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The bark petition, Wave Hill strike and land rights for Indigenous Australians

Key ideas:

• The historical conditions for Indigenous people in the Territory that inspired the submission of the Bark Petition and Wave Hill strike;
• The significant role played by Vincent Lingiari in the land rights movement;
• The significance of these events to the land rights movement.

Land rights and Politics

Issues of Indigenous land rights and politics are closely bound and fights for land rights continue to represent a fight for political and cultural recognition. The conflict between Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and mining companies has been very well documented. Most recently, the Jabiluka uranium mine sparked huge controversy when the Mirrar people of the northern Kakadu region fought against the establishment of the mine on their land. The 'bark petition' in the 1960s represents one of the earliest land-rights struggles to inspire great progress for Indigenous political rights. In August, 1963, the Yolngu people of Yirrkala in eastern Arnhemland sent the famous 'bark petitions' (shown left) against the Nabalco Mining Company to the Commonwealth Parliament as a protest against the Federal Government's decision to remove more than 300 square kilometers of land from the Arnhemland reserve for the mining of bauxite (a raw material in the process of making aluminium).

The agreement made between the Federal Government and Nabalco (now known as Alcan) a Swiss/Australian consortium, allowed for land that had been taken from the Yolngu people of Yirrkala to be used for mining and processing of 250 million tonnes of ore of the world's largest bauxite deposits as well as establish the new township of Nhulunbuy. The local Yolngu clans opposed the decision to remove 300sq kilometres from their reserve, as they were never consulted by the government or mining company. In fact much of the negotiations between the two stakeholders was conducted in secrecy and work started on the mine and new township without anyone ever talking to the Yolngu people.

Parliamentarian involvement

Two Labor parliamentarians, Kim Beazley (senior) and Gordon Bryant visited Reverend Edgar Wells, Superintendent of the Yirrkala Methodist Church mission, in July 1963. At that meeting, Yolngu leaders made clear their objection to the lack of consultation and secrecy of the Government's agreement with Nabalco, and their concern about the impact of mining on their land and that their voices were never heard in the whole process.

Presentation of petitions to parliament

The first of the two petitions, requesting an inquiry, were presented in the House of Representatives on 14 August by Jock Nelson, Member for the Northern Territory, and on 28 August by Arthur Calwell, Leader of the Opposition. Subsequently, a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry listened to evidence presented at Yirrkala and in Darwin. The Committee's report acknowledged the rights the Yolngu set out in the petitions and recommended to Parliament on 29 October 1963 that compensation for loss of livelihood be paid, that sacred sites be protected and that an ongoing Parliamentary Committee monitor the mining project. The Yolngu leaders were still unhappy and turned to the Supreme Court in the Northern Territory, where hearings into their case, commonly known as the Gove Land Rights Case began in 1968. Unfortunately this case also failed and the mine and refinery (above) went ahead.

In handing down his decision in 1971, Justice Blackburn accepted the evidence that the Yolngu people had been living at Yirrkala for tens of thousands of years and that their law was based on intricate relations to land. As this case occurred long before the renowned Mabo decision, Justice Blackburn held that Australian law could not recognize the property relations of the case and that the law as it stood could not solve the problem at the heart of the case: that the facts of Australian history disproved the 'legal fiction' of terra nullius, on which Australian law was built. Even though the case was lost, there was wider awareness of the just claim of the Yolngu people, and of the concerns of Indigenous people throughout Australia regarding land ownership. The inability of the law to find a just answer for the Yolngu people, who had been turned away first by the Parliament and then by the Courts, inspired a national protest.

Gurindji stike

In the 1960s the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory who were working on Wave Hill cattle station, (owned by Lord Vestey, a member of the British aristocracy) staged a landmark struggle for Aboriginal justice. The campaign, which ended up becoming Australia's first successful Aboriginal land claim, began as an industrial dispute. This had the immediate effect of challenging the Australian labour movement and other Australian institutions to address its attitudes on the rights and conditions of Aboriginal people, attitudes which until then had often been indifferent and sometimes openly hostile.

Until 1920, when the last recorded massacre occurred in the Northern Territory, people like the Gurindji suffered appallingly from the processes of colonization which included a onslaught of massacres, being dispossessed from traditional lands and often being forced into slave labour by the cattle station owners who had taken over the lands that once belonged to them.

Having lost the use of cheap, convict labour from which the pastoralists had prospered in the early years of settlement, the cattle industry turned to Aboriginal people for labour and they became the backbone of most cattle stations across the north of Australia. The Aboriginal people worked for little or no money. A Territory Government Inquiry held in the mid 1930's said of the Wave Hill Station and Vesteys who were its owners, that it was obvious that they had been ruthless in denying Aboriginal labourers adequate access to basic human rights.

Vincent Lingiari's response

After suffering from this treatment for many years, on the 23 August 1966, the famous Vincent Lingiari, a respected elder of the Gurindji people, led members of his people, along with others from the Ngarinman, Bilinara, Warlpiri and Mudbara groups, off the Wave Hill Station in protest. From Wave Hill, they walked to Victoria River where, despite mounting intimidation, they held strong through the wet season, and in March of 1967 made the decision to move to a very special dreaming place for the Gurindji people which they called Daguragu, or Wattie Creek.

A fight for land rights

Wattie Creek became their new settlement, and in spite of offers of a raise from Vestey, Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people held out for nine years at Daguragu where efforts to cut off their food supply by Vestey's men left them starving on many of occasions. In the book, The Unlucky Australians (Hardy 1968), Vincent is recalled saying to Vestey, 'You can keep your gold, we just want our land back'.

