Walk-off 50 years ago triggered Indigenous land-rights movement

The Wave Hill Walk Off triggered a land-rights movement that, almost a decade later, led to one of the first cases of returning traditional land to Indigenous Australians.

Timmy Vincent, son of Vincent Lingiari, at anniversary celebration Source: AAP

This month (August 23) marks 50 years since the day 200 Aboriginal workers walked off a Northern Territory cattle station in protest over exploitative living and wage conditions.

 

Vincent Lingiari is the man who, in 1966, led 200 fellow Aboriginal stockmen and their families off Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory in protest.

The unprecedented strike would grow into a years-long movement for Indigenous land rights, all started from the stories Mr Lingiari had heard as he grew up.

 

Almost a decade later, Vincent Lingiari was standing in Daguragu, at the heart of the land the Gurindji people claimed, together with then prime minister Gough Whitlam.