Australian Dictionary of Biography

Aunty Doreen Kartinyeri

Photographer: Jess Wallace

Doreen ‘Dodo’ Maude Kartinyeri (1935–2007), genealogist, historian, and Aboriginal rights activist, was born on 3 February 1935 at Raukkan (Point McLeay mission), Ngarrindjeri Country, South Australia. Descended from Ngarrindjeri, Wirangu, Nauo, Barkandji, Boandik (Bungandidj), and Ngadjuri peoples, she was the second child of Oswald (known as Oscar) Kartinyeri and his wife Thelma, née Rigney. Her siblings were Oscar junior, Nancy, Doris Alma, Ron, Connie, and Doris Eileen. Three cousins, Lila, Thelma, and Elsie, lived with the family and were so close that Doreen and Elsie only realised they were not sisters when they were in their early teens. Oscar junior, who stuttered as a child, called Doreen ‘Dodo’ and the name stuck.

Despite being governed by the South Australian Aborigines Protection Board (APB) and subject to mission regulations and routines, Doreen had a happy childhood at Raukkan. She enjoyed camping at the Kurrangk (Coorong) with elders, collecting and cooking wild food to supplement the mission rations, spending time with her aunties and grandparents, and being part of a large, loving family. A series of tragedies profoundly changed their lives. In 1943 two of Doreen’s younger sisters, Nancy and Doris Alma, died (of complications during surgery and diphtheria, respectively) and her cousins Lila and Thelma were taken from the family and placed at the Girls’ Probationary School, Fullarton (later the Salvation Army Girls’ Home). When Doreen’s mother Thelma became pregnant the following year, her cousin Elsie was also removed by the APB and sent to Fullarton.

Doreen’s youngest sister, Doris Eileen, was born in 1945. A month after giving birth, Thelma died. Doreen would later attribute her mother’s death to the decreased involvement of Aboriginal midwives in childbirth. As a ten-year-old, the loss of her beloved mother was devasting. Unbeknown to Oscar, his infant daughter was taken from the hospital where his wife had died and placed at Colebrook Home, Eden Hills. He searched in vain for Doris Eileen, travelling to Adelaide and as far as Victoria. ‘For a long time,’ Doreen later recalled, ‘our home was full of tears’ (Kartinyeri 2000, xiv).

The APB wanted to remove all the remaining Kartinyeri children. After evading the welfare officers for several months, Doreen was sent to the Salvation Army Girls’ Home at Fullarton, aged eleven. Rebellious and principled, she was expelled two years later after getting into a fight in defence of a disabled girl. At the age of thirteen she was sent to work as a domestic servant for the Dunn family at Charleston in the Adelaide Hills; later she worked for the Motteram family at Kings Park. Both families let her visit relatives and friends, including her sister Doris Eileen at Colebrook.

In 1950 Doreen returned to Raukkan to help take care of her grandmother who was unwell. She got a job working as a domestic servant for the mission superintendent and most of her meagre earnings were given to her grandparents to supplement their rations. At sixteen Doreen became a full-time foster mother to her young cousins Ron, Heather, and Bobby Rankine; she would foster more than twenty children over the course of her life. In 1954 she fell pregnant and married Terry Wanganeen, moving to Point Pearce Aboriginal Station, on the Yorke Peninsula. She gave birth to a son, Terry, in December. His death seven months later from an unknown illness was one of the most traumatic experiences in her life. Between 1955 and 1969 she gave birth to eight more children, six sons and two daughters: Ronald (Jamie), Darryl (Snacka), Klynton (Kandy), Lydia (Dibby), Robin, Brenton, Ricky, and Christabel. An active member of the Point Pearce community, she volunteered at the school, helped to establish a youth group and women’s centre, and initiated the station’s first debutante ball.

Doreen was very close to her mother’s sister Rosie who lived near Point Pearce. Rosie taught her customary skills like weaving and making feather flowers; passed on women’s knowledge about matters such as contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, and Ngarrindjeri women’s initiation; and educated her about genealogies, igniting a lasting interest.

