Dr. Stanley Ann Dunham

DR. STANLEY ANN DUNHAM:AN EXTRAORDINARY WOMAN AND HER WORK Dr. Stanley Ann Dunham, also known as Ann Soetoro, has recently come to public awareness as a result of her son’s prominence. The late Ann Soetoro was the mother of presidential candidate, Barack Obama, and Hawai’i educator, Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng. This colloquium is not so much about that aspect of her life, important as it was, but rather about the lesser known research and consulting work that she did as an economic and applied anthropologist in many locations around the world. Her 1992 dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa was titled Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds. In that work as well as in her consultancies for the Ford Foundation and Bank Rakyat Indonesia, to mention a few, she was always eager to empower ordinary people struggling to make ends meet in the demanding contexts of developing countries in the 20th Century. For example, she developed a system of micro finance projects in Indonesia to help people engaged in cottage industries in rural areas to pull themselves out of poverty. Like those of so many accomplished women, Ann Soetoro’s contributions to Social Science and people in developing countries might have gone unsung except among those who knew and worked with her. This panel welcomes the opportunity to highlight some of the valuable contributions that Ann Soetoro made before her life was cut short by cancer. The Speakers: Dr. Alice G. Dewey, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology UHM, Bron Solyom (Curator of the Jean Charlot Collection at UHM), Dr. Nancy I. Cooper (Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, UHM) --with a special appearance by Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng--

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