Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings 0754631842, 0754631850, 2004009790, 9780754651284, 9781315263519

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ABORIGINAL RELIGIONS IN AUSTRALIA Over the last 25 years there has been an explosion of interest in the Aboriginal religions of Australia and this anthology provides a variety of recent writings, by a wide range of scholars. Australian Aboriginal Religions are probably the oldest extant religious systems. Over some 50,000 years they have coped with change and re-invented themselves in an astonishingly creative way. The Dreaming, the mythical time when the Ancestor Spirits shaped the territories of the Aborigines and laid down a moral and ritual Law for their occupants, is the fundamental religious reality. It is the basis of the Aborigines' view of their land or country, kinship relationships, ritual and art. However, the Dreaming is not a static principle since it is interpreted in different ways, as in the extraordinary movement in contemporary indigenous painting, and in attempts at an accommodation with Christianity. The contributions of anthropologists, cultural historians, philosophers of religion and others are included in this anthology which not only guides readers through the literature but also ensures this still largely inaccessible material is available to a wider range of readers and non-specialist students and academics.

VITALITY OF INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS SERIES Series Editors Graham Harvey, Open University, UK Lawrence Martin, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, USA Dr Tabona Shoko, University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Ashgate’s Vitality o f Indigenous Religions series offers an exciting new cluster of research monographs, drawing together volumes from leading international scholars across a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Indigenous religions are vital and empowering for many thousands of indigenous peoples globally, and dialogue with, and consideration of, these diverse religious life-ways promises to challenge and refine the methodologies of a number of academic disciplines, whilst greatly enhancing understandings of the world. This series explores the development of contemporary indigenous religions from traditional, ancestral precursors, but the characteristic contribution of the series is its focus on their living and current manifestations. Devoted to the contemporary expression, experience and understanding of particular indigenous peoples and their religions, books address key issues which include: the sacredness of land, exile from lands, diasporic survival and diversification, the indigenization of Christianity and other missionary religions, sacred language, and re-vitalization movements. Proving of particular value to academics, graduates, postgraduates and higher level undergraduate readers worldwide, this series holds obvious attraction to scholars of Native American studies, Maori studies, African studies and offers invaluable contributions to religious studies, sociology, anthropology, geography and other related subject areas.

OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES Maya Identities and the Violence o f Place Borders Bleed Charles D. Thompson, Jr. ISBN 0 7546 1377 1 Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics Planting a Tree Edited by Philip P. Arnold and Ann Grodzins Gold ISBN 0 7546 1569 3 Korean Shamanism The Cultural Paradox Chongho Kim ISBN 0 7546 3184 2 (hbk) ISBN 0 7546 3185 0(pbk)

Aboriginal Religions in Australia An Anthology o f Recent Writings

Edited by

Max Charlesworth Franchise Dussart Howard Morphy

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Max Charles worth, Frangoise Dussart, and Howard Morphy, 2005 The editors have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings 1. Aboriginal Australians - Religion. I. Charlesworth, Max, 1925-. II. Dussart, Fransoise. III. Morphy, Howard. 299.9’215 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Aboriginal Religions in Australia: An Anthology of Recent Writings / [edited by] Max Charlesworth, Fran^ise Dussart, Howard Morphy p. cm. - (Vitality of Indigenous Religions) Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Aboriginal Australians - Religion. I. Charlesworth, M. J. (Maxwell John), 1925- . II. Dussart, Frangoise. III. Morphy, Howard. IV. Series BL2610.A26 2004 299’.9215-dc22 2004009790

ISBN 13:978-0-7546-5128-4 (hbk)

Contents

List of Illustrations, Maps and Colour Plates List of Contributors Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION Max Charlesworth

viii x xiii

1

PART 1: REVALUATIONS

1

2

3

Introduction Max Charlesworth

29

Baldwin Spencer and FJ. Gillen John Mulvaney

31

High Gods LR. Hiatt

45

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion Ian Keen

61

PART 2: RELIGIOUS BUSINESS

4

5

Introduction Howard Morphy

19

“Women’s Business”, What is It? Diane Bell

81

Big Businesswomen Franqoise Dussart

93

Contents

VI

PART 3: SACRED PLACES

6

1

8

Introduction Fran^oise Dussart

113

Do Places Appear? Francesca Merlan

115

Sacred Geography Marcia Langton

131

Myth and History Peter Sutton

141

PART 4: ART AND RELIGION

9

10

11

Introduction Franqoise Dussart

157

Yolngu Art and the Creativity of the Inside Howard Morphy

159

Linda Syddick on Longing Fred Myers

171

The Enigma of Emily Kngwarray Jenny Green

185

PART 5: DIFFERENT DREAMINGS

12

13

14

Introduction Howard Morphy

193

Aboriginal Religion Today John Morton

195

Life and Land in Aboriginal Australia Deborah Bird Rose

205

Creation in the Kimberley David Mowaljarlai

217

Contents

vii

PART 6: RELIGIONS AND LAW

15

16

Introduction Max Charlesworth

225

Land Rights: The Religious Factor Frank Brennan

227

The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair and Secret Knowledge Robert Tonkinson

247

PART 7: RELIGIOUS EXCHANGES

17

18

Introduction Max Charlesworth

277

Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity Fiona Magowan

279

Islam and Australian Aborigines Ian McIntosh

297

Index

319

List of Illustrations, Maps and Colour Plates

ILLUSTRATIONS 10.1 Linda Syddick, Father's Body Thrown in Fire, 1991

174

10.2 Linda Syddick, The Cleansing Rain, 1991

176

10.3 Linda Syddick, The Ascension, 1991

177

10.4 Linda Syddick, The Last Supper, 1991

178

13.1 Relationships and contexts

209

14.1 The body of Australia, Corpus Australis

223

18.1 Walitha’walitha

299

MAPS 1

Central Desert, Arnhem Land and the Kimberley

216

2

Location of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge

248

3

Eastern Indonesia and northern Australia

305

COLOUR PLATES 1

Narritjin Maymaru, The Three Digging Sticks, 1971 Reproduced with permission of Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala

2

Nyapililingu Maymaru, The Ancestral Woman Nyapililingu, 1974 Reproduced with permission of Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala

Illustrations, Maps and Colour Plates

IX

3

Narritjin Maymaru, Djarrakpi Landscape, 1976 Reproduced with permission of Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala

4

Linda Syddick, ET, 1991 © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004. Photograph by Fred Myers.

