Address
delivered by Ted Kennedy May
4 1998
on the occasion of the funeral of Shirley Smith
St Mary's Cathedral Sydney
“Mum
Shirl" was born Colleen Shirley Perry on 22nd
November 1924
at Cowra. She was born into what many whites accepted
as pre-ordained penury. It is significant that even
the two surnames she ever bore were borrowed from an
alien culture - Perry from Perry's Circus, and her husband
Darcy Smith was assigned his name as a boxing pseudonym.
That branch of her grandfather's proud traditional name,
Boney, was destined to be consigned to oblivion. Like
the shabby ill-fitting 2nd-hand clothing that aboriginal
people are required to settle for, her family was supposed
to accept a false and borrowed name. Such is the way
of the inexorable effects of ongoing colonisation. The
devastating spoliation extends even to nomenclature.
Even the colloquial name for her birthplace Erambie,
West
Cowra,
was "Bagtown".
It
seemed to accent the precarious makeshift existence
she was born into. Her birth-date and birth-place silently
mark the centenary of the awful tragedy for her tribe
the Wiradjuri. One hundred years before, Governor Thomas
Brisbane proclaimed Martial Law which virtually amounted
to open season of gunfire on the Wiradjuri tribe. The
Governor's edict extended from 14th
August 1824
until 11th
December 1824.
In excess of 100 blacks most of them women and children
lay dead. William Cox, Sen, a pastoralist with impeccable
family connections and impeccable British manners called
on the 49th Regiment to "shoot all the Blacks and manure
the ground with their carcasses".
So
the army did. No charges were ever laid; no official
account ever given. More than 100 of tile Wiradjuri
were massacred; the whole Wiradjuri tribe was cast into
mourning. Such is the oral living memory of aboriginal
people that - 100 years is but a day when it comes to
freshness of memory.
Shirley
Perry was born into the unrelenting sorrow and grieving
of her tribe. In addition; to be born at Erambie Mission
in 1924 was to experience the full brunt of the suffocating
power and control of the dreaded Aboriginal Protection
Board. As Shirley would later stress in an interview
with Kevin Gilbert in 1977 "I'll tell (what is an aboriginal).
An aboriginal is anyone who knows what it was like down
at Erambie Mission West Cowra, thirty years ago. An
aboriginal is anyone that lived down there with me that
knew what it was like". (Living Black p.251)
It
is of the essence of Mum Shirl that she carried in her
inner spirit the unfadeable, undilutable memories of
her race. In the face of that on-going, ever-present
pain she stood as one for whom memory was a sacred trust.
That is why it is sickening to hear some whites speak
as if time of itself should erase the past, particularly
when they have done nothing to case it. The impatient
desire that some people express to get things over with
is in itself a sign of deep insecurity, and of being
out of touch with human nature. We are governed today
as if reality itself were subject to a sunset clause.
In repudiating a so called "black arm band" view of
history this government stands, in uneducated ignorance
of what has been established in cross-cultural science,
that shameful mechanisms of denial perpetuate grieving
and cause ongoing pain. While they might mount sonic
sort of case that they arc not now physically bashing
blacks, it remains quite clear that while they govern;
in shameful dishonour and in incredible insensitivity,
the same pathology o William Cox Sen the pastoralist
lives on. We have indeed a government without a soul.
We
have witnessed in our own time in South
Africa,
under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the largeness
of heart which bears out the prayer of Francis of Assisi
that the forgiving heart is the necessary prelude to
a heart forgiven. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
The South African Trust and Reconciliation Commission
has gone such a long way towards setting a whole nation
on a path of healing, whereas the forlorn figure of
P W Botha recently protesting a clear conscience seems
to be expecting pardon at dirt cheap rates without going
through the anguish of asking for it, or indeed, of
giving the slightest indication of sorrow.
