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Historians Professor Marcia Langton of the Yiman-Bidjara Nation and Professor Gordon Briscoe of the Maraduntjara Nation discuss the situation of Aboriginal people in south-east Australia in the 1930s, with particular reference to the incarceration of children for labour. Narrator Rachel Perkins describes Aboriginal football legend Doug Nicholls’s path to joining the Aborigines’ Advancement League.
Curator’s notes
It’s easy to understand Doug Nicholls’s rationale for being hesitant to join the Aborigines’ Advancement League. When it was already hard enough to get by himself, to make a life in mainstream Australia, it would’ve seemed insurmountable to think he could help others, not to mention the sort of trouble it might have caused him on the football field.
He did eventually change his mind to join the League, and it was meeting people far worse off than he and his family or anything he had ever experienced in Victoria that may have shamed him to do so. Nicholls went on to campaign strongly for Aboriginal rights and was eventually appointed Governor of South Australia.
