Ruby Hammond strong rights campaigner in South Australia; 1988 first Aboriginal female federal MP candidate

From the cover of Flight of an Eagle: The dreaming of Ruby Hammond, a biography by Margaret Forte (Wakefield Press).

Ruby Hammond (1936-93) was the first Aboriginal woman candidate for the Australian federal parliament in 1988 for the seat of Port Adelaide.

She was born in Blackford, an independent indigenous community, as a member of the Tangenekald group of the Ngarrindindjeri people of the Coorong at the River Murray's mouth in South Australia,

At 32, she joined the Council of Aboriginal Women and in the 1970s and in the 1980s pursued equal rights for Aboriginal people including roles at the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, the department of personnel and industrial relations and National Australian Women's Consultative Council.

She consulted for the 1977 Australian Law Reform Commission into whether customary laws could be applied to Aboriginal people.

Hammond was appointed by the Whitlam federal government to the Australian National Advisory Committee on International Women's Year (1975). In 1980, Hammond advocated for a treaty recognising Aboriginal sovereignty. Speaking for the Aboriginal Land Rights Support Group, Hammond argued that “we are the national minority; it is a treaty between two nations. The government must agree and recognise that we were here first”.

In 1988, she ran in a federal byelection for the seat of Port Adelaide.

In 1990, Hammond headed the Aboriginal issues unit for the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, and was Aboriginal Coordinator for the South Australian department of arts and cultural heritage 1991-93. In 1991, she joined singer Archie Roach to publicly demand an inquiry into the stolen generations.

Hammond was awarded the Australian public service medal and received a posthumous award for equal opportunity achievement in 1993.