File talk:Marjorie Anne Tripp AO was 17 when she signed up for the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service and became its first Aboriginal member-- 2014-07-10 06-53.jpg

Marjorie Tripp was 17 when she signed up for the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service and became its first Aboriginal member. The Ngarrindjeri Elder started her naval career in 1963, four years before she was even considered a citizen in her own land. It would be half a century before Marj saw Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen receive the recognition they deserved. Today, as NAIDOC Week opens across the country – with the theme Serving Country: Centenary & Beyond – RECOGNISE honours Marj and the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have served Australia at war. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander personnel have served in every major military conflict Australia has been involved in from the Boer War onwards. Yet while serving their country abroad in global conflict in World War I and II, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians faced inequality and discrimination at home. They were not counted as citizens and many were denied the vote. “For a long time, most non-Aboriginal people didn’t even know about Aboriginal people (in the armed forces),” says Marj. Marj has remained committed to ensuring she and her fellow Aboriginal servicemen and women were appropriately recognised at home. It took seven years of lobbying and fundraising as Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander War Memorial Committee before a permanent memorial to honour the tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who served for our country was finally unveiled. “It was a wonderful thing, so emotional,” she says. For her work towards the recognition of the first Australians in the armed forces, and her promotion of improved aged care and health outcomes among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, she was last month awarded an Officer in the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Marj has worked at state and national levels for the past 30 years to ensure elders receive appropriate aged care and are involved in planning and policy. Throughout the 1980s she chaired the SA branch of the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) and was involved in setting up the Tandanya National Cultural Institute in Adelaide. And she was the longtime chairwoman of the Aboriginal Ex-Service Members and Dependants Project, an RSL-funded initiative set up to connect Aboriginal ex-service men and women and their families with the Department of Veterans Affairs support system..