Reader advisory: Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following post includes an image of a person since deceased.
This fortnight we salute Kumantjayi Perkins (1936 - 2000) (known in his lifetime as Charles or Charlie Perkins), noted Aboriginal activist, soccer player, and senior Australian Commonwealth (federal) public servant.
Kumantjayi Perkins was born in the Northern Territory in 1936 of Arrente and Kalkadoon parentage. He was educated in Adelaide an Sydney, and his soccer (football) skills took him to England.
He was a prominent figure in the Freedom Rides of the 1964 and 1965, where activists sought to reveal entrenched racism in rural areas of my Australian home State of New South Wales.
Perkins saw many firsts in his life in Australia:
- First aboriginal to graduate with a university degree
- First aboriginal to play soccer at an elite level
- First aboriginal to be the permanent head of an Australian Government department
- Longest living Australian kidney transplant recipient (28 years at the time of his death).
(Actually, I remember recalling from his biography by Peter Read, how he said he felt that a scrubbing brush had instantly gone through his brain and tidied things up as soon as he had the transplant; I was monstrously disappointed because i did not experience this! It took me about a month; Pauline would believe that this is yet to happen.)
He did not allow his public servant status to get in the way of describing injustice as he saw it, and regularly made the headlines for criticising politicians. He was suspended from his job in 1972 for doing this.
He was created an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1987.
Websites documenting the life and work of Kumantjani Perkins include:
- Wikipedia article
- Collaborating for indigenous rights 1957-1973 (published by the Museum of Australia) > biography of Charles Perkins
- Australian biography (produced by Film Australia) > Charles Perkins interview
- Screen Australia - digital learning > Charles Perkins interview (this is an expanded version of the previous page, including teaching resource notes)
- Project on Charles Perkins by students of Anderson's Creek Primary School, Warrandyte, Victoria
- Fact sheet on Charles Nelson Perkins, published by the National Archives of Australia
- Papers of Charles Perkins in the National Library of Australia
- Message Club [program on ABC Australia] - Didj U know stories - Freedom Rides, by Kezla Dawkins
- The Australian Freedom Rides (website based on a radio documentary by Darce Cassidy)
- Daniel Lewis, Freedom Ride inspires a new generation, Sydney Morning Herald, 5th February 2005
- Wikipedia article on the Freedom Ride
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- This image is reproduced from the website The Australian Freedom Rides
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