NEW NAME AND DESIGN FOR ROEBOURNE ART GROUP

Roebourne artists celebrated a new name and logo yesterday in Ieramagadu.

The new name is Wangaba Roebourne Art Group. Check out their logo on their FB page.

You'll hear from some of the artists this morning on Ngaarda radio ahead of the Cossack Art Awards this Saturday night.

Good luck to all the artists.

Photo credit: Tracey Heimberger

#BREAKING

NGAARDA MEDIA RECEIVES FUNDING FOR NEW NGAARDA NEWS DAILY BULLETIN

Today the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas announced the first stage of its grants program to support quality journalism and Ngaarda Media is proud to be a recipient.

Media organisations from across the nation received funding to cover a range of projects and Ngaarda Media received funding to produce a daily Ngaarda news bulletin focusing on the strongest indigenous Pilbara and Kimberley stories as well as national content.

"Judith Nelson is a wealthy patron of arts especially Chinese arts, but she really wanted to do some important things in Australia, said Prue Clarke, Senior Executive Officer of the institute.

"She wanted to try and have an impact in media and looked, like all of us have, at the business model that's really shrunk dramatically especially in countries like Australia and there is far less money available to do the great reporting that we know is so important to keeping the powerful accountable and giving a voice to those that don't always have one, she decided to start this institute and she put 100 million dollars against it, it was a very serious commitment."

Eleven organisations received funding and this is the first round of grants.

"There is a range from smaller organisations like Ngaarda all the way up to bigger organisations like the Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and also the Guardian Australia. So Guardian Australia is going to work in the south pacific bureaus they will have an editor based in Sydney and a network of indigenous reporters across the region reporting, the Herald and Age will hire an indigenous editor and an indigenous reporter with their grant to tell more stories that they haven't been able to tell so far."

Prue Clarke is an international journalist and media development specialist who co-founded New Narratives , an NGO supporting independent and investigative journalism in Africa. Prue led BBC radio programming during the Ebola crisis in West Africa and started her career as a cadet in the ABC Sydney TV newsroom and later worked in the New York bureau of the Financial Times.

Ngaarda Media's Tangiora Hinaki spoke with Ms Clarke about her work in Eastern Congo.

"I have come from running Native Narratives NGO .. it will be 10 years next year in West Africa and this is exactly what we have been doing there is giving them grants to do reporting that they are not able to do otherwise, it has been very obvious to me and I think people in Australia tend to take for granted independent media,

" I have spent 15 years now working in settings that just don't have any honest media and it is amazing what happens in that environment so people don't know what the major stories are they just get a steady diet of propaganda from newsmakers who are paying for the news, so people are not able to take action on the major news that is troubling their society."

Ms Carke also spoke about a project New Narratives is working on now on wartime justice in Liberia who went through a civil war where 250 thousand people have died.

"15 years later they have never had any accountability, no trials for anyone who was involved with the war and in-fact many of the leaders of the war are in power in the government which you can imagine undermines any confidence people have in government there, so we have been able to bring in a grant in there to do 8-10 stories a month on justice issues and really driving a push for war crimes there finally."

The grant recipients are:
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation to fund a media literacy program across remote communities in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
The Australian for a new series that will examine the complex implications of China’s transformation, both inside and outside of the country.
The Australian Financial Review to re-open a South East Asia bureau in Jakarta that will provide deeper coverage of the major economic, trade, business and security issues in Indonesia and the region.
The Guardian, to fund the appointment of a Pacific editor, the establishment of a network of independent journalists and the commissioning of major investigations to expand reporting on Australia’s immediate neighbourhood.
Ngaarda Media, a community radio station in Roebourne, Western Australia, to support news coverage.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to employ an Indigenous journalist and Indigenous trainee photographer to work with reporters in the newsroom on a series of news stories, features and multimedia projects.

LISTEN HERE: https://soundcloud.com/ngaardamedia/tjn-institute-of-journalism-prue-clarke

First Nations Media Australia Koori Mail PAKAM - Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media RADIO MAMA 100.9fm Noongar Radio PAW Media and Communications

So Michael J Ireland says that #NAIDOC should be abolished.

"TSI MOB HAD NO FLAG": BERNARD NAMOK JUNIOR REFLECTS ON THE CREATION OF TSI FLAG

In the wake of the recent news concerning the Aboriginal flag exclusive rights being sold to a non-indigenous company, Ngaarda Media decided to find out about the Torres Strait Flag and who designed it.

Bernard Namok Jnr is a Senior Broadcaster at TEABBA RADIO and the son of Bernard Namok who designed the TSI flag from Thursday Island.

Bernard told Ngaarda Media about a conference that was held in the 80s that many nationalities attended with their flags. Sadly, the TSI mob had no flag and so a flag competition was launched when they returned home.

"Back in the 80s a delegation from the Islands went over the Pacific and people from Australia were standing behind their flag to represent people from countries that had gone to a conference on the Pacific Island. Mob from TI were standing there without a flag! So they went back to the island and said you know we need to create something to represent mob from that area, that's where the idea kinda came about, he said.

"My father was an artist by hobby he did a few T-shirts and things and when the call-out came for mob to create a symbol to recognise people from that region, he was approached by the committee to put a design in, I remember at the time I lived at my grandmas house and I remember my dad sitting up late doing the sketches for the competition which my mum still has on the island."

The TSI flag was launched in 1992 at the Torres Strait cultural festival that was held on Thursday Island.

"The colours on the flag, the green represents the land when you look at the top and bottom green where TSI is situated is between to lands, the blue represents the water between the two continents the black represents the people from the region the headdress represents Torres Strait islanders and the five-pointed star represents the regions of the Torres Straits."

LISTEN HERE: https://soundcloud.com/ngaardamedia/tsi-flag-story-short-for-marions-show/s-xg7T7

#Sunrise in #Yirramagadu #Ieramagadu #Roebourne