Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this vale contains the name, photograph and video of a person who has died.    

Uncle Lionel Fogarty was one of Australia’s most respected, long-standing and profoundly honest Indigenous poets and political activists, giving voice to Aboriginal poetry for over forty years.

Born and raised in Cherbourg, Uncle Lionel was a proud Mununjali man of the Yugambeh nation and deeply connected to country. 

Uncle Lionel was active in many of the political struggles of Aboriginal people, particularly in southern Queensland, from the Land Rights movement, to setting up Aboriginal health and legal services, to the issue of black deaths in custody.

His poetry was formed from his participation at protest rallies and community meetings across the country and inspired by the letters that parents in the community of Cherbourg would write to the Aboriginal Protection Board and to sons and daughters in prison.

Uncle Lionel's poetry was first published in 1980 with Kargun and spanned 14 collections and five decades. His last book, Harvest Lingo, was published by Giramondo in 2023 and won him the Judith Wright Calanthe Award at the Queensland Literary Awards, as well as shortlistings for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Uncle Lionel travelled the world raising awareness and seeking justice. He spoke at festivals and conferences across Australia and Europe in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2004 he was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts to promote minyung Woolah Binnung - What Saying Says, poems and drawings in Italy and the UK. He received writing fellowships from the Australia Council for the Arts in 1987, 1992 and 2003.

Franchesca Cubillo, Executive Director, First Nations Arts and Culture, said:

“Uncle Lionel Fogarty was a giant of Australian poetry. His writing expressed the urgent need for justice and equity for Australia’s First Peoples. A blend of Mununjali/Yugumbeh language and English, his truth-telling challenged and moved us. Right up until his passing he remained a passionate mentor to many young Aboriginal writers in remote regions of Australia.”

Later in his career Uncle Lionel extended his practice to visual art, translating his text to canvas. His 2025 show Burraloupoo at Darren Knight Gallery contained 30 large-scale works and 36 smaller works, addressing injustice and the ongoing impacts of colonisation, while honouring Indigenous people of the past.

Last year, Uncle Lionel was recognised with a prestigious Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement at the First Nations Arts and Culture Awards for his poetry and his mentorship of young Aboriginal writers.

In receiving the Red Ochre Award in May 2025, Uncle Lionel said:

“I am a poet, but I am still learning how to be a poet.
The power of poetry to me is uniting people together to see no grievance between each other and justice will be served to all colours in the ochre of art and First Nations.
We never ceded our land.
We never ceded our language.
I want it to be remembered that we believe in this.
I don’t think that’s a legacy, that’s a fight.
Sometimes legacies are a trivialism, an entertainment trivialism.
I don’t really go along with it.
So, my inspiration is to inspire others, not to just keep it for my own egotistic self.
It’s not that I carry the legacy, the younger people carry the legacy once they get into culture.”

Vale Lionel Fogarty
1958-2026

^{Photo: Going North}