Take a glimpse at outback Australia and hear outback sounds put into music.
"A guide to Australia’s Stolen Generations"
The video was hoisted from
The Spinifex Gum Collective: 'This isn’t just the voice of Indigenous Australia this is the voice of Australia.'
(NITV News)
The Cat Empire frontman, Felix Riebl, talks about working with the Gondwana Indigenous Children's Choir and the importance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous musical collaborations.
By Laura Morelli
23 Nov 2017 - 4:56 PM UPDATED 23 Nov 2017 - 5:02 PM
In 2014, choir-guru Lyn Williams was in the studio the Cat Empire, and asked frontman, Felix Riebl whether he’d like to write a song-cycle based on the Pilbara for The Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir. Years later Felix says out of all the studio albums he’s created, Self Titled debut Album is without a doubt his favourite.
Over the course of three years, Felix, together with bandmate Ollie McGill and Marilya of Gondwana Choirs, were able to create the Spinifex Gum collective. The three ventured through Roebourne, Western Australia and its surrounding Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi country, to meet local communities and come face-to-face with some of the harsh realities Indigenous Australians face.
“At first I had no idea what I’d write about or how it would sound. I had the doubts of a non-Indigenous person entering a community, wanting to both create and to show respect, which would involve several years of returning there to build relationships,” Felix explained.
“I was excited to have the chance to write for something as joyous and life-affirming as a teenage choir, and simultaneously troubled by what I witnessed and discovered about the areas I travelled. I spent a lot of time going awkwardly from place to place with a field recorder.”
A group of survivors has created Australia's first travelling Stolen Generations education centre.
Key points:
* The Kinchela Boys Home housed more than 500 Aboriginal boys between 1924 and 1970
* The children who attended the home were forcibly removed from their families and make up part of the Stolen Generations
* Now, former residents are taking their story on the road in a mobile education centre to tell the truth about what happened to them
Former residents of the infamous Kinchela Boys Home, near Kempsey on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, will take an exhibition about the centre around the state to share their experiences, marking 50 years since its closure.
Richard Campbell is a former resident of the boys' home, where he was identified by the number 28.
"That trauma that we endured, telling us that we didn't have a name, we didn't have a family, we didn't have a culture, we didn't have a language," Mr Campbell said.
He and other survivors created the mobile exhibition to make sure the injustices of the past were not forgotten.
The children were removed from their families, where many suffered serious physical and psychological abuse.
"We can get out there and tell the truth and that history about what really happened behind closed doors," he said.
Photo: A classroom at the Kinchela Boys Home near Kempsey. (Supplied: W Pederson/National Archives of Australia)
Education is key
In partnership with the Department of Education, the project aims to expand current understanding of the Stolen Generations taught in schools.
"Sadly here in NSW the reference point still seems to be the Rabbit Proof Fence," Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation CEO Tiffany McComsey said.
"There's a whole local history that needs to be understood."
Photo: Kinchela Boys Home survivor Roger Jarrett speaks to a group inside the Stolen Generations mobile education centre. (Supplied: Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation)
Built into an old bus, the centre houses an interior exhibition display developed in consultation with survivors.
The back half of the bus has been converted into a cinema that shows a short animated film produced by some of the Uncles.
Ms McComsey said the bus created a safe space for students to talk with survivors about their experiences in the home and provide a broader understanding of the ongoing impacts of the Stolen Generations.
"Having the Uncles who can share their stories and their lived experience is critical to the success of this," she said.
"We're here as living proof to tell the truth about what we went through," survivor Uncle Roger Jarrett said.
Photo: Survivor Uncle Roger Jarrett hopes to share the details of what the boys endured at the home. (ABC Mid North Coast: Kirstie Wellauer)
It took six years before Mr Campbell could talk about his time at the home, and for others much longer.
He said the process of "truth-telling" was important to end intergenerational trauma.
"That is very important for our kids because they suffer from our trauma through intergenerational trauma and it's still affecting our kids at the moment," Mr Campbell said.
"That trauma is affecting a lot of Indigenous people around New South Wales.
"Our trauma has got to stop with us as a Kinchela boy, through our truth-telling and through the educational system."
Reconnecting communities
The project will also reconnect survivors with the communities from which they were taken.
Ms McComsey said welcome back ceremonies will be held, hoping to encourage healing between the community and the Uncles.
