Chapter 3 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

During the 20th century, the region’s First Nations people were disenfranchised and denied full citizenship. They experienced racial segregation similar to what was occurring in American society. As a result, they became determined to resist authority and fight for civil rights, a struggle that would inspire other oppressed minorities. 

https://www.robpyne.com.au/about/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-people/

Transcript

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Chapter three is about the struggle of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The chapter starts with Kevin Rudd in his apology saying, We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering, and loss on our fellow Australians. We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities, and their country. Kevin Rudd. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history. From an early age, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were among my closest friends. There was a strong connection. However, during my adventurous years growing up in Edmonton, I was unaware of the rich history of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander struggle for justice right here in Gimwai. Assimilations of First Nations people. Children taken from their parents, the stolen generations, were taught to reject their indigenous heritage. They were forced to adopt white culture. Often, their names were changed. In addition, they were forbidden from speaking their traditional languages. Some children were adopted by white families, while others were placed in institutions where abuse and neglect were commonplace. Legislation and policies excluded Indigenous peoples from participation as equal citizens. This led to the forced removal of many Indigenous people from their homes to missions and cattle stations. Consequently, their lives were lived under regimes of surveillance and control, with severe restrictions on personal freedom. Just as Aboriginal people resisted invasion during the frontier wars, there was also a strong and concerted resistance during the 1950s and 1960s. This resistance was non-violent but very passionate. The resistance did not rely on electoral politics, but instead saw Aboriginal peoples asserting their own leadership to drive change. One key area of resistance where Aboriginal leaders took on strong leadership roles was within the trade union movement. Joe McGuinness, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander champion. Born in 1914, approximately 50 kilometers south of Darwin, Joe McGuinness was the youngest of five children. He was born to Irish immigrant Stephen McGuinness and his wife, Ally Andubu, a Kungura can woman, also known as Lucy. McGuinness worked as a truck driver in the 1920s and 1930s before joining the army after the bombing of Darwin. He served with the Field Ambulance in Darwin, Moritai, and Borneo. During the 1930s, Joe became known throughout North Queensland as a fighter for the rights of Australia's First Peoples. However, it was after the war that Uncle Joe, as he was known, became fully focused on this struggle. Most notably, he challenged the protection laws that granted state governments near total control over the movement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In response to these policies, McGuinness dedicated much of his time to campaigning for the 1967 amendment to the Constitution. After all, this amendment granted constitutional power to the federal government to legislate in favour of Aboriginal people. Further, it allowed Indigenous Australians to be counted in the national census. McGuinness moved to Cairns in 1951, where he met his second partner, Amy Nagus. He helped raise Amy's two sons, Raymond and Samuel, and their daughter Sandra, who was born in 1954. Like most regional towns of that era, Cairns had distinct racial divides. Most Aboriginal residents were confined to the town's outskirts, surviving on intermittent and underpaid work. McGuinness became determined to fight the systemic discrimination and abuse directed at the local indigenous community, particularly from employers and police. After joining the Waterside Workers Federation while working on the wharves on Thursday Island, McGuinness expanded his activism. In Cairns, his union involvement deepened, ultimately leading to his election to its executive committee. In 1958, the Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League was formed with McGuinness as its secretary. The League worked closely with the Local Trades and Labor Council, the TLC. McGuinness described the TLC as the only white organization that showed concern over reported cases of injustice. Increased activism by the Cairns League coincided with the emerging national movement in support of indigenous rights. Indeed, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, commonly known as Fikati, was formed after a coalition of rights groups met in Adelaide in 1958. McGuinness became Fikatsy's first Indigenous president. He held the position for 17 years, from 1961 to 1973 and from 1975 to 1979. Before long, Fikati won its first victory of national significance. A young indigenous man at the Hopevale Mission who had consorted with his girlfriend was vlogged by the mission's pastor and ordered to move to