Tag Archives: Catholic

Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann

Born in the bush near Daly River in 1950, Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann is a member of the Ngangiwumirr language group and speaks four other local languages. Despite never attending secondary school, she became the Northern Territory’s first Indigenous school teacher and the principal of St Francis Xavier school in her home community. A committed Christian (she was baptized in the Catholic Church at age 15) Ungunmerr-Baumann is admired throughout the Territory for the leadership and commitment she has shown, promoting education within Aboriginal communities and ensuring that Aboriginal people have the opportunity to become qualified teachers and manage their own schools. In 1998, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, for her services to Aboriginal education and art. In 2002 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Northern Territory University in recognition of her leadership and example in the fields of Aboriginal education and the visual arts, and for her contribution to the general community in the Northern Territory. In 2004 she was appointed to the now defunct Federal Government advisory body, the National Indigenous Council.

At the age of five Ungunmerr-Baumann was placed in the care of her Aunt Nellie and Uncle Attawoomba Joe, a legendary police tracker. She moved with her aunt and uncle to live at police stations at Adelaide River, Pine Creek and Mataranka, where she attended government primary schools. She was a diligent student, she says, because the other police she lived with would take no nonsense when she tried to skip class. While receiving a formal education, she also learned traditional ways through following her uncle Joe around. This combination in her formative years, building skills that enabled her to read books and the land helped her to ‘feel comfortable walking in two worlds’ (NAIDOC week).

After finishing primary school, Ungunmerr-Baumann was employed as a domestic servant to a school teacher living near Daly River. After finishing her chores one day, she sat down to read a book and was discovered by the teacher on her return home. ‘She got a surprise’, says Ungunmerr-Baumann, and the teacher asked her to read a paragraph, and then the whole page. ‘”Right”, she said, “you’re going to be my assistant teacher.” And that’s where everything started’ (NAIDOC week). An assistant teacher’s course, a bridging course and a degree from Deakin University followed. In 1975, she returned to Daly River as the Territory’s first fully qualified Aboriginal teacher. She has continued to work for post graduate qualifications; a Bachelor of Education (1993) and a Masters of Education in 1999. She was appointed principal at St. Francis Xavier School at Daly River in 1993.

As well as being a committed and innovative leading educator, Ungunmerr-Baumann is a talented and accomplished artist who was an early experimenter with combining traditional techniques with western acrylics. She used art as a means of encouraging children to express themselves. Her skills in this area led to her being employed by the Curriculum and Research Centre in Darwin as an advisory teacher of art in 1977 and a Commonwealth Government secondment to Victoria to enable her to work with art teachers in that state.

Ungunmerr-Baumann was active in her community in other ways in the 1970s and 80s. She was involved in the preliminary research and planning that led to the establishment of two Aboriginal women’s resource centres, one in Darwin and one at Daly River. She also served for several years as the President of the Nauiya Community Government Council, an Aboriginal organisation that operated the leasing arrangements for the Daly River community, which included arrangements for community housing, health services and crisis accommodation. When she was appointed president in 1982 she was the first woman to hold the position and was criticised for ‘not knowing her proper place as a woman’ (Bicentennial N.T.). A report on community services for remote and isolated women concluded that she was an extremely effective president, nonetheless, with the Daly River services noted to be some of the best. Many women told the research team that this was largely due to the efforts of Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann.

Ungunmerr-Baumann is dedicated to maintaining the cultural independence of her people, an issue that she has taken up in her professional, community and creative life for over forty years. In 1991 she explained a painting she exhibited in the following way:

The painting symbolizes the need for me to assist my people to retain their culture while gaining the education which gives us, as culturally bound Aboriginal people, the knowledge and power to live our cultural lives within the western world. All the sections of this painting meld together to make me whole – I cannot do without any of them if I am to remain a whole person (The Power In Me).

