Shamed Abroad

How Aboriginal resistance uses shame to embarrass Australia into compliance.

The history of Australian Aboriginal resistance begins with white settlement and continues today. The use of blanket labels of ‘Aboriginal rights’, ‘land rights’, ‘civil rights’ or ‘human rights’ to describe core campaign issues belie the complexities involved and the inherent difficulties in achieving them. Where victories for civil rights are hard fought for and won, there is an intersecting element for many campaigns: the international embarrassment of Australian governments. Three far-reaching campaigns at the end of the 1960s that resulted in changes to government policy, demonstrate the use of diplomatically damaging shame as strategic leverage by the Aboriginal resistance movement. The Freedom Ride of 1965, the 1967 Referendum and the pitching of a Tent Embassy in 1972 form a kind of axis of activism that saw Australian governments disgraced on the world stage.

All that is left

The frantic gold rush of the 1850s left large scale land dispossession and despoilment in its wake, and it was only as Aboriginal people were no longer considered a physical threat that the concern for the self-image of colonists emerged. Australian commentators began to see the country’s treatment of Aboriginal people since “the very commencement of the settlement of the continent” as a source of shame and “a standing reproach against the colonists.” In 1921 Aboriginal activist Anthony MartinFernando, in a self-imposed exile from Australia spoke to a Swiss newspaper of the possibility of self-rule for his people. Perhaps he was optimistic about the post-World War I creation of the League of Nations. Ten years later Fernando could regularly be found standing outside Australia House in London, explaining to visitors and passers-by that the small toy skeletons he draped himself in represented “all that is left of my people”. In her moving account of his life, Paisley reasons that Fernando “anticipated by several decades the direct international lobbying begun by a generation of Aboriginal activists during the 1960s and 1970s.” Colonist self-awareness and guilt, coupled with Aboriginal strategies of cross-border agitation produced an effective tool for future generations of activists to add to a growing kit of resistance.

Seeking white attention

Barred from the baths by Robert Campbell Jnr. 

Aboriginal activists had been campaigning domestically for some time, and non-Aboriginal supporters such as Jessie Street campaigned extensively in Europe throughout the 1950s. However it was not until 1963 that the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) formally resolved to begin the process of “draw[ing] world attention to the disabilities under which the Australian Aborigines are forced to live.” The timing was crucial – as the FCAA were meeting in Canberra, Commonwealth Prime Ministers were meeting in London discussing South African apartheid s being “incompatible” with shared Commonwealth values of democracy, human rights and rule of law. The FCAA resolved to report their concerns directly to the United Nations and such resolutions were routinely released for publication in Asian and African countries that since decolonisation in the 1950s and 60s had formed a newly powerful voting block at the United Nations.[8] As relationships established through the federalisation of activist networks were consolidated, experience grew and knowledge was shared. It’s reasonable to expect therefore that a group of Sydney students discussing the escalation of action two years later were very much aware of the political capital available to them when drawing international attention to their campaigns.

In February 1965 a well organised group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students decided to engage in a form of collective, non-violent action. Emulating similar actions of the civil rights movement in America, the students embarked on a bus tour throughout northern New South Wales. The tour strategically chose to share the name of the American actions in the South, and was known as the Freedom Ride. Ann Curthoys says in her 2002 memoir of the Ride that the students had a “limited understating of the issues”. CharlesPerkins, however, described it as a way to “draw more white attention to the problem [racism].” Whilst racial discrimination against Aboriginal people was of primary concern, it was racism’s daily manifestations that would become the issues for debate at state and federal levels. Amongst the stories of urban students venturing into unwelcome rural territory to face physical and verbal attacks, what is apparent is that Perkins and other organisers such as Curthoys, were savvy enough to understand the political potential of wide media coverage. Perkins said at the time that “nobody had taken notice of us until then.” Sub-standard housing, education and health were all matters finally given at least some attention as a result of the unwelcome global gaze turned upon Australia following the Ride.

Once the Ride ended, the controversy grew. Newspapers in New York, London, Cape Town, Rangoon and Karachi reported on the reception afforded the students by small-town New South Wales. They followed-up with reports on the treatment of the Aboriginal population in Australia generally. Australian diplomats abroad sent press cuttings to the Department of External Affairs warning of the continuing damage being done to Australia’s international reputation; comparisons with the civil unrest in the American south were drawn; a televised debate between Perkins and then New South Premier Jack Renshaw was broadcast just weeks after the Riders returned to Sydney. The Ride had clearly produced enough pressure that Aboriginal concerns were finally pushed into state election and federal parliament spotlights. Whilst the actual outcomes of the Rides continue to be debated, certainly Perkins’ original aim to “draw more white attention” was achieved – on a worldwide scale.

