Collective living-legacies of Aunty Gladys Elphick and the Council for Aboriginal Women in South Australia

In 2018, Harkin was gifted a significant archive on the life and work of the late Kaurna, Ngadjuri, Narungga Elder Aunty Gladys Elphick, as an extension to her research on Aboriginal women’s domestic service and labour histories in South Australia. ‘Aunty Glad’ had established the Council for Aboriginal Women in South Australia (CAWSA) in 1966 with a group of prominent Aboriginal women who were tireless and unwavering in their determination for Aboriginal justice and rights in SA. As a grassroots network, they transformed the social and political landscape at a pivotal time in Australian history, to secure employment, education, health, housing, and legal services for the community, many of which still exist today. Their collective story, however, particularly regarding Aboriginal women’s activism and leadership at the time, is not widely known or understood in the larger public narratives of history. This chapter considers the cultural responsibility and challenge to honour the living-legacy archive of one woman, ‘Aunty Glad’, which is also a community-owned story with significant claim and investment. It will also consider ‘archival-poetics’ as a literary method contributing to innovative modes of Indigenous collective biography, storytelling, and research.