Talk:2004 Redfern riots

Untitled

"lasting until Monday morning" If we don't know when they started, this is meaningless because it doesn't tell us how long the riots lasted. What day was Feb 14th 2004? pomegranate 00:09, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Is there any particular reason where 2 incidents of civil unrest are linked in a page that appears to be inappropriately titled. Hmette 12:02, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

The linkages seem valid, but they should probably be split out into a seperate section. Maybe ==Similar events==.

I'm not thrilled about this whole article, it misses a few facts.

There was an outstanding arrest warrant for TJ, most of the rioters were not locals, the area impacted was reasonably small, and I'm pretty sure that TJ's bycycle had no brakes.

At the time of the riot there was a big crackdown on a few local drug dealers happening and I'm told (by a friend with good connections to the block) that many of the rioters worked for the dealers and had been stockpiling wheelie bins full of half bricks for a few days.

The link to Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody seems POV.

On the other paw, the article also glosses over how unprepared for the riots the police apparently were.

Feburary 14 was a Sunday.

The SMH report cited in the main body of the article is pretty good. See in particular http://smh.com.au/media/2004/02/19/1077072769138.html for the basics of what happened.

Regards, Ben Aveling 20:03, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

-- I question the the reference to the damage at the railway station being "superficial" when the damage bill was reported at being in excess of $3 million dollars and was shut for some time. Regards, Yeppoon 13:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The introduction to this article seems strongly biased on the side of the Police rather than simply stating the facts Regards, belblah 23:46, 30 April 2012

CBS article from the time suggests riot went for 9 hours ABC article reporting as it ended suggests riot ended around 5am Monday 16th Feb. 2004 (article seems to state higher number of officers injured, multiple of articles from various sources back up number being 40 or so) Assuming CBS news reported correctly, riot would've begun around 8pm Sunday 15th Feb. 2004 Regards, Blaziel 07:15, 21 November 2023

References

Racism and misrepresentation in this Wikipedia entry

Very few white australians (for context, I am a white australian) know australia's history, including the history of police violence in Redfern where Aboriginal people were targeted by police violence and harassment for years, to such a degree that it has been described as terrorism (to learn more, read "The Aboriginal Tent Embassy: Sovereignty, Black Power, Land Rights and the State", 2014, edited by Gary Foley, Andrew Schaap and Edwina Howell. Particularly relevant is the chapter, 'The Orgins of the Embassy'). Such information is necessary contextual history for this Wikipedia entry.

This Wikipedia entry is ill-informed and it uncritically draws on sources which are biased in favour of their own interests and against Aboriginal people. This misinformation and misrepresentation is something which the majority of australians consistently encounter in our media and in our education system.

Wikipedia should be a source that the wider public can rely on to inform ourselves of events and context in order to better understand our world. In australia itself, many acknowledge that we need truth-telling. Because there has been so little truth-telling, so many of us have been misinformed about our history. This leads us to ignore, accept, support or implement current policies and practices that continue the legacy of genocide through the growing numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being taken and put in prisons (the minimum age of criminal responsibility is 10-years-old in 6 of australia's states and territories) or non-Indigenous out-of-home care (contravening the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle which is intended to protect the rights of Indigenous children taken from their parents) due to the intense surveillance of First Nations families and children, disproportionate rates of Indigenous incarceration among the highest in the world (for context, these rates are much higher than the rates at which Black Indigenous people of the area colonisers named "South Africa" were incarcerated during the height of the apartheid era), avoidable deaths in custody (most of these deaths would not have happened if the recommendations in the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report had been implemented), early deaths and chronic illnesses due to medical racism and successive government policies which have materially disadvantaged Aboriginal people through neglect or mistreatment (to learn more, read the work of Chelsea Watego, Amy McQuire, and others they work with), and other policies and practices, the outcomes of which the government terms the "Gap" between non-Indigenous australians and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The government is not honest about what is causing these outcomes.

I urge people who do not know our historical and present treatment of First Nations people here NOT to write about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Such misrepresentations which give the false impression of being factual are dangerous. We have seen in the media, in particular, that false information manufactures wide public consent for the violation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's rights. To begin learning more about this, read Amy McQuire's writing about the fraudulent media stories, fabricated by government staffers, which were used by the government to justify their suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, and their attacks on Aboriginal communities under an Act called the Northern Territory Intervention Act.

I urge people (especially australians) to, ourselves, learn and unlearn what we have been led to think we "know" about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people before we even consider speaking or writing about them.

In her book, "Living on Stolen Land", Palyku writer Ambelin Kwaymullina writes about the artificial context that all non-Indigenous australians learn to use when we process information and knowledge about First Nations peoples. She describes it in her poem, "Artificial context." This is an excerpt: 'The artificial context arises from the long con of settler-colonialism, from the denigration of Indigenous peoples as "less than" which has formed the dominant environment through which laws, policies, behaviours, attitudes about Indigenous peoples have been shaped for almost all of the existence of the settler-colonial state caled Australia.' In her poem, "Bias", she writes the following about unconscious bias, the artificial context, and how to shift unconscious bias: 'The artificial context was born from, sustained by, stories Settlers told about Indigenous peoples. This means one of the ways to start to shift bias is to engage with the stories Indigenous peoples tell about ourselves. Seek out the works of Indigenous authors, playwrights, dancers, singers, Elders, communities. Not one story. Not two. All of them. It will take hundreds of stories, many years of listening to create change.' Gee2626 (talk) 03:08, 3 February 2026 (UTC)