tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/wave-hill-walk-off-29986/articlesWave Hill Walk-Off – The Conversation2016-08-20T22:57:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637002016-08-20T22:57:18Z2016-08-20T22:57:18ZAn historic handful of dirt: Whitlam and the legacy of the Wave Hill Walk-Off<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134034/original/image-20160814-25485-sjyrhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vincent Lingiari looks on as Prime Minister Gough Whitlam swigs champagne after the symbolic handback of the Gurindji people's land.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Wesley-Smith</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.freedomday50.com.au/">Fifty years ago</a>, on the morning of August 23, 1966, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lingiari-vincent-14178">Vincent Lingiari</a> led a walk-off of 200 Gurindji, Mudburra and Warlpiri workers and their families from a remote Northern Territory cattle station, escaping <a href="http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-untold-story-behind-the-1966-wave-hill-walk-off-62890">a century of servitude</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">A new book traces what happened after the Wave Hill Walk-Off and this famous moment between Vincent Lingiari and Gough Whitlam in 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu.au/books/hs-9781925377163.html">Monash University Publishing, 2016</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The families rejected the pleas of their British multinational employer Vestey’s to return to the Wave Hill station, re-occupied an area of their own land at Wattie Creek, and fought until the nation’s leaders heeded their cause. Nine years later, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically returned the Gurindji’s country with a handful of red dirt – a story many Australians know from the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ndC07C2qw&ab_channel=JimmyJones">From Little Things, Big Things Grow</a>.</p>
<p>But how much did the <a href="http://www.nma.gov.au/online_features/defining_moments/featured/wave_hill_walk-off">1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off</a>, or the historic 1975 meeting between Whitlam and Lingiari, really improve life for the Gurindji people? And how significant was the walk-off in the fight for Indigenous recognition and land rights in Australia?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu.au/books/hs-9781925377163.html">A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off</a>, published today, tells that story. This edited extract reveals the drama and accidental comedy of the day the prime minister and his entourage descended on the remote community of Daguragu (formerly Wattie Creek) for the <a href="http://indigenousrights.net.au/land_rights/wave_hill_walk_off,_1966-75/the_hand_back">“hand back”</a> on August 16, 1975 – and its bittersweet aftermath.</p>
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<p>Whitlam flew up in a BAC 1-11 [jet]. The airstrip… wasn’t quite long enough for it [laughs]. I remember that when he landed, there were all these dignitaries waiting out there for Gough, but he didn’t stop in time and went hurtling through the fence. It was a pretty spectacular start to the day’s events. – <strong>Geoff Eames, Central Land Council lawyer.</strong></p>
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<p>It was just after midday when Whitlam and his wife Margaret stepped onto Gurindji soil for the first time. According to a very young onlooker, the prime minister “stood there like a great big giant and [shook] each old people hand”. In her blue slacksuit, Mrs Whitlam also began mixing with the crowd, embracing local infants.</p>
<p>A succession of former ministers — all of whom had promised the Gurindji varying amounts of land — milled about. Meanwhile, a “tethered goat [ate] rubbish with great solemnity”.</p>
<p>After introductions and greetings, the day’s program began under the shade of a bough shed. Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Les Johnson optimistically reassured the audience that with the government’s forthcoming Land Rights Act, the Gurindji could convert their lease to proper land rights, making them legal owners “later in the year”. (In reality, that didn’t happen for more than a decade.)</p>
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<span class="caption">The Wave Hill region in Australia’s Northern Territory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu.au/books/hs-9781925377163.html">A Handful of Sand, by Charlie Ward, Monash University Publishing, 2016</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>The general manager of Vestey’s Angliss group Roger Golding announced that Lord Vestey would give the Gurindji a gift of 400 cattle. Golding wished the new Murramulla Gurindji Company every success – though he also made a jibe at the protesters who had stormed his company’s offices some years earlier. Lupngiari — a significant player in the Gurindji’s struggle — sat back, ignored by photographers, rolling a smoke.</p>
<p>On the prime ministerial jet that morning, public servant turned Aboriginal affairs adviser <a href="http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/coombs/">H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs</a> urged Whitlam to keep his speech short and invest the day with a sense of ceremony. </p>
