WARNING: This story features the name and picture of a person who has died.
Uncle Albert Holt, an Indigenous trailblazer and Queensland Great who spent his youth as an inmate of Barambah Aboriginal Settlement, has died aged 89.
Mr Holt died on 22 January after a life of advocating for First Nations rights and reconciliation.
The Bidjara man grew up on Barambah Aboriginal Settlement, now Cherbourg, following his birth in 1936, with the Queensland Government having forcibly removed his family from their home Country near Springsure in the Central Highlands.
Mr Holt is credited with lobbying Queensland schools to include Aboriginal history into their lesson plans, and also helped to establish education and health services in Inala, Brisbane.
He became the Queensland Police Service’s first senior liaison officer in 1995.
In 2006, Mr Holt helped establish the Queensland Murri Court, and in 2011 he founded the Hymba Yumba Community Hub in Springfield, which serves as an independent Indigenous school.
His 2001 book Forcibly Removed and 2015 follow-up Murri on a Mission – Gunnan Gunnan outlined his family’s time as inmates of Cherbourg.
In 2005, Mr Holt was named as NAIDOC Week National Male Elder of the Year; in 2022, the Queensland Government named him a Queensland Great.
