government. The referendum succeeded in all six states, attracting nearly 91 percent support across the country, which gave the Federal Government the power to make laws for Indigenous Australians in states, as well as including them in population counts (the Australian census). In 1975, Bandler visited Ambrym Island, where her father had been kidnapped 92 years before. Throughout the 1970s, Bandler was a prominent member of the Women's Electoral Lobby in New South Wales. Writing In 1974, Bandler started working on four books, two histories of the 1967 referendum, an account of her brother's life in New South Wales, and a novel about her father's experience of blackbirding in Queensland. Beginning in 1974, she also started campaigning for the rights of South Sea Islander Australians. According to Bandler's biographer, feminist writer and historian Marilyn Lake, this campaign was more challenging than the FCAATSI campaign for the 1967 referendum, since Bandler was fighting on two fronts. Not only was she battling historians who insisted that the blackbirded South Sea Islanders were actually voluntary indentured servants, but she was also to some extent ostracised by indigenous Australians in the Australian civil rights movement, due to the increasing influence of separatist Black Power ideology. Personal life In 1952, Faith married Hans Bandler, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, Austria, and lived in Frenchs Forest. During the war, Hans had been interned in the Nazi labour camps. The couple had a daughter, Lilon Gretl, born in 1954, and a fostered Aboriginal Australian son, Peter (Manual Armstrong). However, they lost touch with Peter when he later left to find his own family. Hans died in 2009. Faith Bandler died at the age of 96 in February 2015. Honours and awards Bandler was: appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1976, but she declined to accept it appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) on 11 June 1984, in recognition of her service to Aboriginal welfare awarded an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University in 1994 awarded the 1997 Human Rights Medal by the then Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission named as one of the 100 inaugural Australian Living Treasures by the National Trust of Australia invested as a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) on 26 January 2009 (Australia Day) included on the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001 A 1993 portrait of Bandler by artist Margaret