In his early life he started as a stockman at Wave Hill Station, where the Aboriginal workers were given no more than rations, tobacco and clothing as their payment.
Vincent Lingiari was born in 1919, according to Australian Government records, but some sources allege his date of birth was actually 13 June 1908.
Although initially an employee-rights action, it soon became a major federal issue when the Gurindji people demanded the return of their traditional lands.
This act was the basis by which Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people could apply for freehold title to traditional lands (known as Native title in Australia) in the Northern Territory and, significantly, the power to negotiate over mining and development on those lands, including what type of compensation they would like.
[12] An important and symbolic event in Australian history occurred when, during an emotional ceremony in 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam poured the local sand into Lingiari's hands, symbolically handing a small part of land belonging to the Wave Hill station back to the Gurindji people, on a 30-year pastoral lease.
[13][14][15] A photograph of the moment captured by Mervyn Bishop was purchased by the National Portrait Gallery and is displayed in Old Parliament House.
[20] The Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lectures have been held at the Casuarina campus amphitheatre of Charles Darwin University since 1996, featuring speakers as diverse as Gough Whitlam, Marcia Langton, Malcolm Fraser, Pat Dodson and Bruce Pascoe.
[21] The story of his part in the strike is also told in Irish folk musician Damien Dempsey's song "Wave Hill Walk Off", on his 2016 album No Force on Earth.
[22][23] The Vincent Lingiari Cup, is an Aussie rules football competition that takes place at the annual Freedom Day Festival each year in Kalkaringi.
[27][31] In 2019 the award theme was "Our Country – True Story", relating to the call for truth-telling which was made in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart,[25] and the submissions were exhibited from 4 September at the Tangentyere Artists Gallery.
[25] Judge Hetti Perkins selected the painting Raining at Laramba, by Grace Kemarre Robinya (born 1942) of Tangentyere Artists as the winner.
The title refers to the small community of Laramba, near Napperby Station, where Robinya used to live, where the water supply contains three times the level of uranium considered to be the safe limit.