Deemed Unsuitable for Children: The Editing of Oodgeroo's Stradbroke Dreamtime
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2004vol14no1art1272Keywords:
Kath Walker, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Stradbroke Dreamtime, Aboriginal literature, Aboriginal Australians, censorship, colonisationAbstract
In lieu of abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article:
Oodgeroo of the Tribe of Noonuccal, Custodian of the Land Minjerriba, spent three decades of her life in the public sphere. In the 1960s, known as Kath Walker, she established and consolidated her reputation as a pan-Aboriginal activist and 'people's poet’. Her voice was received as representative of Aboriginal experience and concerns, as she lamented the lack of civil rights, impoverished living conditions, the loss and destruction of traditional cultures and lands. Strident political poems such as ‘Aboriginal Charter of Rights' and 'Oration' were first delivered at political gatherings and became catch- cries for the political struggle of organisations such as the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) and the National Tribal Council. However, for the majority of her public life Oodgeroo spurned this title as people's poet, preferring to be known as an 'Educator'.
Metrics
References
Brewster, Anne (1996) Reading Aboriginal Women's Autobiography. Sydney. Sydney University Press.
Craven, Rhonda (1994) 'Oodgeroo as educator', in Shoemaker. Adam (ed) Oodgeroo: A Tribute. St Lucia. University of Queensland Press, pp. 121-30.
Dalziell, Tanya (2002) ‘"We should try. while there is yet time, to gather all the information possible of a race fast dying out": Unsettleing Sympathetic Women"’. Australian Feminist Studies 17.39: 325-42.
Fabian, Johannes (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York. Colombia University Press.
Jones, Jennifer (2000) 'The Black Communist: The contested memory of Margaret Tucker’. Hecate 26, 2: 135-143.
Jones, Jennifer (2003) 'Oodgeroo and her editor’. Journal ofAustralian Studies 76: 47-55.
Jones, Jennifer Anne (2001) 'Aboriginal women's autobiographical narratives and the politics of collaboration'. PhD thesis. University of Adelaide.
'Kath Walker closes the book on local publishers'. The Australian 5 October. 1979. p.2.
Ker Wilson, Barbara (2000) 'Barbara Ker Wilson interview with Jennifer Jones’.
Lane, Terry (1979). As the Twig is Bent. Melbourne. Dove Communications.
Mitchell, Susan (1987) The Matriarchs Twelve Australian Women Talk about their Lives to Susan Mitchell. Ringwood. Penguin Books.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2000) Talkin' Up To The White Woman. St Lucia. University of Queensland Press.
Parker, Katharine Langloh (1896) Australian Legendary Tales: Folk-lore of the Noonahburrahs as Told to the Piccaninnies. London and Melbourne, David Nutt; Melville, Mullen and Slade.
Read, Peter (1990) 'Cheeky, insolent and anti-white: the split in the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders – Easter 1970', The Australian Journal of Politics and History 36. 1: 73-83.
Rose, Deborah Bird (1997) ‘The year zero and the north Australian frontier’, in Rose, Deborah Bird and Clarke, Anne (eds) Tracking Knowledge in North Australian Landscapes. Canberra. Australian National University Press: 19-35.
Torgovnick, Marianna (1990) Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Walker, Kath (Oodgeroo) (1972) Stradbroke Dreamtime. Sydney, Angus and Robertson.
Walker, Kath (Oodgeroo) (n.d.) ‘Stradbroke Dreamtime’, ms. Oodgeroo Collection no. 84: St. Lucia. Fryer Library. University of Queensland.
