1987

1. 13 October Arts Stamps

   Australia Post issues a set of 5 stamps with details of Aboriginal crafts. The stamps show patterns on a basket (from Arukun, QLD; 37c), a spear thrower (Warburton River, WA; 3c), a bowl (Pintubi people of Central Australia; 37c); a belt (Arnhem Land, NT; 37c) and a shield (New South Wales; 15c).

   

1988

1. Justice Muirhead presents interim report on Black Deaths in Custody.

2. Sydney activist Burnum Burnum (Harry Penrith) plants the Aboriginal flag on an English beach to claim Britain for the Aboriginal people.

3. High Court judgment affirms power of Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act over discriminatory state based legislation. The Court hands down decision on a claim by Mer people for native title rights to the Murray Islands. It allows the original claim to be heard, which the Queensland government had attempted to block by introducing retrospective legislation abolishing land rights.

4. Second Aboriginal cricket team tours England.

5. Human Rights Commission reports that conditions at Toomelah and Boggabilla settlements are worse than in Third World countries.

6. Australia’s representative to the United Nations Human Rights Committee acknowledges ‘public policy regarding the care of Aboriginal children, particularly during the postwar period, had been a serious mistake’.

7. 26 January Arts Stamps

   

   Two stamps of the Australia Day issue show an Aboriginal family watching the arrival of the First Fleet. They are relaxed and just looking on, a misrepresentation of the resistance Aboriginal people showed when they first encountered the British.

8. 26 January

   A commemorative $10 banknote (the world's first banknote printed on a polymer substrate) shows on its back the image of a First Nations youth with dotted body decoration. Behind him is a Morning Star Pole, used in the funerary rituals in Arnhem Land, NT, for the transportation of the deceased’s spirit, and to the left is an ancient rock painting's figure from Deaf Adder Gorge, Western Arnhem Land (NT). The background shows different artistic techniques, such as hand stenciling, dot painting and cross-hatching. ^[1]

   

9. 26 January Protest

   Tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people march through the streets of Sydney on Australia Day to celebrate their survival during the previous 200 years, while non-Aboriginal Australia commemorates the bicentenary of their immigration. Aboriginal people rename the day ‘Survival Day’.

10. 16 February Protest

    For the first time in the 10-year history of the Mardi Gra there is an First Nations float featuring gay First Nations and South Sea Islander Malcolm Cole dressed as Captain Cook standing on a boat pulled by white men. ^[2]

    It is enough trouble being black, let alone gay,

    — Malcolm Cole ^[2]

11. June Treaty

    A statement of Aboriginal aspirations is presented to Mr Hawke at the Barunga Festival ("The Barunga Statement"). The Prime Minister responds by calling for a treaty to be negotiated between the Aboriginal people and the government of Australia.

    There shall be a treaty negotiated between the Aboriginal people and the government on behalf of all the people of Australia.

    — Prime Minister Bob Hawke

12. July Treaty

    The use of the term "treaty" ignites much public interest, and Mr Hawke remarks, "It's not the word that's important, its the attitudes of the peoples, attitudes of the non-Aboriginal Australians and of the Aboriginal Australians if there is a sense of reconciliation... whether you say there's a treaty or a compact is not important, but it is important that we do it."

13. 1 August Arts Stamps

    Australia Post issues four stamps celebrating the Art of the Desert. All paintings selected for this issue depict an event in the Dreaming: Bush Potato Country (Turkey Tolsen Tjupurrula & David Corby Tjapaltjarri, 37c), Courtship Rejected (Limpi Puntungka Tjapangati, 55c), Medicine Story (unknown artist, 90c) and Ancestor Dreaming (Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, $1).

    

1989

1. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) is established as main Commonwealth agency in Indigenous affairs.

2. The government introduces the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy, the first policy of its kind to explicitly address the educational differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.

1990

1. February Remains repatriation

   Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland gives back the head of the great-great grandfather of Tasmanian lawyer Michael Mansell after he went to Dublin petitioning for the return of Aboriginal remains including the one of his family ^[3].

2. 5 March Self-determination

   Bob Hawke's Labor government establishes the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989. It allows elected regional councils and a board of commissioners to make decisions on policy and funding.
   

3. 16 July Self-determination

   Founding of the Aboriginal Provisional Government (APG) which sees Aboriginal people as a sovereign people and campaigns for Aboriginal self-determination and self-government, rejects assimilation into the Australian state, and maintains that Aboriginal people have the right to decide the future of their lands and lives to the exclusion of colonial interference.

1991

1. The Upper House in Tasmania rejects land rights legislation for Aboriginal people.

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References