[5][2] For many years Aboriginal pastoral workers in the Pilbara were denied cash wages and were only paid in supplies of tobacco, flour and other necessities.
Though there was a royal commission into the reported killing and burning of Aboriginal people in the East Kimberley, the police allegedly involved were brought to trial and acquitted.
[11] As well as proper wages and better working conditions, Aboriginal lawmen sought natural justice arising from the original Western Australian colonial Constitution.
As a condition for self-rule in the colony, the British Government insisted that once public revenue in WA exceeded 500,000 pounds, 1 per cent was to be dedicated to "the welfare of the Aboriginal natives" under Section 70 of the Constitution.
[13] Regarded as a pioneer of the Aboriginal rights movement in the 1940s,[14] he was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1972, and appointed NAIDOC Elder of the Year in 2002.
Further afield in Broome[2] and Derby and other inland northern towns, the strike movement was harshly suppressed by police action and was more short lived.
[5] The strike stimulated support from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, who helped establish the Committee for the Defence of Native Rights.
[2] Many of the Aboriginal strikers served time in jail;[2] some were seized by police at revolver point[citation needed] and put into chains for several days.
The local strike leader, Jacob Oberdoo, and other strikers held the policemen until they had regained some composure and then arranged their own arrests, insisting they be taken into custody.
McLeod described Oberdoo's reply to the Prime Minister rejecting the medal: The strikers sustained themselves with their traditional bush skills, hunting kangaroos and goats for both meat and skins.
[1][2] They also developed some cottage industry which brought some cash payment such as selling buffel grass seed in Sydney, the sale of pearl shell, and in surface mining.
[5] Before the strike commenced, Bindi organised meetings in south-eastern Pilbara, which attracted police attention, and authorities threatened to remove her from the area.
[1] Eventually they pooled their funds from surface mining and other cottage industries to buy or lease stations, including some they had formerly worked on, to run them as cooperatives.
[1][2][5][4][6] Aboriginal plaintiffs from Strelley Station finally commenced an action in the Supreme Court of Western Australia in 1994,[16] seeking a declaration that the 1905 repeal of section 70 was invalid.