Charles Perkins Aboriginal Rights

Charles Perkins was an activist who spent most of his life fighting for Indigenous people and their rights. He pushed himself out into a world full of racism, to raise awareness of the issues Indigenous people are facing in education, housing, health and their employment. He was a national spokesperson fighting for the rights of Indigenous people throughout Australia. Perkins through his Freedom Rides fought against racial discrimination towards Indigenous Australians and fought for the concept of ‘closing the gap’, pushing the idea of equal opportunities for Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people inside education and within the community.

Charles Nelson Perkins was born in Alice Springs in 1936 to an Arrente mother, Hetty and Kalkadoon father, Connelly . He died in 2007 due to a kidney disease that had been ongoing for many years. While in Alice Springs Perkins lived in a mud hut and studied at St Mary’s Church School, a segregated school on the telegraph reserve that was optional to whether or not Indigenous children attended. Around the age of 10, Perkins, his mother and his siblings were forced to relocate to ‘Rainbow town’, (a settlement built for Indigenous people outside of Alice Springs) as it was illegal for Indigenous people to live in Alice Springs at that time.

Father Smith moved to Alice Springs around 1936, his goal was to educate Indigenous students. Smith felt that the conditions in Alice were not

The group led by Perkins, consisted of around 35 other students including Gary Williams, another Indigenous student at the university. In 1965 the group were bound for regional towns around NSW. Their goal was to highlight racism, Indigenous health, education and housing. The freedom rides were a copy of what went on in America in 1961, with a smaller group of African-Americans and ‘white’ Americans touring around Americas South to protest