Pilbara Strike
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The 1946 Pilbara strike was a landmark strike by Indigenous Australian pastoral workers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia for human rights recognition, payment of fair wages and working conditions. The strike involved at least 800
Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...
pastoral workers walking off the large pastoral stations in the Pilbara on 1 May 1946, and from employment in the two major towns of Port Hedland and Marble Bar. The strike did not end until August 1949 and even then many Indigenous Australians refused to go back and work for white station owners. It is regarded as the first industrial strike by Aboriginal people since colonisation and one of if not the longest industrial strikes in Australia, and a landmark in indigenous Australians fighting for their human rights, cultural rights, and Native title.


Working conditions

For many years Aboriginal pastoral workers in the Pilbara were denied cash wages and were only paid in supplies of tobacco, flour and other necessities. The pastoral stations treated the Aboriginal workers as a cheap slave labour workforce to be exploited. Many tried to leave the stations on which they worked but were met with legal resistance; those who were unsuccessful could be whipped and those who escaped were hunted by police and returned. The situation was that "while Aboriginal labour was required, Aboriginal people were treated as if they were expendable". European attacks and brutal shootings of whole family groups of Aboriginal Australians are part of the history of the region, though often not well documented. One attack took place at Skull Creek in the Northern Territory a few kilometers north of Ti-Tree in the 1870s, which resulted in the bleached bones and thus the name for the place. In 1926 the
Forrest River massacre The Forrest River massacre, or Oombulgurri massacre of June 1926, was a massacre of Indigenous Australian people by a group of law enforcement personnel and civilians in the wake of the killing of a pastoralist in the Kimberley region of Wester ...
was carried out by a police party on the Forrest River Mission (later the Aboriginal community of Oombulgurri), in the East Kimberleys. Though there was a royal commission into the reported killing and burning of Aboriginal people in the East Kimberley, the police allegedly involved were brought to trial and acquitted. As well as proper wages and better working conditions, Aboriginal lawmen sought natural justice arising from the original Western Australian colonial Constitution. As a condition for self-rule in the colony, the
British Government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_es ...
insisted that once public revenue in WA exceeded 500,000 pounds, 1 per cent was to be dedicated to "the welfare of the Aboriginal natives" under Section 70 of the Constitution. Succeeding colonial and state Governments legislated to remove the funding provisions for "native welfare".


