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Article Excerpt
News of the death of Les Hiatt in England on 14th February 2008 came to me on an AAS circular message. It was an odd way to hear about the passing of someone who was such a significant figure in my life. Even though I had not seen much of Les in later years, we had exchanged emails and correspondence, particularly over his CD-Rom Project, People of the Rivermouth: the Joborr Texts of Frank Gurrmanamana (2002) and I thought of him often as I struggled with my own late-career development, especially as I distanced myself from anthropological work in Australia and more so as I became one of that doubtful breed, 'management'. Les, like many others, probably did not approve. He maintained a life-long commitment to his 'field' and refused to follow an academic career path which would take him away from it. This meant lost opportunities for him--and others. I often wonder what might have happened had Les taken the Chair of Anthropology at Adelaide University as was once proposed. Still, had he done so he would have felt even more acutely the dissatisfaction shared by so many as Universities changed into hybrid educational corporations whose practices and approaches are determined largely by Government agencies. As it was, Les experienced growing dissatisfaction in the University environment which sometimes led him to take provocative positions in his own workplace and elsewhere.
I am not attempting here an assessment of the vast corpus of Les's work. The IATSIS Bibliography displays the remarkable range of Les's academic writings. (1) Some of his other contributions can be located readily by an Internet search, but a number are less accessible. Some papers he gave in public contexts were unpublished, and may perhaps be found in his private materials. In the Festschrift published by the Institute after Les's retirement from the University of Sydney (Scholar and Sceptic: Australian Aboriginal Studies hi Honour of L.R. Hiatt, 1997) some of the directions of his work are taken up, especially by his students, although there is no attempt at coveting the full range of Les's work, where it came from or what it implied. A full analysis of Les's intellectual contributions remains a tantalising, if daunting, challenge.
Les Hiatt touched many people profoundly, not always comfortably. Here I want to give some insight into Les, in part to offer a kind of thanks to him which I wish I had done before he died, and in part to offer a brief glimpse into some aspects of his engagement with a changing world which others will no doubt be able to amplify from numerous, not always consistent, points of view.
When I began anthropology in 1962 at Sydney University 1 really had no idea what it was about. My first love was English literature and poetry. I wasn't thinking about making a living but I hoped I could become a writer. Anthropology was something to fill up the program. By the end of first year, things had changed in the English department, and anthropology, compared with the pieties of the Leavisites, seemed quite compelling. In second year, individual teachers came into focus. It was an exciting time: fantastic discoveries in Australian prehistory were being made by the Sydney group (among them Richard Wright and later Rhys Jones). Everyone did both prehistory/archaeology and anthropology. Digging in the middens south of Sydney opened up windows on Australia and its early habitation which induced dizzying perspectives. Living Aboriginal people were present too. Mervyn Meggitt, renowned for his work among the Walbiri of the Western Desert, was still in the Sydney department and Les Hiatt had recently returned from 'the field" in remote Maningrida, northern Arnhem Land. Anthropology at that time was largely populated by transplanted English academics, who displayed a certain ponderous seriousness befitting their responsibilities to educate the colonials. Mervyn and Les, however, were friendly, funny and very Australian. Les was married to Betty Meehan, and Betty and I found ourselves in the same classes in anthropology and archaeology. We became firm friends.
These were the heady days of the Sydney Push--latter days, it must be said, when many of the early figures had left the scene and increasingly diverse people were drawn into its ambit. University people joined others--writers, artists and general hangers-on, spending a great deal of time drinking, arguing and producing ephemeral writing, published in broadsheets. Les contributed several papers to the Libertarian Broadsheet, and edited a volume called The Sydney Line in 1963. This occasional journal was produced courtesy of Nestor Grivas, editor of the Hellenic' Herald, who occupied a basement on a corner of Oxford Street Paddington from which numerous pamphlets and contentious material issued. Another of Les's early papers, 'Violence in animals and early man' was published in the occasional journal, Heraclitus, in 1965.
Among the diverse group who met frequently and argued often were writers Frank Moorhouse and Michael Thornhill, Roelof Smilde who later became Les's brother-in-law when Les married Roelof's sister Ursula, Jim Staples, Liz Fell, Bob Ellis, Wendy Bacon, Germaine Greer, Darcy Waters, Jill Burnett. George Molnar, fan Bedford, Andre Frankovits, Albie Thorns, Terry McMullen, Cam Perry, Gordon Barton, Paddy McGuiness, Margaret Fink, Lynne Segal, and...
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