Why is the tent embassy important

In Sydney, Australia's first Aboriginal legal and medical services were founded. Aboriginal people demanded land rights for the areas that they lived on since millennia. Land rights were considered the key to economic independence, and land the base to generate resources and employment.

To many it came as a shock when in April the Northern Territory Supreme Court decided against Aboriginal people and in favour of a mining company to have access to Aboriginal land. Australian common law, the justice concluded, did not recognise Aboriginal land rights [2].

Aboriginal people travelled to Canberra to ask the Prime Minister of the time, William McMahon, to give them title to their land, royalties from the mining operations, a right to consent to or reject further development on their land, and the land to be returned once mining operations finished.

The Prime Minister promised to look at ways to protect Aboriginal interests, but 9 months later, on the eve of Australia Day , announced that, instead of granting Aboriginal people title to their land, his government would ask Aboriginal people to apply for new year general purpose leases over such land. They would also have to prove that they put that land to 'reasonable' economic and social use. Aboriginal people had no title to mineral and forest rights [2].

Angered by this announcement, Aboriginal people gathered in Sydney and decided that on Australia Day four representatives would travel to Canberra to protest against this decision. The four erected a beach umbrella surrounded by placards in front of Parliament House proclaiming it an 'Aboriginal Embassy'. If people think this is an eyesore, well it is the way it is on government settlements. The place is beginning to look as tired as we are… we all wish we were in other places doing other things.

But we know we have to stay here until we get what we want. Wiradjuri woman Jenny Munro remembers how the tent embassy came about: [4]. We got out on the streets, on the land and marched and protested for those gains. Land Rights had been discussed, argued, protested for generations but the court decision [Milirrpum people vs Nabalco] gave extra impetus to the Land Rights campaign.

All that we would ever get from any government was a system of perpetual leases on land we already owned and occupied.

They were messengers for the group here in Sydney. Because they had no rights in their own land the Aboriginal protesters thought that they were 'aliens in [their] own land' [2]. As aliens they would need an embassy of their own. Of the original founders, Tony Coorie went back to Sydney the next day. The resulting situation made the government extremely uncomfortable. The Australian government, consequently, has repeatedly removed the Embassy by force, only to see it rebuilt time and time again.

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy has taken on a strong symbolic significance for the indigenous rights movement in Australia. The continued re-establishment of the Embassy has come to represent the never-ending fight of indigenous Australians for their rights. In recent years a fire has been burning continuously outside of the Embassy to reinforce the message of an ongoing struggle. After the ongoing disappointments of the land rights struggle, this announcement sparked action among many Indigenous groups and directly contributed to the founding of the Tent Embassy.

Photo: Ken Middleton. National Library of Australia obj On 6 February the embassy issued a list of demands to the Australian Government. The list focused on land rights issues and demanded:. A visit from Opposition Leader Gough Whitlam to discuss the five-point plan was seen by activists as a great success in gaining recognition for their cause and having their ideas heard by those in positions of power.

Rapidly gathering support, the embassy grew by April to include at least eight tents. It attracted both Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people from across the country who joined in solidarity over the land rights movement. Support shown by official representatives from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, as well as diplomats from a number of countries including Canada and Russia, helped bolster the profile of the embassy.

Support for the Embassy was also strong among the Canberra student population, with a number of Australian National University students assisting with billeting, joining the protest crowd and opening an embassy bank account. Gaining media attention across Australia and internationally, the embassy site became a centre for protest, with a number of well-known Aboriginal activists spending time there.

Groups from the embassy went on protest marches, lobbied government representatives and spoke at community forums to continue to raise the issue of land rights in broader public settings. While the embassy enjoyed wide support, it also faced a large contingent of politicians and members of the general public who believed that the protest was nothing more than trespassing, and a blot on the Canberra landscape. View from Parliament House of police and protesters at a land rights demonstration, Canberra, 30 July However, these were refused as they were seen as a way of placating and removing protesters while making no real changes to the land rights situation.

In May Ralph Hunt, the Minister for the Interior, announced that new laws would come into effect making it illegal to camp on unleased land in the ACT and giving the government powers to forcibly remove anyone found to be in breach of the ordinance. On 20 July hundreds of protesters clashed with police in a violent brawl after officers tried to move people along and remove the embassy tents.

Many protesters were arrested and the tents were torn down. Medical education. Volume Issue 1. The spirit of the tent embassy: 40 years on. Med J Aust ; 1 : View this article on Wiley Online Library. Correspondence: leila aida. Competing interests:. Robinson S. The Aboriginal embassy: an account of the protests of Aboriginal History ; Anaya SJ. The right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination in the post-declaration era.

In: Charters C, Stavenhagen R, editors. Making the declaration work: the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Aboriginal Medical Service. A political history, Redfern AMS 20th anniversary book. Sydney: Redfern AMS, Australian Government. Stronger futures in the Northern Territory policy statement.

Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia,