Daring to lead

The events that began on that Montgomery bus in the winter of 1955 captivated the nation and transformed a 26-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King Jr into a major civil rights leader.

The New York Times, October 25, 2005, paying tribute to Rosa Parks who died on the previous day (she was 92), quoted the Rev. Jessie Jackson with the following momentous words: “She sat down in order that we might stand up.”

Ten years after Rosa Parks wrote her name into the history books, a young Charlie Perkins rose to national prominence when he led the famous Freedom Ride, in February 1965, throughout western New South Wales to draw attention to the appalling level of racism experienced by Indigenous people.

Charlie’s impressive personal achievements in Indigenous politics, in addition to his outstanding success on and off the soccer field; being elected vice-president of FCAATSI (1961), becoming one of the first Indigenous persons to receive a university degree (Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney in 1964), helping establish the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC as adviser to Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gordon Bryant in 1972), appointed chairperson of the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC in 1981) and first Indigenous Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA in 1984), have been a hard act to emulate by aspiring leaders.

And yes it is little wonder that comparisons are being made today between potential leaders and Charlie - I do it all the time.

During meetings with Native Americans, including high profile veteran actor Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman (of Dancing with Wolves fame) and Antonio Gonzales, International Indians Treaty Council, and Winona LaDuke, Vice-Presidential candidate for the Green Party in 1996 and 2000 and named by Times Magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders under 40 years of age, I was presented with their aspirations for a better way of life for their people.

Like Indigenous Australians the struggle from unity and equity of Native Americans is made even more complicated through the sheer number of tribes and the tyranny of distance that hinders the bringing together of leaders to mount cohesive fronts against the government.

These fine leaders have been in the game for a long time and tell of their frustration of not being taken seriously by political figures and the media - but nevertheless their fight continues with varying degrees of success.

On the other hand a black leader that does not suffer the same problems, but rather to the contrary is celebrated by members of all political persuasions and who revels in the Hollywood-style media circus that follows him everywhere he goes and who can’t get enough of him, is Barack Obama.

Barack Obama, the son of a black African father from Kenya and a white American mother, is a lawyer and author of New York Times No 1 Bestseller books: Dreams from My Father - The story of race and inheritance and The Audacity of Hope - Thoughts of reclaiming the American Dream, and is widely tipped to be the first African American president after the next US presidential elections in 2008.

In a story in Newsweek, January 29, 2007, Joseph Lowery, a former chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organisation that Martin Luther King Jr led, argues that Obama’s history, or lack thereof in the civil rights movement, should not count against him. “As we move further and further into the new century, we are not going to always be able to have people running for high office who are directly connected to the civil-rights movement,” Lowery says.

Speaking in the same article Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also ran for president in 1984, commenting on Obama’s lack of involvement in black politics said that is all for the good as long as “civil-rights beneficiaries see their connection to the benefactors”.