Stan Davey

Stanley Fraser Davey AM (20 July 1922 – 22 September 2010) was a prominent Australian activist and advocate for Aboriginal Australians. He co-founded several advocacy organisations, including the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, where he was the founding secretary, alongside Pastor Doug Nicholls, and the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement.

Early life and education Stanley Fraser Davey

He studied at the College of the Bible, Glen Iris, in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris, graduating in 1947.

Ministry Davey returned to Perth, and worked as the Western Australian youth director of Churches of Christ for two years.

He had started having doubts about the policy of the Menzies government towards Aboriginal Australians, and, following a meeting with Doug Nicholls (who was a Churches of Christ pastor as well as Aboriginal activist),

Activism and career Davey, usually known as Stan, met both Aboriginal activists, such as Joe McGinness, and white Australians who were advocating for Aboriginal people, such as Shirley Andrews, Doris Blackburn, and Labor politician Gordon Bryant. was established in March 1957, with Bryant as founding president, Blackburn as deputy president, Davey as secretary, and Nicholls as field officer.

In 1958 Davey was a co-founder of the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA; later FCAATSI), and was general secretary for 10 years. In 1965, he supported Don McLeod (another non-Indigenous activist) in advocating for Aboriginal people's access to unemployment benefits, as they were being penalised for not accepting low-paying jobs. In the late 1960s, he invited Yolngu man Daymbalipu (one of the signatories of the Yirrkala bark petitions) to Victoria, to observe first-hand the devastating effects of mining in La Trobe Valley. Daymbalipu stayed with former Yirrkala teacher Ron Croxford.

In 1966, he travelled to Daguragu in the Northern Territory to support Gurindji stockmen during the Wave Hill walk-off.

In 1968 he resigned as the director of the AAL and moved to the Pilbara and Kimberley regions in Western Australia to work directly with Aboriginal communities. He worked for Don McLeod teaching English, and later assisted Aboriginal people in Broome to establish a fishing cooperative. From 1975 until 1980 in Fitzroy Crossing, Davey helped six Aboriginal groups to get incorporated and establish economic independence, while Richardson worked with the women in the camps. During these years in north-western WA, he noted evidence of discrimination against individual Aboriginal people as well as campaigning on rights issues, helped along by his networks built through VAAL and FCAA.

Personal life and death Davey first married Joan, and they had two children. He later married Dr Jan Richardson, and they had two children.

In 2022, historian Clare Wright discovered that Davey's ex-wife Joan, then living in Derby, Western Australia, was in possession of the fourth bark petition, which had been given to Davey by Gordon Bryant. Wright met Joan, and she agreed to return the framed document to Yirrkala. After undergoing meticulous preservation measures by Artlab in Adelaide, the document was returned to Yirrkala on 7 December 2023. The handover ceremony was attended by Davey's son, Paul, and granddaughter Natalie.

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