Students and Aboriginal Rights – From 1965 to Now

When most people think of contemporary student activism, they think of students campaigning around federal education policy or local campus issues. Student environmentalism or student protests in support of refugees might get a mention. However, students also have a rich history of engagement with the struggle for Aboriginal rights stretching back over 50 years. This article tells some of the stories from the early days of activism, as well as how students have carried on this legacy in recent years.

Historical Context

Student engagement with Aboriginal rights began in the 1960s as the very first generation of Aboriginal people were able to attend university. The first generation of Aboriginal student activists included people who later became major Aboriginal community leaders, such as Charlie Perkins and Gary Williams (Curthoys, 2003). Broader changes in the economy and society also increased contact between students and Aboriginal people in urban centres in Australia. From the 1960s, as a result of new legal requirements to pay Aboriginal people award wages, many rural employers who had previously relied on Aboriginal workers sacked them (Irving & Cahill, 2010, p.328). At the same time, many government-run Aboriginal reserves were closed down (Goodall, 1996, p.345). This forced large numbers of Aboriginal people from rural NSW into urban Sydney in search of work and accommodation. Inner-city Redfern’s Aboriginal population grew to 35,000 in 1968 from just a few thousand earlier that decade (Teece-Johnson & Burton-Bradley, 2016). Overcrowding, poverty, health issues and police harassment were serious concerns, and dissatisfaction at substandard living conditions underpinned a surge of Aboriginal political activity in the area. As this radical community was so close to Sydney University, it was natural that they would develop relationships with student activists.

The 1965 Freedom Ride

Widely seen as a turning point for race relations in Australia, the 1965 ‘Freedom Ride’ saw Sydney University students travel to rural NSW in an attempt to expose and challenge discrimination against Aboriginal people. Led by Charlie Perkins and Gary Williams, 30 students from a group called Student Action For Aborigines (SAFA) raised all funds for the trip and succeeded in bringing the overt racism of country towns into suburban living rooms. The trip drew on Perkins’ and Williams’ connections with Aboriginal communities around the state, established through the Tranby Aboriginal College, but also on much deeper networks of Aboriginal activists who had been organising around the state since the 1920s (Goodall, 1996; Maynard, 2007). The group included many students who were Communist Party or left-wing ALP members, as well as progressive trade unionists (Mcqueen, 2011).

In Walgett, they supported Aboriginal people protesting the Returned Servicemen’s League policy of excluding Aboriginal war veterans from the club. One student held a sign reading “Good Enough For Tobruk — Why Not Walgett RSL?”. In Moree, they challenged local council laws which banned Aboriginal people from swimming in the public pool, while in Bowraville they staged a sit-in at the local cinema which was racially segregated at the time. They found widespread discrimination in employment, education, housing, health and services and brought these issues to mainstream attention. In many places the students faced intense hostility from local racists, with a Walgett man attempting to run them off the road and a large angry mob descending on the students at a demonstration in Moree (Curthoys, 2003).

Another student organisation at this time was Abschol, originally established to raise funds to support Aboriginal students to attend university. Over time the group also became involved in political protests, supporting the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’ (FCAATSI) successful 1967 referendum campaign, which gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people national civil rights. Abschol was also heavily involved in the Gurindji people’s struggle for self-determination. In 1966, 150 Gurindji people walked off the remote Wave Hill cattle station in protest over substandard wages and conditions. They had to work seven days a week from sunup to sundown in return for rations of flour, sugar and tea from Vestey’s, the international British-owned corporation which kept the station. After establishing a settlement at Daguragu (Wattie Creek), the community decided they what they actually wanted was to see Vestey’s get out of their country altogether. They wanted their ownership of the land recognised, and they wanted to manage the place themselves. Students from Sydney and Melbourne collaborated with trade unionists to raise money to support the Gurindji settlement, organising shipments of food and materials to keep the camp going. Some students also travelled the 4,100km journey to help build fences and houses for the community (Ward, 2016).

