Margaret Lilardia Tucker MBE's landmark autobiography – If Everyone Cared – has been republished by NLA Publishing in a new edition titled If Everyone Cared Enough. This nationally significant publication aims to reinstate the original words of Aunty Marge, as she was affectionately known, and shed light on the previously omitted descriptions of her culture and personal experiences.
Margaret Liliardia Tucker MBE was a significant Aboriginal activist and one of the first Aboriginal women to publish for mainstream audiences.
Originally published in 1977, If Everyone Cared was a groundbreaking work that required significant alterations to cater to non-Indigenous readers who had limited knowledge of Aboriginal cultures and the consequences of settler invasion from a First Nations perspective. As a result, Tucker's tone and content were modified, and her original Aboriginal storytelling voice was altered.
If Everyone Cared Enough draws from the handwritten manuscript held in the collections of the National Library of Australia, allowing readers to experience Tucker's story as she originally wrote it. The republished autobiography commences with her joyful early memories of swimming, fishing, and learning, but also delves into the abrupt end of her childhood when she was sent to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. Tucker fearlessly recounts the horrors of the training, the cruelty of her first employer, and the profound loneliness, homesickness, and heartache she endured.
