| Henrietta Marrie | |
|---|---|
| Born | Henrietta Fourmile Yarrabah, Queensland |
| Residence | Cairns |
| Nationality | Yidinji |
| Other names | Bukal |
| Ethnicity | Aboriginal Australian |
| Citizenship | Australian |
| Education | Diploma Teaching, Graduate Diploma Teaching, Masters in Environmental and Local Government Law |
| Occupation | Program Officer, Northern Australia |
| Employer | The Christensenfund |
| Known for | Promoting and advocating indigenous cultural rights |
| Home town | Yarrabah, Queensland |
| Spouse | Adrian Marrie |
Henrietta Marrie (née Fourmile) (born 1954) is an Australian indigenous rights activist. She is an Indigenous Australian from the Yidinji tribe, directly descended from Ye-i-nie, an Aboriginal leader in the Cairns region.[1][2]
She is an advocate for the rights of her own Gimuy Walubarra Yidinji families, as well as for the cultural rights of indigenous peoples nationally and internationally.
The "Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia" identifies Henrietta Marrie as a notable Aboriginal Australian in an entry that reads, in part, as follows:[3]
Fourmile has been involved in extensive research in the areas of Aboriginal cultural heritage and museums, the politics of Aboriginal heritage and the arts and recently the area of Aborigines and cultural tourism.
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Henrietta Marrie's country within local Aboriginal tradition,[4] to which she holds some property rights under Native Title law, is that country that was once wholly possessed, occupied, used and enjoyed by 'King' Ye-i-nie' and the Walubarra Yidinji families generally, as follows:
The area of the foreshore of the City of Cairns was traditionally known as Gimuy - after the Slippery Blue Fig Tree. The traditional lands of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji People extend south of the Barron River to Wrights Creek (south of Edmonton), west into the ranges behind Cairns, and east into Trinity Inlet, including Admiralty Island, to the adjacent waters of the outer Great Barrier Reef. The lands in the Cairns suburb of Woree, close to Admiralty Island and Trinity Inlet, were the principal traditional camping grounds of the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji people.[5]
Henrietta Marrie was born and raised in Yarrabah, Queensland (an Aboriginal community approx 7 km south-east of Cairns[3]), the eldest daughter of Henry Fourmile (aka Queballum - cyclone),[6] grandson to the Yidinji warrior Ye-i-nie (Aboriginal Peace Maker and 'King' of Cairns).[7]
She went to school in Yarrabah, and later studied teaching at the South Australian College of Advanced Education, where she first obtained a Diploma in Teaching.[3] Later, after the College had been transformed into the University of South Australia, she obtained a Graduate Diploma of Arts (Indigenous Studies).[4]
By 1988 Henrietta Marrie was lecturing at Griffith University, Brisbane, and in 1991 had managed to return to Cairns (Gimuy) region, where she first assisted coordinate the Cairns College of Technical and Further Education's Aboriginal ranger training program, then by 1994, had become the Cairns Coordinator of a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participation, Research and Development Centre in James Cook University.[3]
From Cairns, Henrietta Marrie undertook at Masters in Environmental and Local Government Law (through Macquarie University). Her interests and concerns moved to biocultural diversity, indigenous intellectual property, and traditional ecological knowledge,[8] and as such, by 1997, she had moved on and taken up a position with the United Nations Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity, where she was the first Aboriginal Australian to be appointed to a full-time professional position in a United Nations agency.[8]
Since 2003, Henrietta Marrie has moved her focus back towards Cairns and is now working as the Christensenfund's North Australian Program Officer assisting that philanthropic organisation distribute grants and funds to help promote, sustain, and encourage indigenous biocultural diversity across Australia's north (including the Cairns region).[8]