
NAIDOC Week 2018 celebrated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island women and the significant roles they have played – and continue to play – in their communities. Helen Ing Nellie is one of those remarkable women, a strong, proud Noongar, and the story she tells in Simply Ing is in part a celebration and recognition of such women’s lives. It is also in part an often tragic recounting of the long-term effects of cultural dispossession, including the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families and communities, and of Ing’s struggle to regain her Noongar identity. It is, however, told with humour and compassion, and despite her often desperate circumstances, Ing sums up her long life as a good one, with many joys.