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Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islanders Civil Rights

Decent Essays

Faith Bandler was one of the most prominent figures promoting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders civil rights in Australia, and played a significant role in the success of the 1967 referendum. Bandler’s background and early life significantly influenced her later activism, causing her to question injustices against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Bandler spent most of her adult life promoting the cause of ATSI civil rights and racial equality, and was involved in a number of key events, one of the most significant being the 1967 referendum. Bandler’s legacy is extremely important in Indigenous Australia’s and Australia’s history, and her life will continue to impact millions.
Bandler’s experiences with racial inequity in her early life prompted her to question injustices against Indigenous Australians and become an activist. Bandler 's father, Peter Mussing, was blackbirded from Vanuatu when he was 13 years old and worked on a Queensland sugar cane plantation for 17 years, eventually escaping and marrying Bandler 's mother, a Scottish-Indian woman living in New South Wales. Together they had had eight children, including Ida Faith Bandler in 1920. Throughout her childhood, Bandler heard about her father’s experiences, and witnessed how other Indigenous children at her school were racially abused. These encounters with racial inequality at a young age influenced and motivated her later activism. During World War II, Bandler and her sister Kath served in the

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