<p>Coombs recounted a story told by anthropologist Bill Stanner: how Wurundjeri elders had formalised their people’s 1835 land treaty with encroaching settlers at Port Phillip by placing soil into the hand of explorer John Batman. Hearing Coombs’ suggestion that the PM might reverse the gesture with Lingiari, Whitlam revised his performance plan for Daguragu on the spot.</p>
<p>When it came to his turn to speak, Whitlam congratulated the Gurindji and their supporters on their victory after a nine-year “fight for justice”. Promising that the Australian government would “help you in your plans to use this land fruitfully”, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/content/2007/s1883613.htm">his speech</a> concluded with the words:</p>
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<p>Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people, and I put into your hands this piece of the earth itself as a sign that we restore them to you and your children forever.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Part of Gough Whitlam’s speech on August 16, 1975. Posted by Luke Pearson.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In finishing, Whitlam handed Lingiari the new deeds to the Gurindji’s land, now officially dubbed NT Pastoral Lease 805. Then, to the joy of assembled photographers, he stooped down, grabbed a handful of red earth, and poured it into Lingiari’s open palm.</p>
<p>Vestey pastoral inspector Cec Watts and his wife Dawn remember how Lingiari — knowing the symbolic importance of the soil he had been given — then quietly tried dispose of the red dirt without offending the assembled <em>kartiya</em> (white people). As the couple recalled:</p>
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<p>Cec: I was standing quite close to Vincent, and Gough gave him this handful of dirt, symbolically, and the old bloke sort of let it drift out of his hand.</p>
<p>Dawn: He didn’t know what to do with it.</p>
<p>Cec: Poor old bugger… He put it behind his back.</p>
<p>Dawn: They could have given him a little box.</p>
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<p>Lingiari — who according to one reporter was struck with a case of nerves — responded to Whitlam and the crowd in his own language:</p>
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<p>The important white men are giving us this land ceremonially… It belonged to the whites, but today it is in the hands of us Aboriginals all around here. Let us live happily as mates, let us not make it hard for each other… They will give us cattle, they will give us horses, and we will be happy… These important white men have come here to our ceremonial ground and they are welcome…</p>
<p>You (Gurindji) must keep this land safe for yourselves, it does not belong to any different Welfare man. They took our country away from us, now they have bought it back ceremonially.</p>
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<p>After Whitlam gave the old man even more dirt for the benefit of the press, photographer <a href="http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/bishop-mervyn/">Mervyn Bishop’s</a> images of the “handover” became some of the most recognised in Australian political history. The power of the photos rested in the symbolism of Whitlam’s gesture, made on behalf of millions concerned by Aboriginal dispossession.</p>
<p>The handover implicitly acknowledged the moral rightfuness of the Gurindji’s stand, and the <a href="http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-untold-story-behind-the-1966-wave-hill-walk-off-62890">historical injustices</a> done to them by the Europeans on their country. It was by dint of the Gurindji’s hard slog at <a href="http://www.nfsa.gov.au/digitallearning/heritage/wattie_creek.html">Wattie Creek</a> that they had successfully brought all this to the nation’s attention. The handover day was the old Gurindji men’s finest hour, and their victory.</p>
<p>Lingiari made his speech, and a party followed. Chops, sausages and fruit were served before painted-up members of the track mob and others danced. Mindful of the whites’ need to mark every occasion by consuming liquor, Daguragu’s elders had waived their alcohol ban for the day, but precious little was on hand.</p>
<p>Guests quickly learned that the line “One for Mrs Whitlam, please” would guarantee them a cold beer. The prime minister “poured champagne down his copious gullet” from the bottle, according to agronomist Rob Wesley-Smith, before passing it to a startled Lingiari. The old man had sworn off drinking the year before, but he took a swig — and requested Whitlam’s help to prevent the ill-effects grog was having on his community.</p>
<p>Amongst such excitement, the Gurindji leader gave the new title deeds to his lawyer, Geoff Eames, for safekeeping. With enthusiastic residents wanting to examine the documents, Eames lost them in the crowd. At that point he was approached by Whitlam, announcing there had been requests for photographs of the black and white statesmen holding the parchment. When Eames replied meekly that he didn’t know where it was, Whitlam’s response was quintessential: </p>
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<p>What? It took them 200 years to get their land back, and you’ve lost it in ten minutes?</p>
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<p>Eventually the deed was located, “all stained with red dirt, it had been passed through so many hands”.</p>
