Burnum Burnum
Burnum Burnum (10 January 1936 – 17 August 1997) was an Aboriginal Australian sportsman, activist, actor, and author. He was a Woiworrung and Yorta Yorta man at Wallaga Lake in southern New South Wales. He was originally christened Harry Penrith but in 1976, he changed his name to Burnum Burnum ("Great Warrior") after his grandfather both to honor him and acknowledge his Aboriginal identity. Early life Burnum Burnum was one of the Stolen Generations, taken from his parents when he was barely three months old. Featured on Late Night Live with Phillip Adams in 1999, the story of his early years graphically illustrates the brutality of the assimilation policy in the middle decades of the 20th century. He was raised as an orphan and as a white person, given the name Harry Penrith, and was taught that white was good and black bad. He spent many years in children's homes run by the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, most notably Kinchela Boys Home at Kempsey where he was abused; for example, being beaten with a cattle whip for accidentally breaking a window with a cricket ball and being forced to say "Look at me and you will see that I am an Aborigine" in front of his class. The Welfare Board promoted his achievements in rugby league and surf lifesaving at Kempsey in their publication Dawn magazine, and reported that he left Kinchela to become a pioneer Aboriginal employee in the NSW Public Service, working for the Department of Agriculture, where he remained for 13 years. But Stolen Generations people like Burnum, though raised "white", were often rejected by white society, leaving them with nothing. In the 1960s he searched for his Aboriginal identity and joined the battle for Aboriginal rights. Sportsman Burnum Burnum also played first grade Rugby Union for Parramatta, New South Wales, and both rugby league and cricket. Activism Burnum Burnum became involved in Australian Indigenous rights activism while attending the University of Tasmania in the late 1960s. He continued his activism work after becoming a Bahá’í, successfully campaigning for the skeleton of the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal woman Truganini, to be released from being displayed in the Museum of Tasmania throughout the 1970s. It was released and cremated at her place of birth in 1976. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 1975 to study hostel provisions for Indigenous people overseas. He may be best remembered for planting the Aboriginal flag on the white cliffs of Dover on the Australian Bicentenary Day of 26 January 1988. This was his satirical way of claiming England, as Arthur Phillip had done to Burnum Burnum's homeland in 1788 when arriving with the First Fleet. However, Burnum stated that no harm would come to England's native people as a result of his invasion. A copy of the Burnum Burnum Declaration is on display among the Indigenous carvings and sculptures at the Enchanted Maze (a.k.a. Arthur's Seat Maze), Mornington Peninsula, Melbourne. Burnum Burnum first came into contact with the Bahá’í Faith in