page_title: Daisy Bindi
section_title: The 1946 Pilbara strike
hierarchical_section_title: Daisy Bindi / The 1946 Pilbara strike
caption_attribution_description: This is a map of the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation of Australia (IBRA), with state boundaries overlaid. The Pilbara region is shown in red.
context_page_description: Daisy Bindi, also known as Mumaring, was an Aboriginal Australian Indigenous rights activist and a leader in the landmark 1946 Pilbara strike in Western Australia.
context_section_description: The Pilbara strike was one of Australia's longest, and changed the structure of labour relations in the state of Western Australia. Bindi helped win Aboriginal workers fairer pay and better working conditions.
  In 1946 in protest against poor wages and living conditions, unionist and elected spokesman for the Aborigines Don McLeod and Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna, urged Aborigines working on sheep and cattle stations in Pilbara to strike for better conditions. Bindi was among the most prominent backers of McLeod, and she led 96 people in the walk-off from Roy Hill station. She lived and worked with the Nyangumarda people on pastoral stations, where she witnessed and experienced indignities from the police in regular police raids on Aboriginal camps. At the time it was common for Aboriginal workers to be paid only in rations of food and clothing.
  She demanded wages from her white station boss, which she received and used to hire a truck and collect workers. She organised the strike on the stations near her despite threats of her removal from the area by police and the Native Welfare Department, and her efforts were instrumental in spreading the strike to Pilbara stations further inland. At Nullagine, when confronted by police, Bindi talked her way through and claimed that she had never heard of McLeod, and made her way to Canning Camp on the Shaw River with 86 others.
  A result of the strike was the establishment of an independent Aboriginal Co-operative organisation, of which Bindi was an active member, which engaged in mining ventures in the 1950s.
caption: The Pilbara region shown in red
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