The Yirrkala Bark Petitions (1963) were presented to the Australian House of Representatives, Commonwealth Parliament in August 1963, and are historic Australian documents. The petitions from the Yolngu people of Yirrkala were the first traditional documents recognised by the Commonwealth Parliament, and thus the first documentary recognition of Indigenous people in Australian law. The acceptance of these petitions also marked a bridge between two traditions of law.
During the late 1950s the Yolngu became aware of prospecting activities in the area of the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land, and the subsequent granting of mining leases over a considerable area of Yolngu traditional land. The Yolngu responded by sending a petition framed by painted bark to the Commonwealth Government demanding recognition of their rights. Although the petitioners were unsuccessful in gaining the Commonwealth Parliament’s recognition of rights to their traditional lands on the Gove Peninsula, the documents formed the foundation of the eventual recognition of Indigenous rights in Commonwealth Law.
The idea for the petition was inspired by two visiting politicians, Kim Beazley (Senior) and Gordon Bryant, the first petition dated 14 August 1963, the second dated 28 August 1963, were presented to the House of Representatives in August by the member for the Northern Territory, Mr Jock Nelson. The petitions was signed by twelve Yolngu men and women (aged between 18 to 36), who were members of local clans from both the Dhuwa and Yirritja moieties.
In 1968, a third petition was presented to Parliament, comprising a painted bark panel with text on the reverse side. This petition was painted by Dundiwuy Wanambi, and signed by: Mungurrawuy, Dundiwuy, Birrikitj, Mau, Matjid, Munyu, Nanyin, Wandjuk, Djalingpa, Gawirrin, Mr J.G. Yunupingu, Yinitjin, Mathaman, Djiriny, Guyuyuma, Djayila, and Roy Dadynga Marika.
The Yirrala petitions have played a ‘key part of the persistent claim for constitutional change which achieved the amendment of the Australian Constitution in 1967, the statutory acknowledgment of Aboriginal land rights by the Commonwealth in 1976, and the overturning of the obstacle of the concept of terra nullis by the High Court in the Mabo Case in 1992.'
(Source: AIATSIS; Museum of Australian Democracy website:; Wikipedia; 'Journey Goes Full Circle from Bark Petition to Blue Mud Bay'.)
Further reading:
– Read story by Wali Wunungumma Journey goes full circle from Bark Petition to Blue Mud Bay
– Bark petitions: Indigenous art and reform for the rights of Indigenous Australians
– 2013 National Naidoc Week Theme
– Yirrkala Bark Petitions 1963
– Solomon, David Harris. The People's Palace: Parliament in Modern Australia. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1986.
– Morphy, Howard. Art and Politics: The Bark Petition and the Barunga Statement. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2000.
– Towner, Joanne 'Copyright issues relating to Yirrkala 'Bark' petitions'. Table. 69 2001. 26-28.
– Schwarz, Janien and Canberra School of Art Beyond familiar territory: De-centering the Centre : an analysis of visual strategies in the art of Robert Smithson, Alfredo Jaar and the Bark petitions of Yirrkala, 1999.
– Langton, Marcia and Australian Broadcasting Corporation The quiet revolution : Indigenous People and the Resources Boom. Sydney NSW HarperCollins Publishers Australia, 2013.
Reward and Punishment in Arnhem Land 1962-1963
Canberra
:
Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies
,
1982
Z1402260
1982
single work
prose
The Yolngu and Their Land : A System of Land Tenure and the Fight for its Recognition
Palo Alto
:
Stanford University Press
,
1986
Z1598486
1986
single work
non-fiction
'The Yolngu and their Land is about the Aboriginal system of tenure in the Northeast of Arnhem Land. From an economy based entirely on hunting and gathering, this community of some 1000 Yolngu speakers has become increasingly involved in the international economy. The transformation began after the establishment of a mission station on the land of one of the clans, and was accelerated with the establishment of a large bauxite mine, processing plant, and the attendant creation of a full scale town with a population of 3500 non-Aborigines'.
Source: Publisher's note. (Sighted: 15/06/2009)
Father of the House : The Memoirs of Kim E. Beazley
North Fremantle
:
Fremantle Press
,
2009
Z1553260
2009
single work
autobiography
'Get the inside story of one of Australia's longest serving and most influential Ministers in Federal Parliament. Kim E Beazley threw off the shackles of a poor childhood to become a teacher, a Union Leader and the Member for Fremantle in the Federal Parliament between 1945 and 1977.
'During his time in Parliament he led the reform of Australian education and played a central role in the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition against bauxite mining on Yolngu land - a major step forward in the struggle for Indigenous land rights.
