Abstract
Abstract
Australian Aboriginal Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993), born as Kath Walker, poet, artist, and political activist, was also a philosopher. This inquiry into her philosophy explicates her poem “Aboriginal Charter of Rights.” It discovers that the poem is not only a template for constructing a treaty for indigenous rights, but also a template for understanding what it means to be human. The poem also introduces two concepts, developed more fully in other works, that further her arguments in the poem. The first is the concept of hope as being existential to human fulfillment. The second is the concept of difference, as it is related to community and oneness. Oodgeroo’s response to having grown up experiencing two cultures and two philosophies of life was to maintain that the ethical mandate for human fulfillment is to understand and accept difference. Difference implies neither superiority nor subjugation, but rather equality, achieved politically by integration rather than assimilation.