"Going back to these communities where a lot of times these stories aren't even known at a local or community level," she said.
Roger Jarrett said it was not only the survivors who were affected by the policies of the Stolen Generations.
"When they come out of that town they lost their identity," Mr Jarrett said.
"[But] it's not just the people that were taken … it's the mothers, the fathers, and all the neighbours," he said.
"The town was traumatised as well."
Photo: Judy Williams and Kim Gillbert visited the mobile education centre during its pilot in Stuart Point. (ABC Mid North Coast: Kirstie Wellauer)
'Hunger for our history'
Judy Williams and Kim Gillbert attended the education centre's pilot at Stuarts Point on the NSW Mid North Coast.
Ms Williams went to school with Mr Campbell in Kempsey, and was surprised to hear what happened to her classmate inside the gates of the Kinchela Boys Home.
"My understanding was that Richard was an orphan," Ms Williams said.
"Why were children who had a mum and dad put into an institution?"
The pair believed the education centre would have a big impact.
"You sit there and listen to the story and you're able to connect with people from the Kinchela Boys Home," Mr Gillbert said.
"I think it will have a tremendous impact on people discovering a part of our real history of Australia."
FactCheck Q&A: are Indigenous Australians the most incarcerated people on Earth?
2015 - "A guide to Australia’s Stolen Generations"
This post is no way intended to minimize the systemic racial injustice in the United States manifest in the current unrest. Rather it simply says the United States is not the worst in that area in all respects.
Add a huge thank you to all the peaceful protesters in the United States, your protest has again heightened attention to aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia - again.
June 6, 2017 2.27pm AEST
Author Thalia Anthony Associate Professor in Law, University of Technology Sydney
Reviewer Eileen Baldry Professor of Criminology, UNSW
Cape York Partnership founder Noel Pearson, speaking on Q&A. Q&A
The Conversation fact-checks claims made on Q&A, broadcast Mondays on the ABC at 9.35pm. Thank you to everyone who sent us quotes for checking via Twitter using hashtags #FactCheck and #QandA, on
Excerpt from Q&A, May 29, 2017. Quote begins at 1:49.
- We’ve made progress in the last 50 years but some of the profound indicators of our problems – children alienated from parents, the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth, and youths in great numbers in detention – obviously speak to a structural problem. – Cape York Partnership founder Noel Pearson, speaking on Q&A, May 29 2017 -
During a Q&A episode marking the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum .. https://theconversation.com/right-wrongs-write-yes-what-was-the-1967-referendum-all-about-76512 , Cape York Partnership founder Noel Pearson outlined some of the problems Indigenous Australians continue to face, including high incarceration rates. Pearson said Indigenous Australians are “the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth”.
Is that right?
Checking the source
When asked for sources to support his statement, a spokesperson for Pearson referred The Conversation to data from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and said:
Therefore, the statement that Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated people in the world is true.
What do the data say?
It depends a bit on what you mean by “people”, which is a tricky term to define and will mean different things to different audiences.
For the purposes of this FactCheck, I have confined myself to checking Pearson’s statement on Indigenous Australian incarceration rates with the best available data on national incarceration rates in other countries.
I have also checked Indigenous Australian incarceration rates against the rate at which Indigenous populations are imprisoned in other countries, as well as the rate for African-Americans.
Let’s look at the facts.
Which country has the world’s highest adult imprisonment rate?
We can compare rates of incarceration in countries around the world using the World Prison Brief .. http://www.prisonstudies.org/world-prison-brief-data , an international database hosted by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Birbeck, University of London. It reports the number of adults incarcerated per 100,000 of the total population in 223 jurisdictions.
Pearson’s spokesperson was accurate to say the US had the highest overall rate of imprisonment in 2010, but things have changed since then.
As a total population – including both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians – Australia currently ranks 93rd on the World Prison Brief list, with an imprisonment rate of 162 adults per 100,000 of the total population in 2016.
But, as Pearson highlighted on Q&A, we get a very different result when we look at the incarceration rate for Indigenous Australians.
Comparing Indigenous Australia’s imprisonment rate to the World Prison Brief rankings
The World Prison Brief doesn’t report the adult imprisonment rate for Indigenous Australians as a subset of the Australian population. But it is possible to calculate an estimate to compare to the international figures, using ABS data and population estimates.
