In 1946 Aboriginal people walked off pastoral stations in Western
Australia’s Pilbara region, withdrawing their labour from the
economically-important wool industry to demand improvements in wages and
conditions. Their strike lasted three years. On Red Earth Walking is
the first comprehensive account of this significant, unique, and understudied
episode of Australian history.
Using extensive and previously unsourced archival evidence, Anne
Scrimgeour interrogates earlier historical accounts of the strike, delving
beneath the strike’s mythology to uncover the rich complexity of its history. The
use of Aboriginal oral history places Aboriginal actors at the centre of these
events, foregrounding their agency and their experiences. Scrimgeour provides a
lucid examination of the system of colonial control that existed in the Pilbara
prior to the strike, and a fascinating and detailed account of how these
mechanisms were gradually broken down by three years of striker activism. Amid
Cold-war fears of communist subversion in the north, the prominence of
communists among southern supporters and the involvement of a non-Aboriginal
activist, Don McLeod, complicated settler responses to the strike. This history
raises provocative ideas around racial tensions in a pastoral settler economy,
and examines political concerns that influenced settler responses to the
strike, to create a nuanced and engaging account of this pivotal event in
Australian Indigenous and labour histories.
