A chorus of voices about one of the country’s most prominent Indigenous activists is a glorious kaleidoscope of testimony
“I always was the chief. I thought of everything and told everyone what to do. And that was the way I grew up on the mission, of understanding non-Indigenous people, and trying to work out what they were thinking long before they said it … I could finish my schoolwork as the teachers were writing it up on the board. I knew exactly what they were going to say next.”
These are the words of Tracker Tilmouth, an Eastern Arrernte man who was born in Alice Springs 1954 and died in 2015. He and his two darker skinned brothers were separated from their lighter skinned siblings when Tracker was three years old. Tracker, William and Patrick were sent north to Croker Island, 1,000km away, where they grew up on a mission. Tracker learned to read early and was encouraged by his house mother, Lois Bartram, to read widely, to become politically aware, to educate himself.
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