Thinking Black
Thinking Black
AIATSIS
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Most non-Indigenous Australians know of Charles Perkins. Many are familiar with a few other Aboriginal leaders. Yet few have heard of William Cooper, one of the most important Aboriginal leaders in Australia's history.
Thinking Black tells the story of Cooper and the Australian Aborigines League, and their campaign for Aboriginal people's rights. Through petitions to government, letters to other campaigners and organisations, and entreaties to friends and well-wishers, Thinking Black reveals their passionate struggle against dispossession and displacement, the denial of rights, and their fight to be citizens in their own country.
Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus document the circumstances behind the most significant moments in Cooper's political career in his famous petition to King George V in 1933, his call for a 'Day of Mourning' in 1938, the walk-off from Cummeragunja in 1939 and his opposition to an Aboriginal regiment in 1939. It explores the principles Cooper drew on in his campaigning, not least his 'Letter from an Educated Black', surely one of the most intriguing political testaments written by an Australian leader.
Thinking Black sheds new light on the history of what it has meant to be Aboriginal in modern Australia. It reveals the rich and varied cultural traditions, both Aboriginal and British, religious and secular, that have informed Aboriginal people's battle for justice, and their vision of equality in Australia of two peoples: equal yet distinct.
Production Details
- Paperback
- 215mm x 140mm x 10mm
- 156pp
- Released October 2004
- ISBN 9780855754594
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements and note on the documents
Abbreviations
Introduction
Documents
Notes
Sources for documents
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations between pages 86–87
About The Author
Bain Attwood has published extensively in the history of colonialism. His sole authored books include The Making of the Aborigines (1989), Rights for Aborigines (2003), Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History (2005), Possession: Batman's Treaty and the Matter of History (2009), Empire and the Making of Native Title: Sovereignty, Property and Indigenous People (2020), and William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story (2021). He is jointly responsible for Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League (2004) and The 1967 Referendum: Race, Power and the Australian Constitution (2007). He has edited or co-edited several collections of essays, including Protection and Empire: A Global History (2017). He collaborated with Anne Scrimgeour to create a major website on the Pilbara Aboriginal strike: https://pilbarastrike.org/.
Andrew Markus is Emeritus Professor in Monash University’s School of International, Historical and Philosophical Studies. Since 2004 he has been a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. His research specialisation is in the field of racial and ethnic relations, ethnic communities, and immigration policy. He is the author or co-author of more than one hundred academic articles, book chapters, reference works, and reports, and of nineteen books, including Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California, 1850-1901 (1979); Australian Race Relations 1788 – 1993 (1994); The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights (with Bain Attwood, 1999); Building a New Community: Immigration and the Victorian Economy (2001); Australia’s Immigration Revolution (with Peter McDonald and James Jupp, 2009); and Second Chance: A History of Yiddish Melbourne (with Margaret Taft, 2018).
About The Cover
Front cover Illustration: 'Barmah Forest', Lin Onus 1994. Lin Onus, Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia, 2004.
Back Cover Photograph: Lin Onus and Gary Foley holding Australian Aborigines' League banner, 1996. Banner created by BIll Onus c. 1950. Photography by David Langsam, Foley Collection
