So much of our activism is built on the shoulders of Yorta Yorta Elder William Cooper
In December 1938, an elderly Aboriginal activist led a small delegation from his home in the inner-western Melbourne suburb of Footscray to the steps of the city’s German consulate to protest the attacks on Jews in Nazi Germany that occurred less than a month earlier.
The attacks came to be known as Kristallnacht.
Until recently the protest march was little known. Over the past 15 years, it has been celebrated as a symbol of solidarity between Aboriginals and the Jewish diaspora. It was a big year for Yorta Yorta elder, William Cooper.
On 26 January 1938, Cooper assisted in organising the Day of Mourning protest for Aboriginal rights, which included a renewed call for Aboriginal representation in the federal parliament. It was a point Cooper had already made in a 1933 petition to the UK’s King George V.
The Day of Mourning protest is now generally regarded as the antecedent of Survival Day, Invasion Day, the increasingly popular Change the Date push, and the more radical Abolish Australia Day movement.
Cooper’s 1933 petition, containing 2,000 signatories, may be viewed as a 75-year precursor to the Statement from the Heart.
The remarkable feats do not end there either. In 1936, Cooper led other eminent names in Aboriginal history, such as Marge Tucker and Shadrach James, in the establishment of the political organisation, the Australian Aborigines League. Shortly after emerging, the League issued its own nine-point plan. Among the program were calls for control over Aboriginals to be transferred from the states to the commonwealth. That one would be legislated in 1967. Others included, recognition by the state and commonwealth legal systems of tribal laws; formal land rights; the need for effective anti-discrimination and racial vilification legislation; improved funding for Aboriginal affairs; and access to higher and tertiary education.
Read the article by Jack Latimore in The Guardian.