Lilla Watson

Lilla Watson (born 1940) is an Indigenous Australian or Murri visual artist, activist and academic working in the field of Women's issues and Aboriginal epistemology.

Lilla Watson is a Gangulu woman who grew up on the Dawson River Central Queensland her 'Mother's Mother's country'. Moving to Brisbane in the late 1960s, she and other members of her family have become well known through their involvement in the Indigenous community. Watson worked at the University of Queensland for ten years, the last six as Lecturer in Aboriginal Welfare Studies within the Social Work Department at the University of Queensland where she developed inter-disciplinary courses on Aboriginal perspectives. Watson has also held membership on the university senate, and has since retired.

Watson has served as the Inaugural President of the Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency, was a founding member of the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association, and was a Vice President of the Aboriginal and Islander Independent School Board, Acacia Ridge. She has acted as a consultant and a member of working groups, panels and selection committees for many Government and non-Government bodies.

After leaving her lecturer post in the nineties she developed her own medium for visual art: elaborate patterns of hundreds of holes scorched in layers of paper, pieces she calls "burnings." Many of her works draw their themes from traditional Aboriginal art and the landscape of Queensland. Watson describes her work as having an "ants eyeview", looking up through roots and foliage from beneath the ground, looking up through the earth, the "Land". As an artist, Watson has developed portrayals of her cultural and spiritual identity that are admired nationally and internationally.

Watson has expanded her art practice greatly over the years. From collaborative works, such as Soft Night Falling (2005) with saxophonist, Tim O'Dwyer to public artworks which can be seen in the New State Library (Brisbane, Qld), the Roma Street Parkland and the New Magistrates Court in Brisbane city.

She is often credited with the quote:

This quote has served as a motto for many activist groups in Australia and elsewhere, including United Students Against Sweatshops. A possible origin for the quote is a speech given by Watson at the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi. Watson has said of this quote that she was "not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process" and prefers that it be credited to "Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s."