IEU Labour History column: The bark petitions that changed Australia
On the 14th of August 1963, a bark petition by the Yolngu People of Yirrkala in the Northern Territory was presented to the Commonwealth Parliament, protesting the seizure of their land by large mining corporations.
Their action was a pivotal moment in the campaign for land rights, and for justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and the story of that unique gesture now forms Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy, the final tome in the ‘Democracy Trilogy’ by acclaimed historian Dr Clare Wright.
Background
In 1963, after the Menzies Government removed over 36,000 hectares from an Arnhem Land reserve for mining leases, the Yolngu people campaigned to protect their land. Two Labor MPs, Gordon Bryant and Kim Beazley senior were so impressed by their submissions that they travelled to Yirrkala, on Yolngu land, where Beazley suggested that the Yolngu petition the parliament.
The Yirrkala bark petition was painted in clan designs by senior Yolngu artists. It was the first formally recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander document tabled in the Australian Parliament.
The petition was initially dismissed, the coalition government claiming that its signatories had no authority to represent the Yolngu. Another petition thumb printed by senior Yolngu men and women was then tabled on the 28th of August by Labor Leader Arthur Calwell.
The pressure created by the petitions and the public campaigning around them led to the creation of a parliamentary committee which travelled to Yirrkala. It started a very long process that eventually led to the beginnings of land rights for Indigenous Australians.
The Australian Trade Union Institute (ATUI) on union support for the Yolngu ATUI explains that attitudes towards the rights of Indigenous Australians changed because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander unionists challenged ‘exclusionary attitudes’ in the movement.
‘The effect of this activism could be seen in the union response to the Yirrkala petition, and the support shown for the Yolngu by unionists.’
At the 1963 union congress, several unions submitted proposed a policy supporting a campaign for wage equality, the call for a referendum to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the census and for the Commonwealth to be given the powers to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (which became the subject of a 1967 referendum), and for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to exercise control over their land.
This was inspired by the campaign of the Yolngu, and other communities whose countries were being threatened by giant corporations wanting to exploit the land.
‘The Building Workers’ Industrial Union argued that the removal of Aboriginal communities from their traditional lands in the interest of foreign investors was ‘an outrageous assault on basic human rights, as those lands had been declared inviolate Aboriginal lands’.’
The effect of the petitions
The Yolngu tried and failed to gain protection for their land through the courts but pursued their case via parliament, and the Whitlam Labor Government, following its election in 1972, formed the Woodward Royal Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights, which led to the passing of The Aboriginal Land Rights Northern Territory Act in 1976.
In 1992, the Mabo judgment of the High Court finally overturned the legal fiction of ‘terra nullius’; that Australia’s land was owned by no-one, ruling that ‘native title’ must be part of Australian law. In 1993 the Native Title Act responded by officially recognising that Indigenous Australians had been ‘progressively dispossessed of their lands’ and setting out standards for dealings affecting native title.
By some estimates, 65% of Australia will be subject to some legislated Indigenous interest by 2030.
In 2013, celebrating their 50th anniversary of the bark petitions, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd described them as ‘two of Australia’s most important founding documents.’
‘These bark petitions are the Magna Carta for the Indigenous peoples of this land,’ Mr Rudd said.
Dr Clare Wright’s book Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy
Dr Wright’s ‘intimate storytelling’, based on primary sources, takes the reader inside the heads of the missionaries, legislators and public servants involved in the making of the petitions and their reception, says Professor Timothy Michael Rowse, writing for The Conversation.
‘Wright persistently evokes their intense attachment to the land in dispute. She never lets the reader forget that the Yolngu worldview, glimpsed in the bark petitions, is richly poetic and deeply felt, and that, in 1963, it was beyond most Australians’ empathy.’
To Dr Wright, the bark petitions, along with the Eureka Flag of the 1850s and the women’s suffrage banner from the 1890s ‘constitute the material heritage of Australian democracy’.
She writes: ‘As the US has its Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, so Australia has a triad of nation defining archival ‘documents’.
Ours are arguably more inclusive, not being written on paper by a literate elite, but rather handmade by ‘the people’ for the purpose of proclaiming their right to be counted’.
Legacy
Yirrkala has for many years hosted the annual Garma Festival, where Yolngu help gather First Nations Australians from around the continent to discuss Indigenous issues. Often, the Prime Minister is present.
Two of the petitions are on display in Parliament House in Canberra and the third is in the Historical Collection of the National Museum of Australia.
As a result of Dr Wright’s research and advocacy, the ‘missing’ fourth Yirrkala Bark Petition was repatriated to country in a community ceremony (bungul) on Thursday 7 December 2023.
LINKS:
Creative spirits Indigenous education resource on the bark petitions