Day of Mourning (Australia)

The Day of Mourning was a protest held by Aboriginal Australians on 26 January 1938, the sesquicentenary of British colonisation of Australia. It was declared to be a protest of 150 years of callous treatment and the seizure of land, and purposefully coincides with the Australia Day celebrations held by the European population on the same day. The protest became a tradition, and annual Days of Mourning have been held to this day.

The Day of Mourning protest was organised by the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), based in New South Wales and led by its founders Jack Patten and William Ferguson. The protest leaders also had support from the Australian Aborigines League (AAL), based in Victoria and led by William Cooper. In 1888, the centenary of British colonisation, Aboriginal leaders had simply boycotted the Australia Day celebrations. However, this had been ignored by the media. These groups had also sent petitions to the Government of Australia and the Government of the United Kingdom, in the early 1930s, for the recognition of Aboriginal civil rights (including Aboriginal representation in the Parliament of Australia), but they had been ignored or dismissed without serious attention, and each had refused to pass the petitions on to King George V. As a result, a more proactive event was planned for the sesquicentenary, which the media and governments could not ignore. This was despite recent experience of the New South Wales Police engaging in general intimidation of public meetings of such political organisations.

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