5

Linda Syddick, ET and Friends, 2000 Reproduced with permission of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004. Photograph by Fred Myers.

6

Emily Kngwarreye, Anatye (Wild Potato), 1989 Reproduced with permission of the National Gallery of Victoria. © Emily Kngwarreye. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004.

List of Contributors

Diane Bell is a feminist anthropologist who, over twenty-five years, has been involved in a number of social justice struggles. A graduate of the Australian National University, she was between 1989 and 1998 Henry Luce Professor of Religion, Economic Development and Social Justice at Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. She is now Professor of Anthropology and Director of Women’s Studies Program at George Washington University. Her books include Daughters o f the Dreaming (1983/93) and the recent Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrini: A World that is, was, and will be (1998) which won the New South Wales Premier’s Award. Frank Brennan AO is a Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus. He is a lawyer by training and has worked extensively in the area of Aboriginal Land Rights and in post-Mabo negotiations. He is currently Associate Director of Uniya, an organisation concerned with social justice issues. His books include Sharing the Country: The Case for an Agreement between Black and White Australians (1991), and One Land, One Nation: Mabo Towards 2001 (1995). Max Charlesworth AO is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University. He has published extensively in the area of philosophy of religion and his books include Religious Inventions (1997) and Philosophy and Religion from Plato to Postmodernism (2000). He is also the editor of Religious Business: Essays in Australian Aboriginal Spirituality (1998). Fran^oise Dussart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. After early studies in France she completed her Ph.D. at the Australian National University. Her most recent book, The Politics of Ritual in an Aboriginal Settlement (2000), presents the results of a ten year study of kinship, gender and social identity in the community at Yuendumu. Jenny Green is a linguist and artist who first met Emily Kngwarreye in 1977 when she went to live at Utopia in the Northern Territory and work with women on literacy and arts projects. She is currently compiling a dictionary on Anmatyerr, Kngwarreye’s language. L.R. Hiatt was from 1970 until his retirement in 1991 Reader in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, and for eight years was President of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. He also edited the journal Oceania and Oceania Monographs and in 1990-1991 was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University.

Contributors

xi

Ian Keen studied anthropology at University College, London, and then gained his Ph.D. at the Australian National University in 1978. He did fieldwork among Aboriginal people in Northeast Arnhem Land, the Alligator Rivers region, and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. He has published many articles in scholarly journals and is the author of Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion (Oxford, 1994), and Aboriginal Economy and Society on the Threshold of Colonisation (Oxford, 2004). He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. Marcia Langton holds the Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne and teaches in the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies. Her present research interests include agreements, treaties and negotiated settlements with Indigenous people, Aboriginal landscape and customary land tenure, and traditions relating to material culture and the visual arts. She has written on these subjects in popular and scholarly publications, and worked for two decades in the Northern Territory, Cape York and north Queensland, and the Kimberley. Fiona Caroline Magowan (D.Phil.) is a lecturer in anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast. She has researched Yolngu music and dance in Northeast Arnhem Land and has published widely in this field as well as in the area of indigenous Christianity. Ian McIntosh (Ph.D.) is an adopted member of the Australian Aboriginal Wangarri clan and senior editor of the Harvard University affiliated indigenous peoples’ rights organisation Cultural Survival. He was, from 1998 to 2003, this organisation’s managing director. He is now Deputy Director of the Armenia Tree Project dedicated to poverty reduction and reafforestation in the Caucasus. Francesca Merlan is Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University. After studying linguistics and anthropology (M.A. and Ph.D.) at the University of New Mexico she began, in 1976, research in northern Australia. She has also done long-term research on landedness and cultural change in New Guinea and, most recently, in Germany. Howard Morphy is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Cross Cultural Research at the Australian National University. Formerly a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, he was also lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford University. He has written extensively on Yolngu art and systems of knowledge and his books include Journey to the Crocodile’s Nest (1984) and Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System o f Knowledge (1991). John Morton is a senior lecturer in anthropology in the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University. He has conducted fieldwork with Aboriginal communities in

xii

Contributors

the Northern Territory, New South Wales and South Australia, mainly in relation to land/native title claims and sacred site protection. He has published widely in Aboriginal studies and general anthropology, including a number of papers on Arrernte (Aranda, Arunta) religion in central Australia. David Mowaljarlai (1925-1997) was an important spokesman for the Ngarinyin people of the Northern Kimberley in Western Australia. He played a central part in the Kimberley Land Council and the Kamali Land Council. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1993 and his book Yorro Yorro: Everything Standing Up Alive! was published in 1997. John Mulvaney AO, CMG held the Chair of Prehistory at the Australian National University between 1971 and 1985. He was a executive member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies for eighteen years and served on the Australian Heritage Commission. His books include The Prehistory o f Australia (1969/1975) and a biography of Baldwin Spencer. He has also co-edited three volumes of letters to Spencer from four of his outback friends. Fred R. Myers is Professor of Anthropology at New York University and President of the American Ethnological Society. He has written many works on the Pintupi people including Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place and Politics Among Western Desert Aborigines (1986), and Painting Culture: The Making o f an Aboriginal High Art (2002). Deborah Bird Rose is Senior Fellow in the Centre for Research and Environmental Studies, Institute of Advanced Studies, at the Australian National University. Her work is focused on social and ecological justice and she is the author of Country of the Heart: an Indigenous Australian Homeland (2002), Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views o f Landscape and Wilderness (1996), Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Aboriginal Australian Culture (winner of the 1992/3 Stanner Prize) and Hidden Histories (winner of the 1991 Jessie Litchfield Award). Her most recent book is Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation (2004). Peter Sutton is Visiting Professor, School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, and Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, University College, London. Robert Tonkinson is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia. He has worked with the Mardu Aborigines in the Western Desert and the Melanesians of Southeast Ambryn, Vanuatu, since the 1960s. His many publications include The Jigalong Mob (1974) and The Mardu Aborigines (1991) and his major topical interests are social organisation, religion, the impact of Christianity and social change.

