From the late 1940s until his death in 1959, Albert Namatjira was one of Australia’s most famous sons. Except that technically he wasn’t an Australian at all. Namatjira was a member of the Arrernte community of the Northern Territory and, like all of Australia’s Aboriginal people at the time, he was not a citizen but a “ward of the state”, which brought restrictions on voting, land ownership, drinking alcohol and freedom of movement, among other things. In 1957, however, his celebrity was such that he and his wife Rubina were granted full citizenship. Namatjira was then 55 years old and the couple were the first indigenous people to be given the rights enjoyed by every white Australian.
The more generous commentators saw Namatjira’s new status as a sign of greater societal tolerance and equality. Sceptics wondered if the fact that his paintings and their reproduction rights brought him up to £7,500 a year (perhaps £250,000 today) wasn’t the real reason for the grant of citizenship: his earnings could now be taxed.
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