The late Mac Silva was a great hero to the Aboriginal community in southeast Australia. He was the leader of legendary Aboriginal band, the Silva Linings, which gave sustanence to the Aboriginal political movement that grew out of Redfern and Fitzroy in the late 1960s. He also played a major role in Redfern community affairs, in particular with the famous Redfern All-Blacks rugby league team.

Bruce McGuinness today lives in Coburg in Melbourne, coping with ill health by maintaining a web site to stay in contact with the world. In the late 1960s and 1970s he was an important leader and strategist in the so-called Black Power Movement which was instrumental in the development of poltical aims of land rights, self-relience, economic and political independence for indigenous Australia.

In the late 1960s he was the first Aboriginal Director of the Aborigines Advancement League (AAL) in Melbourne, and introduced the term "Black Power" to Australia when he and AAL Chairman, Bob Maza, invited an Afro-Carribean academic, Dr Roosevelt Brown to speak at an AAL meeting. The Australian media, who at the time were even more racist than they are today, had a field day whipping up fear and hysteria with headlines about "Black Power Violence". When McGuinness associate Denis Walker then set up a Brisbane-based Black Panther Party, white Australian's reacted with fear and loathing, but McGuinness and Walker, along with the Paul Coe led Redfern group went on to stage some of the biggest indigenous demonstrations ever staged in this country.

When an opportunistic political stunt accidentally turned into the most successful indigneous demonstartion ever, at the "Aboriginal Embassy" in Canberra between January and July in 1972, McGuinness, Walker and the Redfern group were the instigators. The "Aboriginal Embassy" led to major government policy changes under the Whitlam and Fraser governments but the struggle to maintain Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs continued. McGuinness became the Chiarperson of the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC) set up by the Whitlam Government, and in the mid-1970s ran a community organisation course for young Kooris at Swinburne College in Melbourne.

In the 1970s and 1980s Bruce McGuinness was Chairman of the Victorian Aboriginal Heath Service (VAHS), and had a significant involvement in the creation and proliferation of community-controlled indigenous health services across Australia. He was also instrumental in the creation of the National Aboriginal & Islander Health Organisation which was at the forefront of political agitation throughout the 1980s.

In media and the arts McGuinness was also a pioneer in that his 1972 radio show on 3ZZZ in Melbourne was the first regular indigenous radio program. In 1972 McGuinness wrote and directed the first film made by an Aboriginal person, Black Fire, and in 1974 wrote and directed the important historical film, A Time to Dream.

Bruce McGuinness can be visited on his website at http://www.kooriweb.org/bbm