Dateline Australia Feminists repudiate theft of Native land National conference expresses solidarity with Aboriginal claims by Delia Maxwell M ore than 400 women from across Australia travelled to Deakin University outside Melbourne for the 6th Women and Labour Conference, held during the last weekend of November 1997. Aboriginal land rights was the issue on everyone's mind, reflecting the groundswell against racism that has been gathering force over the past year. They were demonstrating against Prime Minister John Howard's Native Title Amendment Bill that, if passed, would revoke indigenous land rights. The ruling stipulated that when opposing claims are asserted, the property rights of ranchers prevail - but this didn't stop the pastoralist and mining industries from going ballistic. Already smarting from the recognition of certain forms of traditional ownership in the 1992 Mabo decision, the corporate magnates have now gone in for the kill - the utter abolition of the Native right to reclaim land.
Rural women speak out.
The conference opened with a welcome by the Wathaurong people, who are the traditional caretakers of the land on which Deakin University stands. And it closed with a speech by Stephanie Gilbert, an indigenous woman and a student at Deakin. In her address about women working on the land, academic Margaret Alston talked about the impact of Wik on rural communities. To take a more conciliatory view toward indigenous rights, she said, is to be branded a traitor. Many rural people are deeply disturbed by this.