First published 1985 by Allen & Unwin
Published 2020 by Routledge
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1985 Isobel White, Diane Barwick and Betty Meehan and the several authors, each in respect of the paper contributed by her.
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Fighters and singers: the lives of some Aboriginal
women.
Bibliography.
ISBN 0 86861 612 5.
ISBN 0 86861 620 6 (pbk.).
1. Aborigines, Australian Women Biography.
I. White, Isobel. II. Barwick, Diane.
III. Meehan, Betty.
920.00929915
Typeset by Ruskin Press, Melbourne
ISBN-13: 9780868616209 (pbk)
Diane Barwick is an anthropologist who has done years of research on the history of Aboriginal administration in Victoria and New South Wales, described in many articles and the forthcoming book Rebellion at Coranderrk. She has edited the first six volumes of Aboriginal History, A handbook for Aboriginal and Islander history, and a memorial volume honouring the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner.
Diane Bell is an anthropologist with extensive fieldwork experience in Northern Australia. In Daughters of the Dreaming she writes of the ritual life of Aboriginal women of Warrabri, where she lived for eighteen months and, in Law, the old and the new, of their role in the maintenance of customary law. She has acted as consultant to the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, the Australian Law Reform Commission, Aboriginal Land Councils and Legal Aid Services. At present she is a research fellow in the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Catherine Berndt is an anthropologist at the University of Western Australia. She has spent a number of years living in Aboriginal communities in South Australia, the Northern Territory and the Western Desert. She has made a special study of Aboriginal women, about whom she writes from almost life-long experience. She has published a number of books and articles about Aborigines, some by herself, some with her husband Ronald Berndt. Their major joint publication The World of the first Australians is widely read and highly acclaimed.
Pearl Duncan was the first Aborigine to become a trained teacher in Australia and has taught in New South Wales, North Queensland, the Torres Straits Islands, and New Zealand. She is a former member of the National Aboriginal Education Committee and is at present studying for a B. Litt. in anthropology at the Australian National University.
Jenny Green is an artist who was employed for some years by the Northern Territory Education Department to encourage art and craft of high quality, produced by adults and children, at the Aboriginal-owned Utopia Station. There she was instrumental in setting up the thriving batik industry. Successful exhibitions of the womens craft work have been held in several capital cities and one is planned for overseas. She is now consultant to the Central Land Council on various matters associated with Aboriginal land tenure and land claims.
Luise Hercus is a linguist, teaching Sanskrit in the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. She also studies Aboriginal languages, particularly those spoken by only few survivors. She has published two volumes on the languages once spoken in Victoria and one on the Barkindji language of the Darling River people. She is preparing for publication a grammar of the Wangkanguru-Arabana language of South Australia.
Ann McGrath is a tutor in the history department at Monash University, after some years as a lecturer in the School of General Studies, Darwin Community College. She has collected oral histories from Aboriginal people and has contributed historical information for several Aboriginal land claims. She has written a PhD thesis entitled We Grew up the Stations: Europeans, Aborigines and Cattle in the Northern Territory.
Janet Mathews has used her training in music to record many rare songs and some other aspects of music from various parts of New South Wales. She has also recorded for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies the last surviving speakers of a number of languages now no longer spoken at all. She has written a number of books about Aborigines, including the widely-read The two worlds of Jimmie Barker and a series of informative books for children.
Betty Meehan is an anthropologist who has lived at intervals over the last twenty years with the Anbarra community in Arnhem Land. Her book Shell bed to shell midden and several articles describe some of her experiences with the women of that community. For five years she was a research fellow in Prehistory in the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. She is now a consultant working on Aboriginal land claims in the Northern Territory.
Lynette Oates is a linguist who has worked with the Summer Institute of Linguistics in several countries. She has published work on a number of hitherto unwritten languages, and, together with her late husband, produced a survey of Australian Aboriginal languages, A revised linguistic survey of Australia, as well as a later updated Survey. She is currently working on two New South Wales languages, and is also engaged in secondary teaching.
Helen Payne is an ethnomusicologist who has made a depth study of the music of Aboriginal womens ceremonies in the Western Desert. While she lived at Ernabella she learnt to sing this music and to dance in the ceremonies. She is now a part-time research assistant and lecturer in the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide.
Janice Reid is a medical anthropologist who has lived with the Yolngu people of Yirrkala in Arnhem Land. There she studied attitudes to illness and death and indigenous healing practices. She now lectures in the Commonwealth Institute of Health at the University of Sydney. She is editor of Body, land and spirit, a collection of papers on health and healing in Aboriginal society, and author of Sorcerers and healing spirits, a study of change in the medical system of the Yolngu.
Diane Smith is an anthropologist who made a special study of the lives of Aboriginal women and their families while staying on an outstation of Aurukun, Cape York Peninsula. She has studied at the University of Queensland and at the Australian National University, and worked for a short time for the Northern Land Council. She is now a consulting anthropologist recording Aboriginal sites of significance and helping to sort out problems of land tenure.
