National NAIDOC Female Elder of the Year

Dr Ruby Langford Ginibi

Dr Ruby Langford Ginibi is a remarkable woman whose sense of humour has endured through the hardships she has experienced. A brilliant storyteller, her honest and often humorous accounts of her own life and those of others has made her one of the Australia’s most celebrated writers.

Don’t Take Your Love to Town was the powerful memoir that cast her as one of Australian literature's great survivors. It also earned her a Human Rights Award for Literature in 1988.

Her poetry and other books, including: Real Deadly, My Bundjalung People, Haunted by the Past and more recently All My Mob, have changed the face of autobiographical writing in Australia.

In 2005, Ruby received the Writers Emeritus Award, the highest honour in Australian literature. She also received History Fellowships from the Ministry of the Arts and the National Museum of Australia and an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University.

Ruby is a historian and lecturer on Aboriginal history, culture and politics. Much of her writing is also studied in schools and Universities across Australia.

Ruby Langford-Ginibi is an icon of survival and strength for Aboriginal people.

For her courage in sharing her experiences, knowledge and spirituality, Dr Ruby Langford Ginibi is the 2007 National NAIDOC Female Elder of the Year.