Robert Tonkinson (born 1938, died 2024) was a retired Australian Social Anthropologist. He was born in Perth, Western Australia. He was appointed to his Chair as Professor of Anthropology in 1984 [1] to succeed the Foundation Professor of Anthropology, Professor Ronald M. Berndt University of Western Australia, Nedlands, 1963–1981 and, on Bob's retirement, he was appointed Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, West Australia.
Tonkinson received a Master of Arts for his thesis "Social structure and acculturation of Aborigines in the Western Desert" [2] and a PhD with his thesis "Da:wajil : a Western Dsert Aboriginal rainmaking ritual", [3] both from the University of Western Australia.
In 1973–1975, following an assistant professorship at the University of Oregon, Tonkinson and his wife Dr Myrna Tonkinson [4] conducted studies with Aboriginal people of the Western Desert, under grants from the Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. [5]
Myrna Tonkinson was closely associated with the Cobourg Peninsula Land Claim of 1979, with Nicolas Peterson supplying anthropological material in support of the claim. [6]
He was Editor of Anthropological Forum from 2000 to 2011.
Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology is the sacred spirituality represented in the stories performed by Aboriginal Australians within each of the language groups across Australia in their ceremonies. Aboriginal spirituality includes the Dreamtime, songlines, and Aboriginal oral literature.
Mervyn John Meggitt was an Australian anthropologist and one of the pioneering researchers of highland Papua New Guinea and of Indigenous Australian cultures.
The Ngarrindjeri people are the traditional Aboriginal Australian people of the lower Murray River, eastern Fleurieu Peninsula, and the Coorong of the southern-central area of the state of South Australia. The term Ngarrindjeri means "belonging to men", and refers to a "tribal constellation". The Ngarrindjeri actually comprised several distinct if closely related tribal groups, including the Jarildekald, Tanganekald, Meintangk and Ramindjeri, who began to form a unified cultural bloc after remnants of each separate community congregated at Raukkan, South Australia.
Makassar people from the region of Sulawesi in what is now known as Indonesia began visiting the coast of Northern Australia sometime around the middle of the 18th century, first in the Kimberley region, and some decades later in Arnhem Land. They were men who collected and processed trepang, a marine invertebrate prized for its culinary value generally and for its supposed medicinal properties in Chinese markets. The term Makassan is generally used to apply to all the trepangers who came to Australia.
Norman Barnett Tindale AO was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist.
The Ramindjeri or Raminjeri people were an Aboriginal Australian people forming part of the Kukabrak grouping now otherwise known as the Ngarrindjeri people. They were the most westerly Ngarrindjeri, living in the area around Encounter Bay and Goolwa in southern South Australia, including Victor Harbor and Port Elliot. In modern native title actions a much more extensive territory has been claimed.
The Western Desert cultural bloc is a cultural region in central Australia covering about 600,000 square kilometres (230,000 sq mi), used to describe a group of linguistically and culturally similar Aboriginal Australian nations.
The Tingari (Tingarri) cycle in Australian Aboriginal mythology embodies a vast network of Aboriginal Dreaming (tjukurpa) songlines that traverse the Western Desert region of Australia. Locations and events associated with the Tingari cycle are frequently the subject of Aboriginal Art from the region.
Fay Gale AO was an Australian cultural geographer and an emeritus professor. She was an advocate of equal opportunity for women and for Aboriginal people.
Ronald Murray Berndt was an Australian social anthropologist who, in 1963, became the inaugural professor of anthropology at the University of Western Australia.
Catherine Helen Berndt, néeWebb was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist known for her research in Australia and Papua New Guinea conducted jointly with her husband, Ronald Berndt.
The Berndt Museum of Anthropology is an anthropological museum in Perth, Western Australia, founded in 1976 by Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt. The Berndt Museum is currently located with the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery on the western side of the University of Western Australia's Crawley campus.
Professor Jon Charles Altman is a social scientist with a disciplinary focus on anthropology and economics. He is an emeritus professor of the Australian National University currently affiliated to the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU. He was the founding director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University and then a research professor there until 2014 when he retired. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. From 2008 to 2013 he was an Australian Research Council Australian Professorial Fellow. In late 2015 Altman moved to Melbourne to take up an appointment from 1 February 2016 as research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University.
Makiri is a location in the northwest of South Australia, where a rock hole and an Aboriginal outstation are located. It is in the Great Victoria Desert, between Kaltjiti and Watarru. It is an important sacred site for the tjala Dreaming, a women's law of the local Aboriginal people. Much of the site was desecrated by a surveying team in 1969. It was officially declared a Prohibited Area by the South Australian government in 1973, as an "important Aboriginal mythological and cultural site".
The Jarildekald people, also known as Yarilde or Yaralde, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia originating on the eastern side of Lake Alexandrina and the Murray River.
Keiadjara, also rendered Kiyajarra, were an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
The Antakirinja, otherwise spelt Antakarinya, and alternatively spoken of as the Ngonde, are an indigenous Australian people of South Australia.
Wurrwurrwuy stone arrangements is a heritage-listed indigenous site at Yirrkala, Northern Territory, Australia. It is also known as Wurrwurrwuy. It was added to the Northern Territory Heritage Register on 15 August 2007 and to the Australian National Heritage List on 9 August 2013.
Anthropological Forum (AF) is a scientific journal in anthropology and comparative sociology. It was founded in 1963 by Ronald Berndt: at the University of Western Australia and is sponsored by the Berndt Museum of Anthropology in Perth. In its early years of existence, it published widely on Aboriginal Australian issues, but has since developed to include anthropological studies of all cultural and geographical areas as well as on a wide range of theoretical issues.
Isobel Mary White (1912–1997) was an English-Australian anthropologist whose publications beginning in the 1960s concentrated on the role of women in Aboriginal societies in Australia.