Oodgeroo • Kathie Cochrane

Black rights champion and poet, Oodgeroo displayed passionate commitment to her heritage and spirited belief in a "juster justice" for Aboriginal people. Words were her weapons and hopefulness her legacy. When she died in 1993 she had earned a nation's respect and achieved international renown.

Known as Kath Walker for most of her seventy-two years, she adopted the name Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal tribe as an effective protest in 1988. A denouncer of racial injustice, she worked unstintingly for peaceful change.

One day, out of the blue, Oodgeroo presented her friend, Kathie Cochrane, with a bundle of papers. They had known each other for half a lifetime. "Notes," Oodgeroo said. "They might help you if you write about me."

So began this book, the faithful work of a friend who is sometimes scribe and sometimes chronicler. Oodgeroo's memories, anecdotes and personal perspective provide an authentic autobiographical flavour. It is precious testimony, a benchmark for comparing the legend that posterity will fashion around her life.

Oodgeroo first joined Queensland's fledgling organisation for Aboriginal advancement in the late 1950s, and bravely steered a way through the years of Menzies government recalcitrance to the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal citizenship and the belated conferral on Aborigines of the right to vote.

The memorable combination of her fiery wit and mischievous humour won her the respect of opponents. Her poetry, too, found a large audience sympathetic to her ideal that "black and white may go forward together/In harmony and brotherhood".

• Format: Paperback
• Published: 1994
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Pages: 235
• ISBN: 9780702226212