The 1966 stand, known as 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.
"My name, Vincent Lingiari. Came from Daguragu, Wattie Creek Station."
This is Vincent Lingiari, 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.
"Well, I got stories from my 'old father,' or grandpa, that the land belonged to me, belonged to Aboriginal man before the horse and the cattle come over on that land, where I'm sitting now. That's what I (had) been keeping on my mind. I still got it on my mind."
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.
"I want to promise you that this act of restitution which we perform today will not stand alone. Your fight was not for yourselves alone, and we are determined that Aboriginal Australians everywhere will be helped by it. And I want to give back to you formally, in Aboriginal and in Australian law, ownership of this land of your fathers."
In 1975, Gough Whitlam travelled to the Northern Territory to commemorate a leasehold title, granted a year earlier to the Gurindji people.
It included around 3,000 square kilometres of land that was once part of Wave Hill station.
There, Mr Whitlam poured soil into Vincent Lingiari's hands to signify the legal transfer.
"I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof in Australian law that these lands belong to the Gurindji people."
The story of Vincent Lingiari's legacy has been told through song by Australian artists Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly.
When Vincent Lingiari led the Wave Hill Walk Off, conditions were dire for Aboriginal people working on the cattle station run by the British company Vestey Brothers.
Their wages were far below those given to non-Indigenous workers, and accommodation and rations were very poor.
Still on the property, the group set up camp in the bed of the Victoria River, where the people continued to negotiate with their employers to secure equal wages for Aboriginal workers.
When that failed, they moved to nearby Daguragu, known also as Wattie Creek.
There they stayed for seven years, transforming a protest around wage and employment conditions into something far greater, as retold in this ABC report: "But the Gurindjis wanted more. Sensing sympathy, they asked for something that was more important to them, the land that was taken from their forefathers and which they'd worked for the whites with little in return. They were led by Vincent Lingiari, a tribal elder who'd worked since childhood on Limbunya, Victoria River Downs and Wave Hill stations."
In 1967, the Gurindji people sent a petition to the governor-general in Canberra, asking that the land be leased to them so they could run their own cattle station.
Their request was not granted, and not until the Labor Party came to power in 1972 did they see a meaningful government response.
Before the election, Mr Whitlam, as opposition leader, had promised his government would "establish once and for all Aborigines' rights to land."
In 1973, it negotiated for a portion of Wave Hill Station land held by Vestey Brothers to be leased to the Gurindji people.
By that time, what Vincent Lingiari had started was part of a growing movement for Indigenous rights in Australia.
It is credited with being an important influence on federal legislation that, in 1976, allowed Indigenous Australians to claim ownership of land if a traditional connection could be established.
The trade union movement played an important role in the land-rights movement born out of the Wave Hill Walk Off.
And, today, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) remains a strong voice for Indigenous rights.
ACTU National Indigenous Officer Kara Keys describes the walk-off as an epic saga, with outcomes that have rippled through generations.
But she has told NITV the struggle for Indigenous equality continues half a century later.
"The fact that the Gurindji won that dispute eventually in 1975, gaining the lease to their land, that doesn't at all devalue that we are facing systemic issues across our communities today. We have industrial discrimination against Indigenous workers through the Community Development Program. We have a systemic failure in the justice system, which has led to the royal commission up here in the Northern Territory into youth detention."
