Aboriginal Australians struggle for civil and human rights, self determination, and the ability to establish aboriginal controlled community based organisations have been present in history from word war two to current times. Within these struggles Aboriginal people have been seeking social justice in the way of choice over lifestyle, access education, employment and healthcare free from discrimination. Along with the right to culture, self determination and access to land. This essay will outline some of the important struggles Aboriginal people have faced in their quest for social justice.
Australian history shows that from the time of early colonisation in Australia, Aboriginal people ...view middle of the document...
, & Anderson, T. 2006). After the second world war between 1939 to 1945 Aboriginal people began fighting back for their rights more profusely. Many Aboriginal stock workers began strikes and walk-off in protest for equal pay. In the Pilbara in 1946. Aboriginal stock workers went on strike for three years as they were not being wages at all (Foley, G., & Anderson, T. 2006). These early struggles of equality, equal pay, racial pride, self determination, self esteem, self reliance and independence marked the beginning of Aboriginal Australians seeking social justice for their people.
Social justice was still the main focus for Aboriginal people in the lead up to the 1967 referendum. In 1965 Charles Perkins a Aboriginal student and thirty white students from Sydney university had gotten the idea of a freedom ride from the African American Civil Rights Movement (Foley, G. 2000). They took bus of Aboriginal children on trip to the Moree swimming pool, in an attempt to combat racism in rural country towns of New South Wales. They were met with violent attacks and the bus was pelted with rotten food (Foley, G. 2000). Despite of this, headlines of the 1965 freedom ride was splashed across newspapers and air on the radio across Australia Curthoys, A. (2011). The 1965 freedom ride, as well as a ten year campaign for human and civil rights run by the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement lead way to the 1967 referendum (Foley, G. 2000). The referendum, resulted in over 90% of white Australians voting yes to include Aboriginal people in the Australian commonwealth. Discriminatory restrictions in the Australian constitution were removed (Foley, G. 2000) and new laws were introduced so that the state and federal governments now had the power to make specific laws relating to the affairs and outcomes of all Aboriginal people (Foley, G. 2000). Aboriginal people had finally been included in the Australian commonwealth, but little to nothing had improved in the way of social justice for Aboriginal people.
Since the 1967 referendum, aboriginal affairs were at the mercy of the political party running Australia at the time. William McMahon was the prime minister of Australia in 1972 and presented a speech on Australia day 1972 stating that there would be no land rights for Aboriginal people (Foley, G., & Anderson, T. 2006). Only hours after this speech the Aboriginal tent embassy...