A festival in Sydney and Melbourne is calling for cardholders to ‘Pay the Rent’, with an additional fee to compensate the traditional owners of the land on which the events are held.
Tickets for the Summer Camp Festival, held in December, cost $228.88, with an optional $3.01 ‘Pay the Rent’ First Nations Community Donation’.
Organizers have described the payment as a way of recognizing that colonization continues to affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
SHOULD FESTIVALS ASK GUESTS TO PAY THE RENT? GIVE YOUR OPINION IN THE COMMENTS
A festival in Sydney and Melbourne later this year is calling for cardholders to ‘Pay the Rent’, with an additional fee to compensate the traditional owners of the land on which the events will take place.
The two main acts for the festival – which promises to ‘bring the best of queer culture’ – are UK’s Jessie Ware and US drag queen DJ Trixie Mattel.
“This amount will be added to the Summer Camp donation to a First Nations organization chosen in consultation with the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council,” the report said.
The two main acts for the festival – which promises to ‘bring the best of queer culture’ – are UK’s Jessie Ware and US drag queen DJ Trixie Mattel.
In July 2021, while the coalition was in government, Summer Camp Festival received a $397,328 federal grant under the RISE Initiative.
The initiative was established as part of a $200 million Covid recovery package for the creative industries and provided 541 grants to revitalize the Australian arts scene.
Summer Camp Festival, operating under the company name Pride in the Parkland at the time, received a grant in the fourth batch of approved recipients.
The Pay the Rent initiative has been around for a long time, but the concept has been at the forefront of recent discussions about the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
While the constitutional amendment — if the referendum passes on Oct. 14 — will make no reference to “paying the rent,” some of the government’s hand-picked First Nations advisers have spoken out in their desire for a vote to move the treaty negotiations forward. to help move forward.
The organizers have described the payment as a way of ‘paying the rent’ to the traditional custodians of the land on which our event is held, recognizing that colonization continues to affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
The Pay the Rent initiative has been around for a long time and is seen as a way to compensate Indigenous Australians for the colonization and survival of Australia
Prominent Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo listed “all the things we think of when we demand a vote, including “reparations, land back, abolishing harmful colonial institutions.”
Mr Mayo said a “guaranteed representative body” was “needed (to)… properly pursue the rent due and an abolition of systems that harm us.”
And prominent Voice architect Teela Reid said, “Aborigines built the nation and now it’s time for you to pay the rent.”
More recently, it was revealed that Professor Megan Davis gave a speech in 2018 describing treaties as ‘about reparations’ and that ‘the Treaty is not an end, but a beginning’.
She said: ‘Treaties are legal texts. Disputes over interpretation will arise. The treaties are about reparations for past injustices and they are about land and resources.’
There is concern, both within the No camp and among the wider public, that there is an undercurrent of attempts to popularize the movement.
Lawyer Teela Reid, a Wiradjuri woman and public speaker, once described the proposal to amend the constitution as a ‘journey with all Australians to destroy the systems that continue to oppress us’
Some of the government’s hand-picked First Nations advisers have spoken out in their desire for a voice to move treaty negotiations forward. Pictured: Teela Reid and Thomas Mayo
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flatly rejected calls to pay reparations to Indigenous Australians.
He said in an interview last month that it was wrong to suggest the Voice could lead to reparations or paying “rent” to live on Australian land.
“There’s nothing in the Uluru statement about reparations,” he said.
“I don’t support reparations.”
While reparations are not mentioned in the one-page Uluru statement on which the Voice is relied upon, the concept is discussed several times in the longer manifesto that formed the basis for the statement.
The official Pay the Rent movement describes the proposal as a means of moving “toward justice, truth, equality and liberation.”
“Any non-Indigenous person, organization or business that uses or benefits from First Nations land must pay the rent,” the group says.
“It is appropriate to pay rent for special events held on First Nations land, such as weddings, conferences or festivals.”
Overall, the group recommends people pay about one percent of their annual income as a “good rule of thumb,” and the money is then funneled back into indigenous communities.
The official organization has helped fund 1,978 funerals and bereavements with the “rent money” it has received from participants, who have the choice of paying a one-time fee or making ongoing contributions.