That's doctor Ginibi to you : hard lessons in the history and publication of Ruby Langford Ginibi

On May Day this year at La Trobe University, a woman who hasblazed the trail of die hard Australian political writing for the past decade finally got some of her due. Ruby Langford - Ginibi in her Bundjalung language - took on the mantle of Honorary Doctor of Letters with all the grace and majesty of her namesake, the black swan. Doctor Ginibi seems a far cry from the Koori woman who built fences in the scrub, fought on the streets for Aboriginal justice, and can show you some pretty angry scars to prove it. Yet the Koori writer, educator, grandmother, auntie and activist reckons it is all part of the same history, all another step in the struggle to realise the justice for her mob that is not only slow coming but, even as she dons the robes of those she is asked to re-educate Koori way, draws further and further into the neocolonial distance.