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Cover image courtesy of publisher.
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Lowitja : The Authorised Biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue
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''I am sometimes identified as one of the "success stories" of the policies of removal of Aboriginal children. But for much of my childhood I was deeply unhappy. I feel I had been deprived of love and the ability to love in return. Like Lily, my mother, I felt totally powerless. And I think this is where the seeds of my commitment to human rights and social justice were sown.' - Lowitja O'Donoghue

'Lowitja O'Donoghue is a truly great Australian. She is arguably our nation's most recognised Indigenous woman. A powerful and unrelenting advocate for her people, an inspiration for many, a former Australian of the Year, she sat opposite Prime Minister Paul Keating in the first negotiations between an Australian government and Aboriginal people and changed the course of the nation.

'But when Lowitja was born in 1932 to an Aboriginal mother and a white father in the harsh and uncompromising landscape of Central Australia the expectations for her life could not have been more different. At the age of two, she was handed over to the missionaries of the Colebrook Home for Half-Caste Children and cut off completely from her people and her culture. She would not see her mother again for another thirty years and would have no memory of her father.

'In 2001 a bitter controversy arose over whether Lowitja was 'stolen' as a child. In search of a past she did not remember, Lowitja went back to Central Australia accompanied by journalist Stuart Rintoul. This ground-breaking and long-awaited biography completes that journey into Lowitja's life and the challenging history of her times. It is a remarkable work about an extraordinary woman.' (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 3582621668965484091.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 392p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 29th September 2020
      ISBN: 9781760875602

Other Formats

  • Dyslexic edition.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

‘The Rock Who Steadied Us’ : A Leader of Transcendent Warmth Michael Winkler , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 22-23)

— Review of Lowitja : The Authorised Biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue Stuart Rintoul , 2020 single work biography
'In Recollections of a Bleeding Heart (2002), Don Watson wrote that Lowitja O’Donoghue ‘seemed then and has seemed ever since to be a person of such transcendent warmth, if Australians ever got to know her they would want her as their Queen’. Robert Manne, in the first-ever Quarterly Essay (2001), portrayed her as ‘a woman of scrupulous honesty and great beauty of soul’. These qualities gleam in Stuart Rintoul’s handsomely produced biography.' (Introduction)
‘The Rock Who Steadied Us’ : A Leader of Transcendent Warmth Michael Winkler , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 22-23)

— Review of Lowitja : The Authorised Biography of Lowitja O'Donoghue Stuart Rintoul , 2020 single work biography
'In Recollections of a Bleeding Heart (2002), Don Watson wrote that Lowitja O’Donoghue ‘seemed then and has seemed ever since to be a person of such transcendent warmth, if Australians ever got to know her they would want her as their Queen’. Robert Manne, in the first-ever Quarterly Essay (2001), portrayed her as ‘a woman of scrupulous honesty and great beauty of soul’. These qualities gleam in Stuart Rintoul’s handsomely produced biography.' (Introduction)
Last amended 29 Nov 2021 10:14:18
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