Saturday marks 50 years since Australians went to the polls on May 27, 1967 for a referendum that would see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people officially recognised in the census and by the federal government.

On the day, 90.77 per cent of Australians voted in favour of the changes to the Constitution.

“Prior to 1967 we were seen as invisible people. We were basically swept under the carpet,” Mr Crawford said.

“People of my generation thought the referendum would save us. It would bring us onto the national agenda.”

But, 50 years on, Mr Crawford is the first to admit there are “serious and complex issues” with Australia’s indigenous people that need to be addressed.

Mr Crawford is 70 years old. He is old enough to remember the “freedom fighters” like his father Tom Crawford who fought to have his people recognised as citizens in their own country.

His mother Jean Cruse once tried to sit in the “white” area of a movie cinema. When she and her friends were refused entry, they staged a sit in and were arrested.

Mr Crawford said 50 years ago he thought: “The referendum was the best thing since sliced bread. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve still got a long way to go”.

These days, however, Mr Crawford fears that Australia’s indigenous population have fallen into a cycle and that the government does not know how to fix.

“To be educated you need to be in good health, to be in good health you need good housing, to get good housing you need good education,” he said. “We’re back where we started.”

Mr Crawford had some strong words for today’s young indigenous people.

“Our kids have come so far and they can’t go back to being an Aboriginal, but they haven’t come far enough to be successful participants in the 20^th century,” he said.

“They’re floating around. That to me is the big issue that we need to start addressing. We talk about the stolen generation, but I think today we have the lost generation.”

Mr Crawford feared that white people view indigenous as: “Bloody black fellas are unlawful and uneducated and I don’t think that we can change that.”

He said the government must  sit down and talk to indigenous people and that “black problems need to be seen through black eyes”.

However, he said indigenous Australians also “need to be masters of their own destiny”.