Audrey Joan Butt Colson (born 15 March 1926),[1] is a social anthropologist with a particular interest in the Amerindian peoples of Guyana, Brazil and Venezuela.
[6] 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.
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.
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.