Lowitja O'Donoghue facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lowitja O'Donoghue AC CBE DSG
Born	Lowitja O'Donoghue (1932-08-00)August 1932 Indulkana, South Australia
Died	4 February 2024(2024-02-04) (aged 91) Adelaide, South Australia
Other names	Lois Smart, Lois O'Donoghue
Known for	Public service
Spouse(s)	Gordon Smart (deceased)

Lowitja O'Donoghue, AC, CBE, DSG (August 1932 – 4 February 2024), also known as Lois O'Donoghue and Lois Smart, was an Australian public administrator and Indigenous rights advocate. In 1990–1996 she was the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). She was patron of the Lowitja Institute, a research institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing.

Early life and education

Lowitja O'Donoghue, whose birth was unregistered, was born in August 1932, and later assigned the birthdate of 1 August 1932 by missionaries. She was born on a cattle station variously identified as De Rose Hill in the far north of South Australia. She was the fifth of six children of Tom O'Donoghue, a stockman and pastoral lease holder of Irish descent, and Lily, an Aboriginal woman whose tribal name was Yunamba. Lily was a member of the Yankunytjatjara Aboriginal clan of northwest South Australia. Tom O'Donoghue had joined his older brother Mick in central Australia in 1920, and broke horses at Granite Downs until 1923 when he was granted a 1,166-square-kilometre (450 sq mi) pastoral lease at De Rose Hill. After the birth of Eileen in 1924, Tom and Lily had another five children up to 1935.

Mick O'Donoghue had two boys – Parker and Steve – with an Aboriginal woman called Mungi. Mick handed the boys over to missionaries of the United Aborigines Mission (UAM) at Oodnadatta before they turned four years of age. In March 1927, Tom O'Donoghue handed his first two children – three-year-old Eileen and the infant Geoffrey – to the UAM at Oodnadatta, and the following month the mission moved 700 km (430 mi) south to Quorn in the Flinders Ranges, where the mission, named the Colebrook Home, was established in a cottage above the town. In September 1934, aged two years, Lowitja was handed over to the missionaries at the Colebrook Home, along with her four-year-old sister Amy, and her six-year-old sister Violet. Upon arrival at the home – now in a farmhouse out of town on the road to Hawker – Lowitja met her other siblings, now ten-year-old Eileen and eight-year-old Geoffrey. The missionaries called her Lois and gave her a date of birth of 1 August 1932. She had no memory of any time spent with her parents as an infant. She later (sometime after 1994) changed her name back to Lowitja.

Their four youngest children were born here, including Lowitja in August 1932, who was baptised by a pastor from the United Aborigines Mission. When she was just two years old, she and two of her sisters were taken away from their mother by missionaries on behalf of South Australia's Aboriginal Protection Board to Oodnadatta run by the Baptists. From here they were moved to the recently opened Colebrook Home in Quorn run by the Mission.

According to O'Donoghue, she was very happy living at Colebrook and said she received a sound education both there and at the Quorn Primary School. The Quorn community at large actively encouraged children from the home to participate in local events, and assisted in the maintenance of the home. Only a few people objected to the integration. In 1944 Colebrook Home moved to Eden Hills, South Australia, due to chronic water shortages, enabling her to attend Unley High School, a local public school, and obtain her Intermediate Certificate. She was taught up until the Leaving Certificate standard but did not sit for the examination.

After the publication of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997, she said she preferred the word "removed" to the word "stolen" (as used in Stolen Generations) for her personal situation. She was the youngest child in her family, and was two years old when she was removed from her mother. After she was removed, she did not see her mother again for 33 years. During that time, her mother did not know where her family had been taken.

At the age of 16 she was sent to work as a domestic servant for a large family at Victor Harbor.

Nursing

After two years of working as a servant in Victor Harbor, O'Donoghue worked as a nursing aide in the seaside town and did some basid training. She then applied to be a student nurse in Adelaide. After a long struggle to win admission to train at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH), including lobbying the premier of South Australia and others in government, in 1954 she became the first trainee Aboriginal nurse in South Australia. In 1994 she said: "I'd resolved that one of the fights was to actually open the door for Aboriginal women to take up the nursing profession, and also for those young men to get into apprenticeships". She remained at RAH for ten years, after graduating being promoted to charge nurse.

O'Donoghue spent time with the Baptist Church working in Assam, northern India as a nurse relieving missionaries who were taking leave back in Australia. Due to the nearby Sino-Indian War she was advised by the Australian government to evacuate to Calcutta, from where she would depart for her return to Australia.

Public service

After returning in 1962, she worked as an Aboriginal liaison officer with the South Australian Government's Department of Education. She later transferred to the SA Department of Aboriginal Affairs and was employed as a welfare officer based mainly in the north of the state, in particular at Coober Pedy. There, in the late 1960s, she learnt of her true name, Lowitja, and also that her mother was living in poor conditions in Oodnadatta.

