Ep90. Redfern: Aboriginal Activism in the 1970s, Johanna Perheentupa

I sat down with Johanna Perheentupa to discuss her new book on Aboriginal activism and the push for self-determination in Redfern in the 1970s. We discuss the conditions and social changes that made Redfern ripe for such radical change and the development of landmark organisations such as the Aboriginal Legal Service, the National Black Theatre, Aboriginal Medical Service, Murawina preschool, and the Aboriginal Housing Company. We discuss the relationship between these organisations and the well known demonstrations of the time (such as the Tent Embassy). We discuss the way the ALS emerged as a response to police violence, how the Black Theatre sought to shape a national Indigenous identity, and how the ALS and AHC engaged the fight for land rights in the city.

Buy the book through Aboriginal Studies Press at the AIATSIS shop.

Dr Johanna Perheentupa is a lecturer in the Nura Gili Centre for Indigenous Programs at UNSW. Johanna grew up in Finland, where she completed a Master’s degree at the University of Turku before completing her PhD in History at UNSW. Her research centres on First Nation rights and the engagement of settler-colonial governments with Indigenous peoples. Johanna’s recent publication Redfern: Aboriginal Activism in the 1970s, by Aboriginal Studies Press, explores the ways in which local Aboriginal organisations pursued self-determination in the diverse fields of law, health, arts and culture, education and housing.

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