The strike

The strike was coordinated and led by Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna; and Don McLeod, an active unionist and member of the Communist Party of Australia for a short period. The strike was planned at an Aboriginal law meeting in 1942 at Skull Springs (east of Nullagine), where a massacre had previously occurred. The meeting was attended by an estimated 200 senior Aboriginal representatives representing twenty-three language groups from much of the remote north-west of Australia. 16 interpreters were needed for the meeting. Discussions were protracted with the meeting lasting six weeks. McLeod, the only European-Australian present, was given the task of chief negotiator. While not present, Bin Bin was elected to represent the Aboriginal peoples from unsettled desert lands. Later McLeod and Bin Bin chose McKenna to represent those from the settled areas. The strike was postponed until after the Second World War had ended in 1945. Peter Coppin, also known as Kangushot, (1920–2006) was another one of the strike leaders. Regarded as a pioneer of the Aboriginal rights movement in the 1940s, he was awarded the
British Empire Medal The British Empire Medal (BEM; formerly British Empire Medal for Meritorious Service) is a British and Commonwealth award for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown. The current honour was created in 1922 to ...
in 1972, and appointed NAIDOC Elder of the Year in 2002. Crude calendars were taken from one station camp to another in early 1946 to organise the strike. The efforts, if noticed by the white people present, were dismissed and laughed at. The date of May 1st was chosen not only because it was
International Workers' Day International Workers' Day, also known as Labour Day in some countries and often referred to as May Day, is a celebration of labourers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labour movement and occurs every year on 1 May, ...
but also because it was the first day of the shearing season. On 1 May 1946, hundreds of Aboriginal workers left the pastoral stations and set up strike camps. The strike was most effective in the Pilbara region. Further afield in Broome and Derby and other inland northern towns, the strike movement was harshly suppressed by police action and was more short lived. Over the three years, occasionally strikers went back to work, while others joined or rejoined the strike. At the commencement of the strike in 1946, McLeod was an Australian Workers' Union delegate at Port Hedland wharf who motivated support by the Australian labour movement. The Western Australian branch of the Seamen's Union of Australia eventually put a blackban on the shipment of wool from the Pilbara. Nineteen unions in Western Australia, seven federal unions and four Trades and
Labour council A labour council, trades council or industrial council is an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area. Most commonly, they represent unions in a given geographical area, whether at the district, city, region, or provincial or ...
s supported the strike. The strike stimulated support from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who helped establish the Committee for the Defence of Native Rights. This organisation raised funds for and publicised the strike in Perth including organising a public meeting in the Perth Town Hall attended by 300 people. Many of the Aboriginal strikers served time in jail; some were seized by police at revolver point and put into chains for several days. At one stage in December 1946, McLeod was arrested in Port Hedland during the strike for "inciting Aborigines to leave their place of lawful employment"; the Aboriginal strikers marched on the jail, occupied it and freed McLeod. McLeod was gaoled a total of seven times during the period, three times for being within five chains () of a congregation of "natives", three times for inciting natives to leave their lawful employment, and once for forgery. In one incident during the strike, two policemen were sent out to the Five Mile Camp near Marble Bar. When they arrived they commenced shooting the people's dogs, even when they were chained up between their legs. Shooting the dogs of Aboriginal people was considered by some frontier Europeans as a sport. On this occasion the endangering of human life angered the strikers, who quickly disarmed the two policeman. The local strike leader, Jacob Oberdoo, and other strikers held the policemen until they had regained some composure and then arranged their own arrests, insisting they be taken into custody. Oberdoo was jailed three or four times and suffered humiliations and deprivations of many kinds during the strike, but maintained his dignity and solidarity for the length of the strike. In 1972 he was awarded the
British Empire Medal The British Empire Medal (BEM; formerly British Empire Medal for Meritorious Service) is a British and Commonwealth award for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown. The current honour was created in 1922 to ...
but turned it down. McLeod described Oberdoo's reply to the Prime Minister rejecting the medal: : "...he was unable to do business with, or accept favours from Law-carriers in bad standing. 'You pin medals on dogs' was how he explained the real message underlying the award". The strikers sustained themselves with their traditional bush skills, hunting kangaroos and goats for both meat and skins. They also developed some
cottage industry The putting-out system is a means of subcontracting work. Historically, it was also known as the workshop system and the domestic system. In putting-out, work is contracted by a central agent to subcontractors who complete the project via remote ...
which brought some cash payment such as selling
buffel grass ''Cenchrus ciliaris'' (buffel-grass or African foxtail grass; syn. ''Pennisetum ciliare'' (L.) Link) is a species of grass native to most of Africa, southern Asia (east to India), southern Iran, and the extreme south of Europe (Sicily). Other nam ...
seed in Sydney, the sale of pearl shell, and in
surface mining Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit (the overburden) are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which ...
. Aboriginal women played a vital role in the strike, both as workers on strike and in the establishment of strikers' camps, though their involvement has not been documented to the same extent as that of the men.
Daisy Bindi Daisy Bindi (1904—1962), also known as Mumaring, was an Aboriginal Australian Indigenous rights activist and a leader in the landmark 1946 Pilbara strike in Western Australia. Early life Bindi was born about 1904 on a cattle-station near ...
, a Nyangumarta woman, led a walk-off of 96 workers at
Roy Hill Station Roy Hill Station is a pastoral lease and cattle station, located about south of the Roy Hill mine. Roy Hill Station was an important cattle station in the north-west, being on the Meekatharra- Nullagine Road and stock route. The station area ...
to join the strike. Before the strike commenced, Bindi organised meetings in south-eastern Pilbara, which attracted police attention, and authorities threatened to remove her from the area. During the strike she transported supporters to the strikers' camps, talking her way through a police confrontation. Her efforts played a large part in spreading the strike to the further stations in inland Pilbara. Wages and conditions were eventually won by the strikers on Mount Edgar and Limestone Stations. These two became a standard, with the strikers declaring that any station requiring labour would have to equal or better the rates of pay and conditions operating on these two. By August 1949, the Seamen's Union had agreed to blackban wool from stations in the Pilbara onto ships for export. On the third day after the ban had been applied, McLeod was told by a government representative that the strikers' demands would be met if the ban was lifted. Weeks after the strike ended and the ban lifted, the government denied making any such agreement. After the strike concluded many Aboriginal people refused to go back to working in their old roles in the pastoral industry. Eventually they pooled their funds from surface mining and other cottage industry to buy or lease stations, including some they had formerly worked on, to run them as cooperatives.