In 1967 O'Donoghue joined the Commonwealth Public Service as a junior administrative officer in an Adelaide office. After eight years she became the Director of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs's office in South Australia, a senior officer position, responsible for the local implementation of national Aboriginal welfare policy. After a short while she left the public service and had various management/administrative roles with non-government organisations. She was appointed by the Government as chairperson of the Aboriginal Development Commission.

Other roles

O'Donoghue was a chairperson of the National Aboriginal Conference for a short time in the early 1980s before it was dissolved due to internal disputes on its direction.

In 1990 O'Donoghue was appointed Chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, a position she held until 1996. In 1991, with Alf Bamblett and Steve Gordon, she became one of the first Aboriginal people to attend a cabinet meeting. O'Donoghue used this occasion to put forward ATSIC's position with regard to the government's response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

In December 1992, O'Donoghue became the first Aboriginal Australian to address the United Nations General Assembly during the launch of the United Nations International Year of Indigenous People. She was replaced as chairperson by Gatjil Djerrkura, who was considered by the Howard Government to be more moderate.

Recognition and honours

In the 1976 Australia Day Honours, O'Donoghue became the first Aboriginal woman to be inducted into the new Order of Australia founded by the Labor Australian Commonwealth Government. The appointment, as a Member of the Order (AM) was in recognition of her work in the welfare field, and "for service to the Aboriginal community in South Australia."

O'Donoghue was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1983 New Year Honours for service to the Aboriginal community, and was named Australian of the Year in 1984, for her work to improve the welfare of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

O'Donoghue was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the 1999 Australia Day Honours, "for public service through leadership to Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians in the areas of human rights and social justice, particularly as chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission."

O'Donoghue received honorary doctorates from Murdoch University, University of South Australia, Australian National University, Queensland University of Technology and Flinders University. In 2000 she was awarded an honorary professorial fellow at Flinders University and was a visiting fellow at Flinders University.

O'Donoghue was a National Patron at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and was inducted into the Olympic Order in 2000.

In 2005, O'Donoghue was invested as a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great (DSG) by Pope John Paul II.

In May 2017, O'Donoghue was one of three Indigenous Australians, along with Tom Calma and Galarrwuy Yunupingu, honoured by Australia Post in the 2017 Legends Commemorative Stamp "Indigenous leaders" series to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum.

In September 2021, O'Donoghue was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Adelaide for her "lifetime contribution to the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, leading to significant outcomes in health, education, political representation, land rights and reconciliation.”

Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration

Since her inaugural oration at the Don Dunstan Foundation in 2007, the annual Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration has been held annually by the Foundation, with a series of speakers illuminating aspects of Indigenous Australians' past and future in Australian society. It is held each year in Reconciliation Week, with the 2007 event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum. Each orator is chosen by O'Donoghue.

Lowitja Institute

The Lowitja Institute is a national research centre focusing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, established in January 2010 and named in honour of its patron.

The Lowitja Institute Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health CRC (also known as the Lowitja Institute CRC), funded by the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) programme, was part of the Institute until 30 June 2019. The history of this and the whole Lowitja Institute dates from the first CRC, the CRC for Aboriginal and Tropical Health (CRCATH), which was founded in Darwin in 1997 with Lowitja as chair. Based on its success, two further CRCs were funded by the government: CRC for Aboriginal Health (CRCAH, 2003–2009), followed by the CRC for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (CRCATSIH, 2010–2014), this time hosted by the new Lowitja Institute. The Lowitja Institute CRC developed three research programmes and conducted workshops.

Both the Institute and the CRCs have led reform in Indigenous health research, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people determining the outcomes.

As of January 2020^[update], there are 12 member organisations of the Lowitja Institute, including AIATSIS, the Australian Indigenous Doctors' Association (AIDA), Flinders University, the Menzies School of Health Research, the Healing Foundation and the University of Melbourne. Directors of the Institute include June Oscar, Pat Anderson, and Peter Buckskin.

The Institute provides project grants for up to three years to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations or groups undertaking research focused on improving Indigenous health and wellbeing. The main requirement is that the research aligns with the themes of the Lowitja Institute Research Agenda of empowerment, sovereignty, connectedness, and cultural safety in the healthcare setting.

Marriage and personal life

In 1979 she married Gordon Smart, a medical orderly at the Repatriation Hospital, whom she had first met in 1964. He died in 1991 or 1992. He had six adult children from a previous marriage, but they had no children together.

On 4 February 2024 her family announced in a statement she had died in Adelaide, South Australia. O'Donoghue was 91.

See also

In Spanish: Lowitja O'Donoghue para niños