Black Power Education in Melbourne: Koori Kollij in Historical Context

ABSTRACT

Koori Kollij was an Aboriginal Community Controlled educational programme in inner city Melbourne that used Black Power praxis to empower Koori students. 284 Koori students graduated as Aboriginal Health Workers with a uniquely holistic understanding of health between 1982 and 1990, they went on to establish scores of innovative health organisations. Activists taught community organisation, communications, the politics of health and Black Studies, and Koori Kollij was at the dynamic heart of the pan-Aboriginal movement for community survival, land rights and self-determination. This article uses the collections of the Aboriginal History Archive and interviews with former teachers and students to highlight the importance of Black Power in the development of the philosophies informing the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Movement. It contextualises Koori Kollij in its urban time and place, highlights the role of music, and engages theoretical insights regarding sovereignty and resistance to genocide.

KEYWORDS:

• Black power
• first nations
• colonialism
• Koori
• resistance
• Australia
• aboriginal community controlled health movement
• Gary Foley

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Wurundjeri Country where we wrote this article. We pay our respects to the Elders past and present. We dedicate this to all the Koori Kollij teachers and students.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term colonial genocide to highlight the particular context of colonial physical and cultural genocide against Aboriginal people in so-called Australia.

2 For example, M. Hemingway, The Long Journey: Colonialism, Community-Control and Indigenous Autonomy, VACCHO, Melbourne, 2011. www.vaccho.org.au/vcwp/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MichaelHemingway-Thesis-History-of-VACCHO.pdf (accessed April 18, 2020).

3 Anthony Birch, ‘Framing Fitzroy: Contesting and (De)constructing Place and Identity in a Melbourne Suburb’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2002).

4 The 1982 VAHS Health Workers Training Program was a predecessor to Koori Kollij, which opened in 1983 with the Aboriginal Health Worker Education Program as its first course. On the founding of VAHS see Pam Nathan, A Home Away From Home: A Study of the Aboriginal Health Service in Fitzroy, Victoria (Bundoora: Victoria, Pit Press, 1980), and A History of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation Inc., https://www.vaccho.org.au/assets/01-RESOURCES/TOPIC-AREA/CORPORATE/A-HISTORY-OF-THE-VICTORIAN-ABORIGINAL-HEALTH-SERVICE.pdf (accessed September 30, 2021). The key founders of VAHS also visited China and were influenced by the Barefoot Doctors. See ‘Aborigines Visiting China’, The West Australian January 17, 1974. http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/news/1970s/1974/wa17jan74.pdf (accessed June 30, 2023). For studies of the Barefoot Doctors in China see Fang, Xiaoping. Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China. Vol. 23. (Boydell & Brewer, 2012). http://www.jstor.org/stable/10 .7722/j.ctt1×7444.

5 Kelli McGuinness, ‘Recollections of Rock Against Racism, VAHS and Australia’s music scene in the 1980s and 1990s’ [interviewed by Will Bracks], 24 February 2022, Recorded Zoom interview, Melbourne, VIC.

6 The Aboriginal Community Elders Service and Kate Harvey, Aboriginal Elders’ Voices: Stories of the “The Tide of History”: Victorian Indigenous Elders’ Life Stories and Oral Histories (Melbourne: Language Australia, 2003), 98.

7 Hemingway, The Long Journey, 29.

8 Alan Brown ‘Koori Kollij Coordinators Report 1983’, Series 0023, 034, Box 34, A00000563, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

9 See Cheryl Buchanan, ‘Koori Kollij Video Student Productions, interviews with the staff and students of Koori Kollij, Lionel Fogarty reading poetry and Koori Kollij News, Umatic video tape, 1984’, Series Box 0023, Box 002, A00003173, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

10 The Swinburne course is the subject of a forthcoming article by Prof Foley’s research group.

11 Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 388.

12 For example see Commissioner for Crown Lands Charles James Tyers, ‘Crown Lands: Squatters’ Runs, Gippsland, 1844–1860 (Balgowlah, N.S.W.: W. & F. Pascoe, 1844), State Library of Victoria. Ben Silverstein, ‘Theoretical Frontiers’, in The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Global History, ed. Ann McGrath and Lynnette Russell (Oxford: Routledge, 2022), 56–85.

