The Wave Hill Walk-off (23 agos 1966 año – 16 agos 1975 año)
Descripción:
On 23 August 1966, 200 Gurindji stockmen, domestic workers and their families initiated strike action at Wave Hill station in the Northern Territory. Negotiations with the station owners, the international food company Vestey Brothers, broke down eventually became a seven-year dispute. This led to the return of a portion of their homelands to the Gurindji people in 1974, and the passing of the first legislation that allowed for Indigenous people to claim land title if they could prove a traditional relationship to the country. In August 1975, Prime Minister Whitlam came to Daguragu and ceremonially returned a small portion of Gurindji land to the traditional owners by pouring a handful of soil into Vincent Lingiari’s hand with the words, ‘Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people’.
The Gurindji people had lived on their homelands in what is now the Victoria River area of the Northern Territory for tens of thousands of years when in 1883 the colonial government granted almost 3000 square kilometres of their country to the explorer and pastoralist Nathaniel Buchanan. The Gurindji would have had no appreciation that someone from outside their community ‘owned’ part of their country.
In 1953, all Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory were made wards of the state and in 1959 the Wards Employment Regulations set out a scale of wages, rations and conditions applicable to wards employed in various industries. However, the ward rates were up to 50% lower than those of Europeans employed in similar occupations and some companies even refused to pay their Aboriginal labourers anything. In 1965, the North Australian Workers Union, under pressure from the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights, applied to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission to delete references in the Northern Territory’s pastoral award that discriminated against Aboriginal workers.
The Gurindji strike was instrumental in heightening the understanding of Indigenous land ownership in Australia and was a catalyst for the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, the first legislation allowing for a claim of title if the Indigenous claimants could provide evidence for their traditional relationship to the land. The Wave Hill Walk-off signalled the start of a series of regaining of rights for the Aboriginal people of Australia. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam announced in his election policy speech that his government would ‘establish once and for all Aborigines’ rights to land’, and it was fulfilled.
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Australia After WWII
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