Birth/Death Years: 1861-1941

State/s where activism took place: Victoria and New South Wales

Main Achievement/s: 

·      He was a led organiser for the 1938 Day of Mourning

·      He was Secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League 

·      He organised a petition on Aboriginal Rights to King George VI in 1938 protesting the treatment of Aboriginal Australians

Other Information:

·      He lived most of his life in rural Victoria where he had a family.

·      He was comparatively well educated for an Aboriginal Australian for the time as he attended adult literacy classes.

Relevant URLs to information: 

- https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-william-5773 
- https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/william-cooper-protests
- https://www.firstpeoplesrelations.vic.gov.au/william-cooper

Birth/Death Years: 1935-2017

State/s where activism took place: Queensland, New South Wales, ACT

Events, campaigns, protests involved in: Townsville Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League, a leading campaigner in the 1967 referendum, Vice President and eventually General Secretary of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), active in the Cairns and District Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation for Women, and the National Aboriginal and Islander Women’s Council, chair of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in a role which culminated with the Corroboree 2000 Bridge Walk, attended by more than a quarter of a million people marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of an official government apology

Other relevant information: Her drive to empower Indigenous Australian women won her the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977. She held audiences with Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II, and a number of Australian prime ministers. She was friends with fellow significant activists Eddie Mabo, Faith Bandler, and Joe McGuinness. She was the recipient of honorary doctorates from James Cook University and the Australian Catholic University, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2003. Upon her death in 2017, Dr Evelyn Scott became the first Aboriginal woman to honoured by the Queensland government in a state funeral

Relevant URLs links about the activist: https://www.rahs.org.au/evelyn-scott-1935-2017/

https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/indigenous-rights/people/evelyn-scott

evelynscottschool.act.edu.au/our_school/about_dr_evelyn_scott_ao_1935_-_2017

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-21/dr-evelyn-scott-indigenous-rights-campaigner-dies-aged-81/8967192

 

Died: 21 January 1988, Daguragu

Early life
Vincent was a Gurindji and an advocate for Aboriginal rights in Australia. In his early years, he worked as a stockman at Wave Hill Station, where the only compensation provided to the Aboriginal workers was rations, tobacco, and clothing.

What he did
vincent lead a group of Aboriginal pastoral workers and their families to stage a walk-off from Wave Hill Station in August 1966. The strike was in response to the unfavorable working conditions that Aboriginal employees had endured at the station for more than 40 years.

The result was
Equal pay for Aboriginal workers and a new land rights act were both results of the Wave Hill Walk-Off, which sparked a wave of change on a national level.

https://www.commonground.org.au/learn/wave-hill-walk-off#:~:text=The%20Wave%20Hill%20Walk%2DOff%20inspired%20national%20change%20in%20the,recognise%20First%20Nations%20land%20ownership.

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/wave-hill-walk-off

https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/lingiari-vincent-14178

Events, campaigns, protests involved in:In 1906 Harris argued with the premier for government assistance to Aborigines on the north-eastern goldfields. He claimed that the Aboriginals' economic dependency resulted from the denudation of native game by miners and demanded provision of food and medicine from monies designated for Aboriginal use under the Federal Constitution.

Other relevant information: He was born in 1867 in Western Australia, one of seven children of convict William Harris, a tramper from Wales, and his wife Madelaine whose mother was Aboriginal. He was a private pupil at the Swan Native and Half-Caste Mission, Perth. 

-        https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/harris-william-6582#:~:text=William%20Harris%20(1867%2D1931),Half%2DCaste%20Mission%2C%20Perth.

-        https://peoplepill.com/people/william-harris-16

-        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harris_(civil_rights_leader)

-        https://overland.org.au/2018/11/early-aboriginal-civil-resistance-in-wa-the-untold-story-of-william-harris/