Vincent Lingiari

(circa.1908 to 1988) 
Vincent Lingiari was a Kadijeri man from the Gurindj People.  This man was a spirit man of his people and he showed his courage as he stood up for all of his peoples in the struggle for recognition.

Below is the story of what Vincent did from the National Museum Australia.

Paul Kelly wrote a gutsy ballad about the plight of Vincent and his people.

Vincent Lingiari, a Kadijeri man, was thrust into public life when he led the Gurindji people off Wave Hill station in 1966.

The powerful Vestey Company had refused to pay these pastoral workers wages of $25.00 per week. The walk-off to Daguragu (or Wattie Creek) was an initial response to the refusal to pay, but the protest shifted to a more fundamental request - that traditional Gurindji lands be returned.

The strike lasted seven years. In 1975, in a now famously symbolic gesture, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam poured earth into Lingiari's hand to mark the giving of a lease of 3300 square kilometres to the Muramulla Gurindji Company.

Vincent Lingiari was one of four Gurindji signatories to the petition to the Governor-General in 1967. The petition argued that 'morally the land is ours and should be returned to us'.

 About the powerful Vestey Company spoken of above from Wiki:

In 1914, Wave Hill Station was bought by Vesteys, a British pastoral company comprising a large conglomerate of cattle companies owned by Baron Vestey. Pastoralists were able to make use of the now landless Aboriginal people as extremely cheap labour. On stations across the north, Aboriginal people became the backbone of the cattle industry, working for little or no money, minimal food and appalling housing.

What Happened...

There had been complaints from Indigenous employees about conditions over many years. A Northern Territory government inquiry held in the 1930s said of Vesteys:

It was obvious that they had been ... quite ruthless in denying their Aboriginal labour proper access to basic human rights.

However, little was done over the decades leading up to the strike. While it was illegal up until 1968 to pay Aboriginal workers more than a specified amount in goods and money, a 1945 inquiry found Vesteys was not even paying Aboriginal workers the 5 shillings a day minimum wage set up for Aborigines under a 1918 Ordinance. Non-Indigenous males were receiving £2/8/- a week in 1945. Gurindji lived in corrugated iron humpies without floors, lighting, sanitation, furniture or cooking facilities. Billy Bunter Jampijinpa, who lived on Wave Hill Station at the time said

We were treated just like dogs. We were lucky to get paid the 50 quid a month we were due, and we lived in tin humpies you had to crawl in and out on your knees. There was no running water. The food was bad – just flour, tea, sugar and bits of beef like the head or feet of a bullock. The Vesteys mob were hard men. They didn't care about blackfellas.

Gurindji who received minimal government benefits had these paid into pastoral company accounts over which they had no control. In contrast, non-Aboriginal workers enjoyed minimum wage security with no legal limit on the maximum they could be paid. They were housed in comfortable homes with gardens and had full control over their finances.

Vincent took them all to sit with the spirit ancestors . . .

On 23 August 1966, led by spokesman Vincent Lingiari, the workers and families walked off Wave Hill and began their seven-year strike. Lingiari led Gurindji, as well as Ngarinman, Bilinara, Warlpiri and Mudbara workers to an important sacred site nearby at Wattie Creek (Daguragu). Initially, the action was interpreted as purely a strike against work and living conditions. However, it soon became apparent that it was not just – or even primarily – improved conditions Gurindji were campaigning for. Their primary demand was for return of their land. Novelist Frank Hardy was one of the many non-Indigenous Australians who supported the Gurindji struggle through the strike years.
"This bin [been] Gurindji country long time before them Vestey mob" Vincent Lingiari told Hardy at the time.
While Hardy records Pincher Manguari as saying:

We want them Vestey mob all go away from here. Wave Hill Aboriginal people bin called Gurindji. We bin here long time before them Vestey mob. This is our country, all this bin Gurindji country. Wave Hill bin our country. We want this land; we strike for that.

 ICONIC Whitlam / Lingiari Photograph

The Law was tested here. .

The Gurindji strike was not the first or the only demand by Aborigines for the return of their lands – but it was the first one to attract wide public support within Australia for Land Rights.