ecognising people

Australia Day, celebrated on January 26th each year, means different things to different people.



It is the day which celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet at Port Jackson in the charge of Captain Arthur Philip in 1788 and the establishment of the Colony of New South Wales, the first penal colony in Australia; it should be noted here that not much mention is made of the penal colony aspect at contemporary Australia Day celebrations.

For most people it means a day off work, a day to go to the beach, to the races (see the next post) or to fire up the ubiquitous Australian barbie; at this time of the year and under the current weather conditions this is often done with a match to the gas barbie and only after paying strict attention to the fire danger rating for the day.

The indigenous people of this nation however often hold an opposing view of the day being seen as a day of celebration. Aboriginal people have been known to turn their backs on the Australian flag and to use the terms Invasion Day or Survival Day; for them the arrival of white settlement sounded the death knell for a way of life, as they knew it up to that point in their history.


It is also a day in which Australians who have contributed in some major way to improving the quality of life of the people, communities, industry and the environment in this country are given public recognition.



This year I would like to briefly mention two people who have made enormous contributions to the welfare and rights of the indigenous people of this country. Yesterday, the Australian of the Year was announced and this award went to Mick Dodson who has done much to work to improve the standing of his fellow indigenous peoples. Mick was orphaned at age 10 and with a stroke of good fortune was able to avoid the fate of so any of his people who became known as the stolen generation, and receive an education along with his brother Pat, at Monivae College, a boarding school in Hamilton, Victoria. Mick went on to study law at Monash University and became Victoria’s first aboriginal barrister in 1981. Presently he is Professor of Law at Australian National University where he also holds the post of Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies.

Since graduating from Monash and taking up his current position at the ANU he has been involved in assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1988, which led to shocking and outrageous revelations about the treatment of aboriginal people held in custody.

He was later co-author of the report ‘Bringing Them Home’; this report dealt with the treatment of aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families and the dark, hidden history surrounding these people, now better known as the ‘Stolen Generation’.




Faith Bandler, who was awarded the Order of Australia Companion for the advancement of human rights, is the second person I want to write about today. Faith Bandler, now 90, has been many things over the years including civil rights campaigner, mother and wife of a WW2 Jewish refugee; she was a driving force in the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal Australians. This was a Federal referendum to strike out discriminatory sections from the constitution; at that time for example, aboriginals were not counted in the national census.

Faith also spent much time and energy on striving for the recognition of her father’s Vanuatuan people who were ‘black-birded’ from the Pacific Islands to indentured work in Australia. In 1901, on the introduction of the White Australia Policy, these same people who had been brought here against their will were deported.

There is much more to be said and learned about these two people and I have only touched on a few important milestones in their lives.