Susan Charles Rankin also known as Aunty Sue Rankin, is an Australian indigenous rights and human rights activist and elder of the Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Jaara people and Loddon River tribe, is a native Aboriginal tribe which occupied the watersheds of the Loddon and Avoca Rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They were part of the Kulin alliance of tribes. There were 16 clans, which adhered...

 people of the Kulin

Kulin

The Kulin nation, was an alliance of five Indigenous Australian nations in Central Victoria, Australia, prior to European settlement. Their collective territory extended to around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River valleys. To their...

 nation from Central Victoria, Australia. She was one of five signatories by Australian aboriginal elders who lodged a writ in the High Court of Australia

High Court of Australia

The High Court of Australia is the supreme court in the Australian court hierarchy and the final court of appeal in Australia. It has both original and appellate jurisdiction, has the power of judicial review over laws passed by the Parliament of Australia and the parliaments of the States, and...

 in April 2005 calling for the Australian Federal Government to be investigated for crimes of genocide.

On 26 May 2004, National Sorry Day

National Sorry Day

The National Sorry Day is an Australian event, held each year on 26 May since 1998, to express regret over the historical mistreatment of Aboriginal peoples. The day was chosen in commemoration of the Bringing Them Home report being handed to the federal government on 26 May 1997. It is not an...

, Susan Rankin, peacefully re-occupied crown land at Franklinford

Franklinford, Victoria

Franklinford is a small community in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, located in the Shire of Hepburn. It was the site chosen by Edward Stone Parker to build the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate station at Franklinford in January 1841 which was an important focus of the Dja Dja Wurrung...

in central Victoria, calling her campsite the Going Home Camp as it is a site of significance to the Dja Dja Wurrung. Rankin asked the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment to produce documents proving that the Crown has the right to occupy these lands. According to the 2 June 2004 Daylesford Advocate, local DSE officers admitted they "cannot produce these documents and doubt that such documents exist". Police later arrested her and took her to Ballarat, but no charges were pressed.

In 2007 Susan Rankin embarked upon a 1,500 kilometre Sacred Life Walk from Adelaide to Uluru in a bid to "bring world-wide focus on Mother Earth’s changes and the continued deplorable treatment and living conditions of Aboriginal Peoples in the homelands of her Ancestors."