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Ali Cobby Eckermann is an Aboriginal Australian poet with a complicated family history. Born in 1953 and named Penelope Rae Cobby, she was adopted by a family with the surname Eckermann after being tricked away from her mother.
Her identity has been influenced by many different people: her biological family, her adoptive family, her Aboriginal ancestors, and her German-descended adoptive parents.
In her poems, she belongs to many cultures but also experiences a sense of loss and exclusion from them.
Ali Cobby Eckermann and Lionel Fogarty at the Hawkesbury River 2014
Ali Cobby Eckermann and Lionel Fogarty at the Hawkesbury River 2014
Juno Gemes
Juno Gemes
Ali Cobby Eckermann (b. 1963), Yankunytjatjara/Kothaka author and poet, was born in Adelaide. Adopted as a baby, she, her mother and grandmother were members of the Stolen Generations. As a teenager she ran away to the desert in Central Australia, where she began to write poetry. After reuniting with her mother and reconnecting with her family and culture at the age of 34, she studied creative writing at the Bachelor College of Indigenous Tertiary Education in Alice Springs.
“In Australia, we could be walking down the street and the cops can pull us over, and search us, and belittle us, and frighten us. And there doesn’t need to be anything we’ve done. It’s just the fact that we’re Aboriginal people. We are the oldest living cultural continuum in the word. And we’re tired of living under the boot of Australia.”
“Get over it,” is what she says her people have been told over and over through time. So, ultimately, Ali Cobby Eckermann says, expressing grief, writing poetry and telling stories is her form of resistance.
Who is Ali Cobby Eckermann?
Who is Ali Cobby Eckermann?
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