Jump to content

Billy Craigie

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Billy Craigie

Billy Craigie (born c. 1953 - August 1998)[1][2] was an Aboriginal Australian activist. He was one of four co-founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights in the world.

Craigie grew up in Moree and was believed to be of the Kamilaroi people.[3]

Craigie, along with Bert Williams, Michael Anderson and Tony Coorey, sent up a Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra in response to the government's Australia Day statement on land rights.[4] The statement proposed general purpose leases and not land rights; it required people to intend and be able to make "economic use of the land," and excluded forestry and mining rights.[4][5] This was unacceptable to the activists who wanted to be granted the rights to their ancestral lands. A documentary movie, Ningla A-Na, was filmed about the protest in 1972.[6]

The activists held a press conference and Craigie said they would maintain the space "indefinitely until we can work out our own Aboriginal government and maybe fill up the rest of the building with elected members from our own, Indigenous, sovereign nation."[7] They along with a few others were arrested for trespassing but others came in to take their places. Craigie gave evidence at the trial stating that the land the government had claimed was sacred and that paintings and rock arrangements which would have indicated its status had been moved and disrupted when Canberra was settled.[3]

In 1979, along with Cecil Patton, he stole the paintings of Aboriginal artist Yirawala from a commercial gallery which was run by a white man.[8] Their defense was that since they were Aboriginal, and the paintings were Aboriginal-community owned, they believed they could take them legally to protect them.[8] The case went to trial and the two were found not guilty.[9] In 1980 he participated in a protest of the Brisbane Commonwealth Games.[10] In 1988 he protested the publication of John Molony's book The Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia by tossing a copy of the book into Sydney Harbour.[11]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Aboriginal women record dissent". The Canberra Times. Vol. 46, no. 13, 032. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 31 January 1972. p. 1. Retrieved 2 January 2025 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. ^ "Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 5 Hansard (26 August) Page 1319". hansard.act.gov.au. 2012-04-14. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  3. ^ a b "New 'embassy' covers old ground". The Canberra Times. Vol. 67, no. 21, 057. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 7 December 1992. p. 4. Retrieved 2 January 2025 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ^ a b Hammond, Holly (2019-03-29). "The Aboriginal Tent Embassy". The Commons. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  5. ^ "The Aboriginal Tent Embassy". Insights Magazine. 2024-12-23. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  6. ^ "Ningla A-Na (1972) ⭐ 7.4". IMDb. 2019-06-09. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  7. ^ Muldoon, Paul; Schaap, Andrew (2012). "Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Politics of Reconciliation: The Constituent Power of the Aboriginal Embassy in Australia" (PDF). Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 30 (3): 534–550. Bibcode:2012EnPlD..30..534M. doi:10.1068/d24310. hdl:10036/106913. ISSN 0263-7758. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  8. ^ a b "Bell's Theorem (Reductio ad Infinitum): Contemporary Art—It's a White Thing!". e-flux. 2014-11-24. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  9. ^ Weisbrot, David. "Weisbrot, David --- "Claim of Right Defence to Theft of Sacred Bark Paintings" [1981] AboriginalLawB 11; (1981) 1(1) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 8". Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII). Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  10. ^ "Aboriginal protests at the 1982 Games". National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. 1982-09-30. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  11. ^ "Historian and Aborigines clash at bicentennial book launch". The Canberra Times. Vol. 62, no. 19, 101. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 22 January 1988. p. 3. Retrieved 2 January 2025 – via National Library of Australia.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Billy_Craigie&oldid=1266967920"