Faith Bandler - Publishing

Publishing

In 1974, Bandler started working on four books, two histories of the 1967 referendum, an account of her brother's life in New South Wales, and a novel about her father's experience of blackbirding in Queensland. Beginning in 1974, she also started campaigning for the rights of South Sea Islander Australians. According to Bandler's biographer, feminist writer and historian Marilyn Lake, this campaign was more challenging than the FCAATSI campaign for the 1967 referendum, since Bandler was fighting on two fronts. Not only was she battling historians who insisted that the blackbirded South Sea Islanders were actually voluntary indentured servants, but she was also to some extent ostracised by Indigenous Australians in the Australian civil rights movement, due to the increasing influence of separatist Black Power ideology. In 1975, Bandler visited Ambryn Island, where her father had been kidnapped 92 years before. Throughout the 1970s, Bandler was also a prominent member of the Women's Electoral Lobby in New South Wales.

Published works

• Bandler, Faith (1977). Wacvie. Adelaide: Rigby. ISBN 0-7270-0446-8.
• Bandler, Faith; Fox, Len (1980). Marani in Australia. Adelaide: Rigby. ISBN 0-7270-1254-1.
• Bandler, Faith; Fox, Len (editors) (1983). The Time was Ripe: A History of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship. Chippendale: Alternative Publishing Cooperative. ISBN 0-909188-78-5.
• Bandler, Faith (1984). Welou, My Brother. Glebe: Wild & Woolley. ISBN 0-909331-73-1.
• Bandler, Faith (1989). Turning the tide : a personal history of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. ISBN 0-85575-196-7.