The 1970s

Abschol became a hub of student support for the nascent Black Power movement (Foley, 1999). In 1972, it supported the establishment of the Aboriginal Medical Service through fundraising (Honi Soit, 1972). Medical students also volunteered at the first free shop-front clinic for Aboriginal people, which has subsequently become a model for Aboriginal community-controlled health care which now provides services to over 50,000 Aboriginal people (Marlow, 2016). Students were also involved in the establishment of the Aboriginal Legal Service, which began in 1970 as a grassroots initiative to provide legal support to, and record the names of, Aboriginal people arbitrarily arrested (Foley, 2009).

That same year, students at ANU helped to raise funds and organise legal support for Black Power activists who had established an Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra (Robinson, 1993; Foley, 2009). This became one of the most iconic protests in Australian history and the protest camp remains on the lawns today as a powerful challenge to White Australia.

Abschol also helped organise the 1972 Black Moratorium march in Sydney, in which 6000 people demanded the Federal Government reverse its opposition to land rights legislation and grant the demands of remote communities like the Gurindji and the Yolŋu for control of their land. Students at Sydney University declared a student strike for the Moratorium and more than 2000 students rallied at the campus before joining the main demonstration in Redfern (Gibson, 2010).

Recent Years of Activism

In the last few years, students have carried on this legacy of engagement with grassroots Aboriginal justice Gary Williams struggles. Students Support Aboriginal Communities and Charles (SSAC) was founded in Redfern in early 2015 by student participants in a Sydney University-organised 50th Anniversary commemoration of the 1965 Freedom Ride (Jonscher & Hall, 2015). The student delegation was led by Students Representative Council President Kyol Gary Blakeney, a dedicated Aboriginal activist and Gomeroi man. Many Aboriginal people communicated to the students during this trip that while some aspects of their community life had improved since 1965, racism was still a significant issue, with ongoing discrimination and lack of access to housing, employment, healthcare and services and chronic underfunding of community initiatives and projects – especially those centred around promoting Aboriginal culture.

As a result of this experience, student participants decided to establish SSAC following the student self-organisation model of SAFA. Mentors such as founding SSAC member Evelyn Corr’s father, Barry Corr, played a crucial role in educating the group, emphasising the need for a sustained commitment to Aboriginal justice and not simply a one-off trip (B Corr, 2015). SSAC was initially focussed on supporting the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy (RATE) in its campaign for affordable inner-city Aboriginal housing. Since early 2015 SSAC has supported a number of other grassroots Aboriginal justice campaigns, such as the movement against forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia and Grandmothers Against Removals’ (GMAR) campaign against the ongoing removal of Aboriginal children from their families.

Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy

RATE’s campaign has challenged the gentrification of Redfern over the last few decades, which has seen its Aboriginal community displaced to other areas due to rising rents. The Redfern Aboriginal Community Housing Scheme, originally established by local Aboriginal activists in 1973 with support from progressive trade unions and students (Burgmann & Burgmann, 1998), was a response to the severe discrimination which Aboriginal people faced in the housing market (Gilbert, 1973). The housing project was fiercely opposed at the time on explicitly racist grounds by local councils and non-Aboriginal community members and its success was heralded as a landmark event for the Aboriginal rights movement. However, pressure from gentrification and police violence over the subsequent decades ultimately led to the demolition of the community housing on the Block. While in 1968 the area was home to 35,000 Aboriginal people, in 2016 there were only 300 (Teece-Johnson & Burton-Bradley, 2016). The racism underlying the gentrification is captured in a 2015 advertisement for new apartments which argued that because “[t]he Aboriginals have already moved out” (Corvini, 2014), the area was now an attractive site for investors.

How SSAC Organises

Land (2015) argues that non-Aboriginal solidarity with Aboriginal activist movements should have two broad strategies. Firstly, a commitment to critical self-reflection about settler identity as part of what she terms “reckoning with complicity” in a history of colonial oppression of Aboriginal people. Secondly, a commitment to public political action in support of Aboriginal rights campaigns. She highlights that progressive movements for social justice have often ignored Aboriginal people’s rights, or treated Aboriginal people in paternalistic ways, and stresses the need for non-tokenistic Aboriginal leadership of such movements.

