The Most Famous
SOCIAL ACTIVISTS from Australia
This page contains a list of the greatest Australian Social Activists. The pantheon dataset contains 840 Social Activists, 2 of which were born in Australia. This makes Australia the birth place of the 62nd most number of Social Activists behind Trinidad and Tobago, and Norway.
Top 3
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Australian Social Activists of all time. This list of famous Australian Social Activists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Yagan (1800 - 1833)
With an HPI of 50.56, Yagan is the most famous Australian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages on wikipedia.
Yagan (; c. 1795 – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. He is considered a legendary figure by the Noongar.After his shooting, settlers removed Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
2. Vida Goldstein (1869 - 1949)
With an HPI of 37.89, Vida Goldstein is the 2nd most famous Australian Social Activist. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (pron. ) (13 April 1869 – 15 August 1949) was an Australian suffragist and social reformer. She was one of four female candidates at the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand. Goldstein was born in Portland, Victoria. Her family moved to Melbourne in 1877 when she was around eight years old, where she would attend Presbyterian Ladies' College. Goldstein followed her mother into the women's suffrage movement and soon became one of its leaders, becoming known both for her public speaking and as an editor of pro-suffrage publications. Despite her efforts, Victoria was the last Australian state to implement equal voting rights, with women not granted the right to vote until 1908. In 1903, Goldstein unsuccessfully contested the Senate as an independent, winning 16.8 percent of the vote. She was one of the first four women to stand for federal parliament, along with Selina Anderson, Nellie Martel, and Mary Moore-Bentley. Goldstein ran for parliament a further four times, and despite never winning an election won back her deposit on all but one occasion. She stood on left-wing platforms, and some of her more radical views alienated both the general public and some of her associates in the women's movement. After women's suffrage was achieved, Goldstein remained prominent as a campaigner for women's rights and various other social reforms. She was an ardent pacifist during World War I, and helped found the Women's Peace Army, an anti-war organisation. Goldstein maintained a lower profile in later life, devoting most of her time to the Christian Science movement. Her death passed largely unnoticed, and it was not until the late 20th century that her contributions were brought to the attention of the general public.
3. Peter Tatchell (b. 1952)
With an HPI of 34.44, Peter Tatchell is the 3rd most famous Australian Social Activist. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.
Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) is an Australian-born British human rights campaigner, best known for his work with LGBTQI+ social movements. Tatchell was selected as the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981. He was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for ostensibly supporting extra-Parliamentary action against the Thatcher government. Labour subsequently allowed him to stand in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election in February 1983, in which the party lost the seat to the Liberals. In the 1990s he campaigned for LGBT rights through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded. He has worked on various campaigns, such as Stop Murder Music against music lyrics allegedly inciting violence against LGBT people and writes and broadcasts on various human rights and social justice issues. He attempted a citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001. In April 2004, Tatchell joined the Green Party of England and Wales and in 2007 was selected as prospective Parliamentary candidate in the constituency of Oxford East, but in December 2009 he stood down due to brain damage he says was caused by a bus accident as well as damage sustained during various protests. Since 2011, he has been Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. He has taken part in over 30 debates at the Oxford Union, encompassing a wide range of issues such as patriotism, Thatcherism and university safe spaces.
People
Pantheon has 3 people classified as Australian social activists born between 1800 and 1952. Of these 3, 1 (33.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Australian social activists include Peter Tatchell. The most famous deceased Australian social activists include Yagan, and Vida Goldstein. As of April 2024, 1 new Australian social activists have been added to Pantheon including Vida Goldstein.
