Clare Wright
Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions
Thursday 10th October 2024 - 1pm
The extraordinary story of how the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian democracy.
In this engaging narrative, Wright follows the story of petitions on bark created by the Yirrkala community in Arnhem Land in 1963, protesting bauxite mining on traditional lands.
In 1975 Gough Whitlam poured a handful of sand into the palm of Gurindji Elder Vincent Lingiari to symbolise the granting of deeds to his ancestral country - and the land rights movement was unstoppable. That journey towards legal recognition of native title started in 1963 with the Yirrkala Bark Petitions - Näku Dhäruk. The background was a four-cornered contest for mastery of the land and its resources between the Menzies government, the mining industry, the Methodist Church and the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land, under whose country was discovered a blanket of bauxite. Throughout the tumultuous year of 1963, leaders of the Yolngu clans worked with white allies on the unprecedented political strategy that culminated in the presentation of four Bark Petitions to Federal Parliament. It was a key moment in the formation of a uniquely Indigenous engagement with Australian politics.
This is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the people who made it. It paints a vibrant picture of the profound and ancient culture of Australia's first peoples, in all its continuing vigour. Clare Wright's groundbreaking Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (workers' rights) and continued with You Daughters of Freedom (women's rights). After a decade of research and community consultation, it concludes, fittingly, with a fascinating and compulsively readable account of a momentous but little-known episode in our shared political history.
About the author: Clare Alice Wright OAM is an American Australian historian, author, broadcaster and podcaster. She is Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University, and was the winner of the 2014 Stella Prize.