Office For Justice, Ecology and Peace

Cape York Peninsula Heads of Agreement Signed
2023-02-05 00:00 - 23:59 (Australia/Sydney)

1973: Woodward Royal Commission into Land Rights
2023-02-08 00:00 - 23:59
On this day in 1973 the Woodward Royal Commission into Land Rights in the Northern Territory was established. The Central Land Council situate this event in its historical context here.

1965: Freedom Ride in Australia Begins
2023-02-12 00:00 - 23:59
A group of Sydney University students organised a bus tour through western and coastal New South Wales towns in 1965. As the National Museum of Australia website explains:

Their purpose was threefold. The students planned to draw public attention to the poor state of Aboriginal health, education and housing. They hoped to point out and help to lessen the socially discriminatory barriers which existed between Aboriginal and white residents. And they also wished to encourage and support Aboriginal people themselves to resist discrimination. The students had formed into a body called Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA) in 1964 to plan this trip and ensure media coverage.

Charles Perkins, an Arrente man born in Alice Springs, who was a third year arts student at the university, was elected president of SAFA. The group included Ann Curthoys who would later write a history of these events, Jim Spigelman who would later become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and Darce Cassidy, an arts student who was also a part-time reporter for the ABC.

Source: https://indigenousrights.net.au/civil_rights/freedom_ride,_1965

2005: Murder of Sr Dorothy Stang in Brazil
2023-02-12 00:00 - 23:59

2008: Apology to the Stolen Generation by the Australian Government
2023-02-13 00:00 - 23:59
On this day Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to Indigenous Australians, and especially the Stolen Generation, for past government policies of removing First Nations children from their families. The National Museum of Australia explains here how the journey to a national apology began with the Bringing Them Home Report.

Watch the apology in the video below.

2015: Death of Faith Bandler AC
2023-02-13 00:00 - 23:59
Faith Bandler AC, activist for Indigenous and South Sea Islander rights, passed away on this day in 2005. An obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted her achievements:

Faith Bandler changed people’s hearts and minds in support of human rights and social justice. Her smile, no doubt, helped. The National Trust listed her as a national living treasure in 1997 and the Herald, in 2001, included her among the 100 most influential Australians of the 20th century. The Good Weekend, in 2011, included her in a list of 50 women considered the most influential in the world.

Her greatest achievement was her 10-year campaign for Aboriginal rights leading to the 1967 referendum which changed the Constitution and included Aborigines in the census. She worked for Aboriginal education and housing, was a founding member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby and the Australian Republican Movement, campaigned for the rights of South Sea Islanders and wrote six books, including Wacvie (1977), a biographical novel about her father.

Read the full text here.

1958: Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders established
2023-02-16 00:00 - 23:59

2014: Murder of Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati in offshore immigration detention on Manus Island
2023-02-17 00:00 - 23:59
Today we remember twenty three year old asylum seeker Reza Barati who was killed in riots at the Regional Processing Centre (RPC) on Manus Island. A Senate Committee inquiry later found that the Australian Government had failed in its duty to protect him, and other asylum seekers, from harm. Here is an extract from the conclusions of the Committee.

8.5 In summary, the committee has found that the events of 16 to 18 February 2014 at the Manus Island RPC were eminently foreseeable, and may have been prevented if transferees had been given a clear pathway for the assessment of their asylum claims. Many of the problems at the centre had their origins in the events of July to October 2013, when the centre was transformed from a mixed facility into a single adult males facility and experienced a massive influx of new transferees, reaching more than double the initial intended capacity of the centre in the space of approximately 12 weeks. The inability of the centre’s infrastructure to cope with this influx, combined with the complete absence of any clear refugee status determination and resettlement framework to deal with these asylum seekers, created an environment where unrest and transferee protests were the inevitable result. 8.6 It is clear from evidence presented to the committee that the Australian Government failed in its duty to protect asylum seekers including Mr Barati from harm. Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report

The Manus Island RPC was found to be unconstitutional by the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court in 2016 and was shut in 2017. A number of detainees were transferred to the Bomana Immigration Detention Centre.

In November 2019 a delegation of representatives from the Australian Catholic community traveled to Papua New Guinea to gain a deeper understanding of conditions for asylum seekers there. Read their statement here.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has made a complaint about the conditions of detention in Bomana to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

As SBS News report, Director of the jurisdiction, complementary and cooperation division of the ICC office of the prosecutor, Phakiso Mochochoko has found that the conditions of detention “appear to have constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Read more here.

1999: International Treaty to Ban Landmines enters into force.
2023-03-01 00:00 - 23:59
Find our more about the Treaty here.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) provides advocacy tools for campaigners, including multimedia resources, ICBL statements, partner resources, and the Landmine Monitor, to keep you up to date on the landmine issue.