SSAC has pursued a strategy of facilitating self-reflection among non-Aboriginal members and in the broader student activist community about racism and colonialism in Australia through organising educational events for students and other young people. These have included reading groups, workshops, discussion forums, and film screenings and have been organised both internally within the SSAC membership and in collaboration with other organisations. Topics have included non-Aboriginal solidarity with Aboriginal movements (SSAC, 2016), relationships between Aboriginal communities and the academy (Corr, 2016), domestic violence and the need for specialised Aboriginal-run support services, the 1965 Freedom Ride, ongoing removal of Aboriginal children (SSAC, 2016), and the over-representation and abuse of Aboriginal children within the juvenile detention system (SSAC, 2016c). Many of the public forums and film screenings have also functioned as fundraisers for Aboriginal-led justice campaigns, and created spaces for Aboriginal elders, academics, activists and community members to share their knowledge with students.

SSAC has also supported Aboriginal activists in their political campaigns using a range of tactics including occupations, rallies, lobbying decision makers, raising awareness and gaining media attention. Members supported RATE’s 15-month long occupation of the Block by holding regular fundraiser events, film screenings, organising student contingents to demonstrations, performing regular cooking, cleaning and security shifts at the camp, and collecting donations of firewood (Mason & Hush, 2015). The group regularly encourages students to attend Aboriginal-led demonstrations as a group.

In January 2016, SSAC organised a trip to a number of rural communities in north-western NSW to follow up on connections made during the 2015 Freedom Ride commemoration (SSAC, 2015), as well as support GMAR and Gamilaraay People Against CSG [coal seam gas] & Coal Mining –a group of local Aboriginal activists involved in demonstrations against new fossil fuel projects on their country (Corr, 2016: Cooper, 2016). SSAC member and Sydney University SRC Indigenous Officer, Georgia Mantle, created an online campaign against a video game in which players were instructed to kill Aboriginal people, attracting widespread media coverage and ultimately leading to the game’s withdrawal from sale (Thorburn, 2016). SSAC members have collectively and individually published extensively in Honi Soit, on a self-run blog, and on other online platforms in order to draw student and wider public attention to a range of issues affecting Aboriginal people. The group has succeeded in gaining media attention for Aboriginal rights campaigns, such as Dylan Voller’s family’s campaign against the abuse of Aboriginal young people in juvenile detention (SSAC, 2016c).

By creating a central space on campus for student involvement in Aboriginal rights campaigns, the organisation has succeeded in increasing the numbers of Sydney University students involved in such movements. The group has grown from approximately 20 students in early 2015 to a Facebook membership of 198 in December 2017, and facilitated a consistent student presence at Aboriginal rights demonstrations. Fundraiser events have been successful, with thousands of dollars cumulatively raised for grassroots Aboriginal justice groups.

The campaigns which SSAC have supported have met with mixed degrees of success. RATE was ultimately able to secure a guarantee of federal government funding for affordable housing for Aboriginal people on the Block (McNally, 2015), and the Western Australia government substantially backed down from its intention to close 150 remote Aboriginal communities across the state (Quartermaine, Booth & Nimmo, 2016). The outcome of many other campaigns is more uncertain. GMAR have had some successes, such as the implementation in the New England region of their Guiding Principles for a culturally appropriate approach to family and community services activities (Thomas & Razaghi, 2015) and a potential federal review of Aboriginal children in out of-home care (Fitzpatrick, 2016). However, the rate at which Aboriginal children are removed from their families continues to rise (ibid). National outrage following media coverage of the mistreatment of Aboriginal teenager Dylan Voller in juvenile detention has precipitated a royal commission into juvenile detention in the NT (ABC online, 2016). Nevertheless, many activists are sceptical about the likelihood that such reviews can lead to substantial reform, given a long history of failed policy in this area (Maddison, 2009).

