Cirrus@Austlit

'Geoffrey Gray’s (2008:114–15) remarks on Daisy Bates’ scientific achievements call for a biographer’s response — on her behalf and on behalf of the late Isobel White. My assertion that Bates ‘pioneered anthropological fieldwork’ (Reece 2007:9) was based on White’s chapter in Marcus’ collected essays on women anthropologists (White 1993:58–61). White’s editing of Bates’ manuscript, ‘The Native Tribes of Western Australia’, had given her an intimate knowledge of her modus operandi: a self-taught researcher who picked the brains of the experts to inform her ethnographic work. In her introduction to the edited version, White remarked that ‘while C Strehlow, Howitt, R H Mathews, John Mathew, Spencer and Gillen describe marriage rules, ceremonies, mythology and beliefs, Mrs Bates writes of everyday behaviour…she gives us a much more vivid picture of Aboriginal life than previous workers’ (Bates 1985:20–1). White did not claim, however, that Bates’ work ‘became the template for modern anthropological fieldwork’ (Gray’s words), which he attributes to Spencer and Haddon. Gray has set up a straw woman by misrepresenting White’s evaluation.' (Introduction)