FROM THE ARCHIVES | CAN.ORG
2 min
The Power of Protest
Uncle Ben Taylor Cuiermara
It's been nearly seventy years since he was inside these walls. In the Fremantle Prison's Noongars-only exercise yard, Uncle Ben Taylor Cuiermara grabs his tapping sticks and starts speaking to his ancestors.
"The spirits of my relatives and my people who walked this land and were locked up in here for nothing are now at rest and at peace, the horrors of this prison for Aboriginal people I will never forget."
These days, the prison is one of Western Australia's top tourist attractions. It's a World Heritage Site, lauded for its cultural significance.
But for Uncle Ben and some of his family members, it was a place of misery and suffering. Uncle Ben's father did time here. His crime was supplying wine to his brother.
In his late teens and early twenties, Uncle Ben also found himself sentenced to time behind bars. He was sent to the state's most notorious gaol, Fremantle Prison, for minor offences.
It would set him on a path to becoming a human rights activist.
Uncle Ben has been fighting for justice for longer than most of us have been alive.
Long before the Black Lives Matter movement swept through the world, Uncle Ben was working tirelessly to protect the lives of Aboriginal people in custody. He was a leading national voice on the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee and Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody.
Uncle Ben has been the voice and the face of justice, inspired by his family and first-hand experiences of incarceration, and attending the funerals and mourning the losses of too many lives at the hands of police.
His activism has taken him all the way to South Africa where he sat with Desmond Tutu and spoke about how Australia provided South Africa with the blueprint for Apartheid.
Uncle Ben's path to activism came via the church when he encountered an Irish priest who preached about injustice at the pulpit. Uncle Ben had just been released from goal for the crime of being black and having a drink. Upon his release Father Tiernan introduced him to an Aboriginal counsellor who helped him get sober.
As well as putting down the bottle, Uncle Ben used his experience to help establish an Aboriginal alcohol counselling service in Western Australia.
Now in his eighties, Uncle Ben Taylor shows no signs of slowing down. As long as he can still walk and raise a fist in defiance, he'll be there – protesting for his people.
"I want to be remembered as Uncle Ben Taylor Cuiermara who fought for justice and his people."
Written by Michelle White
Produced by Community Arts Network during the Ngaluk Waangkiny project.
can.org.au/ngaluk-waangkiny
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