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Elsie
Fisher is welcomed by Prime Minister John Howard
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Indigenous
Youth Heard at UNESCO
By ANNABEL
CRABB in Canberra
from The Advertiser (November 1999)
ELSIE Fisher
is about to take a giant stride from her childhood background
at Point Pearce to the world stage.
She is leaving
for Italy this week to address a UNICEF meeting in Florence.
Representing
Australian indigenous youth at the international meeting, Elsie
will take with her 18 years of experience as an Aboriginal girl
growing up in multicultural Australia.
Elsie, who
completed Year 12 this year and was also named South Australian
Student of the Year, was chosen by UNICEF Australia and the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to travel to Florence
as the nation's sole representative.
In Canberra
yesterday, after meeting Prime Minister John Howard to discuss
her mission, Elsie said she wanted to tell the UNICEF meeting
about the problems young indigenous people faced.
"Just basically
Issues In the Aboriginal community that are still being affected
- even though a lot has been done little has been changed," she
said.
Elsie said
her own childhood - spent around Point Pearce, Maitland and Port
Victoria on the Yorke Peninsula after her birth on the Cherbourg
mission in Queensland - yielded many memories of disadvantage
for her parents and seven siblings. "I noticed much of It through
my parents," she said.
"As they were
bringing me up they were both unemployed, and raising a large
family was difficult for them In the country even though they
had plenty of support through their families."
Poised to
take up a 12-month traineeship with the SA Museum, Elsie also
has a long-term ambition of helping young indigenous people to
find work.
"There are
a lot of opportunities... but most of the young fellows, they
don't really see much of them," she said. "They haven't had the
influence from other people - I think I've Influenced a lot of
my younger cousins just through what I've done."
HREOC Social
Justice Commissioner Dr William Jonas, who selected Elsie to go
to the UNICEF meeting, noticed her as a "standout example" when
she participated In the Indigenous Young People's Forum this year.
"She was a very impressive delegate," he said. "She's just got
everything going for her."
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