Indigenous Rights and Freedoms Flashcards

These vocabulary flashcards cover the history of Indigenous rights in Australia and the parallel civil rights movements abroad, including key figures, policies, and legal milestones.

42nd Street

The nickname of a location on Crete where Reg Saunders' battalion held up advancing German forces during the Second World War.

Len Waters

The first and only Aboriginal Australian fighter pilot of the Second World War.

Reg Saunders

A major Aboriginal figure who evaded capture on Crete for 11 months and later re-enlisted in the Australian Army in $1950$ for the Korean War.

Terra Nullius

A label applied to Australia in $1835$ by British explorers, implying the land belonged to no one because they found no permanent settlements or evidence of farming.

Aboriginal protection boards

Boards established in every Australian state to manage Aboriginal populations.

Chief protectors

Officials appointed with the intent to "smooth the dying pillow" regarding Indigenous populations.

Assimilation policy

A policy adopted in $1937$ with the goal that Indigenous people would be integrated into Australia so that "blackness" would eventually be bred out.

Stolen Generations

Indigenous children who were removed from their families under various state policies and experiences across a long time period.

Day of Mourning

A protest held to ask for a new policy to raise Indigenous people to full citizenship status and equality within the community.

Doug Nicholls

The founding pastor at the Fitzroy Church of Christ Aborigines’ Mission and a well-known winger for Fitzroy in the Victorian Football League (VFL).

Albert Namatjira

One of Australia’s best-known Aboriginal painters of western-style landscapes who, along with his wife, became the first Aborigines to be granted Australian citizenship.

Eddie Gilbert

An Indigenous cricketer who lived on a reserve and was famously described by Don Bradman as having the fastest delivery he ever faced.

Bruce Trevorrow

The only member of the Stolen Generations to successfully sue an Australian government for financial reparations.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

A document established in $1948$ asserting that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights regardless of race, sex, or religion.

Nonviolence

A practice coined as 'satyagraha' by Mahatma Gandhi, involving the achievement of social or political goals through symbolic protests and civil disobedience without physical violence.

Freedom Riders

Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in $1961$ to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions.

Charles Perkins

An Australian civil rights activist who led the Australian Freedom Rides and dedicated his life to justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A landmark United States Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in American schools was unconstitutional.

Emmett Till

An African-American youth who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in $1954$/$1955$, after which an all-white jury acquitted the accused white men.

Rosa Parks

An activist arrested in $1955$ for failing to give up her bus seat, leading to the desegregation of buses in $1966$.

The Mongolian Octopus

A$1886$ cartoon from The Bulletin depicting various social fears and prejudice associated with Cheap Chinese Labour and the White Australia policy.

Wave Hill walk off

A mass walk off caused by the British Vestey Company's refusal to pay Indigenous workers $25$ a week, which brought national attention to land rights.

Tent Embassy

A protest camp set up in front of Parliament in $1972$ to demand legal and title rights to land, preservation of sacred sites, and compensation.

Mabo

The $1992$ court case won by Eddie Mabo which ruled that Crown Land can be claimed under Native Title by traditional owners.

ATSIC

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, passed in November $1989$ to ensure full participation of Aboriginal people in decision making.