{{Short description|Indigenous Australian activist (1901–1983)}} {{Use Australian English|date=April 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2017}} {{infobox person | image = Pearl Gibbs.jpg | caption = Gibbs, from the collections of the State Library of New South Wales | name = Pearl Gibbs | birth_name = Pearl Mary Brown | other_names = Pearl Mary Gibbs (married name) | birth_place = La Perouse, New South Wales, Australia<ref name="ANDB" /> | birth_date = 18 July 1901 | death_place = Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia | death_date = 28 April 1983 (aged 81) | occupation = {{hlist|Aboriginal leader|Political activist|Social activist}} | spouse = Robert James Gibbs (m. 1923 Sep. ?) | awards = Victorian Honour Roll of Women | organization = Aborigines Welfare Board (1954 - 1957)<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article229222208|title=Betty is not a criminal|date=1954-10-22|work=The Sun|access-date=2019-03-08|pages=2}}</ref>}}
'''Pearl Mary Gibbs''' (née '''Brown''') (18 July 1901 – 28 April 1983) was an Indigenous Australian activist, and the most prominent female activist within the Aboriginal movement in the early 20th century. She was a member of the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), and was involved with various protest events such as the 1938 Day of Mourning. She has strong associations with activists Jessie Street and Faith Bandler.
Pearl married English naval steward Robert Gibbs in 1923 and had 2 sons and a daughter. The marriage broke down in the late 1920s and her husband took control of her children, later placing them in foster care. Quoted from NSW Heritage site
==Early life== Gibbs was born Pearl Mary Brown on 18 July 1901 in La Perouse or possibly Botany Bay,<ref name="WR">{{cite web|url=https://womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0998b.htm|title=Gibbs, Pearl Mary (1901-1983)| website= Australian Women's Register| first=Leonarda|last=Kovacic| date=12 September 2017}}</ref> Sydney, to Mary Margaret Brown, whose mother was an Aboriginal woman of the Ngemba people called Maria, and a white man, David Barry.<ref name="ANDB">{{cite Australian Dictionary of Biography |last1=Goodall|first1=Heather|title=Gibbs, Pearl Mary (Gambanyi) (1901–1983)|id2=gibbs-pearl-mary-gambanyi-12533|access-date=31 October 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| last1=Thompson| first1=George| last2=Markham| first2=Colin| title=Tribute to Pearl Gibbs| url=https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20011109014| website=Parliament of New South Wales| access-date=31 October 2014| ref=transcript| archive-date=31 October 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141031113400/https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20011109014| url-status=dead}}</ref> Gibbs grew up in and around the town of Yass, where she attended Mount Carmel School along with her sister Olga.<ref name="ANDB"/>
In 1917, Gibbs and her sister moved to Sydney to work as domestics, and Gibbs found a position in Potts Point.<ref name="Cole Haskins">{{Citation | author1=Cole, Anna | author2=Haskins, Victoria K. (Victoria Katharine)| author3=Paisley, Fiona | author4=Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | title=Uncommon ground : white women and Aboriginal history | year=2005 | publication-date=2005 | publisher=Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | edition=New | isbn=978-0-85575-485-3 }}</ref> Gibbs met other Aboriginal women and girls who were apprenticed as domestics by the Aborigines Protection Board and helped them make representations to the Board about their working conditions.<ref name="Cole Haskins"/>
She married Robert James Gibbs, in April 1923, a British sailor, with whom she had a daughter and two sons; however, they later separated, and Gibbs cared for the children on her own.<ref>Horner 1983, pp. 10-12.</ref><ref>{{Citation|last1=Standfield|first1=Rachel|title=Aunty Pearl Gibbs:: Leading for Aboriginal rights|date=2014|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwvj5.6|work=Diversity in Leadership|pages=53–68|editor-last=Damousi|editor-first=Joy|series=Australian women, past and present|publisher=ANU Press|isbn=978-1-925021-70-7|access-date=2021-03-01|last2=Peckham|first2=Ray|last3=Nolan|first3=John|jstor=j.ctt13wwvj5.6 |editor2-last=Rubenstein|editor2-first=Kim|editor3-last=Tomsic|editor3-first=Mary}}</ref>
== Activism == In the 1930s, Gibbs helped run a camp to support unemployed Aboriginal workers.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}} She also spent time living at Salt Pan Creek camp in south-western Sydney. Refugee families from the north and south coast and Cummeragunja lived there, including Bill Onus, Jack Patten, and Jack Campbell.<ref name=daao>{{cite web| url=https://www.daao.org.au/bio/bill-onus/biography/| website= Design & Art Australia Online| title=Bill Onus| author= Kleinert, Sylvia| date= 2011| access-date=18 November 2022}}</ref> In 1933 she organised a strike for Aboriginal pea-pickers. She was one of the first members of the APA, and attracted large crowds when she gave speeches in The Domain in Sydney. She began to work with APA president Jack Patten and secretary William Ferguson, and in 1938 she was involved with organising the Day of Mourning protests, which at the time was the most significant Aboriginal civil rights demonstration in Australia. She was a spokesperson for the Committee for Aboriginal Citizen Rights, the lobby group which was set up to carry on the work of the Day of Mourning Congress. Later in 1938 she succeeded Ferguson as secretary of the APA, and she held the position until 1940.{{cn|date=March 2024}}
