Dr Clare Wright OAM has penned an important new book about critical documents in the land rights movement for Indigenous Australians.
The IEU spoke with acclaimed historian Dr Clare Wright in 2022 about her pioneering work, activism and admiration for teachers. Coming from a family of teachers, Dr Wright knows how hard they work.
“They’re at the coalface of the culture wars in many ways. And we don’t give them anywhere near the respect and the recognition they deserve,” she said in 2022.
Now, Dr Wright has released the final tome in her Democracy Trilogy, which is sure to be of interest to anyone with a passion for Australian history. The historian was awarded the Stella Prize for the book.
On the 14 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.
The story of that unique gesture now forms Dr Wright’s Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy.
How the bark petitions were created
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. 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 28 August.
