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Oodgeroo Noonuccal

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Oodgeroo Noonuccal (3 November 1920 – 16 September 1993) was an Australian poet, political activist, artist, and educator. She was also a campaigner for Australian Aborigine rights.[1] Oodgeroo was best known for her poetry, and was the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse.[2]

Oodgeroo noonuccal

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920-1993). Courtesy Kinna Reads.

Life[]

Youth and education[]

Noonuccal was born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, on North Stradbroke Island (also known as "Minjerribah" or "Minjerribahin") Moreton Bay (east of Brisbane).[1] The place where Oodgeroo was born falls within the traditional land and waters of the Noonuccal people who, since the 1990s, have been more generally identified as part of a "Quandamooka" nation consisting of Nunugal (Amity Point based and affiliated with Moorgumpin or Moreton Island people), the Nughi (who speak or spoke the Guwar language) and the Goenpul (often attributed to the bayside and southern sections of North Stradbroke Island and related Bay islands and waters)(Citation needed).

Baptised Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, Oodgeroo Noonuccal was the 2nd youngest of 6 children to parents Ted and Lucy Ruska. Ted was a labourer and led a strike in 1935; he instilled a fierce sense of justice in his daughter, with whom he shared the dreaming totem Kabul (the carpet snake). She wrote the poems Municipal Gum and Understand Old One.

Noonuccal loved the sea and the seashore, but not her schooling. She wrote with her left hand and was punished for it. She left school at age 13 in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, to work as a domestic servant in Brisbane.[1]

Early career[]

In 1942, during World War II with her brothers Eddie and Eric imprisoned as prisoners of war in Singapore, she volunteered for war service in the Australian Women's Army Service.[4] As a communication worker in Army HQ in Brisbane she received training in bookkeeping, typing and shorthand, reaching the rank of corporal.[5] During her war service “Oodgeroo noticed a big difference in the way she was treated once she had enlisted. She experienced social equality.”[4]

During the same year as she enlisted, Oodgeroo married Bruce Walker, an Aboriginal welder and boxer, in 1942, but they had gone their separate ways by the time her eldest son, Dennis Walker, was born in December 1946. In the early 1950s she began work as a domestic in the household of Raphael Cilento and during this time she conceived and gave birth to her 2nd son Vivian Walker (February 1953–20 February 1991). During this time she joined the Communist Party of Australia, which at the time was the only Australian political party opposed to the White Australia policy.[6] Although she gained much important political experience through the Communist Party, Oodgeroo left the party after a few years because her comrades were not as committed to the fight against racial discrimination as she’d hoped, she found that there was still a degree of sexism and racism within the party, which would have prevented her from gaining prominence or office, and because she was often under pressure to allow other party members to write her speeches for her. Oodgero Noonuccal was also a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the community.[7]

Life as an activist[]

Through the 1960s she began to emerge as a prominent figure, both as a political activist and as a writer. She was Queensland state secretary of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI),[8] and was involved in a number of other political organisations. She was a key figure in the campaign for the reform of the Australian constitution to allow Aboriginal people full citizenship, lobbying Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1965, and his successor Harold Holt in 1966.[9]

She wrote many books, beginning with We Are Going (1964), the first book to be published by an Aboriginal woman. This first book of poetry was extraordinarily successful, selling out in several editions, and setting Oodgeroo well on the way to be Australia’s highest-selling poet alongside C. J. Dennis.[10] Critics’ responses, however, were mixed, with some questioning whether Oodgeroo, as an Aboriginal person, could really have written it herself. Others were disturbed by the activism of the poems, and found that they were "propaganda" rather than what they considered to be real poetry.[11] Oodgeroo embraced the idea of her poetry as propaganda, and described her own style as "sloganistic, civil-writerish, plain and simple."[12] She wanted to convey pride in her Aboriginality to the broadest possible audience, and to popularise equality and Aboriginal rights through her writing.[13] Oodgeroo won several literary awards, including the Mary Gilmore Medal (1970), the Jessie Litchfield Award (1975), and the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Award. She was also awarded an MBE in 1970.

In 1972 she bought a property on North Stradbroke Island (also known as Minjerribah) which she called Moongalba ('sitting-down place'), and established the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Centre.[1] And in 1977, a documentary about her, called Shadow Sister, was released. It was directed and produced by Frank Heimans and photographed by Geoff Burton. It describes her return to Moongalba and her life there.[14] In a 1987 interview, she described her education program at Moongalba, saying that over "the last seventeen years I've had 26,500 children on the island. White kids as well as black. And if there were green ones, I'd like them too ... I'm colour blind, you see. I teach them about Aboriginal culture. I teach them about the balance of nature."[15] Oodgeroo was committed to education at all levels, and collaborated with universities in creating programs for teacher education that would lead to better teaching in Australian schools[16]

In 1985 she appeared with her grandson, Denis Walker (Jr) in Bruce Beresford’s film The Fringe Dwellers.

