Faith Bandler (27 September 1918 13 February 2015; née Ida Lessing Faith Mussing) was an Australian civil rights activist of South Sea Islander and Scottish-Indian heritage. A campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians and South Sea Islanders, she was best known for her leadership in the campaign for the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal Australians. Early life and family Bandler was born in Tumbulgum, New South Wales, and raised on a farm near Murwillumbah. Her father Wacvie Mussingkon, son of Baddick and Lessing Mussingkon, had been blackbirded from Biap, on Ambrym Island, in what is now Vanuatu as a boy, aged about 13 years, in 1883. He was then sent to Mackay, Queensland, before being sent to work on a sugar cane plantation. He later escaped and married Bandler's mother, a Scottish–Indian woman from New South Wales. Mussingkon's abduction was part of blackbirding, the practice which brought cheap labour to help establish the Australian sugar industry. He was later known as Peter Mussing, a lay preacher and worked on a banana plantation outside Murwillumbah. He died when Bandler was five years old. Bandler cited stories of her father's harsh experience as a slave labourer as a strong motivation for her activism. In 1934, Bandler left school and moved to Sydney, where she worked as a dressmaker's apprentice. Career Early career During World War II, Bandler and her sister Kath served in the Australian Women's Land Army, working on fruit farms. Bandler and indigenous workers received less pay than white workers. After being discharged in 1945, she started to campaign for equal pay for indigenous workers. After the war, Bandler moved to the Sydney suburb of Kings Cross, New South Wales where she also worked as an abuse activist. Community activism In 1956, Bandler became a full-time activist, co-founding and becoming active in the Sydney-based Indigenous rights organisation Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship along with Pearl Gibbs, Bert Groves, and Grace Bardsley. Bandler also became involved with the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA, later FCAATSI), which was formed in 1957. During this period, Bandler worked with her mentors Pearl Gibbs and Jessie Street. As general secretary of FCAA, Bandler led the campaign for a constitutional referendum to remove discriminatory provisions from the Constitution of Australia. The campaign, which included several massive petitions and hundreds of public meetings arranged by Bandler, resulted in the 1967 referendum being put to the people by the Holt