The force of international opinion

A growing coalition of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists drawn from diverse backgrounds campaigned around a long list of legitimate complaints, from decent housing and education to land claims and labour rights. As John Chesterman has shown, there were so many federal and state laws governing every aspect of Aboriginal life that it “took pages simply to list them.” By 1965 the Australian government realised that although racial discrimination was a matter of state and federal legislation, sections of the Australian Constitution were widely considered – domestically and internationally – to be racially discriminatory. Government officials had been monitoring the activities of Aboriginal organisations since 1961. They were convinced that Soviet communist infiltrators were exploiting the treatment of Australian Aboriginals in order to create a “nice, juicy, divisive, controversial problem”, and that existing discriminatory legislation provided ammunition for such enemies of the state. It was considered that Aboriginal enfranchisement would “undoubtedly” have a good effect on diplomatic relations and that it was “necessary, even useful” to make some changes. It was not from any warm sense of altruism that finally forced the hand of  Prime Minster Robert Menzies to put the matter to a public referendum in 1967. Rather, the determining factors were anxiety about what Australia’s international friends thought domestic policy and fear of how international foes might use the situation against national interests.

The national campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote played on these anxieties further as Aboriginal activists and supporters invoked international opinion: “A ‘no’ vote…will brand this country racist and put it in the same category as South Africa.”The tactic worked. The Referendum was resoundingly supported and 90.77 per cent of those who voted, voted ‘Yes’. The elation of the ‘Yes’ campaigners was short-lived. GaryFoley’s assessment of the Referendum centres on its preparatory effect on young Aboriginal activists who were disappointed by what they saw as the hollow victory that came out of its implementation. “[We] were told to assist in the campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote as that would be the answer to indigenous people’s ongoing oppression and marginalization... but nothing really changed”. Having made the constitutional changes needed to appease public opinion, the government yet again had to be pressured into taking action. Once more it was only “the force of international opinion” that made it necessary to be seen to be doing something that saw the creation of a small advisory office. Foley was right. Little had changed. But the experience was formative for a new generation of activists ready to intensify protest actions.

Major political embarrassment

Aborginal activist Gary Foley. 

The United Nations General Assembly declared 1971 the International Year for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, by which time Aboriginal resistance had evolved yet again. Now campaigning for land rights, the new campaigners were angry and heavily influenced by the radical politics of the American Black Panther ‘black power’ movement. This group were prepared to escalate protests beyond the polite discourse and acts of civil disobedience of the immediate past. When Prime Minister Billy McMahon publicly rejected the principle of Aboriginal land rights, Foley and other Black Panthers recognised the significance of the opportunity presented to them – because they understood the importance of international opinion for Australia.  

McMahon had made his announcement as part of his 1972 Australia Day speech. Within 48 hours a small group of protesters had travelled from Sydney to Canberra to plant a beach umbrella into the lawn of Parliament House. The group settled in for the long haul, occupying the claimed space and calling it the Tent Embassy, identifying “Aboriginal status as impoverished fringe dwellers [and] aliens in their land… [and] assertion of Aboriginal nationhood.” The almost farcical events that ensued, as police worked out the legalities and protesters were removed only to return, would have implications for the Australian Aboriginal rights movement for decades to come:

"Television crews from more than thirty countries filmed and broadcast stories about the Embassy and the situation of Aboriginal peoples in Australia... images of the forced removal of the Embassy were shown... around the world. Violent scenes were broadcast around the world. It very quickly became apparent that the Embassy protest was becoming a major political embarrassment for the Liberal McMahon Government."

The Embassy not only drew the most significant international attention Aboriginal affairs had received to date, it cemented a national sense of pan-Aboriginality identity as protesters from around the country converged on Canberra to join ranks. 

Subsequent swinging changes in Federal governments saw Prime Ministers from both sides of politics courting the votes of Aboriginal people and their non-Aboriginal supporters, keen to be seen to be doing the right thing. The Tent Embassy represented a constant and visible reminder of Aboriginal land claims, and was an ongoing source of embarrassment and experiences that strengthened activist’s power. By 1982 hundreds of protesters were arrested under draconian anti-protestor state legislation at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games. In 1988 the Bi-centennial celebrations in Sydney were used to stage one of the biggest ever Aboriginal peaceful assemblies in history. Aboriginal resistance movement leaders were and continue to be aware of the integral value of leveraging international opinion against successive federal governments.  

Civil rights for Australian Aboriginal people have been, and continue to be won in significant part due to the international embarrassment – potential and actual – brought about by Aboriginal activists and non-Aboriginal supporters. The ability to create such an effect has been underpinned by escalating actions, especially during an intense period of activist growth between the 1960s and 1970s. Such actions were consciously chosen to highlight to international observers the treatment of Australian Aboriginals and the legislative changes that resulted were made to save face. Historians continue to debate whether those changes produced positive results for the communities affected. What is clear is that the scorn or risk of scorn from peer colonial countries was, and continues to be consciously wielded by Aboriginal activists against the institutionalised racism of Australian state and federal governments.

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