Acknowledgements

The editors thank the Charles Strong Trust, Australia, the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, at the Australian National University and the editor of the journal Sophia Professor P. Bilimoria for their generous support of this anthology.

Introduction Max Charlesworth

This collection is a sequel to an anthology of texts published in 1984 and entitled Religion in Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology.1 Since 1984, however, there has been a remarkable change in the way in which anthropologists and other scholars have approached Australian Aboriginal religions, and there has also been a significant revaluation of past observers and thinkers such as Baldwin Spencer and F J. Gillen, T.G.H. Strehlow and W.E.H. Stanner. No serious scholar now follows Spencer’s evolutionistic approach which saw Australian Aboriginal religions as quintessentially ‘primitive’ forms of religion, or Emile Durkheim’s reductionist approach which saw Aboriginal religions as archaic instruments of social cohesion - the simplest or most ‘elementary’ forms of religion in the simplest form of society. On the other hand, W.E.H. Stanner has emerged as the central figure in the study of Aboriginal religions. There have, moreover, been important new developments in the pluralism of indigenous Australian cultures and their religions, the systems of knowledge and power in Aboriginal life-worlds, the connections between art, ritual practice and religion, the different interpretations of the fundamental religious reality of the Dreamtime or ‘Dreaming’, Aboriginal religions and the politico-legal context in 20th century Australia (the High Court Mabo decision and the Hindmarsh Bridge affair), and the exchanges between Aboriginal religions and Christianity and other religions. Above all, the dynamism and resilience of Aboriginal religions faced with immense cultural changes in non-Aboriginal Australia, as well as with severe social malaises among many Aboriginal communities, has been a focus of much interest since 1984. One must also mention the emergence of comparative studies of other indigenous religions (Native American, African, South East Asian) vis-avis Aboriginal religions. The intention of this anthology is to provide a sample of significant post-1984 scholarly writings on Aboriginal religions; it is not meant to be a compendious reference work for all aspects of Aboriginal cultures.2 Some of the post-1984 studies have been adventurously speculative, as in Lynne Hume’s attempt to link the Aboriginal ‘Dreaming’ with ‘New Age’ spiritual ecology At the other extreme there has been an influential quasi-phenomenological approach based on fine­ grained and empathetic description of aspects of Aboriginal life-worlds, as in Francesca Merlan’s writing on sacred places in the Katherine (NT.).3 The work of Fran^oise Dussart and Christine Watson can also be mentioned in this respect. Most of the issues just mentioned are covered by the essays collected in this book and it is worthwhile providing a summary account of the common themes that run through them. This will also serve as a guide to the rich and profuse body

2

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

of scholarly writing over the last fifteen years on the theological, philosophical, cultural and political aspects of Australian indigenous religions. Not Religion But Religions The first theme is that we can no longer speak of Aboriginal religion en bloc but rather of Aboriginal religions in the plural. Just as there is a pluralism of distinct Aboriginal languages, so there is a pluralism of religions. And just as the Ancestor Beings are responsible for linguistic pluralism, so also they are responsible for religious pluralism, including different conceptions of the ‘Dreaming’ and the role of the Ancestor Spirits themselves. No doubt this religious diversity had already been remarked onby a number of older scholars such as Strehlow and Stanner, but it has been strongly reinforced and emphasised by contemporary thinkers. For example, Deborah Bird Rose claims that Aboriginal ‘countries’ or terrains are autonomous: ‘No country, however defined, is dependent upon any other country for its Law, its livelihood, its right to be ... Autonomous countries were established in Dreaming, and that is how they remain when all is well.’4 Again, in a recent book lan Keen has a valuable analysis of Aboriginal societies at the time of European contact which emphasises the significant differences in religions across the Australian continent.5 One needs to remember, however, that Aboriginal religions have always existed in the context of regional systems. While different peoples may emphasise a unique ancestral inheritance, they nonetheless practise their religions in the setting of ceremonial performances that require members of different groups to come together, and even to ‘trade’ in ceremonies. Again, the value of particular peoples’ sacred objects derive in large part from their use in regional gatherings in which participants share a common set of underlying precepts of religious practice. It is worthwhile remembering that at the beginning of European settlement in 1788 the Aboriginal population was about 750,000 and that these 750,000 Aborigines were divided up into some 500 distinct groups using over 200 distinct languages. One large family of languages, Pama-Yyungan, occupied most of the continent and another set of non-Pama-Yungan languages was found in the Kimberley and Western and Southern Arnhem Land. The 500 Aboriginal social groupings and their religions had certain obvious structural similarities, but there were also deep differences between them. In traditional Judaism the diversity of languages (and of peoples) was seen as the regrettable result of human hubris, as witness the myth of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), but there is no suggestion of this in Australian Aboriginal thought. (In fact, the Ancestor Beings are themselves often described as being multi-lingual and they are portrayed as changing languages as they travel through different regions.) A consequence of this is that Aboriginal Australians seem to be able to cope comfortably with the fact that there are a number of diverse religious traditions (both other Aboriginal traditions and ‘world religions’ such as Christianity and Islam).

