Antinuclear

We must not forget Vincent Lingiari and the struggle for Aboriginal land rights

Lingiari’s legacy lost on the young AMOS AIKMAN THE AUSTRALIAN MAY 20, 2014 
EVERY morning, the last of the Wave Hill Aboriginal stockmen gather at a place not far from where Gough Whitlam poured sand into Vincent Lingiari’s hands. Beside a dusty parking lot outside Kalkarindji store, where camp dogs and stray children eat breakfast, the old men watch passersby.The famous walk-off of ­Gurindji people from Wave Hill station in August 1966, protesting against poor pay and conditions, began the land rights movement that Whitlam’s gesture consummated.

Paddy Doolyak, one of the last surviving stockmen, said they walked off “for money, just for money”. Land rights came a “little bit later”.

From the time of the walk-off in 1966 until Whitlam’s historic land rights declaration in 1975, The Australian devoted prominent coverage to the Gurindji ­demands, commissioning a man who was central to the walk-off, the communist and novelist Frank Hardy, to write feature ­articles.

“The Gurindji people wanted to abandon contact with the white man and revert to their tribal ways,” Hardy wrote in one of those pieces.

He told of the day that the stockmen and their families, led by Lingiari, walked to Wattie Creek where they remained until their land rights victory so many years later…….

May 20, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history