Doris Pilkington Garimara

Writing

Garimara's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence is considered a powerful description of the abuses endured by the Stolen Generations. The book was made into an internationally successful film in 2002, directed by Phillip Noyce.

Her follow-up book, Under the Wintamarra Tree, details her own life at Moore River and at the Roelands Native Mission and how she managed to escape by enrolling in a nursing school. Home to Mother is her children's edition of Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence. In the four books, Caprice, a Stockman's Daughter, Follow the Rabbit-proof Fence, Home to Mother, and Under the Wintamarra Tree, Pilkington documented three generations of women in her family.

In 1990, Pilkington's book Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter, the first of the trilogy, won the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards' Unpublished Indigenous Writer – The David Unaipon Award. She was appointed co-patron of Australia's State and Federal Sorry Day committee's Journey of Healing in 2002. In May 2008, she was awarded the $50,000 Red Ochre Award which is made to an indigenous artist for their outstanding, lifelong contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts at home and abroad.

Death

Pilkington Garimara died of ovarian cancer at age 76 on 10 April 2014 in Perth, Western Australia.

Awards Pilkington Garimara was posthumously inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame in 2022.

Australia Council for the Arts The Australia Council for the Arts arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia. Since 1993, it has awarded a Red Ochre Award. It is presented to an outstanding Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal Australian or Torres Strait Islander) artist for lifetime achievement. 2008 Herself Red Ochre Award