The struggle for rights and freedoms
The taking away of reserve land, the after math of the Second World War and the assimilation policy all led to an increase in Indigenous activism. The Coniston Massacre of 1928 was the last time that Aboriginal people and white settlers would clash in a physical battle; a new era of resistance now began. Instead of using violence the Indigenous people now began to pursue a policy of peaceful, political protest through activist groups and demonstrations.
The first protest group formed in New South Wales was the Aborigines' Progressive Association (APA) which was established in 1925 by a group of Aboriginal people and some white supporters sympathetic to their cause. The APA wanted to promote citizenship rights and wanted to bring an end to racial discrimination. In later years the also APA got support form trade unions and the Communist Party of Australia.
26 January 1938 (Australia Day) was declared a day of celebration in Australia as it was the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the 'First Fleet' in Sydney. Celebrations, parades and re-enactments of the landing of Arthur Phillip and the British were held in Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay. The Indigenous people, however, declared the day not one of celebration but a 'Day of Mourning'; for their culture, their traditions and those who had died un-necessarily in the previous 150 years. See image 1
The Day of Mourning was organised by the APA and the Australian Aborigines' League. As the celebrations were going on in Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay the Aboriginal protest groups were also making their presence felt. More than 1000 Aboriginal people from every state made the journey to Sydney to protest the celebrations of the anniversary of an event that had begun the destruction of their traditional way of life. The movement was also very much an Indigenous initiative - pamphlets that were given out to advertise the fact that there would be a protest rally made it clear that it was for Aboriginal peoples only.
Some Aboriginal people had no chance to protest; a group of men from one of the reserves had been forced into taking part in the re-enactment of the First Fleet landing. They were kept locked up overnight in a police station and were not allowed to see their families. They had been told that if they did not take part, their rations would be stopped on the reserves.
Those who were able to take part in the National Day of Mourning were also protesting for the right to citizenship. Two of the main Indigenous leaders, Jack Patten and William Ferguson wrote up a manifesto outlining the Aboriginal peoples' protest and their demands. Titled 'Aborigines Claim Citizenship Rights', it opened with the words;
'This festival of 150 years so-called “progress" in Australia commemorates also 150 years of misery and degradation imposed upon the original native inhabitants by the white invaders of this country'
This manifesto was the first Indigenous version of Australian colonial history that had been written down by Aboriginal people. Five days later Patten and Ferguson met with Prime Minister J.A. Lyons to present him with a document that outlined the steps towards equality for Aboriginal people. This was an historic meeting - no Indigenous delegation had ever been able to present their demands directly to the Prime Minister before.
The Second World War halted the impetus of the Aboriginal peoples' protest movement - nearly 2000 Indigenous Australians became directly involved with the war effort as soldiers - even though conscription of Aboriginal people was banned by military policy at the time. They did not get anywhere near the same amount of wages as their white colleagues - some were even only paid in tobacco. At the same time, the shortage of labour in the towns and cities meant that for the first time many Indigenous men and women were able to get long term jobs, rather than just the normal seasonal work they usually got. When the war was over however the situation reversed once more and Aboriginal people had made no real gains. The 'black diggers' were not given war pensions or any of the other benefits the white soldiers received when the war was over. Several of them became spokesmen for the Indigenous protest movement. See image 2
Nearly 2000 Indigenous Australians became involved in the war effort.
Discrimination was also a major issue in the work sector for Aboriginal people; many of them were only ever paid in food and board, while those who were paid with money were paid far less than their white counterparts. Their living conditions on the farms and reserves were also so bad that it prompted some to take strike action.
The first instance of this type of protest was in 1939 when the Cummeroogunga people walked off their reserve in protest at their living and working conditions. In 1946 Aboriginal people in Pilbara in Western Australia started a strike that was to last for three years over work and pay conditions and in 1950 there was also a strike by Indigenous people in Darwin.
The fact that reserve land was being taken away from Indigenous people also caused many of them to react in a political way. The government had given land to Aboriginal people to live on, only to take some of it away and sell it for housing or mining. In 1963 the people on the Yirrkala reserve in Arnhem Land sent a petition written on bark to the House of Representatives in protest at 390 square kilometres of their land on the Gove peninsula being given to a mining company. The Yirrkala people said they had not been consulted before the land, which they depended on, had been taken away. Although they eventually lost their court case in 1971, the bark petition did lead to the formation of the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission which meant that sacred Indigenous sites could no longer be easily destroyed.
The strikes and the Yirrkala bark petition were the fore runners of the land rights campaign that took off in the 1960s and grew throughout the 1970s.
The election of Joe McGuiness, the first Indigenous president of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) in 1961, was a turning point in the struggle for rights and freedoms. The FCAATSI was an organisation influenced by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in America. There are evident links between the Indigenous protest movement in Australia and the civil rights movement in America at that time. Like the NAACP, the FCAATSI aimed to get equal rights and pay for Aboriginal people as white people. FCAATSI also wanted Aboriginal peoples to have the right to run their own communities i.e. self-determination.
The American 'Freedom Riders' of the 1960s also made their mark on Australia and in 1965 Freedom Rides began in New South Wales. In America the Freedom Riders were helping black people register to vote, in Australia they were high-lighting the extent of segregation in many country towns. The Australian Freedom Riders were led by a young Indigenous man named Charles Perkins and a group of non-Indigenous university students. They spent a summer driving to country towns and protesting at the segregation and discrimination that was rife in the New South Wales countryside. These towns included places like Moree and Walgett, where Aboriginal people could only use the town swimming pool at certain times, where they were banned from socialising in the hotels and where Indigenous ex-servicemen could not enter the local RSL. See image 3 and animation
Their protests were peaceful, yet they were often attacked by the local white people who were angered by the Freedom Riders and what they stood for. On a number of occasions they were pelted with eggs and fruit and were even nearly run off the road once. Their efforts were appreciated by the Aboriginal people in the towns who, for the first time, were able to make their feelings known about the discrimination they suffered.
Publicity for the Indigenous cause meant that there was more support for the movement from white society. Commonwealth MPs like Kim Beazley Senior and Paul Hasluck were also campaigning in Federal Parliament for the end of racial discrimination and for improvement in Aboriginal peoples' living conditions. However as we have seen in a previous chapter, politicians like Hasluck felt that assimilation into white society was the best way to improve their life.
The National Day of Mourning in 1938 was the beginning of Indigenous political activity. By the middle of the 1960s the protest movement had spread across the entire country and it had growing support in both sections of society, but there was still a long way to go. The trade unions now stood behind Indigenous workers claims for equal pay in work. That step was approved by the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1965. But it did not come into effect for another three years and in that time the Indigenous land rights campaign took off.
