The Indomitable Miss Pink: a Life in Anthropology.

Gray, Geoffrey

The Indomitable Miss Pink: A Life in Anthropology Julie Marcus University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2001, xv + 340 pp, ISBN 0868405477

Reviewed by Geoffrey Gray, AIATSIS

The Indomitable Miss Pink is a sympathetic portrait of Olive Muriel Pink--watercolourist, botanist, anthropologist, activist and advocate, scourge, indefatigable letter writer, loyal friend, radical and conservative, pursuer of truth and justice, and eccentric. She was a woman of fierce principle and determination, if not outright stubbornness, in her advocacy of what she perceived were Aboriginal interests. Her unwillingness to play the political game and her forthrightness did not, however, make her an effective lobbyist for the causes she held dear. Pink's life falls into three main phases: the first was her youth in Tasmania, her training as an artist at the Julian Ashton School of Art, and her working life in Sydney as a draftswoman; the second phase began with her study of anthropology; and the third, with her return to Alice Springs in 1944, lasted until her death. But, above all, Pink was indomitable! The book is therefore more than 'a life in anthropology', although it was anthropology that changed Pink's life (p. 53).

Pink came to anthropology late, in her mid-40s. She was introduced to anthropology by Daisy Bates, whom she stayed with at Ooldea, in central South Australia, in 1926. Like most who wanted to practise anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s, she had to attend the University of Sydney, which had the only department of anthropology in Australia. She was taught by Raymond Firth, who encouraged her to study anthropology, and Camilla Wedgwood. By the time she had completed her Diploma in Anthropology and was ready to undertake fieldwork, the somewhat intellectually narrow and authoritarian AP Elkin had assumed the chair.

Marcus makes Pink uncannily modern. Her views, often unacceptable to others interested in Aboriginal affairs then, are now, in Marcus' opinion, prescient--Pink's 'prophetic modernity'--which is the book's leitmotif. Examples of this modernity were her objecting strongly 'to Aboriginal artifacts, paintings and ground paintings being treated as art objects outside their ritual context and...to these designs being used by European artists as decorative motifs' (p. 208)--legal and moral copyright; she railed against citizenship for Aboriginal people because she believed it would be a corrosive assault against Aboriginal people (pp. 7-8, 29)--self-determination; she fought for the recognition of Aboriginal customary law, award wages, and reserves (especially her 'Walpiri secular reserve') free of both mission and government interference; her 'likening of assimilation to apartheid was considered extreme, a dangerous nonsense, but today moderate Aboriginal activists make precisely her point'; she opposed the removal of children from their families, 'whether full-blood or of mixed descent', as 'forced, unconscionable and utterly uncivilised' (p. 5).

In her advocacy of 'human rights', Pink, so argues Marcus, was ahead of her time: 'she [Pink] reasoned that freedom and dignity came from basic human rights--rights to freedom of expression, for example, to freedom of religion and association, freedom to live where one chooses, freedom to be heard, and the rights to be paid for work...[T]hese principles and her understandings of the nature of Aboriginal society and Aboriginal moral codes' formed the basis for her assessment of policies, proposals and actions involving Aboriginal people. 'Of each proposal she would ask: would this be what Aboriginal people would really want for themselves if they knew all the facts? And does this particular proposal infringe those basic humanitarian (sic) rights to which every single Aboriginal person is entitled?' (p. 4).

The biography is strong and insightful on the academic limitations imposed on Pink during her lifetime, but less concerned with her time-bound limitations. What Marcus identifies as Pink's 'prophetic modernity' is more complex than she wishes to convey. What is lacking in most of these assertions is an historical and political context. Was Pink prescient, working against the grain, or representing various ideas of the time in her own peculiar and particular way? In answering this I focus on the way she dealt with 'secret knowledge' and confidentiality. Like many other anthropologists, Pink had concerns over the treatment of material, especially secret material, obtained during fieldwork. Anthropologists, by the very nature of the discipline, were, and are, placed in tricky situations. What were (are) the responsibilities of anthropologists to their informants, to their science, to their career and such like?

