The advent of affordable digital video production has the potential to give voice to people who once were denied a platform for their point of view and the means to propagate it.

Here is a case in point. The recording speaks for itself.


FMG's Great Native Title Swindle on Vimeo

and the democratisation of the medium is the only democracy there - that was pretty sad - greedy bastards!

Nothing much has changed in 170 or so years. The area was settled around the time the americans were shooting each other in the north and south thing.

Trinkets and beads, divide and conquer methodologies. Like Louey the Fly, if you are on a good thing stick to it. At least though the massacres are now forbidden. Native title on the Burrup Peninsula is primarily extinguished by the fact that the Yaburara people were shot out in what became infamously known as the "Flying Foam Massacre" and the land has not been continuously occupied or used since.

Yindjibarndi land use is provable and current.

Their surviving elder is over 100 years old, is normally a very quiet man and honorable without question.

He is frail but still has his faculties and has been the last fount of knowledge of the traditional country. He was very much upset by the whole contention which implies he and his entire life is a lie. Such a slight would not have been dreamed of 25 years ago.

For him to rise and protest in such a manner in among such a big mob in the presence of business people, lawyers and Police is so outside of his normal demeanour. It evidences that the disrespect must have really got to him.


By the way, I am in no way connected to the video. I was only notified of its existence and have unrelated knowledge of the community and the players involved. Its technical presentation maybe leaves much to be desired. My motive in posting the link was to touch on the accessibity of modern audiovisual tech and for its enabling people to much more their own advocates.

Here is one which is more finessed and draws on the AFI award winning documentary of 1993, "Exile And The Kingdom".

A Song For Country FMG Want To Destroy on Vimeo

It appears that the video and the issue behind it is developing a life of its own.


PRESS RELEASE
YINDJIBARNDI ABORIGINAL CORPORATION
Roebourne, WA
13 APRIL 2011
Vimeo forced to delete “FMG’s Great Native Title Swindle” video after legal threats from FMG and CEO Andrew Forrest

A video exposing the interference of Fortescue Metals Group and its CEO Andrew Forrest at an illegitimate, FMG-sponsored native title meeting in Roebourne on 16 March, has been deleted from the video hosting site Vimeo after Vimeo got a lawyer’s letter from FMG threatening legal action.

The meeting shown in the video was staged to try and strong-arm the Yindjibarndi community into removing all its objections to FMG’s Solomon Hub development in the Hamersley Ranges, and into expelling the majority (four out of seven) Claim Applicants who rejected FMG’s deal as a rip-off.

The video, “FMG’s Great Native Title Swindle”, received 12,000 plays in just nine days on the Vimeo site before being shut down, and has spurred intense online response across global social media sites, FaceBook, GetUp, twitter and so on.

“They say a picture tells a thousand words,” said Michael Woodley, CEO of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, “but this video, it puts you right in the room with us, lets you get an idea of how it feels to be bullied and abused by Twiggy Forrest and FMG .”

Michael Cheah, Legal Counsel representing Vimeo, informed the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC), “Vimeo removed this video after receiving correspondence from lawyers for Fortescue Metals Group and its CEO alleging that the video contained defamatory and misleading statements about them.
[…] Please note that we take no position on whether any of the statements in the video are true or not.

Rather, we have merely determined that the video could be subject of a defamation claim and, under Australian law, could subject Vimeo to liability.”

It appears that FMG did not want to be identified for its role in gagging the video because this correspondence from Vimeo directly contradicts a statement made to Crikey by Fortescue spokesman, Cameron Morse, who said FMG has had no contact with Vimeo about the video.

FMG public relations people have also been busy trying to delete critical public comments on FMG’s Wikipedia site and the Generation One FaceBook page, which was flooded with dozens of complaints about FMG’s and Andrew Forrest’s conduct in the meeting.

“If he wants to fight us online, he is going to get a shock. Money can’t buy the sort of help we are getting from people around the world,” said Woodley, “and all these
people want to take the stick to Twiggy and Fortescue Metals.”

The video has been re-hosted on Youtube until such a time as YAC can find a secure streaming platform immune from outside interference. The video is now hosted in two parts on:

Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (http://yindjibarndi.org.au/yindjibarndi/)

CONTACT:
Michael Woodley, CEO Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation
0419 097 130
m.woodley@juluwarlu.com.au
media@juluwarlu.com.au

For background & research materials please visit: Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (http://www.yindjibarndi.org.au)

"They seek him here, they seek him there" ( rip from the Scarlet Pimpernel ) might be apt to describe the ongoing saga playing out.

It seems the antagonist in the drama is expending considerable money and effort in swamping search engines and having providers of video hosting services shut down the offending clip wherever it surfaces.

You would wonder about the cost-effectiveness of trying to suppress it. All it seems to be achieving is to give the protagonists more traction in their campaign and reinforcing a growing public perception of the mining company as an oppressor.

The latest jump has been to this web address :-

IsumaTV | IsumaTV (http://www.isuma.tv/lo/ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ/yindjibarndi/fmgs-great-native-title-swindle)

Don't fret over those strange signs in the link address. It still works.

Alas, the power of a cheap small handycam made in South East Asia earning its keep in the dust and the heat and the new world order of communication, the internet.