Politics With Michelle Grattan

Next week, Australians will look back at one the most significant moments in the struggle for Indigenous rights. August 23 marks the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill walk-off when Vincent Lingiari led a group of 200 Aboriginal workers and their families off a Northern Territory pastoral station in protest against their exploitative pay and working conditions. Labor’s spokesperson for human services, Linda Burney, who at the election became the first Indigenous woman to win a seat in the lower house, tells Michelle Grattan the events of Wave Hill were incredibly important and continue to be. Burney says the actions of Lingiari and the Gurindji people at Wave Hill were “heroic” and should be “fundamental to everyone’s education in Australia through the school curriculum”. Burney also traces the modern land rights movement to the walk-off. “The Gurindji with the support of unions and many others - non-Aboriginal people - came to the south and presented their case about living conditions, about rights to country