Level 5

Phoebe Wanganeen was a Narungga, Ngarrindjeri and Bungala Elder born in 1925. Phoebe’s Grandfather Alfred Spencer was from Point McLeay (Raukkan), but moved to Point Pearce to marry her Grandmother, and had one child – Rachel, Phoebe’s mother. Phoebe grew up at Point Pearce and had eleven children, but relocated to Adelaide so that her paraplegic son would have access to medical services. As of 2000, she had 53 grandchildren. Phoebe is most well known for her contributions to Aboriginal education, particularly in language and oral history, her involvement in the Kaurna Plains School and Tauondi College, and as a member of the South Australian Education Consultative Committee and representing South Australia on the inaugural Commonwealth Aboriginal Employment, Education and Training Committee.

Phoebe was an important custodian of the surviving fragmentary Narungga language along with Elders Gladys Elphic, Doris Graham, Eileen Jovic and others, repeatedly promoting the importance of language for culture and identity. She was involved in language revival projects with the Mobile Language Team and The Federation of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Languages & Culture (FATSILC). At an historic community meeting to launch the Language Revival Project on Narungga Country in 2001, Phoebe was able to realise a culmination of this work that she hadn’t thought would be possible in her lifetime – formally opening the meeting in Language, and heralding that the process of reinstating Narungga as a fully spoken language was both possible and well underway.

Phoebe also contributed to Kaurna language revival, consulting on the Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi project out of the University of Adelaide, and acknowledged in the resultant publication: ‘Warraparna Kaurna! Reclaiming an Australian Language’. During one consultation session cited in relation to the project, she expressed her support as such:

And I'd like, myself, to see the Kaurna language taught in every school wherever there are Aboriginal children. Because it's most important. We've lost so much in the past and it's about time that our kids be given the chance to speak their own language.

Phoebe has made valuable contributions to the historical record of life on Point Pearce through oral histories that have informed publications including: ‘Survival in Our Own Land’; the ‘Point Pearce Social History Project’; ‘The Unfenced Land’; and the children’s book ‘Bookayana Stories: Childhood Memories of Bookayana [Point Pearce]’.

Phoebe was honoured with the Senior Australian Achiever of the Year Award, and a Premier's Award, in 2000; she was named a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003, for ‘service to the Indigenous community of South Australia, particularly through the provision of advice and as a contributor to the development of educational programs, and through the activities of a range of social welfare and support groups’; and she was on the South Australian Women’s Honours Roll in 2009. Since 2008, an education scholarship in Phoebe’s name has supported Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the Salisbury area to pursue further study at TAFE or university.

Kevin Francis Ah-ngi O’Loughlin, or ‘Uncle Dookie’ as he is known in the community, is a senior Narungga and Kaurna Elder, mentor, educator and cultural consultant, widely respected for his work in education, the transmission and preservation of cultural knowledge, and his extensive volunteer and consultative roles with community organisations.

Born at Wallaroo in 1947 to Edmond and Winifred O’Loughlin (née Wanganeen), Kevin was the sixth of eleven children growing up at Point Pearce Mission Station, where he attended school until Grade 5, before moving to Maitland Area School for two years after it was made accessible to kids from Point Pearce in 1959. Kevin recalls feeling excited about attending Maitland Area School, and that the kids from the mission were made to feel welcome. At 14 he left school and began general farm work on the mission, from shearing, stone picking, driving the grader or tractor, to driving the community bus and the rubbish truck. He would also return deceased community members to Point Pearce from Adelaide and Wallaroo Hospitals, and dug graves at the cemetery with Nelson Varcoe.

In 1966, Kevin was a member of the first Aboriginal Lands Trust Committee for Point Pearce following the enactment of the Aboriginal Lands Trust Act 1966 (SA), then with the Point Pearce Community Council after the station land was transferred to community control in 1972. He also share farmed paddocks around Point Pearce, in the process raising $20 000 farming for the Church of England, and was a founding member of the Narungga Farming Company from 1972. In 1966 he was involved in the second Debutante Ball for the community.

