In “Dreaming in the Present Progressive: Kath Walker Across, Beyond, and Through an Indigenous 1964,” Allen (2017, 11) states that during the 1960s, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, custodian of the Land of Minjerribah, “refuses to dream herself or her people outside of time, as either locked into an idealised past or assimilated out of recognisable existence.” Instead, she “dreams” in a present “she did not ask for but is forced to actively live within if she and her people are to survive […]” (11). Oodgeroo was the “first” Aboriginal woman poet to publish a book of poetry, entitled We Are Going (1964) during the peak of Aboriginal political activism, although Aboriginal oral literature, including storytelling, flourished long before the arrival of the Europeans (Fox 2011). This makes her both one of the most renowned poets in Australia and the “grandmother of Aboriginal poetry” (Heiss and Minter 2008, 40; see also Allen 2012a, 54). In 1966, she won the Dame Mary Gilmore Medal for poetry. By coincidence, Oodgeroo's We Are Going was published in 1964, the same year that both First Nations poets, Hone Tuwhare and Gerald Vizenor from New Zealand and North America respectively, published their first books of poetry (Allen 2017). Oodgeroo's collection thus can be seen as a crucial part of an international literary campaign for Indigenous rights. Oodgeroo's work addresses “the intersections of Indigenous activism and publishing,” and this literary combination also gives some insight into the nature of her early poetry (Allen 2017, 1).

As a writer and activist, Oodgeroo never stands still; she is always on the move, constantly adapting her literary ideology in response to ideological developments in Aboriginal activism. Oodgeroo's early poetry was written during the 1960s, when Aboriginal political struggle witnessed a dramatic escalation as well as a transition from civil rights to Black Power activism, unlike Fogarty's early radical poetry, which was written during the peak of the Black Power and Land Rights movements.