Sam Backo's clearest memory on the 1967 referendum is being chased down a street in Townsville by dogs after letterboxing how-to-vote cards in support of the 'yes' campaign. He was six years old.
He also recalls selling soft drinks at Saturday-night dances at the Buffalo Hall to raise money for the campaign, and cleaning up afterwards.
But what he has reflected on most over the years is how ecstatic his mother, Evelyn Scott, was when more than 92 per cent of Australia voted 'yes', 50 years ago on Saturday.
Scott, a striking, stylish and tall woman, was the local secretary for the organisation that drove the 'yes' campaign, the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI).
"I'm a Nordic blackfella," says Mr Backo, who played rugby league for Australia and was in the Indigenous team of the 20th century. "Mum never married my father. That's a different story. She married a Scotsman, that's how she ended up with Evelyn Scott. Her maiden name was Backo. I've never had any other name."
Evelyn Scott was a close friend of Eddie 'Koiki' Mabo and his wife Bonita, which meant Mr Backo had a ringside seat at the next watershed moment in black and white relations, a quarter of a century after the 1967 referendum.
Mr Backo recalls Mabo coming from his gardening job at the James Cook University and sitting down at the kitchen table with his mother and discussing how they planned to challenge the idea that the land belonged to no one when the Europeans arrived. "I called him uncle and Bonita aunty."
Eight years after the High Court recognised the rights of Mabo's people to their islands in the eastern Torres Strait and inserted the legal doctrine of native title into Australian law, another seismic moment beckoned.
Ms Scott was chairwoman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation when a 10-year project culminated with the council handing its report to government and walks for reconciliation across the country. Among the recommendations were a call to government to back constitutional recognition and "put in place a process which will unite all Australians by way of an agreement, or treaty, through which unresolved issues of reconciliation can be resolved".
Mr Backo walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge with his mother and family members and half a million others. He reckons his mum felt 10 feet tall. "I thought people were happy to sit down and settle this business, you know?"
But, like the recommendations in so many reports about Indigenous affairs, the recommendations went nowhere. "Like usual, it's still collecting dust."
This week Mr Backo, 56, has been one of 250 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people to gather at Uluru for the country's first national Indigenous constitutional convention.
He says he is representing his mother and his Warrgamay people, rain forest Murris whose traditional lands are north of Townsville.
Among the delegates are many whose family histories were shaped by the institutionalised racism that prevailed until the early 1970s, including plenty who saw Evelyn Scott as an inspiration and a mentor.
Jackie Huggins is one of them. She experienced that racism with Ms Scott in the months before the bridge walk in 2000 when they were told by a cab driver in central Sydney: "I'm not taking you two!"
Then there is Norma Ingham, a Wiradjuri woman who was born in the NSW town of Cowra and raised on "Erambie" Aboriginal Reserve. She recalls her mother being in hospital to give birth when more than 1100 Japanese prisoners of war attempted a mass breakout from the camp outside the town.
"The Aboriginal people were not allowed in the main part of the hospital and everything that the Aboriginal patients used had ABO on it, the sheets and the towels," she says.
"Evelyn was always at the forefront of the struggle for our rights. She was one of those larger-than-life people. You couldn't miss her."
Mr Backo's hope is that the agreement reached at the convention will give Indigenous Australia a clear direction and that a treaty and strategy to give his people economic independence will be part of it. More than that, he wants the statement to be embraced by the nation.
"They talk about closing the gap. I say: 'Level up the playing field!' I'm not greedy. A small fish is sweet."
To prepare for the convention Mr Backo went back to Hailifax, where his grandfather, Ishmael Sampson Backo, is buried, and visited his 81-year-old mother, who is in high care with dementia in Cairns. What followed was another moment he will never forget.
"I sat with her and I said, 'I'm going to Uluru to do business for our country about us and the government and the way we have been treated and the way forward.' And she looked me straight in the eye and she just said: 'Yes!'"
