aboriginal land rights issueas recorded in oodgeroo noonuccal's ...

165case they're giving us the minerals under the ground". Aboriginalawareness of the essentialvalue ofland as an economic resource is finnlydisclosed by Noonuccal: "gave us the land [and] enough money to runthe land".The 1960s marked a great change in Aboriginal history. Whitepeople in Australia fmally admitted that they had treated Aboriginalpeople badly andin 1967,"89 per cent of all Australians of voting age agreed to thereferendum proposals that Aborigines should be included in thecensus count and that the federal government should be givenpower to legislate forAborigines" (Broome, 1992:178).In the following years the campaign for Aboriginal Land Rightsachieved a remarkable success. Aboriginal people gained what they hadfought for as from the 1970s the Commonwealth and some Stateparliaments began to pass Aboriginal Land Rights Acts (Buckley andWheelwright, 1992:22).Thus, they could control much of their own landand especially in the Northern Territory they "succeeded in extractinglarge royalty sums from mining companies" (Buckley and Wheelwright,1992:22). Aboriginal people's struggle for their land rights; however,still continues. The majority of Aboriginal people have not got thebenefit fromthis landrights legislation, particularly those living in urbanareas such as Redfern in Sidney. These urban Aboriginal people do notobtain practicable landcompensation fromthe government.D. ConclusionAboriginal people's struggle to regain their lands is carried outin various ways. They protest to their white counterparts over their landdispossession through political demonstrations and art. They, withoutfalling into despondency, undertake this struggle as land makes up aconstituent part which is very essential to their life. Land has not only areligious but also an economic tie to Aboriginalpeople. This religious tieAboriginal Land Rights Issue (Sugi Iswalono)