In the 60s and 70s Aboriginal people were allowed to drink in hotels, but only in the public bar. Sadly, in more isolated areas, this continued well into the 80s and 90s.
Indigenous alcohol consumption
While the rate of alcohol abstention is high, the rate of both short- and long-term risky drinking in indigenous Australians causes some concern. Indigenous Australians were prohibited from buying alcohol until the end of the 1960s.
Australians vote yes to change the Constitution
On 27 May 1967, Australians voted to change the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them.
1967 saw the commonwealth referendum and Aboriginal peoples were granted the right of citizenship. The federal Labor Government led by Gough Whitlam adopted the policy of 'self-determination' for Indigenous communities in 1972.
Background to status of Aboriginal Australians prior to 1967
When the Australian constitution took effect on 1 January 1901, each individual state acquired the primary lawmaking power over Aboriginal people. Consequently, the legal status of Aboriginal people shifted from British subjects to wards of the state.
From the first federal electoral Act in 1902 to 1965, when the last state changed its law, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were subject to regulations which prohibited them from voting at federal and state elections.
Indigenous Australians were formally acknowledged as part of our nation's population. Until the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not included in the census and therefore weren't considered members of the Australian population.
In April 1971, Mr Justice Blackburn delivered his judgment that, under the Australian law as it then stood, Aboriginal people had no legal claims to land. This ruling meant that Australian state governments would need to pass legislation if Aboriginal people were to be granted such rights.
In 1965, a group of students from the University of Sydney drew national and international attention to the appalling living conditions of Aboriginal people and the racism that was rife in New South Wales country towns.
The British settlement in Australia was not peaceful. Aboriginal people were moved off their traditional land and killed in battles or by hunting parties. European diseases such as measles and tuberculosis also killed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Most Australians thought that the 1967 referendum would allow full citizenship rights for Indigenous Australians. But the referendum didn't give Aborigines the vote, equal pay or citizenship rights. It also didn't address their rates of pay or personal freedoms – issues that also needed urgent attention.
It is probably unnecessary for me to state that the campaign was indeed successful, and spectacularly so, because the 1967 referendum saw the highest 'yes' vote ever recorded in a federal referendum with an unprecedented 90.77 per cent vote for change.
In 1960, Aboriginal people were mostly denied the vote, were not counted in the Census, were still subject to extreme controls by bureaucrats, in some parts of Australia were confined to reserves or lived around our towns and cities in humpies and car bodies.
The 'poison grog'
Within weeks of the arrival of the First Fleet, the first pubs opened. That shaped the way Australian society developed over the next few decades. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander labourers were paid in alcohol or tobacco (if their wages were not stolen).
The stereotype that aboriginal people have a genetic intolerance to alcohol persists in Canada and around the world, but a Manitoba medical expert says studies show a possible predisposition to alcoholism really boils down to social conditions such as poverty.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
On 3 June 1992 the High Court of Australia recognised that a group of Torres Strait Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, held ownership of Mer (Murray Island). In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people.
On 26 January 1972 four Indigenous men set up a beach umbrella on the lawns opposite Parliament House in Canberra. Describing the umbrella as the Aboriginal Embassy, the men were protesting the McMahon government's approach to Indigenous land rights.
In December 1976 the federal parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. It was the first legislation in Australia that enabled First Nations peoples to claim land rights for Country where traditional ownership could be proven.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights and interests in land are formally recognised over around 50 per cent of Australia's land mass. Connection to land is of central importance to First Nations Australians.
Proportion of all land that is Indigenous owned or controlled. Nationally as at June 2022, 16.1 per cent of Australia's land area was owned or controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is unchanged from the same time in the previous two years (June 2020 and 2021) (figure SE15a. 1).
The Stolen Generations refers to a period in Australia's history where Aboriginal children were removed from their families through government policies. This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.
Official records state at least 40 men, women and children were killed, but other historians suggest hundreds of Aboriginal people died that day. Today, the site of the killings bears no obvious evidence of the murders.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were granted Australian citizenship along with all other Australians in 1948. (Before this all Australians were British subjects). Citizenship did not give voting rights to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples though.
This history of injustice has meant that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been denied access to basic human rights, such as rights to health, housing, employment and education. Did you know that there were over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages at the time of colonisation?