Zohl de Ishtar

Zohl de Ishtar (born 1953) is an Irish-Australian sociologist, anti-nuclear activist and feminist. Founder of Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific and the Kapululangu Women's Law and Culture Centre, she has campaigned for peace throughout her career. In 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Biography De Ishtar was born in Adelaide in 1953. She was awarded an MA by Macquarie University, and an MPhil by the University of Sydney. Whilst there she started the Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (WWNFIP) movement in the UK. The organisation campaigned to raise awareness amongst British peace activists about the issues facing colonized Pacific countries.

From 1999 to 2001 she was the founder and director of the short-lived Kapululangu Women's Law and Culture Centre in Wirrimanu, where she lived and worked alongside Aboriginal women. In 2003 she was awarded a PhD from Deakin University, based on her research in Wirrimanu.

Reception De Ishtar's book Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women’s Law is based on her experience of living with the Kapululangu community, and was described by Amanda Kearney, as a work which attempted to "demystify life in Aboriginal communities and illuminate some of the points of engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians". However Kearney felt that the book still contributed to the exoticisation of "Indigenous people and their ways of living" and that it did not centre Kapululangu voices and perspectives enough.

Personal life De Ishtar lives in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women's Law (2005, Spinifex Press)

Articles

Dé Ishtar, Zohl. "Striving for a common language: A white feminist parallel to Indigenous ways of knowing and researching." Women's Studies International Forum. Vol. 28. No. 5. Pergamon, 2005. De Ishtar, Zohl. "Living on the ground research: steps towards white women researching in collaboration with Indigenous people." Hecate 30.1 (2004): 72–82. De Ishtar, Zohl. "Poisoned Lives, Contaminated Lands: Marshall Islanders Are Paying a High Price for the United States Nuclear Arsenal." Seattle J. Soc. Just. 2 (2003): 287. De Ishtar, Zohl. "‘War, Violence, Terror, Genocide’-The Pacific Experience." Sociological Research Online 4.2 (1999): 44–49.