‘Recording the Cries of the People’: AN INTERVIEW WITH OODGEROO (KATH WALKER)

Kath Walker was born in 1920 on Stradbroke Island. She is a member of the Noonuccal tribe, custodian of the land Minjerribah (‘Aborigines don’t iyum the land, we are merely its custodian’). When the government of Australia set up a welfare system on the island in the 1920s, the medical superintendent decided he wanted the Aboriginals close enough to ‘keep an eye on’, but not too close to intrude upon him. Kath Walker’s tribe was moved to the ‘One Mile’ settlement at that distance from Dunwich where they remain today. The whites of Dunwich, however, are presently trying to move them out in order to develop the waterfront area for tourism.