William Harris (civil rights leader)

William Harris (1867–1931) was an early Western Australian activist for Aboriginal civil rights. He has been called "the most significant voice of a generation with the education and social standing to assert their rights as British subjects".

Over the course of his life Harris worked as a miner, as a port and pastoral worker, and as a farmer. He also vocally protested the injustices of the Aborigines Act (1905), which effectively abolished the prior legal status and citizen rights of all persons of indigenous descent; and he was willing to criticize senior officials who were complacent or uninterested in the mistreatment of Aboriginal people. Although entitled to a personal exemption from the Aborigines Act, he declined this on the grounds that it reinforced the exclusion of others.