1788

1. December Conflict

   Arabanoo is the first Aboriginal person captured by Europeans.

1905

1. 23 December Stolen Generations Politics

   The Western Australian government passes the Aborigines Act 1905 which commences in April 1906. It is designed to better protect and care of the Aboriginal people of Western Australia but in reality ruled over all aspects of Aboriginal lives for nearly 60 years. The Act created the position of Chief Protector of Aborigines who became the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child to the age of 16 years, and permitted authorities to remove Aboriginal children from their families. It establishes reserves and sets the rules governing Aboriginal employment.

1938

1. December Arts

   Central Australian Aboriginal painter, Albert Namatjira, holds his first exhibition in Melbourne. All 41 works are sold in three days. He combines European painting techniques (mainly watercolours) with subject matter from his native land.

2. 6 December Protest

   Aboriginal man William Cooper, in his 70s, leads a delegation of the Australian Aboriginal League to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a petition which condemns the "cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany". ^[1] The Jewish community appreciated Cooper's legacy with a plaque at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne in 2002 in honour of "the Aboriginal people for their actions protesting against the persecution of Jews by the Nazi Government of Germany in 1938."

1948

1. 10 December Politics

   The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is adopted by the newly-formed United Nations and supported by Australia.

2. 21 December Politics

   The Commonwealth Citizenship and Nationality Act 1948 for the first time makes all Australians, including all Aboriginal people, Australian citizens. But at state level they still suffer legal discrimination.

1966

1. 8 December Land & land rights

   The South Australian Lands Trust Act is the first-ever Act in Australia to recognise Aboriginal land rights and provide land ownership and compensation to dispossessed Aboriginal people. The Act set up a trust composed of Aboriginal people. It enabled them to obtain specific title to reserves, where reserves existed.

1972

1. December Politics

   The Whitlam (Labor) government establishes the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. By 1975 offices have been established in all states and only Queensland has not transferred to the department all major responsibilities for Aboriginal policy and administration.

2. December Land & land rights

   The Whitlam government freezes all applications for mining and exploration on Commonwealth Aboriginal reserves.

1976

1. 1 December Politics

   Yorta Yorta man Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls is appointed Governor of South Australia. He is the first non-white person to serve as the governor of an Australian state, and is the only Aboriginal person to have held an official's office. He retires due to ill health on 22 April 1977.

1992

1. 10 December Politics

   Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating’s Redfern speech at the launch of the International Year of the Indigenous People acknowledges past wrongs perpetrated against Aboriginal people.

1993

1. 15 December Land & land rights

   Ayers Rock is renamed "Ayers Rock / Uluru", becoming the first official dual-named feature in the Northern Territory. The order of the dual names was officially reversed to "Uluru / Ayers Rock" on 6 November 2002 following a request from the Regional Tourism Association in Alice Springs.

2. 22 December Land & land rights

   In response to the landmark 1992 High Court Mabo decision the federal government passes the Native Title Act 1993 after one of the longest and most divisive parliamentary debates in Australia’s legislative history. This law recognises Aboriginal peoples' land based on the recognition by the common law and allows Indigenous people to make land claims under certain situations. They cannot make claims on freehold (i.e. privately-owned) land.

1996

1. 23 December Land & land rights

   The Wik Decision - the High Court reversed Justice Drummond’s judgement. The High Court found that pastoral leases did not necessarily extinguish native title and that both could co-exist but where there was a conflict native title rights were subordinate to the rights of the pastoral lease holder. The federal government develops ‘Ten Point Plan’ outlining a proposed legislative response to the High Court Wik decision, with the aim of limiting Aboriginal land rights.

2004

1. 15 December Stolen wages

   The Minister for Community Services, Carmel Tebbutt, announced that the NSW government would establish an Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme (ATFRS). It will repay wages or other money that was paid into the Trust Funds between 1900 and 1968 and never repaid.

2005

1. 10 December Stolen wages

   ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation) organises a National Day of Action for stolen Aboriginal wages on Human Rights Day. ANTaR estimates that more than $1 billion in today's value was lost or stolen from Aboriginal families across Australia.

2006

1. 7 December Stolen wages

   As a result of the enquiry a Senate committee releases the 'Unfinished Business: Indigenous stolen wages' report which received "compelling evidence that governments systematically withheld and mismanaged Indigenous wages and entitlements over decades". It also found that these practices "were still in place in the 1980s".

2007

1. December Stolen wages

   The Victorian government appoints an officer to sift through almost 100 years of records in state and Commonwealth archives to determine whether Victorian Aboriginal people are owed wages.

   For each of my 'employment' placements, I was not asked if I wanted to accept the employment offer; nor did I know the terms and conditions of my employment (including rate of pay and hours of work).

   — Lesley Williams ^[2]

2008

1. December Stolen wages

   The Aborigines Welfare Fund worth $10.8 million is absorbed into a new Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education foundation, which the government says will supply about 100 scholarships a year worth $20,000 each to young Aboriginal people.

   Also to be absorbed into the foundation will be about $15 million unclaimed from the $55.4 million stolen wages reparations fund set up by the Beattie government in 2002 ^[3].

2. December Remains repatriation

   University of Oxford, Britain agrees to hand over the remains of three Aboriginal people. The three human skulls and lower jaws - acquired in the 1860s and held in its museum of natural history - belong to the Ngarrindjeri people from Goolwa (Port Elliot) in South Australia ^[4].

   It seemed so utterly unreasonable that the British Museum needed – actually needed – 1570 sets of remains from Aboriginal men, women and children.

   — John Danalis in his book 'Riding the Black Cockatoo'

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References