<p>After the bonhomie subsided and the VIPs departed for the Wave Hill airstrip, Daguragu’s elders were apparently “disgusted” by the empty beer cans left behind.</p>
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<span class="caption">Gurindji employees of the Muramulla Cattle Company, yarding cattle at Daguragu (formerly Wattie Creek) in about 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Wesley-Smith</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>In rural Queensland the day after the ceremony, Whitlam claimed on radio that “for the first time, Aboriginal people have been given rights to their own land”.</p>
<p>The PM was gilding the lily, for although he was clear that the government’s transferral of a pastoral lease to the Gurindji was just the first step towards returning their land in perpetuity, the “rights” he’d conferred were merely those enjoyed by Vestey’s and other NT pastoralists. Contrary to Whitlam’s spin, the reality was that other Aboriginal groups had pipped the Gurindji to the post on that count, too.</p>
<p>The 1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off and the tireless years of campaigning that followed were nationally significant, not least because they helped inspire the Whitlam government’s 1973–74 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights. Its findings were used to draft the <a href="http://www.nlc.org.au/articles/info/aboriginal-land-rights-northern-territory-act-1976/">Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976</a> – the most far-reaching land rights laws in any part of Australia.</p>
<p>But as for their own land rights, it would take the Gurindji people <a href="http://www.clc.org.au/land-won-back/info/daguragu-station-land-claim/">another 11 years</a> before they could finally call their land their own.
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<p><em>* <a href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu.au/books/hs-9781925377163.html">A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off</a> is published by Monash University Publishing.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlie Ward is the author of "A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-off", published in August 2016 by Monash University Publishing. He is also involved as an organiser of the Freedom Day celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-Off.</span></em></p>A new book reveals the drama and comedy of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s famous “hand back” of Gurindji land in 1975, following the Wave Hill Walk-Off 50 years ago – and the bittersweet aftermath.Charlie Ward, Writer, Historian and PhD Candidate, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628902016-08-18T20:15:19Z2016-08-18T20:15:19ZFriday essay: the untold story behind the 1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133593/original/image-20160809-20932-1707vo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gurindji ranger Ursula Chubb pays her respects to ancestors killed in the early 1900s at Blackfella Creek, where children were tied with wire and dragged by horses, and adults were shot as they fled. They were buried under rocks where they fell.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brenda L Croft, from Yijarni</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>* First Nations people, please be advised this article speaks of racially discriminating moments in history, including the distress and death of First Nations people. This article also contain images, voices and names of deceased people.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.freedomday50.com.au/">Fifty years ago</a>, the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory made their name across Australia with the 1966 <a href="http://indigenousrights.net.au/land_rights/wave_hill_walk_off,_1966-75">Wave Hill Walk-Off</a>. It was a landmark event that inspired national change: equal wages for Aboriginal workers, as well as a new <a href="http://www.clc.org.au/articles/cat/land-rights-act/">land rights act</a>. Although it took another two decades, the Gurindji also became one of the first Aboriginal groups to <a href="http://www.clc.org.au/land-won-back/info/daguragu-station-land-claim/">reclaim their traditional lands</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">A new book shares untold stories about the history behind the 1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aboriginal Studies Press</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<span class="caption">Wave Hill’s location in Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.publishing.monash.edu.au/books/hs-9781925377163.html">A Handful of Sand: The Gurindji Struggle, After the Walk-Off, by Charlie Ward, published by Monash University Publishing 2016</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Many people know a small part of the walk-off story because of the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ndC07C2qw&ab_channel=JimmyJones">From Little Things, Big Things Grow</a>: how 200 stockmen, house servants and their families walked off Wave Hill Station on August 23, 1966, in protest at appalling pay and <a href="http://www.freedomday50.com.au/history-culture/">living conditions</a>. </p>
<p>What’s much less widely known is that the walk-off followed more than 80 years of massacres and killings, stolen children and other abuses by early colonists. For many Gurindji elders alive today, it happened within their lifetime, to them or to their loved ones.</p>
