THE TENT EMBASSY
The establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on 26 January in 1972 was one of the high points of the Aborig n 1971, a Supreme Court challenge by the Yirrkala people against the Nabalco mining company ended with a ruling that Aboriginal people had no rights to their land under the law. Then, on the eve of Invasion Day in 1972, Liberal prime minister Billy McMahon refused to recognise land rights through legislation. The next day four Aboriginal activists, Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Bertie Williams and Tony Coorey, travelled from Sydney to Canberra in a car driven by photographer Noel Hazard. They planted a beach umbrella on the lawns
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of Parliament House and held placards that read “Land rights now or else” and “Legally this land is our land. We shall take it if need be”. Originally this was intended as a protest stunt. But when they arrived they discovered that a legal loophole allowed camping on the parliamentary lawns, and began erecting tents. The Tent Embassy became a central rallying point for the Aboriginal rights movement. After the 1967 referendum extending citizenship to Aboriginal people, campaigners had hoped conditions in Aboriginal communities would improve. But little changed. The government continued to revoke Aboriginal reserve land, forcing families into the cities. Aboriginal people lived in squalid
26 | Inner Sydney Voice | Autumn 2022 | innersydneyvoice.org.au
housing and segregated communities, encountering daily police violence. The failure of the Yirrkala court action and McMahon’s subsequent rejection of land rights showed many people that neither parliament nor the legal system would end the discrimination they faced. The Tent Embassy drew inspiration from the student and working class radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s, including widespread strike action, the movement against the Vietnam War, anti-colonial struggles across the world and the US civil rights movement. Demands for land rights had become central. In 1966, over 200 Gurindji on a cattle station in the NT began a threeyear strike against virtual slave
