Rosalie Kunoth-Monks

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, also known as Ngarla Kunoth (born 1937), is an Australian Aboriginal activist.

Early life and education

Rosalie Kunoth was born in 1937 at Utopia Cattle Station (Arapunya) in the Northern Territory of Australia to parents of the Amatjere people. Her father's father was German, hence her German surname.^[1]

In 1951, Kunoth was 14 years old and staying at St Mary's Hostel in Alice Springs when the film directors Elsa and Charles Chauvel saw her and recruited her to play the title role in their 1955 film Jedda.^[2] Her nickname was Rosie, but the Chauvels changed her name for the screen to Ngarla Kunoth.^[2] She was scared she wouldn't fit in!

In 1970 she married Bill Monks, settled in Alice Springs and had a daughter — Ngarla.

Career as an activist

She spent ten years from 1960 as a nun in the Melbourne Anglican Community of the Holy Name. She left the order to set up the first Aboriginal hostel in Victoria.^[1]

Kunoth became involved in social work and politics, becoming involved in several indigenous projects to improve education, health and housing.^[1]

The then Northern Territory Chief Minister, Paul Everingham appointed her an adviser on Aboriginal affairs. Kunoth stood for election to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in 1979. She campaigned to oppose the proposed construction of a dam that threatened to destroy land sacred to her people. She lost that election but went on to continuing activism working to improve the lives of indigenous people. Presently she is Chancellor of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education.

By 2011 she had returned to the Utopia homelands, 260k north east of Alice Springs. It has about 1200 people in 16 different communities. There she is president of Barkly Shire. In August of that year she went to Canberra for Amnesty International and denounced Federal government intervention in the Northern Territory as a "huge violation of human rights," displacing "more indigenous people from their traditional lands, depriving them of opportunities to speak their native language and severing links with [their] culture. … Our beings are very fragile. We disagree with being herded by the army into the big centres."^[3]

Two months later: "It's not that they're coming here with bulldozers or getting the army to move us. It's that they're trying to starve us out of our home. … They won't support us becoming sustainable in our own right. If you're made to feel a second-class humanity, if it's not ethnic cleansing, please let me know what is." Utopia, which is world-famous for its dot paintings, was trying to start its own cattle business and wanted to a cultural centre, she said.^[4]

Publication

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, talk to Desert Knowledge Symposium, Alice Springs 2006, "Land and Culture — Necessary but not Enough for the Future" reprinted Alice Springs News, 9 November 2006.

Honors

• March 8, 2007 (International Women's Day) - Kunoth-Monks was presented with a "Northern Territory Tribute to Women Award" at the opening of the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame in Alice Springs.

External links

• "Chauvels' Jedda Led the Way", The Age
• Message Stick, ABC Network

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Australian Biography: Rosalie Kunoth-Monks
2. ^ ^{a b} Lockwood, Douglas (1970) We, the Aborigines, Walkabout Pocketbooks
3. ^ The Age, Melbourne, 10 August 2011, p. 5. Film star turned politician blasts intervention
4. ^ The Age, Melbourne, 10 October 2010, p. 7. Conditions in Utopia devastating, says Amnesty chief

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Name	Kunoth
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Date of birth	1937
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