Ngadlu tampinthi ngadlu Kaurna Miyurna yartangka. Munaintya puru purruna ngadlu-itya. Munaintyanangku yalaka tarrkarriana tuntarri.
We acknowledge we are on Kaurna Miyurna land. The Dreaming is still living. From the past, in the present, into the future, forever.
Doreen Maude Kartinyeri was an Ngarrindjeri elder and historian. She was born in 1935 at the Aboriginal reserve Point MacLeay (now Raukkan). Thirteen years later, after her mother died, she and her younger sister were placed in various institutions. In 1951 Doreen was expelled from the Salvation Army Home in Fullarton and never continued her formal education ... but in later years she won many honorary academic awards.
In 1954 Doreen married Terence Douglas Wanganeen, the father of her nine children. For the next twenty years she lived at Point Pearce and her re-connection to family led her to research and publish the genealogy of the Rigney family and then eight generations of the Wanganeen family.
For this work she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Adelaide and offered a position at the South Australian Museum to head their new Aboriginal Family History Unit.
Doreen played a significant role opposing the construction of a bridge from Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island proposed by the Labor Government in 1993. She argued the project would violate the most sacred beliefs of women members of the Ngarrindjeri. Following a Royal Commission, in 1996 plans were approved to build the bridge, which was completed in 2000.
In 1994 Doreen was named the South Australian Aboriginal of the Year, and a year later awarded a second Honorary Doctorate, this time from the University of South Australia.
Diana Laidlaw AM