ABC Newslink: Neville Bonner, first Aborigine elected to Federal Parliament, dies Friday 5 February, 1999 (4:48pm AEDT) The first Aborigine elected to Australia's Federal Parliament has died. Former Liberal Senator Neville Bonner had been suffering from lung cancer for some time. Neville Bonner's childhood was marked by hunger, discrimination and dispossession. He had only one year of formal education. Despite that, he became known as an elder statesman of Australia's indigenous people. An elder of the Jagera people from south-east Queensland, he was the first Aborigine elected to Federal Parliament in 1971. After 12 years as a Senator, he held a series of prominent positions, serving as a director on the board of the ABC, as the Senior Official Visitor for all Queensland prisons, and as head of the Indigenous Advisory Council, the peak body advising the Queensland Government on indigenous issues. Last year, he attended Australia's Constitutional Convention on behalf of the group Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy. He was 76 when he died. ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use."
