of the Constitution. Succeeding colonial and state Governments legislated to remove the funding provisions for "native welfare". The strike The strike was coordinated and led by Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna; and Don McLeod, an active unionist and member of the Communist Party of Australia for a short period. The strike was planned at an Aboriginal law meeting in 1942 at Skull Springs (east of Nullagine), where a massacre had previously occurred. The meeting was attended by an estimated 200 senior Aboriginal representatives representing twenty-three language groups from much of the remote north-west of Australia. 16 interpreters were needed for the meeting. Discussions were protracted with the meeting lasting six weeks. McLeod, the only European-Australian present, was given the task of chief negotiator. While not present, Bin Bin was elected to represent the Aboriginal peoples from unsettled desert lands. Later McLeod and Bin Bin chose McKenna to represent those from the settled areas. The strike was postponed until after the Second World War had ended in 1945. Peter Coppin, also known as Kangushot, (1920–2006) was another one of the strike leaders. Regarded as a pioneer of the Aboriginal rights movement in the 1940s, he was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1972, and appointed NAIDOC Elder of the Year in 2002. Crude calendars were taken from one station camp to another in early 1946 to organise the strike. The efforts, if noticed by the white people present, were dismissed and laughed at. The date of May 1st was chosen not only because it was International Workers' Day but also because it was the first day of the shearing season. On 1 May 1946, hundreds of Aboriginal workers left the pastoral stations and set up strike camps. The strike was most effective in the Pilbara region. Further afield in Broome and Derby and other inland northern towns, the strike movement was harshly suppressed by police action and was more short lived. Over the three years, occasionally strikers went back to work, while others joined or rejoined the strike. At the commencement of the strike in 1946, McLeod was an Australian Workers' Union delegate at Port Hedland wharf who motivated support by the Australian labour movement. The Western Australian branch of the Seamen's Union of Australia eventually put a blackban on the shipment of wool from the Pilbara. Nineteen unions in Western Australia, seven federal unions and four Trades