Name Catherine Berndt | ||
Books The World of the First Australia, Pheasant and Kingfisher, The Speaking Land: Myt, The aboriginal Australians, When the World was New: In R | ||
Catherine Helen Berndt, née Webb (8 May 1918 – 12 May 1994), born in Auckland, was an Australian anthropologist known for her research in Australia and Papua New Guinea. She was awarded in 1950 the Percy Smith Medal from the Univ. of Otago, New Zealand and in 1980 she also received a children's book award and medal for her book, Land of the Rainbow Snake, a collection of stories from Western Arnhem Land.
Berndt published valuable monographs on Aboriginal Australia, including Women's Changing ceremonies in Northern Australia (1950). She authored over 36 major publications about women's social and religious life in Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea plus a dozen co-authored publications with others.
For this work, Berndt was elected to the Honorary Fellows of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. She was also the 7th woman elected as a Fellow in the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
With her husband Ronald Berndt, C. Berndt collected indigenous art works of Australia and Asia. The collection is conserved in the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, founded by the couple in 1976 (University of Western Australia). C. Berdnt was first author of the monograph The Aboriginal Australians: The First Pioneers and second author of Arnhem Land: Its history and its people.
She died in 1994.