Aboriginal Tent Embassy


The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is a permanent protest occupation site as a focus for representing the political rights of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people. Established on 26 January 1972, it is the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights in the world.
First established in 1972 under a beach umbrella as a protest against the McMahon government's approach to Indigenous Australian land rights, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is made up of signs and tents. Since 1992 it has been located on the lawn opposite Old Parliament House in Canberra, the Australian capital. It is not considered an official embassy by the Australian Government. The Embassy has been a site of protest and support for grassroots campaigns for the recognition of Indigenous land rights in Australia, Aboriginal deaths in custody, self-determination, and Indigenous sovereignty.

Background

said that he had attended a political rally in 1946 where the initial idea and inspiration for the Embassy was raised by Jack Patten, President and co-founder of the Aborigines Progressive Association. Patten had called for an Aboriginal mission station to be placed in front of Parliament House, where the eyes of the world could see the plight of the land's First Peoples.
In 1967, Australians voted in an historic referendum to amend the Australian Constitution to allow the Commonwealth Government to include Aboriginal people in official population counts for constitutional purposes, and to be able to make separate laws for them; however, young urban Aboriginal people were not happy with progress since then. There had been many years of conservative governments in Australia, and during the 1960s there were also large protests against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War as well as against apartheid in South Africa. This energy was tapped into by Indigenous rights protesters.
On 26 January 1972, then prime minister William McMahon issued a new policy relating to Aboriginal land use. Under this new legislation by the Coalition government, which had refused to recognise Aboriginal land rights or native title in Australia, Indigenous people would be granted leases. They offered 50-year general-purpose leases for Aboriginal people which would be conditional upon their "intention and ability to make reasonable economic and social use of land", while reserving for the Crown rights to minerals and forestry.

1972: establishment

On 26 January 1972, four Aboriginal men, Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Tony Coorey and Bertie Williams, arrived in Canberra from Sydney, to establish an Aboriginal Embassy by planting a beach umbrella on the lawn in front of Parliament House.
Williams suggested calling the tiny protest, at that point just a camp with a few placards, an embassy. The term "embassy" was deliberately chosen to draw attention to the fact Aboriginal people had never ceded sovereignty, and that there had never been any kind of treaty process with the Crown; they were the only cultural group in Australia who did not have an embassy to represent them. Dr Gary Foley later wrote in his 2014 book about the embassy that the term "tent embassy" was intended to serve as a reminder that Aboriginal people were living in substandard conditions, and treated "like aliens in their own land".
On 6 February 1972 the Aboriginal Tent Embassy presented a list of demands to Parliament:
Leader of the Australian Labor Party Gough Whitlam spoke at the Embassy on 8 February 1972, as did Bobbi Sykes and Frank Roberts Jnr, father of theatre director Rhoda Roberts.
The beach umbrella was soon replaced by several tents and Aboriginal people, including activists such as Gary Foley, Isabell Coe, John Newfong, Chicka Dixon, and Gordon Briscoe, and non-Indigenous supporters came from all parts of Australia to join the protest. The occupiers were told by Kep Enderby that they were legally entitled to camp outside Parliament since it was Commonwealth land. Dixon said that he became the "Minister for Defence" and they all assigned themselves portfolios. They painted the gutter "No Parking – Aboriginal Staff Only", and then introduced the flag. Support grew around the world too.
In May 1972, with winter approaching, embassy spokesman Sammy Watson Jnr announced that it would be cutting down its staff to four people over winter. A new accounting system would be introduced, with their bookkeeping open to inspection. Any donations superfluous to the needs of running the embassy would be given to community projects. Watson and Gary Foley said that the aim of the embassy was "to develop awareness among urban Blacks, in particular, of Black nationalism, and to unite all Aborigines despite cultural or language difficulties in the fight for their rights". They also expressed solidarity with other oppressed groups, and class struggles. Michael Anderson resigned as High Commissioner for the embassy at this time as he wished to turn his attention to a voter registration among Aboriginal people in rural New South Wales.
The demands were rejected, and following an amendment to the Trespass on Commonwealth Lands Ordinance 1932, police moved in without notice on 20 July 1972. They removed the tents and arrested eight people. Three days later, on 23 July, 200 activists returned to the site and were prevented from reoccupying it by 200 police, who dismantled the embassy. Chicka Dixon commented "we decided to fight the coppers, so we armed ourselves with little sticks". The police did not intervene, and after listening to speeches the crowd dispersed peacefully. The clash was later described by Anderson as "a bloody battle", which caused 36 police to be taken to hospital and 18 protesters to be sent to jail. A week later on 30 July, around 2000 people turned up, and the tents were re-erected afterwards removed by the protesters, in a peaceful demonstration.
During the first six months of its life in 1972 the Embassy succeeded in uniting Aboriginal people throughout Australia in demanding uniform national land rights, and mobilised widespread non-Indigenous support for the cause. Humour was used to engage ordinary Australians. Other people associated with the Embassy demonstration in 1972 include Gary Williams, Sam Watson, Pearl Gibbs, Roberta Sykes, Alana Doolan, Cheryl Buchanan, Pat Eatock, Kevin Gilbert, Denis Walker, and Shirley Smith.
Many of the main participants in the Embassy, including John Newfong, Cheryl Buchanan, Gary Foley and Michael Anderson, also produced Indigenous newspapers, which published alternative information from that found in mainstream newspapers. The Embassy also began to attract attention in the international press such as The New York Times and BBC News, and comparisons were made with apartheid in South Africa. Some of the protesters in the Aboriginal rights movement had been involved in the Black theatre, and performed street theatre as well as being heard on the stage.
The ACT Supreme Court ruled in September 1972 that the amendment to the Trespass on Commonwealth Lands Ordinance 1932 did not allow for the eviction of the Embassy. A Bill was quickly added to make the Ordinance retrospective, and the Embassy was evicted again the next day, after it had been symbolically re-erected.