It soon became evident that the Gurindji were fighting for their land as well as against mistreatment. Even though the walk-off started as a strike against Aboriginal cattle workers' wages and the poor living conditions, the protest evolved into an issue that was at the hearts and minds of most Aboriginal people in the country — the issue of land.

Raising the national consciousness

Although this was not the first Aboriginal strike as similar actions were attempted in the Victoria River Downs region and also in Darwin, it was however, the first of its kind to gain strong interest and support from around Australia. Support poured in from student groups, trade unionists, church groups and the Communist Party of Australia organised fund raising support towards the Gurindji struggle. Finally the consciousness of Australia's city dwellers had been stirred and the issues relating to Aboriginal people in the rural parts of Australia had come to the surface and were difficult to ignore.

Support from the Whitlam government

Unfortunately, the petitioning for land by the Gurindji was ignored by the government of the day and it was only in 1972 when Gough Whitlam's Labor government gained power that there was a move towards support for the Gurindji claim. The government put a hold on development leases granted by the Northern Territory Land Board that could damage Aboriginal rights, suspended mining exploration licenses, and gave a small grant of land at Daguragu / Wattie Creek, as an initial step of good faith towards the final land handover.

The Whitlam government appointed Justice Woodward to head of a Royal Commission into the legal establishment of land rights. Recommendations were made to create reserves and incorporated land trusts which would be administered by either traditional owners or land councils, financed by the government. Although the recommendations were made in 1974, it wasn't until 1976 that appropriate legislation was passed by the new conservative government under Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. The complexities of the political situation with the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975, prevented them from being enacted earlier. The Act allowed Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory to automatically be given freehold title ownership to existing Aboriginal reserves and where traditional links to crown land could be proven. Two (and then four) Aboriginal Land Councils (in Darwin and Alice Springs) were also established as part of the Act, to represent the various Aboriginal communities in the process of regaining ownership of land that had been taken from them.

A turning point in the recognition of Indigenous rights

The struggle of Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people is generally considered to be a momentous turning point for Australian society. During the ceremony where the Gurindji were given deeds of proof of land ownership, Gough Whitlam poured sand through Vincent Lingiari's fingers. This moment has become a symbolic gesture of reconciliation in Australia. People consider it a time of handing back and righting wrongs. Whether Vincent Lingiari felt this way is not known, he had a victory, however limited, against ignorant government and a powerful industry.

The Mabo decision

In 1982, Eddie Mabo and three other Torres Strait Islander elders brought forth a case in the High Court against the Queensland Government, know as Mabo and others vs Queensland. The case concerned the ownership of Mer (Murray) and Waier Islands. They claimed that the Merriam people had lived on the Islands since time immemorial and that they are the traditional owners of the Islands and surrounding seas. The Queensland government had passed the Queensland Coast Islands Declaration Act 1985, which declared that the Queensland legislation in 1879 extinguished any pre-existing property, fishing and mineral rights of the Torres Strait Islanders.

The court ruled in favour of Mabo and others and found that the Queensland Coast Islands Declaration Act 1985 was in breach of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975, as the Act had specifically extinguished the rights of Torres Strait Islanders, and the Racial Discrimination Act states that it is illegal to treat people of a particular race less favourably than those of another race. The court concluded that by taking away the traditional legal rights, the Queensland Coast Islands Declaration Act 1985, also deprived the Merriam people of their rights over the Murray Islands.

The High Court challenge took 10 years to be heard and on the 3rd of June 1992, the High Court judges made the decision to uphold the native title rights of the Murray Islanders and discarded the doctrine of terra nullius. This meant that the notion of Australia 'belonging to no-one' before the arrival of the British was overturned and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were finally recognized as the original owners and inhabitants of this land.

The decision meant that where land had remained as Aboriginal reserves, vacant crown land, stock routes or national parks, native title still existed and had not been extinguished, so long as the local systems of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander law was still active and recognized present owners or managers. However, where the Crown (the government) had granted freehold leases to others, native title had been extinguished.

In 1993, the Keating Labor Government introduced the Native Title Act to deal with the implications of the Mabo decision. The Native Title Act 1993 set forward procedures for dealing with native title claims and retrospectively validated the interests of non-Indigenous land holders. In an historic compromise, Indigenous groups accepted this validation process in exchange for guaranteed rights to negotiate.

The Wik decision, handed down by the High Court of Australia on 23rd December 1996 focused on the situation concerning pastoral leases in Queensland, but provided guidance concerning other types of title. The fundamental question at stake was whether the granting of a pastoral lease necessarily extinguished native title.

Pastoral land in outback Australia is generally not owned by station owners, it is held under a lease arrangement with the relevant government and could be considered to still be Crown land. As such there was some question about the nature of Native Title on pastoral leases. Had it been extinguished or did it still exist? The Wik decision by the High Court basically confirmed the notion that native title hadn't necessarily been extinguished on pastoral leases and that the two uses of the land weren't necessarily incompatible.

In 1998 the Howard Liberal government, with the support of Tasmanian independent Senator Harradine, amended the Native Title Act (1993) in a manner which makes it much harder for Indigenous groups to register claims, and which transfers extensive control of the operation of the Act from the Commonwealth Governments to the States. In so doing it allows the states to unilaterally extinguish native title to lands held under a wide range of categories. Even from just a cursory glance, you can probably see that the issues around Mabo and native title have become quite complex and it is not surprising that most native title claims end up in the High Court.

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