Nicholls, Sir Douglas (1906-1988), was the first Aborigine
to be knighted and Australia's first Aboriginal state governor. He
served as state governor in South Australia in 1976 and 1977.
He was given his knighthood in 1972 in recognition of his work
for the Aboriginal people. He was a founding member for the
Aborigines' Advancement League and became a director in
1969. Douglas Ralph Nicholls was born in Cummeragunja, New
South Wales, on Dec. 9, 1906. In his early life, he was a well-
known boxer, runner, and Australian Rules football player. Later,
he became pastor of the Churches of Christ Aborigines' Mission
in Fitzroy, Victoria. He died on June 4, 1988, near Shepparton, Victoria.
In 1972 Sir Douglas was the first Aborigine to be honoured with a
knighthood, made a Knight- Bachelor of the British Empire - Sir Douglas
Ralph Nicholls, O.B.E., and M.B.E. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for
his work on Aboriginal issues, and later became Governor of South
Australia. "He was another example of a person of Aboriginal descent who
achieved greatness," according to Australian D.R. Meagher QC.
Born in 1906 in Cumeroogunga, a New South Wales Aboriginal station, he
started work as an unskilled labourer at age 14. Though slight in stature (5
foot 2 inches), Doug was an extraordinary athlete and became an
Australian Rules footballer playing for the Fitzroy Footy Club in Melbourne.
Pastor Doug started the Churches of Christ Aborigines Mission and served
as "missioner."
He returned from a visit to the Warburton Ranges in 1957 traumatized,
saying, "My people are starving ... everywhere we went they pleaded for
food and water ... I wish I hadn't seen the pitiable squalor... never, never
can I forget." He travelled throughout the Victoria and Tasmania on lecture
tours, most sponsored by churches, educating the Australian whites about
the Aboriginal cause and "was in every street demonstration, deputation
and public meeting, agitating, promoting and demanding a referendum on
Aboriginal recognition and rights." Pastor Doug was one of three
Aborigines at the 1958 inauguration of the Australian Federal Council for
Aboriginal Advancement calling for citizenship and equal rights for
Aborigines.
For many years Pastor Doug served as field officer for the Aborigines
Advancement League, an organization that continues to provide a fighting
force and education on behalf of the Aboriginal people of Australia. He
was instrumental in persuading the National Multicultural Advisory Council
to name the second Sunday in July a day of remembrance of Aboriginal
people, now celebrated annually as "Sorry Day" in the midst of
Reconciliation Week.
In a press interview after being named Victoria's Father of the Year "for his
outstanding leadership in youth welfare work and for the inspired example
he has set the community in his unfailing efforts to further the cause of
the Australian Aboriginal," Doug said,
"I have no embittering personal experiences of racial prejudice. I have been encouraged
by the white man....But for the underprivileged and misinterpreted of our race, I have
tried to act as an interpreter. Our future is not a cold-blooded political matter; it is a
question of humanitarian consideration."
Some Australians are likening "Pastor Doug" to the American civil rights leader,
Martin Luther King. The Victorian State Parliament has approved the
construction of a statue of Sir Douglas and his wife, Gladys, to stand in
Parliament Gardens in Melbourne, to be unveiled in December.
Pearl Gibbs was born at Botany Bay in 1901, and grew up near
Yass and at Byrock, near Bourke in western New South Wales. At 16 she
and her sister began work in Sydney as domestic servants. In her twenties
Pearl Gibbs supported her three children working as a cook in private
homes in Sydney’s wealthy suburbs. At the same time she fought to
improve conditions for young Aboriginal girls still being conscripted into
domestic service by the state Aborigines Protection Board. She joined the
Feminist Club in Sydney, where her experiences and her strong views
influenced political activists like Jessie Street.
With other Aboriginal activists like Bill Ferguson, Tom Foster and Jack Patten, in 1937
Pearl Gibbs founded the New South Wales Aborigines’ Progressive Association and was
secretary from 1938-1940. A gifted speaker, she attracted large crowds in the Sydney
Domain, gave radio talks and published articles on citizenship rights. She was an
organiser of the Day of Mourning protest against celebrations of the 150th anniversary of
the British occupation of Australia. The Aborigines’ Progressive Association held a rally in
Sydney on 26 January 1938, members wearing formal black dress as a sign of grieving.
Among non-Indigenous participants in the Day of Mourning was Mary Bennett, who had
come from West Australia.
On 23 February 1938, Pearl Gibbs made history as a member of the first Aboriginal
deputation to a prime minister. William Cooper’s Victorian Australian Aborigines’ League
organised the deputation to Joseph Lyons to ask for federal control of Aboriginal affairs -
the seed of the Constitutional change achieved forty years later. Pearl Gibbs was one of
the campaigners who collected 1,814 signatures from Aboriginal people around Australia
on a petition to King George VI for basic citizenship rights. The Lyons government
rejected the proposal of the deputation and declined to forward the petition. In July that
year Pearl Gibbs wrote to the League of Nations asking for action for Aboriginal people in
the Northern Territory, including the removal of Judge Wells. This judge had been the
subject of protest by the Anti-Slavery Society in 1934, when he had sentenced Yolngu
man Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda to death. The international attention to the case had forced the
successful appeal against the sentence. Such publicity was a powerful force, but by 1938
the League of Nations was no longer the powerful humanitarian forum it had been.
