These bark petitions are the Magna Carta for the Indigenous peoples of this land.

In 1963, Yolngu leaders from Yirrkala, on the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land, sent two petitions to the Australian Parliament. They asked the government to reconsider its decision to excise 300 km² of Arnhem Land for bauxite mining. Work had started on the mine, without consultation with the Yolngu people.

The Yirrkala petitions combine painted bark panels and text typed in English and Gumatj. Like Magna Carta centuries before, they are a statement of grievance and an assertion of rights. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, whose father, Mungurrawuy, was one of the petitions’ painters and signatories, said they are ‘not just a series of pictures but represented the title to our country under law’. Bridging two legal traditions — those of the Yolgnu and the Westminster parliamentary system — the petitions were the first traditional Indigenous documents recognised by the Australian Parliament.

The petitions failed and the mine proceeded. But they did help advance the recognition of the sovereign title of Indigenous Australians. They led to the 1971 Gove Land Rights Case and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976. In 1992 the Mabo judgement overturned the ‘legal fiction’ of terra nullius.

Like Magna Carta, the Yirrkala petitions are founding documents setting down principles and inspiring actions for social justice. They are kept at Australian Parliament House, Canberra.