On Red Earth Walking: The Pilbara Aboriginal Strike, Western Australia 1946-1949

- Blurb -

In 1946 Aboriginal people walked off pastoral stations in WesternAustralia's Pilbara region, withdrawing their labour from theeconomically-important wool industry to demand improvements in wages andconditions. Their strike lasted three years. On Red Earth Walking isthe first comprehensive account of this significant, unique, and understudiedepisode of Australian history.Using extensive and previously unsourced archival evidence, AnneScrimgeour interrogates earlier historical accounts of the strike, delvingbeneath the strike's mythology to uncover the rich complexity of its history. Theuse of Aboriginal oral history places Aboriginal actors at the centre of theseevents, foregrounding their agency and their experiences. Scrimgeour provides alucid examination of the system of colonial control that existed in the Pilbaraprior to the strike, and a fascinating and detailed account of how thesemechanisms were gradually broken down by three years of striker activism. AmidCold-war fears of communist subversion in the north, the prominence ofcommunists among southern supporters and the involvement of a non-Aboriginalactivist, Don McLeod, complicated settler responses to the strike. This historyraises provocative ideas around racial tensions in a pastoral settler economy,and examines political concerns that influenced settler responses to thestrike, to create a nuanced and engaging account of this pivotal event inAustralian Indigenous and labour histories.