As a small volunteer group, SSAC is relatively powerless to influence large and complex policy areas like juvenile detention or child removal, but insofar as the organisation has engaged greater numbers of students in Aboriginal rights campaigns and built stronger connections between student activists and Aboriginal activists, it has fulfilled its objectives.

SSAC has faced a number of obstacles and issues since its inception. In a general context within which students are increasingly individualised due to the corporatisation of universities (Undercomming Collective, 2016), and high cost of living pressures (ABC, 2013), it is more difficult than in previous decades to engage students on political issues (Manning, 2006). The social distance between most non-Aboriginal people and Aboriginal communities (Land, 2015) and enduring racism on campus adds to the difficulty of engaging the student body in Aboriginal rights issues. Increased visibility is needed to ensure all interested students are able to become involved and to engage with students whose knowledge of Aboriginal issues and racism in Australia is less developed.

SSAC’s focus on Sydney University students has also been limiting, and in the future the group should continue to broaden its membership to other universities. Aboriginal students and older activists have consistently been heavily involved with SSAC, but expanding the group’s Aboriginal membership will ensure that relationships with Aboriginal communities continue to develop. In the long term, SSAC should also develop plans for connecting with regional university campuses and with Aboriginal student groups outside Sydney. The organisation has recently pursued connections with SEED, a national Indigenous youth network which campaigns on climate change and will develop this relationship further by supporting SEED’s campaigns.

The lack of formal statutory status in a student union and of clear roles within the organisation are also potential barriers to sustainability for SSAC. These issues could potentially be resolved by incorporating the organisation as an official collective within the Sydney University SRC, and by assigning defined organisational responsibilities to the membership. On the other hand, having autonomy from the bureaucracy of student unions has enabled the organisation to respond very quickly and flexibly when Aboriginal organisations have required support and kept the organisation focussed on its connections with Aboriginal activists outside the university rather than on the factional squabbles that can dominate within student unions. Similarly, autonomy from the university and from government has allowed SSAC a greater degree of political freedom than organisations which depend on these sources of funding. SSAC has been able to challenge both government and the university when Aboriginal activists have called on it to do so.

Conclusions

Student engagement in Aboriginal rights struggles stretches back over half a century and is alive and well today. Inspired by support for Aboriginal rights movements in the radical climate of the 1960s and 70s, students in Sydney have recently formed SSAC to centralise their support for ongoing Aboriginal rights struggles. Key to this process has been developing relationships with Aboriginal activists outside the university in order to ensure a meaningful social basis for student activism and address concerns around cultural competence and community accountability. Grounded by these connections, students have engaged in a range of strategies to support local community campaigns. SSAC has pursued consciousness-raising activities such as forums, film screenings, and reading groups to educate the student body about issues affecting Aboriginal people. Students have raised funds for community campaigns, and organised to ensure a significant student presence at Aboriginal-run demonstrations around issues such as child removals, community closures and affordable Aboriginal housing.

In my view, SSAC has been directly responsible for raising the profile of Aboriginal issues within the student left in and around Sydney. Whereas several years ago Aboriginal community events would attract perhaps half a dozen students, now large contingents of students are common at demonstrations and community events. Through its broader communication strategy of holding campus events (sometimes attracting hundreds of people) and publishing widely in student media, SSAC has also contributed to a generally heightened awareness of—and engagement in—Aboriginal rights issues among students and young people. This approach has already shown promise, with tens of thousands of people (mostly university students and recent graduates) attending the most recent Invasion Day demonstrations across the country. Additionally, a majority of young people voted in a recent ABC poll to change the date of the Hottest 100 countdown from 26 January. This signifies a growing understanding among young people of Australia’s colonial past and a willingness to support Aboriginal people in their struggle for justice. Student organisers should be encouraged by these trends and pursue this issue on their campus by making and deepening connections between their activist groups and the local Aboriginal community.