Mudrooroo

Colin Thomas Johnson (21 August 1938 – 2019), better known by his nom de plume Mudrooroo, and also published under the names Mudrooroo Narogin and Mudrooroo Nyoongah, was an Australian novelist, poet, essayist and playwright. He is best known for his first novel, Wild Cat Falling, which became a best-seller after its publication in 1965. His many works are centred on Aboriginal Australian characters and topics; however, there was doubt cast upon his claims to have Aboriginal ancestry.

Early life Colin Thomas Johnson was born on 21 August 1938 on a farm near Narrogin, Western Australia. He turned to burglary and served two stints in Fremantle Prison, where he began writing literature.

His works were published under the names Mudrooroo Narogin, Mudrooroo Nyoongah, and simply Mudrooroo. (NAIWOLDA). One of the organisation's priorities was to establish an independent national Black Australian publishing house.

Recognition and awards Mudrooroo won the FAW Patricia Weickhardt Award to an Aboriginal Writer in 1979.

He was appointed writer-in-residence at Murdoch University in Perth in 1982. Mudrooroo means paperbark

A request by the Nyoongah community to substantiate his claimed kinship to the Kickett family was not acknowledged because he was overseas and then in the process of relocating interstate. On 27 July 1996 the Nyoongah elders released a public statement: "The Kickett family rejects Colin Johnson's claim to his Aboriginality and any kinship ties to the family".

Mudrooroo's prior statements about Indigenous writers such as Sally Morgan, whom he excluded from his definition of Aboriginality, did not assist his cause. He had said of Morgan's book My Place that it made Aboriginality acceptable so long as you were "young, gifted and not very black". In addition, Mudrooroo's writings had placed emphasis on kinship and family links as key features of Aboriginal identity, and his rejection of his biological family deeply offended some in the Aboriginal community. Initially, many people came to Mudrooroo's defence, some claiming it was a "white conspiracy" or a racist attack on Aboriginality, with some claiming Polglaze's "amateur sleuthing" was being exploited. Award-winning Indigenous author Graeme Dixon called on Mudrooroo to come forward and tell the truth, stressing that it was important to "out" pretenders and reclaim Aboriginal culture. Several authors see evidence in his writings that Mudrooroo deliberately assumed an Aboriginal identity to legitimise his work when in his early 20s, although it remains possible he was unaware. Editor Gerhard Fischer believes that it was Dame Mary Durack, though not Aboriginal herself, who "defined and determined" his Aboriginal identity.

Later life and death After the 1996 controversy surrounding his Aboriginal identity, Mudrooroo spent 15 years living in India and Nepal, where he married (possibly for the third time) and had a son. In 2011 he and his family returned to Australia, where he published Balga Boy Jackson (2017) and began work on an (unfinished) autobiography.