Introduction

3

This recognition of the diversity of Australian Aboriginal religions reflects, in a microcosmic way, the same kind of recognition, over the last thirty years, of radical religious diversity among the main ‘world religions’. This means that we can no longer pretend that all religions are the same au fond, or that certain monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity or Islam, for example) have some kind of paradigmatic status.6 Regarding the diversity of Australian Aboriginal religions, there is, no doubt, a ‘family resemblance’ (to use Wittgenstein’s term) between Aboriginal religions. There is, for example, a structural similarity between various versions of the ‘Dreaming’. But there are also crucial, if subtle, differences between them which must be recognised. No one now seriously thinks that the various forms of Christianity can be considered as being basically similar, and the same is true of Aboriginal religions; their differences are as important as their resemblances. Finally, it might be said that there is not merely diversity among Aboriginal religions, but also a diversity within particular groups with regard to the various interpretations of rituals and ceremonies and other religious practices. Thus Ian Keen, in his study Knowledge and Secrecy in An Aboriginal Religion,7 reports that ‘different groups in north-east Arnhem Land, and indeed individuals of the one group, interpreted a performance in which they were involved with reference to distinct myths. They were able to come together and co-operate in an enactment without subscribing to a common orthodoxy.’8 Keen sums up the Yolngu view as ‘Same song, different meaning’,9 and that very acute (almost postmodernist) maxim applies analogously to a great deal of Aboriginal belief and practice. It is also worth remembering that there is often a difference in the religious fervour or piety of diverse groups. The celebrated British anthropologist, Mary Douglas, has reminded us of what she calls ‘the myth of primitive piety’, that is, the supposition that all indigenous societies are universally and uniformly religious.10 And that warning certainly applies to the study of Australian indigenous societies and their religions. There is, in fact, a strain of what one might call religious scepticism among certain groups. Ritual, Art, Acrylics The second major theme is the emphasis that contemporary scholars put upon the profound connection between Aboriginal religious beliefs, myths, rituals on the one hand, and art (graphic representation and painting, dance, music) on the other hand. This, of course, was remarked on by earlier observers with regard to traditional forms of painting (so-called bark-paintings, rock art, ritual body designs etc.)." But it is also true of the remarkable paintings that were inspired by the Papunya Tula (Western Desert) movement of the 1970s which in turn led to the ‘modernist’ acrylic revolution of the 1980s and 1990s.12 The Papunya Tula tradition of painting originated in the early 1970s almost by chance, when an white art teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, introduced a number of men at Papunya to painting with acrylics while using traditional motifs.13 However, the ground had, so to speak, been prepared beforehand by certain religio-political

4

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

developments. Thus Vivien Johnson, in a masterly study of the origins of the Papunya movement, has shown how the Aboriginal elders at Papunya ‘grasped the didactic potential of the enthusiastic art teacher’s project for winning back the hearts and minds of the younger generation to their responsibilities under the Dreaming’. Again, ‘the arrival of the Pintubi (people) in Papunya with the strength of their immediate, practical continuity with country, may have precipitated the painting movement at Papunya’.14 These new forms of Aboriginal painting spread to other communities of southern Warlpiri people at Yuendumu, 100 km north of Papunya, and then to other centres. Detached from their immediate ritual context, they were feted by the international art market, but they also derived from quite local traditional beliefs about the Ancestor Spirits and the ‘Dreaming’. The astonishing ‘abstract’ paintings of the late Emily Kngwarreye are, for example, firmly based upon local myths and rituals, involving ceremonial body painting and totemic objects such as the yam, of her own Central Australian Anmatyerre people even though the mode and style of her later paintings are startlingly ‘Western’ or European.15 Thus the fact that the meanings of their paintings were, for Emily Kngwarreye, Rover Thomas and others, quite different from the meanings those same works had for international buyers and collectors did not affect the latter’s interest in those works. In other words they were appreciated for different reasons by the Aboriginal artists and their communities and, on the other hand, by non-Aboriginal connoisseurs in Melbourne and New York. Most indigenous artists, both traditional and modem, see their work as essentially religious in character and they do not, at least explicitly, acknowledge an autonomous aesthetic (art for art’s sake) domain. Howard Morphy has shown that ‘traditional’ Aboriginal works of art typically have many layers of meanings. As he puts it: ‘Through complex combinations of figurative with geometric motifs Yolngu convey the transformational nature of the spiritual processes that underlie their universe. Ancestral beings are able to transform themselves into different forms - from human to animal ... animal to inanimate - and the geometric art helps carry the abstracted idea of the ancestor, transcending the variety of its manifestations.’16 And, if that is true of traditional art, there is nothing new or strange about the plurality of meanings in contemporary Aboriginal acrylic art. Again, we might remember that Westerners faced much the same situation from the 13th to the 15th centuries in European art. In that period Christian religious art underwent a radical change when paintings, frescoes and sculptures, that were created as iconic objects in churches and cathedrals for the faithful’s religious devotions, became objects for secular aesthetic appraisal in the private homes of the great and powerful and later in public museums. Even now, a medieval altarpiece that was originally created in the 14th century with a religious motive and meaning may be exhibited as a ‘work of art’ to be appreciated by contemporary religious believers and unbelievers alike. Referring to this situation where works of contemporary Aboriginal art have one meaning and value for the artist and the community of the artist and another for non-Aboriginal connoisseurs, the American anthropologist Fred Myers has attempted to show how this forces us to rethink the idea of ‘culture’. In a

