Alitya Rigney

Rigney was born on the Aboriginal Mission at Point Pearce. When she completed primary school, her teacher negotiated for her to attend Unley Girls Technical High School in Adelaide as the local high schools would not accept Aboriginal children.[2] She returned to Point Pearce following her school and training as a nurse, married and raised her family there. She worked at the local kindergarten, then as a School Support Officer at Maitland Area School. She was eventually registered as a teacher, but for Point Pearce only. She then went to Adelaide and was the only Aboriginal student of 400 at the de Lissa Institute teachers college, now part of the University of South Australia.[3] Once she graduated, she was a teacher at a primary school in the western suburbs of Adelaide. She became the first Aboriginal bureaucrat in the South Australian Department of Education. In the 1980s, she agitated for the creation of what became the Kura Yerlo Aboriginal Centre in Largs Bay and the Kaurna Plains School in Elizabeth. She became the first female Aboriginal principal of a primary school in Australia when she took up the post of principal at Kaurna Plains.[4]

Rigney was awarded a Public Service Medal in 1991.[5]

She was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by the University of South Australia in 1998[4][6] in recognition of her pioneering contribution to Aboriginal education.[3]

Rigney died in Adelaide on 13 May 2017, a day after her husband, Lester, was buried on their birth country at Point Pearce.[7] Their three children all have roles in education: Lester-Irabinna Rigney is a Professor of Education at UniSA, Eileen Wanganeen is a teacher and education leader and Tracey Ritchie is a principal Aboriginal consultant at the Department of Education and Child Development.[3] She was posthumously made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours.[8]