<p>Those elders are now sharing their untold stories through a new book, <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/yijarni-true-stories-gurindji-country/paperback">Yijarni</a>, being launched today at Kalkaringi by Senator Pat Dodson, as part of the <a href="http://www.freedomday50.com.au/">50th-anniversary celebrations of the walk-off</a>. Yijarni – meaning “true” in Gurindji – is a collaboration between those elders, linguists, photographers, visual artists from <a href="http://www.darwinaboriginalartfair.com.au/centre/karungkarni-art/">Karungkarni Arts</a> and the <a href="http://www.clc.org.au/articles/info/clc-rangers1">Murnkurrumurnkurru Central Land Council rangers</a>. </p>
<p>As the elders recall, memories of their brutal treatment over several generations weighed heavily on the minds of Gurindji people when they walked off the station.</p>
<p>One of the first things the Gurindji did after the walk-off was to take the bones of those massacred at Blackfellows Knob and accord them the respect of a traditional burial, by interring them in the caves of the Seale Gorge. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133557/original/image-20160809-18014-15hb59d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Violet Wadrill describes the Blackfellows Knob massacre and the later reburial of bones at Seale Gorge to her granddaughter Leah Leaman in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penny Smith, from Yijarni.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘They shot blackfellas like dogs’</h2>
<p>Gurindji country was first colonised by pastoralists who considered the blacksoil plains of the Victoria River District to be prime grazing land.</p>
<p>In late 1855, the brothers Henry and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gregory-francis-thomas-frank-3899">Francis Gregory</a> arrived from the north and followed the Victoria River and its tributaries upstream. Here they met Gurindji, Malngin, Bilinarra and Mudburra people for the first time.</p>
<p>The first Gurindji murder recorded by pastoralists occurred just after <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/buchanan-nathaniel-nat-3101">Nat Buchanan</a> established Wave Hill Station in 1882. His son Gordon noted in his memoirs that Sam Croker shot a Gurindji man in the back for trying to take a bucket.</p>
<p>Killings of individuals and groups increased in frequency as more and more Gurindji land was taken for grazing.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Nyanuny-ngurlu-rni ngurra-ngurlu kartipa yani nyamu yani ‘nother place, ‘nother land-kari-ngurlu. Murlangkurra paraj ngumpit turlakap warlaku-marraj, kula kuya-ma punyu … nyawa-ma-rna yurrk marnana nyamu-yilu yurrk marnani kamparlkarra marlarluka-lu, kajikajirri-lu yurrk.</em></p>
<p>They were shot on their own country by the foreigners. When they came here, they found blackfellas and shot them like dogs — that’s not right! I’m telling it how the old people who were there told it. <strong>– Ronnie Wavehill, speaking in Gurindji in 1997, translated into English.</strong> (Yijarni, page 50-51)</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131548/original/image-20160722-21872-rt5lrd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jack Beasley in 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lilly collection, courtesy of Darrell Lewis, The Murranji Track, 2011</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One man from the 1930s still remembered by Gurindji people is stockman Jack Beasley. He had a reputation among Gurindji and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=OhPKA3T2YjUC&lpg=RA1-PA56&ots=7bmBDYLhT5&dq=murranji%20track%20jack%20beasley&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q=murranji%20track%20jack%20beasley&f=false">white stockmen</a> alike as a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-velvet-redefining-and-celebrating-indigenous-australian-women-in-art-56211">gin jockey</a>”: a common term for someone who took Aboriginal women against their will for his own sexual gratification.</p>
<p>In a memoir by Doug Moore, an Ord River bookkeeper, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=JTbWBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA266&lpg=PA266&dq=jack+beasley+wave+hill&source=bl&ots=mnGsn2vQ4M&sig=6R0TGoGI9LQFyORkfFo9vtLuqgA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin0Z7emcjOAhVGpJQKHfOfCKMQ6AEILzAD#v=onepage&q=jack%20beasley%20wave%20hill&f=false">Beasley is described</a> as “a rough good-natured chap who talked about gouging out blackfellows’ eyes with a blunt pocket knife”.</p>
<p>To this day, the Gurindji talk about Beasley as the worst perpetrator of massacres in this area.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131547/original/image-20160722-21879-x6uzb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than a dozen known massacre sites from the early colonial period – as recorded by Gurindji elders or early pastoralists – are marked on this map with the symbol of a cross.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yijarni, p. 28-29</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘He kicked my mother till she dropped dead’</h2>
