[Linganth] Re : Daisy Bates and Aborigine dialects

[Timothy Mason]

I am wondering whether anyone knows anything about the linguistic
competence/reputation of the Australian journalist/anthropologist, Daisy
Bates. Bates claimed to have acquired 120 'Aborigine dialects', and I
would be interested to discover what this might mean in terms of being
able to understand what her respondents told her, and so on. Bates
relays a number of lurid tales of mothers eating their babies, and other
gruesome tales - could this be due to misunderstandings as Pickering
suggests it may have been in some other cases in which white observers
claimed to have discovered evidence of cannibalism.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason