ALBURY Wiradjuri elder Nancy Rooke says she hopes in the near future that a circle of elders might be formed who will guide the region’s young people in respecting their Aboriginal backgrounds.
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“Even though we are on Wiradjuri land we need elders from other tribes to talk to these young people because they will listen to them,” she said.
It is 30 years since Mrs Rooke first moved to the diverse community in Albury from Narrandera where she had been born in a shack on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River.
“It was a hard childhood. Dad was a drover and went away to war for four years,” she said.
“Everyone worked, including my mum and there was often only gran and I in that little shack.”
Mrs Rooke’s grandmother was a member of the stolen generations and told her grand-daughter she believed the way Aboriginal people could get on with their lives was to get an education.
It was advice that has influenced Mrs Rooke for much of her life.
Mrs Rooke, whose own family now extends to six children, 23 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, said she was overwhelmed upon receiving the news of her Medal (OAM) of the Order of Australia in today’s Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Upon her arrival in Albury with husband Chris and two of her daughters she began work at the Murray Valley Centre and then went to the St Vincent de Paul’s mens shelter, an option she says was hard considering she doesn’t drink or smoke.
“One bloke said to me, ‘Nance, I think the grog’s getting weaker’,” she said.
“What he didn’t know is that I had found his stash and had filled it half with water.
“It taught me to be more tolerant.”
Mrs Rooke was the initiator of the Wiradjuri Home Care Service but an accident meant that she couldn’t work and she turned to TAFE wanting to supplement school studies that ended at 14½ and which were interrupted by time she had spent with her father on the road.
“We started with older people, grandmothers who had no formal education, believing it was the way to grab the grandkids,” she said.
“They said to me, ‘this is our second chance at an education’.”
Mrs Rooke created a possum skin cloak with two other younger women and it formed part of a performance to the Queen during her most recent visit to Australia.
The cloak will make a re-appearance tomorrow for a conference of NSW school principals in Albury.
“While we were making the cloak, we were talking and that is what it is about — getting together and yarning,” she said.
“I don’t like to get political but I will say we’ve been around for 40,000 years so why wouldn’t we get together and walk together.
“This is a resettled area and that is not an easy place to work in but there have been successes, the Aboriginal Health Service, Wonga Wetlands and the Wiradjuri Home Care Service.”