Edward Koiki Mabo: The Journey to Native Title - [API] Network

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Eddie Mabo woman, in October 1959. They saved enough to begin buying a house and had settled into a comfortable suburban existence when Koiki’s increasing involvement in black and white politics again brought him into conflict with forces of reaction in Queensland that identified black activism with white political radicalism. While working between 1954 and 1957 on luggers that visited the mainland, he had realised how exploited Torres Strait Islanders were in comparison with white workers. Islanders were given, he estimated, about one quarter of the wages of an equivalent white worker and even this income was controlled by a paternalistic administration. He realised islander initiative was being stifled because the islander owners of company boats had to sell their shell to the Queensland government at a much lower price than the owners of master boats received. He also realised that the Queensland government was subsidising its administration through its involvement in the Torres Strait Island fisheries. Although the Queensland department of native affairs practised a policy of soft, personalised control with regard to Torres Strait Islanders, Mabo realised that his people were just as effectively ‘kept in their place’ as an inferior caste as were Queensland’s Aboriginal people. He was later to entitle one of his notices in the native title campaign: ‘Qld Govt is our Friendly Enemy’. 5 In 1960, at Hughenden in western Queensland, Mabo had become involved with the trade union movement when he became a spokesman and union representative for Torres Strait Islanders working on the Townsville-Mount Isa rail-reconstruction project. This involvement was to deepen when he moved back to Townsville. In the west, he had personally encountered racism in the workplace, brushing it aside with a quite dignity that reflected his assessment that this was what you had to expect from white Australia. When it affected his young wife and their two small children, he found it much harder to tolerate: Several times we brought our kids in to Hughenden when they were sick and the doctor would see them — Eddie and Maria for instance, when they were babies, when we were out west. And we couldn’t get a lift. We didn’t have a vehicle at that time ... And there was no way of getting back so we had to go to the nearest pub, or whatever, and ask for a room. And for all the times that we used to come in, all of the pubs didn’t take us. They wouldn’t accept black money, or probably they thought we’d leave our skins on the sheets. 6 Such discrimination also helped to politicise his wife, Bonita, whose religious upbringing had initially made her hostile to black activism, trade unions and leftwing politics, even the labor party. While working as a labourer at the Townsville harbour board, Koiki soon found that the whites most supportive of black advancement were radical trade union leaders, especially the members of the communist party which had supported the Aboriginal cause since the 1930s. 7 At the time, Mabo did not know what the communist party was, nor indeed care. It was the only political party whose members were willing to work with the black advancement movement in a non-paternalistic way. Two black representatives were invited to attend Townsville’s trades and labour council meetings, generally Mabo and another executive member of the Aboriginal advancement league, Dick Hoolihan. They were encouraged to bring up black issues, but not to expect the white unionists to speak for them. At the TLC meetings and at associated conferences, 111
Noel Loos Mabo learned meeting procedures and gained experience at public speaking in what he would term ‘white-man culture’. It was also while Mabo was in western Queensland that he was first influenced by black activists such as Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal) and Joe McGinness. When he returned to Townsville, he became involved with the Aboriginal advancement league and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and held executive positions in most that he joined. 1967 was an important year for black Australians. They now see it as the year in which they were at last acknowledged as Australian citizens. The referendum of that year changed the constitution to allow Aborigines to be counted in the census, from which they had been specifically excluded. And for the first time, the commonwealth government could legislate and set up administrative structures on their behalf. Previously, by the constitution, indigenous Australians had been a state responsibility except in the Northern Territory. Mabo had been a member of the Aboriginal advancement league in Townsville since 1962 and involved in the campaign for the 1967 referendum. He wanted to drive home the significance of these changes to the constitution and in July 1967 suggested to local union leaders that a seminar be held, involving black and white north Queenslanders, to focus on the problems confronting indigenous Australians and consequently white Australians. The title, ‘We the Australians — What Is to Follow the Referendum’ encapsulated the thrust of the conference, and the logo, two hands, one white, one black clasped in friendship, indicated the positive direction intended. It also reflected Mabo’s thinking: that it was necessary to work with supportive whites and through white processes and institutions to achieve black advancement. The inter-racial seminar identified three groups in which Mabo realised he could find allies: the trade union movement, academics from the newly established James Cook University College, and mainstream churches. Mabo deliberately set out to strengthen his ties with people who had indicated their commitment to social justice, especially those from the first two groups with whom he felt especially comfortable. Even in this, his first major foray across the cultural divide, the Meriam battler found that he had stirred up a hornets’ nest of white reaction. It was decided locally that the Townsville branch of the one people of Australia league (OPAL) would host and advertise the conference as a number of members of the convening committee believed themselves, to be members of OPAL, the one multi-racial organisation in Queensland that was socially acceptable across the political spectrum and in the press. The federal council for the advancement of Aborigines, soon to be renamed the federal council for the advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) on Mabo’s motion, was considered radical, even by some a communist front. A conservative anglican clergyman, the dean of the cathedral, the police special branch, and the ultra-conservative Queensland government decided that this conference was a dangerous communist front manipulating simple-minded blacks who were content with their existing lot, and set about demonising it. The Townsville clergy were advised by the dean not to participate in the inter-racial seminar. Some immediately withdrew, including all roman catholic nuns and priests. Others joined because they either thought the project was too important to ignore or believed it should not be left in the hands of left-wing agitators. Others ignored the advice and 112
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Edward Koiki Mabo: The Journey to Native Title - [API] Network

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