In 1941, Gibbs made the first radio broadcast by an Aboriginal woman, on the station 2WL in Wollongong. Her speech was on Aboriginal civil rights, and carefully scripted so that it would be allowed on the air.<ref>Pearl Gibbs'Radio Broadcast' (transcript) in Nicholas Jose (general editor) ''The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature'' Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest NSW, 2009.</ref> Much of Gibbs' early work was done during a time when Aboriginal people were subject to controls on their movement, unless they had an exemption certificate from the relevant protection board.<ref name="ANDB"/> Police would also monitor all public civil rights demonstrations. In 1993, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) released their file on Gibbs to the National Archives of Australia. The file included records of which political meetings Gibbs had attended, and clippings of newspaper articles in which she had been mentioned.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp |title=ASIO file on Pearl Gibbs at the National Archives of Australia |access-date=17 November 2009 |archive-date=24 March 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190324125952/https://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Gibbs spent much of her adult life in Dubbo. In 1946, she and Ferguson established a branch of the Australian Aborigines' League in Dubbo, and she was the vice-president and later secretary of the branch throughout the 1940s and 1950s.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article103925515 |title=Aboriginal Rights |newspaper=Western Herald |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=20 March 1953 |access-date=20 April 2017 |page=8 |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref> Later, in 1960, Gibbs set up a hostel to care for the families of Aboriginal hospital patients in Dubbo. From 1954 to 1957, Gibbs was the only Aboriginal member of the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board,<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article106933028 |title=Aboriginal woman elected to board |newspaper=The Land |issue=2237 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=20 August 1954 |access-date=20 April 2017 |page=2 |via=National Library of Australia}}</ref> and she was the only woman to ever serve on the board. In 1956 she was a co-founder, along with Faith Bandler, of the Aboriginal-Australian Fellowship (AAF), which was a mainly urban organisation designed to facilitate cooperation between Aboriginal political groups and white people sympathetic to the cause. Gibbs was able to use the AAF to develop connections with the trade union movement in New South Wales.<ref>Horner 1983, pp. 16-18.</ref>
Gibbs continued to be politically active throughout the 1970s, including supporting the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. She forged important links between the Aboriginal movement and other progressive political groups, notably the women's movement.<ref name="WR"/>
Gibbs died in Dubbo in 1983, aged 81.<ref name="ANDB"/>
==Recognition== thumb|Pearl Gibbs mural, Dubbo Gibbs was inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.whise.org.au/assets/docs/policy/Victorian%20Honour%20Roll%20of%20Women%202001-%202011.pdf|title=Victorian Honour Roll of Women List of Inductees 2001-2011}}</ref>
On 18 July 2021, Google honoured her 120th birthday with a Google Doodle.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Pearl Gibbs "Gambanyi's" 120th Birthday|url=https://doodles.google/doodle/pearl-gibbs-gambanyis-120th-birthday/|access-date=2021-07-18|website=Google|language=en}}</ref>
In November 2023, it was announced that Gibbs was one of eight women chosen to be commemorated in the second round of blue plaques sponsored by the Government of New South Wales alongside, among others, Kathleen Butler, godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge; Emma Jane Callaghan, an Aboriginal midwife and activist; Susan Katherina Schardt; journalist Dorothy Drain; writer Charmian Clift; and charity worker Grace Emily Munro.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Power |first=Julie |date=2023-11-19 |title=The 'clever girl' who helped build the Harbour Bridge |url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-clever-girl-who-helped-build-the-harbour-bridge-20231116-p5ekga.html |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=Sydney Morning Herald|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Plaques |first=Blue |date=2023-11-20 |title=New round of Blue Plaques recognises the stories of NSW |url=https://blueplaques.nsw.gov.au/news-and-media/articles/2023/new-round-of-blue-plaques-recognises-the-stories-of-nsw |access-date=2023-11-21 |website=Blue Plaques |language=en}}</ref>
== References == {{reflist|30em}}
== Further reading == * {{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0343b.htm |title=Gibbs, Pearl Mary|encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia}} * Gilbert, Kevin, "Pearl Gibbs: Aboriginal Patriot", ''Aboriginal History'', vol. 7, no. 1, 1983, pp. 4–9. * Goodall, Heather. "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/24045576?seq=1 Pearl Gibbs: Some Memories]", ''Aboriginal History'', vol 7, no 1, 1983, p. 20. {{jstor|24055767}} * Goodall, Heather, "Pearl Gibbs", in Radi, Heather (ed.), ''200 Australian Women: A Redress anthology'', Women's Redress Press, Broadway, N.S.W., [1988], pp. 211–213. * Horner, Jack, "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/24045575?seq=1 Pearl Gibbs: A Biographical Tribute]", ''Aboriginal History'', vol. 7, no. 1, 1983, pp. 10–12. {{jstor|24045574}} * {{cite book|last1=Standfield|first1= Rachel|first2= Ray |last2=Peckham|first3=John|last3= Nolan|chapter=3. Aunty Pearl Gibbs: Leading for Aboriginal Rights|title= In Diversity in Leadership: Australian Women, past and Present|editor1= Damousi Joy|editor2= Rubenstein Kim|editor3= Tomsic Mary|pages= 53–68 |publisher=ANU Press|date= 2014|jstor= j.ctt13wwvj5.6.|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wwvj5.6.}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gibbs, Pearl}} Category:1901 births Category:1983 deaths Category:Australian Indigenous rights activists Category:Australian women human rights activists Category:20th-century Australian women