Kevin Cook is described as a “pioneer freedom fighter” for Aboriginal People.

He was the first Chairperson of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, the State’s peak representative body in Aboriginal Affairs.

He became the first Aboriginal General Secretary of Tranby Aboriginal College – an independent learning environment for adult Aboriginal and Torres-strait Islander Peoples. It pioneered Aboriginal Education, setting its own Indigenous agenda including outreach to Indigenous communities, social justice activism and reconciliation.

Previously he had been an organiser with the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) working as a grassroots activist on the job. He linked with other unions working on land rights, ‘deaths in custody’ and later ‘building bridges’ that went on to become ‘Survival Day Concert’.

He was appointed a member of the ‘NSW Life Sentence Review Committee’ and was awarded the Centenary Medal of Federation in 2001.