Truth-telling starts not with truth, but with memory. Memory throws light on the unseen demons that lurk in unsuspected shadows. It overcomes victimhood, affirms resistance, resets our models of experience and gives form to cultural and political identities. It creates collective solidarity.
Why, then, have we all so readily forgotten about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that was established in Adelaide in July 1972?
A book on this important event was self-published in 2014. The 1972 Adelaide Aboriginal Tent Embassy was compiled by Michele Madigan of the Sisters of St Joseph who has a history of assisting Aboriginal communities in South Australia. It includes photographs, reports from newspapers, archival documents from the Adelaide City Council and interviews with Aboriginal persons connected with the event.
It rescued the embassy from historical obscurity and was a welcome reminder of an important episode in South Australiaās history and race relations. It presented new ways of continuing Aboriginal struggles for social recognition and land rights. It is now a fitting tribute for the 50th anniversary year.
Tent Embassy movement
The events surrounding the initial Canberra Embassy, from January 26, 1972 to July, are familiar to many. Less known is that three other cities had similar movements. One was Perth where, at 2am on June 17, 15 people erected a blue Consulate tent, first in Kingās Park, then on Parliament House lawns, to draw attention to the dire state of Aboriginal housing. It lasted barely two months: the Consulate was bulldozed by the conservative government on August 15.[1]
Another was in London where, on July 12, 1972, a group of Australians tried to erect an Aboriginal āhumpyā in front of Australia House in solidarity with Canberraās Tent Embassy and to promote Aboriginal rights in Britain. They faced robust opposition fromĀ British police.[2]
And there was Adelaide. The city was no stranger to Aboriginal activism. Its Aboriginal Womenās Council included fervent militants, such as Ruby Hammond. It is the site where the Aboriginal flag was first raised, in July 1971. On January 19, 1972, a protest march, supported by the radical Redfern group and trade unions, aimed for āa better deal for Aboriginesā.
Indeed, the leader of Adelaideās Embassy, Colin āBlack Macā McDonald (born in 1943, probably at Hermannsberg, but raised in SA), was influenced by the ideas of the Redfern Group of activists regarding, notes Madigan, āself-determinationā, āland rightsā and āthe methods of direct confrontationā.
Madiganās interviewees described him as a ādetermined, extraordinary fellowā and āa born diplomatā, who ālived dispossession [ā¦] not as a victim but as a person who was freeā and who was able to see āthe good things in all peopleā.
He combined political astuteness with personal warmth. It is not difficult to see why he became the Ambassador.[3]
Unlike Perthās Consulate, Adelaideās Tent Embassy was erected in broad daylight when four activists āĀ McDonald, Lenny Campbell, Gilbert Hunter and Alan Campbell ā erected three draughty tents in Brougham Gardens, on the eastern side of King William Road opposite the Federation villa at 58 Brougham Place.
The site was not accidental since the area was a sacred site to the Kaurna people. But it was also a strategically astute location alongside the busy road connecting Adelaideās CBD to the well-to-do residential district of North Adelaide. They flew the Aboriginal flag from the first day and a sign boldly declared their aims: āWe demand land and social rights for our people.ā
Adelaide Tent Embassy
So began a three-month protest, rarely remembered and even less celebrated.[4]
The Embassy soon asserted itself. The 1972 National Aboriginal Day march the following day attracted 1000 protesters chanting āMore Black rights!ā, departed from the Embassy site.
When Liberal Prime Minister William McMahon was at the Adelaide Town HallĀ on July 25, he was met by Embassy activists who refused to be placated by his frantic hand-shaking, patronising references to āmy peopleā and crass observations ā āMy, youāre a healthy one!ā, he said to one person ā Ā while engineering a publicity photo with a young woman.[5]
Over the following weeks the Embassy organised itself as best it could. Students, residents and the passing curious gave advice and praise, and the occasional rebuke. Many homeless people seeking shelter, white and Black,Ā found hospitality and companionship in the Embassy tents.
About 30 people lived at the Embassy at any one time. It organised a variety of activities, including an exhibition for Aboriginal artists on September 3, the proceeds going to āthe establishment of a holiday home for childrenā. Benevolent support groups assisted, with Lincoln College providing bathroom facilities and Flinders and Adelaide UniversitiesĀ donating a large tent for the kitchen.
