Yirrkala+Bark+Petitions+1963

In August 1963 a petition of a pair of bark paintings was sent to the Australian Parliament, signed by 13 leaders of the Yolngu region of the Northern Territory. There had been many earlier petitions from Aboriginal people to Australian parliaments. The bark petitions were the first to use traditional forms and combine bark painting with text typed on paper.

The 1963 petition was the first in a series of bark petitions that have been presented to Australian Prime Ministers and the Commonwealth Parliament. Bark petitions have been presented in 1968, 1988, 1998, and 2008. The 1963 bark petitions are the only ones to have been formally recognise and can be found in Parliament House in a ceremonial hall.

The bark petitions are considered 'founding documents' of our democracy and were the starting point for a long process of reform to recognise the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Earlier petitions seeking recognition of rights that were submitted to Queen Victoria and the colonial governments included:
 * Batman's Treaty of Melbourne in 1835
 * the Wybalenna petition presented to Queen Victoria in 1847
 * the Coranderrk letter in 1882

In 1935 and 1937, petitions were presented to the Commonwealth government seeking representation in Parliament and the establishment of a national Department of Native Affairs. The lack of a response by 1938 saw Aboriginal people from around Australia establish a National Aboriginal Day Observance Committee (NADOC). NADOC later became NAIDOC to recognise Torres Strait Islanders.

This, together with the 1966 Gurindji strike for equal pay, led to constitutional change with the 1967 Referendum and federal recognition of Aboriginal land rights in 1976 with the //Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT)//.

Galarrwuy Yunupingu, a highly respected Aboriginal leader, (He has been Australian of the Year in 1978 and a Member of the Order of Australia in 1985) is a key figure in most of the petitions that have gradually altered the Australian view of the significance of traditional culture and law and progressed the move towards reconciliation. Galarrwuy Yunupingu translated for his father Mungurrawuy in the Gove Land Rights Case, who was one of the painters and signatories of the 1963 petition. In July 2008, Yunupingu presented Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with another petition by various Yirrkala artists, requesting 'full recognition of Indigenous rights in the Australian Constitution.'

What prompted the 1963 petition? - bauxite mining and protection of sacred sites
In February 1963 Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced that the government would grant leases to mine bauxite (used for the production of aluminium) in land taken from the Arnhem Land reserve. It was later revealed that the Methodist Overseas Mission (the organisation then responsible for the management of Yirrkala) had supported this without consultation with any Aboriginal leaders.

Elders from the region, notably Mawalan Marika and Mungurrawuy Yunupingu, were frustrated and angered that they had not been consulted. They were concerned that the mining would disturb, and restrict their access to, sacred sites.

The Opposition was also concerned about this issue, and in July, Kim Beasley (Snr) MP and Gordon Bryant MP of the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement visited Yirrkala. They suggested that the leaders send a petition to state their grievances and to request '…a Committee, accompanied by competent interpreters, to hear the views of the people of Yirrkala before permitting the excision of this land'.

The 1963 a pair of barks were tabled separately in the House of Representatives, firstly on 14 August by Jock Nelson, Member for the Northern Territory, and then on 28 August by Arthur Caldwell, Leader of the Opposition. One panel is //Dhuwa// and the other is //Yirritja// and they represent each Yolngu moiety, as explained by Wundjuk Marika in Wandjuk Marika Life Story: > > //There is land—that land is one, it look the same—but the land is divided up to two group. Yirritja and Dhuwa. Doesn't matter if the country look the same, but there is a name and tribe living in two different area of the land—two landowners—the Yirritja on their land—and Dhuwa, we learn on our land.//

A little-known third petition, known as the 'Thumbprints Petition', was sent to Parliament on 23 August 1963 as reinforcement. As a consequence of the petition a seven-member Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry was established. The report... > //…acknowledged the rights the Yolngu set out in the petitions and recommended 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.// >

Petitions, legal action and court decisions
While the petitions had very little immediate effect, they were a 'significant step by the Yirrkala groups for their claim for land rights'. In 1968, after their petitions to Parliament failed to gain recognition of their rights to land, Yolngu people from Yirrkala in eastern Arnhem Land took their case to the Northern Territory Supreme Court. On Australia Day 1972 Aboriginal people set up a tent embassy on the lawns in front of Parliament House. Aboriginal people and supporters demonstrated at Parliament House in 1974. The embassy was removed by police and re-established several times until February 1975, when it closed. The following year Parliament passed the first Commonwealth law on land rights.

Misunderstood: not just decorated texts
The shock of the 1963 petition was that the format of the petition as a bark painting. At the same time,Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, including art from Arnhem Land has been offered as an exchange to non-Aboriginal people for a long time. From early contact with missionaries to government officials, barks by Yolngu artists from Arnhem Land were presented with much ceremony to visitors. Each time the bark paintings were made and given, the painters were articulating their claim as the original owners of the land. Previously, the clans of the Gove Peninsula had recorded their title to lands in paintings on two great panels for the Yirrkala Methodist Mission church. > //'Yolngu have used art for hundreds of years as a means of asserting their rights and engaging outsiders…their art is an expression of a way of life and of a view of the world: it is a gift of immense value…It is offered in exchange'.// Howard Morphy

But the lack of a response to the gifts of bark paintings was baffling for Yolngu people. As Galarrwuy Yunupingu recounts in the 1950s: > //The vehicles came to a rest, the dignitaries got out, they received their flowers, they smiled, then they left and that was that. The clan leaders stood there expecting something that would acknowledge them and respect them, an exchange or a gift in return—but they received nothing.//

The 1963 petition - a bridge between two traditions of law
The 1963 petition was preceded by correspondence that recorded the community's concern for their land.