Olive Pink (1884-1975) was an unconventional anthropologist, a staunch advocate of Aboriginal rights and an early proponent of the cultivation of the Australian indigenous plants that she loved to paint. Born in Hobart, she moved to Sydney in 1914 where she studied anthropology at the University of Sydney under Professors Ronald Firth and A.P. Elkin. She travelled extensively in central Australia, lived in remote areas with both Arrernte and Walpiri people, and caused much controversy within the anthropological profession.
Olive Pink's ardent political activism brought her into conflict with missionaries, pastoralists and her anthropological colleagues, while her sustained letter-writing campaigns made her the scourge of the public servants and administrators responsible for the wellbeing of Aboriginal people. She watched and harassed them continuously, trying to shift attitudes and shape policy.
In The Indomitable Miss Pink: A life in anthropology, Julie Marcus traces Olive Pink's life from Hobart to Alice Springs, untangling the myths through which she is remembered in Australia's Aboriginal and settler communities.
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Julie Marcus is an anthropologist and writer. Her doctoral research investigated the relationship between Islam and women's lives in urban Turkey; later work focused on how race, gender and sexuality appeared in public discussions of social life in Australia. She is the author of The Indomitable Miss Pink: A life in anthropology, a family memoir, The Flavour of Her Years: Culinary memories of Mother and domestic life in the 1950s, plus several edited volumes.
ISBN 9780957776654
CATEGORY Biography/Autobiography/True Stories
IMAGES Black-and-white illustrations throughout
PAGE COUNT 400
DIMENSIONS 236 x 171 mm