William Cooper's passionate struggle against the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the denial of their rights, and his heroic fight for them to become citizens in their own country, has been widely commemorated and celebrated. By carefully reconstructing the historical losses his people suffered and endured, William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story reveals how the first seventy years of Cooper's life inspired the remarkable political work he undertook in the 1930s. Focusing on Cooper's most important campaigns - his famous petition to King George VI for an Aboriginal representative in the Australian parliament, his call for a day of mourning after 150 years of colonisation, the walk-off of the Yorta Yorta people from Cummeragunja reserve in 1939 and his opposition to the establishment of an Aboriginal regiment in the Second World War - this carefully researched study sheds important new light on the long struggle that Indigenous people have fought to tell the truth about Australia's black history and to win representation in Australia's political order.

About the Author
Bain Attwood is Professor of History at Monash and has held fellowships at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University. Possession: Batman's Treaty and the Matter of History won the 2010 Ernest Scott Prize for the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia or New Zealand or colonial history. Previous works include Rights for Aborigines; Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History and The Making of Native Title: Sovereignty, Property and Indigenous People. He is the co-editor of Telling Stories: Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zealand and Protection and Empire: A Global History.


Book Information
ISBN 9780522877939
Author Bain Attwood
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint The Miegunyah Press
Publisher Melbourne University Press
Weight(grams) 642g
Dimensions(mm) 241mm * 165mm * 23mm