land rights - Alice Springs News

Voice campaigner cut her teeth in the Alice

Erwin Chlanda — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 07:41:43 +0000

By ERWIN CHLANDA On the day the Prime Minister has announced the date of the referendum, in Alice Springs it’s fitting to consider the thoughts of Professor Marcia Langton who honed her incisive activism in part when she lived in this town during the late seventies. Her inaugural NAIDOC Week keynote lecture at the University […]

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‘Custodians wanted Mount Gillen closed for many years’

Erwin Chlanda — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 06:33:24 +0000

By ERWIN CHLANDA All of the iconic Mount Gillen (Alhekulyele), against which Alice Springs nestles to the south-west, will be in its entirety subject to “restrictions, entry and use”. It began as the closure of an eroded walking track from Flynn’s Grave to near the “nose of stone,” the peak of the mountain which has […]

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Guarding his culture with spear, canvas and book

Kieran Finnane — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 07:18:04 +0000

A unique manifesto as well as a fascinating account of a life well lived, a hymn of praise to the culture that nourished it, a testimony to one man's vision and resolve. KIERAN FINNANE reviews Kulinmaya! by Kunmanara Williams.

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Slow road to wealth for NT's biggest land owners

Erwin Chlanda — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 18:30:46 +0000

More than 40 years after land rights and a quarter century after native title, three pilot projects in The Centre over four years starting in 2019/20 will identify opportunities and provide “a roadmap for development”. Meanwhile 350 km north of Alice Springs, a plantation at Ali Curung, once touted as a landmark Indigenous project, turned into a dismal failure but now produces 10,000 tonnes of watermelons (pictured) a year for an interstate lessee, relying mostly on labour from backpackers. ERWIN CHLANDA reports.

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Gas, fracking: potential benefits to Aborigines enormous

Erwin Chlanda — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 01:52:50 +0000

At a conservative estimate, 500 wells producing one million cubic feet of gas a day would generate $1.75b a year. But Aboriginal land owners under Land Rights could veto. The money or the land, that will clearly become the question. ERWIN CHLANDA reports.

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'My future is in my hands': winning work

Kieran Finnane — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 01:57:49 +0000

Inaugural Vincent Lingiari Art Award winner Marlene Rubuntja celebrates her life in the Larapinta Valley town camp. KIERAN FINNANE reports.

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Miners oppose call for land holders' veto rights

Erwin Chlanda — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 23:50:06 +0000

Any changes to the power of veto could set an "extremely worrying precedent for all other commodities," writes AMEC's

Simon Bennison (pictured).

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Questions ALP Senator Nova Peris will not answer

Erwin Chlanda — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:16:44 +0000

The ALP Senator for the NT, Nova Peris (pictured), has declined to answer questions put to her by the Alice Springs News Online about what is shaping up as the key question in Territory Aboriginal affairs: economic development on Aboriginal land. ERWIN CHLANDA reports.

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That four-letter word: work

Erwin Chlanda — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 01:48:42 +0000

Work – mainstream, private, lucrative and honourable – may achieve for Aborigines what four decades of social engineering and handouts have not. Nigel Scullion (pictured with a Top End elder), the first NT based Minister for Indigenous Affairs, clearly does not want to amend the Land Rights Act which would trigger a national outcry by lower-case 'l' liberals. Yet he must bring into play Aboriginal assets that have lain idle for too long: Half a million square kilometers of freehold land, and thousands of working-age people on the dole. ERWIN CHLANDA reports.

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Land use emerges as big issue in Centre

Erwin Chlanda — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 02:54:54 +0000

Candidates spruiking repetitive and uninformative platitudes is an irritating feature of Australian elections which always result in the victory of one major party that is only marginally different from the other. We quickly get over it. Lingiari is different: Here the election is a matter of life and death. COMMENT by ERWIN CHLANDA.

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