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RUBY HUNTER (1955-2010)
Ruby Hunter was a proud Ngarrindjeri woman & a musician with a deep, evocative voice whose songs tell the stories of her life, her family & her people.
THREAD
Photo credit: Jacqueline Mitelman
Ruby Hunter was a proud Ngarrindjeri woman & a musician with a deep, evocative voice whose songs tell the stories of her life, her family & her people.
THREAD
Photo credit: Jacqueline Mitelman
She was born in a billabong to Irene & Geoffrey Hunter. She grew up on camps along the Murray River filled with siblings, aunties, uncles, grandparents & cousins on the land the Ngarrindjeri people had thrived on for at least 10 000 years.
Before European invasion, there were thousands of Ngarrindjeri people living in a sophisticated society deeply connected to the water, land, plants & animals around them. They passed on their knowledge, culture & family history through storytelling & music.
When the white people came, they forcefully took away their land, destroyed their ability to produce food, murdered them & brought diseases. The surviving Ngarrindjeri people persisted in pursuing joyful, creative, culture-filled lives in community with each other.
Ruby’s grandmother played the piano accordion & so did her Aunty Charlotte Richards. Charlotte was a free spirit, a talented independent woman & skilled in the old ways of living off the land.
Aunty Charlotte always had her camera with her to document life. She made sure to take photos of Ngarrindjeri kids & give them to their families knowing that at any moment they could be taken away by the government.
Ruby’s mum got pneumonia & died when Ruby was only a few years old. After that, her grandparents looked after her & her siblings. Then one day when she was 8 years old, a big government car drove up. They told Ruby & her siblings to get in & they’d take them to the circus.
The children never came back. Grandma was heartbroken & soon became ill & died. The siblings were separated & sent to institutions & foster homes. At 16, Ruby was left homeless when the state released her with no home, no family, nowhere to go.
On the streets of Adelaide, Ruby Hunter met another member of the Stolen Generations, Archie Roach. They had two boys together but it was tough living with no support, so much pain & only alcohol to numb it. Eventually both Archie & Ruby were able to give up drinking.
They found solace in music & song writing.Ruby wrote about her experience with homelessness in the song Down City Streets which was performed by Archie on his first album. In 1994, she recorded her first album Thoughts Within.
This was the first solo “rock” album to be recorded by an Aboriginal woman & Ruby was the first Aboriginal woman to be signed to a major record label. Though she kept her Ngarrindjeri language, she chose to sing in English so her music & the culture the government fought so hard
to take away from her as a child would reach a wider audience. When she performed on stage, she would display her heritage proudly through bush jewellery. Ruby was an incredibly generous, community-minded person.
She worked in homeless shelters, wrote a children’s book & mentored many in the music industry. Archie & Ruby fostered over 30 Aboriginal children & instilled a sense of pride in their heritage. Their son Amos Roach teaches culture & healing through music & dance.
As an adult, Ruby was able to reconnect with her siblings. In 2008, Prime Minister Rudd made an apology to the Stolen Generations. Ruby hoped the apology would bring some relief to the burden she felt on her shoulders & that her great-grandchildren wouldn’t have to carry
the weight of these issues. There is still a long way to go to heal the pains of the Stolen Generations & Aboriginal kids are still being removed from their families at much too high a rate.
There is no national compensation scheme so many survivors & their families can’t access the support services they need to heal from the trauma & the trauma is passed on to the next generations.
In 2010, Ruby died suddenly of a heart attack at only 54 years old, leaving behind her beloved Archie, her children & grandchildren. Listen to Ruby tell her own story through music on Spotify in the album Ruby. My favourite song is Ngarrindjeri Woman.
end of thread.
#rubyhunter #australianhistory #aboriginalhistory #stolengenerations #australianfamilyhistory #ngarrindjeri #archieroach #ngarrindjerihistory #charlotterichards #nationalapology #familyhistory
#rubyhunter #australianhistory #aboriginalhistory #stolengenerations #australianfamilyhistory #ngarrindjeri #archieroach #ngarrindjerihistory #charlotterichards #nationalapology #familyhistory
This should have had a cultural warning at the top for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers that this thread contains images and names of people who have died.
