In this historic anthology, award-winning writers Dr Anita Heiss and Rosie Scott have gathered together the work of twenty of Australia’s finest writers both Indigenous and non-Indigenous together with powerful statements from Northern Territory Elders to bring a new dimension and urgency to an issue that has remained largely outside the public radar.
Anna Funder has described the book as ‘an indispensable contribution to the debate.’
It’s been a long time in the making.
Media Release "Australian Authors speak out on NT Intervention" of 1 June 2015: please click here
The Intervention Anthology is now available for pre-order: please click here
Further details about the Intervention Anthology on Facebook: please click here
The Intervention Anthology in the library: please click here or here
Description about "The Intervention - an Anthology"
One of the most invasive, puzzling and unprecedented actions by a government in Australian history – the 2007 NT Intervention by the Howard Government - has resulted in an ongoing and flagrant breach of human rights. The introduction of this racist legislation has never been fully debated nationally nor has there ever been any significant consultation with the Indigenous communities most affected.
In this historic anthology, award-winning writers Dr Anita Heiss and Rosie Scott have gathered together the work of twenty of Australia’s finest writers both Indigenous and non-Indigenous together with powerful statements from Northern Territory Elders to bring a new dimension and urgency to an issue that has remained largely outside the public radar.
In compelling fiction, memoir, essays, poetry and communiqués, the dramatic story of the Intervention and the despair, anguish and anger of the First Nations People of the Territory comes alive.
The Intervention: an Anthology is a unique document – deeply moving, impassioned, spiritual, angry and authoritative – it’s essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this passionate opposition.
For more, extract, table of contents, details: please click here
Anthology on the NT intervention - By A Support group for the Anthology
Join us in rekindling discussion of the Northern Territory Intervention, help us publish an anthology of writings about it by prominent Australians
https://www.chuffed.org/project/anthology-on-the-nt--intervention
List of Contributors
Debra Adelaide, Pat Anderson, Larissa Behrendt, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Eva Cox, Brenda L. Croft, Lionel Fogarty, Djiniyini Gondarra, Yingiya Mark Guyula, Rodney Hall, Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, Deni Langman, Melissa Lucashenko, Jeff McMullen, PM Newton, Christine Olsen, Bruce Pascoe, Nicole Watson, Samuel Wagan Watson, Rachel Willika, Alexis Wright, Yalmay Yunipingu and Arnold Zable.
Book Review
SMH
Eight years after the federal government sent troops and police into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, the verdict is grim. Almost none of the recommendations in the report Little Children Are Sacred, which was cited as the motivation for the intervention, have been addressed. Co-author of the report, Pat Anderson, concludes that the intervention was "neither well-intentioned nor well evidenced". Her disturbing conclusion is that it was driven by the Howard government's desire to undermine land rights, an ideological campaign dressed up as concern for child welfare. According to Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, from Utopia, the intervention only further traumatised Aboriginal people, fuelling anger and despair. The key message in essay after essay in this collection is that the intervention failed. It was a heavy-handed, political quick fix that has fixed almost nothing.
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/in-short-nonfiction-book-reviews-20150622-ghrq1k.html#ixzz3eJArDBDx
Linda Jaivin
This is an important book, one that every Australian (and non-Australian interested in the rights of First Nation peoples) ought to read. Since Prime Minister John Howard launched the military-led Intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory in 2007, there has been intermittent discussion of its methods, consequences and ongoing effects in the Australian media, but until now, it has been difficult for even sympathetic outsiders to understand the full range, import and impact of this complex, neo-paternalistic policy on life in the NT. ...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1322997284?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
1 July 2015 - National launch in Sydney: please click here
For more past events info: please click here
14 September 2015 - Mona Vale launch
Monday, 14 September 2015 - 7.30pm
Speaker: Jeff McMullen, journalist and film-maker
For the flyer: please click here
For the info sheet: please click here
Hosted by the Aboriginal Support Group MWP: http://www.asgmwp.net/index.htm
Event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1683295528571641/
ASGMWP on Facebook: please click here
Listed in ASGMWP's latest newsletter: please click here (pdf)
Listed on Pittwaternewsonline: please click here
Quotes
"We [the authors of the report], together with the Aboriginal people we spoke to believed that we were attempting to find solutions to some of the more challenging aspects of society at the time. And still remain today in some places. So we didn't - look, I don't whether it was naivety or what, but we didn't expect that it would be used in such a vile, deceitful, evil way."
