ABORIGINAL AND

TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES

BACKGROUND TO STRUGGLE FOR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
 When this symbol is on a slide, you
summarise the information into your
workbook.
A summary should be your
UNDERSTANDING of the information,
not an exact copy.

THE POLICIES
 1

PROTECTION POLICY
Prior to Federation -1937
At Federation, each state became responsible for the ‘wellbeing’
of the ATSI people in their state and continued their previous protectionist
policies.
⊡

⊡
“
A growing concern for the treatment of ATSI people led the British Government to
appoint protectors in the colonies who were supposed to clamp down on the violence
and ensure that those living on the outskirts of towns were provided basic rations.
This measure had little effect.

By the late nineteen century it was believed that the inferior race would eventually
die out. It was believed that in order to survive that the ATSI Peoples should be
separated from their uncivilized culture and be Christianised.

⊡ Colonies (later states) established protection boards to strictly govern their lives.
The chief protector in each colony was made legal guardian of the ATSI population.

⊡ Under these protection policies the majority were forcibly removed onto land set
aside as reserves run by government or church missionaries. They had no
traditional rights; traditional names and customs were not allowed, they could not
leave or marry without permission, the protection officers were the legal owners of
any wages earned and children had to attend special schools.
 2

ASSIMILATION POLICY
1937 – 1965
 “in the course of time, it is expected that all persons of Aboriginal blood or mixed blood in Australia will live like white
Australians do” 1951 Paul Hasluck, Federal Minister for Territories

 This policy envisaged that Aboriginals (and non-British European migrants) would shed their traditional values and culture
and blend into the Anglo-British Australian way of life

 Many Aboriginals were, under this policy, removed from reserves into towns and cities

 However, this created the ‘fringe camps’. Fringe camps allowed Aborigines to maintain a communal way of life with
financial independence. Many were unemployed and continued to rely on Government pensions as a source of income

 The policy of assimilation caused widespread racism and segregation in

many country towns between the whites and Aboriginals who, it was widely
believed, represented a hygiene and health risk

 The policy led to increasing the practice of children being removed from
their families – the generation which became known as “The Stolen
Generation”
 3

INTEGRATION POLICY
1965 – 1972
 Despite the failures of Protectionism and Assimilation Aboriginals still clung to their traditional ways of life and
their culture

 Many people during the 1960s came to believe that they had a RIGHT and RESPONSIBILITY to confront
injustices to change society. Australian society was changing with never before seen events such as the anti-
Vietnam Moratorium marches and the recognition of the growing civil rights movement in the US

 1965 - the Australian Freedom Rides gained national and international media attention by publicizing the
degree of racism and segregation within Australia

 1967 – Referendum held to allow the Federal Government to:

1 Make laws to specifically affect the Aboriginal people (s 51); and
2 Include the Aboriginals in any future census (s 127)
The referendum received bi-lateral political support and recorded a 90.77% “Yes”
vote for change

 The policy of integration, while recognizing the importance of Aboriginal people maintaining their own cultural
values, still assumed that the Aboriginal people would adopt white Australian culture. A policy of multiculturism
was yet to be established.
 4

SELF-DETERMINATION POLICY
1972 - 1991



Rights).
“
Self-determination is the right of all peoples to 'freely determine their political status and freely pursue their
economic, social and cultural development' (Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political

1972 – the Whitlam Labor Government proclaimed a policy of 'self-determination' for Aboriginals, whereby they
gained the right to make decisions about matters affecting their own lives, including the pace and nature of their
future development within the legal, social and economic framework of Australian society.
 1975 – the Racial Discrimination Act is passed
 States repealed anti-aboriginal laws and the stolen generation came to an end.
 Self-determination encompasses three key aspects:
1 Aboriginals should receive the same rights and freedoms as non-Aboriginals.
2 Aboriginals should be allowed to choose how they want to live.
3 Aboriginals should be allowed to have a say in the policies that affect them
 1989 – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) is formed
 5

RECONCILIATION POLICY
1991 - Present
 There are FIVE dimensions of ‘Reconciliation’:
 Race Relations
 Equality and Equity
 Institutional Integrity
 Unity
 Historical Acceptance

 Race Relations: Aiming to ensure all Australians understand and value Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous cultures, rights and experiences which results in
stronger relationships based on trust and respect and that are free of racism.

 Equality and Equity: Ensuring that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
participate equally in a range of life opportunities and the unique rights of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples are recognised and upheld.

 Institutional Integrity: The active support of reconciliation by the nation’s political,

business and community structures.

