Ruby Hunter To Be Inducted Into The 2025 Australian Women In Music Honour Roll
Ruby Hunter to be inducted into the 2025
By Julius Ewudo, Cyber Era NG ASEAN Region Representative
Australian Women In Music Honour Roll The 2025 Australian Women in Music Honour Roll acknowledges outstanding women in the Australian music industry who have made significant and lasting contributions in their chosen field. It provides a platform for recognition and appreciation of political activists and exceptional creative pioneers across the sector.
AWMA Founding Executive Producer Vicki Gordon announced today that Ruby Hunter will be posthumously inducted into the 2025 AWMA Honour Roll at this year’s Award Ceremony alongside Helen Reddy, Dame Joan Sutherland (OM, AC, DBE), Olivia Newton John (AC, DBE), Judith Durham (AO) and others. The Ceremony will take place in the Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on the evening of Thursday 9 October, and the award will be accepted by Ruby’s son Amos Roach.
Ruby Hunter (1955-2010) was a Ngarrindjeri/Kukatha/Pitjantjatjara woman from South Australia, born on Goat Island, near Renmark, and taken from the Coorong(Kurongk). She is one of the nation’s most treasured musical storytellers. At just eight years old, she and her siblings were taken from their parents as part of the Stolen Generations and fostered into a white family. Separated from her culture and community, Ruby’s early life was marked by dislocation and hardship, experiences that fuelled her determination to speak up for others through song.
As a teenager living on the streets of Adelaide, Ruby met her lifelong partner and musical soulmate, Archie Roach AC. In a hostel room they shared, Archie discovered Ruby’s first handwritten songs. One of them, Down City Streets, was later recorded at 101 Collins St, Thornbury, on his landmark debut studio album Charcoal Lane (1990). This watershed moment brought Ruby’s voice as a songwriter to national attention.
In 1994, Ruby released her debut solo album Thoughts Within becoming the first Aboriginal woman to sign with a major record label. Her follow-up album Feeling Good (2000) won her Best Female Artist at the Deadly Awards – and in 2003 she was recognised for her outstanding contribution to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander music.
Ruby’s stage presence was unforgettable, soulful and honest. She co-created Ruby’s Story (2004) with Archie Roach and Paul Grabowsky and was a founding member of the Black Arm Band.
Ruby loved children and in 2012 her children’s song book, Butcher Paper, Texta, Black Board and Chalk (2012) was published.
One of her final projects was sharing stories from children in the Cape York Peninsula region, created through songwriting and music workshops run by Ruby and Archie.
Ruby Hunter’s music and spirit remain a beacon of truth and love. Her legacy endures not only in her recordings but in the strength and inspiration she offered to future generations of First Nations artists.
