Love, Resilience & Activism: A Family’s Odyssey Through Aboriginal Political History

As we approach the dreaded date of January 26, a pervasive question is floating around among the people in my social circle. Though phrased in different ways, most people seem to be wondering, “What does the landscape of Aboriginal politics look like after a massively unsuccessful referendum?” 

In Aboriginal cultures, generally there is a great emphasis on revisiting past knowledge and histories to compare, frame and interpret emerging trends and situations. For me, this question on the direction of Aboriginal politics after the Voice to Parliament led me to search for the closest comparison we have: the 1967 referendum. 

1967 is a treasured year in my family history, and not just because it was the year of Australia’s most successful referendum that allowed the federal government to make laws for Aboriginal people and override racist state-based legislation. 

For us, 1967 is also the year that my maternal grandparents, Wayne and Julie, got married — an Aboriginal and white mixed-race couple who were both members of the Aboriginal Civil Rights movement. In revisiting their life in the Sydney Aboriginal community, I learn and hope to prompt others that, ultimately, it is the relationships we create within and beyond politics that matters. 

Since invasion, Sydney has been shaped into a central hub for the Australian project through waves of colonial violence and expansion against First Nations people. However, despite attempted genocide, dehumanising racist policies and general social alienation, Sydney also became a hub for pan-Aboriginal community and resistance. 

Along with Traditional Owner groups, waves of Aboriginal migrations further bolstered numbers in many suburbs. Redfern is the most famous of these, but many Black families occupied streets in suburbs like Surry Hills, Eveleigh and Waterloo. 

My family was part of these Aboriginal migrations. In 1948, my great grandparents, Pa Peter Webb and Nanny Beryl Russell, were part of the post-World War II migration to the city looking for work and opportunity, after marrying and having two kids (my Nan and her brother) on my Nanny’s traditional Worimi Country. Pa was a Bundjalung man from Casino on the north coast of New South Wales who met Nanny when he was a soldier.

They first lived in a block of flats in Surry Hills with Pa’s siblings, cousins, Aunties and extended Bundjalung kinship. In 1955, they moved to their own terrace house at 35 Beaumont Street, Waterloo, where they were, again, surrounded by family. Pa’s family Uncle Eddie and Aunty Evelyn lived in the terrace on the right and the Silva family lived on the left, while his sisters lived 300 metres away and a network of Nanny’s Worimi cousins lived within several blocks. 

My Nan, Julie, had a vibrant social life in the Sydney Aboriginal community. Significant spaces for Nan in her teens and early 20s included the Aboriginal Inland Mission church services and Sunday School in Redfern Street and Botany Street, the La Perouse Football team and Redfern All Blacks at Redfern Oval, community concerts at McConnell’s gym in Newtown to see mob entertainers like Jimmy Little and Candy “The Godfather of Redfern Aboriginal music” Williams and Aboriginal dance events held at Redfern and Waterloo Town Hall. 

It was in 1963 that a dinner-dance was put on in Waterloo Town Hall to rally the Aboriginal community into political action. There, my Nan was introduced to Herbert “Bert” Groves, a previous member of the Aborigines Progressive Association (a civil rights organisation), who then introduced her to the daughter of the previous APA president, Isabell McCallum. Isabell then introduced Nan to her “good white friends”, the Butler family, who had joined the fight for equal citizenship rights for Aboriginal people. 

When recounting their first meeting, Pop would always chuckle, saying he “saw her and that was that, love at first sight”. Nan would always cackle when telling us about how she saw Uncle Grant, Pop’s brother, first and thought he was unattractive — but was completely taken by Pop, which is particularly funny when you realise that Pop and Uncle Grant are identical twins. 

From that point, Nan and Pop were very active as a couple in the Aboriginal civil rights and social scene. They joined and became involved in fundraising for the Aboriginal Progressive Association, worked with Aboriginal youth through the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs and for the Sydney NAIDOC Ball. However, growing up, I never heard too much about politics and often the story would always come back to the relationships they had. 

For example, I didn’t know until I was in high school that Harriet Ellis was a staunch unionist and the secretarial consultant in the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders' head office in Sydney. To me, she was my Nan’s bridesmaid and a dear friend to my grandparents made through The Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs. 

I also didn’t know until later that Charlie Perkins was a famous Aboriginal Rights activist who, at one point, made over 100 speeches a year to Black and White audiences. To me, Charlie was a frequent visitor to the same beach as my grandparents in La Perouse, where they would meet as friends to talk and enjoy the sunshine. 

It didn’t occur to me that these were two significant figures in the 1967 referendum until I was 17; to me, they were members of my family’s community.

As we reflect on the time we spent during that tense referendum process, I implore people to not fixate solely on the political outcomes, but to reflect deeply on the relationships we created and even strengthened within our own communities. No amount of political analysis or polling data will create the same grounding, offer the same comfort or inspire the same motivation as the people who are special in our life do. 

This January 26, in light of the Voice Referendum, I’m going to take a page out of my grandparents' book. I’m going to tend to the relationships that pull me forward, who celebrate our success, persist through injustice and give space to the whole people we are, beyond our political fight.