Cowra Local Aboriginal Land Council

12/06/2026

In an extraordinary Council Meeting held on Thursday, 11 June, NSWALC has confirmed it will pause participation in Closing the Gap governance forums and NSW Government advisory committees, pending its consideration of the State Government’s proposed amendments to the Crown Land Management Amendment Bill 2026 (the Bill).

This decision follows critical meetings held with Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Treaty, David Harris, and Minister for Lands and Property, Steve Kamper, yesterday.

Minister Kamper confirmed that amendments to the Bill aimed at addressing serious concerns raised by NSWALC and the Land Rights Network will be circulated to Aboriginal Land Councils by the end of next week.

NSWALC will carefully consider the amendments against the preservation of Land Rights before making a formal decision on its future participation in Closing the Gap at a meeting scheduled for the end of June. Both Ministers have been invited to attend the meeting.

NSWALC wishes to reassure the Network that it remains completely opposed to the Bill in its current form.

10/06/2026

The long-held legal assumption that Australia’s High Court does not have the power to hear claims of Aboriginal sovereignty is wrong, according to new research by Melbourne Law School.

The assumption is based on a misunderstanding of the significance of an earlier legal case, according to Associate Professor Olivia Barr.

Her research is published tomorrow in the University of New South Wales Law Journal. ‘A Matter of Precedent: Are all questions of First Nations sovereignty really non-justiciable in Australian courts?’ is being hailed as having the potential to lead to “the next Mabo”, as it opens the way for the Court to hear cases on the question of sovereignty.

See all links here

https://law.unimelb.edu.au/news/MLS/high-court-can-hear-cases-on-aboriginal-sovereignty,-new-findings-show

Currently, Australia is the only Commonwealth country that has not signed a national treaty with its Indigenous peoples. A treaty acknowledges the “sovereignty” of original inhabitants, that is, their authority and power to make decisions about how best to govern aspects of their own lives.

“For 50 years, the High Court has consistently said that all questions about First Nations sovereignty fall outside its jurisdiction; that is, that the court does not have the power to hear such cases,” says Associate Professor Barr.

“This started in the 70s, with a case called ‘Coe v Commonwealth (1979)’, where four High Court judges split two and two on the early procedural question of whether the Court should allow a trial on sovereignty. The vote was a stalemate, and that case did not go to trial.

“Since then, everyone has accepted the outcome of the 1970s case, and the assumption that the High Court doesn’t have jurisdiction.”

But, she says, this is an error: “Because it was a stalemate, or deadlock vote, and not a decision in which the court had a majority verdict one way or the other, the Coe case does not count as a precedent (a legal precedent is a decision that must be followed in all subsequent cases).

“There is a long-forgotten legal rule that split-court decisions like this do not create a precedent (see Tasmania v Victoria (1935) as endorsed by WA v Hamersley Iron (No 2) (1969)). This means it is as if the Coe case never happened, so it is open to the High Court to agree to hear any case on Aboriginal sovereignty that is put forward.”

Associate Professor Barr said it would now be up to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to decide whether to run a new test case: “If so, the High Court might continue to avoid this issue, as it has done for 50 years, and leave it to the political arena (i.e. claiming no jurisdiction).

“If the High Court did get involved, there would be a trial, and the Court would have the power to decide whether – at least in terms of the law – First Nations’ sovereignty does, or does not, exist.

“If rejected, this would be devastating for Indigenous people, akin to the failed Voice referendum.

“If sovereignty were recognised, this would be hugely significant, like another Mabo, potentially opening legal avenues to more treaties, self-determination and reparations for First Nations people in Australia.”

She says this is common elsewhere in the world, including in most Commonwealth countries, such as New Zealand with its Treaty of Waitangi.

She says Canada has several successful examples of Indigenous sovereignty, including in its treaty with a First Nation called the Nisga’a: “Before the treaty was signed in 2000, they had poorer health compared to non-Indigenous communities, greater interaction with criminal justice systems, lower life expectancy, and all those things that come from intergenerational trauma as a result of colonisation.

