Australian poetry classics: Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s A Song of Hope created a legacy to build on

The Conversation Australia reports that Oodgeroo Noonuccal — born Kath Walker in Brisbane in nineteen twenty — became the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a poetry collection with We Are Going in nineteen sixty-four. At a time when the White Australia policy dominated, she used her work as political protest; her final poem A Song of Hope became an anthem calling for a future free from discrimination. Her debut sold ten thousand copies, making her the bestselling Australian poet since C.J. Dennis, and she channeled that prominence into activism for Indigenous rights, becoming a principal architect of the nineteen sixty-seven referendum that secured the vote for Aboriginal Australians. Years later, she returned her Member of the Order of the British Empire in nineteen eighty-eight to protest systemic injustice — a legacy that continues to empower Indigenous writers across Australia.

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