The Block, Redfern

You are standing in the birthplace of Aboriginal civil rights in Australia. In the late nineteen-sixties and seventies, Redfern became home to over twenty thousand Aboriginal people who had been displaced from country reserves across New South Wales. It was the cheapest suburb in Sydney -- a run-down, neglected pocket of the inner city where only the poorest could afford to live. And it became the most important square block in Indigenous Australian history.

In an extraordinary burst of energy across just three years, Aboriginal people in Redfern established institutions that had never existed before. Australia's first Aboriginal Legal Service, founded in nineteen seventy. The first Aboriginal Medical Service, nineteen seventy-one. A Black Theatre. An Aboriginal-run childcare centre called Murawina. And the Aboriginal Housing Company, which fought for and won ownership of The Block itself -- the first time Aboriginal people had been granted ownership of urban land anywhere in Australia.

Think about the context. These were people who had been displaced from their traditional lands, dumped in the worst housing in the worst suburb, with no institutional support. And within a few years they built their own legal system, their own healthcare, their own housing organisation, and their own cultural spaces. From nothing. In the teeth of systemic racism and government neglect.

The Block is bounded by Eveleigh, Caroline, Louis, and Vine Streets. It has changed enormously since those days -- redevelopment has been controversial and ongoing for decades, and the area looks very different now. But the institutions that were born here in the early seventies still exist and still serve Aboriginal communities across Australia.

This is not ancient history. People who were part of these movements are still alive. The revolution happened within living memory, on this street, in these buildings.