Tayla Corrigan

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Profession-Specific Activity:
In what ways will a knowledge of the history of Indigenous political
activism be important to your audience (recent graduates) in their future
professional lives?

Good afternoon fellow teachers, my name is Tayla Corrigan and today I will
be informing you about the political struggles and activism of Indigenous
people, and the importance of understanding government policies on
Indigenous issues. The issues I will be focussing on today are land rights
and reconciliation. Knowledge of this will assist us in becoming culturally
competent teachers that will be able to encourage students today to be
aware of the significance of the impact of Aboriginal
history.
Reconciliation is about unity and respect between
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and non-Indigenous
Australians. It is about us valuing each others cultures and
way of life. As teachers today we need to educate children
to be able to understand the Indigenous way of life, so that
they can appreciate and understand the depth of

2.4 Here I have

demonstrated
the importance
of reconciliation
between
Indigenous and
non-indigenous
Australians, as it
leads to cultural
understandings
for students.

Australias history. According to Robin Ryan an Honorary

Researcher (2001) reconciliation involves acceptance, forgiveness, and
respect for differences, these are each topics you could use to teach
children on different types of reconciliation in relation to Indigenous
Australians to create awareness for children.
Aboriginal identity remains strongly connected to the concepts of land,
kinship and culture. These are not separate values, but inextricably
bound together in lived experience (Short, D. 2003). A reflection of
Indigenous identity could be explored through teaching by looking at the
different language groups of Aboriginal people, observing the Aboriginal
flag, and also by looking at the Indigenous arts such as song, dance, oral

Tayla Corrigan
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history, painting and film. This would provide a deep insight for children to
see the amazing culture of Indigenous Australians.
As teachers today we all need to be educated on the Indigenous affairs
that can be traced back to the period between 1960s and 1970s when
small groups of younger generation Aboriginal people educated
themselves politically, and developed a movement that changed the
course of Australian history(Merlan, F. 2005). In 1965 an Aboriginal man
named Charles Perkins became involved at university with a group of
white students from an organization called Student Action For Aborigines
(SAFA) (Foley, G. 2010). These students went on a bus journey through
different towns across Northern NSW. They encountered racial
discrimination and intolerance from all kinds of people and what we know
today as the 1965 Freedom Ride had been inspired by
the action of the same name conducted by the civil
rights movement in the USA earlier that decade (Foley,
G. 2010). The Freedom Ride exposed Australian
racism to the world and as such was a significant
embarrassment to the Australian Government and
nation (Foley, G. 2010), and it was due to the efforts of

2.4 These highlighted

parts demonstrate
my understanding of
the importance of
Aboriginal history
and the importance
of acknowledging
and respecting this
history and culture.

this group of activists, that Australia was forced to finally

pay attention to the problems, needs and aspirations of the Aboriginal
community. Educating children about the Aboriginal activists who were
able to make some difference to the lives of Indigenous people will change
the way Aboriginal people are sometimes stereotypically portrayed as
lazy, and show the success that they can and have achieved.
It is very important to understand and be aware of the damage and
hardships Aboriginal people went through when their lands were invaded
by Europeans and then taken away from them. Aboriginal people within
their communities had their own economic and kinship systems, customs
and law (Merlan, F. 2005). This was interrupted and destroyed after their
lands were attacked and occupied by Europeans, leaving them distraught
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and vulnerable. They were no longer able to practise their ceremonies or