Introduction

5

remarkable essay, Myers makes a sharp distinction between ‘culture as context’ and culture as something that is ‘produced’ by human action. Myers argues that we should not think of signs as ‘having a meaning but of signifiers in social action, in fields of power.’17 Thus, when we ask whether Aboriginal acrylic painting is ‘traditional’ or culturally authentic we cannot give a definite answer since the immediate world or context of the Aboriginal artist may be a composite of older beliefs and practices and customs held together (often tenuously) with contemporary beliefs and practices and customs. Myers exemplifies this by the life and work of a remarkable Pintubi woman painter Tjunkaya (Linda Syddick) Nappaltjarri from Kintore in the Western Desert.18 Myers suggests that all these elements - personal, social, cultural, aesthetic - have to be taken into account in understanding the meaning of her paintings and whether they are authentically 'Aboriginal’ or not. Aboriginal artists like Linda Syddick no longer live in a closed ‘traditional’ culture; they live in a hybrid Aboriginal/European ‘multicultural’ culture where phenomena such as contemporary film characters like ET can have a powerful symbolic role far beyond their filmic meaning. A number of scholars have remarked that Aboriginal groups, such as the Yolngu, for example, see their artistic output as a way of showing white Australians something of the riches of their spiritual and religious life. Thus, speaking of Western Arnhem Land paintings of the Kunwinjku, Luke Taylor claims that ‘painting became a means of securing prized trade goods, and later cash, but it additionally became a way of communicating with settlers about the things that Kunwinjku hold dear ... The Kunwinjku say explicitly that they want the viewers of these works to understand the connection between creation beings, the major features of landscape created by them, and the lives of contemporary Kunwinjku people who care for these places.’19 Again, the art historian Rosemary Crumlin reports that the women painters in the Balgo community (Susie Bootja Bootja Napangarti, Bai Bai Napangarti and others) deliberately used their art to instruct their children in their spiritual heritage in order to counteract the influence of television.20 Their painting industry, she notes, also offers employment: ‘There is no regular work to be had in Balgo, no industry, no resources, but the community has upwards of 150 practising artists’!21 An impressive study of Balgo women artists has recently been written by Christine Watson,22 who shows how the Balgo women’s sand sculptures, made by piercing the earth (or ‘skin’) of their country, imitate the deeds of the Ancestors of the Dreaming who have become objectified or incarnated in geographical features of their country. And these land sculptures or drawings have led in turn to the vivid acrylic paintings of Eubena Nampitjin, Marti Mudgidell, Millie Skeen Nampitjin and others in the Balgo community. Reviewing the Scholarly Forefathers In recent studies there has been a critical rethinking of the work of Baldwin Spencer and his remarkable collaborator F.J. Gillen on the question of Aboriginal religions. Two illuminating books, ‘So Much That is New’: Baldwin Spencer 1860-

6

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

1929 by the eminent archaeologist and pre-historian John Mulvaney , and ‘My Dear SpencerV The Letters o f F.J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer, edited by John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy and Alison Petch,23 enable us to take a more balanced view of their attitude to Aboriginal cultures in general and to Aboriginal religions in particular. At the same time there are sharp differences in scholarly asessments of them. On the one hand, both Mulvaney and Morphy argue that Spencer and Gillen were the first to adopt a ‘scientific’ anthropological approach to Aboriginal lifeworlds and thus can be justly considered to be the founding fathers of Australian Aboriginal anthropology and, indeed, of anthropology as a discipline. Spencer was trained as a biologist at Oxford and his main work when he became Professor of Biology at the University of Melbourne in 1887 was in biological research. His interest in Aboriginal societies was kindled only in 1894 when he met Frank Gillen, who was then post and telegraph stationmaster at Alice Springs in Central Australia. Gillen had been a collector of Aboriginal artefacts (including sacred objects) but his main virtue was that he had an easy and friendly relationship with local Aboriginal groups as well as a deep respect for their way of life. He was also an observer of genius. It has been said that Gillen was Spencer’s most significant discovery and that remark is largely true in that Gillen supplied Spencer with a constant stream of detailed and vivid information from a variety of Aboriginal sources. On the other hand, Mulvaney shows that Spencer’s outlook was radically limited by his uncritical acceptance of Sir James Frazer’s naive evolutionist approach to so-called ‘primitive’ cultures as passing from a stage of magical beliefs to religious beliefs which led him to classify Aboriginal beliefs and practices under the rubric o f ‘magic’. As Mulvaney relates: ‘Under the subsequent tutelage of Frazer, Spencer adopted a terminology from which “creative” religious actions were excluded. In Frazer’s company at the Anthropological Institute in London (in 1898) Spencer announced that “Mr Frazer would now prefer to designate (Arunta totemism) as magical rather than religious”. So “magical” it remained, with all the intellectual denigration of the Aboriginal mind implied by that term. There is no index entry under “religion” in any of Spencer’s books, although they are numerous under “totem” and “magic”. The “natives have nothing whatever in the way of a simple, pure religion...” he assured Frazer later.’24 It might be added that ‘magic’, as applied to Aboriginal beliefs and practices, was an ambivalent term in that it was interpreted both as a pre-religious and pre-scientific mode of consciousness and also as a kind of ‘fallen’ or debased kind of religious consciousness. As Stanner put it later: the Aborigines were viewed as being ‘either too archaic in the social sense or too debased in the moral sense to have veritable religion’.25 Morphy however takes a much more benevolent and forgiving view of Spencer and Gillen’s position and sees it as transcending the evolutionist or Frazerian model and pointing the way to a new view of anthropology which would, through Stanner and others in the 1950s and 1960s, eventually give pride of place to Aboriginal religious beliefs. As Morphy puts it: ‘Spencer and Gillen’s lasting contribution was the production of an ethnography of unprecedented richness

Introduction

1

which shifted the agenda of anthropology away from comparativism towards the detailed analysis of particular societies.’26 And it was in the detailed analysis of Aboriginal societies that religion was later seen to be fundamental. Again, Morphy sees both Spencer and Durkheim as the initiators of a historical process that eventually resulted in changing European conceptions of religion and the development of a more inclusive perspective. While both Spencer and Durkheim were basically 19th and early 20th century rationalists who thought that religion was a delusion, they also challenged the assumption that Christianity was the paradigmatic or model religion and so opened up a perspective that enables the fundamentally religious nature of Aboriginal cultures to be seen. As against Morphy’s position, some scholars have been critical of the way in which, under the influence of Spencer and Gillen’s evolutionism, the study of Aboriginal cultures and religions was, until the 1950s, distorted, and, according to others, used to support a colonialist view of those cultures and religions. Diane Austin-Broos, for example, has argued that Spencer and Gillen had never really transcended the evolutionist position and that other earlier non-English anthropological scholars deserve to be taken into account.27 Again, an earlier postmodernist essay by Patrick Wolfe, ‘On Being Woken Up: The Dreamtime in Anthropology and in Australian Settler Culture’,28 attempted to show that Spencer and Gillen’s concept of the ‘Dream Time’ was a colonialist ‘construction’ serving white settler interests. (Morphy’s essay, ‘From Empiricism to Metaphysics’, was in fact a sharp rejoinder to Wolfe’s essay.) A second important influence on Australian anthropologists was Emile Durkheim’s bold theory that all religious systems were social mechanisms reinforcing social cohesion or the ‘social bond’. Durkheim had relied heavily on Spencer and Gillen’s work The Native Tribes o f Central Australia (1899) which he interpreted as showing that the Australian Aborigines had the simplest or most elementary forms of social life and the most elementary forms of religious life which enabled us to see the essence of religion in general.29 Durkheim’s ideas on religion were introduced to English and Australian anthropologists by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, who was Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney between 1920 and 1931. Radcliffe-Brown was also strongly influenced by W.H.R. Rivers (1864-1931), with whom he had studied at Cambridge and for whom the primary object of anthropology was social organisation or structure with kinship as its key. For him, as for Rivers and Durkheim, it was Aboriginal social structure that was primary and Aboriginal religions were seen as a secondary and derivative phenomenon.30 Reflecting on Radcliffe-Brown’s legacy, Annette Hamilton has argued that his determination to make anthropology into a strictly scientific discipline resulted in The fetish istic elaboration of schemata of kinship, and the obsession with mechanisms of fission and fusion, the lineage and clan thus mirroring the molecular processes of an atomic nature’.31 No doubt Hamilton’s criticism is a little exaggerated because elaborate kinship systems are a central feature of indigenous societies. However, the emphasis given to kinship by the disciples of Radcliffe Brown was certainly excessive.

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion That state of affairs lasted until the late 1950s when W.E.H. Stanner’s series of essays On Aboriginal Religion appeared.32 In effect, Stanner turned Durkheim’s theory on its head so that Aboriginal religions were no longer seen as a function of social organisation but social structure was seen as a function of religious realities centred upon the Ancestral Dreaming.33 It is not too much to say that Stanner was one of the first to take the religious dimension of Aboriginal life seriously and to see it as a sophisticated and complex (and admirable) body of belief, moral and social practice, ritual, and even philosophical thought. L.R. Hiatt has said that ‘Stanner’s monograph On Aboriginal Religion is the most important account of Aboriginal religion within the modem period’, and most contemporary scholars would endorse that view.34 As already noted, Stanner’s approach was a quasi-phenomenological one characterised by what might be called imaginative and empathetic description. Stanner also rejected any kind of sociological or psychological approach which reduces Aboriginal religion to its social (as in Durkheim) or psychological (as in Freud’s Totem and Taboo) functions. But while he saw clearly what was wrong with these reductivist approaches, he never produced a fully elaborated methodology of his own.35 However, in his various writings Stanner provided a concrete example or model of how anthropology should be done and above all what the relationship between the white observer and the Aboriginal observed should be. For Stanner, the anthropologist cannot be a dispassionate and scientifically ‘objective’ observer since the observer and observed are both human beings and they ought to interact as human beings. As he put it in a 1972 letter: ‘Why do we have to struggle so hard with ourselves to see our Aborigines in a way that is at one and the same time humane, respectful and compassionate.’36 Again, Stanner complained that ‘a scholarly rigour is one thing: another thing altogether is to use logic and method to dehumanise what one studies. Something very much like that has happened in what have been called the behavioural sciences, including anthropology.’37 Stanner’s essays were followed in 1964 by T.G.H. Strehlow’s powerful monograph Central Australian Religion: Personal Monototemism in a Polytotemic Community.38 Here Barry Hill’s recent monumental biography of T.G.H. Strehlow should also be mentioned. Hill is neither an anthropologist nor a philosopher but he is concerned to show the connexions between Strehlow’s tragic life and his work on Aboriginal culture and religion. Hill’s work is, in many ways, a tour de force and it deserves serious attention from anthropologists and philosophers of religion.39 As Hill shows, Strehlow was, despite his deep admiration for Aboriginal religions, obsessed by the idea that Aboriginal cultures and their religions were rapidly dying out. But of course the endurance and inventiveness of Australian Aboriginal peoples in coping with radical post-invasion cultural changes and renewing their religious life are now manifest despite the various social malaises (alcoholism, unemployment, welfare dependence, family violence) that afflict many Aboriginal communities. It was, then, these two scholars who established the centrality of the Dreaming in its various forms, and most scholars in the field have subsequently followed