13 Massacres are detailed at The Centre for 21st Century Humanities, Research team led by Lyndall Ryan, Colonial Frontiers Massacre Map https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/introduction.php. For a contextual reading regarding the uses and discussion of definitions of “massacre” in relation to genocide to create Australia, see Philip Dwyer and Lyndall Ryan, ‘Reflections on Genocide and Settler-Colonial Violence’, History Australia 13, no. 3 (2016): 335–50. doi: 10.1080/14490854.2016.1202336.

14 See Joanna Cruickshank and Mark McMillan, ‘Lawful Conduct, Aboriginal Protection and Land in Victoria, 1859–1869,’ in Aboriginal protection and its intermediaries in Britain's antipodean colonies Routledge (2020), 194–291. https://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30128174

15 Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘Creating the Aboriginal Vagrant: Protective Governance and Indigenous Mobility in Colonial Australia,’ Pacific Historical Review 87, no. 1 (2018): 79–100. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26419880.

16 Victoria, An Act to provide for the Protection and Management of the Aboriginal Natives of Victoria 1869, 1. https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgibin/viewdb/au/legis/vic/hist_act/aatpftpamotanov757/

17 Gary Foley 1982 Clash Concert Sydney, NFSA ID797443, 2005. https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/dramatically-black-green-bush-im-black-australian (accessed June 30, 2023). https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/dramatically-black-green-bush-im-black-australian

18 Leigh Boucher and Lynette Russell, Settler Colonial Governance in Nineteenth Century Victoria (Acton ACT: ANU Press, 2015). “Protectors” is in quotation marks because they were a direct threat to Aboriginal people, they did not protect them. As Yorta Yorta rapper Adam Briggs says, “who protects us from protectors?” A.B. Original, ‘Report to the Mist’, Reclaim Australia, Golden Era Records/ Bad Apples Music, 2017).

19 Clare Land, ‘Shifting definitions: the 1886 Aborigines Protection Act, ‘race’ and ‘half-castes,’ (Honours Thesis, Department of History, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2006); Clare Land, ‘Law and the Construction of ‘Race’: Critical Race Theory and the Aborigines Protection Act, 1886, Victoria, Australia’, in Rethinking Colonial Histories: New and Alternative Approaches, eds. Penelope Edmonds and Samuel Furphy (Melbourne, Vic.: RMIT Publishing, 2006), 137–56.

20 Penny Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-Century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver, Canada: University of British Colombia, 2010).

21 Daniel Browning, ‘The Politics of Skin: Not Black Enough’, Artlink 30, no. 1 (2010): 22–7.

22 The repression and agency of Aboriginal people can be read through colonial eyes in Victoria. Parliament, Report upon the operation of the Aborigines Act 1928 and the regulations and orders made thereunder (Melbourne Vic.: W.M. Houston, Govt. Printer, 1957).

23 Gary Foley, ‘Black Power in Redfern, 1968–1972’ (BA Hons thesis, Department of History, University of Melbourne, 2001), 4. John Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal activism (Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007).

24 Victims or Victors?: The Story of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1985), 27.

25 Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972. (Sydney, NSW: Sydney University Press, 2008).

26 Foley, ‘Black Power in Redfern, 1968–1972’, 4.

27 National Museum Australia, ‘1938: Sesquicentenary and Aboriginal Day of Mourning’ https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/day-of-mourning (accessed June 30, 2023).

28 Birch 2002. Primary sources documenting peoples’ addresses and occupations are Australian Electoral Roles and telephone books of the period. The post war period is recognised as a critical turning point for Indigenous communities organising for resurgence see Deirdre Howard-Wagner, Indigenous Invisibility in the City: Successful Resurgence and Community Development Hidden in Plain Sight (Routledge 2020), 48–71. https://doi.org/10.4324/978042950651248-71.

29 Diane E. Barwick, A Little More than Kin: Regional Affiliation and Group Identity Among Aboriginal Migrants in Melbourne (PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Australian National University, 1963).

30 Bunta Patten Bunj Consultants, Snapshots of Aboriginal Fitzroy (Melbourne, Vic.: City of Yarra, 2002), 20.

31 Gary Foley and Tim Anderson, ‘Land Rights and Aboriginal Voices’, Australian Journal of Human Rights 12, no. 1 (2006): 83–108. doi: 10.1080/1323238X.2006.11910814. Deborah Wilson, ‘Different White People: Communists, Unionists and Aboriginal Rights 1946–1972’ (PhD Thesis University of Tasmania 2013). https://doi.org/10.25959/23237192.v1

32 Gary Foley, ‘Harold Holt's Death and Why the 1967 Referendum Failed Indigenous People’ IndigenousX, 29 May 2017 https://indigenousx.com.au/gary-foley-harold-holts-death-and-why-the-1967-referendum-failed-indigenous-people/

33 Gary Foley, ‘Gary Foley the Godfather of Aboriginal Activism Speaking the Truth’ (interview, Melbourne, VIC, 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH_W_G4uBz4 (accessed June 30, 2023).

34 Gary Foley, Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service 1971-1991: Twenty Years of Community Service. Aboriginal Medical Service Co-operative (Redfern, New South Wales: William Homer, 1991), 5.

35 Gary Foley, ‘Black Power in Redfern, 1968-1972’ (BA Honours thesis, Department of History, University of Melbourne, 2001). Alyssa L. Trometter, Aboriginal Black Power and the Rise of the Australian Black Panther Party, 1967–1972 (Charm, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2021) and ‘Malcolm X and The Aboriginal Black Power Movement in Australia, 1967–1972’, The Journal of African American History 100, no. 2 (2015): 226–49.

36 Gary Foley, ‘Black Power in Redfern, 1968–1972’ (BA Honours thesis, Department of History, University of Melbourne, 2001), 8.

37 Foley, ‘Black Power in Redfern, 1968–1972’, 8.

38 Ibid. and Johanna Perheentupa Redfern: Aboriginal Activism in the 1970s (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2020), 67–9.

39 See Aboriginal Legal Service, “Our History: 50+ years of resistance, resilience and solidarity” 2023, https://www.alsnswact.org.au/history.

40 Perheentupa Redfern: Aboriginal Activism in the 1970s.

41 Bruce McGuinness in Naomi Mayers, Alma Thorpe, Marj. Thorpe, Bruce McGuinness, Sol Bellear, Denis Walker, Graham Austin, Henry Councillor, Tony McCartney, Lyn Helms, ‘The Philosophy and some history of the relationship with government of the National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation’ (unpublished report, 1984), 8. http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/135.pdf (accessed July 2, 2023).

42 Ibid., 18.

43 Gary Foley and Edwina Howell, ‘A History of the Media Strategy of the Aboriginal Land Right, Black Power and Self-Determination Movement’, in Routledge Companion to Media and Activism, ed. G. Meikle (London: Routledge, 2018), 9.

44 Ibid.

45 Foley, ‘Black Power in Redfern, 1968–1972’, 2−3.

46 Foley Media Strategy, 3. Summarised from Edwina Howell, Tangled Up in Black: A study of the activist strategies of the black power movement through the life of Gary Foley (PhD Dissertation, Anthropology, Monash University, 2013). Also see Alyssa L. Trometter, Aboriginal Black Power and the Rise of the Australian Black Panther Party, 1967–1972 (Charm, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2021); ‘Malcolm X and The Aboriginal Black Power Movement in Australia, 1967–1972’, The Journal of African American History 100, no. 2 (2015): 226–49.

47 Roberta Sykes, Ann Turner and Neville Bonner, Black Power in Australia: Bobbi Sykes versus Senator Neville Bonner (Heinemann Educational Australia, 1975), 10.

48 Bruce McGuinness quoted in Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights A Documentary History (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 243.

49 Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin. Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. 1st ed. (University of California Press, 2013), 368.

50 The Koorier Issue 5, 1968, 8.

51 Alick Jackomos, ‘Remembering Aboriginal Fitzroy’, 28, unpublished manuscript.

52 Alan Brown, ‘Koori Kollij Coordinators Report 1983’, Series 0023, 034, Box 34, A00000563, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

53 McGuinness and Foley co-founded Redfern Radio in 1981, now known as Koori Radio, and McGuinness was also one of the first Aboriginal filmmakers, producing the short film Black Fire in the early 1970s. Gary Foley, “Obituary of Bruce B. McGuinness: Activist for Aboriginal Rights”, The Age, October 2, 2003. http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/heroes/biogs/bruce_mcguinness.html (last accessed June 30, 2023).

