Sovereign Rights

Wednesday 26 August, 2015. 6.30- 8.30pm (pop-up bar open from 5.30-6.20pm)

VU at MetroWest, 138 Nicholson Street, Footscray.

Sovereign Rights

“Native Title is NOT Land Rights”! In 1972, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established on the lawns of Old Parliament House in Canberra to demand sovereignty for Aboriginal people. Demands of the Tent Embassy included land and mineral rights to Aboriginal people of Aboriginal lands; legal and political control for Aboriginal people of Aboriginal land and compensation for land stolen.

Gary Foley is a product of the Black Power Movement and the establishment of the Tent Embassy; he is a key player in a generation of Aboriginal people who abandoned a passive and submissive approach in the struggle for justice and political independence. A struggle that continues to this day.

As part of educating all people, the historical archive of the Black Power and Self-Determination Movements is contained in the Foley Collection at VU. Gary Foley and Tony Birch understand that there is a lack of academic attention given to primary historical sources and the community voices of these life-changing movements as well as a lack of publically available archival material.

The conversation will focus on the uniqueness of the Foley Collection materials and these two Aboriginal activists’ personal perspective on the history and impact of the Black Power and Self-Determination movements.

Speakers: Gary Foley in conversation with Tony Birch

Dr Gary Edward Foley
PhD (UniMelb), BA Hons (UniMelb)
Associate Professor, Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Unit

Gary Foley was born in Grafton (1950), northern NSW of Gumbainggir descent. Expelled from school aged 15, Foley came to Sydney as an apprentice draughtsperson. Since then he has been at the centre of major political activities. Foley was involved in the establishment of the first Aboriginal self-help and survival organisations including Redfern’s Aboriginal Legal Service, Aboriginal Health Service in Melbourneand National Black Theatre.

In 1974 he was part of an Aboriginal delegation that toured China and in 1978 he took films on black Australia to the Cannes Film festival.

In 1994 Foley created the first Aboriginal owned and operated website when he created the Koori History website, which remains one of the most comprehensive Aboriginal education resources available today online.

Late in life Foley completed his BA and then gained first class honours in history in 2002. Between 2001 and 2005 he was also the Senior Curator for Southeastern Australia at Museum Victoria. Between 2005 and 2008 he was a lecturer/tutor in the Education Faculty of University of Melbourne. In 2012 he completed at PhD in History at the University of Melbourne. He has worked at Victoria University since 2008.

Tony Birich
Tony Birch is the author of the books Shadowboxing (2006), Father's Day (2009), Blood (2011), shortlisted for the Miles Franklin literary award, and The Promise (2014). His new novel, Ghost River, will be released in October 2015. Both his fiction and nonfiction has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, both in Australia and internationally. He is currently the the inaugural Bruce McGuinness Research Fellow within the Moondani Balluk Centre at Victoria University.

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