Ernest Ailred Worms (1891-1963) was a German missionary who lived and worked among
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...
. He became an expert in
Aboriginal languages Aboriginal language may refer to:
* Indigenous language
* Australian Aboriginal languages
* Taiwanese aboriginal languages
* Indigenous languages of the Americas
* Aboriginal Malay languages
The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-P ...
, and an important contributor to the development of both Australian studies of native languages, and to the
ethnography
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
of the continent's Indigenous peoples.
Life
He was ordained a
Pallotine father, and spent his first period of missionary work in
Broome, where he served as parish priest for eight years. His interest in ethnography led to particular studies among the
Bardi people
The Bardi people, also spelt Baada or Baardi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people, living north of Broome and inhabiting parts of the Dampier Peninsula in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. They are ethnically cl ...
.
Stolen bones
In 1935 Worms came across the large body of an Aboriginal person wrapped for burial in bark and, as was a widespread custom,
placed in the fork of a tree. He gathered the remains and dispatched them to
Limburg. Worms was quite aware that he was violating the law against the unauthorised export of ethnological materials in doing so, and therefore requested anonymity. The remains, together with other skeletal material, was
repatriated and restored to the Bardi Jawi, who laid them to rest in an offshore cave, in November 2015.
Works
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Worms, Ernest A. (1968): ''Australische eingeborenen religionen.'' Translated by M.J. Wilson, D. O'Donovan, M. Charlesworth as ''Australian Aboriginal religions'', Spectrum Publications, for Nelen Yubu Missiological Unit, 1986.
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Worms, Ernest Ailred
1891 births
1963 deaths
Australian anthropologists
Australian lexicographers
20th-century anthropologists
Pallottines
20th-century lexicographers