Pat Anderson, co-author of the 'The Little Children are Sacred' report
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/07/03/call-new-debate-interventions-impacts
"I think the despair and depression out there has put a lot more people at risk with alcohol abuse. Depression unchecked. White fellas don't go into the doctor and say I'm depressed - so how are they going to expect Aboriginal men in a small community to go into a clinic and say I'm not feeling really good with my emotions. And depression can have a ripple effect in places where people don't really intend it to go."
Ali Cobby Eckermann
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/07/03/call-new-debate-interventions-impacts
Quote about Ali Cobby Eckermann's poem 'Intervention Pay Day' included in the Intervention Anthology
Overland - A literature that refuses to go missing - 15 February 2012
...Monday marked the fourth anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations. In considering where that apology has taken us, it is easy to be disappointed. The currency of the discriminatory policies of Federal control in the NT Intervention – currently under expansion through Compulsory Income Management and the School Enrolment and Attendance Measure (SEAM) – is reflected in several pieces, not least Cobby Eckermann’s own ‘Intervention Pay Day’, a punchy, unforgiving poem about the social impacts of the policies, which subtly draws out the ripple-on effect of such policies into families and communities. This journal should wake anyone who doubts that colonisation is a contemporary process....
https://overland.org.au/2012/02/a-literature-that-refuses-to-go-missing/
"I have spent decades working with Aboriginal people and the constant struggle that they have is not only to have their voice heard, but it is also to be truly recognised and understood. I think this book will have a very useful place. I hope it goes into many Australian homes, but at the moment anyone who is studying law, anyone who is going into medicine, or is going to be on the frontline of the real emergency - which is the health crisis, where life is collapsing in our fourth world poverty. Those people need to understand the politics of now. This is twenty first political oppression in a country which is blessed with so much opportunity. We should not have poverty at all."
Jeff McMullen
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/07/03/call-new-debate-interventions-impacts
"I commend this book to you as a powerful witness to certainly a sad episode in Australia's history. ...
And from my perspective as an international lawyer, it was grossly in breach of the basic principles of public international law...."
Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4265831.htm
Audio
98.9FM Let's Talk - Bruce Pascoe - 14 July 2015
Bruce Pascoe, a Bunurong man, is a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative of southern Victoria, and an awarding winning Australian writer, editor, and anthologist.
Author of Dark Emu and contributor to The Intervention anthology.
http://www.989fm.com.au/podcasts/lets-talk/bruce-pascoe-2/
Direct audio link: http://www.989fm.com.au/wp-content/uploads/14-07-2015BrucePascoe.mp3
RRR News - Discussing The Intervention: an anthology - 13 July 2015
Hear an interview with writer and historian Bruce Pascoe speaking about his essay titled Bread, which features in the new historic anthology The Intervention: an anthology edited by Rosie Scott and Anita Heiss ...
http://www.rrr.org.au/whats-going-on/news/discussing-the-intervention-an-anthology/
Direct Audio link: click here
ABC RN - Anthology investigates 'The Intervention' - 7 July 2015
A new anthology features twenty Australian writers who ruminate on one of the extraordinary national programs of our time — The Northern Territory Emergency Response, or 'The Intervention'. ...
with
Rosie Scott, Editor, The Intervention — an Anthology
Samuel Wagan Watson, Poet of Birri-Gubba, Munanjali, Germanic and Gaelic descent
Bruce Pascoe, Australian novelist; Bruce is of Bunurang/Tasmanian descent
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/the-intervention/6600110 or
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/books-and-arts-7-july-2015/6600106
http://article.wn.com/view/2015/07/07/Anthology_investigates_The_Intervention/
Direct audio link: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/07/bay_20150707_1005.mp3
Also at: http://www.podcastchart.com/podcasts/indigenous-podcast/episodes/anthology-investigates-the-intervention
SBS podcast - Call for new debate on The Intervention's impacts - 3 July 2015
A group of prominent Indigenous Australians have put together their personal reflections on the impact of the Northern Territory Intervention. ...
