author
Yolanda Murphy
A Polish-born American anthropologist, she helped bring the lives of Indigenous communities in Brazil and the American West to a wide readership. Her work is still remembered for its close, human view of women’s lives and social worlds.
1 Audiobook
Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society
by Robert F. (Robert Francis) Murphy, Yolanda Murphy
About the author
Born in Poland on April 10, 1925, Yolanda Murphy became an American cultural anthropologist whose writing grew out of careful fieldwork and a strong interest in everyday social life. She is best known as the co-author, with her husband Robert F. Murphy, of Women of the Forest, a widely noted study based on research among the Mundurucu people of the Brazilian Amazon.
Murphy also wrote Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society, reflecting her research on Indigenous life in the American West. Across her work, she focused on how communities organize family life, labor, and culture, with special attention to women’s experiences.
She died on June 3, 2016. Her books remain part of anthropology’s classic reading for listeners and readers interested in culture, gender, and the lived realities behind academic theory.