Diane Elizabeth MacEachern Barwick was born April 29,1938 in Canada. Her parents were Beatrice Rosemond O'Flynn and Ronald Bernard "Bear Tracks" MacEachern. Most of Diane's younger years were spent in remote British Columbia logging camps where her father worked. It was through correspondence that Diane and her sister, Edna, received their early education. Diane's father later worked as boss logger and superintendent at the Woss Camp on Vancouver Island.
Diane attended the University of British Columbia in the late 1950's where she earned her BA (Honours) degree in Anthropology. "The Logging Camps as Subculture" was the topic of her honours essay. She spent five months doing fieldwork in six Englewood Valley mining camps, studying "the occupational identity among loggers and their families in the camps of Vancouver Islands". She later made note of the similarities between the close knit logging communities and the Aboriginal communities.
She moved to Australia from Canada in 1960 where she received her Ph.D. from the Australian National University . While working on her doctorate, she focused mainly on aboriginal communities in Victoria. Diane had the opportunity to work with many aboriginal people while attending Australian National University and later while attending the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies. Diane tried unsuccessfully for years to gain an academic position at the Australian National University. She did manage to work there in temporary positions as a tutor and a lecturer between 1974 and 1982.
Diane was the co-founder of the journal Aboriginal History, which she also edited for a period of time. Throughout her career, Diane tried to understand the traditional and contemporary aspects of aboriginal life. At the same time she had to fight against prejudice and injustice for the aboriginal people. In 1984 Diane published a journal article “Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian clans, 1835-1904”, which was a major reference for a project she began right before her death. The project was to map all the local aboriginal groups in Victoria. The article she wrote was the first section of the project. Diane started to write the second section, but she did not get to finish it.
Diane was married to zoologist Richard Barwick, who was a strong supporter of her anthropological work. They had one child in 1973, Laura Eden Barwick. Diane Barwick died just days short of her forty-eighth birthday, on April 4, 1986, of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Some of her publications include:
Handbook for Aboriginal and Islanders History (1979) Edited by Diane Barwick, Michael Mace, and Tom Stannage
Making a Treaty: The North American Experience (1982) Diane Barwick for the Aboriginal Treaty Committee
Fighters and Singers, The Lives of Some Australian Aboriginal Women (1985) Edited by Isobel White, Diane Barwick, Betty Meehan
Rebellion at Coranderrk (1998)
Aboriginal History. Special Volume (1988)
Hagen, Rod, Ethnographic Information and Anthropological Interpretations in A Native
The Yorta Yorta Experience, www.netspace.net.au/~rodhagen/ANU%202.html, (December 2001)
Former link, www.arts.monash.edu.au/cais/ekulin/sour/about.htm, (December 2001)
Former link, www.monash.edu.au/cais/support/schools.htm, (December 2001)
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/guides/barw/BARPOOL.htm
Written By: Michelle Imes, 2001