[citation needed] With his wife Hiatt set off in 1959 to do his primary, detailed ethnographic fieldwork for his doctorate in, and around, Maningrida, in the Northern Territory's Arnhem Land.
[b] From the late 1950s (at which time the Australian Aboriginal community of Maningrida was first being formed and gazetted as a township), Hiatt spent more than 45 years, off and on, researching, learning and recording the views, language, songs, stories, understandings, and practices of the Burarra-speaking Gidjingarli members.
[1] It was here at Maningrida that Les developed some of his deepest, most persevering research relationships, producing at least one film[6] and a book in memory of Frank Gurrmanamana, one of the 'informants' with whom he worked most closely.
[7] In some of his late work, Hiatt attempted to analyze the ethics and value systems of Gidjingarli culture in terms of evolutionary biology and the theories of Edward Westermarck's regarding the origins of morality.
[10] The main mourners are Frank Gurramanamana, the deceased clan brother, and Harry Diama, Angabarraparra's maternal uncle[11] and the senior blood-relative, without the presence of both of whom the ritual sequence cannot be completed.
The keynote theme is Harry's repeated absences: business engagements demand his attention in a nearby town; his son is up on charges and requires the father's presence in court.
[13] Institutional assistance and support for 'Aboriginalist' scholarship (studies into Australian Aboriginal societies) has improved from that time when Hiatt first started his own studies, and he has since been attributed with playing an important role assisting and supporting this reform (particularly during the Whitlam and Fraser governments, with the early establishment of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies[citation needed] In addition to Dr Hiatt's detailed ethnographic records and works, there is a substantial body of written works inquiring into, questioning and sometimes challenging some of the more conventionally 'received' anthropological knowledges held by academia and the general public about Australian Aboriginal peoples.