World News for Students of English

01-02-2022 07:00

In 1971, Harold Thomas created the Australian Aboriginal flag. It was black, yellow, and red, and Thomas first used it at a protest.

The flag became a symbol of the Aboriginal people, but it brought problems, too. Thomas and a few companies owned the rights to use the flag. If someone else used it, they had to pay money for it.

Sports teams used the flag on T-shirts, caps, and other things. Aboriginal people used the flag, too, but they started to be angry that they had to pay for it. There were more and more disagreements, and for example, the Australian Football League refused to pay when it used the flag.

The Australian government paid 20 million dollars, and it bought the copyright on the flag. Now, people can use it freely, and nobody will pay for it.

Difficult words: aboriginal (the original people who live in a place), refuse (when you say that you will not do something), copyright (a legal right which says that somebody can use or sell something, and nobody else can do it).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.