There
are analogies we must draw from South
Africa
for our own country. Guilt, as Pat Dodson rightly says,
is a wasted emotion. But shame is another matter. We
must accept the shame that all the good things which
white Australians now enjoy - good things that are the
envy of the world which scent to sparkle the more in
the Australian sunlight, we must in all honesty and
shame admit that none of the benefits that we now enjoy
were acquired except at the horrific expense of massacre
and unbelievable grief and starvation, including the
snatching of children of Aboriginal people in the past,
of selfish grabbing of entitlements from Aboriginal
people today. So that whether our ancestors arrived
on the first fleet, or we are new migrants who came
on the last plane, we must accept the shame, and indeed
scream out our shame that clearly identifiable pathologies
of the colonizer are re-emerging today. In the end,
of course, our continuing neo-colonizers will lose;
the price they seemingly must pay for the attempts to
extinguish native title would seem to be a self dealing
deathful extinguishment of any possible whispering of
sacred honour in their own hearts.
As
I stand here today looking back over more years than
I like to count, I think of the times beyond all counting
when I have by my own insensitivity hurt or insulted
so many Aborigines. I can say with enormous gratitude
to them that in all my days I have never known one to
refuse my apologies. Koories are themselves great forgivers.
That is why there is a profound poignancy in the contrast
that our present Government cannot find the heart to
offer them an official word of apology.
All
Aborigines today stand in bewildered disbelief when
yet the call from Aboriginal people across this land,
for an apology for the “stolen generations” and for
all the other crimes committed against Aboriginal people,
has not been heeded. In the words of Mr Gatjil Djerrkura
Chairperson of ATSIC:
The
defence of ignorance is no longer available. Individual
Australians are not responsible for the past actions
of others. But if Australians fail to respond to what
you now know, that is another thing. We should not be
preoccupied with the material, with the possible cost
of compensation, but the words - the fact that we are
prepared to say them and acknowledge the fact. That
is what means the most to my people, and that is why
the Federal Government must apologise.
Shirley
was always capable of uncovering this dirty secret of
compromise, in uncompromising scarifying language. She
stayed unremittingly and derisively on the hard edge
of political awareness. In a deceptively unlettered
way she mustered a literacy and a direct eloquence that
was hard to beat. She stood out from the crowd in that
she was incredibly like every single individual in the
crowd. She was different only because she was open to
all. I think I have never met anyone like her to put
people at their ease, a capacity to free peoples’ anxiety,
which allowed them to confide in her totally. It was
a capacity to comfort the afflicted but never suggesting
that she would not afflict the comfortable. She chose
to stay in the street world of Aboriginal life in such
a way that she was like the flagship of the fleet that
had to accommodate its speed to the slowest ship in
the fleet.
There
was a memorable event late in 1980 when the first ever
National Conference of Catholic Social Workers was held
at St
Joseph's
College, Hunters Hill. Mum Shirl was not invited. In
fact no Aboriginals were invited. So she gathered a
group of friends and gate-crashed the Conference. As
the invited guests returned from dinner to the auditorium
where there were a dozen tables with white tablecloths
and empty and half empty beer bottles Shirley went to
the microphone, and tried to address them, but the guests
went on talking. Shirley then proceeded one by one,
to tear tablecloths from the tables. The bottles crashed
and rolled and splashed, the scene was remarkably reminiscent
of the Titanic collision. In the scurry of legs, by
the way, the Bishops were the first group to make themselves
scarce. Someone staggered downstairs to call for help
from Paul Collins who was the official coordinator of
the Convention saying that an Aboriginal woman upstairs
had gone berserk. That's when Paul Collins made his
famous remark, "But there are 300 social workers up
there. That should be enough".
We
whites are slow learners. Often it is only when the
inner life of Aborigines reaches epidemic proportions
of pain that we acknowledge puzzlingly that something
must be wrong. So with the reality of Black Deaths in
Custody. We remain guarded and grudging in the ways
that we acknowledge, we keep protecting ourselves so
that nothing seems to change in our lives. We continue
on the escalator, using receding time as an anaesthetic,
and we show impatience if people continue to hold the
memory which means holding up the mirror of truth that
draws our anger. We mutter half-heartedly the need for
political answers.
