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AUSTRALIA
Wednesday May 22, 6pm
Tuesday, 22 May, 2007
Remembering the Referendum
May 27, 2007 will mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, in which Australians voted to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws specifically to benefit Aboriginal people. It was one of few successful referendums in Australia's history and Living Black video journalist Emma Cook marks this milestone by taking us back to Melbourne in the 1960s, a key campaign area.
It was here that passion and politics converged and the Victorian Aboriginal Advancement League was born. It campaigned for the referendum and Esmai Manahan couldn't be prouder of her parents' role, agitating wherever they could.
"I'll remember my father going to places like the Collingwood football ground just getting petitions signed, which was about aboriginal and non-aboriginal people fighting for that Yes referendum to happen," she tells Cook.
"I think it recognised us as human beings," Philip Cooper, CEO of the League tells Cook. "But I think that what we should have done is take it a little bit further and pushed it a lot harder around human rights."
Indeed, as Cook discovers, there are those who feel the 1967 referendum didn't achieve all that it set out to. As former League president Margaret Briggs-Wirrpanda says: "The state we're living in now, it's not much. It might be one step forward, half a step back, we've got to stoke the fires up again, because everyone's gone too quiet. Don't let the government do the talking for you cos we've got to do our own thinking and our own talking."
The Secret Life of Uncle Herb
Victorian elder Herb Patten recently found fame on Channel 7's TV show Australia's Got Talent. Uncle Herb, as he's known, is renowned for his skills in playing the gum leaf and he's best known for his renditions of Beatles songs Imagine and Help. On Living Black, video journalist Jacinta Isaacs reveals the lesser-known side of Uncle Herb: political advocate, artist and natural self-promoter.
An elder of the Gunnai-Kurnai tribes of East Gippsland, Uncle Herb draws on more than 50 years experience as a 'leafist' and is determined to pass on his skill to future generations. "Your music, it can be modern, it can be old. It can be crazy, it can be just any type of thing," Uncle Herbs says. "But it's coming from you, yourself. Just like the voice. The voice is you. The gumleaf is you."
May 27, 2007 will mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, in which Australians voted to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws specifically to benefit Aboriginal people. It was one of few successful referendums in Australia's history and Living Black video journalist Emma Cook marks this milestone by taking us back to Melbourne in the 1960s, a key campaign area.
It was here that passion and politics converged and the Victorian Aboriginal Advancement League was born. It campaigned for the referendum and Esmai Manahan couldn't be prouder of her parents' role, agitating wherever they could.
"I'll remember my father going to places like the Collingwood football ground just getting petitions signed, which was about aboriginal and non-aboriginal people fighting for that Yes referendum to happen," she tells Cook.
"I think it recognised us as human beings," Philip Cooper, CEO of the League tells Cook. "But I think that what we should have done is take it a little bit further and pushed it a lot harder around human rights."
Indeed, as Cook discovers, there are those who feel the 1967 referendum didn't achieve all that it set out to. As former League president Margaret Briggs-Wirrpanda says: "The state we're living in now, it's not much. It might be one step forward, half a step back, we've got to stoke the fires up again, because everyone's gone too quiet. Don't let the government do the talking for you cos we've got to do our own thinking and our own talking."
The Secret Life of Uncle Herb
Victorian elder Herb Patten recently found fame on Channel 7's TV show Australia's Got Talent. Uncle Herb, as he's known, is renowned for his skills in playing the gum leaf and he's best known for his renditions of Beatles songs Imagine and Help. On Living Black, video journalist Jacinta Isaacs reveals the lesser-known side of Uncle Herb: political advocate, artist and natural self-promoter.
An elder of the Gunnai-Kurnai tribes of East Gippsland, Uncle Herb draws on more than 50 years experience as a 'leafist' and is determined to pass on his skill to future generations. "Your music, it can be modern, it can be old. It can be crazy, it can be just any type of thing," Uncle Herbs says. "But it's coming from you, yourself. Just like the voice. The voice is you. The gumleaf is you."
