Laura Spender Harris (c. 1876–1963)

Laura Spender was born in Glanville, South Australia, the Country of the Kaurna. Her father, George Spender, was a Ngarrindjeri man from the Coorong and mother Rebecca was a Kaurna woman of the Adelaide Plains.¹

Laura and her mother both worked for some years on the Glanville Estate. In 1896, Laura married Jacob (Karak) Harris, a Ngarrindjeri man, at Raukkan (Point McLeay mission). They had several children, and among their descendants included activists and community leaders Dorthy Rankine² and Veronica Brodie.³

In 1895 the South Australian Parliament granted all adult women the vote and by the time of the following year’s state election, 102 Aboriginal people were on the electoral roll at Point McLeay. The voter turnout there was around 80%, in stark contrast to the 46% average across the state.⁴ Laura Harris continued to exercise her vote in state and federal elections.⁵ However, political and cultural discrimination saw many Aboriginal people lose their voting rights. By 1949 Laura Spender Harris was the only Aboriginal Australian remaining on the Point McLeay roll.⁶

Though active in her community, Harris only rarely entered the public record. An Adelaide News article in 1945 noted that every year Harris made an Anzac Day wreath from swan feathers which was brought from the Point McLeay Mission Station to the State War Memorial in Adelaide.⁷ She also contributed to a book on the ethnography of the Yaraldi dialect.⁸

She died at Raukkan, Point McLeay.

References
1. Ritsuko Kurita, 'The Lartelare Glanville Land Rights Movement in Adelaide', The Otemon Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 37, 2011, p. 106; Veronica Brodie, My side of the bridge: the life story of Veronica Brody, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, South Australia, 2007; R Amery, Warraparna Kaurna! Reclaiming an Australian Language, University of Adelaide Press, Adelaide, 2015, 7. Websites accessed 27 June 2024.
2. Jennifer K Newsome, 'Rankine, Dorothy Leila (1932–1993)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University; Rita Metzenrath, 'Veronica Brodie's Story', Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Websites accessed 27 June 2024.
3. State Library of South Australia, 'Hindmarsh Island bridge', accessed 27 June 2024.
4. Pat Stretton and Christine Finnimore, 'Black Fellow Citizens: Aborigines and the Commonwealth Franchise', Australian Historic Studies, v. 25, 1993, 521–35.
5. Australian Electoral Commission, History of the Indigenous Vote, Kingston, ACT, 2006.
6. Stretton and Finnimore, op. cit., 534.
7. ‘Swan-Feather wreath from Aboriginal’, News, 25 April 1945, p. 3, accessed 14 July 2024.
8. Ronald M Berndt and Catherine H Berndt, A World that was: The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia, Melbourne University Press and the Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 1993, p. 9.