One hundred and twenty people packed out Gleebooks in Sydney on September 1 for the launch of Walk with Us — the latest book from the Aboriginal solidarity group Concerned Australians.
The book documents the detrimental impact of the Northern Territory intervention on Aboriginal people and features a call out from Aboriginal elders to Australians, asking them to walk with them in their quest for justice.
The book aims to promote the campaign against the intervention by promoting the opinions and concerns of Aboriginal elders who are subject to the discriminatory laws.
It is a sequel to the highly regarded This Is What We Said, which was published in February last year.
Millie Ingram from the Wyanga Elders Group in Redfern said “these stories of dispossession, dispersal and oppression are heart breaking. Racism is being enforced and encouraged in the Northern Territory and more than anything else racism destroys our society”.
Nicole Watson from Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning told the crowd that “change will only happen when more Australians express their abhorrence in the measures that deprive Aboriginal people of their self determination and for many even their dignity.
“We need to spread the word that these measures are inhumane and do more harm than good.”
Journalist Jeff McMullen also spoke at the launch. He said: “We walk on Aboriginal land. And the fight for Aboriginal lands, and the future of the homelands, is the great moral challenge facing all of us, and facing this country.”