Paul Coe

Paul Thomas Ernest Coe (4 February 1949 – 29 July 2025) was an Aboriginal Australian activist of Aboriginal rights and a former lawyer. He was a Wiradjuri man, born at Erambie Mission in Cowra, New South Wales. Well known for his lifelong advocacy of Aboriginal rights both civil (legal) and land rights. He studied law at the University of New South Wales (the first Aboriginal person to do so). He was the founding figure in the establishment of the Aboriginal Legal Service in 1970, in Redfern (Sydney), which provides free legal aid and advocacy for Aboriginal people (first in New South Wales and then expanded to all states and territories). He was also a key figure in the establishment of the Aboriginal Medical Service in 1971 (also in Redfern); the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Australian federal parliament house in Canberra in 1972; and the Redfern Aboriginal Children's Services in 1975. He initiated his landmark Coe vs Commonwealth case in the Australian High Court in April 1979, in which he sought legal recognition of Aboriginal people having never ceded sovereignty of the continent of Australia by the British crown, establishing the major precursor for Eddie Mabo's greatly attenuated High Court case, 13 years later. He became the first Aboriginal person in New South Wales to be admitted as a barrister. In 1988 he represented Aboriginal peoples at the Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva, contributing to the early drafting process that led to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.