Roberta Sykes



Roberta "Bobbi" Sykes (16 August 1943 Townsville, Queensland, Australia–14 November 2010 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) was an Australian poet and author. She was a life-long campaigner for indigenous land rights, as well as human rights and women's rights.

Early life and education
Born Roberta Barkley Patterson in Townsville, Queensland, Sykes was raised by her mother and purportedly never knew her father. Sykes says in her autobiography that his identity is unknown, and her mother told her a number of different accounts about her father; variously that he was Fijian, Papuan, African-American and Native-American.

Early activism
Sykes was, controversially, expelled from school aged 14 and, after a succession of jobs, including a nurses assistant at the Townsville General Hospital from 1959 to 1960. She moved to Brisbane and then to Sydney in the early to mid-1960s where she worked as a strip-tease dancer at the notorious Pink Pussycat Club, 38a Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross under the stage name, [pseudonym] of "Opal Stone". She became a freelance journalist and got involved in several national indigenous activist organisations. She was one of the many protestors arrested at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in July 1972. She was involved in the creation and early development of the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service, although other participants say that her autobiography exaggerates her role in this.

Poetry
Sykes's early poetry was published in 1979 in the book Love Poems and Other Revolutionary Acts. The first edition was limited to a thousand copies (with the first 300 numbered and signed). A mass market edition was published in 1988. Her second volume of poetry was published in 1996. In 1981 she ghosted the autobiography of Mum (Shirl) Smith, an indigenous Australian social worker in New South Wales. She won the Patricia Weickert Black Writers Award in 1982.

Harvard and later activism
Sykes received a PhD in Education from Harvard University in 1983. She was the first black Australian to graduate from a United States university. She returned to Australia where she continued her life as an activist and was appointed to the Nation Review, as Australia's first (presumed) indigenous columnist. In 1994 her role was recognised when awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal.

Sykes's three-volume autobiography Snake Dreaming was published between 1997 and 2000. The first volume won The Age Book of the Year 1997 and the 1998 Nita Kibble Literary Award for women writers.

Recognition

 * 1982: Patricia Weickert Black Writers Award
 * 1994: Australian Human Rights Medal
 * 1997: Age Book of the Year for Snake Cradle
 * 1998: National Biography Award for Snake Cradle
 * 1998: Nita B. Kibble Literary Award for Snake Cradle

Publications

 * Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions (Cammeray: The Saturday Centre, 1979)
 * Mum Shirl: An Autobiography (with Colleen Shirley Perry) (Melbourne, 1981)
 * Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989) ISBN 0-7022-2173-2
 * Eclipse. (Queensland, Australia: Univ of Queensland Press, 1996) ISBN 0-7022-2848-6
 * Incentive, Achievement and Community (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1986)
 * Black Majority (Hawthorn, Australia: Hudson, 1989) ISBN 0-949873-25-X
 * Murawina: Australian Women of High Achievement (Sydney: Doubleday, 1993) ISBN 0-86824-436-8
 * Snake Cradle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997) ISBN 1-86448-513-2
 * Snake Dancing (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998) ISBN 1-86448-513-2
 * Snake Circle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000) ISBN 1-86508-335-6