Legacy

Aboriginal plaintiffs from Strelley Station finally commenced an action in the
Supreme Court of Western Australia The Supreme Court of Western Australia is the highest state court in the Australian State of Western Australia. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the state in civil matters (although it usually only hears matters involving sums of A$750,00 ...
in 1994, seeking a declaration that the 1905 repeal of section 70 was invalid. In 2001, after protracted
litigation - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
, the
High Court of Australia The High Court of Australia is Australia's apex court. It exercises Original jurisdiction, original and appellate jurisdiction on matters specified within Constitution of Australia, Australia's Constitution. The High Court was established fol ...
held that the 1905 repeal had been legally effective. Four streets in the
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suburb of
Bonner Bonner may refer to: People * Bonner (name) Places ;United States * Bonner Springs, Kansas * Bonner County, Idaho * Bonners Ferry, Idaho * Bonner-West Riverside, Montana * Bonner, Nebraska ;Australia * Bonner, Australian Capital Territory, subur ...
were named after the strike leaders in 2010. Clancy McKenna Crescent, Dooley Bin Bin Street, Peter Coppin Street and Don McLeod Lane were all named after the men instrumental in organizing the strike.


In the arts

*The poet
Dorothy Hewett Dorothy Coade Hewett (21 May 1923 – 25 August 2002) was an Australian playwright, poet and author, and a romantic feminist icon. In writing and in her life, Hewett was an experimenter. As her circumstances and beliefs changed, she progressed ...
visited Port Hedland in 1946 and wrote the poem "Clancey and Dooley and Don McLeod" about the strike, which was subsequently put to music by folk musician Chris Kempster and recorded by Roy Bailey. *The 1959 documentary novel ''Yandy'' by Donald Stuart deals with the strike. *In 1987 a documentary film was made about the strike by director David Noakes, titled ''How the West was Lost''. *''Kangkushot, The Life of Nyamal Lawman Peter Coppin'', by Jolly Read and Peter Coppin, tells the story of Kangku's life including his leadership in the strike and after in setting up Yandeyarra station which still runs today. It was shortlisted for the 1999 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. *''Yandy'', a play written by Jolly Read after being commissioned by Black Swan State Theatre Company, tells the story of the strike and its leaders and families. It won the 2004 Western Australian Premier's Book Award for best script. *Artist Nyaparu Gardiner, who was born into the strike, has portrayed it many times in his work.


See also

*
Wave Hill walk-off The Wave Hill walk-off, also known as the Gurindji strike, was a walk-off and strike by 200 Gurindji stockmen, house servants and their families, starting on 23 August 1966 and lasting for seven years. It took place at Wave Hill, a cattle sta ...


References


Further reading

* * * George, Jennie. (1997
Reconciliation in the Community - How do we make it a reality?
* *McLeod, D. W.(1984) ''How the West was lost: The native question in the development of Western Australia'' Port Hedland, W.A. The author. * * Roberts, Janine (1978) ''From Massacres to Mining''


External links



(1987), film made by David Noakes * (Dedicated website) {{DEFAULTSORT:1946 Pilbara Strike Pilbara Strike, 1946 1947 labor disputes and strikes 1948 labor disputes and strikes 1949 labor disputes and strikes Pilbara strike Pilbara strike Pilbara strike Pilbara strike Indigenous Australian politics Labour disputes in Australia Pilbara Agriculture and forestry strikes 1940s in Western Australia 1940s in Australia Economic history of Western Australia