Born: 19 June 1941, Australia
Died: NA
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA
The following is republished with permission from the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.
Pat O’Shane has always fiercely defended the rights of women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Pat O’Shane was born on 19 June 1941 in Mossman, Queensland, to an Irish father and an Aboriginal mother. The eldest of five children, she grew up surrounded by poverty and prejudice. Her father, a wharfie, was active in the militant Waterside Workers’ Federation. Her mother, of the Kunjandi clan, was also active in women’s and Aboriginal causes. They were determined that their children should receive an education so that they could make some positive changes to the world.
When Pat was fifteen she became involved in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League. She trained as a teacher at the Queensland Teachers’ College in Brisbane where she was the only Aboriginal woman, and enrolled in a Bachelor of Education at the University of Queensland. In 1962 she married another activist, Mick Miller and they moved to Cairns where Pat was active in the Communist Party and Aboriginal political work. They had two daughters.
She taught in Cairns for a number of years but her life took a strange turn when her mother died tragically. Pat became mentally unwell and was in and out of psychiatric institutions. She went to Sydney and almost entered the Chelmsford Hospital for psychosurgery, however she consulted another psychiatrist, threw away her medication and began rebuilding her life. She had left her husband and was working as a typist to support her family.
With the help of a study grant she began a law degree at the University of New South Wales which she completed in 1975. She was admitted to the bar the following year, making her the first Aboriginal person to achieve this status. She worked in Central Australia in the Aboriginal Legal Service before returning to New South Wales to work with the Mental Health Act Review Committee.
Pat then headed overseas before accepting a job in Canberra in the Office of Women’s Affairs. In 1981, she was invited to head the new New South Wales Aboriginal Affairs Department, the first woman to head a government department in Australia, and inevitably she found herself in the crossfire of Aboriginal politics. It was an extremely difficult job which she managed until 1986. She found the bureaucracy to be male dominated and met a lot of resistance to change. However she was able to make some meaningful reforms, particularly in the area of housing, employment and education.
From there she was appointed a magistrate, another first for an Aboriginal person. Pat has always fiercely defended the rights of women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and is not afraid to be outspoken on issues. In a paper titled ‘Is there any relevance in the Women’s Movement for Aboriginal Women?’ she wrote, “Sexist attitudes did not wipe out whole tribes of our people – racism did, and continues to do so.” In January 1993 she dismissed charges against four women who had defaced a billboard featuring scantily clad women being sawn in half. She decided that the real crime ‘was the erection of these extremely offensive advertisements’. In 1995, she was appointed Chancellor of the University of New England, another first for an Aboriginal woman.
This biography is republished from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Written by Nikki Henningham, The University of Melbourne. See below for full attribution.
Pat O’Shane has been a trailblazer for Australian Indigenous people since becoming the only Indigenous person in her age group to graduate from her far north Queensland high school in Cairns in the late 1950s. She went on to become the first Aboriginal teacher in Queensland, the first to earn a law degree, the first barrister and the first Aboriginal magistrate in the NSW local court.
After teaching at Cairns High School for eight years, O’Shane returned to study at the University of New South Wales on an Aboriginal Study Grant. She graduated in law in 1976 and was admitted to the New South Wales bar. She then found work with the Aboriginal Legal Services in Sydney and later in Alice Springs. On her return from Alice Springs, she tutored in law at the University of New South Wales.
O’Shane then joined the New South Wales public service and, in 1981 was appointed as Head of the New South Wales Aboriginal Affairs Department; the first woman and Indigenous person to be the head of a government department in Australia. She held the position for five years, serving also as a Commissioner of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission from 1983 to 1986. In 1986, O’Shane was the first Indigenous Australian to be appointed a magistrate for the local courts in New South Wales. From 1995 to 2003, O’Shane was the Chancellor of the University of New England.
In 2013, O’Shane was awarded the Marcia Langton award for lifetime achievement in leadership at the Deadly awards, which recognise the work of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders in music, sport, entertainment and the community. A spokesperson for the awards summed up the impact of O’Shane’s achievements. ‘This is an Aboriginal woman who blazed a path for others to follow. Because many of her achievements have been firsts for her people, she is a genuine and inspiring role model for others.’ (Jabour)
Work cited
Nikki Henningham, ‘O’Shane, Pat’, in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, Australian Women’s Archives Project, 2014, https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0771b.htm, accessed 16 January 2022.