<p>In the 1930s, when Jimmy Manngayarri was only about four years old, he watched as his mother was kicked to death by pastoralist Harry Reid. Half a century later, he said he always believed Reid had killed her because his mother had been unable to make him stop crying.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I was a little boy … Harry Reid was kicking my mother here on the kidney. He kicked her in the kidney till she dropped dead. <strong>– Malngin elder Jimmy Manngayarri talking to Deborah Rose in the early 1980s.</strong> (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Hidden_Histories.html?id=xsM7LPwGwFQC">Hidden Histories</a>, p. 41)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also saw his uncle die at the hands of two other white men, Jack Cusack and Jack Carpenter.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cusack and Carpenter meikim im cartim jangilany. ‘Alrait yu cartim wud.’ Wal imin gedim wud na. Imin gedim wud, stackimap. ‘Rait yu stand up deya. Stand up longsaid langa faya.’ Jutim deya binij on top of the wood. Gedim kerosin an barnimap rait deya top of the wud jukim kerosine barnim. Puka kartiya brobli. Dat ai bin siim acting langa mairoun eye ai bin siim wen ai was piccininny.</p>
<p>Cusack and Carpenter made my uncle get some firewood. ‘Alright, you cart some wood,’ they told him. Well, he got some wood then and stacked it up. ‘Right you stand up there,’ they said. ‘Stand lengthways to the pile of firewood.’ Then they shot him so he fell on top of the wood. They got some kerosene and burnt him right there. Those whitefellas were rotten to the core. I saw them do these things with my own eyes when I was a child. <strong>– Jimmy Manngayarri, recorded in 1975.</strong> (Yijarni, p. 60-62)</p>
</blockquote>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="34" data-image="" data-title="Jimmy Manngayarri describes his uncle's death." data-size="273572" data-source="McConvell collection (AIATSIS)" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/464/manngayarri.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Jimmy Manngayarri describes his uncle’s death.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">McConvell collection (AIATSIS)</span><span class="download"><span>267 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/464/manngayarri.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<h2>‘You reckon you can run as fast as a horse?’</h2>
<p>The establishment of the Gordon Creek Police Station in 1894 and Bow Hills Police Station in 1913 (later known as Wave Hill Police Station) did little to stop the increasingly normalised violence against Gurindji men, women and children.</p>
<p>Mounted Constable William Willshire was the first policeman posted at Gordon Creek Police Station in 1894. He arrived with a murderous reputation, as <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/willshire-william-henry-9128">the Australian Dictionary of Biography records</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Disliking paperwork, Willshire often failed to report his activities; by 1890 Aboriginal deaths associated with his actions certainly exceeded the official number of thirteen … In 1891 Willshire’s men attacked sleeping Aborigines camped at Tempe Downs station. Two men died and were cremated. F.J. Gillen, Alice Springs sub-protector of Aborigines, investigated the reported episode and committed Willshire to Port Augusta for trial for murder … Aboriginal witnesses attended, but problems over accepting their evidence resulted in Willshire’s popular acquittal. Having prudently stationed him at southern centres, his superiors transferred him in 1893 to the Victoria River district where he was able ‘to commit mayhem at will’.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133566/original/image-20160809-11853-114r0qm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous ranger George Sambo shows the tree where Mounted Constable McDonald used to chain Aboriginal men.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Penny Smith, Yijarni</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even after being put on trial, Willshire’s brutality continued unchecked in the north when he was posted at Gordon Creek.</p>
<p>Another early policeman, Mounted Constable MacDonald, stationed at Bow Hills Police Station, had a reputation for chaining up Gurindji men and setting dogs on them.</p>
<p>Little changed in the new century. In the 1940s, Gordon Stott’s patrols of the Victoria River District with his tracker Kurnmali were feared by Aboriginal stockman.</p>
<p>Like Willshire, Stott’s reputation had preceded him. Following a trial in Borroloola in 1933 involving Aboriginal witnesses, a departmental inquiry found that “Mounted Constable Stott, by intimidation and assault, extracted false evidence of cattle killing from a number of aboriginals”. Another witness had also died following an assault by Stott. It was recommended that he be dismissed; instead, he was sent to the Victoria River District.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Rarraj-ku-ma ngun yawarta-marraj wayi?’ Ngurla kup mani kuyarniny-ma jamana-ma nyila-ma. Ngurla kup mani kujarrap. Ngurla mani shorn-rasp na yalungku na imin raspim nyila-ma jamana-ma najing til im meikim kungulu nyawa-ma wansaid.</p>
<p>‘You reckon you can run as fast as a horse?’ Gordon Stott the policeman taunted the prisoner. Stott took the chains off one of the prisioner’s feet and then the other. Then he got a horse rasp and filed the sole of his foot until it bled. – <strong>Banjo Ryan, interviewed in 2015.</strong> (Yijarni, p. 221)</p>
