Some weekend reading for you:

ABC News: “Doctor criticises Indigenous child health checks”

Maningrida doctor Paul Burgess says the checks, part of the Federal Government’s intervention into Indigenous child sex abuse, are being carried out by inexperienced doctors who know little about Aboriginal issues.
[…]
Dr Burgess held back tears as he talked about the Aboriginal women and children whom he says are being let down, even after telling their stories to the Little Children are Sacred inquiry.

“So much trust, and if we need to do one thing out of this meeting it is to honour that trust,” he said.

Darwin barrister Pat McIntyre says the Federal Government was planning to remove the permit system in Indigenous communities well before the Little Children are Sacred report was released.

Mr McIntyre says he read first-hand the Howard Government’s 10-page discussion paper released last year on removing the Indigenous permit system.

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The Age: “Stolen wages a major barrier to reconciliation”

To MOST Australians, the word “slavery” conjures up images of Africans in chains being taken across the Atlantic to work the cotton fields of America’s Deep South. We struggle to comprehend that slavery is also part of our own nation’s history.

Governments around Australia controlled wages, savings and benefits belonging to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for most of the 20th century. Payments withheld included child endowment, pensions and even soldiers’ pay. Much of the money held in trust was never paid to its owners. Trust account funds were transferred to public revenue, or disappeared through fraud or negligence along with many of the records.

More on stolen wages from ANTAR.

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Remember the De Anza rape case? The one where the door was held closed by a group of men against three rescuers? The one where a witness said “One of the guys who was in the room said: ‘This is her fault. She got drunk and she did this to herself.'”? The one where the vomit on the face of the semi-comatose 17-year-old victim was not considered evidence of her drunkenness – because it wasn’t her vomit? The one where the three women who rescued the victim have now received commendations by the San Jose city council, but that remains charge-free? The original video story is here at KTVU.

Witnesses at center stage in De Anza rape inquiry (reg required, bugmenot works)

Officials from the state attorney general’s office today will interview three young women who sheriff’s investigators believe stopped the gang rape of a teenage girl at a De Anza College baseball player’s home, the women’s attorney said.
[…]
[Attorney] Hammer said the women haven’t changed their compelling story: They broke into a side room during a drunken March birthday party and saw someone having sex with a partially clad, nearly unconscious girl on a dirty mattress as others looked on.

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And lastly: these shoes are awesome.

Categories: culture wars, gender & feminism, indigenous, law & order, Politics, social justice, violence

Tags: authoritarianism, bigotry, indigenous, law, race & racism, rape, Read-ems, sexual violence, sexuality and health, social change