On 27 May 1967 a remarkable event occurred. An overwhelming majority of electors voted in a national referendum to amend clauses of the Australian Constitution concerning Aboriginal people. Today it is commonly regarded as a turning point in the history of relations between Indigenous and white Australians: a historic moment when citizenship rights -- including the vote -- were granted and the Commonwealth at long last assumed responsibility for Aboriginal affairs. Yet the constitutional changes entailed in the referendum brought about none of these things. "The 1967 Referendum" explores the legal and political significance of the referendum and the long struggle by black and white Australians for constitutional change. It traces the emergence of a series of powerful narratives about the Australian Constitution and the status of Aborigines, revealing how and why the referendum campaign acquired so much significance and has since become the subject of highly charged myth in contemporary Australia. Attwood and Markus's text is complemented by personal recollections and opinions about the referendum by a range of Indigenous people, and historical documents and illustrations.
Bain Attwood is a Professor of History at Monash University. He is the author of several books, including The Making of the Aborigine (1989), Rights for Aborigines (2003), Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History (2005), and Possession: Batman's Treaty and the Matter of History (2009). He is also the co-author of The 1967 Referendum: Race, Power and the Australian Constitution (2007), and co-editor of Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience (2003), Frontier, Race, Nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian History (2009), and Protection and Empire: A Global History (2017).
Professor Andrew Markus is the Pratt Foundation Research Professor of Jewish Civilisation at Monash University and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. He has published extensively on Australian immigration and race relations. Andrew heads the Scanlon Foundation social cohesion research program which in 2017 conducted its 10th national survey. He is also the principal researcher on the Australian Jewish population and Yiddish Melbourne research projects. Andrew is a post-war immigrant from Hungary who arrived in Australia in January 1957.