Proud am I being a woman, it begins.

Doubly proud to be an Aboriginal woman.

Proud because not only do I know who I am, I am what I am and proud of it.

So who exactly is Rosie Smith?

For starters, she's a dyslexic poet, which might seem like an oxymoron but most certainly isn't in this case.

She's a lawyer by trade, just the third Aboriginal person to be admitted to the bar in Tasmania.

Smith, 63, of Lenah Valley, was an active participant in a number of landmark moments in Australia's modern reconciliation effort.

Perhaps above all, she loves her dog Coco.

Despite being looked on as an elder in Tasmania's Aboriginal community, Smith doesn't see herself that way.

"I've got a lot of people in the community still who I call elders," she says.

Born in 1956 to a black mother and a white father, Smith was raised in Hobart.

During her childhood, her nurse mother would tell Smith and her siblings of their Aboriginal heritage, how they had descended from the famed Fanny Cochrane Smith (1834-1905), whose songs are the only surviving recordings of a Tasmanian Aboriginal language.

"My mother and my nan, they grew up listening to Fanny's music," Smith says.

"[Mum] could remember her mother talking about how Fanny used to always have visitors like Truganini because they didn't live very far away from each other [at Oyster Cove]."

Becoming a mother herself at just 17, Smith raised her three children at Bridgewater on the northern outskirts of Hobart. To her kids she passed on the same pride her own mother had passed on to her.

In her poem, titled Proud, Smith writes:

Proud because in surviving not only the oppression of my gender, race and class

I am proud I have learnt much on the way.

One gets the sense that it's this intense pride in who she is that has been the driving force in Smith's life.

Once her children were all in school, Smith began studying law at the University of Tasmania, which she describes as "an ongoing battle". She was the only Aboriginal student studying law at the time.

"Here I was, a single parent living in a Housing Department house. How dare I? Who am I to be coming to university?" she says. "These were some of the comments. It was just terrible."

Smith says she still "loved" her time at uni. She particularly has fond memories of the debating team she set up. "We used to go into the prison and debate against the Aboriginal fellas in there," she says, chuckling.

It wasn't until Smith worked at the now defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission later in life that she learned she was dyslexic. And so it was that she struggled through her uni exams with confusion and frustration.

"My manager [at ATSIC] sent me off to have a test and they found that I'm dyslexic," Smith says. "I've always had problems with writing. When I did my law exams, I had to sit criminal law, property law and contract law three times."

"It wasn't until I sat them the third time that I went to the Aboriginal students' unit and I would put old exam questions up on the blackboard and then I could remember how to answer them when I did practice exams."

In spite of her struggles, Smith prevailed, going on to work as both a criminal and civil lawyer at Hobart firm Wallace Wilkinson & Webster, where former premier Will Hodgman was once an associate.

When the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987-91) held hearings in Hobart, Smith served as the clerk who swore in the witnesses, including the police.

"That was really quite daunting," she says.

"Some of the attitudes of the police towards Aboriginal people in Tasmania were so racist. 'How would we know? He's got blond hair, blue eyes.' I just found the racism so terrible in that ... inquiry. It was eye-opening."

But Smith says it was equally eye-opening working for the state government in the wake of the momentous Bringing Them Home report, which detailed the devastating experience of the Stolen Generations.

"I worked ... to assist Aboriginal people to access their personal records that had been held by the [government]," she says. "And that was pretty emotional but also I was quite honoured to help people access their records.

"One of the things I did do was create a nice space in the welfare department so a welfare officer could take people through reading their records. Because I didn't want to breach their privacy, I wouldn't sit in with them. Unless after a certain period of time they would ask me if I'd sit with them.

"I've had a broad range of experience."

It'd be difficult to argue that point with Smith. While at ATSIC, she helped oversee the repatriation of human remains and Aboriginal cultural materials from institutions across the world.

"[The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery]... had Truganini's remains hung up," Smith says. "It wasn't until we were able to get her remains back and had them returned from cremation that we had her ashes scattered down at the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. Because that's where she used to swim."

"A lot of our ancestors that have been returned, we've tried to conduct very sensitive ceremonies."

Smith laments the fact that ATSIC is no more.

"The Commonwealth government has got no policy in regards to Aboriginal affairs," she says. "And it's just terrible."

For nearly 14 years, Smith worked for the Victorian Department of Justice within the Koori Courts, commencing as a project officer, moving to project manager and then finishing as manager of all Koori programs and initiatives.

Today, she is a grandmother to 10 grandchildren and works for UTAS as an Aboriginal health careers officer. Her job is to encourage more Aboriginal people to enrol to study at the uni's School of Medicine.

She's also a member of the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute's board, as well as TMAG's Tasmanian Aboriginal Advisory Council.

Smith says when she began in her role at UTAS, there was just one Aboriginal student studying medicine. Now there's nine.

One of her proudest moments was when she managed the installation at UTAS' Medical Science Precinct of a visual timeline acknowledging the history of Tasmanian Aborigines' health and wellbeing.

But then again, her life so far has been one unceasing list of proud moments.

Proud because I have much to share with others and appreciate what others have to share with me, Smith's poem concludes.

Proud I am in believing in myself while others did not

Proud because I am making sure I get from life the most I can

Proud that I can help my people on the way.

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