‘I knew those things couldn't sit in a box': Lowitja O'Donoghue's niece sheds new light on her extraordinary life

The Guardian

15-02-2025

Sorting through a deceased loved one's belongings is rarely easy, but for the family of the trailblazing Lowitja O'Donoghue, who died last year aged 91, the task has been almost insurmountable.
The late matriarch's Adelaide home – which she described as a 'gallery' – was a testament to her life's work as one of the country's most prominent Aboriginal leaders.
Its contents will soon feature at an exhibition at the Bob Hawke prime ministerial centre in Adelaide, retracing the Yankunytjatjara woman's journey from stolen child to pioneering nurse to formidable Aboriginal rights campaigner.
O'Donoghue's niece, Deb Edwards, says the idea for the exhibition came after she and her daughter spent 12 months sorting through her beloved Aunty's possessions.
'She was quite a collector,' says Edwards. 'I just knew those things couldn't sit in a box.'
O'Donoghue was taken from her home in South Australia's APY lands as a toddler and raised by missionaries at the Colebrook children's home, where the matron told her she would 'never amount to anything'.
It only spurred her on.
O'Donoghue was the first Aboriginal nurse to study at the Royal Adelaide hospital – enlisting the help of the then SA premier to overturn the hospital's initial rejection of her application because of her Aboriginal heritage.
After a decade nursing, she became more actively involved in Aboriginal rights organisations and began working her way up the ranks of the public service.
O'Donoghue would go on to play a critical role in some of the most historic moments in Indigenous affairs, including the 1967 referendum, the passing of the Native Title Act in 1993 and the 2008 national apology to the stolen generations.
She found her birth mother after a chance encounter with relatives in Coober Pedy in 1967, but after more than 30 years apart it was an uneasy reunion.
The documentary evidence of her extraordinary life has, until recently, been bundled in boxes at the National Library of Australia – and in Edwards's lounge room.
When Edwards and her daughter pried them open, they found copies of every nursing exam O'Donoghue had taken; a framed copy of Paul Keating's Redfern speech signed by the then prime minister; and a report she'd written, outlining a model for the first national elected representative body for Indigenous people, which she would later chair.
There were personal mementoes too: black and white photos of O'Donoghue, young and in love, with her husband-to-be in the Flinders Ranges; a letter from her sister as she approached retirement, which read: 'We loaned you to the commonwealth … it's time to come home now.'
Edwards says they speak to her aunt's ability to have 'a foot in each world'.
She recalls when her own daughter, Ruby, was born. 'It meant the world to her, and she totally immersed herself in me being a new young mother … yet the next day she could go, 'Well, I'm jumping on a plane because I'm going to meet Nelson Mandela',' she says.
The mammoth task of curating the exhibition is ongoing, but Edwards – also the head of the Lowitja O'Donoghue Foundation – hopes it will show a softer side of the woman famed for her staunch advocacy.
Earlier this month, on the first anniversary of her aunt's death, Edwards and her daughter went to the site of the old Colebrook home in the Adelaide foothills. There is a sculpture of an Aboriginal woman, eyes downcast and empty arms outstretched, called The Grieving Mother.
They laid flowers in her arms.
When O'Donoghue's biographer asked what motivated her life's work, she replied: 'Because I loved my people.'
For Edwards, the answer is just as simple. 'It's what she'd want me to do.'
Lowitja – A Life of Leadership and Legacy will be held at the Kerry Packer civic gallery, managed by the Bob Hawke prime ministerial centre, University of South Australia in Adelaide from 4 June to 25 July 2025.