The Embassy had its opponents, too: some councillors searched for by-laws to close it down and hostile locals complained of ādrunken carousalsā, bongo drums and āunhygienic habitsā, even though police found no reason for action.
Journalists were often anxious to find fault withĀ or belittleĀ the Embassy. But Black Mac remained steadfast in asserting its value, declaring: āIt is not a failure.āĀ Moreover, he would add, any faults of the Embassyās staff and its residents were trifles compared to the two centuries of colonial oppression and bloodshed.[6]
The Embassyās success was in its very presence: the confidence of its inhabitants and the enthusiasm of its supporters.
The Embassy came to an end when David Wassa, a self-styled ātrue Aboriginalā from the bush, burned down the kitchen tent on October 3 citing the āshameā the ācity Aboriginalsā had brought on the Aboriginal community.
The Embassy and its Ambassador Black Mac remained for another week, but the experiment was over. It was demolished on October 10 by members of the Aboriginal Womenās Council of SA, while Black Mac, clearly resigned and in a plaintive mood, played āHome Sweet Homeā and āThe Last Rose of Summerā on his mouth organ.[7]
Post-colonialism
Settler colonies, like Australia, have yet to deal with demands for decolonisation and this is reflected in the Embassyās story.
For many Black and white communities, it was a protest against racism.Ā McDonaldās aim in setting up the Embassy wasĀ āto make people aware that we native Australians donāt own any land in Australia, and that horses, cattle and sheep have more rights than usā.
It certainly did that, but inevitably there were a range of opinions. Kaurna and Ngadijuri woman Gladys Elphick who was President of the Aboriginal Womenās Council claimed on October 10 that some ādisapproved of it and were shamed by itā and that it undermined the Don Dunstan government which had done āa good job for the Aboriginal causeā.
Interviewed by Madigan in 2014, Ngarrindjeri Elder Laura Winslow remembered the āTent Embassy people at North Adelaideā as āGround Breakersā because, she said, āThey set the stage for political awareness. They were the original radicals āĀ and from off the streets!ā
Ruby Hammond, one of the nine Aboriginal people in the delegation to China in October 1972, organised by the Australia-China Friendship Society, believed that āAborigines would be nowhere without visible, audible protestā, Madigan wrote.
Hammond considered the Embassy āa dramatically successful statementā that told Australians āthey had reduced the original inhabitants to squatters in their own land [and] foreigners in their own countryā.[8]
The Embassy also had a broader historical significance: it redrew the post-colonial landscape by rejecting geographical segregation. It recaptured white urban spaces. It questioned the administrative domination and repressive controls of colonisation.
Most of all, it was a rare and early public exercise in truth-telling through recaptured memories of āthe white manās injustice ā¦Ā over 200 yearsā.[9]
The Adelaide City Council includes a brief reference to the Embassy on a sign in Brougham Gardens. But this is not enough. A permanent monument should be erected in recognition of the event as a belated but necessary tribute to SAās Aboriginal activists for post-colonial restitution, collective land rights and personal dignity.
[Don Longo campaignsĀ for nuclear disarmament and multiculturalism and is a retiredĀ historian with a special interest in the rural experience of World War I.]Ā
[1]Canberra Times, 17/6/72, 10; Tribune, 20/6/72, 11 and 25/7/72, 7; Advertiser, 16/8/72, p9
[2]Advertiser, 15/7/72, p3
[3] Madigan, 14-15; Southern Cross, 14/7/72, 2. On McDonald, see Madigan, pp59-66
[4]Madigan, 11; Advertiser, 14/7/72, 1; Southern Cross, 14/7/72, p2
[5] Madigan, 31; Sunday Mail, 16/7/72, 3; Advertiser,26/7/72, p1
[6]Madigan, 14-15, 27-35, 39, 43, 51; Advertiser, 14/7/72, 1; Sunday Mail, 16/7/72, p1, 3
[7] Madigan, 54-56; Advertiser, 10/10/72, p3
[8] Madigan, 55-56; Advertiser, 30/10/72
[9] Madigan, 51. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Blackwell, 1974/1991)
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