Aboriginal activists | Groote Broadcasting

Explore powerful stories at the intersection of history, culture, and music—from Aboriginal cricket pioneers and war heroes to legendary albums by Hendrix, Miles Davis, and Gurrumul. This blog dives deep into First Nations resilience, iconic protest music, and untold truths that shaped Australia and the world. Engaging, thoughtful, and unapologetically real—where powerful voices from the past meet today's social conversation.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this page contains images and names of deceased persons.

The Stolen Generations: The effects did not end when the policies did.

In the quiet spaces between official records and family memory lies one of the most confronting truths of Australia’s modern history. Between 1910 and the 1970s, it is estimated that as many as one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families under formal government policies of assimilation. These children would later become known as the Stolen Generations — though the term itself barely captures the scale, duration, and hu

Groote Broadcasting

Feb 112 min read

On This Day, 4 February 1939: The Cummeragunja Walk-Off.

On 4 February 1939, a quiet but revolutionary act unfolded on the banks of the Murray River. About 200 Aboriginal men, women and children walked off Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station, near Moama in southern New South Wales, in what became one of the first mass Indigenous strikes in Australian history. This was no spontaneous protest. It was a carefully considered act of resistance against years of neglect, abuse and control imposed by the NSW Aborigines Protection Board, the go

Groote Broadcasting

Feb 42 min read

January 26: A Date That Still Divides a Nation.

Each year, January 26 arrives carrying two very different meanings. For some Australians, it marks the foundation of the modern nation — the day the First Fleet raised the British flag at Sydney Cove in 1788. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, however, it represents the beginning of dispossession, violence, and the systematic disruption of cultures that had thrived on this continent for tens of thousands of years. This is why the date is widely referred t

Groote Broadcasting

Jan 261 min read

Colonisation: A Global Story of Displacement and Survival.

Colonisation is often taught as a chapter of expansion and exploration. For Indigenous peoples, it is remembered as a profound rupture — one that reshaped lands, laws, cultures, and lives across continents. In Australia, British colonisation from 1788 was built on the false premise of terra nullius, the claim that the land belonged to no one. This legal fiction ignored the existence of hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, each with their own laws, langua

Groote Broadcasting

Jan 212 min read

Ruby Hunter - Thoughts Within (1994)

Ruby Hunter’s Thoughts Within (1994) is one of the quiet masterpieces of Australian music — an album that speaks softly but carries enormous weight. Long overshadowed by the towering presence of her partner Archie Roach, this debut record stands today as a work of profound emotional honesty and cultural importance, a collection of songs that gave voice to stories Australian music had rarely been willing to hear, let alone centre. From the opening moments, Thoughts Within esta

Groote Broadcasting

Dec 20, 20252 min read

Georgia Lee Sings the Blues Down Under [1962]

Georgia Lee — born Ramer Lyra “Dulcie” Pitt in Cairns in 1921 — occupies a singular place in Australian music history: a trailblazer whose artistry broke barriers long before the industry was ready to acknowledge them. A proud woman of Torres Strait Islander, Jamaican and Scottish heritage, Lee grew up in a musical family and began her career in the dance halls, clubs, and hotel circuits of North Queensland, singing jazz and blues with a voice that could shift from velvety wa

Groote Broadcasting

Dec 6, 20252 min read

Oral tradition sits at the heart of First Nations cultures in Australia.

Oral tradition sits at the heart of First Nations cultures in Australia—an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural archive maintained not on paper, but in memory, voice, and lived practice. For tens of thousands of years, long before written language was introduced to the continent, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples preserved vast bodies of knowledge through spoken word, song, dance, story, ceremony, art, and Country itself. These traditions are not simply stories;

Groote Broadcasting

Nov 26, 20252 min read

Gary Foley: The Firebrand of Aboriginal Activism.

Dr. Gary Foley (born 1950) is one of the most influential and outspoken figures in the history of Aboriginal activism in Australia — a man whose life’s work has challenged the nation to confront its deepest injustices. Born in Grafton, New South Wales, and a proud Gumbaynggirr man, Foley came of age during an era of immense social upheaval. His voice would soon become one of the defining ones in the modern Aboriginal rights movement. Foley moved to Sydney in the late 1960s, w

Groote Broadcasting

Oct 13, 20252 min read