Glenn Mitchell Wightman (born 1961) is an ethnobotanist working for the Department of Environment Parks and Water Security, in Palmerston. He works closely with various aboriginal language groups to document plant and animal names and their usage in the culture. In doing so, he has been helping to preserve some 48 Aboriginal languages in collaboration with some 252 Indigenous co-authors. He has also done biocultural work in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

.cite Q Wightman was born in 1961 at

Leongatha Leongatha () is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, located south-east of Melbourne. At the , Leongatha had a population of 5,869. Canadian dairy company Saputo In ...

, Victoria, and graduated from

Monash University Monash University () is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victoria, Australia. Named after World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the ...

in 1982 with a BSc, majoring in botany and geology. In 2008 he curated ''Replant: A New Generation of Botanical Art'', an exhibition held at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney of illustrations of water lilies by six indigenous and non-indigenous artists in collaboration with the Nauiyu community in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

. The exhibition of prints was displayed in the Cowra Regional Art Gallery in central New South Wales in 2011. He has published one plant name: '' Atalaya brevialata'' Cowie & Wightman.

Honours and recognition

In the

Australia Day Honours The Australian honours and awards system refers to all orders, decorations, and medals, as instituted by letters patent from the Monarch of Australia and countersigned by the Australian prime minister at the time, that have been progressively ...

of 2011, he was awarded the Public Service Medal for "For outstanding public service to the maintenance of Indigenous languages and culture in the Northern Territory, particularly Indigenous biological knowledge of plants, animals and landscapes". In 2021 he won the Northern Territory's Natural Resource Management's lifetime achievement award.

Publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wightman, Glenn M. Ethnobotanists 20th-century Australian botanists Australian anthropologists Recipients of the Public Service Medal (Australia) Monash University alumni 1961 births Living people 21st-century Australian botanists