Thread by @AusPolMate

🧵1/ If not 1938, then when?
Jack Patten, legendary Yorta Yorta man. He was an athlete, orator, activist & founder of the first Aboriginal newspaper,

Edition 1/6- Aus Day 1938, 150 yrs after the 1st fleet landed, saw Jack organise a national day of mourning.
#VoteYes #Auspol

2/ Edition 2/6- A stark contrast. 60 years earlier, the 1st cricket team to visit England was all Aboriginal.
A Judge lamented being unable to flog Aboriginals when sentencing Packsaddle (Real name: Too Put Ah Malay).

3/ Edition 3/6- The Abo Call survives a police compliance audit.
They are then hit with a ￡300 bond payment. The law required all newspapers to pay this in the event they breached any laws.
Through goodwill, the money was loaned to them.
Jack must've been an extraordinary man!

4/ Edition 4/6- Jack succeeds in raising the racist exclusion of Aborigines from social insurance schemes into the parliamentary debate. Quoted below.
The all-white Aboriginal Protection Board organised clergymen and anthropologists when all they wanted was equal opportunity.

5/ Edition 5/6- Laws were made to keep 'half-castes' separate from full-bloods. Half-castes were shunned by full-bloods and whites. Sending half-caste children to school invited severe bullying & harassment for the kids and community reprisals from the community at large.

6/ Edition 6/6- We are told about La Perouse, an Aboriginal reservation used to demonstrate Australia's "successful" Aboriginal policies. In reality, no other reservation came close to its facilities & support.
The financial viability of a newspaper whose audience was poor and

7/
often illiterate was always going to be a struggle. IMO it's probable white people with money would not pay to read about how society was failing the Aborigines.

For reasons raised in the 'Abo Call' and many more, I am looking forward to #VoteYes.