Following the breakdown of her marriage in the mid-1970s, Doreen moved to Adelaide. In 1978 she met Syd Chamberlain, a station hand of Pitjantjatjara descent who had four children. Later that year they moved to Cummins on the Eyre Peninsula, where Syd worked as a shearer. Kaurna elder Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien visited Doreen at Cummins in the early 1980s to talk about her interest in genealogy. She had already begun to compile her own family’s story. Recognising the importance of her research to the broader Aboriginal community, O’Brien, who worked for the South Australian Education Department, made arrangements for her to commence formal work on Aboriginal genealogies in Adelaide. Her first published genealogy, The Rigney Family Genealogy (1983), included a forty-four-foot-long (13.4 m) family tree. In 1985 she published The Wanganeen Family Genealogy, which combined the anthropologist Norman Tindale’s work on Aboriginal genealogies with her own lived experience, oral history knowledge, and research.

In 1987 and 1988 Doreen helped to establish an Aboriginal family history unit at the South Australian Museum, where she was employed as an Aboriginal research officer. Her tenacious research habits, sharp memory, and attention to detail enabled her to piece together broken fragments of family histories, aiding her own and others’ research. She worked on a history of Poonindie with Peggy Brock, published Kartinyeri, Wilson, and Rankine genealogies, and helped members of the Stolen Generations reconnect with their families. For this work she was named South Australia’s Aboriginal of the Year in 1994, awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in 1995, and awarded the Prime Ministers’ Centenary medal in 2001.

During the mid-1990s Doreen became a key figure opposing the construction of a bridge from Goolwa to Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island). A strong Ngarrindjeri woman, she held important cultural knowledge from her ancestors relating to the island, including secret and sacred women’s business, which could not be shared. Subject to sexist and racist vilification from politicians, big business, and the media, she also faced criticism from other Ngarrindjeri women who claimed to have no knowledge of the island’s spiritual significance. In 1995 the South Australian government established a royal commission headed by Iris Stevens to investigate the nature of Ngarrindjeri women’s spiritual beliefs. Stevens concluded that the claim of secret and sacred women’s business at Kumarangk had been fabricated—a harrowing finding for many in the community. Subsequently, the Federal government passed the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act 1997, prohibiting further applications for heritage protection at the site and paving the way for the bridge’s construction.

The Hindmarsh Island controversy exposed the limitations of Australia’s legal and political systems to protect Aboriginal heritage rights. In 2001 Justice John von Doussa, in a Federal Court decision, reached a significantly different conclusion than Stevens, ruling that he was ‘not satisfied that the restricted women’s knowledge was fabricated’ (Australian 2001, 4). It was too late to stop construction of the bridge, but Doreen and her fellow activists took some comfort in having their cultural knowledge and spiritual beliefs publicly and legally vindicated.

The controversy took a heavy psychological and physical toll on Doreen. She quit her job at the museum, became ill with stomach ulcers, and then stomach cancer. Recovering from surgery at Point Pearce, she continued to research and write, publishing Ngarrindjeri Anzacs (1996), Narungga Nation (2002), and Ngarrindjeri Nation (2006). Despite all that she endured her sharp wit and humour and her integrity and passionate sense of justice never left her. She died on 3 December 2007 at Maitland Hospital on the Yorke Peninsula with her family at her bedside. A beloved elder, mother, grandmother, sister, aunty, and warrior-woman dedicated to upholding and protecting Ngarrindjeri law, she was deeply mourned. My Ngarrindjeri Calling, her memoir co-written with Sue Anderson, was published posthumously in 2008. Her genealogical research has proven invaluable for Aboriginal community members seeking family information and community connection, and for Narungga, Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna, and Ngadjuri Nations in native title consent determination cases. Her genealogies continue to be extended upon today.

Natalie Harkin is Narungga and Denise Noack is of German descent. Both were born and wrote this article on Kaurna Yerta. Natalie and Denise consulted Aunty Doreen’s family in researching and writing this article.