William Harris (civil rights leader)
William Harris (1867–1931) was an early Western Australian activist for Aboriginal civil rights. He has been called "the most significant voice of a generation with the education and social standing to assert their rights as British subjects". Over the course of his life Harris worked as a miner, as a port and pastoral worker, and as a farmer. He also vocally protested the injustices of the Aborigines Act (1905), which effectively abolished the prior legal status and citizen rights of all persons of indigenous descent; and he was willing to criticize senior officials who were complacent or uninterested in the mistreatment of Aboriginal people. Although entitled to a personal exemption from the Aborigines Act, he declined this on the grounds that it reinforced the exclusion of others. Early life William Harris was one of seven children born to William and Madelaine Harris in Western Australia. One of his grandmothers was Aboriginal, and Harris received an initial rudimentary education as a private pupil at the Swan Native and Half-Caste Mission in Perth. Activism While working at the ports and on stations in the Ashburton and Gascoyne districts of Western Australia, Harris witnessed the brutish and cruel practices used to oppress, disenfranchise