Norma Ingram

Norma Ingram is a proud Wiradjuri Elder. She is Executive Director at National Aboriginal College. She has lived most of her life in Redfern.

Education

Norma Ingram went to Harvard with the help of the Black Women's Action Group. Graduated with a masters of Education in 1985.^[1]

"50 Years of Solidarity between FRETILIN and SEARCH"

Bob Boughton and Luke Whitington organized "50 Years of Solidarity between FRETILIN and the SEARCH Foundation" at the Maritime Union of Australia Building Sussex St. Sydney February 6, 2025.

Please join us as Auntie Norma Ingram provides a Welcome to Country to our visitors from FRETILIN, followed by short speeches from Comrade Thomas Mayo of the Maritime Union of Australia and Comrade Naldo Rei from FRETILIN’s Central Committee. FRETILIN representatives will then present Certificates of Recognition to long-time Australian solidarity activists.

SEARCH Foundation

In 2023 Norma Ingram, center, was a member of the SEARCH Foundation.^[2]

Evatt connection

Aboriginal activist

Norma Ingram has been part of the Aboriginal political movement since the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs in the 1960s.

Norma has a rich and varied resume: she has been CEO of both the Metropolitan Local and the State Aboriginal Land Councils; she managed projects with NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and has run training programs at QANTAS, TAFE and the University of Technology, Sydney.

Norma has also shared her expertise sitting on numerous committees and boards of Aboriginal organisations. Her role as Chairperson of the Wyanga Aboriginal Elders Program continues to remind her that Aboriginal stories are essential to the continuation of Aboriginal culture and must be passed on to the younger generation.^[3]

Voice, Treaty, Truth

Thomas Mayo, Norma Ingram.

Mich-Elle Myers, Norma Ingram.

Dodson connection

Patrick Dodson with Norma Ingram.

'Albo' connection

Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese, Norma Ingram.

Linda Burney, Darcy Byrne, Norma Ingram, Anthony Albanese.

Burgmann connection

Newtown run

In March 2019 Norma Ingram will make her first tilt at state political office as Labor's candidate for Newtown at the 2019 election, after the party endorsed her preselection on Thursday.

While the electorate is new - the seat returned to the political landscape at the 2015 election for the first time since the 1950s - the suburbs it encompasses have been Ms Ingram's home turf for most of her life.

"When I first moved into Newtown it was working class," she says. "Redfern was working class. It’s all become gentrified now."

It will be an enormous task to unseat Greens MP Jenny Leong, who fought off a challenge from Labor's Penny Sharpe in 2015 and now holds the seat with a comfortable margin of 9 per cent.

Ms Leong has a solid support base in Newtown's activist constituency. She is a frequent fixture at rallies across the electorate, and as the Greens' housing spokeswoman, she campaigns heavily on renters' rights.

For Ms Ingram, the issue of housing affordability is personal.

Over the past few months she has been living in a halfway house, where she must sometimes share a room.^[4]