The pieces in this seminal collection represent almost four decades of writing by historian and activist Jackie Huggins. These essays, speeches and interviews combine both the public and the personal in a bold trajectory tracing one Murri woman's journey towards self-discovery and human understanding. As a widely respected cultural educator and analyst, Huggins offers an Aboriginal view of the history, values and struggles of Indigenous people.
Sister Girl reflects on many important and timely topics, including identity, activism, leadership and reconciliation. It challenges accepted notions of the appropriateness of mainstream feminism in Aboriginal society and of white historians writing Indigenous history. Jackie Huggins' words, then and now, offer wisdom, urgency and hope.
Dr Jackie Huggins AM FAHA, a member of the Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru peoples, is the Co-Chair Treaty Advancement Committee (Qld). In popular demand as a speaker on Aboriginal issues, she is a well-known historian and author, with articles published widely in Australia and internationally. Her acclaimed biography of her mother, Auntie Rita, was published in 1994. Keeping it in the family, in 2022 her biography of her father, Jack of Hearts- QX11594, will be published.
She was the former Co-Chair National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, former member of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Co-Chair Reconciliation Australia, the State Library Board of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. She was Co-Commissioner for Queensland for the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, and for several years was a Judge of the annual David Unaipon Award.