Kevin married Joan Chester in 1968, and they had four children: Petina (died at six weeks), Kylie, Akarnie, and Narrah. From 1977-79 Kevin had worked as an Aboriginal Community Worker for the Department of Community Welfare, but after funding for the station was decreased, and Joan got a job as a health worker in Norwood, the family relocated to Adelaide, and Kevin began studying at the Aboriginal College in North Adelaide in 1980 (now Tauondi College). The following year he undertook a traineeship there in the Aboriginal Studies Teaching Resource Unit (ASTRU), and became coordinator of ASTRU only one year later, working closely with colleagues Mike Gray and Andrew Lindsay in the development of a range of programs and resources for their cultural educators to implement in schools, as well as establishing Dreaming trails and cultural tours throughout Adelaide; and designing various plant trails. Kevin and ASTRU also established a successful training program for Aboriginal Cultural Tour Guides, and training Aboriginal teacher aides from 1985, and the sharing and publication of traditional stories including ‘Winda: A Narungga Dreaming Story,’ and ‘Buthera’s Rock.’

Kevin was also integrally involved in the Narungga Aboriginal Progress Association (NAPA) led Narungga Language Revival Committee from the early 1980s, identifying important sites around Point Pearce to be named, and finally launching the Language Reclamation Project with other Elders including Auntie Phoebe Wanganeen, Auntie Rose Dixon (née Williams) and Auntie Alice Rigney in 2001, celebrating decades of work by the many members of the community and researchers and linguists at a milestone toward the restoration of Narungga as a fully spoken language. Kevin contributed to the proceedings with a discussion of the Narungga words for relationships in the context of his family tree, and reading a Dreaming trail narrative incorporating Narungga language. He was also a narrator in the 1991 Education Department of South Australia film ‘The Kaurna people: Aboriginal people of the Adelaide Plains’, discussing seasonal movements and food hunting and gathering.

In 2002, Kevin gave a demonstration in Narungga culture as part of the official ceremony for the Adelaide Festival, and appeared at Adelaide Festival’s Writers Week in 2003.

Since leaving Tauondi College in 2007, Kevin has worked as cultural advisor to a broad range of organisations, including Salisbury Council and Pooraka Farm Community Centre. From 2013 he worked for the University of South Australia teaching cultural knowledge and restoration ecology, and has a particular interest in the protection of land and migratory birds, also consulting for the Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary. UniSA has published Kevin’s work in the traditional story collection ‘Dookie’s Narungga Stories’, and the fact sheet: ‘Cultural significance of the waterholes north of Adelaide.’ He is acknowledged as one of the major contributors to the 2011 publication ‘Nharangga Wargunni Bugi-Buggillu: a journey through Narungga history,’ by Skye Krichauff of the University of Adelaide, alongside others including Michael and Leslie Wanganeen, Auntie Phoebe Wanganeen, and Auntie Rose Dixon.

In 2009, Kevin worked with the Port Adelaide Enfield Council and South Australian artists Michelle Nikou and Jason Milanovic on the public art project ‘Glow/Taltaityai’ (a Kaurna word meaning ‘glowing’), inspired by the Tjilbruke Dreaming story, and representing the idea of traditional Kaurna hunting of emus along the Lefevre Peninsula. The artwork comprises five glowing emus and an ibis, and was one of the largest public art installations in South Australia, along the bank of the Port River. Kevin has also worked with the Salisbury Council on public art and Kaurna naming projects.

Kevin was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2006 for “service to the community as a contributor to the development of teaching programs providing insight into Indigenous culture and through contributions to the reconciliation process.” He was NAIDOC SA Scholar of the Year in 1993, and Elder of the Year in 2016, and was awarded by Point Pearce Council for his contributions to Point Pearce history and culture.

Kevin was acknowledged for his contribution to Aboriginal education over 50 years with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia in August 2017. UniSA Vice Chancellor, Professor David Lloyd says the University is proud to recognise the outstanding achievements of an Aboriginal leader who has given so much to students, staff, and the community. “He is a vast ‘storehouse’ of traditional cultural knowledge, contributing to many educational resources and publications; and has been a distinguished and influential cultural ambassador in South Australia since the 1960s.”