Palm Island. McGuinness campaigned long and hard against the pastor's actions. McGuinness and his comrades forced the government to hold an inquiry into the incident. It later found that the pastor's behaviour was inexcusable. Moreover, it was the first time this type of misconduct by a mission had been successfully challenged. The win triggered a range of protests against similar incidences of abuse across the country. Fikatsy pursued important law reform, including wage equality cases and the early push for land rights. However, McGuinness is best remembered for his role as joint national campaign director in the historic 1967 referendum campaign. Travelling tirelessly from Town Hall meeting to town hall meeting, he helped spearhead a nationwide grassroots campaign. This referendum became Foucatsi's strongest and most successful campaign. Achieving over over 90% voter approval, it remains the strongest yes vote of any Australian referendum. In North Queensland, Joe McGuinness became the regional manager of Aboriginal Hostels in Cairns. He was also instrumental in the establishment of many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organizations. He later became a key figure in the early days of the development of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Upon his passing in 2003, Patrick Dodson wrote of Uncle Joe, this grand old man has been the inspiration to many of us who have joined in the battle for justice. He has provided wisdom and advice, guidance and correction, humor and hope. His interest, enthusiasm, and point of view on the continuing challenges we face against the ignorant and arrogant who profess to know what is best for us. He was always present and available as he encouraged us on. Gladys O'Shane, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights advocate. Born in Mossman, far north Queensland in 1919, Gladys Davis began her working life in the Mossman Hospital Laundry. It was there she met Irish immigrant Patrick O'Shane, and the couple fell in love, marrying in October 1940. Gladys and Patrick moved to Cairns, where Patrick became known as Tiger O'Shane, a nickname earned for his fighting ability when taunted about his marriage to an Aboriginal woman. Tiger worked as a wharf labourer and became active in the Union movement, while Gratis began her political life during the 1954 National Waterside Workers' Strike, supporting Cairns Wharfies. Her commitment to Indigenous rights became evident in 1958 when she addressed the Waterside Workers Federation Women's Committee National Conference in Sydney. At the Sydney Conference, O'Shea informed the audience that the Queensland Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act was as vicious as any crimes act, highlighting how the Director of Native Welfare and not the parents were the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in the state. Therefore, she urged the women to join with us in our struggle for a better way of life. In 1960, O'Shane made history as the inaugural president of the Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Advancement League. Under her leadership, the League took on cases involving abuse of Aboriginal people. An alliance of the Cairns Trades and Labour Council and the Cairns League succeeded in publicising these cases, often bringing the offenders to justice. O'Chane had a wider influence through the Cairns League's affiliation with the national body, the Federal Council of Aboriginal Advancement. O'Shane joined the Communist Party in 1960, attending the party's summer schools to hone her public speaking skills. By 1984, she had been elected to the CPA's North Queensland District Committee. When she died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1965, the movement mourned the loss of a formidable champion of our first people. The Communist Fred Patterson. Born in 1897, Fred Patterson was politicized by the First World War. He saw workers on each side of the front line massacring one another for no reason at the behest of a wealthy ruling class. A prize-winning student, Patterson was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford and could easily have become a wealthy barrister. However, his only goal in life was to improve the lives of working people and advance the cause of socialism. Patterson explained in his memoir that for him, practicing law was always a part-time pursuit. Most of his time was spent working for the party. Between cases, I did an enormous amount of work for the Communist Party, addressing meetings all over North Queensland, from the coast to the North Territory border. Two of Fred's many clients were Joe McGuinness and Tiger O'Shane. Fred was a strong ally of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples everywhere. Fred Patterson forged his reputation by fighting fascism and defending unemployed migrants. During the Great Depression, Queensland had the highest number of Italian immigrants of any state. These new arrivals, having escaped Mussolini's fascist regime, often moved north from Brisbane looking for work. Consequently, Australia's first anti-fascist march was held in the far north Queensland town of Halifax in 1925. While the government cracked down on these radical protesters, Fred stood in solidarity with them. Anti-migrant racism resurfaced in 1931 when the cane farmers and the Conservative Australian