Maynard, John. Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2007. ISBN: 9780855755508
Altman, Jon and Hinkson, Melinda (eds). Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia. Arena Publications Association, North Carlton, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-9804158-0-3
There are times in a nation's history when events combine to place particular moments in its collective memory. The Prime Minister's apology to the Stolen Generations on 13 February this year is likely to be one. Its timing, planning and execution moved the hearts of many Australians. For similar reasons, the Federal Government's intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities in 2007 is likely to be another.
Such events, and the people who shape them, can open up transforming moments in a community's sense of self. They become occasions to be held and remembered, re-told from one generation to the next. At the same time, they also serve to caution us.
Some significant events and the people who have shaped them can too easily be forgotten. The story of Fred Maynard is one.
Maynard was born in 1879, as the second century of Australia's colonisation was just beginning. That he was instrumental in establishing the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) is not something deeply etched into our history or memory of Aboriginal protest.
In Fight for Liberty and Freedom, his grandson, John Maynard, describes what is was like to be Aboriginal one hundred years ago. He offers us the story of someone who fought to proclaim the voice and protect the rights of his fellow Aboriginal people.
The AAPA sought to make and strengthen links with American Black activists, such as Marcus Garvey and the boxer Jack Johnson, who came to Australia to fight on more than one occasion.
One of his most memorable fights was against Canadian world heavyweight champion, Tommy Burns, in 1908 — an event Maynard describes as 'the biggest sporting event with an international focus staged in Australia during the twentieth century', next to the 1956 Olympic Games. Some 20,000 people gathered inside the stadium, and 40,000 were locked outside. They watched Johnson clearly and emphatically win. But this was no Cathy Freeman uniting a country — the colour of race was far too evident and politically divisive in the nation at that time.
Maynard was strongly supported by a non-Aboriginal woman, Elizabeth McKenzie Hatton, a remarkable woman, missionary and social worker. Her son died