Born Roberta Barkley Patterson in Townsville, Queensland, Sykes was raised by her mother and purportedly never knew her father. Sykes says in her autobiography that his identity is unknown, and her mother told her a number of different accounts about her father. Variously that he was Fijian, Papuan, African-American and Native-American.
Harvard University.
She was a lifelong campaigner for indigenous land rights, as well as human rights and women"s rights. Although she fought hard for Australian Aboriginal rights, she herself is not of Australian Aboriginal descent. Sykes was, controversially, expelled from school aged 14 and, after a succession of jobs, including a nurses assistant at the Townsville General Hospital from 1959 to 1960.
She moved to Brisbane and then to Sydney in the early to mid-1960s where she worked as a strip-tease dancer at the notorious Pink Pussycat Club, 38a Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross under the stage name, of "Opal Stone".
She became a freelance journalist and got involved in several national indigenous activist organisations. She was one of the many protestors arrested at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in July 1972.
She was involved in the creation and early development of the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service, although other participants say that her autobiography exaggerates her role in this. Sykes received a Doctor of Philosophy in Education from Harvard University in 1983.
She was the first black Australian to graduate from a United States university.
She returned to Australia where she continued her life as an activist and was appointed to the Nation Review, as Australia"s first (presumed) indigenous columnist. In 1994 her role was recognised when awarded the Australian Human Rights Meda Sykes"s died in Sydney in November 2010.
1982: Patricia Weickert Black Writers Award.
