Louisa Briggs

Louisa Briggs (; 14 November 1818 or 1836 – 6 or 8 September 1925) was an Aboriginal Australian rights activist, dormitory matron, midwife and nurse. She is officially recognised by the Victorian Government and the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council as one of five apical ancestors from whom Boonwurrung descent is established. Variations exist in the origin accounts of Louisa. Her own account was that she was the daughter of a woman from the area around Port Phillip Bay named Mary and an English sealer, John Strugnell. In an interview, she said that her mother was biracial and her grandmother Marjorie (Margery) was a full-blooded Indigenous woman from the area of Melbourne. Louisa may have been born in Victoria, but other accounts indicate it was likely that she was born on Preservation Island in Tasmania. She and her husband John Briggs had nine children. They took part in the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s and between prospecting, lived on the privately owned Eurambeen Station, where they did farm labour and worked as shepherds. When the gold boom economy slowed, they were unable to find work and in 1871, moved to Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, a reserve which the government had created for the resettlement of the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung people. At Coranderrk, Louisa worked as a nurse and midwife. She replaced a European staff member as a paid dormitory matron in 1876. Louisa participated in an inquiry that year over mismanagement of the station. After she and her minor children were evicted from Coranderrk in 1878, they moved to the Ebenezer Aboriginal Station, where she was hired as a nurse and laundress. She protested the treatment of Aboriginal people on the government reserves, repeatedly sending letters about the lack of rations and low wages. Her activism resulted in officials' decisions to keep her family separated between the two stations until 1882, but also eventually caused rations and wages at both reserves to be equalised. When she and her children were allowed to return to Coranderrk, Louisa was reinstated as dormitory matron. Because administrators wanted to sell the land for the stations, they began to enforce a policy of assimilation for biracial people. Louisa's son Jack relocated to the Maloga Mission and she joined him there 1885.