My NAIDOC hero and inspiration is William Cooper. Cooper was a Yorta Yorta man (from northern Victoria around the yarra river), an Aboriginal activist and a human rights advocate in the early 20th century. He was the founder of the Australian Aborigines League and he is also known as the Father of the National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC), the annual event we are celebrating this week.
In the course of demanding the rights of citizenship and “uplift”, Cooper repeatedly sought to draw attention to his ancestors’ prior ownership of the land and their subsequent dispossession, displacement and decimation.
The successful 1967 Commonwealth referendum, which finally changed the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them, wouldn’t have happened without leaders like Cooper demanding & fighting for change from as far back as late 19th century. 90.77% of voters voted in favour of the ‘Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967’, which was the highest ‘yes’ vote ever recorded in a federal referendum.
William Cooper inspires me to be patient and never give up on demanding reformative change. E.g. never tire in playing my role to help the first nations people of Australia achieve the objectives of the Uluru Statement of the Heart.
Sam Evans
The Black Caucus 