Past Programs
Government and Politics - 2008
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Chicka Dixon and the Tent Embassy
18/10/2008
Charles 'Chicka' Dixon is one of the most influential figures in contemporary Aboriginal Australia.
He grew up at Wallaga Lake and Wreck Bay on the New South Wales south coast. At 14, he worked as a labourer on the waterfront at Port Kembla, where his involvement in strike action sparked an interest in politics. He then moved to Sydney, where he became active in trade union circles and took a leading role in the campaign for the 1967 Referendum.
Chicka Dixon was both an instigator and an organiser of the 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy. As one of the few experienced campaigners, he acted as a mentor for a firebrand group of young activists who sought to bring Aboriginal rights issues into the mainstream. His influence helped the tent embassy activists gain direct access to senior government figures and was instrumental in encouraging the media to question the living conditions of Aboriginal Australians.
In 1984 Chicka Dixon was nominated for Aboriginal of the Year in recognition of his contributions to Aboriginal health, community development and culture. He continues to travel the country, lecturing and sharing his wisdom.
Also, a profile of Carly Wallace, a young Aboriginal woman from the Atherton Tablelands, who is set to one day be a leader in Indigenous media.
Postcards from the road: Kintore
17/05/2008
In the first in a series of postcards from the road, we travel to the remote community of Kintore, 530 kilometres west of Alice Springs. The artist Irene Nangala talks about the effect of income management and the abolition of the permit system on the tiny desert community.
Marcia Langton: a new agenda for Indigenous relations
15/03/2008
We present a talk by Professor Marcia Langton, who's just written an essay for the Griffith Review in which she argues that the everyday suffering of Aboriginal people has become a kind of visual and intellectual pornography.
Also today, writers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada talk about their craft. Anita Heiss and Briar Grace-Smith talk about Indigenous identity in a multicultural world and young hip hop artists, Manik 1derful, Simon Reese and Chillie give a sample of their beatbox sound mixed with Canadian Indian influences.
Fear of a Black Planet - part 2
12/01/2008
In part two of 'Fear of a Black Planet', Tony Collins weighs up the economic prospects for a future north Australia.
While demographers predict a sharp increase in the Aboriginal population in the north over the next fifty years, economists point to a distinct lack of jobs and education in the growing black townships.
This program was first broadcast on February 10 2007
