Alma Thorpe

Thorpe was born in Melbourne during the Great Depression in Australia in 1935, and her family lived in the suburb of Fitzroy.^[2] Her mother was Edna Brown,^[3] who, after being forced off the Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve in 1932, aged 15, became a community organiser in Fitzroy. She set up an Aboriginal funeral fund from her new home, after observing many homeless Aboriginal men being buried in pauper's graves.^[4] Her father, James Brown, was a second-generation Scottish-Australian who worked for Victorian Railways and was a communist involved in the labour movement.^[1]

Thorpe left school at the age of 12 and worked in a shoe factory, and at 18 married and moved to the town of Yallourn.^[2]

In the 1960s, Thorpe separated from her husband and returned to Melbourne, along with her children, and began work as a barmaid.^[2]

Inspired by her mother, Edna, Thorpe joined community leaders such as Geraldine Briggs and Margaret Tucker in protests for Aboriginal rights.^[2] In 1972, she was involved in setting up the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.^[4]

In 1973, together with her mother^[3] and co-founder Bruce McGuinness,^[2] she helped to establish the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS) to help the Aboriginal community with their health and wellbeing.^[5] Through her communist connections, she had been able to enter China and observe the 'barefoot doctors' program; from this experience came her concept of the Aboriginal Health Worker.^[1] According to McGuinness, "Without Alma Thorpe there wouldn't have been a health service".^[2]

Thorpe also set up the Yappera Children's Service to provide childcare, and in 1977, a youth club and gym, later renamed Melbourne Aboriginal Youth Sport and Recreation (MAYSAR).^[5][2]

As of 2019^[update], she is Elder in Residence at the Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University and continues her work with MAYSAR.^[2][5]

For all of her hard work in the Aboriginal community she was made a lifetime member of the Aborigines Advancement League.^[5]

Thorpe had seven children with her husband and later fostered two more on her own.^[2]

Her daughter Marjorie Thorpe was a commissioner on the Stolen Generations inquiry that produced the Bringing Them Home report, and later a member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, and a preselected Australian Greens federal candidate for the electorate of Gippsland.^[4] Before that, she was coordinator of SNAICC and director of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency.^[6]

Marjorie's daughter Lidia Thorpe became the first Indigenous woman elected to the Parliament of Victoria in 2018, and the first Victorian Aboriginal Senator in 2020.^[7]