Indigenous protests
In the mid to late 1920’s, led by Worimi man, Fred Maynard, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA), was active from Sydney to north coast New South Wales, lobbying for recognition of Indigenous equality, full citizenship rights, including the right to own land, and the right to live with family unencumbered by the New South Wales Protection Board. The organisation was forced underground by police harassment in the late 20s. ¹
In 1937, William Ferguson, a shearer, trade union and Labor Party member, formed the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) at Dubbo, an all Aboriginal organisation advocating the abolition of the Aborigines Protection Board, full citizenship rights and representation in Parliament.2 In late 1937 in Sydney, Ferguson gave evidence to the New South Wales Select Committee on the Aborigines on behalf of Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales. Jack Patten, Pearl Gibbs and others attended the hearings.
In Victoria, the Australian Aborigines’ League, headed by William Cooper (a Yorta Yorta man who had lived at Cummeragunja), protested in the 1930s against the, often cruel, conditions of the Protection Acts.