SOME LESSONS FROM THE PAST:

ACHIEVING LAND RIGHTS IN NSW.

By Heidi Norman, Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Change, UTS and member of the ANTaR NSW Committee.

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The Redfern based Black Defence Group, and participants (including, but not limited to, Kevin Cook, Bob Bellear, Marcia Langton, Kevin Gilbert) formed a critical part of the land rights story from 1975 and subsequent formation of the non-statutory NSW Aboriginal Land Council in 1977. The defence group and later NSW ALC included highly effective Aboriginal organisers who made successful and strategic policy interventions that in turn shaped the Government’s LR response. Importantly they successfully brought the NSW Aboriginal community together and crafted a coherent political narrative for land rights as a grass roots movement. They were a highly strategic and politically astute collection of charismatic individuals who were open to instruction from Elders and who built a movement continuous with the most recent land activism (in response to Askin’s reforms), but with a sharpened sense of political strategy.

The BDG drew together an alliance of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people active in a number of areas including trade union and social movement to fundraise for the roll-out of Aboriginal Medical Services across the country. They produced a newsletter and fund raising kit and approached various philanthropic organisations in search of financial support to run an AMS. But it was South Coast Elders, Jack Campbell, Percy Mumbler and Ted ‘Gaboo’, Thomas, who impressed upon the younger activists that ‘the most important issue is land rights’. Kevin Cook recalls that;

They came up and talked to us about setting up a different Act. The Lands Trust was operating at that time and people weren’t too happy…it was widely perceived that the Act was no good. It didn’t allow Aboriginal people to do anything for themselves.

With this influence the BDG went on to organise a state wide land rights conference [held at the Black Theatre in Redfern] where the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Council (NSW ALC) was formed in 1977 with Kevin Cook as the chairperson. At the inaugural Premier to table their report by the end of 1979, it was ‘We have decided to pressure the ALP to embark on a land acquisition program’ and for ‘the NSW ALC to become a statutory body’. ...

Read the full article in the ANTaR NSW May 2010 newsletter

About NSWALC - History

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A non-statutory NSW Aboriginal Land Council was established in 1977 as a specialist Aboriginal lobby on land rights. It was formed when over 200 Aboriginal community representatives and individuals met for three days at the Black Theatre in Redfern to discuss land rights.

The Conference was held over the October long weekend to coincide with the annual football knockout carnival to allow as many people as possible to attend the conference and catch some of the action at the football carnival.

It called for the full scale recognition of Aboriginal rights to land, resolved to form the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, and called for the abolition of the Aboriginal Lands Trust.

Thirty one community representatives were elected. In turn, they selected a working committee.

The Committee comprised: Kevin Cook, Joyce Claque, Kevin Gilbert, Alan Woods, Alice Briggs, Camela Potter, Trudy Longbottom, Betty Tighe, Ray Kelly, Jack Campbell, and Ted Thomas.

Kevin Cook was the convenor and then Chairperson.

Mr Cook was one of a number of grassroots and union campaigners from across New South Wales who had formed the Black Defence Group in Sydney earlier that year to press for land rights.

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Read more on the ALC website