Emma Jane Callaghan (28 February 1884 - 31 December 1979) was an Australian Aboriginal midwife, Indigenous rights/ activist supporter, nurse and Indigenous Culture Recorder.
At age thirteen although barely educated herself, Callaghan became a teacher within an Aboriginal settlement in Bellbrook, New South Wales.
[2] 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.
In the same year as her second husband, Henry James Cook's death, she met Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark.
[3] In November 2023 it was announced that Callaghan 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; Susan Katherina Schardt; Dorothy Drain, one of Australia's first female war correspondents; writer Charmian Clift; Pearl Mary Gibbs, an Aboriginal rights movement activist; and charity worker Grace Emily Munro.