Bates, Daisy May (1863 - 1951)

A self-taught anthropologist, Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia. She supported herself largely by writing articles for urban newspapers on such topics as 'native cannibalism' and the 'doomed' fate of Indigenous peoples. Bates also published her work on Indigenous kinship systems, marriage laws, language and religion in books and articles. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Aboriginal welfare work in 1934.

From 1899-1900 she was at the Trappist mission, Beagle Bay, north of Broome and in 1904 was appointed by the Western Australian government to research the tribes of the State. Bates was a member of an expedition led by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown to study the social anthropology of Aboriginal people of north-west Australia in 1910.

Over more than twenty years Bates camped at several locations in South Australia and Western Australia; Eucla, 1912-1914; near Yalata, 1915-1918; and near Ooldea, 1918-1934; She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Aboriginal welfare work on January 1, 1934. She was a member of the British Royal Anthropological Institute and the Australasian Anthropological Institute.

Bates wrote her autobiography 'My natives and I' in a tent at Pyap, South Australia, 1935-1940. This was serialised in The Adelaide Advertiser and later edited and published as The Passing of the Aborigines in 1938. Her articles appeared in several newspapers, including The Catholic Record, The Western Mail, The Adelaide Advertiser, and The Children's Newspaper.

She lived in Wynbring, east of Ooldea, South Australia from 1941 until old age and failing health led her to return to Adelaide in 1945, where she remained until her death in 1951.

Bates is remembered in an ambivalent light by Indigenous and non-Indigenous folk-lore, and has been represented in children's literature, theatre, film and opera. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Bates was given the affectionate name 'Kabbarli', meaning 'grandmotherly person'; the Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia records that Anangu people living at Yalata have referred to Bates as 'Daiji Bate mamu' ('mamu' meaning ghost or devil) and as 'that poor old lady at Ooldea.'

Related People

• Sutherland, Margaret (1897 - 1984)

  Margaret Sutherland's one-act opera 'The Young Kabbarli' was based on an incident from the life of Daisy Bates

Books

• Barbara Ker Wilson. Illustrated by Harold Thomas., Tales told to Kabbarli: Aboriginal legends collected by Daisy Bates, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1972. [ Details... ]
• Bates, Daisy, The passing of the Aborigines : a lifetime spent among the natives of Australia, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1966, 258 pp. [ Details... ]
• Bates, Daisy, 1859-1951. (compiled from statistics, records, etc., under the direction of the Registrar General), Efforts made by Western Australia towards the betterment of her Aborigines, Fred. Wm. Simpson, Government Printer, Perth, 1907, 31 pp. [ Details... ]
• Cobbers, Portraits of Australian women [sound recording], Bushland, Carlton, Vic., 1981. [ Details... ]
• Daisy Bates; edited by Isobel White, The native tribes of Western Australia, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1985, 387 pp. [ Details... ]
• Daisy Bates; edited by P.J. Bridge ; with an introduction by Peter Bindon, Aboriginal Perth and Bibbulmun biographies and legends, Hesperian Press, Carlisle, W.A., 1992. [ Details... ]
• Elizabeth Salter, Daisy Bates: "the great white queen of the never never", Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1971, 266 pp. [ Details... ]
• Elizabeth Salter, Daisy Bates, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, New York, 1971, 266 pp. [ Details... ]
• Ernestine Hill, Kabbarli: a personal memoir of Daisy Bates, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1973, 173 pp. [ Details... ]
• Julia Blackburn, Daisy Bates in the desert, Secker & Warburg, London, 1994, 232 pp. [ Details... ]

Book Sections

• Wright, R. V. S., 'Bates, Daisy May (1863-1951), welfare worker among Aboriginals and anthropologist', in Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 7, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 1979, pp. 208-209. [ Details... ]

Journal Articles

• Daisy Bates, 'The marriage laws and some customs of the Western Australian Aborigines', rnal of the Royal Geographical Society, no. 23, 1905. [ Details... ]
• Daisy Bates, 'Social organization of some Western Australian tribes', British Association for the Advancement of Science, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, Sydney, 1913. [ Details... ]
• Daisy Bates, 'Aborigines of the west coast of South Australia: vocabularies and ethnographical notes', Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia., no. 42, 1918. [ Details... ]

Online Resources

• Danuta Bois, 'Daisy May Bates', in Distinguished Women of Past and Present, 1998, http://www.DistinguishedWomen.com/biographies/bates-dm.html. [ Details... ]
• National Library of Australia, 'Papers of Daisy Bates', 2002, http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/0365.html. [ Details... ]

See also

• The Sphere: The Empire's Illustrated Weekly [London], November 10, 1934. [ Details... ]
• Adelaide, Debra, Australian women writers : a bibliographic guide, Title Australian women writers : a bibliographic guide / Debra Adelaide. Published, Pandora Press, London ; Sydney, 1988, 208 pp. [ Details... ]
• Andrew G. Taylor, Kabbarli: a film about Daisy Bates, 2002. [ Details... ]
• Anne Bartlett, Daisy Bates: keeper of totems, Reed Library - Cardigan Street, Carlton, Vic, 1997, 44 pp. [ Details... ]
• Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, 'Where are the Women in Australian science?', 22 August 2003, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/wisa/wisa.html. [ Details... ]
• Curtis, Allan, Kabbarli, Heinemann, Richmond, Vic, 1985, 61 pp. [ Details... ]
• Daniels, Kay, Uphill all the way, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1980, 335 pp. [ Details... ]
• Edna Tantjingu Williams and Eileen Wani Wingfield ; illustrated by Kunyi June-Anne McInerney, Down the hole, up the tree, across the sandhills : running from the State and Daisy Bates, IAD Press, Alice Springs, N.T., 2000, 48 pp. [ Details... ]
• Horton, David (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia : Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, society and culture, Aboriginal Studies Press for AIATSIS, Canberra, 1994, 2 v. (xxxiii, 1340 p.) pp. [ Details... ]
• Macklin, Robert, 100 great Australians, Currey O'Neil Ross, South Yarra, Vic., 1983, 248 pp. [ Details... ]
• Marcus, Julie; Lepervanche, Marie de; McBryde, Isabel; Prior, Mary Ellen Murray; White, Isobel; Morris, Miranda; O'Gorman, Anne; Marcus, Julie and Cheater, Christine, First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1993. [ Details... ]
• Popham, Daphne; Stokes, K.A.; Lewis, Julie, Reflections : profiles of 150 women who helped make Western Australia's history; Project of the Womens Committee for the 150th Anniversary Celebrations of Western Australia, Carrolls, Perth, Melbourne [etc.]:, 1979, 266 pp. [ Details... ]
• Russell McGregor, Imagined destinies : Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880-1939, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic, 1997, xiii, 313 pp. [ Details... ]
• Stewart, Michael, 'An evaluation of Daisy Bate's Passing of the Aborigines, London, John Murray Ltd., 1972', Identity, vol. 3, no. 8, 1978, pp. 34-35, 39. [ Details... ]