Introduction

9

them in seeing the sacred reality of the Dreaming as the foundation or ground of Australian Aboriginal cultures as a whole. Thus, even the ritual body paintings used in important ceremonies are directly connected with the Dreaming. As Morphy has put it with regard to the Yolngu people: T he designs that are painted on people’s bodies during rituals are the very designs that the ancestral beings had painted on their bodies, and the ceremonial grounds that are constructed today are the same ones that the ancestors first constructed. Thus the use of paintings in ritual allows performers to participate in the spiritual dimension that was instrumental in shaping the world and which is fundamental to continuing existence.’40 The particular land or ‘country’ which has been shaped and impregnated with ancestral spiritual energy or power and given to each Aboriginal people is, so to speak, the conduit through which the ongoing influence of the Ancestor Beings on various groups is effected. The anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose reports one of her Yarralin confidants, Hobbles Danayarri, as saying: ‘Everything come up out of the ground - language, people. Emu, Kangaroo, grass. That’s Law.’41 In this sense everything of importance in Aboriginal life has a religious or sacred dimension and we cannot easily separate, as Emile Durkheim wished to do, a realm of the ‘sacred’ from a realm of the ‘profane’ in Aboriginal cultures. In this respect, we must also remark on the importance of the night sky for most Aboriginal peoples. For them the stars of the Southern Hemisphere and their constellations reflected the order of life in the terrestrial world and as Dianne Johnson puts it, ‘were but one part of the vast totemic network’.42 In another essay on the Pleiades constellation in Aboriginal astronomies, Johnson says that ‘the skyworld is seen as the dwelling-place of many ancestral spirit and creation heroes and heroines, those personified sources of energy which inform and give meaning to natural and cultural life ... Earth-based men and women of high degree (traditional healers) whose great powers are seen to be connected to these energies can also access the sky-world.’43 Interpreting the Dreaming As we have seen, the centrality of the Dreaming and the Ancestor Spirits was recognised in the past by Strehlow and Stanner, but there is no doubt that it has been powerfully reinforced by recent scholars. However, we must also recognise that the realm of the Dreaming is characterised in different ways by diverse Aboriginal peoples. Thus the anthropologist John Morton speaks of the Dreaming, as conceived by the Warlpiri, almost in Aristotelian terms. So he says: ‘As we delve deeper into the complex associations of “the Dreaming” it begins to appear as something much, much more than dreaming (i.e. in the ordinary sense). It is, in effect, a First Cause, a synthetic principle to which all minor causes are subordinate. While manifested through the material world, it is not in itself a material entity. It has been described by T.G.H. Strehlow (1971) as “eternity uncreated, sprung out of itself.’”44 Morton also speaks of the creative beings of the Dreaming as ‘eternal and transcendent’.45

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

On the other hand David McKnight speaks of the concept of the Dreaming of the Lardil people of Momington Island in a subtly different way. For the Lardil the realm of the Dreaming exists in parallel with the terrestrial world - a quasiPlatonic or dualist view of the Dreaming. As McKnight puts it: T he Lardil believe Dreamtime is something that came into being (or perhaps more accurately, has always existed) before the appearance of humans, and it is a time that will continue after humans cease to exist. In some unexplained way, a split occurred in Dreamtime and as a result the time of this world in which we live came into existence. The two times, Dreamtime and the time of this world, exist parallel to one another so that there are two streams of time. For the Lardil, the everyday secular world in which they live is only an imitation of Dreamtime. It is not true reality. True reality is Dreamtime. The secular world is subject to changes of growing old and dying. But Dreamtime is timeless and unchanging.’46 This view of the Dreamtime is reminiscent of the Platonic theory of Forms where the world or domain of the eternal and immaterial and unchanging Forms is paralleled by the contingent and material and changing world of our immediate experience. A more radical view of the Dreaming has been proposed by some recent scholars, who argue that the land or country is the central reality in Aboriginal thought and that the apparent transcendental character of the Dreamtime should be discounted. The Aboriginal view of the land, they claim, is very close to that of the proponents of ‘deep ecology’ and ‘Gaia’ (the ordering principle responsible for the harmonious and quasi-purposive and self-regulating inter-relationships between the various parts of the ecological environment) in contemporary cosmological thought.47 Heather McDonald, referring to Aboriginal groups in the Kimberley region, argues that Aboriginal religions are wholly centred upon the land and it is from the land that they derive their spiritual values. These religious systems, she claims, do not denigrate or devalue the world by looking to ‘a distant sky world’ as recompense.48 However, McDonald appears to neglect the fact that for most Aboriginal groups the land has its own peculiar geographical and spiritual features and values precisely because it has been endowed with them by the Ancestor Beings. The land is valued as an incarnation or embodiment of ancestral power and precedent. In his work on the Yangura people in West Kimberley in Western Australia Eric Kolig puts forward a more nuanced version of McDonald’s view. So he says: ‘The physical and the spiritual universes are not experienced as distinct. In the traditional, unquestioned scheme of things, spiritual existence, nature and man form one indissoluble whole. More concretely, in the Aboriginal view no distinction existed between man and land: they were quite literally part of each other.’49 However, it might be remarked here that the Yangura, if Kolig is right, have a very ‘spiritualised’ view of the ‘land’ in the light of their Dreaming myths. For them the land is not simply the physical/material stuff that can be fenced off, bought and sold and which is subject to some form of property law. It is rather something that has been sacralised by the Ancestor Spirits. In other words, the Yangura’s view of the ‘land’ is very different from the white Australian view and from the philosophical views of Australian ‘deep ecologists’. For the Yangura ‘land’ is understood as land-as-sacralised-by-the-Ancestor-Beings.

Introduction

11

A more ambitious version of the ecological approach to the Dreaming is that of Deborah Bird Rose in her book on the Yarralin of the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory. In Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Aboriginal Australia (1992) she says, ‘there is a political economy of intersubjectivity embedded in a system that has no centre. Everything comes out of the earth by Dreaming; everything knows itself, its place, its relationships to other portions of the cosmos. Every living thing has, and knows its own law.’50 As has been remarked, Bird Rose bases her ecological version of the Dreaming on James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis that the universe is a living and self­ regulating system and, like Lovelock, she appears to think that it is founded upon scientific analysis. However, it is formidably difficult to know whether ‘Gaia’ is a scientific hypothesis, or a metaphysical theory, or simply a useful imaginative/metaphorical construction which may or may not be true. If it is proposed as a scientific hypothesis, like for example the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, then, as Karl Popper has taught us, it must be able in principle to be falsified by some specifiable kind of empirical evidence. But it is difficult to see how this could be possible apropos of the Gaia hypothesis.51 On the other hand, the Gaia hypothesis and Rose’s ‘Dreaming ecology’ could be seen as imaginative metaphors on the ground that it is useful to think of Aboriginal myths, rituals, traditions and institutions as though they were part of an ecosystem of a Lovelockian kind. As William James might say, Gaia and the Dreaming ecology are ‘fruitful hypotheses’.52 (Much as Levi-Strauss’s anthropology is based upon the supposition or hypothesis that it is useful to think of cultures and sub-cultures as though they were languages or linguistic systems of a Saussurean kind.) It is, of course, difficult to adjudicate in any definitive way between these versions of the Dreaming. It may be that there are in reality different interpretations of the Dreaming in different Aboriginal communities, or it may be that the variants just outlined simply reflect the views of external anthropological observers. However, the view of the Dreaming that appears to be most consonant with current anthropological evidence is that of Strehlow, Stanner and Morton. No doubt the 'land’ is of paramount importance in Aboriginal religions and Rose is right to emphasise this. But the land for most Aboriginal groups is land-as-sacralised-bythe-Ancestor-Beings so that the Ancestor Beings are metaphysically more fundamental than the land, or earth, or country. In this sense the Dreaming and the Law have a transcendental (supra-naturalistic) character, though of a very different kind from the classical Greek view o f ‘The Divine’ or the Judaeo-Christian view of 'God’. For one thing, many of the Ancestor Beings are scandalously amoral and do not act as moral exemplars. This transcendentalist reading of the Dreaming is reinforced by Francesca Merlan’s analysis of the relationship of Ancestral figures to the physical sites or places to which they relate. Following Myers,53 Merlan suggests that the Dreaming events are metaphysically prior to the physical shapes and forms of the world to which they are related by Aborigines. As she puts it: ‘The identity of a particular ancestral figure may not necessarily or easily be read off from the sensible properties of places (although they may apparently offer stimuli to the

