Ann Dunham

1.1. Birth and Family

Dunham was born as Stanley Ann Dunham on November 29, 1942, at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kansas. She was the only child of Madelyn Lee Payne and Stanley Armour Dunham. Her parents, both Kansas natives, met and married in Wichita on May 5, 1940. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, her father joined the United States Army, and her mother worked at a Boeing plant in Wichita.

Dunham's ancestry was predominantly English, with smaller proportions of Scottish, Welsh, Irish, German, and Swiss-German heritage. Notably, she was a sixth cousin, five times removed, of Wild Bill Hickok. Furthermore, Ancestry.com claimed in 2012, based on historical documents and yDNA analysis, that her mother was descended from John Punch, an African slave in 17th-century colonial Virginia. Despite her masculine given name, which she stated was given because her father wanted a son (though relatives dispute this, suggesting her mother named her after a sophisticated character in a film), she was known as Stanley throughout her childhood and adolescence. She later adopted her middle name, Ann, when she began college.

The family moved frequently after World War II. They relocated from Wichita to California while her father attended the University of California, Berkeley. In 1948, they moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma, then to Vernon, Texas, and later to El Dorado, Kansas. In 1955, they settled in Seattle, Washington, where her father worked as a furniture salesman and her mother became a bank vice president. They resided in an apartment in the Wedgwood neighborhood, and Ann attended Nathan Eckstein Junior High School.

1.2. Education and Formative Years

In 1957, Dunham's family moved to Mercer Island, a suburb of Seattle, so she could attend the newly opened Mercer Island High School. There, teachers Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman greatly influenced her, teaching the importance of challenging social norms and questioning authority. Dunham embraced these lessons, reportedly feeling no pressure to date, marry, or have children. Classmates described her as "intellectually way more mature than we were and a little bit ahead of her time, in an off-center way." One friend called her "the original feminist," noting that she was knowledgeable and progressive: "If you were concerned about something going wrong in the world, Stanley would know about it first. We were liberals before we knew what liberals were." During high school, she immersed herself in "reading beatnik poets and French existentialists."

Her father, Stanley Armour Dunham, was also a close friend of the prominent poet, writer, and journalist Franklin Marshall Davis. Conservative figures in the U.S. later unbasely claimed that Davis was Barack Obama's biological father, but such claims are widely recognized as baseless criticisms. Despite this, Dunham maintained a friendly relationship with Davis after her separation from him, respecting him as a close friend of her father.

2.1. First Marriage: Barack Obama Sr.

While attending a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, Dunham met Barack Obama Sr., who was the university's first African student. Obama Sr., then 25, had come to Hawaii to pursue his education, leaving behind a pregnant wife, Kezia, and an infant son in his hometown of Nyang'oma Kogelo, Kenya. Despite opposition from both families, Dunham and Obama Sr. were married on the Hawaiian island of Maui on February 2, 1961. Dunham was three months pregnant at the time. Obama Sr. eventually informed Dunham about his first marriage in Kenya but falsely claimed he was divorced, a fact she discovered years later. His first wife, Kezia, later stated that she had consented to his second marriage, in accordance with Luo customs.

On August 4, 1961, at the age of 18, Dunham gave birth to her first child, Barack Obama, in Honolulu. After his birth, Dunham studied at the University of Washington in Seattle from September 1961 to June 1962, living as a single mother with her son in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Her husband continued his studies in Hawaii. Upon graduating from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, Obama Sr. left for Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin graduate studies at Harvard University in the fall of 1962. Dunham returned to Honolulu in January 1963, resuming her undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii. During this period, her parents provided significant help in raising young Barack. Dunham filed for divorce in January 1964, which Obama Sr. did not contest.

2.2. Second Marriage: Lolo Soetoro

At the East-West Center in Honolulu, Dunham met Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese surveyor who had come to study geography at the University of Hawaii on an East-West Center grant in September 1962. Soetoro graduated with an MA in geography in June 1964. In 1965, Soetoro and Dunham married in Hawaii. Soetoro returned to Indonesia in 1966. After graduating from the University of Hawaii with a B.A. in anthropology on August 6, 1967, Dunham moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, with her six-year-old son in October of the same year to rejoin her husband.

In Indonesia, Soetoro initially worked as a low-paid topographical surveyor for the Indonesian government, then in the government relations office of Union Oil Company. The family first lived in Menteng Dalam, South Jakarta, for two and a half years, where her son attended the local Indonesian-language Santo Fransiskus Asisi (St. Francis of Assisi) Catholic School. In 1970, they moved to Matraman Dalam, Central Jakarta, where her son attended the Indonesian-language government-run Besuki School. On August 15, 1970, Soetoro and Dunham had a daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro.