“Since the Treaty was signed, giving them decision-making control through their own level of government, the statistics in that community have greatly improved. Life has got better.”

01/06/2026

A hero on and off the field, Stephen Ingram's legacy celebrated. Read more 👉 www.theland.com.au/story/9254911

29/05/2026

A woman walked into a prison to visit her brother — and never really left. For the next four decades, she became the mother of hundreds she had never met, changed Australia's justice system from the inside, and the authorities who once questioned her never dared to again.
Colleen Shirley Perry Smith was born in 1924 in Cowra, New South Wales. Because of epilepsy, she never attended a conventional school. Her grandfather took on her education instead — and by the time she was grown, she could speak multiple Aboriginal languages and carry herself with a quiet authority that no classroom could have taught her. When her family moved to Sydney in the 1930s, she carried that quiet strength with her into one of the most overlooked corners of Australian society.
It started with her brother. When he was imprisoned, Shirley visited him faithfully. Other inmates began to look forward to her presence too — she listened, she cared, she showed up. When her brother was eventually released and barred from returning to see his fellow prisoners, Shirley went in his place. Every time a guard asked, "What is your relation to the prisoner?" she gave the same calm answer: "I'm his mum." She said it so many times, to so many guards, about so many men, that it stopped being a strategy and became the truth. She was Mum Shirl now — and that name would follow her for the rest of her life.
Prison authorities eventually stopped questioning her and started opening doors for her — granting her access to any prisoner she wished to visit across the country. But prisons were only one part of her world. She helped children without families find homes. She was a driving force behind the establishment of the Aboriginal Legal Service, ensuring that Indigenous Australians had access to legal support that had long been denied to them. By 1990, she had personally raised 60 children. She passed away on April 28, 1998, at the age of 73 — but the families she built, the doors she opened, and the dignity she restored have outlasted every barrier that was ever placed in front of her.
Some people change the world loudly. Mum Shirl did it by simply showing up — again, and again, and again.

26/05/2026

A renewable energy company working on a major transmission project in Central West NSW has admitted it damaged an Aboriginal rock shelter beyond repair while clearing land for new power infrastructure.

ACEREZ, which is developing connections for the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone, says the culturally significant site near Mudgee was identified in planning approvals but was still destroyed during access track works.

The company has apologised “without reservation”, saying the required heritage protection processes were not properly followed and confirming it has now paused work in the area.

“We are deeply sorry. The loss of this rock shelter is permanent,” CEO Steve Masters said.

The incident has triggered an investigation by NSW authorities, with Environment Minister Penny Sharpe describing the destruction as “furious” and “completely unacceptable”.

It also comes after earlier criticism of the project over environmental damage, including the loss of native bird hatchlings during land clearing.

Traditional owners have reportedly lodged emergency federal heritage protection applications under Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage laws.

Authorities are now examining how the failure occurred and what safeguards must be strengthened for future renewable energy developments.

24/05/2026

🖤🙌🏽✨

"Her full name was Colleen Shirley Perry Smith. But across all of Sydney - and eventually all of Australia - she is known by 2 words.

Mum Shirl.

She is born on December 8, 1924, in Cowra, New South Wales - a Wiradjuri woman raised in the long shadow of laws and policies designed to strip Aboriginal Australians of land, language, and dignity. She grows up understanding exactly what the Australian system thinks of people like her.

She decides, quietly and permanently, that she does not agree.

By the time Shirl settles in the suburb of Redfern in inner Sydney, the community around her is carrying enormous weight. The 1960s in Australia are a period of rapid, painful change for Aboriginal people. Many have been forcibly removed from their communities under government policies stretching back decades. Families are fractured. Young men are cycling through jails in numbers that should have shamed the entire country - arrested at rates far exceeding those of non-Indigenous Australians, with almost no support on the inside and nothing waiting for them when they get out.

Shirl walks into Bathurst Gaol one day in the late 1960s to visit a relative. She looks around the visiting room. She sees men sitting alone. No one has come for them. No family. No friend. No one.

That is all it takes.

