More than 1600 people have signed up within 48 hours to join a class action against Western Australia's government over the theft of wages from Indigenous workers.
Shine Lawyers lodged the action in the Federal Court on Monday on behalf of workers whose wages were stolen as part of a labour scheme operated under the Native Administration Act 1936 and Native Welfare Act 1963.
Up to 10,000 workers are expected to be directly eligible, as well as a substantial number of their descendants.
WA's government has indicated it will look to settle the matter, which is being funded by Litigation Lending Services (LLS), outside of court.
LLS director and prominent Indigenous leader Warren Mundine has encouraged anyone affected by the policy to sign up to the class action.
"You might expect big corporations to resist wage theft claims but the same governments that talk about closing the gap ought to be proactive about paying these people back their rightful wages," he said on Wednesday.
"Instead, Indigenous Australians have been forced to mount legal challenges.
Advocates have warned many elderly complainants may not live to see the matter resolved.
The Queensland government last year settled a class action relating to similar unpaid entitlements for $190 million after a three-year battle.
More than 30,000 claimants ultimately came forward, well above the 12,000 initially expected.
Class action group member Ron Harrington-Smith, who was four when he was forcibly taken from his mother to work at the Mount Margaret mission in the northeastern Goldfields region, described the practice as unfair and appalling.
His duties included chopping and carting wood to missionaries in their houses, marshalling livestock and cleaning soiled toilet pans.
"All of this was barefoot and in squalid conditions," Mr Harrington-Smith said.
"It's hard to imagine that we endured all this suffering."
Aboriginal Affairs Minister Ben Wyatt said the government was considering the grounds of the compensation claims and would look to achieve a mediated outcome.
His paternal grandmother was among the many Indigenous people subject to the discriminatory policy.