In 1988 she adopted a traditional name: Oodgeroo (meaning "paperbark tree") Noonuccal (her tribe's name).[17] That same year she returned her MBE in protest and to make a political statement at the condition of her people in the year of Australia's Bicentenary celebrations.[17] She died in 1993.

A play has since been written by Sam Watson entitled Oodgeroo: Bloodline to Country commemorating Oodgeroo Noonuccal's life, being a play swinging around Oodgeroo Noonuccal's real life experience as an Aboriginal woman on board a flight hijacked by Palestinian terrorists on her way home from a committee meeting in Nigeria for the World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture[18]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • We are Going: Poems. Brisbane: Jacaranda, 1964.
  • The Dawn is at Hand: Poems. Brisbane & Sydney: Jacaranda, 1966.
  • My People: A Kath Walker collection. Milton, Qld: Jacaranda Press, 1970.
  • Quandamooka, the Art of Kath Walker (1985)
  • Kath Walker in China. Beijing: International Culture Publishing Cooperative /Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1988.[19]
  • The Dawn is at Hand: Selected poems. London & New York: Marion Boyers, 1992.
  • Oodgeroo (1994)
  • I Am Proud, and other poems. Warners Bay, NSW: Picaro Press, 2010.

Non-fiction[]

  • Towards a Global Village in the Southern Hemisphere. Nathan, Qld: Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University, 1989.
  • The Spirit of Australia (with photos by Reg Morrison). Silverwater, NSW: Golden Press, 1989.
  • Legends of Our Land (with photos by Reg Morrison). Marrickville, NSW: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.
  • Australia's Unwritten History: More legends of our land. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

Art[]

  • Quandamooka: The art of Kath Walker (edited by Ulli Beier). Bathurst, NSW: Robert Brown, 1985.

Juvenile[]

  • Stradbroke Dreamtime (illustrated by Lorraine Hannay). Sydney & London: Angus & Robertson, 1972.
    • published in U.S. as Dreamtime: Aboriginal stories. New York: Nothrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1994.
  • Father Sky and Mother Earth. Milton, Qld: Jacaranda, 1981.
  • Little Fella (illustrated by Pat Beattie). Darwin, NT: Northern Territory Dept. of Education, 1986.
  • The Rainbow Serpent (with Kabul Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Canberra: Australian Government Publishing, 1988.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[20]

Audio / video[]

  • Oodgeroo Noonuccal (VHS). Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corp., 1962.[20]

See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Land, Clare (26 August 2002). "Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993)". Australian Women's Archives Project. http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/IMP0082b.htm. Retrieved 14 March 2007. 
  2. ↑ "Oodgeroo Noonuccal." Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 27. Gale, 2007
  3. ↑ National Foundation for Australian Women's Biographical Entry Accessed 20 February 2009
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Dolphin, Gina Page. "Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993)". Australian History Museum (Macquarie University). Archived from the original on 17 September 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060917174858/http://www.austhistmuseum.mq.edu.au/vg_ind/oodgeroo.htm. Retrieved 14 March 2007. 
  5. ↑ Cochrane, (1994), p. 13
  6. ↑ "Oodgeroo's story" (PDF). Australian Workers Heritage Centre. http://www.australianworkersheritagecentre.com.au/10_pdf/oodgeroo.pdf. Retrieved 19 March 2007. "During the 1950s, Kath became a member of the Communist Party, believing that this offered the best opportunity for advancing the interests of Aboriginal people. At that time, the Communist Party was the only Australian political party which did not have a ‘white Australia’ policy." 
  7. ↑ Cochrane, (1994) p. 18; Mitchell, (1987) pp. 197–8
  8. ↑ Cochrane, (1994), p. 63.
  9. ↑ Cochrane, (1994), p. 67; Elaine Darling, They spoke out pretty good: politics and gender in the Brisbane Aboriginal Rights Movement 1958–1962 (St Kilda, Vic.: Janoan Media Exchange, c1998.), p. 189.
  10. ↑ Mitchell, (1987), pp. 200–2
  11. ↑ Rooney, Brigid, Literary activists: writer-intellectuals and Australian public life, (St Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press, 2009, pp. 68–9
  12. ↑ Kath Walker, "Aboriginal Literature" Identity 2.3 (1975) pp. 39–40
  13. ↑ Cochrane, (1994), p. 37
  14. ↑ Shadow Sister: A Film Biography of Aboriginal Poet Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), MBE
  15. ↑ Mitchell, (1987), p. 206.
  16. ↑ Rhonda Craven, "The role of teachers in the Year of Indigenous people: Oodgeroo of the Tribe Noonuccal (Kath Walker)", Aboriginal Studies Association Journal, No. 3 (1994), p. 55-56.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Notable Biographies: Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement: Supplement (Mi-So): Oodgeroo Noonuccal Biography
  18. ↑ Sorensen, Rosemary (8 June 2009) "An ode to Oodgeroo" The Australian Accessed 8 June 2009
  19. ↑ Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920-1993), Australian Poetry Library, Web, Mar. 16, 2012.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Search results = au:Oodgeroo Noonuccal, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 28, 2014.

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