54 Pete Steedman, A Report on the Course in Community Organisation at Swinburne College of Technology, 1 June 1976, 1.

55 Mureena Vol.3 No.3 August 1978. The cover page headline reads “Good News.. Worthy Retires!!! Bad News.. Comm. Org. Course Forced to Close … ”

56 Michael Hemingway, VACCHO The Long Journey: Colonialism, Community-Control & Indigenous Autonomy (Victoria, Vaccho, 2010), 29–30. https://vaccho.org.au/archive/assets/01-RESOURCES/HISTORY-VACCHO.pdf (accessed June 30, 2023).

57 Bruce McGuinness, ‘Health and Crime in Black Australia’ (Conference paper, Aboriginal Health Conference 1982) https://nacchocommunique.com/2012/12/07/naccho-naiho-1982-aboriginal-health-conference-paper-bruce-mcguinness/ (accessed June 30, 2023).

58 Ronald Johnson in Bunj Consultants, Snapshots, 49. Also see Bronwyn Fredericks, ‘“We Don’t Leave Our Identities at the City Limits”: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People Living in Urban Localities,’ Australian Aboriginal Studies 2013, no. 1 (July 2013): 4–16.

59 Alick Jackomos, ‘Remembering Aboriginal Fitzroy’, 24.

60 Yarra City Council, The Aboriginal History of Yarra website, Fitzroy Aboriginal Heritage Walking Trail https://aboriginalhistoryofyarra.com.au/FitzroyAboriginalHeritageWalkingTrail.pdf (accessed June 30, 2023).

61 Crystal McKinnon ‘Expressing Indigenous Sovereignty: The Production of Embodied Texts in Social Protest and the Arts’ (PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 2018), 9.

62 Aunty Joy Murphy-Wandin in Bunj Consultants, Snapshots of Aboriginal Fitzroy (Melbourne, Vic.: City of Yarra, 2002), 7.

63 Paul Mitchell, “Community Control: Koorie Kollege” Inwurra 1983, Series 0023, 034, Box 34, A00000563, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

64 Clare Land, Decolonizing solidarity: dilemmas and directions for supporters of indigenous struggles (London: Zed Books, 2015), 129.

65 Foley as cited in Ibid., 129.

66 Kembaki 1984, 38, Series 0023, 034, Box 34, A00000563, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

67 The NAIHO definition of health stipulated that ‘health does not mean the physical well being of an individual, but refers to the social emotional and cultural well being of the whole community’. Bruce McGuinness, from Paper presented to the Aboriginal Health Conference 1982, entitled ‘Health and Crime in Black Australia’, https://nacchocommunique.com/tag/naiho-history/ (accessed 11 November 2023).

68 ‘Alcoholism’ Kembaki 1984, 25.

69 Brown, Coordinators Report 1983.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Tiriki Onus, ‘Interlude,’ in Representing Australian Aboriginal Music and Dance 1930– 1970, eds Amanda Harris, Shannon Foster, Tiriki Onus and Nardi Simpson (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 87.

74 Kutcha Edwards in Bunj Consultants, Snapshots, 47.

75 See Recording of the Koori Kollij Video Newsletter, No:1. 1984, VHS Video Cassette Tape, 1984’, Series T0003, 125, Shelves 1, A00000021, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

76 Quote from Nikki Moodie, J. Maxwell, and S. Rudolph, ‘The Impact of Racism on the Schooling Experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students: A Systematic Review’, Aust. Educ. Res. 46, no. 273–295 (2019): 291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-019-00312-8. Also see Roberta B. Sykes, Incentive, Achievement and Community: an Analysis of Black Viewpoints on Issues Relating to Black Australian Education / Roberta B. Sykes (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1986).

77 Amy Quayle, Christopher Sonn and Pilar Kasat, ‘Community arts as Public Pedagogy: Disruptions into Public Memory Through Aboriginal Counter-Storytelling’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 20, no. 3 (2016): 261–77. doi: 10.1080/13603116.2015.1047662. See also Alice-Anne Psaltis, ‘Artpolitical Environment: Richard Bell and Emory Douglas's Burnett Lane Mural,’ Electronic Melbourne Art Journal 10, no. 17 (2018): 1–25. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/artpolitical-environment-richard-bell-emory/docview/2064865664/se-2.

78 See Kembaki and Inwarra, op cit.

79 Fran Edmonds, Making Murals, Revealing Histories: Murals as an Assertion of Aboriginality in Melbourne's Inner North’, In Urban Representations: Cultural expression, identity and politics, ed. Sylvia Kleinert and Grace Koch (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2012), 22.