From his beginnings as a primary school teacher after graduating in 1965, through a distinguished career in education policy, higher education, chairing numerous committees, research and consultation, Emeritus Professor Paul Hughes has made a unique and trailblazing contribution to Aboriginal Education and the involvement of Aboriginal people in public policy development at the highest level

Awards and honours over Paul’s career include:

• Fellow of the Australian College of Education, 1985
• South Australian Aboriginal Scholar of the Year, 1991
• Member of the Order of Australia, 1993
• UNESCO Comenius Medal on behalf of the S.A. Aboriginal Education Unit, 1994
• Australian College of Educators Medal, 2000
• World Indigenous Network Higher Education Consortium, Elders Award, 2004

Paul was awarded a Masters Degree in Education from Harvard University and an Honorary Doctorate from Flinders University. Paul was the first South Australian Aboriginal person to be promoted to the position of Professor.

As well as his many professional achievements, awards and acknowledgements over the years, Paul’s legacy is also that of a cultural shift across government and education in his strident prosecution of the twin principles: that policy makers impacting the lives of Aboriginal people must understand more about Aboriginal people and culture; and that it is imperative to involve Aboriginal people in leadership and decision making roles when developing policy that impacts Aboriginal people. This manifested in his striving to personally empower Aboriginal people through support in educational attainment, and effecting institutional change in highlighting the importance of elevating Aboriginal people to leadership roles.

Paul brought a critical Aboriginal perspective to the scholarship and policy discussion of Aboriginal education, and is widely regarded now, both nationally and internationally, as the ‘Grandfather of Aboriginal Education Public Policy’ in Australia.

Paul worked as a Primary School teacher for nine years between Adelaide and Ceduna and Koonibba in the state’s Far West, before moving into Education Policy at the South Australian, then Commonwealth level in 1973 with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, notably contributing to the establishment of Australia’s first Aboriginal Community Colleges. After four years there he moved over to the South Australian College of Advanced Education (now University of South Australia) as Coordinator of the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program, which was the first Aboriginal program of its kind in Australia and became the flagship for a national program across the higher education sector. He then became Director of the amalgamated Aboriginal Studies and Teacher Education Centre.

Many of Paul’s most esteemed contributions were in public policy research and development, notably while serving on the National Aboriginal Education Committee (NAEC) from 1977, and as Chairman from 1983. His work here on the NAEC’s national policy development of Aboriginal Teacher Education Programs contributed to the National Inquiry into Teacher Education, 1979 and led to the establishment of support centres for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in universities across Australia.

In 1986 Paul returned from Canberra to once more work for the SA Education Department, this time as Director of Aboriginal Education, during which time he also served on the UniSA Council, and chaired Indigenous Education committees at both UniSA and Flinders University. He was later appointed as Director of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research at Flinders University in 1996, and then as Professor, Dean and Head of School at the Indigenous College of Education and Research, UniSA in 2004, building on his legacy of expanding opportunities for Aboriginal students in higher education, and paving the way for the formation of UniSA’s David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research (DUCIER) in 2006.

Since retiring from DUCIER in 2008, Paul has consulted on the ‘Dare to Lead’ project for the Australian Principals Association, and on the National Curriculum Service and Australian Curriculum Studies Association’s ‘What Works’ program, among various other advisory committee memberships.

It was remarked in a citation for Paul, upon the conference of title of Emeritus Professor at the University of South Australia in 2008, that his broader legacy is, in part, his insight that “the Indigenous knowledge movement is not, nor has it ever been, just about curriculum. Indigenous knowledge crosses every aspect of humanity and is as important to humanity as the principles underpinning the dominant sources of knowledge in the western world. To fail to understand this is to be less than what humanity can be.”

Tauto Sansbury was a proud Narungga man born on Point Pearce Mission on 2 July 1949. Right up until his death from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma on 23 September 2019, he was a tireless worker and advocate for Aboriginal people, both in South Australia and Australia-wide.

Tauto knew only too well the underlying issues that still lead to the over representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system. Tauto was removed from his family as a young child and spent a number of years being brutalised in boys’ homes, and later in youth detention centres. His schooling ceased at Grade 6. His experiences at this time had a profound and lifelong impact on him and were pivotal in driving him to work for justice for his community, leading him to a career spanning more than 30 years. He is remembered as a fearless champion and warrior, particularly in regard to law and justice.