In public and private, Pearl Gibbs forcefully put forward the view that Australia’s
‘Aboriginal’ problem was in fact a white problem. In the 1940s she and Bill Ferguson
made the first organised link between state Aboriginal organisations when they
established a New South Wales Branch of the Australian Aborigines’ League. After moving
to Dubbo, Pearl Gibbs set up a Dubbo branch in 1946, serving terms as vice-president
and as secretary.
In the early 1950s Pearl Gibbs worked with Shirley Andrews at the Victorian Council for
Aboriginal Rights and was also an influential member of the management committee of
the Union of Australian Women. In 1954 she became the first woman member of the NSW
Aborigines Welfare Board. Her experience in her 3-year term there sharpened her
criticism of its failure to deal with the realities of Aboriginal lives. In press statements she
exposed its annual reports as shedding ‘sweetness and light, but not fact’.
In 1956 Pearl Gibbs and Bill Ferguson, with Faith Bandler, Bert Groves and others,
established the Australia-wide Aboriginal Australian Fellowship, with Jessie Street a
founding member. However it was Pearl Gibbs who was the driving force, inspiring many
others. She later felt sidelined when Bert Groves was elected founding president. It would
be hard to name any Australian organisation at the time where women were chosen as
leaders over men, but the work of women was the major influence in the birth and
growth of the new Indigenous political bodies. Pearl Gibbs made the point by withdrawing
from her central role. But when the Fellowship’s intended 1957 fundraiser was
transformed into the public rally that launched the Referendum campaign on 27 April
1957, Pearl Gibbs got together with Bert Groves to make sure there was a strong
Indigenous attendance. They organised special buses to transport people from La
Perouse to Sydney’s Town Hall, not a journey that had merited its own bus route before.
Faith Bandler considered Pearl Gibbs among the most powerful influences on her own
political awareness. They worked together in the long Referendum campaign and at the
same time Pearl Gibbs was active in the Aboriginal community in Dubbo, setting up the
first hostel for Aboriginal hospital patients and their families in 1960. She remained
involved in Aboriginal conferences in New South Wales until 1983, when she died, aged
82.
Charles Perkins was born in Alice Springs; his mother was Arrente and
his father Kalkadoon. He was removed from the Alice Springs Telegraph Station
Aboriginal Reserve when he was 10 and educated at St Francis House, a school
established by Father Percy Smith in Adelaide to educate Aboriginal boys. He
trained initially as a fitter and turner but, being a gifted soccer player, he played
professionally for the English club, Everton, then on his return to Australia with the
Adelaide Croatian and the Sydney Pan-Hellenic Clubs.
Perkins first attended the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement annual conference in
Brisbane in 1961. He spoke with passion about his visit to Mungana reserve where he saw a
double standard in action: attractive homes for the white staff and tin shanties for the Aboriginal
residents.
In 1965 Perkins, one of two Aboriginal students at the University of Sydney (the other was Gary
Williams), was keen to find a way to publicise the Aboriginal cause. This led to the formation of
Student Action for Aborigines (SAFA) and the decision to organise a bus tour of western New South
Wales towns. About 30 students, led by Perkins, travelled to Walgett, Moree, Kempsey and other
towns exposing discrimination in the use of halls, swimming pools, picture theatres and hotels. In
a number of towns Aboriginal returned servicemen were only permitted entry to the Returned
Service League clubs on Anzac Day. This trip became known as the Freedom Ride and assumed
iconic status as the students ensured that they had press coverage for the conflicts which occurred
in these towns. Their effective use of television brought the issue of racial discrimination in country
towns to national attention. Perkins' role in this action propelled him to a position as a national
Aboriginal leader and spokesman, a position he held until his death.
In the post-referendum period, Charles Perkins was critical of the Federal Council, believing it had
not done enough to share power with Aboriginal members. In 1965 he became the manager of the
Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs in Sydney, and in 1969 he moved to Canberra to begin work in
the Office of Aboriginal Affairs, which was set up by Prime Minister Harold Holt. By 1984 Perkins
was Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the first Aboriginal Australian to attain such
a position in the bureaucracy. In his post-public service life Perkins played key roles on the boards
of Aboriginal arts, sport and media organisations. As well he was a member of the Aboriginal and
Torres Straits Islander Commission (ATSIC) and of the Arrente Council of Central Australia.
Charlie Perkins was an independent spirit who gave much to the cause of his people, and also to
Australian soccer. His independence of mind meant that he was no stranger to controversy. He was
given a state funeral in recognition of his dedicated work for Indigenous Australians.