But
it was that stark social phenomenon of blacks dying
in custody and the continuing pain of the “Stolen Generations”
which Mum Shirl always knew in her bones that caused
her to confront the harsh reality at a personal level
and that was at the deepest political level of all.
And she recognised early the promise of the youth and
would burst with pride in those taking on the struggle,
among them her beloved Paul, Isabel and Jenny Coe, Gary
Foley and Charlie Perkins who will soon speak.
From
the time she was sixteen, when white institutions would
have been enough to stifle the confidence of any timid
aboriginal girl, she set herself against the whole draconian
system and so responded to the excruciating solitude
of prisoners and by her incessant visiting, she gave
them solace. She was untiring in giving herself to them
and in crashing through the loneliness. For hundreds
of prisoners black and white her visits were the only
ones to look forward to. The blacks only because often
their loved ones could not afford the cost of travel,
and the whites, so often because their family could
not afford the embarrassment.
A
life-size seated image of Mum Shirl done by the sculptor
Bill Clements, a personal friend of Mum Shirl, is in
existence. It has to be cast in bronze, and placed in
relation to excerpts from her autobiography. Funds for
this will be needed and a suitable place in the city
will need to be found, but it ought to be a permanent
reminder to this city of over-dogs of what she meant
to the under-dogs. The lesson that Shirley tried to
teach us by example was to get to know and love the
poor. And because the poor still go to prison in droves
your pre-existing friendship will naturally force you
to follow them there.
Her
very presence set her as one nobly distinguished. Yet
her distinction lay in that she made no distinction
among people. Her deepest heart was for the "goomies",
those addicted to White Lady, or Methylated Spirits.
She took in and lived with their terror described by
the aboriginal poet Jack Davis.
We
are tired of the benches, our beds in the park
We
welcome the sundown that heralds the dark.
White
Lady Methylate, keep us warns and from crying
Hold
back the hate, and hasten the dying
She
intuitively recognised the same sort of desperate terror
in the hordes of Aboriginal people incarcerated in Australian
jails. She knew exactly what Robert Walker was writing
about in his poem "Solitary Confinement"
Have
you ever been ordered to strip
before
half a dozen barking eyes,
Forcing
you against a wall.
Ordering
you to part your legs and bend over?
Have
you ever had a door slammed
Locking
you out of the world, Propelling you Into timeless space
–
To
the emptiness of silence?
Have
you ever laid on a wooden bed –
In
regulation pyjamas,
And
tried to get a bucket to talk –
In
all seriousness?
Have
you ever begged for blankets
From
an eye staring through a hole in the door,
Rubbing
at the cold air digging into your flesh
Biting
down on your bottom lip, while mouthing "Please Sir"?
She
grieved with an inconsolable grief, as she did with
all the others, when Robert Walker finally found death
more attractive, took a sock, and hanged himself.
The
number of children who once called her "Mummy" is beyond
counting, the only mothering one they were ever allowed
to know.
"My
son, your troubled eyes search mine
Puzzled
and hurt by colour line,
Your
black skin soft as velvet shine:
What
can I tell you, son of mine?
I
could tell you of heart break, hatred blind.
I
could tell you of crimes that shame mankind,
Of
brutal wrong and deeds malign,
Of
rape and murder, son of mine.
For
the sake of all these countless little ones whose eyes
met hers, she maintained a playfulness and a light heartedness,
and she begged and borrowed that they might be spared
the insecurity and the penury she once knew. It was
all important to her that she would give them hope.
But
I'll tell instead of brave and fine
When
lives of black and white entwine,
And
men in brotherhood combine
This
would I tell you, son of mine
(Oodgeroo
Noonuccal)
Therein
lay the real miracle of Mum Shirl, that while never
trying to block out the pain she held on to hope, and
thereby held out hope, especially to the young ones.
Look
up my people,
The
dawn is breaking
The
World is waking
To
a new bright day,
When
none defame us
No
restrictions harm us
Nor
colour shame us
Nor
sneer dismay
(Oodgeroo
Noonuccal)
That
is why she could always recognise a white ally when
she saw one whether it be Germaine Greer or Fred Hollows
or Nugget Coombs. She could hold out the hope that these
could contribute to a bright new day for her people.
