Indigenous People and Social Justice

First Nations Peoples' activism in Australia and New Zealand developed through three phases—resistance, equal rights, and self-determination. These often overlapped and the resulting movements may be engaged in one, two, or all of these phases simultaneously. The experiences of indigenous and First Nations Peoples of New Zealand and Australia differ and are treated separately here.

While the sovereignty of the Maori is recognized under the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, which offers them some legal recourse, for the First Nations Peoples of Australia, the primary motivation for activism is unjust treatment. It results from claims to rights and social justice exercised either through “traditional” law or the legal framework of the dominant (British) culture. Activists seek redress either through active resistance using violent means or via passive resistance—noncompliance with the mechanisms of alien institutions that have replaced their own. In Australia and New Zealand, activism manifests differently depending on the context but involves claims to land and physical, intellectual and spiritual, resources denied by unfair rule of law, access to legal recourse or the rule of law is mostly exercised in favor of the dominant alien culture.

The lands of First Nations Peoples of Australia were invaded and colonized by the British from 1788 through the late 1800s by force of arms. While the first peoples were guaranteed the rights of British subjects, this was largely ignored by those administering the laws. The loss of lands, resources, and culture were resisted by the First Nations inhabitants at the frontiers; devastated by introduced diseases and technically superior weapons, they have been reduced to remnant pockets on the fringes of the settlements of the invading culture.

Indigenous Australians resisted their displacement and loss of their lands and resources from the beginning. Early place names bear testament to Indigenous/First Nations Peoples' struggle to maintain their birthrights. Places such as Battle Hill and Murdering Flat dot the landscape and figures such as Pemulwye and Jimmy Blacksmith in New South Wales, and Pigeon in Western Australia led fierce, though short, armed resistance. Pemulwye, a Dharuk man and a skilled strategist, organized armed resistance to European settlement at Parramatta ending with his death in 1802. Armed resistance largely ended with the forced removal of First Nations Peoples of Australia to church-run missions and government controlled reserves in the mid- to late 1800s.

Indigenous Australians passively resisted occupation through noncompliance with the imposed laws and regulations, from earliest contact to the present, resulting in high rates of incarceration. Many refused to contribute their labor for less remuneration than their European counterparts. In the 1940s, communist agitator Don McLeod led a pastoral strike of indigenous Australians in Western Australia and indigenous dock workers went on strike in Darwin. In the 1960s the Gurindji people walked out of the Vesty-owned Wave Hill cattle station in a dispute over unequal pay and conditions. This action evolved into agitation for rights to their traditional lands (Wattie Creek) that was eventually successful in the 1970s. In Sydney the first Aboriginal Legal Service was established in 1970 to [Page 743]defend the rights of indigenous Australians. As a protest over the McMahon government's denial of land rights, activists Kevin Gilbert, Chika Dixon, Gary Foley, and others, with support from around the country, established the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra to bring national and international attention to the poor treatment and conditions experienced by First Nations Australians. While it has been periodically removed (with on occasion violent confrontation and arrests for obstruction) it has been continually reestablished as a focal point for activism by Indigenous/First Nations Australians.

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