Changing values, changing nation - Saint Ignatius' Moodle Community

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Resource sheet 4 Aboriginal Tent Embassy Changing Indigenous rights: key image National Archives of Australia A6180, 14/3/74/338 Aboriginal Tent Embassy, 1974 The Aboriginal Tent Embassy was set up on Australia Day 1972 on the lawns outside Old Parliament House, Canberra. At first, it was simply a beach umbrella and a few chairs. However, over time the Embassy grew into a more substantial and more permanent structure. It is still there today and continues to arouse controversy – and consciences. Defining the issues • What do the signs around the tent reveal about the issues that Indigenous Australians thought important during the early 1970s? • What protests were Indigenous Australians making about their current and past treatment? 166 Values for Australian Schooling – Teaching and Learning Units ©Commonwealth of Australia Later adolescence – Changing values, changing nation
Resource sheet 5 Changing Indigenous rights Source 1: The impact of the 1965 Freedom Ride In 1965, some students from Sydney University formed a group called Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA). Inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States of America, particularly the ideas of Reverend Martin Luther King, they hired an old bus and organised a ‘Freedom Ride’ around NSW country towns. Their aim was to draw attention to discrimination against Aboriginal people. Here Ann Curthoys, one of the original Freedom Riders, assesses the effects of the Ride. In retrospect, it seems that the Freedom Ride, limited though the students’ understanding of the issues and ideas about the future may have been, placed the issue of ‘rights’ more firmly on the public agenda than it had been before. It created a social tension on Aboriginal issues which had mixed short-term consequences, but which did indeed make possible the emergence of something new. It insisted that Aboriginal conditions and demands raise moral and economic questions which white Australians had, at last, to face. And it stimulated a new kind of Aboriginal politics, with far reaching consequences. Curthoys, Ann 2002, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, p 239 Source 2: The origins of the Aboriginal flag, 1971 It was a sequence of events which led to me being the designer of the Aboriginal flag. When I look carefully at what the Aboriginal flag looks like, it comes from the simplicity and power of Aboriginal art itself. Simple colour, choice of colour, and a simple design. It’s powerful, and the colours are important. And it took some time to think about it – red ochre, the red soil – the country of Australia is all red. Source 3: The 1967 referendum Most Australian referendums have not been carried (see http://www.aec.gov.au>When>Referendums> Referendum Dates and Results 1906 – Present). However in 1967, 90.77 per cent of Australians registered a ‘Yes’ vote to change sections of the Australian Constitution that discriminated against Indigenous people. All major political parties supported the proposed changes and both Houses of Parliament passed the proposed Act unanimously; consequently a ‘No’ case was not even submitted. The campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote in the 1967 referendum suggested that the Aboriginal cause had gained a high degree of support, for although the changes were quite mechanical, being simply the granting of a concurrent power to the Commonwealth to make laws for Indigenous people, as well as being able to include Indigenous Australians in national censuses, most campaigners chose to talk in terms of morality: Vote ‘Yes’ for Aborigines, they want to be Australians too Vote ‘Yes’ to give them rights and freedoms just like me and you Vote ‘Yes’ for Aborigines, all parties say they think you should Vote ‘Yes’ and show the world the true Australian brotherhood. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May 1967 Bennett, Scott 1999, White Politics and Black Australians, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, p 22 Why did I choose the sun? Because it’s another colour that is used commonly in Aboriginal art – yellow ochre. But the sun is a great symbol for all people. When we look carefully at the colour black, which is an interesting one, it’s more of a political inclusion, rather than a spiritual, Aboriginal concept. The black represents the pride of being black in Australia. Because, at the time, black pride came into Australian culture – during the ’60s and ’70s – influenced by Black American pride of their culture. If this is going to be an Aboriginal flag, it has to have black, because it represents the black people of the continent. Extract from Dimensions in Time, Ep 7, ‘Harold Thomas - Creator of the Aboriginal flag’, first broadcast 25 March 2002, is reproduced by permission of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABC Online © 2002 ABC. All rights reserved. A full copy of the article can be found at: http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_in_time/Transcripts/s513731. htm Values for Australian Schooling – Teaching and Learning Units ©Commonwealth of Australia Later adolescence – Changing values, changing nation 167
Page 1 and 2: Values for Australian Schooling Bui
Page 3 and 4: Changing values, changing nation Un
Page 5 and 6: Link class discussion to the study
Page 7 and 8: Bringing it together This research
Page 9 and 10: Useful references Recommended books
Page 11 and 12: Resource sheet 2 A view of Australi
Page 13: Resource sheet 3 A picture album of

Changing values, changing nation - Saint Ignatius' Moodle Community

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