Daisy Bindi

The 2004 Black Swan Theatre Company production of the play Yandy, written by Jolly Read and directed by Rachael Maza, tells the story of the Indigenous workers in the Pilbara strike, including Bindi, and their fight for wages, freedom of speech and freedom of movement across their country.

Bindi died on 23 December 1962 of uraemia, a type of kidney disease, at the Native Hospital in Port Hedland, Western Australia. She was buried in the local cemetery.

In 1960 the Cooperative split into fractions, some who wished to continue with McLeod, and others who thought that his position against mining interests were counterproductive to the Aboriginal cause; which included Bindi.

A result of the strike was the establishment of an independent Aboriginal Co-operative organisation, of which Bindi was an active member, which engaged in mining ventures in the 1950s.

In the 1950s Bindi lived in the Pindan Cooperative settlement in Port Hedland, a well-ordered collective and one of the first Aboriginal cooperatives formed in Western Australia, where residents worked in the mining industry and received equal pay. In October 1959 she successfully lobbied for a school for Pindan while in Perth to be fitted for an prosthetic limb after losing her leg in an accident in the bush. In Perth she also spoke at meetings of the Western Australian branch of the Union of Australian Women, a group which supported the cause of Aboriginal rights.

In 1946 in protest against poor wages and living conditions, unionist and elected spokesman for the Aborigines; Don McLeod and Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna, encouraged Aborigines working on sheep and cattle stations in Pilbara to strike for better conditions. Bindi was among the most prominent backers of McLeod, and she led 96 people in the walk-off from Roy Hill station. She lived and worked with the Nyangumarda people on pastoral stations, where she witnessed and experienced indignities from the police in regular police raids on Aboriginal camps. At the time it was common for Aboriginal workers to be paid only in rations of food and clothing.

Daisy Bindi (1904—1962), also known as Mumaring, was an Aboriginal Australian Indigenous rights activist and a leader in the landmark 1946 Pilbara strike in Western Australia.

Bindi was born about 1904 on a cattle-station near present-day Jigalong, on the edge of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia, to parents Jimmy and Milly. Her Aboriginal name was Mumaring. She acquired the name Bindi on her marriage to her husband, though no other records of their union have been found.