 Unity: An Australian society that values and recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander cultures and heritage as a proud part of a shared national identity.

 Historical Acceptance: All Australians understand and accept the wrongs of the past and
their impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Australia need to make
amends for  past policies and practices to ensure these wrongs are never repeated.
Short Responses:

1.
Describe the four policies Australian parliaments have implemented
with respect to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia.

2.
Which of the four policies do you believe is the most unjust? Why do
you believe this?

3.
Using the source below AND your own knowledge, describe how
Aboriginal peoples had been treated under the Australian Parliament’s
policies.

Source A:
“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”
From Jack Patten’s and William Ferguson’s 1938 “Day of Mourning Manifesto”
THE STOLEN GENERATION
 THE STOLEN GENERATION
People began removing
Indigenous children from their
families not long after the arrival
of the Europeans in 1788. State
governments began to do this
more systematically towards the
late nineteenth century and
continued doing so until the late
twentieth century.
Over time, most state
governments made Indigenous
children wards of the state
(legal guardian is the state) so
that there was no need to
provide reasons for their
removal.
They established Protection Acts
(laws) to empower them to do
this. They established Protection
Boards to administer this policy.
Gave power to police and
protection officers to implement
the policy. Took over from
parents their roles as their
children’s legal guardians
They placed them in government
and missionary run training
institutions, put them up for
adoption and placed them with
foster parents. They targeted
half-castes and expected they
would assimilate with the white
race as labourers and servants.
Officials often falsely claimed
that parents abused or
neglected their children.
Officials said governments
would provide the children with
a better life than they could
expect with their own
communities and families
They expected these children
would have children with white
partners and that, over
generations, Australia’s
Indigenous peoples would die out.
Removed children by deception,
force, threat and trickery.
Families tried hiding children.
 BOMADERRY ABORIGINAL
CHILDREN’s HOME
The Aborigines Protection Board established the Bomaderry Aboriginal Children’s Home with the intention of replacing
original family ties with a new family unit, created according to the European Christian model.
Staff encouraged children to think
of themselves as white.
They kept them away from their
families, preventing the children
from gaining any knowledge of
their cultural heritage or relatives.

1. Look closely at the image.

Describe the scene.

2. Estimate the average age of the

children in this image.

3. Why do you think all of these

children are around this age?
 COOTAMUNDRA DOMESTIC
TRAINING HOME FOR GIRLS
Established in 1912 for girls from
7-14
Forcibly removed from their parents
to train as domestic servants for
white families
The home denied the girls contact
with their families, taught them
nothing about their own cultures and
traditions, forbade the use of their
traditional languages and punished
anyone who broke these rules
Instructors taught the girls that they
were white and that Indigenous
Australians were inferior.

1. The text claims that the girls

were ’white’. What does this
mean?

2. Why is this important to

understand?
•

•
“
THE EMOTIONAL, PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM
Parents and communities lost their roles in nurturing these children to adulthood. Children denied these skills failed to
learn how to be good parents.

Denied access to their culture, heritage, language and role models within their own communities many suffered
depression and poor self-esteem.

• As many as 20-25% in adoptive and foster home and 10% in institutions were victims of sexual assault.

• Staff taught children to think of Indigenous as dirty, inferior, threatening and untrustworthy. Children learned to fear
and reject Indigenous people and many blamed their parents for their removal.

• Some turned to alcohol and drugs.

• As a group, they were more likely than other children to have poor health, poor education, poor opportunities and be
arrested or go to prison.
EARLY PROTEST MOVEMENTS
1938 DAY
OF
MOURNING
Synthesise this protest
into ONE sentence.
Australia Day in 1938 a
committee organised a
campaign of public
speeches, meetings and
press interviews.
They produced a statement
called Aborigines Claims
for Citizenship Rights
demanding the federal
government take control of
Aboriginal affairs to
implement a national
policy and ATSI Peoples
be granted full citizenship
rights including equal
rights to education.
 CUMMERAGUNJA WALK-OFF
Synthesise this protest into
ONE sentence.
At Cummeragunja Station, a
large reserve on NSW side of
the Murray River, the
Aboriginal residents had
developed communal farms.
By the late 1930s an abusive
manager was appointed to the
reserve. The residents who
were not allowed to leave had
to live under appalling
conditions.
In 1939 about 200 of the
community walked off the
reserve and the farm they had
built up.
Most never returned and
settled on the outskirts of
northern Victorian towns.
THE STRUGGLE:
CONTINUED
 YOLNGU BARK PETITION