1970: International Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
2023-03-05 00:00 - 23:59

1990: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission established
2023-03-05 00:00 - 23:59

2011: Fukushima Earthquake and Tsunami
2023-03-11 00:00 - 23:59
On this day an earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan killed 18,500 people. Damage to a nuclear power plant in this event caused widespread contamination and the displacement of thousands of people. Reflecting on these events, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Japan called for the abolition on nuclear power:

We, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan, appeal to all people who share our common home called Earth that we join hands, rise together and act in solidarity to end nuclear power generation. For that purpose, we turn first to the Catholic Church throughout the world, seeking cooperation and solidarity. Then, building on that, we hope to develop a global solidarity that transcends religions, races and nations. Catholic Bishops Conference of Japan

1913: Founding of Canberra as Australia's captial
2023-03-12 00:00 - 23:59

2013: Election of Pope Francis
2023-03-13 08:00 - 17:00

2019: Death of Deacon Boniface Perdjert
2023-03-18 00:00 - 23:59
Deacn Boniface, a respected Elder and the first Aboriginal permanent deacon, passed away in 2019. As the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council’s tribute page for Deacon Boniface says:

His words and actions spoke loudly to the members of the Wadeye Community – of which he was a deeply loved and respected Elder – but also to the Catholic Hierarchy with whom he shared his wisdom on many official occasions. http://www.natsicc.org.au/a-tribute-to-deacon-boniface.html

On the first anniversary of Deacon Boniface’s death we share for your reflection these words that he wrote in the later 1970s:

God did not begin to take an interest in people with the incarnation of his Son, nor with Abraham. My people existed here in Australia thousands of years before Abraham. In all that time God was with my people. He worked through their culture. He was saving us despite human weakness. He was preparing us for the day when he would see the features of Aboriginals in the image of his Son. So i must recognize, I must use the things of God that are in my culture. I mus use them in his service. If I do not do this, my faith and my service are shallow. They are pretending. They belong to someone else, not me. God has asked us t love him with wjhole mind, heart and soul. So i must give myself to God as an Aboriginal. This is what God wants or he would not have made me what I am. http://www.natsicc.org.au/a-tribute-to-deacon-boniface.html

1866: Beginning of Sisters of St Joseph at Penola, SA
2023-03-19 00:00 - 23:59

2003: Invasion of Iraq by USA and Allies
2023-03-19 00:00 - 23:59

2005: Abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC)
2023-03-24 00:00 - 23:59

1877: Death of Caroline Chisholm
2023-03-25 00:00 - 23:59

1941: Death of William Cooper
2023-03-29 00:00 - 23:59
William Cooper was an inspirational Aboriginal leader in New South Wales and Victoria in the early part of the 20th century and a founding secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League. The league was created to lobby state and federal governments on behalf of Aboriginal people. The powerful symbolic gesture of a Day of Mourning on 26 January, along with a petition to the British monarch calling for Aboriginal representation in federal parliament, inspired generations of activists working for justice for Indigenous Australians. National Museum of Australia

1897: Death of Jandamarra
2023-04-01 00:00 - 23:59
Jandamarra was an Aboriginal resistance leader of the Bunuba people in Western Australia. Find our more about his story here.

1997: Bringing Them Home Report published
2023-04-05 00:00 - 23:59
The report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families was published on this day in 1997. Read the Bringing Them Home Report here and access information and teaching resources on the Stolen Generations here.

1963: Pacem in Terris published by Pope John XXIII
2023-04-11 00:00 - 23:59
The encyclical Pacem in Terris is known in English as Peace on Earth. You can read an introduction to the encyclical and find a link to the full text here.

1991: Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission Final Report signed
2023-04-15 00:00 - 23:59

1945: First united Nations Conference opens
2023-04-25 00:00 - 23:59

1986: Nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine
2023-04-26 00:00 - 23:59

1998: Death of Shirley 'Mum Shirl' Smith, Aboriginal community leader
2023-04-28 00:00 - 23:59

2016: Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen appointed Bishop of Parramatta
2023-05-05 00:00 - 23:59
Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv is the first Vietnamese born bishop to lead a diocese outside of Vietnam and the first Vietnamese born bishop in Australia. He was born in 1961 in Dong Nai in Vietnam. Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, his family has been dispersed.

In 1984, Vincent Long became a professed Conventual Franciscan friar (OFM Conv) and studied for the priesthood in Melbourne. After his priestly ordination on 30 December in 1989, he was sent to Rome for further studies and was awarded a licentiate in Christology and Spirituality from the Pontifical Faculty of St Bonaventure.

He served as an assistant and then parish priest for seven years in Kellyville within the Diocese of Parramatta and for seven years in Springvale in Victoria before being elected Superior of the Order of Friars Minor Conventuals in Australia in 2005. He served as Assistant General in Rome from 2008 until 2011, responsible for the Asia-Oceania section of his Order.

In 2011, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne in which role he served for nearly five years. On 16 June 2016, Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv was installed as the fourth Bishop of Parramatta at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta.

Find out more about Bishop Vincent here.

1970: First anti-Vietnam War Moratorium march in Australia
2023-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

1997: Wik 'Ten Point Plan' to extinguish native title announced
2023-05-08 00:00 - 23:59
