Irish-Australian lesbian Dr Zohl dé Ishtar is the author of Daughters of the Pacific and editor of Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation. 

These books contain histories of peoples’ immense suffering and courageous resistance against colonialism, which were told to her by Indigenous Pacific and Australian women. Having worked with Indigenous Australian and Pacific women and their communities since 1979, Zohl has visited twenty-seven countries as a political activist campaigning for the eradication of colonialism in all its forms. 

Diagnosed with cancer in 1991 she established LesCan, Australia’s first lesbian cancer support group. In 1995 she sailed to Moruroa to protest French nuclear testing with the New Zealand Peace Flotilla. In 1998-99, as the Oceania representative for the International Peace Bureau, she coordinated the Pacific delegation (twenty delegates representing eight nations) to the Citizen’s Centennial end-of-millennium social justice conference in The Hague. 

In 1999 she took up residence in Wirrimanu on the edge of Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert where she lived intimately with the women elders assisting them to establish the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre. This experience was the subject of her PhD for which she was awarded Deakin University’s Isi Liebler Prize for “advancing knowledge of racism, religious or ethnic prejudice” and furthering “multiculturalism and community relations in Australia”.

In 2005 Zohl was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as a part of the 1000 Women for Peace campaign celebrating the courage, vision and resilience of women throughout the world who actively and passionately dedicate their lives to fostering peace and social justice in their communities. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Queensland’s Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.