Audrey Butt Colson
Audrey Joan Butt Colson | |
---|---|
Born | Audrey Joan Butt 1926 |
Fields | Social anthropology |
Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Thesis | Systems of belief in relation to social structure and organisation (with reference to the Carib-speaking tribes of the Guianas) (1954) |
Known for | Study of the Amerindian peoples of Guyana, Brazil and Venezuela |
Influences | Edward Evans-Pritchard |
Influenced | Peter Rivière[1] |
Spouse | Robin Colson |
Audrey Joan Butt Colson (born 1926),[2] is a social anthropologist with a particular interest in the Amerindian peoples of Guyana, Brazil and Venezuela. She was, together with Peter Rivière, one of the pioneers of Amazonian anthropology at the University of Oxford.[3]
Part of the permanent endowment of the University of Oxford is a fund to support South American Amerindian Studies known as the Butt Colson Amerindian Studies Bequest.[4]
Contents
Oxford University
Audrey Butt studied at Oxford under Edward Evans-Pritchard, and carried out fieldwork among the Akawaio people in Guyana in 1951-1952 and in 1957, later broadening her study to include other Pemon and Kapon[disambiguation needed] groups in Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. She obtained the Diploma in Ethnology in 1949, the B.Litt. degree in 1950, and the D.Phil. in 1955. She then spent a year in Spain to learn Spanish in preparation for further fieldwork in South America.[5]
In 1956 she lectured on South American societies at Oxford's Department of Ethnology.[6]
Pitt Rivers Museum
The South American collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum contain 310 Amerindian objects donated by Butt Colson as a result of her fieldwork.[7] The museum also holds two reels of 16mm film shot by Bassett Maguire in 1952 and a BBC recording of Akawaio music and songs made in 1961, all produced with Butt Colson’s assistance.
Amerindian land disputes
In 2012 a judge in the Demerara High Court ruled that Dr Colson could not appear as an expert witness in a land suit brought by Akawaio and Arekuna Amerindian communities because of her prior support of the plaintiffs' position.[8]
In September 2013 Survival International published her report, Dug out, dried out or flooded out? Hydro Power and Mining Threats to the Indigenous Peoples of the Upper Mazaruni District, Guyana,[9] demonstrating that the government of Guyana's plans to build hydroelectric dams on the upper Mazaruni River would flood the entire territory of the Akawaio indigenous people.
Works
Books
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- Stewart Wavell, Aufrey Butt, Nina Epton, Trances (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966)
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Journal articles and chapters in books
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Reports
- Dug out, dried out or flooded out? Hydro Power and Mining Threats to the Indigenous Peoples of the Upper Mazaruni District, Guyana, Survival International, September 2013.
External links
References
- ↑ Peter Rivière, "Indians and Cowboys: Two Field Experiences", in Anthropologists in a Wider World, edited by Paul Dresch, Wendy James and David Parkin (Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 31
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- ↑ University Acts, Oxford University Gazette, 14 July 2005.
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- ↑ Reviewed by Christopher Carrico in New West Indian Guide, Vol. 86, No. 1/2 (2012), pp. 157-159.
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