Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920-1993) was a groundbreaking poet, educator, and activist for Aboriginal rights in Australia.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s Activist was a groundbreaking poet, educator, and activist for Aboriginal rights in Australia. She rose to national acclaim with her first book of poetry, created a lasting legacy of learning around Aboriginal cultures, and established herself as an author whose dedication to social justice was the backbone of her creative writing. Please welcome Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
Oodgeroo was born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska on November 3rd, 1920 in Brisbane, Australia. She was the second youngest of seven children to Lucy and Edward Ruska. Lucy was the daughter of an inland Aboriginal woman. Edward belonged to the Noonuccal people. The Noonuccal people are the traditional custodians of the Minjerribah land, also known as Stradbroke Island, where Kath grew up.
The Ruska family lived on a settlement on the outskirts of Dunwich called One Mile. Kath grew up within the Noonuccal culture, but her identity was also shaped by the injustices she saw levied by the Australian government against Aboriginal people. Lucy had been forcibly removed from her own family as a child as part of a nationwide assimilation effort. She was part of the “Stolen Generation,” a large group of children taught to reject their Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage in favor of white ideals. Throughout Kath’s youth, Edward worked as a laborer for the Queensland government as part of an underpaid Aboriginal workforce. His campaigns for better conditions for Aboriginal workers likely left an impact on his daughter.
Kath completed her formal education at Dunwich State School in 1934 and graduated into the height of an economic depression. Unable to afford further schooling, Kath began working as a domestic servant. She found few opportunities open to Aboriginal women at the time and earned less than white workers at the same jobs.
When two of her brothers were captured at the Fall of Singapore in 1942, Kath enlisted in the Australian Women’s Army Service. She worked there until a severe ear infection left her with partial hearing loss.
During her time in the military, Kath married childhood friend Bruce Walker. The two became invested in the Communist Party of Australia, the only party at the time without a White Australia policy aimed at keeping non-European ethnicities out of Australia. Kath and Bruce’s marriage didn’t last, though, and by 1946 Kath was raising their son, Denis, as a single mother. She returned to domestic work and found a job and artistic support in the household of two prominent medical doctors, Sir Raphael and Lady Phyllis Cilento. Kath had a second son, named Vivian, with Ralph Cilento, Junior.
By the 1950s, Kath’s career in writing was beginning to take shape. She joined the Brisbane Realist Writer’s Group, where fellow writers encouraged her to send her work to local publisher Jacaranda Press. The resulting collection, called “We Are Going,” was published in 1964 and became the first book of poetry released by an Aboriginal Australian. Kath’s first publications were immediate commercial successes-- she became one of Australia’s best-selling poets and received numerous honors.
Kath’s activism was indivisible from her art. While she was rocketing to fame as a poet, Kath was also relentlessly fighting for Aboriginal rights. In 1962, she was elected as the Queensland State Secretary of the Federal Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement, as well as an executive to the Aboriginal Advancement League.
These organizations led the way to a 1967 referendum enabling the federal government to legislate on Aboriginal affairs. Prior to this ruling, laws for Aboriginal peoples varied from state to state. Work by activists like Kath also secured voting rights and Australian citizenship for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
In the late 1960s, Kath retired from public politics. She published a book called “My People” in 1970-- it would be her last piece of work for a decade and a half. Kath returned to Minjerribah and began a new chapter of her life dedicated to education and preservation of hers and other Aboriginal cultures. She created a gunyah, a traditional shelter, near One Mile and named the area Moongalba, or “the sitting down place.” There, Kath established the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Center, a site for Aboriginal students and teachers across the country. There, she published two books on Aboriginal legends for children.
Kath continued to travel, educate, and protest in this last chapter of her life. While traveling through China in 1984, she published her fourth and final work, aptly called “Kath Walker in China.” She received four honorary doctorates from Australian universities, won an award for her role in a film biography about herself called Shadow Sister, and even survived a 1974 British Airways hijacking where she wrote two poems on the back of an airline sick bag.
One of Kath’s most infamous protests occurred in 1987, when she returned her title as a Member of the Order of the British Empire. She’d originally accepted it in 1970 as a recognition of her civil service and as a chance to, quote, “open doors that were still closed to the Aborigines,” as she said in a 1987 interview. 17 years after accepting it, she saw no real improvement in the treatment of Aborigines in Australia. She returned it in protest of the Bicentennial celebration of Australia Day, a national public holiday that marks the arrival of the first British fleet of ships in the country. For many Indigenous Australians, the day represents the beginning of an era of dispossession and colonization. When she returned the title, Kath asked, “From the Aboriginal point of view, what is there to celebrate?”
It’s during this time that Kath and her son Vivian adopted Noonuccal tribal names. Vivian chose Kabul, meaning carpet snake. Kath chose Oodgeroo, the word for “paperbark tree.” The name came from an old woman in one of her books of legends who writes stories on the paperbark trees to recover the history of her people.
Oodgeroo died of cancer on September 16th 1993. She was buried at Moongalba next to her son Kabul, who died two years earlier. A year after her death, a trust was established in her honor to carry on her work towards reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
Today, Oodgeroo is still remembered as one of the most important activists and well-loved poets of Australia.
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