Transcript: click here
Audio: click here
Media Coverage
Aurora Magazine - After the Intervention - 7 July 2015
... “ Yes. Yes, of course the government should do something…But not this…”
So said esteemed Aboriginal writer Alexis Wright to esteemed Aboriginal writer Melissa Lucashenko concerning “the Intervention”.
“Bad programs, appallingly delivered,” writes Eva Cox. And she shows why and how. A vast number of dollars for limited benefit and enormous human deficit, with the assumption that “lack of progress stems from recipients’ failures…not bad processes by policy makers”.
In 2007, the soldiers came with their guns. The first experience of the Intervention for many was terror. Do we run into the bush to prevent their taking our kids, to avoid being shot? The dread and panic is palpable in the relating. Rachel Willika’s eloquent and powerful telling inspired Rosie Scott to compile this anthology. ...
http://mnnews.today/aurora-magazine/july-2015/3680-after-the-intervention/
Crikey - Read and listen to the “strong statements from hurt hearts and sad voices” in this new book: The Intervention – An Anthology - 28 June 2015
... Listen to the echoes of these voices: Rosalie Kunoth-Monks states that ‘The Intervention to us was like Australia declaring war on us’ (p.24) and Pat Anderson notes that ‘it was clear that we were to blame, we were now going to be given a good shake, told to sit down, and that they would sort it out’ (p.36) or from John Leemans’ about Stronger Futures (p.160) to ‘keep fighting to get rid of the Stronger Futures laws and to win self-determination for our people’ (p.161) or from Djiniyini Gondarra et al. on Stronger Futures ‘we will not tolerate this bullying and it is no way to treat human beings’ (p.246). ...
For Zable’s story of ‘been enough intervening, not enough listening’ is one of taking the time for existential mapping of geography, of spirituality, of seeing humanity through listening to personal stories, of journeys of the heart and of the deep history of resilience of Aboriginal people. ...
... what Zable notes is that NTER is ‘the first intervention of the new millennium’ but that it continued a cultural pattern that ‘in its essence it was designed without consultation’ (p.224). ...
The Yolngu Nations Assembly and the Alywaar Nation stated that ‘There must be respect and genuine partnership, not the top—down approach which undermines and devalues us as people’ (p.194). ...
Encoded in all pieces of legislation should be the provisions to protect basic human rights. ...
The introduction is bare bones, no holding back opinion that ‘the abuse of human rights by the Northern Territory Intervention has no place in this country’. Rosalie Kunoth Monks states that ‘we need to live on our own terms and with strength in our own customary practices’ (p. 23); Rachel Willika (p.42), a person living in a remote community writes of the feelings of fright at the news of the Intervention, wants the rights to ‘live and work on our own land.’
And Djiniyini Gondarra (p.114), spokesperson for the Yolngu Nations Assembly provides a declaration of their independence and traditional rule of law as being the equal of any other system of law. However, framed by the Australian Constitution 1901, all legislation traces back to those historical roots because even the Racial Discrimination Act can be ‘suspended’ within the remit of the old Framework. This should be a concern for Australian citizens.
Instead, as noted by many writers in The Intervention – An Anthology, mainstream media attention is largely unconcerned with human rights violations going on in Australia. ...
Read about the amazing legacy of work by Jeff McMullen (Rolling Thunder: Voices Against Oppression, p.115) where he noted the long-term underlying neo-liberal agenda at play, in the removal of Indigenous peoples’ rights to land in order for further mineral exploitation for the benefit of corporate profits. In his discussions he ‘heard a rolling thunder saying NO to the land grab’ (p.115).
McMullen also raised the counter-point occurring in mainstream Australia where the findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse did not result in ‘NT-style Interventions into the church and state institutions’. Do any Churches have Intervention Signs (No Child Pornography)? And are Catholic School students subject to mass ‘health checks’ in military style operations? ...
There is a clear principle that should be part of any governance document (such as a constitution) and that is of genuine consultation. So many poignant voices in The Intervention – An Anthology, support such a principle, founded on the Little Children are Sacred reports’ first recommendation that ‘It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities’ (p.197).
