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Impact Of The Gurindji Strike

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The Gurindji Strike or Wave Hill 'Walk off' was a fundamental event in the Australian Aboriginal struggle for rights. The Gurindji's were faced with low wages and poor conditions on the cattle station which sparked the start of the protest but soon after the focus shifted to the land rights of the Gurindji people (ABC net, 2014). On the 23rd of August 1966, 200 Gurindji stockmen, house servants and their families went on strike on the Wave Hill cattle station in Kalkarindji in the Northern Territory. This essay will discuss what led up to this event and its goals, why was this seen as a 'landmark' event and what the ongoing impacts are from the event. The Gurindji strike showcases the true struggle for the proper rights that the Australian …show more content…

“Wave Hill was a major step on the long road towards equality between settlers and indigenous Australians,” says Professor Deborah Rose, an anthropologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (Dineley, 2013). This situation of land theft by the white settlers was, and still is to this day, a very prominent issue and unfortunately many did not have the same resolution as the Gurindji strike. This strike was seen as "the first claim for traditional Aboriginal land in Australia (Korff, Jens. 2014)." A very giant step forward and the beginning of Aboriginal land rights occurred on August 16, 1975, five years after the start of the Gurindji strike, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the Labor party handed over the entitled land to the Gurindji people. This event carved the path for the Northern Territory land rights act of 1975 and in the same year the Gurindji people were able to purchase the pastoral lease for the Gurindji land and the developing in to the Gurindji people gaining the free hold title to the waterhole on Wattie Creek in 1986, which is where the Gurindji people stayed after leaving the cattle station during the strike in 1966. This moment was seen as a pivotal point in Aboriginal History as Gough Whitlam poured soil from the Gurindji land into the palm of Aboriginal elder Vincent Lingiari at the ceremony of purchasing the pastoral lease. In May 2004, Vincent Linguari the leader during the initial strike at the Cattle Station was memorialised as part of the reconciliation place in Canberra (Korff, Jens. 2014) The Wave Hill Walk off was different from previous Aboriginal strikes, it was the first to receive strong support from the trade unions and other organisations around Australia and the attraction of the media and involvement of the author Frank Hardy gave the Gurindji’s grievances more of a wider scale audience

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