Driving reconciliation

Valerie Fisher Indigenous Female Scholarship

Jenny Wightman has long been a powerful advocate for reconciliation. She drives the Sophia Reconciliation Group’s community funding for the Sophia Indigenous Scholarship – one of Flinders University’s longest running scholarships.

Now, 84-year-old Jenny wants to build on the achievements of the scholarship and has left a donation in her Will to support students through the Valerie Fisher Indigenous Female Scholarship.

Jenny says she felt compelled to do more for reconciliation and as a legacy in memory of her late partner Valerie Fisher, a former primary school principal who had a keen regard for Indigenous knowledge and communities.

“We have so much to learn from Aboriginal people and so much to understand about their struggles to fit in with our imposed culture,” says Jenny.

Catherine Wegener with Sarita Prabhakaran

Jenny Wightman

“They have wisdoms that our culture hasn’t even glimpsed. Val realised this. She was such an inspiring woman.”

In the 1950s Valerie emerged from a tough working-class upbringing in inner-city Melbourne to become junior swimming champion of Victoria at the age of 14.

This achievement, alongside part-time study at Melbourne University, led to her becoming a Physical Education teacher. She later produced several teaching manuals for movement education and was rapidly promoted within the Victorian Education Department.

Jenny says, “Val became principal at a primary school which was in a very bad way, and with hard work over several years, she totally turned it around.”

Jenny met Valerie (four years her senior) when she became her lecturer at La Trobe University during Valerie’s further studies in humanities. They later became partners and together began a journey of discovery into the wisdom of First Nations people.

In 1979, Valerie was diagnosed with brain cancer.

“After treatment the cancer was ‘cured’, but Val had sustained brain damage from the radiation and was summarily dismissed, with a pension, from the Education Department,” says Jenny.

“Across the next five years, we bought several acres of bush and when I could take time off from La Trobe, we worked on it and planned to set up as self-sustainable a life as we could manage.

“Then the cancer returned and I cared for Val for about six months at home until she died.”

Today, inspired by Valerie’s experiences in underprivileged communities and in her cherished memory, Jenny’s focus is on supporting the next generation of female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to experience a prosperous and inclusive future.

“I want to help equip Indigenous students, especially women, with the skills they need to give full expression to their own Indigenous knowledge, and together we can work at repairing our world,” says Jenny.

“So many suffer from poverty and prejudice resulting from our ignorance. I hope to redress the balance a little through my bequest to support a scholarship.”

Jenny Wightman and Valerie Fisher, London 1970s

Jenny’s passion for driving reconciliation by supporting education was ignited when she returned to her home city of Adelaide after Valerie’s passing to study nursing at Flinders.

“Nursing was a new departure for me. For 17 years I had lectured in the English Department at La Trobe University, but after I helped nurse Val for the six years of her brain cancer treatment, I wanted a different kind of engagement with the community.”

After graduating, Jenny worked in private palliative care and at the Julia Farr Centre, caring for women with permanent injury or disease. For the past 28 years she has also run the Women Writing About Themselves course at the Sophia Women's Community Centre.

“I find that the intimacy of working with women to discover and value their achievements through their own accounts of their lives to be so rewarding,” says Jenny.

Having been active in university life as both a teacher and a student, Jenny understands the benefits that come from supporting emerging student talent, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

She believes that empowering students through education holds the key to an improved society. Jenny’s bequest to create the Valerie Fisher Indigenous Female Scholarship will serve as a wonderful memorial to Valerie’s interest in the welfare of female Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

“The scholarship reflects our joint passion to address the general disadvantage facing many women in our society.”

“And it is all the more important to support Indigenous female students, giving them the opportunity to use their talents and develop their careers in our current world,” says Jenny.

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^{Published March 2025. Author: Lynda Allen.}

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