Yirrkala Bark Petitions Flashcards
About Yirrkala Bark Petitions 1963:
On 14 August 1963 the Yirrkala bark petitions were presented to the Australian Parliament’s House of Representatives. They were the first formal assertion of Indigenous native title.
WHAT were the Yirrkala Bark Petitions?
Using painted designs to proclaim Yolongu Law, depicting the traditional relations to land
WHERE and WHEN were the Yirrkala Bark Petitions
1963 in Arnhem Land
WHY were the Yirrkala Bark Petitions created?
To claim back ownership of their land
HOW were the Yirrkala Bark Petitions done?
Protesting against the government through multiple petitions
What was the RESULT of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions?
The Yolngu eventually received native title to their land in 1978. Aboriginal people were recognised as Australian citizens for the first time.
IMPACT on Social Justice and Human Rights made from the Yirrkala Bark Petitions:
This petition was a step forward for Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal people as they continued to strive for social justice and human rights.
How did the government respond?
Politicians presented the two petitions to the House of Representatives on 14 and 18 August 1963. A parliamentary committee of inquiry listened to the evidence presented at Yirrkala and in Darwin. The committee’s report acknowledged the rights the Yolngu set out in the petitions and recommend to Parliament on 29 October 1963 that compensation for loss of livelihood be paid, that sacred sites be protected, and that an ongoing parliamentary committee monitor the mining project.
But the Yolngu people failed in their attempt to get justice. Mining did go ahead near Yirrkala, and by
1968 a massive bauxite refinery was built at Gove, 20km to the north.
When their appeals to Parliament failed, the Yolngu leaders turned to the Supreme Court in the
Northern Territory, where hearings in their case, known as the Gove Land Rights Case, began in 1968. This case also failed.
Handing down his decision in 1971, the judge accepted the evidence that Yolngu had been living at Virrkala for tens of thousands of years and that their law was based on intricate relations to land.
He held, however, that Australian law could not recognise these as property relations and that this law as it stood could not solve the problem at the heart of the case: that the facts of Australian history
disproved the legal fiction’ of terra nullius, on which Australian law was built.
Why were there two petitions?
The Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, challenged the validity of the signatures of the first petition, signed by 12 clan leaders from the Yolngu region, a move that was widely understood as rejecting the petition. When they learned of Hasluck’s rejection, the people of Yirrkala decided to send a second bark petition, this time accompanied by the thumbprints of clan elders, so there could be no doubt that they approved of the petition.
Why are the Yirrkala petitions still relevant today?
One result of the bark petitions was a wider awareness of the just claim of the Yolngu, and of the problems of Aboriginal people throughout Australia. The inability of the law to find a just answer to the Yolngu, who has been turned away first by the Parliament and then by the courts, inspired by a national protest. But the petitions also set off a debate that led to the Land Rights Act in 1976 and, in 1992, to the High Court’s Mabo decision overturning the ‘terra nullius’ concept and recognising Aboriginal occupation of Australia before European settlement.
It also paved the way for the 1967 referendum in which Aboriginal people were recognised as Australian citizens for the first time.
Why is this IMPORTANT?