1970s–1990s: temporary relocation

In October 1973, around 70 Aboriginal protesters staged a sit-in on the steps of Parliament House and the Tent Embassy was re-established. The sit-in ended when Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam agreed to meet with protesters.
On 30 May 1974 the embassy was destroyed in a storm, but its contents were safeguarded by the Department of the Capital Territory, and it was re-established on 30 October by the Organisation of Aboriginal Unity, who staged a sit-in in at the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and on the steps of Parliament House and temporarily renamed it the Canberra Aboriginal Reserve. They charged Whitlam with forgetting his earlier promises. On 21 November the OAU said that the "mission" would remain on the Parliament House lawns until "The Department of Aboriginal Affairs was abolished; all reserves and land on which blacks were now living were handed back to them in full ownership; compensation for land lost was paid plus a percentage of the annual gross income; an Aboriginal commission was formed to handle Aboriginal affairs and distribute all funds; all budget submissions were met and approved in time to enable all black organisations to function at the requirement of the people".
In February 1975 Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins negotiated the "temporary" removal of the Embassy with the Government, pending Government action on land rights. In December 1976 the embassy was dismantled after the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 with bipartisan support by the Fraser government, having been introduced by the Whitlam government in mid-1975. The protest site was then relocated to various sites in Canberra until 1992. In March 1976, the Embassy was established in a house in the nearby suburb of Red Hill; however, this closed in 1977. For a short period in 1979, the embassy was re-established by Lyall Munro Jnr, Cecil Patten, and Paul Coe, as the "National Aboriginal Government" on Capital Hill, site of the proposed new Parliament House.
On the 20th anniversary of its founding in 1992, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was re-established at the original site on the lawns of Old Parliament House. Despite being a continual source of controversy, with many calls for its removal, it has existed on the site since that time.
In 1993, the ashes of the poet Kevin Gilbert, who had been involved in the early days, were buried at the site.
The site of the Tent Embassy was added to the Australian Register of the National Estate in 1995, after being registered in 1987, as the only Aboriginal site in Australia that is recognised nationally as representing political struggle for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.