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216:. Harris explained that the Aboriginal people living on the eastern goldfields were in desperate need of food and medicine, and handed Rason a letter of support signed by the local Justices of the Peace. Harris also met Henry Charles Prinsep, to try to persuade his Aborigines Department to supply rations, clothes and medicine to those starving and diseased.
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amusement park. William Harris also told
Premier Collier that Daisy Bates and Chief Protector Neville were the "worst enemies" of the Aboriginal people, according to a contemporary newspaper account. Their representations were ultimately unsuccessful: The Aborigines Act (1905) continued to govern the
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Over the course of his life Harris worked as a miner, as a port and pastoral worker, and as a farmer. He also vocally protested the injustices of the
Aborigines Act (1905), which effectively abolished the prior legal status and citizen rights of all persons of indigenous descent; and he was willing
236:. They asked Collier to repeal the Aborigines Act (1905), and give Aboriginal people the same rights as the white community. Describing the conditions at Mogumber as intolerable, they implored him to close it down. They also asked about Aboriginal people being barred from the popular
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William Harris was one of seven children born to convict
William and his wife Madelaine, in Western Australia. One of his grandmothers was Aboriginal, and Harris received an initial rudimentary education as a private pupil at the Swan Native and Half-Caste Mission in Perth.
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Harris also headed the first
Aboriginal deputation to meet with a Western Australian Premier. In 1928 he, Edward Harris (his brother), Norman Harris (his nephew), Wilfred Morrison, Edward Jacobs, Arthur Kickett and William Bodney met with the Premier,
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to criticize senior officials who were complacent or uninterested in the mistreatment of
Aboriginal people. Although entitled to a personal exemption from the Aborigines Act, he declined this on the grounds that it reinforced the exclusion of others.
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In 1926, Harris formed an
Aboriginal peoples' union in response to the persecution inflicted upon Aboriginal people by the Western Australian Aborigines Department and its officials. He was particularly concerned about conditions at Mogumber
192:, of willful hypocrisy and misrepresentation. Kingsmill had vehemently denied there was any evidence of the ill-treatment of Aboriginal people. Harris also criticized the Chief Protector of Aborigines for Western Australia, Henry Charles
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of the state, where he observed extensive starvation and disease among the local
Aboriginal population. Harris was so concerned by what he witnessed that he traveled to Perth and on 8 February 1906, he and the Goldfields MP,
188:(London) and the Australia press published an account of the ill-treatment of Aboriginal people in the northwest of the state. Harris entered into the public debate with a letter to the press accusing the Colonial Secretary,
385:"An Aboriginal delegation petitioned Premier Phillip Collier about injustices to indigenous West Australians under the 1905 act – the first form of organised political agitation by indigenous groups in Australia"
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lives of all
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districts of
Western Australia, Harris witnessed the brutish and cruel practices used to oppress, disenfranchise and subjugate the local Aboriginal people. In 1904
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97:. He has been called "the most significant voice of a generation with the education and social standing to assert their rights as British subjects".
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A Trans-generational effect of the
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343:"Early Aboriginal civil resistance in WA: the untold story of William Harris"
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Early Western Australian leader for Aboriginal civil rights
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176:While working at the ports and on stations in the
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244:In 1930 William Harris moved to the town of
61:Aboriginal cemetery at Utacarra, Geraldton
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164:Learn how and when to remove this message
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486:Australian indigenous rights activists
446:Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert
391:. State Library of Western Australia.
271:. School of Law, Murdoch University.
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389:Western Australia and Federation
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292:"Harris, William (1867–1931)"
222:Moore River Native Settlement
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430:The Daily News (Perth, WA)
347:Overland literary journal
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428:"NATIVES' WORST ENEMY".
290:Tilbrook, Lois (1983).
320:. Amazon. p. 47.
316:Lomas, Brian (2015).
267:Delmege, S. (2005).
142:improve this article
443:Reece, Bob (2007).
368:"ABORIGINAL HEROES"
407:Swan River Stories
318:Queen of Deception
205:Eastern Goldfields
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341:Ganitis, George.
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105:Early life
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