It had been shown before the Commission that no anthropological work regarding the Ngarrindjeri, specifically Ronald Berndt's authoritative book "A World That Was," mentioned the existence of a secret life for Ngarrindjeri women. Cultural geographer Dr Jane Jacobs argued that these publications needed to be seen as a product of their times. In the case of Berndt, we are assuming a male anthropologist walking into an Aboriginal community in the 1940s got the truth. His enquiries were likely not directed towards secrets held by female members of the tribe. Connie Roberts, who was born in 1919 and was one of the elders who had passed the "women’s business" on to Doreen Kartinyeri, was asked about talking about such things with an anthropologist: "You can't. You're not supposed to talk about things like that. My parents told me, only the old people used to tell certain people."