One of Australia’s most important Aboriginal leaders, Yunupingu, yesterday died aged 74, with supporters describing the indigenous rights trailblazer as a “giant of the nation.”
Yunupingu played a pivotal role in Aboriginal Australians’ fight for ancestral land rights throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
He was recognized as a “national living treasure” in 1998.
Photo: REUTERS
He is known for the decades he spent advocating for Aboriginal Australians to be recognized in the country’s constitution — an issue that is to be decided through a national referendum at the end of this year.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Yunupingu — whose family asked that his given name not be used after his death, in keeping with Aboriginal tradition — “one of the greatest Australians.”
“Yunupingu walked in two worlds with authority, power and grace, and he worked to make them whole together,” Albanese said.
“With his passing, consider what we have lost. A leader. A statesman,” he said.
Yunupingu, who died after a long illness, was part of the Yolngu people from Arnhem Land in northern Australia — a remote region spanning tropical coastlines and sprawling inland savannas.
In the early 1960s, he helped draft the Yirrkala bark petitions, in which the Yolngu people sought to stave off foreign mining projects by asserting their ownership of the land.
The petitions, framed by traditional bark paintings, would inspire a generation of Aboriginal land rights activists across the country.
“Yunupingu was a master of the ceremonies and a keeper of the songlines of the Yolngu people,” the Yothu Yindi Foundation said.
“A giant of the nation whose contribution to public life spanned seven decades, he was first and foremost a leader of his people, whose welfare was his most pressing concern and responsibility,” it said.
Indigenous Australians settled in the country about 65,000 years ago.
They have suffered widespread discrimination and oppression since the arrival of the British more than two centuries ago.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS