Peter Sutton and the socio-cultural dynamics of Indigenous Australian multilingualism

Abstract

I met Peter Sutton on my first day in Australia, in 1975, as a University of Chicago postgraduate student preparing to do my PhD research in the Northern Kimverley region of Western Australia. He was working as a Research Officer at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) and, among his other duties, was charged with meeting and greeting newly arrived AIAS-supported researchers from overseas at the then miniscule Canberra airport. There was a big influx of them in those days (roughtly 1974-1976), including Patrick McConvell (whol reportedly arrived in searing summer heat wearing English tweeds), Jeffrey Heath, Michael Siverstein, Basil Sansom, John Beaton, Paul Black, Francesca Merlan, Frank Wordick, Michel Lorblanchet, Bob Layton, and David and Judith MacDougall.

Peter did his job well, helping us to settle in and for man of us, becoming a ling-term colleague and interlocutor whose work has continued to inspire and provoke us in productive ways. A prime example of this has been in the rethinking of issues of language and territoriality, to which I now turn.