Author: Daisy Bates

Daisy Bates (1859–1951) was an Irish-Australian journalist, welfare worker, and lifelong student of Australian Aboriginal culture and society. Her most significant contribution to literature is her seminal work “The Passing of the Aborigines, ” a book that documents her experiences and observations of Indigenous Australian life. Bates spent many years in the Australian outback, particularly in the Western Australian and South Australian regions, where she studied the customs, languages, and lifestyle of Aboriginal Australians. Her work, although criticized for its sometimes unscientific approach and the author”s personal biases, provides a detailed and comprehensive account of numerous Indigenous cultures on the brink of drastic change due to European settlement. Bates”s methods, which included living in camps and learning different Aboriginal languages, allowed her to compile information on rites, social organization, and mythology, which would have otherwise been lost to time, and fostered an ethos of preservation over assimilation. She is often remembered for her dedication to the people she studied and worked with, despite the controversies surrounding her methods and perspectives. Her passion for Aboriginal welfare and her writing on the subject have left a complex but critical legacy in the records of Australian history and anthropology.