Taking the road back to Armidale

At 19, Nyoongar man Dennis Eggington arrived at Armidale Teachers’ College* “eager to explore the world”. He left three years later, his mind filled with a “wealth of information” and possessing the confidence he would need to navigate that challenging world.

“All roads lead back to Armidale, where I first came to understand the value of education,” said Dennis, the long-serving chief executive of the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia (ALSWA). “The teachers’ college provided a good base for the start of my adult education, social and intellectual development.

“My mates and I used to produce radio programs at the community station and this lead to being involved in developing Aboriginal radio all over Australia, laying the foundations for what would become a large First Nations media network. It gave me a love and understanding of the power of the individual’s voice. Armidale was also where I was thrust into the world of Aboriginal politics, through our Aboriginal Students meetings.”

Only now, at the age of 67, can Dennis fully appreciate the significance of being one of the first Indigenous students to study at university with the assistance of a Commonwealth Aboriginal Study Grant.

That’s because racism was never far beneath the surface. Like most of the Aboriginal graduates in 1977, Dennis was not initially offered a teaching position in NSW. He spent a year working in a remote primary school in Arnhem Land before a special placement was negotiated in Bourke – a town with a high Indigenous population but still largely segregated.

“We are talking about a different time in Australia, when there was still apartheid and systemic racism, when Aboriginal people had to drink in the back bars of hotels and could not become members of clubs,” Dennis said. “In Bourke, I had to listen to a senior police officer tell the school principal that he didn’t want his child in that ‘rabid, black activist’s class’. I was a competent teacher, but my degree had not prepared me for going into the profession as a young Aboriginal person.”

With the Aboriginal rights movement in full swing and the Aboriginal tent embassy established at Parliament House, the young man who had cut his teeth at high school opposing nuclear testing in the Pacific and the Vietnam War now embraced a cause much closer to his own heart – campaigning for “a better Australia” that protected the human and land rights of his people.

After teaching in Bourke and Sydney, Dennis returned to his own country in the south-west of WA in 1983. In 1996 he joined ALSWA and, ever since, has fought for reform on multiple levels in a state with the nation’s highest First Nations incarceration rate. On his watch, legislation to abolish the imprisonment of fine defaulters has been introduced, a custody notification service established, and reparation sought for the thousands of Aboriginal people unpaid for their station labour for almost a century.

Dennis’ continued support for recognition of Australia’s bloody past and the importance of Indigenous nation-building has seen him receive multiple death threats and bullets with his name etched on them. However, it has done little to deter his pursuit of what he describes as “a just Australia”.

In the mid-1990s he attended the fourth working group on the drafting of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and, in 2010, participated in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Dennis was awarded Curtin University’s John Curtin Medal (recognising vision, leadership and community service) in 2007, and he graduated from that institution in 2009 with a Master of Human Rights. He was named the National NAIDOC Person of the Year in 2010, and under Dennis’ leadership ALSWA was awarded the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Community Organisation Award in 2012.

“My early activism was about the equal rights of Aboriginal citizens,” Dennis said. “Now, the discourse is around the inherent rights of First Nations peoples here and around the world; about how we can take our rightful place.

“People are still being shot dead, being locked up and dying in custody, and still struggling with poor health. We are still living in an occupied country and widespread social transformation is urgently needed.”

Accepting a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in June in the Queen’s Birthday honours list for his significant service to WA’s Indigenous community was difficult for Dennis. “There was conflict there for me, but I hope the AM will help our cause,” he said.

Because there is still much to do. After 26 years at the helm of the ALSWA, Dennis will step down next year to concentrate on peace and treaty talks for his “Nyoongar mob”. “That’s my new passion, but it’s only been possible because of my time at the ALSWA and the journey that started all those years ago back in Armidale,” he said.

During the Frank Archibald Memorial Lecture he delivered at UNE in 1999 Dennis said: “The challenge for Aboriginal Australia is … to embrace the future without losing the past. The challenge for higher learning is to prepare wider Australia for such an outcome. … [to] Enter into a journey with Aboriginal Australia to make the new century truly one of sharing, understanding and mutual respect.”

It’s a future he remains committed to, especially now as a grandfather to eight children.

“The treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia is not acceptable,” Dennis said. “We can’t be afraid to make hard choices, in order to re-shape our future. I know in my heart that self-governance for First Nations people is right and good for this country and I want my grandchildren to inherit an Australia that is not built on lies and deceit and murder; I want them to experience living, not surviving. Now that I’m getting older, there’s a quickening of my desire to see something new and better. We still have a long way to go.”