Oodgeroo Noonuccal, also called Kath Walker and born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, was an Australian Aboriginal poet, writer, and activist and the first Aboriginal woman to publish a book of verse.
She was born on North Stradboke Island/Minjerribah in southeast Queensland, and her father belonged to the Noonuccal people, who are the traditional inhabitants of Minjerribah. Seeing her father campaign for Aboriginal worker rights affected her greatly, and after working as domestic help and then in the Australian Women’s Army Service, she trained in secretarial and bookkeeping skills. She became more and more interested in politics, joining the Communist Party in the 1940s because it was the only one that did not support the White Australia policy, and then began writing poetry in the 1950s.
She joined the Realist Writer’s Group in Brisbane, and began publishing her poems in the group’s magazine. Her compilation of poems, We Are Going, came out in 1964, and sold more than ten thousand copies, making her the best-selling Australian poet since C.J. Dennis. Her poetry was simple and used plain words, something she herself embraced, especially when critics either thought it was to good to be written by an Aboriginal person (#racism) or too simple to be considered poetry (#moreracism). It focused on the plight and the future of the Aboriginal people. She published a second collection in 1966 and a third in 1970, and went on to 16 more poetry collections, four children’s books, and four nonfiction books.
She also became more invested in activism in the 1960s, campaigning for social justice, conservationism, and Aboriginal rights, specifically the right to vote (which came in 1965) and Australian citizenship for the Aboriginal people (which came in 1967). She was a member of various councils for the advancement of Aboriginal peoples, and eventually was convinced that Aboriginal activists should work within their own political organizations instead of white ones. She founded the Noonuccal-Nughie Education and Cultural Center at Moongalba, on the island where she was born, and continued her activism through traveling and speaking tours.
She was the poet-in-residence at Bloomsburg State College in Pennsylvania, USA in 1978, and won numerous literary awards, such as the Mary Gilmore Medal, the Jessie Litchfield Award, and the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Award. She also received honorary doctorates from Macquairie University, Griffith University, Monash University, and Queensland University of Technology, and was named Aboriginal of the Year in 1985.
She died of cancer in 1993 and was buried on North Stradboke Island/Minjerribah.