The Pilbara strike of 1946-49 is one of the most dramatic moments in Australia’s indigenous history. Aboriginal people not only defied the owners of pastoral stations in North-West Western Australia by demanding better wages and conditions, but also sought to win independence from their colonial masters. In its aftermath, they acquired considerable freedom and autonomy through co-operative mining and other ventures. The story of this struggle inspired the campaign for Aboriginal rights throughout Australia.

On May 1, 1946 around 800 Aboriginal workers and their families walked off stations across the Pilbara where they were being forced to work. This action was despite great danger and lasted for months following, to protest poor wages and living conditions, and their battle for justice.

They had been disinherited of their land by the squatters and government and forced to work for decades on the stations for meagre rations, and little or no wages; their lives subject to the exploitation and whims of the pastoralists, government agents and legislators.

Yandy is the story of the heroic struggle of Aboriginal workers in the Pilbara and their pride, endurance and determination. It is the story of the first Aboriginal strike in Australia in 1946.

The story of the Pilbara strike has been told in many different forms over many years now, and those forms can have a profound influence on its content. Most importantly, the ways in which Aboriginal people represent the past tend to differ markedly from those of scholars working in the discipline of history. Many of the stories Aboriginal people have told about the strike belong to an oral tradition in which the meaning and significance of the event in the present, rather than in the past, is of the utmost importance; and, as the needs of the present have changed, the nature of the stories being told has shifted as well. From a European scholarly point of view, these stories, especially when they are rendered in ways that preserve their original idiom or spirit, are invaluable as they reveal much about the ways in which the past, as it is remembered, has both shaped the marrngu sense of self and informed their actions. At the same time, oral histories, told by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, can shed light on the strike itself, since they reveal aspects of it that are barely evident in the contemporary historical record.

The Strike: At the meeting of tribal leaders Winyirin Bin Bin was nominated, in his absence, to work with a non-Aboriginal social reformer, Don McLeod, as a representative of the inland’s Aborigines. He and his kinsman Clancy McKenna sought a minimum wage of thirty shillings per week for Aboriginal station-hands and planned a mass withdrawal of labour if the request were refused.

In Western Australia in the 1930s, Don McLeod, a white man, was a prospector and miner in the remote northwest Pilbara. He worked throughout this vast region of mineral-bearing rocks that, if they could be cracked, could bring a miner great wealth. McLeod was successful, and he hoped to become a millionaire, but instead, a chance encounter with an Aboriginal pastoral worker changed his life. He became an activist for Aboriginal rights, and amongst his own people it made him the most hated man in the northwest.

PROBLEMS IN PILBARA. Effects of Recent Strike.
(By A.G.O.)
The police court case at Port Hedland last week when a white man was fined for having been im-plicated in a strike among natives employed on sheep stations in the
Pilbara district has focussed pub-lic attention on the conditions of natives and their treatment. A number of natives went on strike at the beginning of May and
within a few days most of them had returned to their employment. The court case was the outcome
of that strike, but the termination of the police court proceedings, it is feared, did not necessarily close
the chapter.

New Attempt To Smash Native Co-op?
Rumors that the hundreds of Aborigines who left the stations in the Pilbara area last year are to be shifted by the Department of Native Affairs to an abandoned property 100 miles from anywhere are causing concern among those who
have been inspired by the heroic stand of the North West Workers' Association. BETWEEN six and seven hundred natives have, despite
all difficulties, succeeded in establishing a solid basis for their co-operative ventures at
Port Hedland and Moolyalla.

The 1936 Native Administration Act required employers to provide housing and healthcare to their Aboriginal workers. Australian law also forced Aboriginal workers to be confined to an employer, and prevented them from leaving a place of employment without consent of an employer. Further restricting Aboriginal mobility, Australian law did not permit them to work in industries that did any type of overseas trading. They lived in low-quality employer-provided houses, without much compensation and unable to leave. In contrast, Caucasian workers were given far better wages and had complete freedom of movement.