Ngarrindjeri Nation

Dr Doreen Kartinyeri was born at Raukkan in 1935. After the sudden death of her mother when she was 10, Dr Kartinyeri was placed in the Salvation Army’s Fullarton Girls’ Home under the government policies for Aboriginal people at the time. At the age of 13 she was put into domestic service in the Adelaide Hills. With husband Terry Wanganeen she bore nine children whom she raised at Point Pearce on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. Over the years she also cared for 23 foster children, rather than seeing them placed in State care. Dr Kartinyeri began work as a genealogist with Professor Fay Gayle in the Geography Department of the University of Adelaide in 1979. She went on to found the Aboriginal Family History Unit of the South Australian Museum and to become the country’s foremost Indigenous genealogist. Dr Kartinyeri was recognised for this work by an Honorary Doctorate from the University of South Australia in 1995, the Prime Minister’s Centenary Medal in 2002, and other awards. She passed away in 2007.