AN Aboriginal woman’s ability to walk in both black and white worlds has given her the power and knowledge to become one of Australia’s leading indigenous educators.
May O’Brien was born in 1933 in the Goldfields district of Edjudina to a fair-skinned Aboriginal mother and a non-Aboriginal father.
“I grew up in a time when police were picking up half-caste Aboriginal kids and they thought I looked more white than black,” she said.
“They would shoot at us and anyone who was full Aboriginal was killed, then put on a cart and taken to the rubbish dump. They were absolutely cruel and it forced me to grow up quickly.”
Mrs O’Brien had to abide by a strict lunchtime curfew to be out of sight in the main township or face harsh consequences.
Sent to a mission at age five, she was encouraged by her uncle to make the most of the education she would receive there.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” Mrs O’Brien said.
“He was the one who told me that I was going to the mission. I didn’t know what that was, but the one thing he said was ‘you’re going to go there and you are going to learn to read and write, so you can understand what the white man is saying about us’.
“At the time, he was challenging the government on the treatment of Aboriginal people. My uncle was regarded as a great lawman which was higher than an elder.”
Mrs O’Brien said the missionaries who educated her gave her a “good sounding” for her future.
Inspired by her uncle’s strong convictions in a decent education and equality for his people, she went on to qualify as WA’s first female Aboriginal teacher.
“It’s what I loved about school the most – knowledge. Even if it was white man’s knowledge, it was a start,” she said.
“It was how I became an educator and a fighter.
“I was doing what my uncle wanted me to do – fight to include Aboriginal children in the education system and keep their culture alive.”
Earlier in her 34-year career, Mrs O’Brien witnessed the arrival of the “new Australians” in the 1950s and 60s.
Her students at Mt Hawthorn Infant School were predominantly of Italian heritage and even then, she strongly encouraged them to continue speaking their native languages at home and carry on their traditions.
“Then I was pleased to find out my students were teaching their parents to read and write in English from the readers they brought home from school,’’ she said.
“They were teachers like me – I loved teaching at Mt Hawthorn.”
A Churchill fellowship abroad to North America and Europe in 1984 cemented her convictions that the customs carried for thousands of years by her people should never die with this generation.
After time spent with the Hopi Indians of Arizona and studies in Britain on Europe’s Romany culture, Mrs O’Brien’s dissertation spoke of a common link between indigenous people of different continents.
They all wanted to learn the language and Western ways, while maintaining links to their own culture and ethnicity.
It was her appointment as superintendent for Aboriginal education and foundation member for the National Aboriginal Education Committee that helped real changes be made in bridging the gap between cultures and provide educational opportunities for indigenous Australians.
Mrs O’Brien wrote a series of bi-lingual children’s books in her native Wongathi language with English translation and campaigned for school libraries around WA to have genuine Aboriginal storybooks in their collections.
Now retired and living in Bassendean, Mrs O’Brien remains an ambassador for numeracy and literacy for everybody.