Ngarla Kunoth

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks (also known as Ngarla Kunoth, born 1937) is an Australian film actress, Aboriginal activist and politician.

Rosalie Kunoth was born in 1937 at Utopia Cattle Station (Arapunya) in the Northern Territory of Australia to parents of the Amatjere people. Her paternal grandfather was German, hence her German surname.

In 1951, Kunoth was 14 years old and staying at St Mary's Hostel in Alice Springs when the filmmakers Charles and Elsa Chauvel recruited her to play the title role in their 1955 film Jedda. Her nickname was Rosie, but the Chauvels changed her name for the screen to Ngarla Kunoth.

Kunoth was the first Indigenous female lead. The groundbreaking film was played for audiences at the Cannes Film Festival 60 years later in 2015.

In 1970 she married Bill Monks, settled in Alice Springs and had a daughter, Ngarla.

Rosalie Kunoth spent ten years from 1960 as a nun in the Melbourne Anglican Community of the Holy Name. She then left the order, married and started work with the department of Aboriginal Affairs, setting up the first home in Victoria for Aboriginal children.

Returning to the Alice Springs region, she worked for Aboriginal Hostels, the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The then Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Everingham, appointed her an adviser on Aboriginal affairs. Kunoth stood for election to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in 1979. She campaigned to oppose the proposed construction of a dam that threatened to destroy land sacred to her people. She lost that election but went on to continuing activism working to improve the lives of indigenous people. Presently she is Chancellor of the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education.

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