Perkins, Charles Nelson

▪ 2001

      Australian civil servant and activist (b. June 16, 1936, Alice Springs, N.Terr.—d. Oct. 18, 2000, Sydney, N.S.W.), was the first indigenous Australian to head a government department and the most influential figure in the Aboriginal fight for civil rights; he was often compared to U.S. civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Perkins began his struggle to publicize and address the unfair treatment of indigenous peoples in the mid-1960s, when he accompanied white students on “freedom rides” through the outback of New South Wales. The rides, inspired by similar activities in the U.S.'s segregated South, generated a great deal of publicity, as did a related effort to secure the right of Aboriginal children to swim in public pools in the town of Bourke. He devoted the rest of his life to the cause, becoming a lightning rod for controversy. A mixed-race Aboriginal, Perkins was sent at age 10 to a school for Aboriginal boys in Adelaide. His talent as an association football (soccer) player attracted the attention of clubs in the U.K., where he became the first Aboriginal to play professionally. He returned to Australia in 1959 and, six years later, became one of the first Australian Aboriginal university graduates when he earned an arts degree from the University of Sydney. That same year Perkins formed the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs, which was a driving force behind the campaign that helped pass a 1967 referendum that gave the federal government authority to legislate justice for Aboriginals. In 1969 Perkins joined the government's Aboriginal Affairs Department of Western Australia as a researcher, and he worked his way up to department secretary in 1984. Unlike most government officials, however, he continued his activist work and was sometimes criticized publicly by his own department. He was forced to resign his position in 1988 following a scandal involving the funding of an Aboriginal social club, but he was later cleared of any charges of wrongdoing. Although he was a member of the group that helped Sydney make its successful bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, he also used the Olympics to stage his last campaigns against racism, threatening that there could be widespread civil unrest among the Aboriginal population during the Games, though he later retracted his statements, which many considered inflammatory.

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