• In 1963, the federal government allowed bauxite mining to

commence at Yirrkala in the Northern Territory.
• Yolngu leaders objected to the lack of consultation and secrecy
surrounding the mining activities and were concerned about the
impact of mining on their traditional lands.
• They sent a petition mounted on bark to the federal parliament,
although the petition gained national and international attention, the
government did not changes its stance.
• The Yolngu leaders then took their case to the federal court in 1971.
Bound by the principal of Terra Nullius the judges had to dismiss it;
however, they recognized that for centuries the Yolngu people had
been connected with the Yolngu land.
 WAVE HILL STRIKE

• Following pressure by the trade unions, in March 1963, the federal Arbitration Commission ruled that Aboriginal and non-

Aboriginal people must be paid equally when doing the same jobs.
• In May 1966 in the NT Aboriginal stockmen on the Newcastle Waters and Wave Hill cattle stations went on strike over

the delay in gaining equal pay and their poor working conditions.
• It gained momentum until 200 Aboriginal families of the Gurindji language group, led by Vincent Lingiari, walked off

Wave Hill Station. They made a camp and established a community at Wattie Creek.
• By October 1966 the Gurindji people were claiming the right to 1300 square kilometers for their own cattle station on

what was their traditional land.

• Continued their struggle until 1974 when the Woodward Royal Commission recommended that Aboriginal Land Councils

be established to represent the claims of ATSI communities.

• In 1975 the Gurindji people won the first land rights claim. In a symbolic gesture Prime Minsiter Gough Whitlam handed

back their lands.

 CHARLES PERKINS AND
• 1936 - Charles Perkins born in Alice Springs. THE• FREEDOM
One of 10 children. He is a ‘half caste’ as is his
father, his mother is a full blood. Raised on a
mission on the outskirts of Alice Springs. At age
10 Perkins is removed from the Mission to
Adelaide where he attends a Protestant run
boarding school
• 1961 - Moves to Sydney to enrol in Sydney
University to study Arts
• In the USA the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) take a bus from Washington DC to New
Orleans to protest the failures to enforce
Federal Laws declaring segregation unlawful.
The protestors are dubbed the “Freedom
Riders”. This bus is fire bombed and the
Freedom Riders are beaten by an angry mob in
Alabama
• 1964 - May. Sydney University students protest
outside the US Consulate including erecting
fiery crosses, wearing white sheets reminiscent
of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK). The protest is
focussed against attempts by some Southern
US Senators to block the US Civil Rights Bill
introduced by JFK and subsequently
championed by LBJ. Over 50 arrests are made
RIDES
Galvanised by the media coverage the US Consulate protest had
attracted and coupled with the realization that segregation in
Australia is just as rampant (but perhaps hidden from the general
community) students form a group named Student Action for
Aborigines (SAFA). Charles Perkins, aged 28, is elected its first
President
• An Australian version of the Freedom Riders bus set out from
Sydney with its initial aim to gather evidence of segregation in
Australia. The bus stops at Walgett where the protestors commence
a demonstration outside the Walgett RSL Club about discriminatory
practices in the town. The protestors are ejected from the town and
an unknown person attempts to run the bus off the road
• In Moree the protestors
“invade” the local
swimming pool area which
segregates between
whites and blacks These
and other actions
garnered a swathe of
media attention and the
protestors return to
Sydney
 THE FREEDOM RIDES
(CONTINUED)
 1965 - Perkins becomes one of the first
Aboriginals to graduate with a University
Degree
 The significance of the Freedom Rides include:
1 The success of the 1967
referendum which allowed the Federal
Government to:
Make laws to specifically affect the
Aboriginal people (s 51); and
Include the Aboriginals in any
future census (s 127)
2 Highlighted the need for change in
Aboriginal policy leading to integration
and subsequently self determination
3 The ultimate establishment of the
Federal Office of Aboriginal Affairs – a
department wholly focused on
indigenous issues
4 Catapulted Perkins into a position of
Aboriginal spokesperson and leader – arguably
the first effective Australian Aboriginal
role model since white occupation
 THE FREEDOM RIDES
(CONTINUED)

The 1965 Australian Freedom Rides

1967 REFERENDUM
FINALLY, A TURNING POINT.
 1967 REFERENDUM

In 1967 the Referendum to repeal section 127 and change section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution was carried
with 90.77% support, thereby for the first time Aborigines became constitutionally equal, undifferentiated citizens.
The changes voted for in the 1967 Referendum were passed in the Constitution Alteration Act 1967. The texts
deleted from sections 51(xxvi) and 127 are printed here in italics and in red:

 CHAPTER I. THE PARLIAMENT PART V. – POWERS OF THE PARLIAMENTLegislative powers of the

Parliament
51. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good
government of the Commonwealth with respect to:– [. . .]
(xxvi.) The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary
to make special laws: [. . .]

 CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS. [. . .]

127. In reckoning the numbers of the people of the commonwealth (a census), or of a State or other part of
the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.
LAND RIGHTS AND NATIVE TITLE

Captain Cook declared Eastern Australia to be the

property of the British Monarch in 1770 at Endeavour
River, Queensland. The land was assumed to belong to
no one TERRA NULLIUS and the Aboriginal people
were completely ignored.
On January 26 1972, four Aboriginal activists set up
an Aboriginal embassy in a tent on the lawns in front
of Parliament house in Canberra. They were angry
about Prime Minister William McMahon’s attitude
towards land rights. He had announced that ‘land
rights would threaten the tenure of every Australian’
and that his government would grant neither land
rights nor compensation to Indigenous peoples.
The governmental response was to pass the Racial
Discrimination Act 1975 and introduced the policy of
self-determination (a groups right to choose and
control its own destiny and development).
 THE MABO DECISION
The Queensland government
took over the Torres Strait
Islands, north of the
Australian mainland in 1879.
The Meriam Islanders
continued their traditional
way of life on the island until
the late 1970s when the
government began to deny
some of them the use of their
lands.
From 1982 Eddie Koiki Mabo
led a court case challenging
the government’s right to do
this. He claimed that the
peoples living on Mer Island
own that land because their
families had been living there
since time immemorial.
• They wanted legal recognition of their native title
rights over their land.
• After losing their case in Queensland’s Supreme Court,
they appealed to the High Court of Australia.
• On June 3 1992, the High Court handed down a
historic decision in Mabo and Others vs. The State of
Queensland (1992). The case is now simply known as
Mabo.
• It decided:
• in favour of the Meriam Islanders and against
the State of Queensland
• that native title had existed before 1788 and
might still be in existence on land that
governments had never sold or given away
• that for native title to continue to exist
Indigenous families and their descendants
would have to have lived on the land since
1788
• that on land that had been legally granted or
sold by governments to someone else for their
exclusive use, native title ceased to exist.
• that Terra Nullius was a legal fiction and .had
no place in Australian law
•
“
THE WIK DECISION

In the 1990s, Australia appeared to be turning into a nation divided over the issue of race. In the midst of this, in December
1996, the High Court handed down its decision in the case brought to it by the Wik people of Cape York in northern
Queensland. In The Wik Peoples v. The State of Queensland and Others (1996), the Wik people argued;
o that native title rights continued on Crown land which had been leased to pastoralists.
o This was the issue which had not been sorted out by either the Mabo decision or by the Native Title Act of 1993.

• The High Court decided in the Wik Case that:

o native title continued in Queensland even on land which the government had leased to pastoralists
o native title rights and the rights of the leaseholder existed concurrently (at the same time)
o if there was any conflict during the term of the lease about how the two groups wanted to use the land, then native
titleholders’ ‘rights and interests must yield to that extent to the rights of the leaseholders’.
EXTENDED RESPONSE
Source A
It was but half a century ago, a time still sharp in the minds of a baby boomer generation, that landmark battles were
waged and won by Aboriginal people, for Aboriginal people. In the 1960s, Aboriginal people achieved citizenship,
financial assistance, and equal pay, and won back rights to their land and rights to the preservation of their cultural
heritage.
Published on the website ‘Australian Geographic’ on July 14, 2011 by Jessica Campion

Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the methods undertaken in the struggle for Indigenous civil rights.

Next slide for how to attack the question.

 EXTENDED RESPONSE
Source A
It was but half a century ago, a time still sharp in the minds of a baby boomer generation, that landmark battles were
waged and won by Aboriginal people, for Aboriginal people. In the 1960s, Aboriginal people achieved citizenship,
financial assistance, and equal pay, and won back rights to their land and rights to the preservation of their cultural
heritage.
Published on the website ‘Australian Geographic’ on July 14, 2011 by Jessica Campion
You must display your Plural: You must provide
own knowledge more than ONE

Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain the methods undertaken in the struggle for indigenous civil rights.

You must quote The subject of the question: ’methods’

the source Show the cause and for achieving indigenous civil rights.
effect