Deborah Bird Rose (1946-2018) was an Australia-based ethnographer of Aboriginal peoples. She was an ecological, multi-species ethnographer and leader in multidisciplinary ethnographic research.
Early years
Born in 1946, Deborah Bird Rose was the eldest of four siblings (Betsy, Mary, Martha, and Will) growing up in Seattle, Washington; Rock Springs, Wyoming; Salem, Oregon; Salem, Massachusetts' and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France. By the early 1970s Rose was attending the University of Delaware, where she worked as a research assistant and helped teach within the university's Department of Anthropology, in 1973 completing a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology.
From 1973 to 1974, Rose was a coordinator of and teacher at the Women's Education Collective of the Women's Resource Centre in Newark, Delaware. In 1977, she completed a Master of Arts in anthropology at Bryn Mawr, and for a brief period in 1979 lectured on cultural and social change at Trenton State College, New Jersey.
By 1980 Rose had enrolled in a PhD program at Bryn Mawr College and obtained a National Science Foundation grant to undertake research on the Aboriginal Australian community of Yarralin, Northern Territory. Rose also obtained an Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies grant to study and research the cultural identity of Aboriginal peoples at Yarralin.
Ethnographic fieldwork
From September 1980 to July 1982, Rose conducted twenty-two months of immersive ethnographic research within the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities of Yarralin and Lingarra, observing and interviewing mostly Ngaringman and Ngaliwurru speakers who had otherwise lived the whole of their lives on Anglo-Australian owned cattle stations. Rose participated in, photographed, and learned about their public ceremonial life, women's secret ceremonial life, and daily life in town and in the bush.
From this initial period of ethnographic research, Rose learned that local Aboriginal peoples of the Victoria River District "possess their own exegesis of cosmos and humanity," also known in Australian Aboriginal English as the Dreaming, and, in 1983–84, she obtained a grant from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies to write about and report on "the religious identity of the Aboriginal peoples of the Victoria river," culminating in her 1984 Bryn Mawr College PhD dissertation:
In 1984 Rose presented some of her doctoral findings on the Yarralin peoples' religion and religious identity to the Australian Association for the Study of Religions, with a summary paper entitled "Consciousness and Responsibility in an Australian Aboriginal religion" which was later included in W.H. Edwards' Traditional Aboriginal Society: A Reader (1987). Rose's ethnography eventually became an influential Australian anthropological book entitled Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture, published first by Cambridge University Press in 1992 and winning the Stanner Prize for a work on Aboriginal issues.
Postcolonial histories
One reviewer of Dingo Makes Us Human observed: "The author’s research is an example of [a] wave of anthropological writing, with [an] emphasis on community involvement, ownership and control." Rose herself said: "My Aboriginal teachers were particularly interested in sharing the history of colonisation with outside readers – especially with white Australians and Americans."
At the same time as she submitted her dissertation, in 1984, Rose submitted for publication the first of the Aboriginal histories she learned while undertaking her ethnographic fieldwork, entitled The Saga of Captain Cook: Morality in Aboriginal and European Law (1984). It was followed shortly afterwards with Ned Lives! (1986), later reissued as Ned Kelly Died for our Sins (1994), then Remembrance (1986) and Signs of Life on a Barbarous Frontier: Intercultural Encounters in North Australia (1998), all published during a stint as a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's History Department writing the Yarralin Aboriginal teachers' Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River, and Wave Hill stations, North Australia (1991).
Rose also saw Aboriginal teachers, elders, and historians Humbert Tommy Nyuwinkarri and Hobbles Danayarri formally acknowledged in The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia (1994), also seeing Danayarri included and acknowledged in the 1996 Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography and the 2007 Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Land rights
As a visiting fellow (1984–1988) with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS), whom had funded Rose's doctoral research, Rose collaborated with archaeologist and historian Darrell Lewis to co-author a paper on ethical issues for archaeologists recommending Aboriginal consultation methodologies (1985), document and assess the cultural significance of rock art in the Victoria River district (1987), and co-write a book about the latter entitled The Shape of the Dreaming: The cultural significance of Victoria River rock art (1988).
Rose and Lewis also researched, wrote, and provided expert opinion for the Kidman Springs/Jasper Gorge (1986) and Bilinarra (Coolibah-Wave Hill Stock Route) (1989) land claims under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
Later (1993–1998) as a fellow with the Australian National University's Darwin-based North Australia Research Unit, Rose undertook further statutory Northern Territory land rights work, including writing senior anthropological reports and providing expert opinion for the Kamu Country Land Claim (1993) and the Kenbi (Cox Peninsula) Land Claim on behalf of the Tommy Lyons Group (1995).
Rose played a major role in the Victoria and New South Wales Yorta Yorta Native Title claim in the 1990s, supporting the claimants against the Kennett ministry's intransigence.
Rose was also consulted by, and provided specialist anthropological advice to the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Justice Peter Gray, in relation to the Central Mount Wedge Land Claim (1998), Palm Valley Land Claim (1999), Alcoota Land Claim (2007), and the Wangkangurru Land Claim (2014).
Publications
Books
As author Rose, Deborah Bird and Darrell Lewis (1988). The Shape of the Dreaming: the Cultural Significance of Victoria River Rock Art. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. .
Rose, Deborah Bird, Kathy Devereaux, Margaret Daiyi, Linda Ford, April Bright and Sharon D'Amico (2002). Country of the Heart: An Australian Indigenous Homeland. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. .
Rose, Deborah Bird (2022). Shimmer: Flying Fox Exuberance in Worlds of Peril. Edinburgh University Press. .
As editor Rose, Deborah Bird, Thom van Dooren and Matthew Chrulew (2017). Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death, and Generations. Columbia University Press. . Gibson, Katherine, Deborah Bird Rose and Ruth Fincher (2015). Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene. New York: Punctum Books. . Rose, Deborah Bird and Richard Davis (2006). Dislocating the Frontier: Essaying the Mystique of the Outback. Australian National University Press. . Rose, Deborah Bird and Anne Clarke (1997). Tracking knowledge in Northern Australian landscapes: studies in indigenous and settler ecological knowledge systems. Australian National University Press. . Rose, Deborah Bird (1995). Country in flames: Proceedings of the 1994 symposium on biodiversity and fire in North Australia. Canberra: Biodiversity Unit, Australian National University. Rose, Deborah Bird and Tony Swain (1988). Aboriginal Australians and Christian missions: ethnographic and historical studies. Bedford Park: Australian Association for the Study of Religions. .
Selected articles and book chapters
References