Tauto always said he was a Treaty man, and in his later years became deeply involved in Native Title for the Narungga people. He was the lead applicant in the Narungga Native Title claim until his death. He was proud to be a signatory to the Buthera agreement between the Labor State Government and the Narungga people. He was also a delegate to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention at Uluru and a signatory to the Uluru Statement.

He leaves a significant legacy for his community and the South Australian community at large, which must not be forgotten.  It is to be hoped that his example and a tangible remembrance of him will inspire a new generation to follow in his footsteps. He has big shoes to fill.

Louisa (Edwards) Eglington 1850s-1938.

Louisa was born in the 1850s near Brutus Well, Point Turton. Her father was a white colonist. Her mother was a Narungga woman of southern Yorke Peninsula (of the “Warri” clan), who was born near Yorketown. Louisa’s mother was given the European name of “Mary Ann”. Mary Ann also had two other children, a daughter named Lena and a son named John. Mary Ann’s Aboriginal husband was “King Tommy”, who was a powerful Narungga leader at the time of European colonisation. Louisa’s mother’s Country included the area around the south-western extremity of Yorke Peninsula and extended as far north as Daly Head and as far east as Sturt Bay. Louisa almost certainly spent her childhood traversing the southern parts of Yorke Peninsula with her family; fishing, hunting and learning about the important places and Dreaming stories of her people.

Louisa married Dan Angie, whose father was a Chinese man and whose mother was a Narungga woman from Wallaroo. Dan and Louisa had three sons named William Angie, Albert Angie and Harry Angie.

Later, Louisa married a European kangaroo hunter by the name of George Eglington, who lived at Marion Bay. Between 1899 and 1905 Louisa provided linguistic information to J. Howard Johnson, who wrote up Narungga word lists who published them in the local newspaper. Louisa was living with George at Marion Bay when the anthropologist, Norman Tindale, came to visit her in 1935. By this time Louisa was an elderly woman, however she was still able to recount much of the language words, place names and Dreaming stories she remembered to Tindale, who published them in 1936. In 1936 Louisa also spoke with anthropologist, Charles Mountford, describing expert fishing practices undertaken by Narungga people that included large “net making” parties to catch schools of mullet when they were in season. Sadly, Louisa passed away two years later in July 1938. Louisa’s many efforts to have her language and culture preserved are an invaluable resource for Narungga people today and into the future.

Buthera was a big strong Narungga man on a journey through his country to the southern part of Guuranda (Yorke Peninsula). On the way he camped and met a stranger who said he was Madjidju, the leader of the bat people.

Buthera was mad at Madjidju coming onto his land without permission. They fought and Buthera cut Madjidju in two, which is why the bat has short legs, and the folds where he was cut can still be seen on his body.

Buthera continued on his way until he came to Garrdimalga (meaning emu water, now called Curramulka) where a group camped. They had been told of the fight by the willy wagtail, who was well-known sharer of news.

Buthera was annoyed that the people knew of his fight with Madjidju and caused a great bushfire to encircle them. The people tried to escape to the waterhole, but the fire followed them at Buthera’s command, and they were all burnt. When the wind picked up, they all turned into the birds: magpies, shags and seagulls. Their bodies were burnt black by the fire and smeared with the grey and white ashes.

Buthera continued on his journey until he met Ngarna. Ngarna was a little man, Ngarna was Madjidju, and Madjidju was a bat. The two men had an argument and fought. In the fight Ngarna was wounded by Buthera, but Ngarna was clever and quick-footed and ran away.

Buthera was at Guguthie and he threw his waddy across the bay at Ngarna who hid behind a rock.

The waddy missed Ngarna and landed with tremendous force, breaking in two. The club head became the large rock known as Buthera’s Rock which lies at Moongurie on the western side of Burgiyana (Point Pearce peninsula). Blood from the wounds can be seen on the rocks. The handle lies in pieces on the other side not far from Yadri, and stones which formed it can be seen there still.

Ngarna became a huge rock over a hundred feet high, and his wife another rock sitting quietly at his feet at what is now known as ‘Rhino Head’ in Dhilba Guuranda (Innes National Park).