As the 1930s drew to a close, and Pink realised that her career as an anthropologist funded by the Australian National Research Council was ending, she gave considerable thought to the future of her field notes. These deliberations were sparked, in part, by her learning that a fellow research worker, TGH Strehlow, whom she intensely disliked and distrusted, had decided to hold back secret material from publication. Could she seal her notes for 50 years and thus keep trust with her 'informants'? Placing an embargo on field notes is uncommon among anthropologists (although Ronald and Catherine Berndt are notable exceptions). It was contrary to Elkin's belief that all material should be made available, at least to him: 'I must read them and ask them [researchers] further questions to elucidate points if necessary...All of us who do field work are under obligation to do this. If we publish secret totemic material in scientific journals, we shall not do any harm to our native friends...Do not contemplate sealing up your material. Prepare it for publication. To increase our understanding of the natives will not only add to scientific knowledge, but will help them. We must make people understand that the Aborigines had (sic) a deeper life than that usually attributed to them' (Elkin to Pink, 21 July 1937).

But Pink was not buying Elkin's argument. She was concerned that 'anyone can read it anywhere in the world...People on mining fields and on cattle stations could (and do) buy scientific books (and that not to help blackfellows!) and so read about totemic matters about which from the full-bloods themselves, they would know nothing--under any circumstances whatever...[B]y publishing it or showing as manuscript etc--breaking 'in spirit'--(even if not in the empty shell of 'the letter')--the conditions under which it was given. That of implicit trust in one's honour and friendship and as confidential matter' (Pink to Elkin, 31 March 1938). The New Zealand anthropologist Reo Fortune made similar protestations in the late 1920s about the potential misuse of information by government against the interests of colonised peoples, the people who had befriended him.

The ANRC argued that the collection of Pink's records 'was made possible by grants made by the ANRC from funds placed at its disposal by the Rockefeller Foundation for anthropological work'. Hence, they would 'only approve' of the arrangement if records were placed in the hands of 'the approved custodian' on the understanding 'that it be handed to the ANRC or its successor on a date to be named' (ANRC to Pink, 21 September 1938). Elkin initially objected to her plan, 'but after having a long discussion with Miss Pink as to the nature of the material she was storing, I advise that permission be given. The matter stored consists mainly of linguistic records of myths and descriptions of certain rites, but mainly the former, and such tabulation is not Miss Pink's strong point. The general principles of the secret life as far as she was able to obtain have been written up by her in her report which she has presented to me. I do not think that we will lose anything by agreeing to the request. In any case we must appreciate the qualms of conscience in this matter. Every earnest fieldworker experiences the same. Miss Pink has made the period fifty years so that it will be of no interest to her then (sic), also because most of the Aborigines with whom she is personally concerned will have passed away' (Elkin to ANRC, 10 August 1938).

This view is, to my mind, a somewhat harsh and dismissive assessment but not without some justification. Nevertheless, it seems these records were not placed in 'safe custody' through the ANRC but ended up with Tom Wright, a union official and friend of Olive Pink. Their present whereabouts are unclear.

In the particular matter of placing an embargo on her field notes, Pink acted against the grain. Yet future control of this cultural knowledge was not vested by her to her informant's descendants; rather, time was made the controlling factor. Does this indicate that Pink assumed her knowledge to be of no importance to the descendants, of limited value other than an historical record of the past cultural life of the Warlpiri and Arrernte? Did she share with many of her contemporaries the idea that Aboriginal (tribal) culture was on the road to extinction? Was she both a critic of contemporary academic practices and a 'child of her time'?

Historians are devotees of the paper trail, which in this biography is sadly inadequate. References are often poorly sourced, incorrect, transposed, omitted, or misquoted. There are also irritating errors. For example: making CLA Abbott Administrator of the Northern Territory in 1949 when he was retired in 1946 (p. 257); making Bovril rather than Vesteys the owners of Wave Hill (p. 263); TGH Strehlow's parents were never Australian citizens; Kaberry did not 'do work in Africa under Malinowski' (pp. 68, 312), and such like. There are also unexplained gaps such as the surprising neglect of Pink's attitudes to people of mixed descent: 'mixed bloods' were 'certainly neither by descent nor culture 'ABORIGINES'. ONLY full bloods are that' (Pink to Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 1939).

Nonetheless, despite the shortcomings--some of which might reflect more on the parlous state of academic editing than it does on the skill of the author--this is a book which should be read. Of course, it is a biography sympathetic to its subject to the point of bias; it accepts Pink's view uncritically, but it covers an important period in the development of anthropology in Australia, highlights the difficulties of working as an anthropologist, especially one as committed as Pink, discusses the problematic of advocacy and scholarship, as well demonstrating how hard it was to obtain and develop a career in anthropology. Julie Marcus has worked hard over a long period of time to (re)-introduce Pink and her achievements to a wider public. This biography is passionate and will ignite passions in the reader.