Within months, she is visiting every Aboriginal prisoner she can reach. She travels between jails across New South Wales - Long Bay, Bathurst, Parramatta - by bus, by train, by whatever means she can put together. She brings food, to***co, and something harder to measure: proof that someone still sees you. That you have not been completely forgotten by the world outside those walls.

She visits hundreds of individual prisoners over the course of her life. With no government funding. With no official authority. Entirely on her own.

Here's what makes it worse: for Aboriginal men released from prison in 1960s and 1970s Sydney, there is almost nothing on the other side of that gate. No culturally safe housing support. No employment pathways. No health services built for them. The mainstream welfare system is inaccessible, poorly understood, and frequently hostile to Aboriginal people trying to navigate it. A man could walk out of Long Bay Gaol with a few dollars in his pocket and nowhere to go.

They find their way to Shirl.

She opens her home in Redfern as though it has no door at all. People sit at her kitchen table for hours - recently released prisoners, mothers searching for children taken by welfare authorities, families with nowhere else to turn. She listens without flinching.

Then she acts. She finds housing. She tracks down government offices and makes them respond. She mediates between families and institutions that have never once tried to understand each other.

She calls everyone love. She judges no one.

But she is not simply a kind-hearted neighbor. She is a builder. She understands that compassion without structure leaves the next person just as lost. So she begins building structure.

In 1971, Shirl becomes a founding figure in the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern - the first community-controlled Aboriginal health service in all of Australia. It opens its doors and treats patients with a cultural dignity and understanding that no government clinic has ever offered. It still operates today, more than 50 years later.

She also helps establish the Aboriginal Legal Service, which gives Aboriginal people access to legal representation that most had never been able to reach. And she helps found the Aboriginal Children's Service - a direct response to the devastating removal of Aboriginal children from their families that continues well into the 1970s.

3 institutions. Less than 1 decade. Each one built from nothing. Each one changing thousands of lives.

In 1977, the Australian government awards Shirl the Medal of the Order of Australia. She later receives an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. For a woman who had little formal schooling and never once sought recognition, both honours arrive almost quietly - because she is still far too busy to stop.

She continues her prison visits, her kitchen table conversations, her phone calls at all hours, her relentless advocacy through the 1980s and into the 1990s. The reconciliation movement grows around her. Land rights legislation moves through parliament. And at every stage, the groundwork Mum Shirl has quietly laid is part of what makes that progress possible.

On April 8, 1998, Colleen Shirley Perry Smith passes away in Sydney. She is 73 years old.

At her funeral, thousands of people fill the streets of Redfern. Elders, politicians, former prisoners, children she had helped raise, and strangers who had never met her but knew exactly what she had meant.

She had no office. No salary. No government mandate.

She had a kitchen table, a refusal to look away, and a heart that simply would not close its door.

Is there someone in your life who showed up quietly for others - not for recognition, but because they could not stand the thought of people being left alone? Tell us in the comments.

Share this with someone who needs to know - you do not need a title to change the world. You just need to refuse to walk past people who need you."
Let this story reach more hearts.....
Follow us: Paths To Go

07/05/2026

Attn: Budding Actors 🎭🎼

Applications are NOW OPEN for the NIDA Pathways Program — 2026 Performance Intensive. 🌟

This is a fully funded, week-long intensive for aspiring first nations performers aged 18–25, where you'll experience the rigour and creative energy of conservatoire-style training at National Institute of Dramatic Arts.

✨ Fully funded — no cost to you
🎬 One week of immersive, professional-level training
📅 July 2026 | NIDA, Sydney

This is an opportunity we want to ensure reaches young people in our region. Please share this with anyone who might benefit. 💛

Applications are now open!

To find out more head to: https://www.nida.edu.au/about-us/initiatives/nida-pathways-program/

About NIDA Pathways Program At NIDA we believe that storytelling is powerful, and we are committed to ensuring that the voices shaping our national narrative reflect the full diversity of Australia. Our Pathways Program is designed to introduce First Nations Peoples and People of Colour aged 18....