Betty Francis Meehan FAHA (born 1933) is an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist who has worked extensively with Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.
Meehan travelled with her first husband, Lester Hiatt, to the remote Northern Territory town of Maningrida, in East Arnhem Land, arriving in 1958 on a pearling lugger to find the Aboriginal community had set up camp on the beach and sent out a dugout canoe to bring them ashore.
[1] There she set up the first school for Aboriginal children at Maningrida, returning in the 1970s to undertake her PhD fieldwork with her second husband, Rhys Jones.
[2] In 1977, Meehan visited North Arnhem Land to observe the Anbarra people's daily behaviour living on the coast.
[8] She was made an Honorary Associate of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University (1995-1996), was director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Environment Section of the Australian Heritage Commission from 1991 to 1995, head of the Aboriginal Section National Museum of Australia (1990-1991), and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (1987).