AustLit

Rebecca Richards is an Adnyamathanha and Barngarla woman. She has an honours degree in anthropology from the University of Adelaide. In 2010 she became the first Indigenous Australian to win a Rhodes Scholarship. Prior to this she had completed a cadetship program at the National Museum of Australia, and had also undertaken a three month internship at the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington.

Her father, Leroy Richards, was a Adnyamathanha and Barngarla custodian and storyteller from the Flinders Ranges region of South Australia. Her interest in anthropology began at age 14, when she accompanied her father and South Australian anthropologist Philip Jones on fieldwork in the Flinders Ranges.