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  Joining the Fight

Women and black people, in demanding the right to freely determine the course of their lives, on the basis of their own convictions, are calling for profound changes in the power relations and hence the whole structure of our society.
(Leaflet on Black Moratorium March, 1972, Vertical File)

Many women outside various Indigenous communities were also committed to improving the position of Indigenous people through political action. In 1968, the International Year of Human Rights, the organising committee for Brisbane’s International Women’s Day celebrations chose the theme 'The Position of Aboriginal People in Australia'. A host of women's groups were involved in planning events, including representatives from the Union of Australian Women (UAW), Trade Unions, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Queensland Peace Committee (QPC). A luncheon celebrating the Universal Charter of Human Rights and Australia’s Aboriginal People was held in March. During July, a seminar on Aboriginal Rights took place in which speakers and participants discussed topics such as education, health and housing, working conditions, and land rights.

In the early 1970s, members of the Women's Liberation Movement took part in a Black Moratorium March supporting their black sisters and brothers in the fight against oppression. Ten years later white Australians, many of them women, joined with the black community and the Black Protest Committee in a peaceful and dignified protest coinciding with the 1982 Commonwealth Games held in Brisbane. The protests were designed to expose and embarrass Australia internationally over racism and the disadvantaged position of Aboriginal people. In September that year, two hundred feminists at the ‘Women in the 80s conference’, held at the Queensland Institute of Technology, voted to march peacefully if called on by Aboriginal leaders.

On Thursday 7 October 1982, the protesters took to the streets. Two hundred and twenty four people were arrested, among them long time activist Daisy Marchisotti. Daisy had been actively concerned with the plight of Aboriginal people since the 1960s. In her statement to the Brisbane Magistrate Court, Daisy declared,

I am seventy-eight years old and a pensioner. I did not take part in my action lightly. [It was] my belief that the only way to change Queensland's racist laws was to take the action I did.
(Handwritten Statement to Magistrate, UQFL156, Box 4, Folder: Commonwealth Games)

Daisy pleaded guilty to disobeying a police direction and was fined fifty dollars.




TOP TO BOTTOM
 
1. Registration form outlining the celebrations for the Seminar on Aboriginal Rights in Ann Street, Brisbane, July 1968. (UQFL156, Box 27, Folder 1)
 
2 and 3. Photographs of ladies at the Aboriginal literature table at the International Women’s Day luncheon, March 12, 1968. (UQFL156, Box 12)
 
4. Leaflet produced by Women’s Liberation advertising the Black Moratorium March, 1972. (Leaflet on Black Moratorium March, 1972, Vertical File)
 
5. Photograph of the demonstration in Brisbane during the Commonwealth Games in 1982. Aborigines and their supporters gathered from all over Queensland and interstate. (UQFL193, Box 20, Folder: Aborigines)
 
6. Photograph of the condition of Aboriginal ‘housing’ in Boulia, the conditions of which outrage Daisy Marchisotti and many other women, Queensland, 1973. (UQFL156, Box 12, Photographs 1973)
 
7. Badge. (UQFL 193, Box 24)
 
8. Advice of conviction for Daisy Marchisotti for her role in the Commonwealth Games protests, 1982. (UQFL156, Box 4, Folder: Commonwealth Games)