After centuries of suffering, dispossession and oppression towards the Indigenous community, one tribe began a nine year strike in 1966, Gurindji Walk Off. The strike was the beginning of change for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders and had great impact upon the changing freedoms and rights of their people.
Wave Hill Cattle Station, located 600 kilometres south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, was the largest cattle farm in Australia sized at 8346 square kilometres. It was owned by Lord Vestey, an English Baron, and was inhabited by the Gurindji people, an Aboriginal tribe who lived and worked there in poor and harsh conditions. The Indigenous workers of Wave Hill lived in ‘humpys’, small huts with dirt floors and a sheet of metal as a roof. They had no access to sanitary facilities and once a week they were rationed meat off-cuts and basic foods such as flour. The women served as house maids, while the men, including young boys, worked as stockmen. The male workers were paid $6 at the end of the week, while the females received nothing. The few non-Indigenous workers at the station earned $25 each …show more content…
In 1975, Whitlam performed the first act of restitution by handing back the Gurindji people their land by leasing 2500 square kilometres of Wattie Creek, traditionally Daguragu, and Wave Hill. The act was performed in a shed, but then formally showcased in front of others with Whitlam symbolically pouring soil into Vincent Lingiari’s, a Gurindji elder who was the leader of the Walk Off, hand. The Aboriginals then ran Dagaragu Cattle Station and it was the first land right Aboriginals were granted in Australia. The Gurindji people, with assistance from several non-Indigenous people soon were able to build a school educating over 150 students, a council, a bakery and were assigned health