Richard Broome - Fighting Hard: The Victorian Aborigines Advancement League

This book is a fascinating history of the League. I enjoyed every moment of reading it. It is wonderful that we have historians like Richard who are prepared to document the history of our people in Victoria. In this book Richard takes the reader to the past and reveals the struggles our people had that paved the way for the rights we enjoy today. This is not only a history that our people can embrace, it is also a cultural education for the wider community. Esme Bamblett, CEO, Aborigines Advance League Inc.

Richard Broome, master storyteller and meticulous historian, brings to life the personalities as well as the politics behind Australias longest-lasting Aboriginal advocacy group. In this briskly engaging book he tells us why the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League has been fighting hard for nearly sixty years and why theyre still doing so. Russell McGregor, Adjunct Professor of History at James Cook University, author of the award-winning Indifferent inclusion

A humanist has closed a crucial gap in contemporary Aboriginal history. Richard Broomes portrait of the significant Aborigines Advancement League illuminates aspects of our race relations that most people would rather not see, but need to see. Professor Colin Tatz

FIGHTING HARD

THE VICTORIAN ABORIGINES ADVANCEMENT LEAGUE

RICHARD BROOME

First published in 2015 by Aboriginal Studies Press

Richard Broome 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its education purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Aboriginal Studies Press is the publishing arm of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

GPO Box 553, Canberra, ACT 2601

Phone: (61 2) 6246 1183

Fax: (61 2) 6261 4288

Email:

Web: www.aiatsis.gov.au/asp/about.html

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication

Creator: Broome, Richard, 1948- author.

Title: Fighting hard : the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League /Richard Broome.

ISBN: 9781922059864 (paperback)

ISBN: 9781922059871 (ebook : pdf)

ISBN: 9781922059888 (ebook : epub)

Notes: Includes index.

Subjects: Aborigines Advancement League (Vic.) History. Aboriginal Australians Victoria Societies, etc. Aboriginal Australians Victoria Social conditions. Aboriginal Australians Government relations. Aboriginal Australians Victoria History. Victoria History.

Dewey Number: 305.8991509945

Front cover: White Mans Burden, part of the ten panel Musquito series by William (Lin) Onus, 19791982, Aborigines Advancement League. Lin Onus Estate/Licensed by Viscopy, 2014.

To the men and women of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who gave time and energy for the struggle, and especially those many who served on the Leagues numerous committees.

CONTENTS

Illustrations between pp. 148 and 149, and pp. 212 and 213.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This history has been a team effort and rests on two decades of research. I owe a great debt to the twenty-three people Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal who gave interviews or supplied information. Their names appear in the bibliography. Former and present leaders of the League were generous with their time, especially Deidre King, Phil Cooper and the current CEO Dr Esme Bamblett and President Alf Bamblett. Kym Powell assisted with illustrations. Cheryl Vickery, a friend of the League acted as go-between, arranging many interviews with Aboriginal people, as set out in my ethics approval from La Trobe University Human Ethics Committee.

Shane Carmody, former Collections Manager, and Kevin Molloy, Archives Manager of the State Library of Victoria, and their staff have assisted greatly my access to the Leagues and other records. The Jackomos family provided generous access to Alick Jackomos papers. Barrie Pittock, a long-time supporter of the League, generously provided access to his papers before lodging them in the National Library of Australia. Sue Taffe made valuable suggestions for research.

Institutions and individuals, particularly the Jackomos family and the League, gave permission to use images in the book, as acknowledged in the captions. The Onus family allowed me to use the astonishing Lin Onus painting on the cover. It not only fits my theme of agency and activism, but is appropriate as Onus held his first art show at the League in 1975 and this painting, part of a series painted 197982, was purchased by the League in 1985.

The Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra provided a research grant, which allowed me valuable research assistance from Dr David Henderson and Brian Ruhle, who were my eyes for the contents of many of the 320 boxes of League archives I could not possibly cover on my own. (For comments on these see the introduction to Select Sources.) To their wise approach I owe a great deal indeed the book would not have been possible without them.

I completed significant background research during study leave granted by La Trobe University in 1992 and 2004, and began writing during study leave in 2012. Esmai Manahan kindly read the whole manuscript and saved me from errors. Jan Richardson read key chapters and offered much information, suggestions, photographs and great encouragement. Graham Atkinson, Deidre King, Esme Bamblett and Alf Bamblett also read . Mandy Rooke transcribed the interviews with great accuracy as she has done so many times in the past. Janet Hutchinson provided expert copy editing and the team at Aboriginal Studies Press made the process of book production a pleasure, especially Rhonda Black, Lisa Fuller and Rachel Ippoliti.

My colleagues and students at La Trobe University, and my family, especially my wife Margaret Donnan, supported this long task, and showed lively interest as the history unfolded through the research and writing. The books shortcomings are mine, but I hope it never disappoints, for the League deserves to be richly celebrated.

PREFACE

Our view of the past is always incomplete as through a glass darkly making this a history, not the history, of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (VAAL). Indeed, another history of the League exists, published in 1985, which is in its way admirable. However, it is now thirty years old and did not draw upon the Leagues own archives. Therefore, in 2007 I approached the board of the League and sought its blessing for me to write a history of the League based on its archives. The board graciously agreed and successive managers Deidre King and Phil Cooper were extremely helpful in my initial progress.

However, I was alarmed at the decaying state of the archives piled up in two rooms adjoining the Leagues Watt Street basketball stadium in Thornbury. Phil Cooper and I, in discussions with Shane Carmody, the then Collections Manager at the State Library of Victoria, devised a plan. The library agreed to care for the records under archival conditions while the League retained full ownership and control. We negotiated for an Aboriginal person to assist with the relocation of the 320 boxes of archives and Maxine Briggs in 2009 gained what became a permanent position on the library staff.