Chicka Dixon

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Charles Chicka Dixon (b. 1928) is an Australian Aboriginal activist and leader.

He was active in campaigns around the 1967 referendum and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, dedicating his life to the fight for basic human rights and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In 1970 Chicka was instrumental in establishing Australia's first Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern; he co-founded the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972. He was the first Aboriginal person to be appointed as a Councillor on the Australia Council and is a former Chairman of the Council's Aboriginal Arts Board. In 1983 Chicka was named the first Aboriginal of the Year.

Chicka attended his first political meeting on his 18th birthday in 1946. Inspired by Jack Patten, an organiser of the 1938 Day of Mourning and the Aborigines Progressive Association, he has been politically active ever since. During the 1960s he was spokesperson for the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

In 1972 he travelled to China to highlight the Aboriginal struggle in an attempt to shame the Australian Government into action. QANTAS wouldn't fly the group, so Chicka found an airline that would.

In 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters for his eminent service to the community by the University of New South Wales.

In his seventies now, he is dealing with asbestos poisoning, a legacy from his working days on the Sydney docks as a wharfie.