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Alana Johnson

A founding member of Australian Women in Agriculture in 1993, she is recognized nationally and internationally for her work in Change Management, Leadership Training and Rural Development and was the 2010 Victorian Rural Women’s Award winner

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Rosalie Gould

Rosalie Santine Gould lived near the Rohwer detention center in McGehee, Arkansas, and dedicated much of her time and efforts to preserving the story and the physical remains of the War Relocation Authority camp.

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Alice Gustava Smith

Alice Gustava Smith, better known by her students and readers as Sister Maris Stella, taught English at the College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University) in St. Paul for nearly fifty years. During that time she also published books of verse that built her reputation as a skilled and spiritual poet.

Smith was born in Alton, Iowa, in 1899. During her junior year in high school she moved to St. Paul to attend Derham Hall High School. At that time, Derham Hall was located on the campus of the College of St. Catherine.

Smith graduated from Derham Hall in 1918. Two years later she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of St. Joseph and took the name Sister Maris Stella. In 1924 she received her undergraduate degree from the College of St. Catherine with majors in English and music. Shortly after receiving her degree, she became a faculty member of the college.

Sister Maris Stella’s career took off when she sailed to England and earned her master’s degree in English at the University of Oxford. Soon after returning from Europe she became a star in the English Department at St. Catherine’s. She loved teaching and became a popular creative writing teacher as well as a poet-in-residence.

In 1939, Sister Maris Stella published her first volume of poetry, Here Only a Dove. During the 1940s she continued to write poetry for magazines. The English poet and novelist Alfred Noyes included a dozen of her poems in The Golden Book of Catholic Poetry, an anthology he edited in 1946.

By the end of the decade, Sister Maris Stella had published her second volume of poetry, Frost for St. Bridget. A nature lover, she linked the Irish St. Bridget with the frost in bleak trees, where, as she wrote in one poem, “Under the moon the orchards bloomed with hoarfrost, the white hills lay pale.”

During this poetically creative period, Sister Maris Stella continued to teach English at the College of St. Catherine. For almost twenty years she also served as chairperson of the school’s English Department. She enjoyed teaching literature, the history of the language, and, especially, creative writing. With such a busy schedule, she found less and less time to write her own poetry.

Then, in the early 1950s, the poet, novelist, and memoirist May Sarton visited the college as a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer. After Sarton returned home, she started a fellowship program for writers like Sister Maris Stella who had little time to travel and write. Sarton believed that writers often suffered from “divine discontent” when they lacked time for creative work.

Sister Maris Stella was surprised and pleased to receive a grant that allowed her to participate in Sarton’s program during the 1958–1959 academic year. She traveled to the Southwest, where she wrote poetry in a desert landscape markedly different from Minnesota’s. Several of these new poems were later published by North Central Publishing Company in a special Christmas edition.

Another highlight in Sister Maris Stella’s career was a collaboration with Paul Fetler, a music professor and composer from the University of Minnesota. Fetler wrote a cantata inspired by her poem “The Veil and the Rock.” The first performance of the cantata was held at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

After serving in the English Department at St. Catherine’s for close to fifty years, Sister Maris Stella retired from active teaching in May 1971. By then, she had returned to using her birth name, Alice Gustava Smith. It was under this name that St. Catherine’s Alumnae Association published her Collected Poems in 1982. The book included several new poems as well as poetry selected from earlier volumes.

Sister Alice died in 1987. Although she suffered from ill health toward the end of her life, she is remembered for her acceptance of aging and her spiritual outlook on life. Her colleagues often quoted her poem “Joseph of Dreams,” which includes the line, “in that last hour be a great light.” They agreed she herself was a great light for others, especially young women writers, for whom she was a strong guide.

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Benedicta Riepp

Mother Benedicta (Sybilla) Riepp was the founder of the Roman Catholic Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict in North America. By 1946, Saint Benedict’s Monastery was the largest community of Benedictine Sisters in the world.

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Hilda Simms

Civil rights activist Hilda Simms became a national celebrity for her leading role in the first all-Black performance of the Broadway show Anna Lucasta. Frustrated by her struggling career and the lack of roles for Black actors, Simms worked as the creative director for the New York State Human Rights Commission to address racial discrimination in the entertainment industry.

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