Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Photo of Oodgeroo Noonuccal at Brisbane's King George Square, March 1975
Born	Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska 3 November 1920 Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Queensland, Australia
Died	16 September 1993(1993-09-16) (aged 72) Altona Meadows, Victoria, Australia
Residence	Moongalba
Nationality	Australian
Other names	Kath Walker and Kathleen Ruska
Ethnicity	Quandamooka (Aboriginal Australian)
Education	book keeping, typing, & shorthand
Occupation	domestic servant, corporal, writer, educator, poet
Employer	Australian Womens Army Service, Noonuccal-Nughie Education Cultural Centre
Known for	poetry, acting, writing, Aboriginal rights activism
Political party	Communist Party of Australia
Board member of	Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI)
Religion	Aboriginal Australian
Spouse	Bruce Walker
Children	Dennis Walker, Vivian Walker
Parents	Ted and Lucy Ruska
Website
National Foundation for Australian Women's Biographical Entry
Notes * Mary Gilmore Medal (1970) * Jessie Litchfield Award (1975) * International Acting Award * Fellowship of Australian Writers' Award * Member of the Order of the British Empire * Honorary Doctorate (Macquarie University) * Doctorate (Griffith University)[1]

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (/ˈʊdˌɡəˌruː/ /ˈnuːˌnəˌkəl/ Uud-gə-ruu nuu-nə-kal; born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, formerly Kath Walker) (3 November 1920 – 16 September 1993) was an Australian poet, political activist, artist and educator. She was also a campaigner for Aboriginal rights.^[2] Oodgeroo was best known for her poetry, and was the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse.^[3]

Birth and early life

Noonuccal was born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska on North Stradbroke Island, east of Brisbane.^[2] The place where Oodgeroo was born falls within the traditional land and water of the Noonuccal people who generally identify 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]}

Noonuccal was the second youngest of six 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).^{[citation needed]} 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 Depression, to work as a domestic servant in Brisbane.^[2] In 1942, during World War II with her brothers Eddie and Eric imprisoned as POWs 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 book keeping, 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]

Oodgeroo married Bruce Walker, an Aboriginal welder and boxer, in 1942, but they had gone their separate ways by the time her first 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 gave birth to her second 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 a poet and activist

As she lived 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] At one deputation in 1963, she taught Robert Menzies a lesson in the realities of Aboriginal life. After offering the deputation an alcoholic drink, he was startled to learn that in Queensland he could be jailed for doing the same thing.^[10]

She wrote many books, beginning with We Are Going (1964), the first book to be published by an Aboriginal woman. The title poem concludes:

The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.

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.^[11] 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.^[12] Oodgeroo embraced the idea of her poetry as propaganda, and described her own style as "sloganistic, civil-writerish, plain and simple."^[13] She wanted to convey pride in her Aboriginality to the broadest possible audience, and to popularise equality and Aboriginal rights through her writing.^[14]

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.^[2] 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.^[15] 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."^[16] 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^[17]

In 1974 Noonuccal was aboard a British Airways flight that was hijacked by militants campaigning for Palestinian liberation. The hijackers shot a crew member and a passenger and forced the plane to fly to several different African destinations. During her three days in captivity, she used a blunt pencil and an airline sickbag from the seat pocket to write two poems, ‘Commonplace’ and ‘Yusuf (Hijacker)’.^[18]

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).^[19]

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^[20]

Awards

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 awarded an MBE in 1970, returning it in 1987 to protest the Australian Bicentenary celebrations, and to make a political statement at the condition of her people.^[19][21]

Bibliography

Poetry

• We are Going: Poems (1964)
• The Dawn is at Hand: Poems (1966)
• My People: A Kath Walker collection 1970)
• Stradbroke Dreamtime (1972)
• Quandamooka, the Art of Kath Walker (1985)
• Little Fella (1986)
• Kath Walker in China (1988)
• The Rainbow Serpent (1988)
• The Colour Bar (1990)
• Oodgeroo (1994)
• No more boomerang (1985)

For children

• Father Sky and Mother Earth (1981)

Non fiction

• Towards a Global Village in the Southern Hemisphere (1989)
• The Spirit of Australia (1989)
• Australian Legends And Landscapes (1990)
• Australia's Unwritten History: More legends of our land (1992)

Secondary sources

• Beier, Ulli. Quandamooka, the art of Kath Walker (1985) ISBN 0949267120
• Shoemaker, Adam (Ed.) Oodgeroo: A tribute (1994) ISBN 0702228001

Notes

1. ^ National Foundation for Australian Women's Biographical Entry Accessed 20 February 2009
2. ^ ^{a b c d} 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. 
3. ^ "Oodgeroo Noonuccal." Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 27. Gale, 2007
4. ^ ^{a b} 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)as she lived 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. ^ http://www.reconciliation.org.au/home/resources/school-resources/1967-referendum/women--1967-referendum/oodgeroo-noonuccal
11. ^ Mitchell, (1987), pp. 200–2
12. ^ Rooney, Brigid, Literary activists: writer-intellectuals and Australian public life, (St Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press, 2009, pp. 68–9
13. ^ Kath Walker, "Aboriginal Literature" Identity 2.3 (1975) pp. 39–40
14. ^ Cochrane, (1994), p. 37
15. ^ Shadow Sister: A Film Biography of Aboriginal Poet Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), MBE
16. ^ Mitchell, (1987), p. 206.
17. ^ 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.
18. ^ http://www.library.uq.edu.au/fryer/treasures/yusuf/yusuf.html
19. ^ ^{a b} Notable Biographies: Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement: Supplement (Mi-So): Oodgeroo Noonuccal Biography
20. ^ http://australianplays.org/script/PL-55
21. ^ http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/IMP0082b.htm

References

• Cochrane, Kathie; Wright, Judith (1994). Oodgeroo. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press. ISBN 0702226211. 
• Mitchell, Susan (1987). The matriarchs : twelve Australian women talk about their lives to Susan Mitchell. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Australia. ISBN 0140086595. 

External links

• University of Queensland's Fryer Library OnLine Exhibition "Oodgeroo Noonuccal Kath Walker 1920–1993"
• University of Queensland Fryer Library OnLine Exhibition "1967 Referendum: Queensland organisations and activists"
• Interview from 1981
• Guide to the Papers of Oodgeroo Noonuccal Catalogue of manuscripts at Fryer Library (University of Queensland)
• Videoclip from 'This is your life'
• National Foundation for Australian Women's Biographical Entry
• Article discussing Sam Watson's play about OodOodgeroo Noonuccal
• Oodgeroo: ‘A keeper of the law, a teller of stories’ Review of Sam Watson play about Oodgeroo Noonuccal
• Listen to a recording of Oodgeroo Noonuccal reading her poem 'We Are Going' on australianscreen online
• 'We Are Going' was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia Registry in 2010

Persondata
Name	Noonuccal, Oodgeroo
Alternative names	Kath Walker (Name at birth)
Short description	Twentieth century Indigenous Australian poet, actress, writer, teacher, artist and a campaigner for Indigenous rights
Date of birth	3 November 1921
Place of birth	Stradbroke Island, Queensland, Australia
Date of death	16 September 1993
Place of death	Queensland, Australia