The only counter to the attempted coup by a small number of white Aboriginals is to repeal The Native Title Act.
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Galarrwuy Yunupingu: Lord of the Manor
Keith Windschuttle
Quadrant, 13 Mar 2025
When Queen Elizabeth died in September last year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave her a respectful but formal eulogy, saying: “With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, an historic reign and a long life devoted to duty, family, faith and service has come to an end.” However, when the Aboriginal identity Galarrwuy Yunupingu died in April 2023, Albanese could hardly contain himself. This once plain-speaking politician plunged into poetics:
Now Yunupingu is gone, but the gurtha—the great tongue of flame and truth with which he spoke to us—is still here. And it lights the path ahead for us. We will never again hear his voice anew, but his words—and his legacy—will keep speaking to us … He lifted us up and held us there so that we could see as far as he did. And what a vision he shared with us …
Yunupingu’s admirers among the Aboriginal political elite were even more complimentary. Melbourne academic Marcia Langton declared him to be “the greatest leader Australia had ever known”. This was reported by the Australian’s indigenous specialist reporter Paige Taylor the day after he died, and has not been retracted since. So this exorbitant quote was not an error. Langton thought Yunupingu not just our greatest Aboriginal leader but Australia’s greatest leader ever.
The news media worked hard to sustain this degree of adoration. The Australian devoted the entire front page of its April 3 edition to a close-up photograph of Yunupingu’s face. Most other newspapers in the capital cities did much the same.
What did Yunupingu accomplish to deserve such acclaim? Albanese said he was the founder of the movement for Aboriginal land rights and a long-time symbol of the uncompromising persistence that was needed to win the cause. In 1978 he was made Australian of the Year for his contribution. Most news stories in April dutifully followed Albanese’s claims. He said:
He made sure with the sheer power of his advocacy for land rights. He made sure when he helped draft the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, which delivered such a powerful message that resounded within the walls of the nation’s parliament.
However, none of Albanese’s claims above were true. When broadcast at Yirrkala, they must have generated infuriated expletives among those who actually did conceive and draft the famous bark petitions. Moreover, the idea of making claims for land rights was not founded by Yunupingu and, when he did have a significant role in the movement years later, there was a stench of corruption about his distribution of the royalties, both to other clans and among his own. He attracted bad publicity in sexual politics too. In 2006, he stood in a Darwin court accused of a violent sexual assault that threatened the life of one of his four wives. To cap this list, on his watch and close within his family there was an awful killing of a woman for which the male culprit got off lightly.Now, I’m not raising these distasteful topics just to disparage Albanese and the news media for the mythical creature they have created. Yunupingu’s career also has implications for the constitutional change these parties are now promoting. If their referendum gets up, its romantic ambition of restoring traditional Aboriginal culture will preserve the careers of indigenous men like Yunupingu. Not only will the Big Men of clans remain dominant over many communities in remote Australia but the Voice will embed new generations of these indigenous oligarchs. Their constitutional protection will make them a law unto themselves, no matter how badly they serve their dependent constituents. So let me outline here, and in our following edition, aspects of Yunupingu’s career that the mainstream media coverage of his death largely omitted or got completely wrong.
The Methodist mission and the mining company
In 1935 a Methodist mission for Aborigines was established at Yirrkala on the north-east coast of Arnhem Land. Before the white men arrived, the monsoonal deluge from November to April always made it difficult for local clans to hunt, fish and gather plant food. They were glad to come, voluntarily, to the mission to get three free meals a day and sleep in dry beds. Most who came in regularly for food eventually decided to stay. This included Yunupingu’s father, Munggurawuy Yunupingu, then the Big Man of the Gumatj clan, who brought into the mission his eleven wives and twenty-four children. The Gumatj were one of thirteen clans on the Gove Peninsula who identified as Yolngu. Galarrwuy Yunupingu was one of the sons educated at the Yirrkala mission school, where he learned to speak English.
In the Second World War the Gove Peninsula became one of the strategically important sites in the Northern Territory. As well as army roads into the peninsula, the Royal Australian Air Force constructed a runway there (on the site of the present mining town of Nhulunbuy), and built a causeway to connect Gunyangara, an island in Melville Bay, to the main peninsula, creating a base for Catalina flying boats. In short, before Yunupingu was born in 1948, the war had opened up the region to the modern world and the local Aborigines had accommodated themselves to it.
The pace of change accelerated in the 1970s when the Swiss and Australian company Nabalco gained a lease from the Commonwealth government over a swathe of land on the peninsula and began constructing an alumina mine and processing plant. It also built the township of Nhulunbuy to house three thousand employees, plus a range of modern facilities, including a hospital and three schools.
