Cartoons from the Alliance Building Day – Climate Impacted Communities Canberra Delegation – 25th March 2024, ‘For too long others have spoken on our behalf, or assumed what communities want and need.’ Preparation for the Advocacy Day on the 26th, ‘advocating in Parliament House for key asks that would improve the outcomes for climate impacted communities‘.
Cartoons from the Auditor-General’s Department ( South Australia) ‘world cafe’ style workshop for all staff to workshop thoughts and ideas to help develop the department’s new Strategic Plan; held in Adelaide, 12th March, and facilitated by the wonderful Denis Picton, Oztrain. One key message was to better promote the range of work that the department does and its value to the community – it is annoying to staff that the department is often confused in people’s minds with the Tax Office…
Each staff member had a ‘passport’ to be stamped as they moved from table to table – each table tackled a particular aspect of the department’s work…
John Strehlow, author, theatre director and more, has lived in the Northern Territory ‘off and on since 1972 as has taken an amused interest in the practice of importing experts from the rest of Australia to aid its development, This book is the result of his observations on this fascinating phenomenon’. Here are some cartoon illustrations from The Southern Expert’s Handbook…
A running joke in the book is that if a southern expert actually does take their job seriously they will be banished to far off Borroloola. As it happens Borroloola is now one of the centres of the innovative and effective Indigenous Learning on Country Program – (as I have learned from my brother Hugh), It is about shared respect and meaning. Sharing of knowledge and experience of living and working together through two-way learning.
More seriously, John Strehlow is the author of The Tale of Frieda Keysser, the 2400 page history of his grandparents, missionaries Carl and Frieda Strehlow, sparked by the discovery ‘of Frieda’s diaries, written in old script German, and the realisation that this personal record of her life in Hermannsburg, from 1897 and 1908 which revealed previously unknown details of their lives their and happenings in the community and more generally around Central Australia.’ John Strehlow sets straight the controversy stemming from Professor Baldwin Spencer’s denigration of Carl Strehlow’s anthropological research – and ‘exposes Spencer as a major scientific fraud‘.
Chris Ategeka has created a book of one hundred ‘one-liner jokes to survive the Road Trip of Life‘.
Here is a small selection from the 100 cartoons that illustrate Chris’s witty thoughts -with a few words from the jokes added just to give you a taste of his humour. To read more you will have to buy Puns and Chuckles, One-liner Jokes to Survive the Road Trip of Life! And to discover the more serious side of Chris Ategeka’s work click here.
The vote in the referendum on 14th October was NO.
On 22nd October a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, community members and organisations who supported Yes released an open letter to be circulated to the Australian public and media, The Statement for our Peoples and Country.
From the statement: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in shock and are grieving the result. We feel acutely the repudiation of our peoples and the rejection of our efforts to pursue reconciliation in good faith. That people who came to our country in only the last 235 years would reject the recognition of this continent’s First Peoples – on our sacred land which we have cared for and nurtured for more than 65,000 years – is so appalling and mean-spirited as to be utterly unbelievable a week following. It will remain unbelievable and appalling for decades to come.
Simon Kneebone - cartoonist and illustrator 