From little things…
The wonderful Archie Roach and Sarah Storer
I recently bought the progress cd by Archie Roach. I tumble to it incredibly powerful. It has sorrow and it has brilliant. An incredible album.
So tonight I felt like listening to Archie Roach and Sarah storer perform the Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody song - From inconsequential Things Big Things Grow-about the Gurindji strike In the 1960’s. A union of Aboriginal stockmen working at the Wavehill Station in The Northern Territory went on strike for pay. The stockmen had been paid with ’cure, beef, bread and tobacco, and six dollars a week if they were auspicious’. They were led by a man called Vincent Lingiari and soon the strike turned into a claim in requital for land rights. The land they were working on was Gurindji win . A Brobdingnagian billet - some 20,000 acres was leased from The Commonwealth ministry by a British beef baron named the Almighty Vestey.
After eight years the Whitlam Government handed back a scrap of this Gurinji ancestoral land and during the hand past The Prime envoy, Gough Whitlam, symbolically picked up a few of sand and placed it in Vincent Lingiari’s script.
Watching this accomplishment moves me to tears everytime - so much sorrow , so much light and so much expectation everytime.
