Pearl Gibbs

Pearl Gibbs was an energetic and compelling advocate for Aboriginal rights.

In 1941, on 2WL in Wollongong, she became the first Aboriginal woman to speak on Australian radio. This was by no means her greatest achievement - but the very direct approach she adopted on that occasion is typical of her advocacy:

‘This is the first time in the history of Australia that an Aboriginal woman has broadcast an appeal for her people. I am more than happy to be that woman… My people have had 153 years of the white man's and white woman's cruelty and injustice and unchristian treatment imposed upon us… Our girls and boys are exploited ruthlessly. They are apprenticed out by the Aborigines Welfare Board at the shocking wage of a shilling to three and six per week pocket money and from two and six to six shillings per week is paid into a trust fund. This is done from 14 years to the age of 18. At the end of four years a girl would, with pocket money and money from the trust, have earned £60 and a boy £90.

Many girls have great difficulty in getting their trust money. Others say they have never been paid. Girls arrive home with white babies. I do not know of one case where the Aborigines Welfare Board has taken steps to compel the white father to support his child.

The child has to grow up as an unwanted member of an apparently unwanted race. Aboriginal girls are no less human than my white sisters… The bad housing, poor water supply, appalling sanitary conditions and the lack of right food, together with unsympathetic managers, make life not worth living for my unfortunate people…

Please remember, we don't want your pity, but practical help. This you can do by writing to the Hon. Chief Secretary, Mr Baddeley MLA, Parliament House, Sydney, and ask that our claims be granted as soon as possible…Do not let it be said of you that we have asked in vain. Will my appeal for practical humanity be in vain? I leave the answer to each and every one of you.’

Pearl Mary (Gambanyi) Gibbs was born in 1901 at La Perouse, Sydney. Her mother was a half-caste Aboriginal woman, her father was a white man.

Pearl and her older sister, Olga, were maids. In 1917, both of them took up positions as domestic servants in Sydney where Pearl was to meet Aboriginal girls who had been unwillingly removed from their country homes and been ‘apprenticed’ or indentured by the Aborigines Protection Board as domestic servants.

In 1923, Pearl married and had two sons and a daughter. The marriage, however, did not last.

In the late 1920s, she became more acutely aware of the practices of the Aborigines Protection Board, so she, her mother and stepfather moved to Nowra to pick peas and to be able to live away from the Board’s control. She then supported pea pickers who were seeking better conditions, and encouraged those at the Wallaga Lake Aboriginal Reserve to defy the board manager’s control over their income – as an example, by encouraging the Aboriginal women to shop for underwear after the manager decreed they could only go shopping when he was present!

In 1936 the Aborigines Protection Board’s powers were widened to allow the confinement to one of its reserves of anyone ‘apparently having an admixture of Aboriginal blood’ – a decision that directly affected Pearl and her family. So, in 1937 she travelled to Sydney and began work for the fledgling Aborigines Progressive Association.

Pearl became secretary of the Aborigines Progressive Association and became one of the few women, white or black, who spoke in public political forums. Her focus (as was reflected in the later 2WL broadcast) was on issues of Aboriginal women’s and children’s rights, and the appalling nutritional and health conditions that were faced by mothers and children on government-managed reserves.

Pearl became a link between the white women’s and Aboriginals’ movements, serving, for example, on the management committee of the Union of Australian Women.

Conscious of the importance of media coverage, Pearl cultivated relationships with journalists. She was also an outstanding organiser, helping to plan the historic first Day of Mourning protest on Australia Day 1938 on the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet.

After World War II, Pearl Gibbs settled in Dubbo with her widowed mother, actively supporting attempts by Aboriginal people in the region to get better conditions from the Aborigines Welfare Board (as the Aborigines Protection Board had by then become known).

In 1954 Gibbs was elected to the seat on the Board that was assigned to mixed-race Aborigines. However, she soon found that there was no real power for an Aboriginal member of the Board; she could not inspect reserves unless on an official tour, and as both an Aboriginal and a woman, she believed she was excluded from key decision-making, some of which took place over drinks in hotel bars. So, she resigned from the position.

In 1956, Pearl Gibbs, together with activist Faith Bandler, was instrumental in forming the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship, an organisation that was to provide a fertile meeting place for black and white activists until the late 1960s. In 1957, the AAF initiated a petition to change the Australian Constitution ‘to provide equal citizenship for Aborigines’.

Pearl also established a hostel for Aboriginal people who came to Dubbo for medical treatment, convincing the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia to fund the hostel — a small weatherboard cottage — and the Aborigines Welfare Board to provide a modest allowance for a warden.

Pearl died in Dubbo in April 1983.