</blockquote>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="17" data-image="" data-title="Banjo Ryan describes the actions of policeman Gordon Stott." data-size="141079" data-source="Yijarni p. 220" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/465/ryan.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Banjo Ryan describes the actions of policeman Gordon Stott.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yijarni p. 220</span><span class="download"><span>138 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/465/ryan.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<h2>‘We grieved for our kids’</h2>
<p>In 1911, the first children were taken under the Aboriginal Ordinance, which was incorporated with the 1910 Aborigines Act. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131555/original/image-20160722-21868-1yvvn1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patrol Officer Ted Evans, shown in 1951, was among those who took children from their mothers. Years later, he wept at what he’d done.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Harry Giese collection, courtesy of Northern Territory Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Chief Protector had the power to remove children who had white fathers from their families and put them into state custody or missions. These children became part of Australia’s <a href="http://www.nsdc.org.au/stolen-generations-history/">Stolen Generations</a>.</p>
<p>For many Gurindji families, Ted Evans and Creed Lovegrove are still remembered as the patrol officers who removed many of their children in the 1940s and ‘50s.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nguyina kanya dat two Welfare na, Welfare-kujarra. Nyila-ma kurrurij-ma jangkarni yard-jawung, welfare kurrurij. International. Ngurnayinangulu nguran karrinya yaluwu na karu-wu. Jawiji-ma nyampa-ma jaju-ma ngamayi-ma nguyinangulu.</p>
<p>The two welfare officers took the children away in a large International truck with wooden slats like a cattle truck. We grieved for those kids — all of us mothers and grandparents. <strong>– Violet Wadrill, interviewed in 2014.</strong> (Yijarni, p. 127)</p>
</blockquote>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="23" data-image="" data-title="Violet Wadrill describes how her children were taken away from her and other mothers." data-size="188726" data-source="Yijarni, p. 127" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/466/violet.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Violet Wadrill describes how her children were taken away from her and other mothers.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yijarni, p. 127</span><span class="download"><span>184 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/466/violet.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>Gurindji children were taken to a number of places in the Northern Territory including the Bungalow (<a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nt/YE00019">Alice Springs Half-Caste Institution</a>) where <a href="http://www.portrait.gov.au/people/joseph-croft-1926">Joseph Croft</a>, the father of a photographer for Yijarni, <a href="https://www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/about-us/our-staff/ms-brenda-croft">Brenda L. Croft</a>, was taken.</p>
<p>Although Patrol Officer Ted Evans was involved in removing children, he found the process traumatic, as Maurie Ryan Japarta, who was taken to <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nt/YE00023">Retta Dixon Home</a> and later Croker Island, discovered:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was in time later to meet the person who removed me from my family and Wave Hill. Ironically, he was the president of my football club, the Wanderers … Ted Evans used to cry … and I thought he was crying because of the scores … I was sitting down there one night … and I said to Ted, ‘Look Ted, don’t worry you know. It’s only a game.’ … And he looked at me and he said, ‘Maurie, I’ve got to tell you something … I was the person that removed you from your family.’ I looked at him and he was still crying, and I just hugged him. I said, ‘It’s alright Ted. What you did is what public servants do today, you had to do a job.’ He said, ‘After I’d taken you and Bonnie, I’d never ever removed another person.’ <strong>– Maurie Ryan Japarta, 2015.</strong> (Yijarni, p. 132)</p>
</blockquote>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="108" data-image="" data-title="Maurie Ryan Japarta describes meeting Ted Evans years later." data-size="868328" data-source="Yijarni, p. 132" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/467/maurie.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Maurie Ryan Japarta describes meeting Ted Evans years later.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yijarni, p. 132</span><span class="download"><span>848 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/467/maurie.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131553/original/image-20160722-21890-rpfxth.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maurie Ryan Japarta, with his brothers Justin and Michael Paddy, sitting at the place where he was taken from his family as a small boy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brenda L Croft 2015, Yijarni, p. 130</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fifty years on: 'We’re still here’</h2>
<p>Over the next three days, the walk-off will be <a href="http://www.freedomday50.com.au/">celebrated</a> with speeches, footy games and bands as an important milestone for black-white relations in Australia – one that sparked the equal wages and Indigenous land rights movements. </p>