80 McKinnon, ‘Expressing Indigenous Sovereignty’, 98.

81 Brown Coordinators Report 1983.

82 Ibid.

83 ‘Commonwealth Games protest material, photos, newsclippings, press release, 1982’, Series 32, Box 33, A00000555, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

84 Bev Murray in Bunj Consultants, Snapshots, 45.

85 Series T0053, Box 97, A00001740, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

86 Ibid.

87 [Unarchived] A. Brown, ‘Alan Brown Interview about Koori Kollij’ [interviewed by Natasha Ritchie and Will Bracks], 25 May 2023, Digital Audio Recording, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, VIC.

88 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘Introduction,’ in Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2007), 2.

89 McKinnon, ‘Expressing Indigenous Sovereignty’.

90 Crystal McKinnon, ‘Indigenous Music as a Space of Resistance’, in Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity ed. Tracey Banivanua Mar and Penelope Edmonds (London, United Kingdom, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 255–72.

91 William Phillip Bracks, ‘Decolonizing Music: A History of Australia’s Rock Against Racism Movement’ (Master of Research, Victoria University, 2022).

92 Kayleen Everett in Kembaki, 1984, A00000563, 11.

93 Bracks, ‘Decolonizing Music’, 29.

94 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Australia) and Ronald Wilson and Australia. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them home: report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (Sydney, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997).

95 The lyrics to Bart Willoughby’s song include the lyrics ‘We have survived the white man’s world and you know you can’t change that!’ See Donald Robertson, No Fixed Address (Melbourne VIC, Hybrid Publishers, 2023), v. You can watch the official film clip and the song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVI2CxvqtII

96 Andrew Morgan, ‘Koorie Anthem,’ Kembaki (1984): 43. The rewriting of the national anthem and other famous songs seems to have been a student activity which often appears in the student newspapers.

97 Mishuana Goeman, ‘Indigenous Performances: Upsetting the Terrains of Settler Colonialism’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35, no. 4 (2011): 8.

98 Onus, ‘Interlude’, 87.

99 Bracks, ‘Decolonizing Music’.

100 Ibid., 25–28.

101 McGuinness, ‘Recollections … ’.

102 ‘Rock Against Racism: Northcote Town Hall 19-12-82. Tape 2’, Series 3, Box 137, A00000134, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

103 McGuinness, ‘Recollections … ’ 2022.

104 Ibid.

105 ‘Audio recording of Rock Against Racism live concert held in Albert Park Melbourne’, Series 1, Box 153, A00000973, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

106 Alan Brown, ‘Historic RR Submission’, [email to W. Bracks, C. Land, J. Katona and G. Foley],

107 Funding cuts correspondence, Series 0023, 034, Box 34, A00000563, Aboriginal History Archive, Melbourne, Australia.

108 Alan Brown, Letter to Department of Education in Ibid.

109 Brown, Coordinators Report 1983.

110 VAHS. (n.d.) ‘Aboriginal Community Initiative, Involvement/Participation and Control of Aboriginal Affairs’. www.kooriweb.org/bbm/essay4.html (accessed April 6, 2014).

111 Brown ‘Koori Kollij Coordinators Report 1983’, 10.

112 Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shannon Woodcock

Shannon Woodcock is a white historian who works with Koori Community direction and is based on Gunai Kurnai Country.

Gary Foley

Gary Foley is a Gumbainggir activist and intellectual who currently leads the Aboriginal History Archive at the Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic Unit at Victoria University. Foley was one of the founders and teachers at Koori Kollij.

Clare Land

Clare Land is a non-Koori activist and historian who works with colleagues at Moondani Balluk and the Aboriginal History Archive to advance their research programs in history and community-based research.

Will Bracks

Will Bracks is a non-Koori Research Archivist at Gary Foley's Aboriginal History Archive. He completed a master by research thesis on a history of Australia's Rock Against Racism in 2022 and is interested in research on music and Australian activist history.

Alan Brown

Alan Brown is a Gunditjmara man who has worked in the Aboriginal Community Controlled health field since the 1970s. He was the coordinator of Koori Kollij 1982–1990, and a Director of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service for more than thirty years.

Jon Hawkes

Jon Hawkes is a whitefella who has known and been arguing with Foley for 50 years. He is an accession lead at the Aboriginal History Archive.

Natasha Ritchie

Natasha Ritchie is a First Nations Research Archivist at the Aboriginal History Archive.