Emma Jane Callaghan

Emma Jane Callaghan (28 February 1884 - 31 December 1979) was an Australian Aboriginal midwife, Indigenous rights/ activist supporter, nurse and Indigenous Culture Recorder.

Early life Emma Foot was born a younger twin to Kathleen Sims of the Tharawal people and Willam Foot in La Perouse, New South Wales. At age thirteen although barely educated herself, Callaghan became a teacher within an Aboriginal settlement in Bellbrook, New South Wales.

Teaching and caring career Emma lived on this settlement for twenty-five years alongside Retta Long helping with childbirth, birth registration, and the ill.

She was proficient in needlework and was also a translator of the Dhanggati language, the tongue of her first husband, Athol Callaghan's tribe, working with biblical tales. Her new home in Armidale was later visited by Ellen Kent Hughes. In the same year as her second husband, Henry James Cook's death, she met Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. She died in Randwick, New South Wales, aged 95.

Commemoration In 1985 Callaghan's home was preserved by the State government.