Alitya (Alice Dorothy) Wallara Richards was born on 27 November 1942[1] at the Aboriginal Mission at Point Pearce, South Australia.

She then went to Adelaide and was the only Aboriginal student of 400 at [citation needed] what is now the de Lissa Institute of Early Childhood and Family Studies at the University of South Australia (UniSA).

In the 1980s, she agitated for the creation of what became the Kura Yerlo Aboriginal Centre in Largs Bay and the Kaurna Plains School in Elizabeth.

[8] In 1998 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of South Australia[4][9] in recognition of her pioneering contribution to Aboriginal education.

[12] Rigney died in Adelaide on 13 May 2017, a day after her husband Lester was buried on their birth country at Point Pearce.