Flames of anger at 'Stolenwealth Games'

Robert Corowa of BlackGST keeps watch at Camp Sovereignty. Picture / Brett Phibbs

MELBOURNE - Smoke from the sacred fire where the Rainbow Serpent lives drifts across Melbourne's Kings Domain as fire-keeper Robert Corowa welcomes visitors to Camp Sovereignty, the centre for two weeks of protest against the "Stolenwealth Games".

He passes guests through an entranceway of eucalyptus branches into a circle defined by sawn logs and hands them a gum twig to drop into the flames with words of peace: "We believe that by coming to the fire and placing leaves on the flames we can help heal the world."

The fire has come from Canberra, where it has been burning at the iconic tent embassy outside old Parliament House since protesters first settled down in the early 1970s to embarrass Australia into improving the lot of its dispossessed and appallingly deprived indigenous people.

Now, with a strong gust of wind, its smoke can roll across the gentle slopes of Kings Domain to Government House, where the Queen and Prince Phillip will stay after opening the Commonwealth Games tomorrow .

Government House itself says it all for Targan, a spokesman for protest organiser BlackGST and a PhD student who uses only his single tribal name.

"That's the site of the first concentration camp in Victoria," he says. "They called it a mission station, but they locked our people in there where they were killed by influenza, not allowed to hunt and gather. Who knows how many died behind its walls."

The McG, where the Games will be opened, is built on sacred ground, a meeting place where local tribes met to settle disputes and arrange inter-tribal marriages.

BlackGST is new on the indigenous block. The initials stand for "genocide to be stopped, sovereignty to be restored, treaty to be made".

It is working closely with other groups such as Australians for a Treaty and Reconciliation (Antar) - which yesterday defied special anti-protest laws to spell "Stolenwealth Games" in placards across the Yarra River - and traditional landowners to use the Games to help bring international pressure on federal lawmakers.

Targan says that little has changed for indigenous Australians since they first received constitutional recognition 40 years ago.

"Until 1967 we were just flora and fauna," he says. "But my 72-year-old mum says we were better off as flora and fauna. Our situation is like a boulder going downhill."

Jill Webb, Victorian chair of Antar, says conditions for indigenous Australians continue to deteriorate and that protesters hoped to use the Games to highlight ongoing injustice.

But she concedes: "I'm not sure if it is possible to embarrass this Government."

Protesters' anger was this week firmed by a new Oxfam report supporting repeated official measures of indigenous disadvantage - life expectancy almost 20 years less than other Australians and much higher rates of infant mortality, cancer, diabetes and heart and lung disease.

The report found that in contrast to rising health standards for Maori and Canadian First Nations peoples, one in three indigenous men will die before he reaches 55 years.

Strengthened by a ream of such figures, representatives of Victoria's 36 tribal groups met two weeks ago to debate a protest strategy for the Games, and backed BlackGST's plans for the Kings Domain Camp.

They plan to mobilise supporters for mass demonstrations. Targan is confident that with 120,000 Aborigines in Victoria, BlackGST's target of 20,000 demonstrators can be reached. Police believe that at best Camp Sovereignty will attract 2000.

For the moment at least, Camp Sovereignty is peaceful. Police and park rangers arrived after the camp was set up on Sunday in defiance of special Games laws but took part in the fire ceremony and left. How long that continues remains to be seen.



Equality end of the game


Today a new book, Australia's Blackest Sporting Moments - The Top 100 will be launched at the protesters' camp, detailing the worst in incidents of racism in sports.


Tomorrow , again in defiance of Games laws, protesters march on the Old Exhibition Centre, where the Queen and Prince Phillip will be lunching.


"We're aiming at equality for the first time since 1777, and we're not stopping short of that," says protester Targan.