Nancy Bowers taught Social Anthropology at The University of Auckland from 1972 through to her retirement about 1993. Before coming to Auckland from the U.S. she had taught at Duke University in North Carolina and at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. Her Phd was gained at Columbia University in New York under Margaret Mead. During her studies, she was said to have integrated by force of personality, and confrontation, a New York pub which did not welcome women. Her research field was the Hagen area of highland Papua New Guinea, and along with Ralph Bulmer, Max Rimoldi, and Robin Hide in the 1970s she established Papua New Guinea studies at Auckland. Her field of special expertise there and generally in the Pacific was ethnobotany, complementing Ralph Bulmer’s studies in ethnozoology.
In the 1970s Nancy brought her mother, paralysed with a stroke in New Jersey, to New Zealand to nurse through to her death a few years later. Nancy herself had only a couple of cousins left, scattered in the U.S. However, she had a whole clan in PNG outside Hagan. Her clan brother Pundia with his family visited us in Auckland for several months, and became well-known around the University. Nancy got him a job with the gardeners, who teased him for shameless rate-breaking. One of the first things he had done upon arriving in Auckland was to get a colourful tattoo of a naked lady the length of his black and muscular arm, and later regaled all listeners with tales of war in the Highlands, showing off his spear scars to Tuhoe in Ruatahuna, as well as the New Caledonian Hotel on upper Symonds Street. Nancy was later bereft when Pundia died of malaria in the Highlands, but kept in close touch with his family.
Nancy was chosen by her students at Auckland as an outstanding teacher, and was known among the many graduates she supervised as an inspiring and unpretentious lecturer, encouraging and tirelessly supportive of their research goals. Her lectures were earthy, anecdotal, and undramatically iconoclastic, her stubborn smoker’s cough eased by continual sips of cough medicine (she had lost one lung to cancer at age 18, but was characteristically undeterred and continued smoking). Her office, overflowing with a clutter of books and field paraphernalia, was open to her students at all hours. Nancy was notoriously staunch in speaking truth to power, and was avoided by those in the University who liked to wield their authority. She did not mince words, especially four-letter ones, with either students or vice-chancellors. Through the mid- and late 1980s she was one of the so-called gang-of-four who attempted, quietly from within, to reform Social Anthropology, the founding and dominant section of the Department.
About 1993 Nancy decided to retire, and we were all taken by surprise that she was already 65 years old. She continued to live in her remodeled state house in Sandringham, involved with graduate students and friends especially from New Guinea, Fiji, and Tonga. By August 2000 she had decided to move back to the U.S., to live in Jacksonville, Florida with Donald Blake, an old boyfriend and another research botanist.
Although she was contemptuously impatient with any expression of sympathy or offer of assistance, Nancy’s spine had begun to deteriorate from the radiation treatment her lungs had received in her youth, and she was losing control of one leg. Donald had lost a leg in an accident as a young man, and together they made a good team. When Lois and I visited them in Jacksonville in 2003, it was clear that Nancy had again fallen deeply in love, and Donald was a very happy man. In July 2005 they moved to live with Donald’s nephew’s family in Schenevus, New York, and Nancy again had a family around her. She had actually finally stopped smoking, and her cough disappeared. The New York winter was not as severe as she had feared. Her new family had become very close, and sitting with her once asked if she knew how much they loved her; she blushed, and said yes, she did. Knowing this, those of us who thought of Nancy as crusty, might now know better. However, early this January she discovered she had colon (not lung) cancer. She declined rapidly and died at home, from a lung clot, surrounded by her new family on 29 January, aged 78 years.
A few days before she died, calling from Great Barrier Island Lois and I were able to talk with Nancy in the hospital. In response to Lois’s query how she was doing, she responded quietly that she was dying. I urged her to be kind to the nurses, and got a chuckle out of her. She said she had been able to contact her old friend Father Joe at the Kiripia Mission in Hagen, PNG. She had long admired his impartiality in clan conflicts, and when in the Highlands frequently visited him at the Mission. Any momentos or donations in Nancy’s name should be sent to Father Joe there in care of the Divine Word Missionaries.
commentary by Steven Webster, Social Anthropology, The University of Auckland 1972-1998.
