Daisy Bates (author)

Daisy May Bates, CBE (born Margaret May O'Dwyer; 16 October 1859 – 18 April 1951) was an Irish-Australian journalist, welfare worker and self-taught anthropologist who conducted fieldwork among several Aboriginal groups in western and southern Australia.

Born in Country Tipperary, Ireland in 1859, Bates migrated to Australia in 1883 where she married three times (at least one of which was bigamous) and gave birth to a son. She returned to England in 1894 and worked as a journalist and editor. She migrated to Western Australia in 1899, where she bought a cattle station and developed an interest in the culture and welfare of Aboriginal Australians. She published a number of articles on Aboriginal issues and from 1904 to 1910 was employed by the Western Australian government to collect ethnographic information on the Aboriginal people of that state. Her research and field work was published posthumously in 1985 as The Native Tribes of Western Australia. Bates was appointed as a Travelling Protector of Aborigines in 1910 and continued to conduct research and welfare work among Aboriginal groups when this position ended in 1911.

In 1919, Bates moved to a remote camp in Ooldea, South Australia, where she lived for 16 years, conducting welfare work and field studies among the Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people and becoming a prominent participant in public debate on Aboriginal issues. Her life and work had come to the attention of the royal family and she was appointed C.B.E. in 1934. Bates moved to Adelaide in 1935 and spent most of the rest of her life in South Australia where she often continued to live with Aboriginal people. A series of semi-autobiographical articles, "My Natives and I", appeared in 1936 and were adapted into the book The Passing of the Aborigines, published in 1938. Her physical and mental health deteriorated in the 1940s and she died in a nursing home in Adelaide in 1951.

Bates is a controversial figure in the history of Indigenous Australians as well as in Australian history more broadly. Although she wrote sympathetically about Aboriginal society and welfare, commentators have criticised her for paternalistic attitudes which were often typical of her time. Scholars consider her anthropological work to include valuable ethnographic data on Aboriginal Australians, in particular the peoples of Western Australia. However, it has been criticised for inaccuracies and exaggerated and often erroneous claims about Aboriginal cannibalism. Her reliability has also been questioned due to false claims she made about her personal history.