Aboriginal Advancement League

[2] A national umbrella organisation, the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (later FCAATSI) was founded in February 1958 in Adelaide, South Australia, but the Aborigines Advancement League of South Australia (AALSA) finally disaffiliated in 1966, because it thought the federal organisation was too centred on Victoria.

[7] In 1968, the AAL, led by Bruce McGuinness and Bob Maza, invited Caribbean activist Roosevelt Brown to give a talk on Black Power in Melbourne, causing a media frenzy.

The Australian Black Power movement had emerged in Redfern in Sydney, Fitzroy, Melbourne, and South Brisbane, following the "Freedom Ride" led by Charles Perkins in 1965, but this visit brought the term to wider attention.

As well as providing a community facility, the building houses a museum and "keeping place" for items of historical, cultural and spiritual importance to Aboriginal people.

The newspaper was especially focused on educating non-Indigenous Australians about the activities of the VAAL, as well as the social and economic conditions in which Aboriginal Victorians lived.

While some sources report that Smoke Signals ceased publication in 1972,[17][14] library catalogues and Museums Victoria show that it went on being published occasionally until at least 2011.