The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A documentary history

by Bain Attwood (Editor)

The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights is the first book of its kind. Not only does it tell the history of the political struggle for Aboriginal rights in all parts of Australia; it does so almost entirely through a selection of historical documents created by the Aboriginal campaigners themselves, many of which have never been published. It presents Aboriginal perspectives of their dispossession and their long and continuing fight to overcome this.

In charting the story of Aboriginal political activity from its beginnings on Flinders Island in the 1830s to the fight over native title today, this book aims to help Australians better understand both the continuities and the changes in Aboriginal politics over the last 150 in the leadership of the Aboriginal political struggle, the objectives of these campaigners for rights for Aborigines, their aspirations, the sources of their programmes for change, their methods of protest, and the outcomes of their protest.

Through the words of Aboriginal activists, across 150 years, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights charts the relationship between political involvement and Aboriginal identity.

424 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

Bain Attwood is a professor of history at Monash University. He is the author of Empire and the Making of Native Title: Sovereignty, Property and Indigenous People, which compares Britain’s colonies in Australia and New Zealand. He holds both New Zealand and Australian citizenship.