Yirrkala bark petitions

The Yirrkala bark petitions (Yolngu: Näku Dhäruk) are a set of four petitions prepared by leaders of the Yolngu people, an Aboriginal Australian people of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, of which two were presented in the Australian Parliament in August 1963. The petitions asserted that the Yolngu people owned the land around Yirrkala on the Gove Peninsula, after discovering that the federal government had granted mining rights to a series of private mining companies since the late 1950s, and claims were being staked out in 1963 by Gove Bauxite Corporation. They were supported by Yirrkala mission superintendent Edgar Wells and his wife Annie, along with various Aboriginal rights activists and politicians, including Kim Beazley Sr. and Gordon Bryant. The petitions were successful in that they instigated the establishment of a government committee to look into their grievances, but ultimately, the mining went ahead.

After a group of Yolngu people took the government to court in 1968 over the matter, in 1971 the court decided that the ordinances and mining leases were valid, and that the Yolngu people were not able to establish their native title at common law, in a decision known as the Milirrpum decision, or the Gove land rights case. However, the actions of the people in presenting the bark petitions eventually led to the recognition of Indigenous rights in Commonwealth law.

The petitions are significant as political art, following the Yirrkala Church Panels a few months earlier, and were the first traditional documents prepared by Indigenous Australians recognised by the Australian Parliament, as well as the first documentary recognition of Indigenous people in Australian law. The acceptance by Parliament of the traditional form of bark painting juxtaposed with European-style text typed on paper marked the tacit acknowledgement of the existence of Yolngu law. They have been likened to England's Magna Carta of 1215, setting out the rights of Indigenous peoples in Australia.