Mum (Shirl) Smith
| Mum Shirl | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Colleen Shirley Perry Smith 21 November 1924 Cowra, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 28 April 1998 (aged 76) |
| Resting place | Botany Cemetery |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | social worker |
| Known for | Aboriginal rights |
Colleen Shirley Perry Smith AM MBE (22 November 1924 – 28 April 1998), better known as Mum Shirl, was a prominent social worker and Aboriginal Australian humanitarian and activist committed to justice and welfare of Aboriginal Australians. She was a founding member of the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Aboriginal Medical Service, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the Aboriginal Children’s Service and the Aboriginal Housing Company in Redfern, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. During her lifetime she was awarded an Australian National Living Treasure
Shirl Smith began to visit Aboriginal people in jail after one of her brothers was incarcerated and she discovered that her visits were beneficial to other prisoners as well. Her community activism also saw her accompanying indigenous people who were unfamiliar with the legal system to court when they had been charged with a crime. Her nickname came from her habit of replying, "I’m his mum" whenever officials queried her relationship with the prisoners - the name by which she became widely known.
Because of her work visiting Aboriginal prisoners, Mum Shirl is the only woman in Australia to have been given unrestricted access to prisons in New South Wales. "She'd be at one end of the state one day, and seen at the other end of the state the next day. The department wasn't getting her from A to B. She used to rely on family and friends to get her around." said Ron Woodham from NSW Corrective Services. Later the Department of Corrective Services revoked her pass, making her prisoner support work near impossible.
Smith's welfare work, however, was not confined only to prisons and the legal system. She also spent considerable time and money finding homes for children whose parents could not look after them, and helping displaced children to find their own parents again. The children with nowhere to go often ended up living with her. By the early 1990s she had raised over 60 children. Likewise, many people with no family or friends in Sydney arrived at Mum Shirl’s Redfern house seeking shelter.
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Wikipedia