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Gallery|Human Rights

Aboriginal Australians defying gentrification

Aboriginals’ ‘tent embassy’ in the heart of Sydney defies development plans and demands affordable housing.

The inner-city suburb of Redfern is undergoing a rapid gentrification process. Hundreds of its original Aborigines inhabitants have already been forced to move to the outer suburbs.
By Silvia Boarini
Published On 9 Feb 20159 Feb 2015
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Sydney, Australia – Aboriginal activist Jenny Munro, a 59-year-old Wiradjuri woman, set up The Aboriginal Tent Embassy in the inner-city suburb of Redfern on May 26, 2014, to protest the Aboriginal Housing Company’s (AHC) commercial development plans for the site.

The protest camp now comprises 20 tents and is the last bastion of resistance to the fast gentrification of Redfern. The camp sits on 10,000sq metres of prime real estate.

Known as The Block, the site has historically been the centre of the Aboriginal community in Sydney and beyond, and was home to more than 100 Aboriginal extended families.

For decades it suffered from a reputation as a crime-ridden area and housing standards were allowed to steadily decline. Regeneration talk for The Block goes back to the 1970s when the AHC acquired the land titles from the government.

This was an important first victory for the Aboriginal land movement, and the original plan earmarked the whole area for affordable housing.

Between 2004 and 2011 rows of terraced houses, which activists claim the AHC had failed to maintain, were bulldozed to the ground. Today, the protesters want to see the AHC provide the promised affordable housing for Aboriginal families.

The AHC has repeatedly claimed it needs to develop part of the site commercially to cover the costs of the affordable housing project.

The motto “Sovereignty never ceded” greets visitors at the entrance of every camp, adopted by “Aboriginal Embassies” across Australia, and first used at the Canberra Embassy.

It started in 1972 “to challenge the sovereignty of the colonial regime”, and acknowledge the feeling that Aborigines had been turned into foreigners in their own land.

'Sovereignty never ceded' is the slogan uniting Aboriginal protest camps across Australia.
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Aboriginal activist Jenny Munroe set up the tent 'embassy' last May on National Sorry Day. 'We wanted to give some meaning to this Sorry Day and not just remember it as the day we got a hypocritical apology from the government.'
A flag in the middle of the camp reads 'white Australia has black history.'
'Bush mechanics' - improvised speakers at the tent embassy.
Samuel Simpson has been at the camp for the past couple of months. He said: 'They shouldn't have taken The Block down and they shouldn't have kicked our people out. We'll stay as long as it takes.'
Children living nearby visit the camp to support the struggle of their extended family.
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Jason Munroe, 21, is one of Jenny Munroe's grandsons. 'They want to drive us out, see. So I am here to support my family, I have to support my people.'
The entrance to the stretch of land in Redfern known as the Block.
Bonny Webb lives at the camp. 'It's about saying enough is enough, the government has already taken enough from us.'
The Block sits on prime estate. Close to the centre of Sydney, Redfern has also recently become a sought after location by the so-called 'hipster' crowd.
The sacred fire at the Redfern camp was lit from the ashes of the sacred fire at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, which has been burning since May 26, 2014.


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