Pauline McLeod was a member of the Stolen Generations. She was removed from her family at the age of two and adopted by a European family by the name of Schmidt. After being refused access to continuing education, McLeod worked as a trainee Aboriginal District Officer at the Department of Youth and Community Services. Here she was able to access her own files relating to her removal from her family. McLeod belongs to the Monaro and Ngarrindjeri people.
In adulthood McLeod became an author, story teller, cultural educator, director and performer. Her work encompassed most facets of popular media, including television, radio, theatre, film and writing (from plays to short stories). She studied at the Eora Centre for Performing Arts in Redfern, Sydney, where she completed her training in the early 1990s. She was one of the first Aboriginal performers to appear regularly on an Australian nation-wide television show. Popularly known as 'Pauline from Playschool', she appeared on a number of Australian television shows with ABC and SBS, and was considered a master story teller both nationally and internationally. She worked regularly as a cultural educator, story teller and performer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Sydney Opera House, the Australian Museum Sydney and the National Gallery in Canberra. She performed at reconciliation forums throughout Sydney between 1996 and 2000, and presented her cultural stories in New South Wales schools, as well as lecturing in Aboriginal studies at TAFE colleges and universities. The Pauline E. McLeod Foundation, which presents the Pauline McLeod Awards for Reconciliation, has been established in her honour.
McLeod's retellings of Aboriginal Dreaming stories have appeared in two educational readers: Aboriginal Art & Stories (1994) and Aboriginal Dreaming Playscripts and Masks (1994). Her video productions include Aboriginal Dreaming Stories (1993), Australian Animal Dreaming Stories (1997) and the posthumously-released Aboriginal Dreamtime series (2004-2005).
