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BlackWords Historical Events Calendar
Significant Dates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
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  • 1920-1949

    1924

    The Kinchela training institution is moved to Kempsey. The Board also contributes to the United Aborigines Mission Home at Bomaderry on the New South Wales south coast where the younger children and babies are placed.

    The Australian Aborigines Progressive Association is formed in New South Wales.

    1927

    Aboriginal people are banned from central Perth, Western Australia, until 1948.

    John Thomas Patten is President of the Aborigines' Progressive Association (APA)

    1928

    Coniston massacre, Northern Territory. After a white dingo trapper is killed, up to 170 Aboriginal men, women and children are shot and killed in reprisals over a period of months. The reprisal was led by mounted constable George Murray. No white person was ever punished for the massacre with a board of enquiry ruling the killers had acted in self defence. (Guardian article)

    1937

    First Commonwealth-State conference on 'native welfare' adopts assimilation as the national policy.

    1937

    Yorta Yorta elder and activist, William Cooper, drafted a petition to King George V asking for Aboriginal people to be granted to "propose a member of parliament". He delivered the petition with over 1,800 signatures to the Commonwealth government, led by Joseph Lyons, in September. In March the following year the Lyons governments informed Cooper that it would neither support his demand for parliamentary representation nor forward his petition to the King. In his response to Lyons, Cooper wrote, in part:

    White men ... claimed that they had "found" a "new" country - Australia. This country was not new, it was already in possession of and inhabited by millions of blacks, who, while unarmed, excepting spears and boomerangs, nevertheless owned the country as their God given heritage ... Every shape and form of murder, yes, mass murder, was used against us and laws were passed and still exist, which no human creature can endure. Our food stuffs have been destroyed, poison and guns have done their work, and now white men's homes have been built on our hunting and camping grounds. Our lives have been wrecked and our happiness ended. Oh! Ye whites! ... how much compensation have we had? How much of our land has been paid for? Not one iota. Again we state that we are the original owners of the country. In spite of force, prestige, or anything else you like, morally the land is ours. (Quoted in McKenna, 3.)

    In 2014, the petition was finally delivered to Queens Elizabeth II via Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove. 

    1938

    On 26 January, an Australian Aboriginal Day of Mourning conference is held in Sydney, New South Wales. It is the first of many Aboriginal protest demonstrations against inequality and injustice. In the 'celebration' of New South Wales, Aboriginal people from Western New South Wales are trucked to Sydney and threatened with starvation unless they play their appointed role in the re-enactment of the events of 26 January, 1788.

    New South Wales Government changes Aboriginal policy from protection to assimilation.

    1939

    World War II: Aboriginal volunteers are rejected.

    Protest by Aboriginal people at Cummeroogunga, New South Wales, who walked off their reserve over malnutrition and ill treatment.

    1943

    Exemption certificates introduced as a means to disconnect Aboriginal people from their identity and community by exempting them from the Act.

    1946

    1 May: the Pilbara Aboriginal Stockmen's Strike, Western Australia.

    Search keyword: Pilbara strike

    1948

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is adopted by the United Nations with Australia's support. It recognises the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, declaring honouring of these rights as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

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