‘You are … my anthropological children’: AP Elkin, Ronald Berndt and Catherine Berndt, 1940–1956

Abstract

Ronald and Catherine Berndt were Australian anthropology's most well-known and prolific practitioners in the period after AP Elkin - a period from about 1950 until their respective deaths in 1990 and 1994. The two met in Elkin's rooms in April 1940 and married the following year. Their intellectual and personal debt to Elkin was enormous, which they recognised. But it was also a burden, one that they attempted to shake off for the rest of their professional lives. This paper, by focusing on Ronald and Catherine Berndt, examines the role of patronage in the academy as a way of elucidating the formation and shaping of the discipline of anthropology in Australian universities in the period 1940 to 1956, the year when Ronald Berndt obtained a position as senior lecturer in anthropology in the University of Western Australia. During this period Elkin, Professor of anthropology, managed to obtain research funding for the Berndts, occasional employment in the Sydney Department of Anthropology as well as sending them to the London School of Economics to do their PhDs, and finally obtaining a position for Ronald as lecturer in the University of Sydney. HD Skinner at Otago (New Zealand) promoted Catherine and it was he who encouraged her to attend Sydney. Due to University regulations she was unable to obtain a tenured position. Professional anthropology in Australia had such a small base that a patron like Elkin was critical to success. The Berndts were not the brightest and best of Elkin's students - a fact acknowledged by Elkin - yet they went on to accept his mantle as the authorities on all matters to do with Aboriginal Australia and Aboriginal Studies. Academic brilliance does not necessarily secure a position and/or success in the academy, a fact Elkin had observed earlier: 'anthropological field work in Australia does not demand brilliance in examinations'.