He was one of four co-founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights in the world.

[3] Craigie, along with Bert Williams, Michael Anderson and Tony Coorey, sent up a Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra in response to the government's Australia Day statement on land rights.

[6] The activists held a press conference and Craigie said they would maintain the space "indefinitely until we can work out our own Aboriginal government and maybe fill up the rest of the building with elected members from our own, Indigenous, sovereign nation.

Craigie gave evidence at the trial stating that the land the government had claimed was sacred and that paintings and rock arrangements which would have indicated its status had been moved and disrupted when Canberra was settled.

[3] In 1979, along with Cecil Patton, he stole the paintings of Aboriginal artist Yirawala from a commercial gallery which was run by a white man.