Warning: The following story contains the name and image of an Aboriginal person who has died; it also contains distressing content.
TRANSCRIPT
"And we had enough. Enough is enough. So let's pack our gear and let's start walking. That's what he said, I remember. Everybody started to walk. They walk along the fence line."
This is the voice of Gurindji Elder George Edwards.
He was eight years old in 1966 when he walked off Wave Hill Station - along with around 200 Gurindji, Mudburra and Warlpiri workers and their families.
Led by Gurindji Elder and stockman Vincent Lingiari, they walked off the station in protest of unfair living and working conditions; and to demand the return of their ancestral Country.
59 years later, Mr Edwards is preparing to re-trace part of that same walk.
"Today is the start walk off. So we're going to meet up here at the art centre. Everyone's going to grab a flag it and start walking from here down to the river where they was there before. When they walk off, where their home (was), they stayed near the river; on the river bed."
He's gathered with people from all over Australia at the Gurindji Freedom Day Festival in Kalkarindji in the Northern Territory, where the historic walk-off took place.
The three-day festival commemorates the iconic events of the strike, which saw the small community of Kalkarindji become the centre of a national Aboriginal land rights movement.
The station was owned by a British-owned meat company, Vestey Brothers, which employed local Gurindji people to work on the property for little or no wages.
They also experienced poor housing conditions, living in basic corrugated iron structures that didn't have floors or lights; and with no easy access to safe drinking water.
Mr Edwards says his mother, father and grandparents all worked without pay on the station.
"Yeah, the memory, I remember it well. My family was working for nothing. Even us - they didn't treat us right. They wasn't a good mob. They treat our families wrong, working for no money. It's slavery. I think it was slavery for me."
Historian professor Henry Reynolds, says in line with legislation introduced in 1913, Aboriginal workers at the station were given rations - in the form of food, clothes, tea and tobacco - in place of wages.
"They didn't pay wages. They gave people clothing and tobacco and food, so that the whole industry was dependent on the Aboriginal workforce."
A report (by anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt) in 1946 showed that First Nations children under 12 were working illegally, and that prostitution for food rations and clothing was taking place.
It concluded the accommodation and rations were inadequate, with no sanitation or rubbish removal facilities provided.
Dr Robyn Smith, senior lecturer in Indigenous Futures at Charles Darwin University, says Aboriginal men and women were subject to horrific treatment and discrimination.
"While the white workers were housed in appropriate Western standard accommodation, the Aboriginal workers had no such equality. The Aboriginal men were working as jackaroos, ringers, drovers, musterers, that sort of thing. The women were working as domestics for the household. And of course, when the Aboriginal men were away, that was awfully convenient for the white male drovers and pastoralists. And the women were fair game and they were routinely raped."
On the 23rd of August 1966, under Vincent Lingiari's lead, Aboriginal workers and their families came together in protest - walking along the fence line to Gordy Creek, setting up camp on the Victoria River, before establishing the community of Darguragu at Wattie Creek.
In 1967, some travelled across Australia, bringing attention to their fight for rights to their traditional lands, and petitioned the Governor-General for ownership of their Country - a request which was declined.
In the years to follow, Mr Lingiari became the voice of a national land rights movement.
"I got story from my old father or grandfather that land belongs to me belong to Aboriginal man before the horse and the cattle come onto that land where I'm sitting now. Well that's what I've been keeping on my mind. I've still got it on my mind. That's all the words I can tell you."
Here giving a spoken introduction to the 1971 song 'Gurindji Blues' he released with musician Ted Egan, Mr Lingiari's and the Gurindji people's struggle for land rights continued to gain momentum.
(Excerpt of 'Gurinji blues')
In 1975, after almost a decade of protest, former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam travelled to Wave Hill station, to formally transfer the leasehold title, handing back a segment of Wave Hill cattle station to the Gurindji people.
"I solemnly hand to you these deeds, as proof in Australian law that these lands belong to the Gurindji people."
Dr Smith says the now iconic image of Prime Minister Whitlam pouring sand into the hand of Mr Lingiari at the hand-back ceremony captures a significant moment - both for the Gurindji people, and for the future of Aboriginal land rights.
"Well, it was a symbolic gesture of returning the land. But it was also because Vincent Lingiari, by then was almost blind, so he couldn't see properly. So if he could feel the sand in his hand, he could feel that he was being given that land at Wattie Creek, which is now known by its Gurindji name, which is Lajamanu."
This decision is considered a turning point for Aboriginal land rights in Australia.
It paved the way for the Northern Territory Land Rights Act in 1976, which enabled Aboriginal people to claim land rights based on their traditional and cultural connection to Country.
A string of significant developments followed, including the Mabo decision, which overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius -Latin for the phrase 'land belonging to no one' - and paving the way the Native Title Act 1993, allowing Indigenous Australians to make claims of native title.
Mr Reynolds says the legacy of the Wave-Hill Walk Off, and the eventual handing back of land to the Gurindji people, cannot be understated.
"The event itself was of great symbolic significance, but it did point the way for what was going to happen in the next 20 years where the Land Rights Act, the Land Rights revolution took place."
Decades later, surrounded by others at the Freedom Day Festival, Mr Edwards remembers the beginnings of the movement, and celebrates the legacy of the man at its centre: Vincent Lingiari.
"He was a great leader. He was the leader of the tribe, all tribe... Mr Lingiari, he was a great man. He was a hero for me. For what he done for us, done for our people."
