William Cooper (civil rights activist)

William Cooper (* 1861 (?) Yorta Yorta Territory in Victoria , † March 29, 1941 in Mooroopna , Victoria ) was a leader of the Aboriginal Australians who campaigned for their political rights. He founded the Australian Aboriginal League in 1934 and his greatest sustained political success was the introduction of the Day of Mourning , which has been celebrated annually in Australia since 1940.

Life

Cooper was born in the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal tribal area around the Murray River and Goulburn River in Victoria. He was the fifth of eight half-caste (half-blood) children of Kitty Lewis and his father, James Cooper, a worker. They lived near the Mologa Mission, which had existed since 1874 . Cooper worked in ranching stations. With the help of adults, he learned to read and read literary classics. He learned from the movements that stood up for the rights of the Indians of North America and New Zealand . He was married three times.

Cooper spent his final years in Cummeragnunja, a settlement where the first massive Aboriginal protest in Australian history took place, the Cummeragunja Walk-off , also in Coranderrk and on other reservations, citing the rights of the Maori and Canadian Indians as examples for the political conflict in Australia and returned to Barmah in November 1940.

He died impoverished at the age of 80, leaving behind his third wife and six children. His grave in Cumeroogunga is not marked.

One of his daughters, Ammy Charles, was the manager of the first Aboriginal dormitory, which opened in Melbourne in 1959, and one of his sons, Lynch Cooper, was an athlete who won Stawell Gift in 1928 and a sprint competition at the 1929 World Cup.

Aboriginal rights

He became the spokesman for the Australian Workers' Union in central Victoria and western New South Wales, and he was the founder and secretary of the Australian Aboriginal League in 1932. This was the first political organization to have only Aboriginal members. The League campaigned for the human and civil rights of the Aborigines.

He initiated a petition to King George V which included direct representation, Aboriginal voting rights in parliament and the transfer of Aboriginal rights to their original land as demands. He collected signatures for it in 1814, although regional administrations and state governments prevented him from doing so. In 1935 he led the first Aboriginal delegation, led by a Commonwealth Minister; and in 1938 the first delegation received by a prime minister. The governments rejected his demands on the occasion of these meetings.

His greatest political success was the enforcement of the Day of Mourning held on January 26, 1936 , in which not only the British conquest is celebrated, but also the rights of the Aborigines is pointed out. This day was first celebrated in 1940. In this dispute, the Cooper-led Australian Aboriginal League allied with the Jack Patten- led Aboriginal Progressive Association .

Protests against the November pogroms in 1938

On December 6, 1938, a few weeks after the November 1938 pogroms in Germany, in which the synagogues were desecrated and pillaged, Cooper led a delegation from the Australian Aboriginal League to the German consulate in Melbourne to hand over a petition calling for the " cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany "(cruel paranoia of the Jewish people by the National Socialist government).

On December 6, 2008, the 70th anniversary of the Aboriginal protest against Kristallnacht, Cooper's grandson, Alfred "Boydie" Turner, planted 70 Australian trees in Israel with the permission of the Israeli embassy . A celebration in Melbourne Parliament was held with the participation of a few dozen members of the Yorta Yorta tribe as well as the Prime Minister of Victoria John Brumby and the Minister for Family, Housing, Public and Aboriginal Affairs Jenny Macklin , MPs, diplomats and representatives of Jewish organizations .

On April 28, 2009, five trees were planted in the Forest of the Martyrs near Jerusalem on the occasion of a memorial ceremony in Israel. Turner and twelve family members of William Cooper took part, as did a number of leading representatives of Jewish organizations. On the same day, the Aboriginal Advancement League held a memorial service in Melbourne to commemorate Cooper's “ brave stance against the oppression of the Jews ”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information on www.kooriweb.org
2. ^ Australian Aborigines' League ( Memento of March 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
3. ^ Diane Barwick : Cooper, William (1861? –1941). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 8. Melbourne University Press, 1981, pp. 107-108. ( online )
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Aboriginal leader honored in Israel , Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), April 28, 2009.