There
is hardly a street in the whole of South
Sydney
where Shirley did not once rent a house, where a dozen
little black faces looked out on an alien sometimes
hostile world where Shirley offered a safe and secure
shelter.
She
welcomed the Gospel like a little child. She thirstingly
swallowed the Gospel whole, never prepared to spit out
the bits that we whites find unsavoury or uncomfortable.
In this she remained quintessentially aboriginal. She
would, I think, happily take as an epitaph Jack Davis”
reminder to white Christians.
This
is the pattern your ordered mind
Has
forgotten, this way of perceiving
That
survival, through sharing and sharing, my friend
Was
the Carpenter's way of believing
Shirley
was able to give a new meaning - a new depth and breadth
to Australian Feminism. Many a female activist has been
inspired by her to uncover the male-directed dominance
and control that underpinned every aspect of colonization.
I have sometimes counted myself privileged to stand
within earshot of Shirley's own hushed reverence for
some poor powerless woman, for Shirley a sacred moment
of recognition, for the woman a moment of grace. Such
were the millions of moments in Shirley's life, in the
after-hours from 5 pin to 9
am
when she responded indefatigably to incessant emergency
calls in the night. The film "once were warriors" gives
just some intimation of what Shirley knew by heart.
I recall there were nights when I would call her five
times to meet some emergency: unfailingly she gave this
unpaid service.
And
there was always the aftermath to the incidents of the
night, and Shirley would be there without fail to defend
the powerless against overwhelming power whether that
power was that of the police, the legal system, the
bureaucracy of hospitals, or capitalism in all its forms,
all designed to cripple blacks. Here was this extraordinary
defiant woman giving warning that if they tried to crush
the little ones they'd. have her and her handbag to
contend with.
Sometimes
I think that it was at that point when her heart might
break that the kindness of nature took over and gently
lifted her into a kind of sleep that shielded her from
further grieving. Laurie Perry, her beloved brother,
was acquitted of a trumped up charge, but not before
he had suffered a stroke and a heart attack and had
lost his speech. Now he was dead. And her beloved Dianne
too, the pride and joy of her life was dead. A heart
can hold only so much grief.
In
the ghetto streets of Redfern
prowls
the battler on the dole
the
Blacks still free come morning
who
survived the nightpatrol
and
paddy waggon coffins
who
only ply their trade
where
politicians don't count votes
police
training grounds are made
(Kevin
Gilbert)
Christian
Hope for her transcended both pessimism and optimism.
It called her to expect God to intervene in the face
of despair. She woke up each morning expectantly-expecting
God to do that. She never had to wait around, because
always, always some rejected person would come around
the corner who of course was Christ himself. She had
had enough of the phoney Christians who try to peddle
a poor-free Christ who is in fact a phoney Christ, not
Christ at all. Mum Shirl was, I think, the greatest
theologian I have ever known. As a mystical or spiritual
theologian, she could beat the socks off Hildegarde
of Bingen or Julian of Norwich. She once said "If you
can't find anyone to hang on the Cross between two thieves,
I will."
I'll
end now with a poem by Kevin Gilbert the Wiradgeri poet
called "Epitaph":
Weep
not for me for Death is
but
the vehicle that unites my soul
with
the Creative Essence, God.
My
spiritual Being, my love is
still
with you, where ever you are
until
forever.
You
will find me in the quiet moments
in
the trees, amidst the rocks,
the
cloud and beams of sunshine
indeed,
everywhere for I, too, am
a
part of the total essence of
creation
that radiates everywhere
about
you, eternally.
Life,
after all, is just a
passing
phase.
(Kevin
Gilbert)
May
black angels lead her into paradise. May Our Lady of
the Sacred Heart and St Martin de Porres, the Black
Saint be there to welcome her on her way. And may she
with Lazarus who was once poor have everlasting rest.
by Fr Ted Kennedy
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