'In his own words, Beazley gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the corridors of power displaying the quiet determination and drive that led to his rise to Minister for Education under Whitlam. Beazley died in October 2007 and his son, Kim Beazley Junior, provides the book's introduction with special insight into the man as father and Parliamentarian.' (Publisher's blurb)
Petitions from Indigenous Australians: Emergence and Negotiations of Indigenous Authorship and Writings
Sydney
:
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW
,
2012
6123743
2012
single work
thesis
'This research discusses the negotiations instantiated by Indigenous petitions in Australia. It does so by conceptualising petition writing and reading, by considering the endorsement and commemoration of petitions, and by chronologically canvassing published and previously unpublished petitions addressed by Indigenous peoples from across Australia to government representatives and international bodies before and after Federation, from the mid 1840s to the early 1960s. Drawing on the theoretical contractarian framework developed by Charles W. Mills and Carole Pateman, the dissertation examines petition writing as a way of intervening in a domination (settler) contract and in an exclusionary and dominating white public sphere. This framework accounts for the collective dimension of petitions and for their nature as political instruments of negotiation within relations of domination and subordination. This cross disciplinary study is located within the scholarly work undertaken in Australian historical and literary studies which, especially since the 1990s, have highlighted the value of petitions as documents which record Aboriginal perspectives, and as forms of early Aboriginal writings deserving of critical attention. More broadly, it can also be contextualised within studies of the emergence of an Indigenous political voice and of processes of identity formation. It shares post-colonial studies interest in the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised and it replies to Spivaks question of whether the subaltern can speak. The analysis of the petitions is historically contextualised and it reflects on the venues of the petitions creation (penal system, reserves and missions, urban and rural settings). It highlights the narratives and requests the petitions convey as well as the argumentative strategies employed by the petitioners. It considers the rhetoric of contemporary discourses (political, racial, humanitarian etc) visible in the petitions and the responses to these discourses put forward by the petitioners. The thesis outlines also some features which petitions and Aboriginal protest literature share and the aspect of testimony or memorial these petitions possess. An Appendix collects a sample of the Indigenous Australian petitions upon which the discussion is based. ' (Source: TROVE)
Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions
Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions: The Extraordinary Story of How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2024
28370027
2024
multi chapter work
criticism
'In 1963—a year of race riots in the United States and explosive agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory were yet to be recognised as full adults. Almost to a person, they were classed as wards of the state, unacknowledged as having any ownership over the land on which they had lived for tens of thousands of years.
'In 1975 Gough Whitlam poured a handful of sand into the palm of Gurindji Elder Vincent Lingiari to symbolise the granting of deeds to his ancestral country—and the land rights movement was unstoppable. That journey towards legal recognition of native title started in 1963 with the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk.
'The background was a four-cornered contest for mastery of the land and its resources between the Menzies government, the mining industry, the Methodist Church and the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land, under whose country was discovered a blanket of bauxite.
'Throughout the tumultuous year of 1963, leaders of the Yolngu clans worked with white allies on the unprecedented political strategy that culminated in the presentation of four Bark Petitions to Federal Parliament. It was a key moment in the formation of a uniquely Indigenous engagement with Australian politics.
This is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the people who made it. It paints a vibrant picture of the profound and ancient culture of Australia’s first peoples, in all its continuing vigour.
'Clare Wright’s groundbreaking Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (workers’ rights) and continued with You Daughters of Freedom (women’s rights). After a decade of research and community consultation, it concludes, fittingly, with a fascinating and compulsively readable account of a momentous but little-known episode in our shared political history.' (Publication summary)
Yunupingu's Song
2023
26915805
2023
single work
podcast
'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Desmond Manderson takes us back sixty years to the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition drafted by Yolngu leader Yunupingu. The Yirrkala petition called for constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights and can be seen as an antecedent to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Desmond Manderson is Director of the Centre for Law, Arts and Humanities at the Australian National University. Here he is with ‘Yunupingu’s song: Constitutions as acts of vision, not of division’, published in the September issue of ABR.' (Production summary)
'From the age of fifteen until his recent death at the age of seventy-four, the great Yolngu leader Yunupingu (1948–2023) was at the forefront of the struggle to change the Australian legal system in unprecedented ways. In 1963, with his father, Mungurrawuy, he drafted the Yirrkala Bark Petition, which presented to Parliament an eloquent claim for the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Arnhem Land before their country was, without their consent, turned into a bauxite mine. The Bark Petition was no ordinary document. On the one hand, it uses the antiquated language of a traditional ‘humble petition’ to Parliament, concluding in forms of speech that have hardly changed since the seventeenth century: ‘And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray.’' (Introduction)
