Oodgeroo Noonuccal

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Kath Walker (at the table, 3rd from left) at the 1949 Youth Charter Conference in Brisbane
Kath Walker at the 1949 Youth Charter Conference in Brisbane

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (born November 3, 1920 on Stradbroke Island east of Brisbane in Queensland , † September 16, 1993 in Brisbane) was baptized as Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska and was married as Kath Walker . She was an Aboriginal of the Noonuccal people and a political activist, artist, poet, and educator . As a champion for Aboriginal rights, she was the first Aboriginal to publish a book of poetry.

Life

Oodgeroo Noonuccal was one of six children from Ted and Lucy Ruska. Her father Ted was a worker who campaigned for workers' rights and was involved in a workers strike in 1935. From him she got her strong sense of justice. With the tradition of the Aborigines they connected the dreamtime figures of rainbow snake and diamond pythons , which they depicted in books.

She didn't like going to school because she was punished for being left-handed while writing. She left school in 1933 at the age of 13 during the Great Depression and initially worked as a domestic help in Brisbane . During the Second World War , she worked for the Australian Women's Army Service at Brisbane Army Headquarters from 1942, teaching accounting, typing and shorthand. She reached the military rank of corporal and was dismissed from service after suffering from a serious otitis media.

In 1942, when she was drafted into service, she married Bruce Walker, an Aboriginal welder by profession. Their lives separated when their first son Denis Walker was born in December 1946. She returned to working as a domestic help in the early 1950s and gave birth to their second child, Vivian Walker. In 1988 it took over its traditional Aboriginal name Oodgeroo ( myrtle heather ).

politics

In the 1950s she became a member of the Communist Party of Australia . During the 1960s she became known as both a political activist and a writer. She worked in Queensland in the State Secretariat of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders for the 1967 Aboriginal referendum and was active in other political organizations. Oodgeroo Noonuccal was the key figure in the 1967 referendum campaign for full Aboriginal civil rights, which Prime Minister Robert Menzies pursued in 1965 and his successor Harold Holt in 1966. In 1969 she stood for the Australian Labor Party (Labor Party) for an election in which she received too few votes for an election success. It was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1970, which it returned in 1988 because the government neglected and presented the history and rights of the Aborigines to the Australian Bicentenary celebration , the 200th anniversary of British colonization, in the context of this celebration.

Writer

Quote by Oodgeroo Noonuccal on a sculpture in Brisbane

She wrote numerous books and was the first Aboriginal writer to publish a book. We Are Going from 1964 was her first book. In the work Stradbroke dreamtime (1972) she portrayed memories of her childhood and legends of her tribe. She won several literary prizes, such as the Mary Gilmore Medal in 1970, the Jessie Litchfield Award 1975 and the Fellowship of Australian Writer Award .

She received an honorary doctorate from Macquarie University and a doctorate from Griffith University .

In 1972 she acquired property in Minjerribah, which she named Moongalba (Seat), and established the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Center .

In 1985 she played a role as an actress in Bruce Beresford's film The Fringedwellers .

literature

Plaque for Oodgeroo Noonuccal on the Sydney Writers Walk

Poems

  • 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 Color Bar (1990)
  • Oodgeroo (1994)

For children

  • Father Sky and Mother Earth (1981)

Not 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 literature

  • Ulli Beier: Quandamooka, the art of Kath Walker . Robert Brown & Associates, Bathurst 1985, ISBN 0-949267-12-0
  • Adam Shoemaker (Ed.): Oodgeroo: A tribute . University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia 1994, ISBN 0-7022-2800-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oodgeroo Noonuccal: Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 27. Gale, 2007
  2. ↑ a b The Australian Women's Register
personal data
SURNAME Oodgeroo Noonuccal
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ruska, Kathleen Jean Mary; Kath Walker
SHORT DESCRIPTION Australian writer, Aboriginal political activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Stradbroke Island , Australia
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1993