October 26.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
William Cooper
William Cooper’s campaign for Indigenous rights in the face of “humiliation”
In 1937 [William] Cooper's despair was becoming more apparent in his
writing. He had hoped in vain for something from the Premier's Conference. In 1937, administrators of Aboriginal affairs from all States and territories met in Canberra. This was a very important conference, but its resolutions, although later to prove highly significant, seemed to Cooper at the time simply to be 'confirmation of our humiliation.' [1] Writing of his hopes for justice for his people he wrote, 'I am an old man... My hopes are not being realised.' [2] He told the Melbourne Herald, 'we are coming to the end of our tether'. [3]
On 20 September 1937, Arthur Burdeu, Cooper's loyal friend and supporter, wrote these words to [Anglican priest] Ernest Gribble who was by then on Palm Island, from where he did as much as he could to encourage Aboriginal people in their struggle for recognition and equality:
Mr Cooper does get depressed in the slow progress made and the result of the meeting of the chief Protectors...is most disheartening. These men never learn and never progress and when they adopt a resolution to consult America and South Africa for advice on the problem of the dark man [it] makes one wonder if the day will come when the dark man in Australia will have to walk off the footpath and keep off trams which contain white folk. Still, God is not dead... [4]
...William Cooper conceived the idea of a Day of Mourning on the sesquicentenary of white settlement, 26 January 1838...Aboriginal people stood watching the procession from a space which some of their white friends had managed to organise for them, holding placards reading 'Aborigines Claim Citizenship Rights'. They did not go to the beach to watch the re-enactment of the arrival of the first fleet. They chose not to suffer the humiliation of watching a sad little group of Aborigines, trucked in from Menindee, made to flee along the beach from the Great White invaders, paid off and trucked back to Menindee the same day.
W. Cooper to Prime Minister Lyons, 26 October 1937, cited in Andrew Markus, Blood from a Stone: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines' League, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1988, p.18.
W. Cooper, letters cited in Markus, 1988: 18.
Herald (Melbourne). 7 August 1937.
A. Burdeu to E. Gribble, 20 September 1937, Gribble Papers, ABM archives.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 629-630, 682, n.69, n.70, n.71, 683, n.72.
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For a fuller account of William Cooper's efforts to gain recognition for his fellow Indigenous people, see:
a. John Harris, One Blood, pp. 617-632.
b. Andrew Markus, Blood from a Stone: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines' League, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1988.
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Almost half a century later, on the 26 October 1985, the Mutijuli Aboriginal Community was granted freehold title to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and the Uluru National Park in the Northern Territory.