Tucked away in a box of interesting documents was the above single fold pamphlet handed out on National Aborigines' Day, July 14,1972, by the National Aborigines' Observance Day Committee ( NADOC ) . On opening it, I was surprised to see it contained the strong views of the late John Newfong about shortcomings in Australian history books .
By Peter Simon
With a magnificent speaking voice, he was described as the first Aboriginal employed in mainstream print media who acted as a spokesman for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy set up outside parliament house, Canberra.
Leader of the Federal Opposition,Gough Whitlam, above , addressing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on January 26-Australia Day- 1972 . Tall , Newfong , second from the left, in suit and tie , is standing near media.
Newfong , of the Ngugi people of Moreton Bay, Queensland, was born in 1943 . His father was Ben Archibald "Archie" Nu Fong a champion Queensland heavyweight boxer , his mother, Edna Crouch , a member of the women's cricket team which played England in 1935.
John wanted to study law but came up against a barrier, so went to Mount Isa in 1965 as a miner . In Brisbane , he took part in the l967 Yes Vote referendum and also served as campaign manager for the Queensland Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders .
He became a reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald and I first met him in Sydney when I was working on the Sun-Herald . From time to time , in his impressive speaking voice , he rang me at home . At the time I reported on a penal reform movement in Sydney and the aftermath of the 1970 Bathurst Gaol rebellion due to poor conditions in the old institution. Prison officials retaliated by bashing prisoners, the event becoming known as the Bathurst Bashings . Newfong became involved with the Redfern Aboriginal Legal Aid Centre . In 1972 he edited the Aboriginal publication , Identity .
NAIDOC said it invited " a black Australian "-Newfong- to outline his view on the "missing section " of the nation's history books for the l972 pamphlet. He opened saying that most anthropologists agreed Aboriginal people came to Australia from Southern Asia at least 30,0000 years ago.
Opinion was divided in deciding the ethnic group of Aborigines. While some pointed to very similar people in the Southern Indian peninsula and suggested they had the same Caucasoid origins as the rest of the Indo-Germanic people of the area, others believed there was greater evidence to suggest a fourth and entirely separate group, the Australoid .
In the case of Tasmanian Aborigines, it was thought they had been in Australia possibly even longer than the mainland Aborigines . Like the people of Papua New Guinea and the Torres Islands, they seemed to have been part of a negroid immigration from Africa eastwards towards the Micro Melanesian part of the Western Pacific .
Mainland Aborigines had a social order and an ecological culture that was probably unique in the history of mankind . The Aboriginal people developed an intricate pattern of survival , their close communion with nature found expression in a religion that was essentially totemic.
European colonisation , for reasons of health as much as the poisonings and massacres, "so often euphemised in Australian history books" , resulted in many being wiped out . The only increase in the number of black people Australia promoted by European colonisers was along the coastal parts of Queensland where a plantation society was established with indentured labour force from the Western Pacific .
For a long time , he wrote , the old formula of "divide and conquer "was applied to the Islanders of Queensland and the local Aborigines , differentiation made between "full bloods" and " half-castes."
Since the l967 referendum , engineered principally by the major national organisation, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders , there had been a trend towards a more grass roots movement , and a feeling that a few black people at the top of the white man's world was just not enough .
1970 saw the first attempt to form an all-black grass roots organisation-the National Tribal Council ; a month later , black Australians' first international press lobby with the Bi-Centenary protest.
Since l970 , black organisations had sprung up over the country . People were no longer prepared to be confined to camping areas on the outskirts of country towns , poor and ragged on the fringes of the white man's world .As a result , black Australians were involved as never before .
Newfong then went on to explain the importance of setting up the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawn outside parliament house on Australia Day , 1972 . It had been established to protest at the fact that black Australians were the only indigenes in the world without legal title to reserve lands, the only ones to whom no form of compensation had been paid .
It is interesting to read that another aim was to obtain State rights for the Northern Territory, so that black Australians could have a more proportionate say in Federal parliament , with members in the House of Representatives and six senators to which the NT as a state would be entitled.
Figures given to the the Senate Committee on Social Environment by the Department of the Interior in l972 indicated black people in Territory rural areas were in a 62 percent majority .
With political awareness increasing in the outback and electoral boundaries favouring rural electors , it seemed more than likely that they would soon not merely have the right to a say in government , but also the means .
A further riot took place at the Bathurst Gaol causing $10million damage in 1974 and the Nagle Royal Commission was subsequently held into NSW prisons. One of the incredible stories which came out of the riots was that at one tense stage, when armed police were facing the rioters , armed with makeshift weapons , holding captives, the group representing prisoners in tense negotiations demanded that The Spook, in the Wizard of Id comic strip be released from the dungeon .
John Newfong, who went on to lecture in journalism and media studies at James Cook University , Townsville , died of cancer , in 1999.
