Catherine H. Berndt Catherine H. Berndt i(A11538 works by) (a.k.a. Catherine Helen Berndt)
Born: Established: 8 May 1918 Auckland, Auckland (Region), North Island,
c
New Zealand,
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Pacific Region, ; Died: Ceased: 12 May 1994 Perth, Western Australia,
Gender: Female
Heritage: New Zealander
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BiographyHistory

Catherine Helen Berndt was an anthropologist who recorded and translated a number of Aboriginal stories, some of them in the form of poems. Daughter of J. McG. Webb, Catherine Berndt was born in Auckland, then her family moved to Wellington. She attended Victoria College, University of New Zealand, taking a degree in Classics (1939), and Otago University, before moving to Sydney to study Anthropology.

Here she met and married in 1941 fellow-Anthropology student, Ronald Murray Berndt (q.v.), with whom she was to collaborate for nearly fifty years in anthropological studies in Australia and in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. They studied the Aboriginal community at Ooldea, then looked at Aboriginal labour on some of the cattle stations in the north-west of the Northern Territory. Returning to Sydney they taught with Professor Elkin. In South Australia they studied the Aborigines of the Adelaide area, then began their life-long study of the Aborigines of Arnhem Land.

From 1953 to 1955, they studied at the London School of Economics, completing dissertations for their PhDs. In 1961, Berndt was a Foundation member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. In 1963, Ronald Berndt was appointed the founding Professor of Anthropology in the University of Western Australia, and he and Berndt made a number of field trips to Aboriginal communities throughout the state, and continued to visit Arnhem Land.

Following the Aboriginal traditional division of labour, Berndt worked on the status of women, marriage and family, religion and oral literature, while Ronald Berndt worked with the men on social organisation, myth and ritual. Berndt was interested in the relationship between the sexes and the way the sexes interacted for the stability of the community.

In 1984, Berndt was made an Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, and in 1987 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia. She won a number of awards for her anthropological work and, in 1980, won the NSW Premier's Literature Award. Together Catherine and Ronald Berndt had a considerable influence on the development of Australian anthropolgy and Aboriginal welfare. Ronald Berndt died in Perth in 1990, and Berndt died four years later.

Most Referenced Works

Affiliation Notes

  • Visited or worked in SA for a period

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon A World That Was : The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia Carlton : Melbourne University Press Miegunyah Press , 1993 Z190969 1993 anthology short story poetry

'This extraordinary book, written from material gathered over half a century ago, will almost certainly be the last fine-grained account of traditional Aboriginal life in settled south-eastern Australia. It recreates the world of the Yaraldi group of the Kukabrak or Narrinyeri people of the Lower Murray and Lakes region of South Australia.

In 1939 Albert Karloan, a Yaraldi man, urged Ronald Berndt to record the story of his people. Karloan and Pinkie Mack, a Yaraldi woman, possessed through personal experience, not merely through hearsay, an all but complete knowledge of traditional life. They were virtually the last custodians of that knowledge and they felt the burden of their unique situation. This book represents their concerted efforts to pass on their story to future generations.

A World That Was encompasses relations between and among individuals and clan groups, land tenure, kinship, the subsistence economy, trade, ceremony, councils, fighting and warfare, rites of passage from conception to death, myths and beliefs and practices concerning healing and the supernatural. Not least, it is a record of the dramatic changes following European colonization.'

Source: UBC Press website http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/index.html (Sighted: 24/01/2011)
1994 winner Stanner Award
y separately published work icon A World That Was : The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia Carlton : Melbourne University Press Miegunyah Press , 1993 Z190969 1993 anthology short story poetry

'This extraordinary book, written from material gathered over half a century ago, will almost certainly be the last fine-grained account of traditional Aboriginal life in settled south-eastern Australia. It recreates the world of the Yaraldi group of the Kukabrak or Narrinyeri people of the Lower Murray and Lakes region of South Australia.

In 1939 Albert Karloan, a Yaraldi man, urged Ronald Berndt to record the story of his people. Karloan and Pinkie Mack, a Yaraldi woman, possessed through personal experience, not merely through hearsay, an all but complete knowledge of traditional life. They were virtually the last custodians of that knowledge and they felt the burden of their unique situation. This book represents their concerted efforts to pass on their story to future generations.

A World That Was encompasses relations between and among individuals and clan groups, land tenure, kinship, the subsistence economy, trade, ceremony, councils, fighting and warfare, rites of passage from conception to death, myths and beliefs and practices concerning healing and the supernatural. Not least, it is a record of the dramatic changes following European colonization.'

Source: UBC Press website http://www.ubcpress.ubc.ca/index.html (Sighted: 24/01/2011)
1994 winner Stanner Award
y separately published work icon When the World Was New : In Rainbow Snake Land Gosford : Martin Educational , 1988 Z872038 1988 single work children's fiction Indigenous story children's
1986 commended Whitley Awards — Best Children's Book
VIEW ALL AWARDS
Last amended 12 May 2015 07:55:55
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