|
Shirley Colleen Smith AM MBE (22 November 1924 – 28 April 1998), better known as Mum Shirl, was a prominent Aboriginal Australian 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. ==Building community== 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Shirley Perry Smith )〕 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. In 1970, Smith, along with Ken Brindle, and Chicka and Elsa Dixon, were the guiding force behind a group of young Aboriginal men and women who were involved in the campaign for land rights by the Gurindji people. This same group, with Fred Hollows and others helped to establish Aboriginal Medical Service in July 1971. They also helped establish the Aboriginal Legal Service in 1971, the Aboriginal Black Theatre, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the Aboriginal Children’s Service, the Aboriginal Housing Company and the Detoxification Centre at Wiseman’s Ferry.〔Mum Shirl, ''Mum Shirl: an autobiography'', Mammoth Australia, 1992, pp 107 ISBN 1-86330-144-5〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mum Shirl」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|