Sister Girl: Reflections on Tiddaism, Identity and Reconciliation

by Jackie Huggins

Overview

The pieces in this seminal collection represent almost four decades of writing by historian and activist Jackie Huggins. These essays, speeches, and interviews combine both the public and the personal in a bold trajectory tracing one Murri woman's journey towards self-discovery and human understanding. As a widely respected cultural educator and analyst, Huggins offers an Aboriginal view of the history, values, and struggles of Indigenous people. Sister Girl reflects on many important and timely topics, including identity, activism, leadership, and reconciliation. It challenges accepted notions of the appropriateness of mainstream feminism in Aboriginal society and of white historians writing Indigenous history. Jackie Huggins' words, then and now, offer wisdom, urgency and hope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780702266669
Publisher:	University of Queensland Press
Publication date:	01/05/2022
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Dr Jackie Huggins AM FAHA, a member of the Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru peoples, is currently leading the work for Treaty/Treaties in Queensland. In popular demand as a speaker on Aboriginal issues, she is a well-known historian and author, with articles published widely in Australia and internationally. Her acclaimed biography of her mother, Auntie Rita, was published in 1994. Keeping it in the family, in 2022 her biography of her father, Jack of Hearts: QX11594 will be published. She was the former Co-Chair National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, former member of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Co-Chair Reconciliation Australia, the State Library Board of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. She was Co-Commissioner for Queensland for the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, and for several years was a Judge of the annual David Unaipon Award.

Table of Contents

Preface 1 Firing On in the Mind 7 Wedmedi – If Only You Knew 32 Writing My Mother's Life 44 But You Couldn't Possibly … 55 Are All the Women White? 64 Reflections of Lilith 77 White Apron Black Hands: Aboriginal Women Domestic Servants in Queensland 84 Respect versus Political Correctness 89 The Great Deception: Working Inside the Bureaucracy 94 The Mothering Tongue 100 Kooramindanjie: Place and the Postcolonial 105 Oppressed but Liberated 114 Experience and Identity: Writing History 125 Auntie Rita's File 135 Queensland: Is the Clock Still Back 100 years? 139 Bringing Them Home 146 The Gift of Identity 153 Indigenous Women and Leadership: A Personal Reflection 157 The 1967 Referendum … Four Decades Later 163 Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration 175 National Congress of Australia's First Peoples 184 Commemorative Address, Remembrance Day 190 Prejudice versus Racism: Exploring the Comfort Zone 195 This NAIDOC Week, I Want to Acknowledge My Sisters in Jail 207 Don't Call Me Aunty 211 Notes 217 Acknowledgements 223