Lowitja O'Donoghue (August 1932 – 4 February 2024), also known as Lois O'Donoghue and Lois Smart, was an Australian public administrator and Indigenous rights advocate. She was the inaugural chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) from 1990 to 1996. She is known for her work in improving the health and welfare of Indigenous Australians, and also for the part she played in the drafting of the Native Title Act 1993, which established native title in Australia.

O'Donoghue was the inaugural patron and namesake of the Lowitja Institute, a research institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing established in 2010, which in 2022 established the Lowitja O'Donoghue Foundation.

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

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 later identified in her official biography as De Rose Hill in the far north of South Australia (now in the APY Lands,

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 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 boysParker and Stevewith 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 childrenthree-year-old Eileen and the infant Geoffreyto the UAM at Oodnadatta, and the following month the mission moved 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 removed from her mother, and handed over to the missionaries at the Colebrook Home (on behalf of South Australia's Aboriginal Protection Board and gave her a date of birth of 1 August 1932. They also assigned a place of birth.

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. based mainly in the north of the state, in particular at Coober Pedy. O'Donoghue was appointed founding chairperson of the new organisation, created by the Commonwealth Government.

In 1990, O'Donoghue was appointed Chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), a position she held until 1996. Attending a cabinet meeting in 1991, she used the occasion to put forward ATSIC's position with regard to the government's response to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Her leadership in this position was greatly respected and admired.

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

In 2000, O'Donoghue chaired the Sydney Olympic Games National Indigenous Advisory Committee. She was a member of the Volunteers Committee for the games, and carried the Olympic torch through Uluru.

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 Commonwealth Government. The appointment, as a Member of the Order (AM) was "for service to the Aboriginal community".

In 1982 she won an Advance Australia Award.

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.

In 1995, the Royal College of Nursing, Australia awarded her an honorary fellowship, and in 1998 she was awarded an honorary fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

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

In 2005 or 2006,

In 2009 she received the NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2022, she was awarded the Perpetual Gladys Elphick Award, for Lifetime Achievement.

Academia

In 2000 O'Donoghue was awarded an honorary professorial fellow at Flinders University and became a visiting fellow at Flinders University. her name is not listed on the Murdoch University list of honourees. These include:

  • Australian National University (law)

Biography

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

Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration

<!---redirects target this section--->

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. It is held each year in Reconciliation Week, with the 2007 event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum. Each orator was chosen by O'Donoghue.

<div>Speakers have included:

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 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 inaugural 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.

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

Lowitja O'Donoghue Foundation

On 1 August 2022, the day on which O'Donoghue celebrated her 90th birthday, the Lowitja Institute announced the establishment of the Lowitja O'Donoghue Foundation. The Foundation is a charitable organisation which seeks funding for scholarships to assist Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people to pursue nursing studies or to work in the public service sector; and to build an archive and educational resources relating to O'Donoghue's life and achievements.

Marriage and personal life

In 1979 O'Donoghue married Gordon Smart, a medical orderly at the Repatriation Hospital, whom she had first met in 1964. but they had no children together. Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, governor-general of Australia David Hurley, South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas, and governor of South Australia Frances Adamson, Lowitja Foundation chair Pat Anderson, and hundreds of relatives, friends, and supporters. Oscar played tribute to her "enormous contribution", saying "Dr 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".

In the proposed redistribution of electorates in South Australia after the 2025 Australian federal election, the Division of Grey was recommended to be changed to O’Donoghue in her honour.

Footnotes

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

  • Hawke Centre, University of South Australia > Patrons > Professor Lowitja O'Donoghue AC CBE