Freedom Riders

During the colonisation of Australia there have been complications for Indigenous people to fully be accepted into the lifestyles set out the European settlers. However, after colonisation both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians began to work together to fight for equality for the Indigenous people throughout Australia. Though the Indigenous communities were able to fight for freedom by themselves, they acquired the help of the non-Indigenous communities also who were willing to help them to improve and developed the desired outcome that the Indigenous were looking for. Charles Perkins was the young man who would later become one of the most important Australian Aboriginal activists, as well as a leader in the Aboriginal community through his work as a politician and as a bureaucrat, as well as through his sporting achievements as a soccer player, coach and administrator (Read 1990).
Perkins was often a controversial leader in the Aboriginal community. He was seen as a pioneering spokesman and bureaucrat, and was known for his determination and willingness to fight for what he believed in, which sometimes brought him into conflict with the government and other community leaders (Barlow 2003). Perkins being an Aboriginal activist he fought for the right of freedom for the Indigenous community, the group that Perkins formed was known as “The Freedom Rider”, with this group both Indigenous and non-Indigenous parties were able to achieve a positive outcome (Gunson 2000). His involvement in the 'Freedom Ride' through rural New South Wales in the early 1960s played a crucial role in bringing attention to the plight of rural Aboriginal people and showing that Aboriginal people could have effective political representation from within their own communities (Barlow 2003).
Perkins, born in 1936, spent his early childhood in a police-patrolled compound in Alice Springs. He was not one of the 'stolen generations' in the sense that he was not forcibly removed from