These include, the Yolgnu Statement (p.188) ‘If we are citizens together in this country, lifting up the one flag, each calling Australia our home, then we must work with respect. Respect for ourselves, our land, our law and our language’ (p.190); Djiniyini Gondarra’s (p.77) list of negotiation points for the Australian State to enter into ‘respectful dialogue and working together’ with the Aboriginal nations of the Northern Territory; and Yalmay Yunupingu (Human rights and social justice award, p.228) calling for ‘for genuine partnerships between governments and communities to be established, the correct process must be followed including authentic and transparent dialogue’ (p.231) ...
The voices in The Intervention-An Anthology will shout out from any bookshelf upon which it is placed, they will reverberate in your sleep and sing into your dreams the disturbing facts of the Northern Territory Emergency Response and the Stronger Futures legislation so that you awaken to a new dawn where the sun’s rays do not hold the same lucky promise for every Australian, by design.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2015/06/28/read-and-listen-to-the-hurt-hearts-and-sad-voices-in-this-new-book-the-intervention-an-anthology/
FNAWN - The Intervention Anthology released June 2015 - 18 June 2015
"The Intervention to us was like Australia declaring war on us and in the process they demonised and dehumanised Aboriginal men, women and children.”
– Rosalie-Kunoth Monks – Elder and Northern Territory Australian of the Year.
June 21 will mark eight years since the introduction of one of Australia’s most racist government policies, – the Northern Territory National Emergency Response package – otherwise known as the NT Intervention.
Many Australians are still waiting for the outcry over the suspension of the Race Discrimination Act which allowed this legislation to pass, not once, but twice. In 2012, the Intervention was renamed “Stronger Futures” and designed to impinge further on the human rights of those in remote communities for another decade.
Award-winning and internationally recognised Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian authors and commentators have taken a stand the best way they can, by using the power of their writing to generate much needed discussion and debate – in homes, universities and in work places. ...
http://www.fnawn.com.au/the-intervention-anthology-released-june-2015/
Indymedia - Aboriginal Elders and writers flail invasion of homelands eight years ago in an exciting anthology - 6 June 2015
June 21 will mark eight years since the introduction of one of Australia’s most racist government policies, the Northern Territory National Emergency Response, otherwise known as the NT Intervention. “Intervention to us was like Australia declaring war on us and in the process they demonised and dehumanised Aboriginal men, women and children,” says Rosalie-Kunoth Monks, Elder and Northern Territory Australian of the Year. Many Australians are still waiting for the outcry over the suspension of the Race Discrimination Act which allowed this legislation to pass, not once, but twice. In 2012, the Intervention was renamed “Stronger Futures” and designed to impinge further on the human rights of those in remote communities for another decade. ...
One of the most invasive, puzzling and unprecedented actions by a government in Australian history – the 2007 NT Intervention by the [ultra-conservative] Howard Government – has resulted in an ongoing and flagrant breach of human rights. The introduction of this racist legislation has never been fully debated nationally nor has there ever been any significant consultation with the Indigenous communities most affected.
In compelling fiction, memoir, essays, poetry and communiqués, the dramatic story of the Intervention and the despair, anguish and anger of the First Nations people of the Territory comes alive.
The Intervention: an Anthology is an extraordinary document – deeply moving, impassioned, spiritual, angry and authoritative – it’s essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this passionate opposition. ...
https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/145322
Rosie Scott - Bibliography - THE INTERVENTION: AN ANTHOLOGY
Edited by Rosie Scott and Anita Heiss (2015)
In this historic anthology, Rosie Scott and Anita Heiss gathered together the work of twenty of Australian’s finest writers both Indigenous and non-Indigenous together with powerful statements from Northern Territory Elders to bring a new dimension and urgency to an issue that has remained largely outside the public radar. ...
http://www.thesecondevolution.com/rosie/bibliography.html
Wish to have an event in your city?
If you are in a position to and would like to organise a launch or event to mark the release of this significant document and generate some discussion, can you please contact Rosie Scott by email directly on: rosie@amaze.net.au
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