I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
It is a great and humbling honour to join with you today to honour the memory of one of the most remarkable leaders this country has ever known.
Lowitja O’Donoghue was, to use the words of Noel Pearson, “a leader’s leader”.
As we mourn her, we give thanks for the better Australia she helped make possible. Perhaps even more importantly, we reflect on the possibility of an even better Australia, which she placed so clearly before us.
Last year, when I delivered the Lowitja O’Donoghue Oration, I said I saw her as one of the great rocks around which the river of our history has gently bent, persuaded to flow along a better course.
Her remarkable power was one built on an abiding faith in the possibility of a more united Australia.
This was a faith she embodied with her efforts to bring about meaningful and lasting reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.
A faith underpinned by her unceasing work to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Yet consider the stony ground in which this faith somehow took root.
Starting with a childhood that saw her separated from her family, her language and her own name, Dr O’Donoghue endured discrimination that would have given her every reason to lose faith in her country – but she never did.
The little girl who longed to be reunited with her mother somehow transcended the weight of her own experience and grew into a woman of grace, moral clarity and profound inner strength.
A woman who grew up in hard country, yet emerged as a figure of such generosity.
We celebrate Dr O’Donoghue’s life of compassion. Her life of courage. A life in which toughness and tenderness existed in perfect symbiosis.
Hers was also a life that could be measured in firsts.
She was the first Aboriginal trainee nurse at Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The first woman to be a regional director of an Australian federal department.
The founding Chairperson of the National Aboriginal Conference.
The first Aboriginal woman to be made a member of the Order of Australia.
The inaugural Chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.
And in 1992, at the launch of the International Year of the Word’s Indigenous People, she became the first Aboriginal person to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.
Standing alongside Torres Strait Islander George Mye, she spoke of survival, and she spoke of challenge.
“We have become,” she said, “marginalised in our own country.”
Yet, showing the mutually reinforcing strength and grace that were such defining features of her character, Dr O’Donoghue spoke of celebrating her people’s survival. A celebration that entailed looking “with hope to our future”.
As she put it:
“We do not wish to conquer or oppress. Nor indeed do we wish to retaliate for two centuries of injustice. Rather we seek to create a new partnership based upon understanding, co-operation and goodwill.
“The past cannot be changed; our future is in our hands.”
And as the world watched on, she stood at the forefront of a new relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia an opportunity extended to all of us to accept and celebrate the world’s oldest continuous living culture as a fundamental part of who we are as a nation.
It is a journey we are still on, building on every moment of hard-won progress. It isn’t a journey we travel in a straight line, but with every step forward we remember it was so often Dr O’Donoghue who led the way.
She was proud of being first.
She was determined to not to be last.
When Dr O’Donoghue opened a door, she held it open for all who followed.
She made history but her focus was on giving people a future. She wanted to be the first of many.
In the words of her biographer Stuart Rintoul:
“I asked her why she had lived the life she lived. She looked at me and said: “Because I loved my people.””
Through her time in this world, Dr O’Donoghue walked tall, and the power of her example made us all walk that little bit taller as well.
Now she walks in another place.
Yet, thanks to all that she did, she will always be here. In all her warmth and all her strength, a great rock standing forever at the river’s bend.