In Indonesia, Dunham supplemented her son's education with correspondence courses in English, recordings by Mahalia Jackson, and speeches by Martin Luther King Jr.. In 1971, she sent young Obama back to Hawaii to attend Punahou School from 5th grade, choosing for him not to remain in Indonesia. Her mother, Madelyn Dunham, who had become one of the first two female vice presidents at the Bank of Hawaii in 1970 after a decade of work, helped pay the substantial tuition, with additional assistance from a scholarship.

In August 1972, Dunham and her daughter moved back to Hawaii to reunite with her son and for Dunham to commence graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her graduate work was supported by grants from The Asia Foundation (August 1972 - July 1973) and the East-West Center Technology and Development Institute (August 1973 - December 1978).

Dunham completed her coursework for an M.A. in anthropology in December 1974. After three years in Hawaii, she returned to Indonesia in 1975, accompanied by her daughter Maya, to conduct anthropological fieldwork. Her son chose to remain in Honolulu, completing high school at Punahou School while living with his grandparents. Lolo Soetoro and Dunham divorced on November 5, 1980. Lolo Soetoro later married Erna Kustina in 1980 and had two more children. He died on March 2, 1987, at age 52, due to liver failure.

Dunham maintained good relationships with both of her ex-husbands and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. She was known to be a woman who prioritized her research, even spending years in Indonesian villages while her children were cared for by her parents in Hawaii, demonstrating her deep commitment to her academic pursuits.

2.3. Children

Ann Dunham had two children:

• Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961), who became the 44th U.S. President.
• Maya Kassandra Soetoro (born August 15, 1970), a Hawaii-based teacher and author.

3.1. Higher Education

Dunham pursued her higher education at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where she earned three degrees in anthropology:

• Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in August 1967.
• Master of Arts (M.A.) in 1974.
• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in August 1992.

She also attended the University of Washington in Seattle from 1961 to 1962, focusing on history during her time there.

3.2. Research Interests

Dunham's research interests were diverse yet interconnected, focusing primarily on economic anthropology and rural development. She was particularly interested in:

• Craftsmanship, weaving, and the role of women in cottage industries.
• Women's work on the island of Java, Indonesia.
• Traditional blacksmithing practices in Indonesia.
• The socio-economic dynamics of village industries.

Her anthropological fieldwork aimed to address the pervasive issue of poverty in rural communities, analyzing how local industries functioned and how they could be supported to foster economic growth and empowerment.

3.3. Doctoral Dissertation

On August 9, 1992, Dunham was awarded her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, under the supervision of Professor Alice G. Dewey. Her dissertation, a comprehensive 1,043-page work, was titled "Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia: Surviving and Thriving Against All Odds."

Anthropologist Michael Dove described the dissertation as "a classic, in-depth, on-the-ground anthropological study of a 1,200-year-old industry." According to Dove, Dunham's work challenged popular perceptions regarding economically and politically marginalized groups. She countered the notions that the roots of poverty lie solely with the poor themselves or that cultural differences are primarily responsible for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West.

Dunham's research in Central Java revealed that the villagers she studied had many of the same economic needs, beliefs, and aspirations as their Western capitalist counterparts. She observed that village craftsmen were "keenly interested in profits," and that entrepreneurship was "in plentiful supply in rural Indonesia," having been "part of the traditional culture" for over a millennium. Based on these observations, Dr. Dunham concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital and its politically influenced allocation, rather than cultural factors. She critiqued anti-poverty programs that overlooked this reality, noting that such programs could inadvertently exacerbate inequality by channeling resources through village officials, who then used the funds to reinforce their own status.

3.4. Publications

Dunham authored several professional papers and reports reflecting her research and insights:

• Civil rights of working Indonesian women (1982)
• The effects of industrialization on women workers in Indonesia (1982)
• Women's work in village industries on Java (1982)
• Women's economic activities in North Coast fishing communities: background for a proposal from PPA (1983)
• BRI Briefing Booklet: KUPEDES Development Impact Survey (1990), co-authored with Roes Haryanto.
• Pendekar-pendekar besi Nusantara: kajian antropologi tentang pandai besi tradisional di Indonesia_{Nusantara iron warriors: an anthropological study of traditional blacksmiths in Indonesia}^Indonesian (2008), co-authored with Yuliani Liputo and Andityas Prabantoro, a translation of her dissertation.

4.1. Rural Development and Microfinance

Dunham was a pioneering figure in the field of rural development and microfinance. She developed and implemented microcredit programs aimed at poverty alleviation and economic empowerment for rural communities. Her work with organizations like the USAID involved creating these programs, which provided small loans to the poor without requiring collateral. While at the Ford Foundation, she developed a microfinance model that became a standard in Indonesia, a country now considered a world leader in microcredit systems. Her work was instrumental in supporting the economic self-sufficiency of marginalized groups.

