Charles Perkins AO (1936–2000) was an Indigenous rights campaigner and bureaucrat. Son of a Kalkadoon father and Arrernte mother, as a youth in Adelaide Perkins was a sought-after soccer player; after completing an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, he played professionally in England, and on his return to Australia in 1959 he played for clubs in Adelaide and Sydney. Widely credited as the first Indigenous person to attain a bachelor's degree from an Australian university, he graduated in Arts from the University of Sydney in 1966. In 1965, he was a prominent organiser of and participant in the anti-discrimination 'freedom rides' through country NSW, foregrounding educational and health issues among rural Indigenous people and exposing entrenched racism by demanding entry to venues such as clubs and swimming pools that denied access to Aboriginal people. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s he was involved in many organisations promoting Aboriginal rights, welfare and advancement. He began his Commonwealth public service career in 1969 at the Office for Aboriginal Affairs, which became Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1972. That year he received a kidney transplant and appeared at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Having weathered a twelve-month suspension from the public service, during which he published his 1975 autobiography A Bastard Like Me, in 1976 he returned to the DAA, becoming Secretary from 1984 to 1988. He was chair of the Arrernte Council of Central Australia between 1991 and 2000, and commissioner and deputy chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commission from 1994 to 1995. Vice-president of the Australian Soccer Federation from 1986, Perkins continued his involvement in various sports, particularly soccer, until he died. He was accorded a State funeral, held in Sydney.
