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Council Member Profile

Galarrwuy Yunupingu, AM

Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Former Chairman of the Northern Land Council, has been closely involved with Land Rights for Aboriginal people for more than 30 years.

Leader of the Gumatj clan since 1979, Galarrwuy was born at Melville Bay near Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land on the Gove Peninsula on 30 June 1948.

He attended Mission School at Yirrkala in his formative years and moved to Brisbane to study at the Methodist Bible College for two years before returning to Gove in 1967.

Galarrwuy entered the struggle for Land Rights in the early 1960s with his father Mungurrawuy, who, as Gumatj clan leader, fought and lost the battle to stop a bauxite mine operating on his land.

As Galarrwuy explains it, he was a teenager when the story that started the great fight for land rights in Australia began:

Galarrwuy stepped down from the NLC chairmanship in October 2004

		the story of his father's tears when the sacred banyan tree at Nhulunbuy was going to be damaged by the mining company;
		the heartache of the senior men when their Bark Petition to explain why the land was sacred was rejected;
		and their devastation after using the Balanda (non-Aboriginal) legal system - with the young Galarrwuy as an interpreter in court - to be told that while their system of law was accepted as real, they could not use it.

Since his father's death in 1979, Galarrwuy has become a very prominent leader and strong voice on behalf of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and Australia, gaining respect and admiration from many.

In 1975 he joined the Northern Land Council, the authority appointed under the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976 to represent traditional Aboriginal landowners and Aboriginal people in the Top End of the Northern Territory of Australia.

He became Chairman of the Land Council in 1977, a position he held until 1980, when he returned to Yirrkala to look after the family business. He continued to hold an executive position on the Northern Land Council during this period and was re-elected to Chairman in 1983, 1986, 1989, 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2001.

Over that period, Galarrwuy has overseen the work of the Land Council to win back land for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, and has championed initiatives to help traditional landowners assert their rights to manage and control their land and marine resources.

He has also witnessed strong opposition to both the Land Rights Act and native title legislation over the years, and fought strongly to protect and preserve the rights those pieces of legislation give to Aboriginal people.

In 1978, Galarrwuy was honoured as Australian of the Year and in January 1985 he was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his services to the Aboriginal community. In 1998, he was honoured as one of Australia's National Living Treasures.

In 2001 Galarrwuy was elected co-chair of the Aboriginal Development Consultative Forum in Darwin, one of many positions he holds on committees and organisations where he can share his wide experience with other Australians and promote the aspirations of his people.