Gary Foley NAIDOC Week: Indigenous activist uses 1970s buy beer poster to attack the Voice

Legendary Indigenous rights activist Gary Foley has revived his famous poster for NAIDOC week mocking paternalistic attitudes towards Aboriginal people.

The poster, created by Professor Foley in the 1970s, mocks the symbolic attitude of white people to the week of events and cultural recognition of Aboriginal people.

The Victoria University historian posted the poster to Facebook during the Voice referendum debate, which the veteran campaigner opposes, warning that it will do nothing for Indigenous Australians and could seriously harm black rights if it fails.

Foley’s satirical poster makes a statement against a single week, ending on Sunday this year, held to promote Indigenous people, saying it’s more about making whites feel less guilty.

Veteran Indigenous rights activist Gary Foley believes the vote is irrelevant, dangerous and a distraction from Aboriginal Australians’ real goal, self-determination

Foley used a racist and outdated word for indigenous people and wrote on the poster ‘Yes Folks, it’s “Buy a B**ng a Beer Week”. You too can ease your conscience!

‘Hurry! Book a black one now! Bring your most condescending smile, your most condescending attitude, and your best head beating glove.

“You’ll be in the best of company — Prime Ministers, Prime Ministers, Governors, Knights, etc. And when it’s over, of course, we can forget about them for another year!”

Professor Foley, an academic, writer, actor, historian and founder of the Australian Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972 and the Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern in the 1970s, hung the poster’s image in the middle of this year’s NAIDOC week on.

It stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee and became a week-long event in 1975.

Foley’s Facebook post featuring the poster has garnered hundreds of comments, laughing emojis, and dozens of comments.

People commented that they loved the humor, calling it “a bloody classic,” while others, like Native editor and writer Gayle Kennedy said, “Nothing’s changed.”

Gary Foley, historian, writer, actor and Indigenous rights activist who founded the Tent Embassy and the Redfern Aboriginal Legal Service says the vote is negative for Aboriginal Australians

One person said, ‘Holy crap. You never held back,” while Melbourne arts director Jason Tamiru remarked, “Stay tuned and deadly Professor Foley.”

Another suggested that Foley ‘bring this poster back in a limited edition! Future generations can look back and see how screwed up the decision makers were!’

Activist Jak Webb said: ‘Nothing has changed! Now you can get a free, hand-picked voice to speak on your behalf.

‘Just plug it in and it goes to work, producing loads of words to be captured and stored in parliament’.

Gary Foley has actively campaigned against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, saying it would ‘make no difference’ to the lives of Aboriginal Australians, describing it as ‘window dressing’.

“All this referendum will do, if it succeeds in the unlikely event, is make white people feel good,” he said. Umbrella News.

‘It’s completely irrelevant. We shouldn’t mess with a referendum.

Professor Foley (above at a 2021 Invasion Day rally) said the federal government pursued the Voice because “it’s one of the best kinds of distractions you can have from the real facts and issues.” And the real problems are white racism in Australia’

‘A referendum No vote would set us back 50 years again, just like the last one. We are 50 years on from the ’67 referendum and we are making the same mistakes again.’

Foley spoke out in January and again at a public event in Melbourne in May, opposing the vote as just more symbolism that wouldn’t solve any real problems, saying that like previous bodies like ATSIC, it would just be another advisory body are to be ignored.

He sees it as ‘a distraction’ from a treaty for Indigenous Australians and from what the real goal is: self-determination.

“The government is pursuing it because it’s one of the best distractions you can have from the real facts and issues,” Foley told Umbrella’s Cade Lucas.

And the real problems are white racism in Australia… entrenched, entrenched racism that permeates the criminal justice system from the High Court to local police.

“No one is interested in tackling that, which is one of the reasons why Australians are so resistant to confronting the truth of their own history.”

Professor Foley said alleged advances for First Nations Australians were ‘complete rubbish’, including the 1967 referendum remembered as giving black Australians the right to vote.

The University of Victoria historian said the 1967 vote had “nothing to do with (the right to vote), but instead enabled the federal government” to take responsibility for Indigenous people away from the states , which resulted in an exodus of Aboriginal people from their traditional land and into inner cities’.

He went on to say that the Native Title Act, passed by Paul Keating’s government after the 1992 Mabo decision, was “inferior”, “pointless” and a roadblock to Aboriginal sovereignty.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Professor Foley for further comment.