4.2. Work in Indonesia and Pakistan

Dunham's professional career spanned various influential organizations across Southeast Asia:

• From January 1968 to December 1969, she taught English and served as an assistant director at the Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika (LIA) - the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute in Central Jakarta, subsidized by the U.S. government.
• From January 1970 to August 1972, she taught English, headed a department, and directed the Lembaga Pendidikan dan Pengembangan Manajemen (LPPM) - the Institute of Management Education and Development in Central Jakarta.
• From June 1977 to September 1978, she conducted research on village industries in the Yogyakarta Special Region of Indonesia, supported by an East-West Center student grant.
• In May and June 1978, she served as a short-term consultant for the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Jakarta, providing recommendations on village industries for Indonesia's third five-year development plan (REPELITA III).
• From October 1978 to December 1980, Dunham was a rural industries consultant in Central Java for the Indonesian Ministry of Industry's Provincial Development Program (PDP I), funded by USAID and implemented through Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI).
• From January 1981 to November 1984, she was the program officer for women and employment in the Ford Foundation's Southeast Asia regional office in Jakarta. During this time, Peter Geithner, father of future U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner, headed the foundation's Asia grant-making.
• In 1986 and 1987, Dunham worked as a cottage industries development consultant for the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP) under the Gujranwala Integrated Rural Development Project (GADP). This project, in the Gujranwala District of Punjab, was funded by the Asian Development Bank and IFAD. She collaborated closely with the Lahore office of the Punjab Small Industries Corporation (PSIC).
• From January 1988 to 1995, Dunham served as a consultant and research coordinator for Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) in Jakarta, Indonesia's oldest bank, with her work supported by USAID and the World Bank. She applied her research to help develop what became the world's largest microfinance program.
• In March 1993, she was a research and policy coordinator for Women's World Banking (WWB) in New York, assisting WWB in managing the Expert Group Meeting on Women and Finance in January 1994, and helping the organization play prominent roles in the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995, as well as preceding UN regional conferences and NGO forums.

4.3. Advocacy for Women's Empowerment

Throughout her professional life, Dunham was a strong advocate for women's rights and economic independence. Her research focused on women's work in village industries, and her microfinance initiatives were specifically designed to empower women in developing countries by giving them access to capital and fostering their entrepreneurial spirit. She worked with leaders from organizations supporting Indonesian human rights, women's rights, and grassroots development. Her efforts with Women's World Banking further cemented her legacy in championing financial inclusion and empowerment for women globally.

4.4. Cultural Contributions

Dunham also had a deep appreciation for cultural arts. From 1968 to 1972, she was a co-founder and active member of the Ganesha Volunteers (Indonesian Heritage Society) at the National Museum in Jakarta. From 1972 to 1975, she was a crafts instructor in weaving, batik, and dyeing at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. A weaver herself, Dunham was drawn to the striking textile art of batik during her time in Indonesia and amassed a collection of diverse fabrics. This collection later became part of exhibitions, highlighting her appreciation for Indonesian cultural heritage.

5.1. Philosophical and Spiritual Outlook

Barack Obama described his mother in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, as "a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism" in a land where fatalism often served as a tool for enduring hardship. In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama noted that he "was not raised in a religious household," and his mother's experiences "only reinforced this inherited skepticism." While she had reservations about institutional religion, Obama also described her as "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I've ever known."

Her daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, clarified that her mother was an agnostic, not an atheist. Dunham encouraged her children to explore various spiritual texts, including the Bible, Hindu Upanishads, Buddhist scripture, and the Tao Te Ching, believing that "everyone has something beautiful to contribute." She saw Jesus as a wonderful example but was critical of Christians who, in her view, acted in "un-Christian ways." Her philosophy of life, according to Maya, was "to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places."

Dunham's high school best friend, Maxine Box, recalled that Dunham "touted herself as an atheist" in her youth, engaging in arguments and comparisons, and "always challenging and arguing and comparing." This early intellectual curiosity set her apart.

5.2. Social and Political Views

Dunham was deeply committed to social justice, economic equality, and liberal ideals. She exemplified a progressive worldview, often being referred to as an "original feminist" and a "soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism." She strongly rejected racial and other forms of discrimination, emphasizing that a person's character should be valued over their race. Her work in rural development and microfinance directly reflected her belief in empowering the marginalized and addressing systemic inequalities.

5.3. Influence on Barack Obama

Barack Obama consistently acknowledged his mother's profound influence on his formative years and his political philosophy. He stated that she was "the dominant figure in [his] formative years," adding, "The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics." Her intellectual curiosity, skepticism, commitment to social justice, and global perspective greatly shaped his worldview.

