Ruby Charlotte Margaret Hunter (31 October 195517 February 2010), also known as Aunty Ruby, was an Aboriginal Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist, and the life and musical partner of Archie Roach . Early life Ruby Hunter was born on 31 October 1955 on Goat Island, on the banks of the Murray River near Renmark in South Australia. She was a Ngarrindjeri, Kokatha and Pitjantjatjara woman. At the time of her birth, her parents were living in tents on Goat Island, having come to the Riverland to find work after the Swan Reach mission had closed in 1946. As a child Hunter lived with her brothers, Wally, Jeffrey and Robert, and sister Iris, with their grandmother and grandfather at the Aboriginal reserve at Point McLeay (later called Raukkan) on Lake Alexandrina in the Coorong region of South Australia. One day, when Ruby was eight years old, Wally was taken off the street by government officials, and then the men took the rest of the children from their home, under the pretext that they were being taken to the circus. Thereafter Ruby lived in institutions and foster care, as one of the Stolen Generations. Hunter was placed in Seaforth Children's Home in the Adelaide seaside suburb of Somerton Park, and later with a foster family. After having an argument with her foster brother, she was placed at Vaughan House, which was a 'home for wayward girls' in the northern Adelaide suburb of Enfield. Hunter met her partner for life, Archie Roach, at the age of 16, while both were homeless teenagers, at the Salvation Army People's Palace, on Pirie Street, Adelaide. It was Roach who inspired Hunter to learn to play the guitar and write her own music. Performing career Hunter first performed in public in 1988 during a festival at Bondi Pavilion in Sydney, where she performed "Proud, Proud Woman," the first song she had written. In 1990, she wrote the autobiographical "Down City Streets", which was performed by Roach on his debut solo album Charcoal Lane. In 1994, Hunter became the first Indigenous Australian woman to record a solo rock album, and the first Aboriginal woman signed to a major record label, when she released her debut album Thoughts Within. The album launched her career as a performer and songwriter. Thereafter she toured with Roach, both within Australian and overseas, releasing her second album, Feeling Good, in May 2000. Also