Unrepentant in her working-class politics and hate by the police for her activism, Lucy “mum” Eatock was a central figure in the struggle to stop the Glebe Evictions in Sydney the 1930s. An Aboriginal woman, raised and educated in a white family in colonial Queensland, Lucy Wakenshaw not only defied colonial social convention by marrying Aboriginal stockman William Eatock, she would also go on to become an active member of the International Workers of the World and the Communist Party of Australia. The matriarch of large family, Lucy’s sons and daughters would follow in their mother’s footsteps and join the working-class struggle for worker and Aboriginal rights as communists.

Lucy Eatock was just one of the many Aboriginal Communists and Revolutionaries, whose participation in the struggle for both working-class and Aboriginal rights has often been pushed to the margins of Australian history. This talk will examine the history, lives and contributions of Aboriginal communists and revolutionaries discussing both the importance of these activists to the struggle for working-class and Aboriginal rights, while also looking at how their legacy has inspired later generations of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists struggling for a better world.