Ningla-A'na

On January 26th 1972 Prime Minister McMahon declared that under his government land rights would never be granted. In the dead of night four young men stuck a beach umbrella into the ground outside parliament house and sat under it. They called it the Aboriginal tent embassy. That single action set off a chain of events which reverberated around the world. It marked the beginning of a new and more radical chapter in the struggle for justice as a young angry generation of black Australians established they weren’t going to wait any longer. Watched by ASIO and harassed by the police, the embassy was the beginning of a movement that lead to the establishment of the Aboriginal legal and medical services, the national black theatre and tide of support from across Australia which lead to the grant of native title land rights.