One of Australia's most strident Aboriginal leaders, Mr Charlie Perkins, who led "Freedom Rides" against racism in 1965, died yesterday from kidney failure.
"His greatest legacy was like that of Martin Luther King, he was a freedom fighter," said Mr Gatjil Djerrkura, former head of the peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
"He fought in the open, in the street. He stood up and risked his life for Aborigines," Mr Djerrkura said.
In a short statement Mr Perkins' family revealed the black activist had received a kidney transplant 30 years ago and had died of renal failure in a Sydney hospital.
Mr Perkins (64), born in an settlement near Alice Springs, became Australia's first Aboriginal university graduate and later headed the government's Department of Aboriginal Affairs.
Despite being a member of the organisation which won Sydney the 2000 Summer Olympics, Perkins used the Olympics to further highlight the cause of disadvantaged Aborigines.
Only a few months before the September Games, Mr Perkins warned the Olympics would suffer a wave of Aboriginal protests.
"It's going to burn, baby, burn, from now on," he said.
"We are not going to lie down like a mongrel dog so people can come along and kick us. We are going to start biting."
Aboriginal protests at the Sydney Olympics turned out to be small and peaceful, but Perkins was always the loud, angry voice of black Australia, allowing others to be portrayed as moderates.
Mr Perkins, named Aborigine of the Year in 1993 and awarded the Order of Australia for his work for indigenous people, led a small group of Aborigines onto the lawns of Australia's parliament house in 1972 and erected an Aboriginal tent embassy.
The Aboriginal tent embassy remains on the lawns of the now old parliament and is protected under heritage laws.
But Mr Perkins kept his harshest criticism for Australia's current Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, for his refusal to apologise to Aborigines for past injustices.
Australia's Aborigines make up 2.1 per cent, or around 400,000, of Australia's 19 million population and have a life expectancy 20 years less than other Australians.
An Aborigine woman serving a six-month jail term for breaching parole was taken handcuffed and chained to her uncle's funeral in Australia, provoking a public outcry at her treatment and forcing a state prisons minister to apologise yesterday. Veronica Barlow, a medium security prisoner in jail for assault, was last Friday driven handcuffed and chained from jail to her uncle's funeral at Yarrabah in north Australia.