hunt and gather food as they had done for thousands of years (Maynard, J.
2009). To begin with, Aboriginal people tried to fight back against settlers
and the impact of colonisation to regain the land that was theirs first.
Then as the numbers began to decrease, they then had to struggle to find
a place in the new society being formed around them. This is a very
important part of history to remember when you are teaching, as it
destroyed many Aboriginal communities and took away their cultural and
sacred homes. Even though Aboriginal people had very limited
opportunities and faced great prejudice, brave Aboriginal leaders and
groups surfaced to work for better conditions and greater independence
(Behrendt, L. 2007). By the twentieth century, Aboriginal people were part
of a national movement and this was presented through the Day of
Mourning that came about in 1938 and the Australian Aborigines League.
According to Gary Foley (2010), in 1983 Prime Minister Bob Hawke felt
strongly about allowing Aboriginal people their Land Rights and was
committed to seeing this through. He was in the beginning admired by
Aboriginal activist who believed in what he could do for them. However,
in a matter of months Hawke did a political back flip when he reversed his
position on Land Rights after an intense, racially charged, multimillion
dollar advertising campaign mounted by vested interests in the mining
and pastoral industries (Foley, G. 2010). Aboriginal people were
distressed and bewildered at this drastic change and all hope of freehold
title land rights was gone. More recently, the Mabo and Wik judgments
have been milestones in the struggle for land rights and there has been
greater recognition of the damage done through many government
policies and actions, especially the removal of Aboriginal children (Foley,
G. 2010). Eddie Mabo from Mer Island north of Queensland is a very
important Aboriginal activist that is a remarkable example of the fight for
Land Rights and a catalyst for a rethinking of Australian history (Ray, J.
2007). Mabo fought for a title claim for ancestral family farming plots and
fishing place. The Mabo decisions and others that followed soon
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afterward ignited a political firestorm; they prompted the federal

government to draft legislation in the form of the Native Title Act (and
subsequent amendments) that undid the "damage" the court had
wrought; and they led the Court to beat a retreat from its bold attempt to
reconcile Aborigines (Ray, J. 2007). This is important to educate children
on as it will create awareness of the terrible ordeals Aboriginal people
have gone through and still are going through to try save their sacred land
along with their traditions and beliefs.
Aboriginal People have had their land stolen, their language mostly
forgotten, their culture mostly destroyed (Forbes, C. 2005) and we as
teachers need to educate children of today so that they understand what
has happened to the Indigenous people of Australia and hopefully grow
up to acknowledge these issues and to offer hope for the future(Foley, G.
2010). This means for you as future teachers, you have a chance to raise
awareness of Aboriginal history and encourage children to work towards
greater social unity in Australia.
(word count: 1,253)

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References

Behrendt, L. (2007). Reconciliation 40 year on, Australian Institute of Policy &

Science 75th Year Commemorative Issue, 48-53, 76
Clark, J. (2008). Aborigines and Activism: Race and the Coming of the Sixities to
Australia. Perth: University of Western Australia Press
Foley, G. (2010). A Short History of the Australian Indigenous Resistance 1950
1990, The Koori History Website, 1(1), 1-29. Retrieved from
http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/PDFs/229.pdf.
Forbes, C. (2005). Reconciliation: The Task Ahead. Australian Educator, 10-12.
Holland, A. (2008). Fight for Liberty and Freedom. The Origins of Australian
Aboriginal Activism. Australian Historical Studies, 39(3), 399-401.
Maynard, J. (2003). Vision, Voice and Influence. Australian Historical Studies,
34(121), 91-105.
McGregor, R. (2009). Another Nation: Aboriginal Activism in the Late 1960s and
Early 1970s. Australian Historical Studies, 40(3), 343-360.
doi:10.1080/10314610903105217
Merlan, F. (2005). Indigenous Movements in Australia. Annual Review of
Anthropology , Vol. 34, pp. 473-494
Ray, A. J. (2007). Recognizing aboriginal title: The mabo case and indigenous
resistance to english-settler colonialism. BC Studies, (154), 137-139.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196891080?
accountid=8194; http://sfx.unilinc.edu.au:9003/acu?url_ver=Z39.88
Ryan, R. (2001). Research and Reconciliation. The Australian Journal of
Indigenous Education. Melbourne, Victoria.
Short, D. (2003). International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de
science politique , Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 491-513.