Dulcie Flower
Dulcie Flower AM is an Australian human rights activist and nurse who worked to improve health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. She campaigned for constitutional recognition, including the 1967 referendum, and helped start the first Aboriginal community‑controlled health service, the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, Sydney.
Born in 1938 in Cairns, Dulcie is a Miri woman from the Meriam nation in the Torres Strait Islands. She trained as a Registered Nurse in Cairns and then moved to Sydney to continue her training. She devoted much of her career to educating Indigenous health workers and helped create the first Aboriginal Health Workers course in 1984 at Redfern. The Aboriginal Medical Service began offering a post‑graduate course in mental health care, which later moved into educational institutions.
Dulcie Flower was a founding member of the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives and played a part in the 1967 referendum campaign. She is an honorary fellow of the Australian College of Nursing. The Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union named an excellence award after her and Aunty Gracelyn Smallwood to recognise a First Nations nurse’s positive contributions to health outcomes.
Her awards include the Order of Australia Medal in 1994 for service to the community, especially in Aboriginal health worker training and the founding of the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, and Member of the Order of Australia in 2019 for service to the Indigenous community and the referendum campaign. In 2024, she received the NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement Award for her long work toward better health, education, housing, water, land rights, and other improvements for First Nations peoples.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 13:08 (CET).