So, Pearson’s statement that Indigenous Australians are “the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth” is correct if considering Indigenous Australian incarceration rates alongside incarceration rates in countries listed by the World Prison Brief.
Indigenous and marginalised groups’ incarceration rates in Canada, NZ and the US
But how does Australia’s Indigenous imprisonment rate compare with those of other Indigenous and marginalised communities around the world?
Data on Indigenous imprisonment rates are not consistently measured or reported in many countries. So it’s difficult to gauge how Australia’s Indigenous imprisonment rate compares with Indigenous people or marginalised groups internationally.
But credible data are available for a number of groups in several countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US.
(Note: the following figures are reported per 100,000 of the adult population, not the total population as used by the World Prison Brief.)
In 2015, the adult imprisonment rate of Indigenous Australians was still higher than that of African-Americans. In that year, 1,745 per 100,000 African-American adults were incarcerated, compared to 2,253 per 100,000 Indigenous Australian adults.
So, Indigenous Australians were imprisoned at higher rates than Indigenous people in the US in 2010, in Canada in 2010-11 and in New Zealand in 2015, and than African-Americans in 2015.
IMAGES
Verdict
Noel Pearson’s statement that Indigenous Australians are “the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth” is correct, based on the best available international data. – Thalia Anthony
Review
This is a sound FactCheck.
We do not have data for imprisonment rates of Indigenous, minority or marginalised groups in every country on Earth, so we cannot categorically state Indigenous Australians are the most incarcerated on the planet.
But for countries for which we do have data, this is an accurate statement. – Eileen Baldry
On the American side of the ledger here, add Trump's 2026 Iran:
Posted 10 years ago --"A guide to Australia’s Stolen Generations"
AI Overview
Based on historical records, reports, and investigations, the worst atrocities involving the United States and Australia include systemic violence against Indigenous populations, war crimes, and massacres.
Worst Australian Atrocities
* Colonial Frontier Massacres (1788–1930): The systematic killing of Indigenous Australians during British colonisation was widespread. Research has documented thousands of massacres across Australia in which six or more people were killed, aimed at forcing Aboriginal people off their land.
* Tasmanian Genocide: During the "Black War" (1820s-1830s), the Aboriginal population of Tasmania was largely destroyed, with remaining people exiled to places like Wybalenna.
* The Stolen Generations: The forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families by government agencies and church missions, which continued until the early 1970s, causing profound generational trauma.
* Afghan Civilian Murders (2005–2016): The Brereton report found credible evidence that 25 Australian special forces soldiers murdered 39 Afghan civilians, including cases where prisoners were shot or had their throats slit.
* Bondi Junction Terrorist Attack (2025): A targeted attack on Jewish Australians in Sydney, which led to at least 15 fatalities, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese labeling it a terrorist atrocity.
* Port Arthur Massacre (1996): While a mass shooting by a single individual, this atrocity resulted in 35 deaths and led to significant changes in Australian gun laws.
* 1965-66 Indonesian Massacres (Involvement): Australia is cited as having supported and condoned the Indonesian Army’s campaign to eliminate the Communist Party (PKI), which led to the murder of an estimated 500,000 people.
Worst USA Atrocities
* Native American Genocide/California Indian Genocide: The U.S. government supported a "war of extermination," paying for militias to kill Native Americans. In California alone, estimates suggest between 9,000 and 16,000 California Indians were killed in 26 years, with the total U.S. Native population declining from millions to 225,000 by 1900.
* Slavery and Post-Civil War Violence: The brutal enslavement of millions of African people, followed by decades of lynching, racial terror, and systemic violence (e.g., Tulsa Race Massacre).
* Vietnam War Crimes: Incidents such as the My Lai Massacre, where U.S. soldiers murdered hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians.
* Philippine-American War (1899–1902): Large-scale killing of Filipino civilians and soldiers, with estimates of civilian deaths ranging from 200,000 to over a million due to combat, famine, and disease.
* Chenogne Massacre (1945): In retaliation for the Malmedy massacre, American troops killed approximately 60 German POWs in Belgium.
* Iraq and Afghanistan Conflicts: Numerous incidents of torture, illegal detention, and civilian casualties, including events at Abu Ghraib and various airstrikes against civilian targets.
These events represent profound violations of human rights and are recognized as some of the most traumatic episodes in the histories of both nations.
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