Jessie Street: Activism Without Discrimination

Abstract

This chapter explores the transnational career of the Australian activist Jessie Street. From the 1920s until the 1960s, Street worked tirelessly in the international networks of feminist, peace, and anti-colonial activism, respectively. As such, her career registered many of the transformations in transnational activists’ methods and objectives—and also their contradictions. Although commanding respect across both sides of the Iron Curtain, Street could not resolve Cold War divisions in the feminist and peace movements. Most notably, her advocacy for Australian Indigenous peoples’ rights drew on resources from anti-colonial liberation struggles, but Street never fully shed the maternalist premise for ‘protection’ of Indigenous peoples that was first forged in a colonial childhood.