touches. But you are there for others as your dominant purpose on the planet.

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7. As an empathic individual you may go through rough patches where what is happening around you in the world is all consuming and saddens you. At this time its goodto remember your purpose is that of a healer.

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8. Imagine if all of our judges were Empaths. Would it change the sentencing of prisoners if the judge could feel the pain that they had suffered during their lives. A worthy experiment.

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9. With training and practice you can lessen the effect of outside energy but also must be aware of your internal energies. its up to us to be the change in the planets energy.

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10. As empaths we attend to attract likeminded people and you hear real stories, not its good and I feel fine. THis is raw honest communication, Yummy.

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11. Its Tenzin Gyatso, HHDL 80th Birthday, he is one of our spiritual leaders and he keeps pointing us towards the responsibility that being an empath is, keep on track.

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12. As empaths you don’t need to be directly adjacent to the person to sense whats going on, Possibly could be the reason why so many Empaths I know become Reiki masters and distance healers.

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13. One of my empathic friends formed a Facebook group called the Anchors of Love, thats what i see the purpose of me being an empath is, to send out the Love.

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14. A funny analogy, putting yourself in another socks, but this is what we do when we want to be comfortable to share whats going on, we take off our shoes and sometime even our socks and become more vulnerable.

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15 When I was downloading the images I lost count and only did 14 so I had to find another one. I found this piece of powerful writing. The quest for Love Justice and wisdom after the heroes journey. The uniting of dreamers, we can change the world.

Well we have reached the end, so time to sign off. Namaste my friends until next time.

Namaste

Terra Nullius, the theft of a land

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firsta

I live in a land that has been populated for close to 60,000 years. Recently the Prime Minister of our country denied this https://newmatilda.com/2014/11/14/tony-abbott-says-nothing-bush-australia-white-settlement, an act he continues to do even though he is the self appointed representative of the people who have inhabited the land for this time. Our Country, Australia is the only western country that does not recognise the indigenous native in their Constitution, in fact the words “other than the aboriginal race” were contained in up to 1967 when 94% of the population voted to have it removed in a referendum. I am ashamed that prior to this under the White Australia Policy of the government our Indigenous brothers and sisters, The First Australians had been considered less than human.

Terra nullius is a Latin expression deriving from Roman law meaning “land belonging to no one”, which is used in international law to describe territory which has never been subject to the sovereignty of any state, or over which any prior sovereign has expressly or implicitly relinquished sovereignty.

We are showing the inspirational SBS series The First Australians at the place that I work at Darebin Intercultural Centrehttps://www.facebook.com/DarebinInterculturalCentre?ref=hl ,a series created by First Australians to belie some of the myths that have been put across as the history of our land http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/. Facts I have learnt from this series are that there were over 250 Tribal groups populating the country when whites first arrived and that genocidal actions were taken against them to steal their land such as the 5 pound bounty put on an aboriginal in Tasmania and the hiring of  professional hunters to complete the task by the government of the day.

This made me think that families who first settled the land in the early days probably saw or took part in some horrendous actions to claim their lands if they were all populated by an aboriginal tribe. I grew up in the bush so somewhere in our distant past who knows what occurred.

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On the night of the 12 February 1965, 30 university students from Sydney boarded a bus and set off to campaign in the country towns of New South Wales. Officially called Student Action for Aborigines, they were led by Charles Perkins, a young man who would become one of the most important Australian Aboriginal activists, as well as a leader in the Aboriginal community through his work as a politician and bureaucrat, as well as through his sporting achievements as a soccer player, coach and administrator.http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-56_u-490_t-1335_c-5130/tas/sose-history/australia-after-1945/an-era-of-protest/charles-perkins-freedom-rides

Charles Perkins and his ilk were willing to fight for the rights of Indigenous people and their actions led to the referendum of 1967 and allowed people like Vincent Lingiari to lead his fellow stockman and families off the Wave Hill cattle station where their civil rights had been being abused by the Vestey family, a wealthy British family who had run the station since the 1880’s. In 1975 the land was handed back to the Gurindji people by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam , the first such case and the beginning of the land rights movement in Australia.

Finally, to give back to you formally in Aboriginal and Australian law ownership of this land of your fathers. Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands this piece of the earth itself as a sign that we restore them to you and your children forever.—Gough Whitlam, August 16th 1975 [4]

This opened up actions to be taken by several governments to either crush or support land rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_title_in_Australia , the most famous case being Mabo vs. Queensland over the period of 1988 to 1992. Eddie Mabo took the government to task about the right his Murri people had  re owner ship of Mer, his home island. Unfortunately Eddie became ill and died several months before the victorious decision was handed down http://www.abc.net.au/tv/mabo/biography/eddie-mabo.htm.

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So why will the government of a supposedly civilised land not recognise the first 40,000 years of their lands history in their constitution? If you look at these statistics it could be assumed that the will of the people is not there and the government are listening to the unspoken racism that exists in  our country http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/racism-in-aboriginal-australia#toc6

Terra Nullius is an abomination and belittles the people of our great country and we should be taking all steps we can to have it reversed and call out to our elected head of government to stop making statements that suggest he supports its existence. The fight for land rights has also risen again as the premier of Western Australia intends to  close 150 settlements http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-12/indigenous-communities-closures-will-have-severe-consequences/5886840. I believe we are better as a nation in recognising our indigenous brothers and sisters, the First Australians than some of the actions occurring seemingly in the name of the money barons who wish to mine without having to ask anyone. Say no to Terra Nullius and the fold back of land rights.

Namaste until we meet again my friends.

Namaste