Born May Lorna Miller of the Wongatha people, in Laverton, Western Australia, at the age of five she was removed to the Mount Margaret Aboriginal Mission.
Her public funeral and memorial service was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
[5] She was awarded the British Empire Medal on 31 December 1977 for work in Aboriginal education.
In 1984 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study programs focused on enabling Indigenous peoples to retain their own cultures, travelling to the USA, Canada and Great Britain.
[6] O'Brien's papers are held at the State Library of Western Australia in a collection titled: Aborigines of the west: their past and their present,[7] and a May O'Brien Special Collection on Aboriginal studies is held at Edith Cowan University Library.