Archaeological evidence suggests Aborigines colonised Australia at least fifty thousand years ago and quickly spread across the entire continent, developing a network of subsistence economies based on an intimate understanding of the local environment. This close relationship to 'country' was the foundation of a rich cultural life. In song, dance, story and visual art Aborigines affirmed and communicated their connection to place through a cosmology which linked the physical world to the activities of ancestral creator beings. Sometimes known as a group's 'Dreaming', these beings existed in a sentient environment, giving each locality a particular spiritual significance.
The act of invading and seizing Aboriginal land was thus not only a devastating blow to the economic and social integrity of Aboriginal society, it struck at the very heart of Aboriginal identity. By breaking the physical connection to territory, the colonizers plunged the survivors into an existence devoid of meaning, a kind of social death. It is not surprising, then, that dispossession shaped indigenous-European relations as powerfully as it did. |
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Since 1788 the claim to 'place', the defence of territory, the demand for land rights, has been a defining feature of indigenous people's resistance.
All struggles in some way have led back to this fundamental conflict.
Aboriginal land rights became national news in 1963 when the Yirrkala people of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory petitioned the Commonwealth Government to stop their traditional land being handed to French mining interests.
But it was another group of Territorians that is usually attributed with launching the modern land rights movement.
In June 1966 members of the Gurindji tribe, assisted by Dexter Daniels, an Aboriginal organiser with the North Australian Workers' Union (NAWU), walked off the job at Newcastle Waters Station in protest against their working conditions and wages.
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Image 5Q: Striking Gurindji stockmen and their families with Dexter Daniels in 1966
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Image 5U: Strike committee of one of the first Aboriginal
strikes in the Northern Territory, organised in 1946 |
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They were quickly joined by about 170 Gurindji from the much larger Wave Hill Station, owned by British peer Lord Vestey. This was not an unusual occurrence. Strikes by Aborigines were common in Western Australia and the Northern Territory from the 1940s onwards.
But from the outset it was apparent the Gurindji walk off was not just about conditions of employment. Strike leader Vincent Lingiari told Daniels, "We sick and tired of [Wave Hill Station manager] Tom Pisher and that Bestey mob living in Gurindji country." 1 Lingiari's people clearly wanted their land back.
On 22 August 1966 they collected their belongings and walked several kilometres to the banks of the Victoria River where they set up camp for the coming wet season. In March 1967 they moved to Wattie Creek, the spiritual centre of their traditional land, where they remained on strike for eight years. Through the NAWU they made contact with Frank Hardy and other members of the Communist Party who helped organise trade union support across the country.
The long campaign eventually led to a leasehold grant over a small part of their land from the Whitlam Labor Government. Indirectly it culminated in the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 under which Aborigines have been able to claim around fifty per cent of the Northern Territory land mass. |
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Image 3B: Captain Major, leader of the striking stockmen from Newcastle Waters Station |
Image 5R: The Gurindji strikers at Wattie Creek in 1967
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Image 5S: Vincent Lingiari, leader of the Gurindji during the Wave Hill walk off |
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Solidarity from trade unions also played a key role in improving employment arrangements for Aborigines. In 1963 campaigning by the FCAA, Communists within the labour movement and indigenous activists within individual unions convinced the ACTU to adopt an anti-discrimination policy. The Queensland Trades and Labor Council also took a stronger position from 1963. A movement parallel to the citizenship rights campaign grew around the demand for equal wages, and in 1965 the NAWU took an equal pay case to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission on behalf of Aborigines in the Northern Territory cattle industry.
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Image 5G: Members of the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights
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Image 5Y: Queensland Trades & Labor Council pamphlet |
The Commission granted the claim in 1966 but gave pastoralists almost three years to introduce the new rates. It was also swayed by the argument put by employer advocate and future Governor General, John Kerr QC, that Aboriginal station hands "were just not worth an award wage." 2
A 'slow worker' clause was introduced, allowing certain (invariably Aboriginal) workers to be exempted from Award rates on the grounds of inefficiency. It was this outcome that precipitated the Gurindji walk off. |
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Image 5P: Freedom Day banner celebrating the famous strike by Gurindji stockmen from Newcastle Waters and Wave Hill stations in the Northern Territory |
Continuing industrial unrest and political protests over indigenous wages eventually forced other sectors and jurisdictions to concede equal pay.
In Queensland overt discrimination was removed from the Station Hands Award in April 1968 but as John Chesterman has argued, it was not until the passage of the Aborigines Act 1971, which removed the term 'assisted Aborigine', that indigenous workers were covered unambiguously by Awards. 3
Even then, as Ros Kidd has revealed, indigenous Queenslanders continued to be underpaid. 4
The struggle to recover unpaid and stolen wages continues today.
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| 1. |
Quoted in Frank Hardy, The Unlucky Australians (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1968), p.72. |
| 2. |
The Australian, 9 July 1965 |
| 3. |
John Chesterman. Civil Rights: How Indigenous Australians Won Formal Equality (St Lucia: UQP, 2005), p.168. |
| 4. |
Ros Kidd. 'The Biggest Broker of them All: The State of Queensland and Aboriginal Labour' in Bradley Bowden & John Kellett, eds, Transforming Labour: Proceedings of the Eighth National Labour History Conference, Brisbane 3-5 October 2003 (Brisbane: BLHA, 2003), p.193. |
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