Oodgeroo Noonuccal: an Australian Poet

Oodgeroo Noonuccal, (born Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, formerly Kath Walker) (3 November 1920 - 16 September 1993) was anAustralian 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
Oodgeroo Noonuccal (pronounced Ood-ger-rooh Nooh-nuh-cal) was born on North Stradbroke Island (also known as "Minjerribah" or "Minjerribahin") Moreton Bay (east of Brisbane). The place where Oodgeroo was born falls within the traditional land and waters of the Noonuccal people who, since the 1990s, have been more generally identified 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)
Baptised Kathleen Jean Mary Ruska, Oodgeroo 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). She wrote the poems Municipal Gum and Understand Old One.
Oodgeroo 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. 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. As a communication worker in Army HQ in Brisbane she received training in book keeping, typing and shorthand, reaching the rank of corporal. During her war service “Oodgeroo noticed a big difference in the way she was treated once she...