<p>But for the Gurindji, the walk-off wasn’t just an industrial or land dispute with their cattle masters. It was a pivotal moment where they chose to wrest back control of their lives after the culmination of 80 years of fear and brutality.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wurlurturr-warla pani ngumpit ngaliwuny-ma ngumpit-ma Gurindji-ma. Nyawa-ma-lu yuwani marru-nganyju-warla. Nyawa-ma-rla ngurra karrinya ngumpit-ku-rni. Kula wapurr pani kaya-ngku-ma lawara. Nyanuny maramara-rni ngunyunu. Ngumpit-tu-rni nyangani-ma murlany-mawu-ma kayirrak kurlarrakkarra. Yumi-ma-rla karrinyani.</p>
<p>Whitefellas massacred our Gurindji ancestors. Then they put up their station houses, yards and stock camps. But this land is Aboriginal land and whitefellas haven’t succeeded in getting rid of us. Aboriginal people still recognise each other as the traditional owners all ‘round this area. The law has always been here. <strong>– <a href="http://indigenousrights.net.au/people/pagination/pincher_manguari">Pincher Nyurrmiari</a>, interviewed in 1978.</strong> (Yijarni, p. 30-31)
<br></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/publications/products/yijarni-true-stories-gurindji-country/paperback">Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country</a>, is published by Aboriginal Studies Press, the publishing arm of <a href="http://aiatsis.gov.au/">AIATSIS</a>. It will be launched in Kalkaringi on August 19, and in <a href="http://avidreader.com.au/events/felicity-meakins-brenda-croft-yijarni">Brisbane</a> on September 6.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Felicity Meakins receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Indigenous Languages and Arts (ILA) and the Aboriginals Benefit Account (ABA). She is also a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and is a co-editor of Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country.</span></em></p>The Gurindji people of the Northern Territory made history 50 years ago by standing up for their rights to land and better pay. But a new book reveals the deeper story behind the Wave Hill Walk-Off.Felicity Meakins, Professor of Linguistics, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640322016-08-16T15:15:16Z2016-08-16T15:15:16ZPolitics podcast: Linda Burney on the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill walk-off<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134295/original/image-20160816-13007-1xbb4tr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pat Hutchens/TC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Next week, Australians will look back at one the most significant moments in the struggle for Indigenous rights. August 23 marks the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill walk-off, when Vincent Lingiari led a group of 200 Aboriginal workers and their families off a Northern Territory pastoral station in protest against their exploitative pay and working conditions. </p>
<p>Labor’s spokesperson for human services, Linda Burney, who at the election became the first Indigenous woman to win a seat in the lower house, tells Michelle Grattan the events of Wave Hill were incredibly important and continue to be. </p>
<p>Burney says the actions of Lingiari and the Gurindji people at Wave Hill were “heroic” and should be “fundamental to everyone’s education in Australia through the school curriculum”. </p>
<p>Burney also traces the modern land rights movement to the walk-off. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134316/original/image-20160816-13025-k3pnn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Returning traditional lands to the Gurindgi people in August 1975, Gough Whitlam pours soil into the hands of Vincent Lingiari.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter/@CanberraInsider</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The Gurindji with the support of unions and many others – non-Aboriginal people – came to the south and presented their case about living conditions, about rights to country, rights to culture, and the south and the north came together and over a long period of time eventually delivered land rights to the Gurindji,” she says. </p>
<h2>Constitutional recognition of First Australians</h2>
<p>Acknowledging roadblocks in the way of constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, Burney says she doesn’t want to “entertain the notion that it can’t happen”.</p>
<p>“I am very disappointed that the Referendum Council has now taken the view that they can’t deliver a report until mid next year.”</p>
<p>“I am still very optimistic that there will be a referendum. It will not be for the 50th anniversary [of the 1967 referendum]. That symbolism is lost but I do think there is still an appetite for a referendum at some point. I am sick of this being kicked down the road.”</p>
<p>“If the Referendum Council says ‘mid-next year’ then let’s for heaven’s sake set a definite date so we know what we’re working towards and get a set of words, a question, so we know what we’re going to be talking about,” she says.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64032/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Next week, Australians will look back at one the most significant moments in the struggle for Indigenous rights.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.