As Australians count down to the national referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the path to the historic vote can be traced back to a significant event 60 years ago.
On August 14, 1963, two petitions, one on bark and one on paper, were tabled in the House of Representatives in Canberra.
Written in Yolngu Matha and English, the Yirrkala Bark Petitions carried a message of protest and are considered foundational documents in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fight for land rights.
The Yolgnu people from Yirrkala in north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory were fighting against the removal of land on which they had lived, hunted and maintained connections to sites of significance for tens of thousands of years.
Bauxite mining leases were granted by the government, and the land was excised without any consultation with the people of Yirrkala.
In 1952 large and valuable deposits of bauxite, an aluminium ore, were found in Melville Bay, north of Yirrkala.
In February 1963, prime minister Robert Menzies announced the government had approved plans for the mining and processing of bauxite near Yirrkala.
Until this time, the Yolngu were unaware of the plans, or the government had made it legal for the land to be removed for mining.
Senior Yolgnu artists painted clan designs in ochre, charcoal and pipeclay around the edges of the bark petitions, demonstrating their ownership of the land.
The petition, signed by nine men and three women, stated that 500 people were residents of the land being removed, and the deal had been kept secret from them.
It also declared that sacred sites, such as Melville Bay, were vital to Yolngu and that the area had been used for hunting and gathering food since time immemorial.
The issue raised in the Yirrkala Bark Petitions has still not been finalised.
In 2019, the late Yunupingu, on behalf of the Gumatj clan, made an application for native title for land in the Gove Peninsula in north-eastern Arnhem Land.
At the same time, he lodged a compensation application for the alleged effects on the native title of certain executive and legislative acts from 1911-1978.
A young Yunupingu had helped his father and other Yolngu draft the Yirrkala Bark Petitions.
In May, a full bench of the Federal Court rejected the Commonwealth’s arguments regarding the potential for compensation to Gumatj people over leasing land to a mining company.
In June, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced the federal government had filed a special leave application in the High Court to appeal.
The federal government is yet to announce when Australians will vote on the referendum, but it will be held between October and December.
The referendum requires a majority of votes in a majority of states to succeed. If the vote is successful, parliament will then design the voice via legislation.
