NAWU also publicised the exile of the leader of the strike action, Fred Waters, to Haast's Bluff, west of Alice Springs, over 1,500 km (930 mi) from his home and family, by the Department of Native Affairs, despite having not been convicted of any crime.
NAWU president Murray Norris garnered support on a speaking tour of the eastern states, helping non-Indigenous people to understand the conditions suffered by Aboriginal Territorians.
The group based the principles, constitution and subsequent campaigns of the council on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (passed in 1948),[1] with the intention of testing existing Australian laws against this standard.
The three speakers at the inaugural meeting, medical practitioner and church moderator Charles Duguid of South Australia, writer Alan Marshall, and Doug Nicholls.
Another of Andrews' regular correspondents was Mary Montgomerie Bennett, who worked with the Wongutha people of the Eastern Goldfields region of WA.
Pickford's presence brought in more Aboriginal Victorians, including Laurie Moffatt from Lake Tyers, Joe McGinness' sister Margaret Edwards, and Nicholls and Bill Onus were all active during the 1960s.
[4] In 1962 it undertook to assist the FCAA with research for and the organisation of a campaign including a carefully-worded petition, to put pressure on the federal government to hold a referendum to allow constitutional change giving the Commonwealth the power to make laws pertaining to Indigenous Australians.
[1] Shirley Andrews, Barry Christopher and Stan Davey (of CAR) and Labor politician Gordon Bryant drafted the petition in Melbourne, which they then sent to other states for further refinement.
It highlighted the legislative and policy discrimination in the various states and territories "which deprive Aborigines of equal wages and employment opportunities and deny them the right to own and develop their remaining tribal lands".
[6] The laws and policies applied to Indigenous peoples governed matters including voting rights, marriage, property ownership, and wage rates, and there was wide disparity in the legislation within and among the states and territories.
There is no evidence in the organisation's files, held in the State Library of Victoria, of an exact date when it ceased to function, but its activities appear to have come to an end in the mid-1980s.