Charles Perkins AO (1936–2000) was an Indigenous rights campaigner and bureaucrat. Son of a Kalkadoon father and Arrernte mother, as a youth in Adelaide Perkins was a sought-after soccer player; after completing a trade apprenticeship, he played professionally in England. Widely credited as the first Indigenous person to attain a bachelor's degree from an Australian university, in 1965 he was a prominent organiser of and participant in the anti-discrimination 'freedom rides' through country NSW. He began his Commonwealth public service career in 1969 at the Office for Aboriginal Affairs, which became Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1972. That year he received a kidney transplant and appeared at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Having weathered a twelve-month suspension from the public service, during which he published his 1975 autobiography A Bastard Like Me, in 1976 he returned to the DAA, becoming Secretary from 1984 to 1988. He was chair of the Arrernte Council of Central Australia between 1991 and 2000, and commissioner and deputy chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commission from 1994 to 1995. Perkins continued his involvement in various sports, particularly soccer, until he died. He was accorded a State funeral, held in Sydney.
Juno Gemes took this photograph of Perkins, then chair of the Aboriginal Development Commission, during National Land Rights Action in Brisbane in 1982.
Gift of the artist 2004. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Juno Gemes/Copyright Agency, 2022
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