Friends recalled Dunham's absolute confidence and belief in her son from an early age, proudly sharing his intelligence, academic success, courage, and adventurous spirit. Some even recounted her stating that her son could one day become the U.S. President, a testament to her deep faith in his potential. Hawaii held a special place for her, being where she met both of her husbands and earned her anthropology degrees, symbolizing her journey of love, family, and intellectual growth.

6.1. Diagnosis and Final Illness

In late 1994, while living and working in Indonesia, Dunham experienced severe stomach pain during dinner at a friend's house in Jakarta. An initial diagnosis from a local physician suggested indigestion. However, upon returning to the United States in early 1995, she sought further examination at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where she was tragically diagnosed with uterine cancer. By this time, the cancer had aggressively spread to her ovaries.

Her final months were reportedly complicated by financial worries regarding her medical care. She struggled with paperwork, medical bills, and insurance forms, particularly because her employer-provided disability insurance denied claims for uncovered expenses, citing her cancer as a pre-existing condition. While her health insurance covered most costs, she still faced hundreds of dollars in monthly deductibles and uncovered expenses.

6.2. Passing and Memorial

Ann Dunham moved back to Hawaii to live near her widowed mother, Madelyn Dunham. She died on November 7, 1995, just 22 days before her 53rd birthday. Following a memorial service held at the University of Hawaii, her son, Barack Obama, and daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, scattered her ashes in the Pacific Ocean at Lanai Lookout on the south side of Oahu. Years later, on December 23, 2008, weeks after his election to the presidency, Obama scattered his grandmother Madelyn Dunham's ashes in the same location.

Obama publicly addressed his mother's final illness in a 30-second campaign advertisement titled "Mother," advocating for health care reform. The advertisement featured a photograph of Dunham holding a young Obama, as Obama recounted her last days worrying about expensive medical bills due to a broken healthcare system. In a 2007 speech in Santa Barbara, California, he further elaborated, "I remember my mother. She was 52 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn't thinking about getting well. She wasn't thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn't sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it's like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it's wrong. It's not who we are as a people."

7.1. Academic Recognition and Publications

In September 2008, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa held a symposium dedicated to Dunham's research. In December 2009, Duke University Press published a revised and edited version of her 1992 dissertation under the title Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. The book was edited by her graduate advisor, Alice G. Dewey, and Nancy I. Cooper, with a foreword by Dunham's daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and an afterword by Boston University anthropologist Robert W. Hefner, who described her research as "prescient" and "relevant today for anthropology, Indonesian studies, and engaged scholarship." The book was officially launched at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia, featuring a special Presidential Panel on Dunham's work, which was televised by C-SPAN.

A substantial collection of Dunham's professional papers, including case studies, correspondence, field notebooks, lectures, photographs, reports, research files, research proposals, and surveys, documenting her dissertation research on blacksmithing and her professional work with organizations like the Ford Foundation and Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), are held in the collections of the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. In 2020, Smithsonian Magazine announced a project to digitize and transcribe her field notes, with public participation encouraged.

7.2. Cultural Impact and Media Portrayals

In 2009, an exhibition of Dunham's collection of Javanese batik textiles, titled A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama's Mother and Indonesian Batiks, toured six museums across the United States, concluding at the Textile Museum of Washington, D.C., in August.

Her life and work have also been the subject of several biographical works and media portrayals:

• A major biography titled A Singular Woman was published in 2011 by Janny Scott, a former New York Times reporter.
• Filmmaker Vivian Norris's feature-length biographical film, Obama Mama (La mère d'Obama), premiered on May 31, 2014, as part of the 40th annual Seattle International Film Festival.
• In the 2016 film Barry, a dramatization of Barack Obama's life as an undergraduate, Dunham was portrayed by Ashley Judd.
• On January 1, 2012, President Obama and his family visited an exhibition of his mother's anthropological work displayed at the East-West Center.

7.3. Endowments and Scholarships

To honor her contributions and enduring legacy, several educational funds and scholarships have been established in Ann Dunham's name:

• The University of Hawaii Foundation created the Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment, which supports a faculty position within the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
• The Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships provide funding for students associated with the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
• In 2010, the Stanley Ann Dunham Scholarship was established for young women graduating from Mercer Island High School, Dunham's alma mater, awarding numerous college scholarships in its first six years.

7.4. Enduring Influence

Ann Dunham's lasting legacy spans the fields of microfinance, rural development, and anthropology, where her work continues to be studied for its insights into economic empowerment and cultural dynamics. Her profound influence on her son, Barack Obama, further amplified her impact, as her values and life experiences shaped his public life and political career. On November 11, 2010, for her research on women's role, socio-economic empowerment, and microcredit in rural villages, the Government of Indonesia awarded the Bintang Jasa Utama, Indonesia's highest civilian award, in her name, which was received by her son. This prestigious award recognizes individuals who have made notable civic and cultural contributions.