McKnight was born in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1935. He completed his B.A. in both English Lit and Philosophy Bishop's University in Quebec in 1957. He went on to study in Great Britain, University College London, obtaining his M.A. degree in Anthropology in 1965 on African death cults. He then shifted his research focus to Australian Aboriginal studies, beginning with a first foray into field research in Queensland in 1965. He was hired at Edinburgh University as a lecturer in Social Anthropology three years later, and then moved to teach the same topic at The London School of Economics. In 1977 he earned his doctorate from London University with a thesis on the intricate marriage systems among the indigenous peoples on the Mornington Islands. He was appointed Senior Lecturer in 1982 and held that post until his retirement in 1997. On the Mornington islands he studied in particular depth the Lardil, the Kaiadilt and the Yangkaal, while at Aurukun he became an authority on the Wik-Mungkan people. His approach clarified that the Australian kinship classification systems were not a code restricted to clan marriage alliances but informed a total cosmology, even if contradictions existed from sub-system to sub-system, which caused dissonances in obligations that infra-tribal arguments had to iron out. He mastered the ceremonial language of the Yardil people, the all but extinct Damin, of which he became the last living speaker, and was given the tribal name of Boorarungee-. Despite his clear-eyed and frank insights into the abuses that were rife in many indigenous Australian communities from alcohol and other causes, local respect for him was such that Lardil elders asked him to teach Damin to their children. Long interested in Italy, he settled in Rome on his retirement, and, on the dissolution of his first marriage to Meg Phillips by whom he had six children, 4 daughters and 2 sons, he later married Alessandra Solivetti.
Major books
Lardil: Keepers of the Dreamtime,Chronicle Books, San Francisco 978-0-811-80834-7
People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classification Among the Lardil of Mornington Island, Oxford University Press,
From Hunting to Drinking: The Devastating Effects of Alcohol on an Australian Aboriginal Community, Psychology Press,
Of Marriage, Violence and Sorcery: The Quest for Power in Northern Queensland, Ashgate,
Going the Whiteman's Way: Kinship and Marriage Among Australian Aborigines, Ashgate,
