As the nation-defining vote on an Indigenous voice to parliament looms, Aunty Di Travis, a Dja Dja Wurrung-Yorta Yorta elder and 1967 referendum campaigner, wants to remind Australians they are “good, kind people”.
Travis, 75, was a teenager during the successful 1967 campaign to change the way Aboriginal people were referred to in the constitution.
The 1967 vote took out the reference excluding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – effectively allowing them to be counted in the census, and giving the commonwealth the power to make laws with respect to them.
Travis received an OAM in 2019 for her work on the campaign.
She remembers there was enormous goodwill at the time, something she thinks is less evident this time.
“I’d love people to have empathy and kindness and understanding that [the voice] is not going to divide us, it’s going to bring us together,” she says. “The voice wont be perfect. Nothing is. There’ll be still problems that we all deal with. You don’t sweep it under the carpet, and you don’t turn a blind eye, because this is going to help all of us.
“I just would say to people, please, I don’t want to beg, but I would just say: this is the right thing to do.”
Travis was 19 when she travelled with her grandfather, the revered Yorta Yorta leader Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls to Canberra to campaign for yes in 1967.
Nicholls began his career as a footballer with the Fitzroy Lions and ended it as governor of South Australia.
Born on Cummeragunja mission in 1908, Nicholls was part of the walk off in protest at poor living conditions and treatment. He joined Fitzroy at age 25, the only Aboriginal player in the league in the 1920s; the AFL’s Indigenous round is named after him. Nicholls used his sporting fame to amplify his voice and those of his people. He joined the Aborigines Advancement League – the advocacy voice of its time – and was ordained as a pastor in 1945.
“When I lived with him, our family and our relatives, we absolutely loved going to the church every Sunday, because he was just such a wonderful preacher, and a happy, happy man, kind and caring and a gentle soul,” Travis says.
In 1957, Nicholls founded the Victorian Aborigines Advancement league, another representative body which fought against the draconian assimilation policies of the time, and joined the national iteration, the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement in 1958. FCAATSI was instrumental in bringing on the 1967 referendum as well as fighting for land rights and equal wages.
But in 1978 was defunded by the federal government – the fate of every Aboriginal representative body since.
Travis’ father was John Stewart Murray, the respected Wamba Wamba elder, who was a founding member of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service in 1973 and the Aboriginal Funeral Service in 1984.
Murray used to drive the iconic Black hearse with the Aboriginal flag on the side – present at many funerals throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was recently re-commissioned to carry Mungo Man and Mungo Lady back to country, and songman Archie Roach to his final resting place in Warrnambool.
Travis says she has “just been lucky” to have this family. “We’re one of the lucky ones. They’ve instilled in me and moulded me into the person I am today.”
The main difference between the 1967 campaign and today that Travis sees is the “negativity and racism” of the debate.
“Social media has obviously brought out the worst in some people in regards to their bad behaviour. The racism has escalated,” she says.
“There is a deep fear that has escalated in regards to land rights, land and ‘we’re going to take their back yards’, or we’re going to ask for a lot of compensation … and there’s also a deep, deep guilt in regard to ancestral history that they don’t want to deal with.
“And I have to say that media and television, like for example Sky News, are a disgrace as far as I’m concerned, they are lowlife people which escalate racism. Because we have the freedom of speech, but they just narrowly have not crossed that line. Some of the things that they come out with is really bad behaviour. And it’s racism.”
Generations of her family have set up and nourished organisations to represent the rights of Aboriginal people, she says. But the dial hasn’t shifted on life outcomes. She would like people to see the voice as a chance to do things differently.
But if it’s a no?
“If it’s no, well, we’re still going to be crying in our drinks, probably. But yes or no – no matter what – the campaigners have done a wonderful job. They’re good, kind people. And there are good, kind people in Australia,” she says.
“I feel in my heart, I’m hopeful, that it just may cross the line. But either way, we’ve still won because of the wonderful people that have voted and have been campaigning – all the people, all of us.”
