An Interesting Career to Follow

LESTER RICHARD HIATT, libertarian, anthropologist, sometime dentist and golfer, died suddenly in England on February 10. Les was born in Gilgandra, New South Wales, on December 30, 1931. He attended Hurlstone Agricultural High School; from there he went to the University of Sydney where he completed a dentistry degree before embarking on Anthropology and Philosophy. In 1963 he was awarded a PhD for his thesis on the Gidjingarli people of northern Arnhem Land, subsequently published as Kinship and Conflict. From 1971 to 1991 he was Reader in Anthropology at Sydney University.

He was a Foundation Member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (formerly the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies) and was the Institute’s President and Chairman of Council from 1974 to 1982. Since 1998 Hiatt had been an Honorary Visiting Fellow at AIATSIS and in 1990- 91 was Visiting Professor in Australian Studies at Harvard University. Hiatt has also held the honorary positions of President, Anthropological Society of New South Wales (1966-67); Chairman, Committee of Inquiry into the Role of the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (1976); President, Section 25, ANZAAS (1982); and Chairman, Fifth International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Darwin (1988). In addition he held the honorary editorial positions of Co-Editor, Mankind (1967–72); Assistant Editor, Oceania (1978–85); Co-Editor, Oceania (1985–91); Editor, Oceania Monographs (1982–91). Hiatt became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1964, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia in 1974.

His retirement was spent playing golf, writing and engaging in public debate. He produced Arguments About Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Anthropology in 1996, and with Kim McKenzie a CD and book People of the Rivermouth: The Joborr Texts of Frank Gurrmanamana (2002). His last publication was a short paper, “Who Wrote Ten Canoes?” in Quadrant last November.

He was described by the anthropologist Francesca Merlan of the ANU, a longtime colleague and friend of Les, as Australia’s most senior scholar of traditional life and social organisation. His almost fifty years of activity in Australian anthropology:

focused on a range of research topics including local organisation, politics, kinship and marriage, conflict, sexuality, myth and symbolism. He was a dedicated inquirer, meticulous scholar, clear and compelling writer, a colleague of unparalleled integrity, and a principled researcher who maintained relationships over the span of his career with people at Maningrida, his main field site from 1958.

He recalled that he got away to a false start: “By the time I was completing my dental undergraduate career in 1952, I was determined, if at all possible, to do two things: to complete dentistry, but to get out of it as soon as I could.” In 1954 he started an Arts degree at night and worked as a dentist part-time. The following year he spent a year at Bourke as a dental assistant, amongst the white people. There he met Betty Meehan, whom he subsequently married. Betty and he returned to Sydney. He continued his Arts degree majoring in Anthropology and Philosophy. His life was set on a different course.

There was however a moment when Les thought that dentistry might be okay. In his second year he attended a course on the Australian Aborigines given by A.P. Elkin, Professor of Anthropology. He recalled:

A good deal of prominence was given to the kinship theory, which Elkin expounded on a blackboard with charts that became more and more convoluted, and by the end of my first year of anthropology I had come close to deciding that this was too much for me. If anthropology was Aboriginal kinship, then maybe dentistry wasn’t so bad after all.

The following year John A. Barnes replaced A.P. Elkin as Professor of Anthropology and, as Les recalled, all the students realised that a new broom had arrived.

After graduating in 1957 he was accepted, the following year, at the Research School of Pacific Studies in the ANU. His doctoral thesis was a turning point in his intellectual career. His first fieldwork was at the recently established settlement of Maningrida. His thesis, later published as Kinship and Conflict: A Study of an Aboriginal Community in Northern Arnhem Land (1965) was the first systematic study of disputes in an Aboriginal community. Francesca Merlan reminds us that it focused on the politics of kinship and marriage as fundamental issues of social control and conflict, themes which resonated with Les’s philosophical and personal interests in libertarianism, freedom and social regulation. His interest in libertarianism was brought about in part by his interest in the philosophy of John Anderson and the social and philosophical theories of the Libertarian Society, which in a sense Anderson had spawned.

Les’s intellectual and moral courage was apparent in his writing, fearlessly challenging conventional views and never afraid to work against the grain. He inserted his voice into the debate about Mutant Messenger Down Under, a New Age-inspired fabrication by an American author about Aboriginal life and culture, fiercely attacked by the Dumbartung people it claimed to describe. In an article in Quadrant (“A New Age for an Old People”, June 1997) Hiatt argued that despite its misrepresentations at least it portrayed Aboriginal people in a positive light. In 2003 he published War against Iraq: Interim Reflections on Moral Justifications, in which he argued that the war against Iraq was immoral. In 2007 he returned to more familiar ground when he wrote “The Moral Lexicon of the Warlpiri People of Central Australia” (Australian Aboriginal Studies).

A short autobiographical piece—“It Seemed an Interesting Career to Follow”—can be found in Geoffrey Gray (ed), Before It’s Too Late (Oceania Monograph, no. 51, 2001). An interview with Les Hiatt, recorded and filmed by Alan Macfarlane on July 14, 2005, for Cambridge University, can be found at https:// www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/67104. In June 2007 Les deposited his papers at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

After retirement he lived mainly in England—his children had moved there—returning annually to Australia for extended stays. A short time before his death he moved to Stroud, Gloucestershire, the English county from where his grandfather had migrated to Australia. He is survived by four long-term partners (Betty Meehan, Margaret Clunies Ross, Ursula Smilde and Judy Barbour); by his adult children with Margaret, Alfred and Christina, and granddaughter Rhiannon; and his two brothers, Ron and Geoffrey, who live in Australia.

His wit and humour, his good grace, generosity of spirit and intellectual fearlessness will be missed by us all.

Dr Geoffrey Gray is Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra. His book A Cautious Silence: The Politics of Australian Anthropology was published last year by AIATSIS