Activists Pitch the Aboriginal Tent Embassy

On 26 January 1972, four Aboriginal men traveled from Sydney to Canberra and set up a beach umbrella on the lawns directly in front of Parliament House. The demonstrators, Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Tony Coorey, and Bertie Williams, arrived in response to an Australia Day policy announcement by Prime Minister William McMahon. The McMahon coalition government had reiterated its refusal to recognize Aboriginal land rights or native title. Instead, it proposed offering conditional fifty-year leases that depended on applicants proving their intention and capacity to make reasonable economic and social use of the land, while preserving Crown rights over forestry and minerals.

Bertie Williams suggested identifying the modest campsite as an embassy. This deliberate choice of title highlighted that Aboriginal people had never ceded sovereignty over their ancestral lands and had never concluded a treaty with the British Crown. Organizers pointed out that despite being the original inhabitants of the continent, Indigenous Australians were treated as foreigners in their own country while remaining the only cultural group lacking a diplomatic post in the federal capital. Within weeks, the beach umbrella was replaced by several tents, drawing activists and non-Indigenous supporters from across the nation.