Indigenous Studies

The 1967 Referendum, or When the Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote by Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus with Dale Edwards and Kath Schilling

Item: The 1967 Referendum, or When the Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote
Author: Barry Hill

November 1997, no. 196

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, $25.00 pb, 154 pp

Indigenous Studies

The 1967 Referendum, or When the Aborigines Didn’t Get the Vote by Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus with Dale Edwards and Kath Schilling

by Barry Hill •

November 1997, no. 196

This eccentric, laborious book is designed to correct what most of us think about the 1967 Referendum. The popular belief – the authors call it a myth – is that the Australian people then voted to acknowledge citizenship by giving Aborigines the vote, and that this was a Commonwealth thrust towards, crucial, deeper involvement in Aboriginal affairs.

‘Surely 27 May should be Australia’s national day,’ The Age opined last year, ‘On that date in 1967 by referendum, all Australian citizens, indigenous or otherwise, became equal under the Constitution with the same rights and responsibilities. True nationhood was born on the day.’ The sentiment is shared by Aboriginal leaders, including Patrick Dobson and Roberta Sykes.

But it is wrong, according to these four authors (two white historians and the two Aboriginal and Islander people who helped them with the all too sketchy oral testimonies dealing with ‘indigenous memories and perspectives’). It is wrong, or at least overstated for several reasons.

Barry Hill

Barry Hill has won Premier’s Awards for poetry, non-fiction, and the essay. He has been writing full-time since 1976, when Penguin published his first book, The Schools. Prior to that he worked as a educational psychologist and journalist in Melbourne and London. His short fiction was widely anthologised. In recent years he has been writing history and fiction. For fifteen years he was Radio Critic for The Age; for ten years the Poetry Editor for The Australian. He is possibly best known for his two major works, Broken Song: TGH Strehlow and Aboriginal possession, and Peacemongers, a study of Rabindranath Tagore and the history of bombing. Recent works include Eagerly We Burn: Selected poems and Reason and Lovelessness: Essays, 1980–2017.