Peter Sutton Scientist
Peter Sutton FASSA (born 1946) is an Australian social anthropologist and linguist who has, over a period of almost 40 years (since 1969), significantly contributed to: recording Australian Aboriginal languages; promoting Australian Aboriginal art; mapping Australian Aboriginal cultural landscapes; and increasing societies' general understanding of contemporary Australian Aboriginal social structures and systems of land tenure.Most recently, Peter Sutton has shifted his anthropological focus away from Aboriginal Australian subjects themselves, and more towards the nature and effect of the public policy that has governed those Aboriginal Australian's over the 40 years he has been conducting anthropological research:"Through personal observation, forensic rigour and an anthropologist's eye, he questions the foundations on which 40 years of public policy, often imposed with bipartisan goodwill, has been constructed"In 2004-2008 Sutton held an Australian Research Council (ARC) Professorial Fellowship at the University of Adelaide's School of Earth & Environmental Sciences and within the South Australian Museum's Division of Anthropology. His project title was "Cape Keerweer 1606-2006: an ethnographic history of the Wik region, Queensland". He was also, recently, an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.