Institute seeks help in tracking down missing NAIDOC Posters

  Library Director Rod Stroud in front of the NAIDOC Poster Display at AIATSIS
  AIATSIS Library Director Rod Stroud in front of the NAIDOC Posters currently on display at the Institute's Foyer in Canberra. (Photo: John Paul Janke)

 

5 July 2011

 

Australia’s leading Indigenous archive has begun a nationwide search for three rare posters promoting NAIDOC Week celebrations dating back over 40 years ago.

AIATSIS – the world’s leading research, collecting and publishing institution in the field of Australian Indigenous studies - is seeking public help in locating copies of NAIDOC Week Posters produced in 1968, 1971 and 1975.

The Institute has begun the search for the posters to coincide with the relaunch of their very popular on-line collection of NAIDOC Posters which currently features thirty eight NAIDOC Week posters dating from 1972 to 2011.

AIATSIS Chairperson, Professor Mick Dodson AM, says that the NAIDOC posters were used by Aboriginal organisations over the last 40 years as a way of gaining mainstream support and to highlight issues of Indigenous self determination, recognition, rights and reforms.

“The posters were used Aboriginal groups in a protest nature to highlight injustice and gain wide spread support for the push in the 1970s for Indigenous rights and reforms.”

“We’re hoping that someone may have a copy if these missing posters in a library, or their garage or office and that we may able to digitise it and add it to the online collection.”

In the mid 1990s, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) launched the official NAIDOC poster competition inviting entries from around the country and offering prize money as well as the opportunity for newly emerging artists to display their work nationally.

Today, 100,000 posters are distributed nationally by the Federal Department of Families, Community Services, and Indigenous Affairs and is the primary tool for promoting NAIDOC Week activities in schools, organisations and state and Federal agencies.

The online collection can be viewed at www.aiatsis.gov.au

If you can assist in the search for these posters, please contact the AIATSIS Library on Tel: 02 6246 1182 or email: library@aiatsis.gov.au