Start of three-year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians.
The 1946 Pilbara strike was a landmark strike by Indigenous Australian pastoral workers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia for human rights recognition, payment of fair wages and working conditions. The strike involved at least 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers walking off the large pastoral stations in the Pilbara on 1 May 1946, and from employment in the two major towns of Port Hedland and Marble Bar. The strike did not end until August 1949 and even then many Indigenous Australians refused to go back and work for white station owners.It is regarded as the first industrial strike by Aboriginal people since colonisation and one of if not the longest industrial strikes in Australia, and a landmark in indigenous Australians fighting for their human rights, cultural rights, and Native title.