- Entry type: Person
- Entry ID: AWE0041
Pink, Olive Muriel
(1884 – 1975)- Nationality Australian
- Born 17 March, 1884, Hobart Tasmania Australia
- Died 6 July, 1975, Alice Springs Northern Teritory Australia
- Occupation Anthropologist, Botanical artist
Summary
Olive Pink was a botanical artist and anthropologist who campaigned for the rights of Aboriginal people. She was one of few women anthropologists working in a male dominated field in the 1930s and 1940s. Pink positioned herself as an expert on Aboriginal people and campaigned from this basis in her criticism of government officials, missionaries and pastoralists.
Details
Educated in art at Hobart Technical College. Pink worked at the Public Works Department and later the Railways Commission of New South Wales. She studied anthropology at Sydney University with the Workers’ Educational Association and became secretary to the Anthropological Society of NSW. In 1926 & 1927 she travelled to Ooldea on the Transcontinental Line, SA. There she created many of her early drawings of desert flora.
Pink spent much time in the Northern Territory, living first with Arrernte and Warlpiri people and settling eventually in Alice Springs. She was a prolific correspondent, writing many letters to government departments and the press, particularly to represent her beliefs about Aboriginal people and her views on their better treatment by the government. Historian Julie Marcus suggests that Pink eventually lost faith in the potential of Anthropology to assist Aboriginal people, and abandoned the discipline later in life.
In 1955 she applied for the reservation of an area of land on the eastern bank of the Todd River as a flora reserve. In 1956 the Australian Arid Regions Flora Reserve of 20 hectares was gazetted. Pink and her gardener Johnny Jambijimba Yannarilyi developed the garden, where Pink lived until her death. The garden was then renamed the Olive Pink Flora Reserve, and now contains over 300 of Central Australia’s plant species.
Published resources
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Resource Section
- Guide to the Norman B. Tindale Archives:, South Australian Museum, 2000, http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindale/HDMS/338-4.htm
- Pink, Olive Muriel (1884-1975), Marcus, Julie, 2006, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160004b.htm
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Resource
- Papers of E.W.P. (Ernest William Pearson) Chinnery (1887-1972), National Library of Australia, http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/0766.html
- Significant Tasmanian Women: Olive Pink (1884-1975), Early Anthropologist, Aboriginal Rights Activist and Botanical Artist, Women Tasmania, 2001, http://www.women.tas.gov.au/significantwomen/search/olivepink.html
- Papers of Sir Paul Hasluck (1905- ), National Library of Australia, 2001, http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/5274.html
- Trove: Pink, Olive M (1884-1975), http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-473797
- Where are the Women in Australian science?, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, 2003, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/wisa/wisa.html
- Book Section
- Journal Article
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Book
- Imagined destinies : Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880-1939, Russell McGregor, 1997
- Yours truly, Olive M. Pink, Marcus, Julie, 1991c
- The Indomitable Miss Pink: A Life in Anthropology, Marcus, Julie, 2001
- Talkin' up to the white woman : Aboriginal women and feminism, Moreton-Robinson, Aileen, 2000
- First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, Marcus, Julie; Lepervanche, Marie de; McBryde, Isabel; Prior, Mary Ellen Murray; White, Isobel; Morris, Miranda; O'Gorman, Anne; Marcus, Julie and Cheater, Christine, 1993
- Journal
- Edited Book
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Site Exhibition
- The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, Smart, Judith and Swain, Shurlee (eds.), 2014, http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders
Archival resources
- Northern Territory Archives Service
- National Library of Australia, Manuscript Collection
- Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Australian National University
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National Archives of Australia, Northern Territory Office
- Flora and fauna reserve Alice Springs - Miss Olive PINK - General correspondence
- Alice Springs Native Flora Reserve Olive Pink
- Miss Olive Pink /secular Sanctuary Granites Tanami District
- Flora and Fauna Reserve. Alice Springs (Miss Olive Pink - General correspondence)
- Native Flora Reserve Olive Pink
- Miss Olive Pink. Application for permit to enter Aboriginal Reserves General Correspondence
- National Archives of Australia, National Office, Canberra
- South Australian Museum Archives
- University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection
- National Library of Australia
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AIATSIS Manuscript and Rare Books Collection
- A patron and a friend : Olive Pink and J.B. Cleland
- Warlpiri vocabulary slips / by Olive Pink, c1934
- Letter, Miss Olive Pink to T.G.H. Strehlow, 8th September, 1946
- Papers of Olive Muriel Pink
- On policies for the Northern Territory Aborigines : an open letter, no.4
- Collection of letters, documents, interview transcripts from [depositor's] collection on Ooldea closure and the Maralinga tests
- ACT Heritage Library