Workers Union made a deal to give British subjects farm work ahead of Italians. Patterson contested the legality of the agreement. In 1933, a deadly epidemic of Wheels disease broke out in the sugar cane fields, prompting the cutters to go on strike. By 1835, 2,000 workers had brought the sugar mills to a standstill. When the state government refused relief to the laid-off workers, the CPA, through the unions, organised fundraising, communal kitchens, and accommodation. Although the strike had only limited success, it raised the profile of the Communist Party of Australia, the CPA, and fueled resentment towards the Australian Labor Party, the ALP. Patterson's support for the cane cutters was instrumental in his election to the Townsville City Council in 1939. Working with allies from a left-wing split within the ALP, Patterson had enough influence on the council to make real improvements for local people. This included providing cheap stoves for Townsville workers, as well as establishing public libraries, a swimming pool, and a public iceworks when the military took over the existing one during the war. Fred fought for Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. Fred represented Jacko, the victim of the Hope Fail flogging case, free of charge. His friendships with Joe McGuinness and Gladys O'Shane led him to undertake considerable pro bono advocacy on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Indeed, the CPA was the first political organisation to champion the cause of Australia's First Peoples. From its foundation in 1920, the CPA and its members were uncompromising opponents of racism against Indigenous Australians. The party criticised ALP policies on Aboriginal rights. The 1st of July 1927 issue of Workers Weekly rejected the near-universal view promoted by bourgeois historians and politicians that Australia had been settled without violence or resistance from Aboriginal peoples. The weekly called out the facts, informing readers that colonization of Australia was accompanied by the attempted physical extermination of the indigenous peoples, and that inhumane exploitation, forced labour, and slavery of Aboriginal workers persisted, especially in outback pastoral industries. Fighting the ban and winning Bowen. When the CPA was banned in 1940, as a consequence it became illegal for Patterson to publicly address crowds. During a visit to Cairns, Patterson used his legal experience and creativity to work around this problem. He addressed a meeting of locals while standing on a table, metres off the Cairns Esplanade, knowing the local police could not enforce the communist ban on him as he was beyond the high watermark and outside their jurisdiction. In the 1944 state election, Patterson won the seat of Bowen, defeating the ALP incumbent Dick Reardon. In one of his first parliamentary speeches, he declared, Socialism is in accordance with the highest and noblest traditions and ideals of mankind. But socialism cannot be imposed upon the people by a minority. It is a movement in the interest of the vast majority and will come into existence only when a majority of the people want it and are organized sufficiently to obtain it and maintain it. Patterson attacked. Rail unions were seeking a flow-on pay rise to match the federal award wages won by metal workers. However, the ALP Hanlon government, despite Hanlon being a former railway worker himself, refused their demands, prompting strike action. Determined to defeat the strike, the state government launched an aggressive propaganda campaign against the rail workers, accusing them of being taken in by a communist plot. Patterson stood firmly with the strikers, joining the picket line every morning, offering the strikers legal advice and using Parliament to vigorously defend their cause. The confrontation turned violent on Sir Patrick's Day 1949 when a Plaincoase policeman assaulted Patterson during a railway workers' rally. His skull was fractured with the police batten, and his injuries were so severe that he was not expected to survive. ALP and the capitalist press joined forces. The day after the bashing, the Courier Mail quoted the ALP Premier expressing indignation at the demonstrators' behaviour and admiration for the police. The article described the events as a deliberately provoked brawl by the communist element, which saw defeat staring it in the face. I have reports of their the police tolerance, patience, and care in handling people during this difficult period. This police violence marked the end of Patterson's political career. His severe injuries left him debilitated, while the ALP government redrew the boundaries in his electorate, making it unwinnable for him. Yet Patterson's legacy as a fighter guarantees his unique place in history, the only communist ever elected to an Australian Parliament. First Peoples and Good Memories. The post-war decades were marked by systemic injustice, including the horrific treatment of First Nations people through stolen land and the forced removal of children. Yet through determined leadership and solidarity, these oppressed communities never surrendered. From J. McGuinness to Gladys O. Shane's advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights to Fred Patterson's campaign for starving families during the Depression, these collective struggles laid the foundation for future progress.