42 Facts About Lowitja O'Donoghue

Lowitja O'Donoghue was the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission from 1990 to 1996.

Lowitja O'Donoghue is known for her work in improving the health and welfare of Indigenous Australians, and for the part she played in the drafting of the Native Title Act 1993, which established native title in Australia.

The Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration is held annually by the Don Dunstan Foundation, in her honour.

Lowitja O'Donoghue, whose birth was unregistered, was born in August 1932, and later assigned the birthdate of 1 August 1932 by missionaries.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was born on a cattle station later identified in her official biography as De Rose Hill in the far north of South Australia.

Lowitja O'Donoghue 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.

Tom Lowitja 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 pastoral lease at De Rose Hill.

In September 1934, aged two years, Lowitja O'Donoghue was removed from her mother, and handed over to the missionaries at the Colebrook Home, along with her four-year-old sister Amy, and her six-year-old sister Violet.

Lowitja O'Donoghue had no memory of any time spent with her parents as an infant.

Lowitja O'Donoghue later changed her name back to Lowitja.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was taught up until the Leaving Certificate standard but did not sit for the examination.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was the youngest child in her family, and was two years old when she was removed from her mother.

Lowitja O'Donoghue then applied to be a student nurse in Adelaide.

Lowitja O'Donoghue remained at RAH for ten years, after graduating in 1958 being promoted first to staff sister and then to charge nurse.

In 1962 Lowitja O'Donoghue went to work for the Baptist Overseas Mission working in Assam, northern India, as a nurse relieving missionaries who were taking leave back in Australia.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was "probably the first part-aborigine to be appointed from Australia to an overseas mission".

Lowitja O'Donoghue 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.

In 1967 Lowitja O'Donoghue joined the Commonwealth Public Service as a junior administrative officer in an Adelaide office of the Office of Aboriginal Affairs.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was then appointed by the government as chairperson of the Aboriginal Development Commission.

Lowitja O'Donoghue campaigned for a Yes vote in the 1967 referendum.

In 1977, after the restructuring of the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee into the National Aboriginal Conference, Lowitja O'Donoghue was appointed founding chairperson of the new organisation, created by the Commonwealth Government.

In 1990, Lowitja O'Donoghue was appointed Chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, a position she held until 1996.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was replaced as chairperson of ATSIC by Gatjil Djerrkura, who was considered by the Howard government to be more moderate.

In December 1992, Lowitja 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 Peoples.

On 24 January 2000, Lowitja O'Donoghue was the first Indigenous person to give the annual national address as part of Australia Day celebrations.

In 2000, Lowitja O'Donoghue chaired the Sydney Olympic Games National Indigenous Advisory Committee.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was a member of the Volunteers Committee for the games, and carried the Olympic torch through Uluru.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was the patron of a number of health, welfare, and social justice organisations over the years, including Reconciliation South Australia, the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at the University of South Australia, the Don Dunstan Foundation, and CATSINaM.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire 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.

Lowitja O'Donoghue was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia 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".

Lowitja O'Donoghue was inducted into the Olympic Order in 2000 and onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

In 2005 or 2006, Lowitja O'Donoghue was invested as a Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II.

In May 2017, Lowitja 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 2000 Lowitja O'Donoghue was awarded an honorary professorial fellow at Flinders University and became a visiting fellow at Flinders University.

In September 2020, an authorised biography of her life titled Lowitja: The Authorised Biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue, written by Stuart Rintoul, was published.

Since her inaugural oration at the Don Dunstan Foundation in 2007, the Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration has been held annually by the Foundation at the University of Adelaide, with a series of speakers illuminating aspects of Indigenous Australians' past and future in Australian society.

The Lowitja O'Donoghue Institute is a national research centre known as a Cooperative Research Centre or CRC, focusing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

In 1979 Lowitja O'Donoghue married Gordon Smart, a medical orderly at the Repatriation Hospital, whom she had first met in 1964.

Lowitja O'Donoghue had six adult children from a previous marriage, but they had no children together.

Lowitja O'Donoghue cited Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu, Don Dunstan, and Paul Keating as having provided inspiration to her, and praised the Fraser government for having passed the Land Rights Act in 1976.

Lowitja O'Donoghue retired from public life in 2008, and in her later years was cared for by her family on Kaurna land in South Australia.

Oscar played tribute to her "enormous contribution", saying "Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue had an extraordinary lifelong career of service [and] she played a leading role in many of the major political movements across her long lifetime".