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

objectification of meaning). In many cases the character of the Dreaming event is complex and opaque relative to their sensible properties. Though the meanings of place may be suggestively linked to them, they cannot be simply read off from them. Overtly, traditional Aboriginal mythopoeia works from the Dreaming event to physical form, not the other way round. For example, that Chambers Pillar in Aranda country is the phallic body of a knob-tailed gecko Ancestor is not to be read off from the shape of the country. Gecko inheres in this place as its truth, and this is crucial knowledge to be transmitted concerning it. The place looks the way it does because gecko inheres in it.’54 A recent, and unusual, interpretation of the Dreaming sees it as the object of ‘altered’ or ‘out-of-the-body’ modes of consciousness akin to trance-induced visions, dreams and even states of consciousness brought about by music and ritual performances. Lynne Hume’s very original book, Ancestral Power: The Dreaming, Consciousness and Aboriginal Australians55 carefully surveys a number of ‘paranormal’ features of Australian Aboriginal religions and suggests that Aborigines’ awareness of Dreaming phenomena is analogous to the out-ofthe-body experiences just mentioned.56 Sacred Places In his collection of essays entitled White Man Got No Dreaming Stanner remarked that Australian Aborigines ‘moved not in a landscape but in a humanised realm saturated with signfication’.57 The general question about the relevance of religious ritual to the Aboriginal conception of ‘place’ has been the subject of much scholarly attention. Thus the ethnomusicologist Helen Payne has shown how ambivalent and fluid the views of some Aboriginal groups are about the connection between religious ceremonial and ritual on the one hand and, on the other hand, the land and sacred/religious sites.58 This, of course, has direct relevance to the socalled ‘sacred sites’ defined and declared by Aboriginal groups, especially in situations where there is a conflict of interest between those groups and white Australian governmental and mining and pastoral interests. Noonkanbah and the Hindmarsh Bridge in South Australia are only two of the many ‘sites’ where this kind of conflict has erupted. The anthropologist Francesca Merlan has discussed this question at some length in her already mentioned book, and she emphasises the indeterminacy or fluidity of Aboriginal views of religious places.59 In the Northern Territory and Western Australia, Merlan says: ‘Aboriginal people continually “produce” places assessing and reassessing their significance in terms of current conditions and relationships. A few of these places are new. That is, Aborigines sometimes identify as places locations where the concept of a distinct, socialised place had not existed or only been indeterminate before, appear to modify their notions of the significance of places, or both.’60 Ian Keen similarly emphasises what he calls ‘the relativity of perspectives’ in Yolngu religious life: T suggest that relativity of perspectives was at the heart of Yolngu religions and other practices ... Yolngu and their neighbours negotiated

Introduction

13

shared languages of forms of practice, but deliberately created differences to constitute and distinguish groups and interpreted religious forms differently ... They constantly produced new variations of old themes and innovative interpretations of old forms in response to unique circumstances ... Furthermore, systematic ambiguity was one basis for the constitution of religious mystery and secret knowledge.’ Keen sums up by saying: 4If cultures are texts to be “read”, then they are differently read by men and women, young and old, experts and non­ experts.’61 Rethinking the Dreaming The remarks above about the metaphysical transcendence of the Dreaming and the Law need to be complemented by the reminder that all the elements of the Dreaming are subject to constant rethinking and revaluation by the diverse Aboriginal groups in the light of new circumstances, especially the challenge of having to live both with the Ancestral Law and the White Australian Law. The French-Canadian anthropologist Sylvie Poirier, who has worked with Aboriginal groups at Balgo in the Western Desert region, has shown how the Ancestral Law (tjukurrpa) is continually being reimagined and reinterpreted (in which dreams play an important part) by these groups.62 This emphasis on the important part that creative interpretation of the Ancestral Law plays in Aboriginal life, and in coping with change, has been strongly emphasised in contemporary studies. Thus Anthony Redmond argues against the idea that Australian Aboriginal societies, and religions, are essentially conservative and ‘set in stone by ancestral action’.63 In fact, many transformations in Aboriginal religions have occurred as creative responses to colonialisation and what might be called ‘settlementisation’. Again, Richard Kimber makes the obvious, but important, hermeneutical point that ‘while everything is explicable in the Law, it’s not always revealed how it is explicable, so things are left to puzzle over’.64 A dramatic example of this kind of creative interpretation of the Dreaming and the Law is the invention of the north-eastern Arnhem Land Yolngu people’s ‘Dreaming-being’ Birrinydji. This was occasioned by the cultural challenge presented by the Macassan beche-de-mer or trepang fishermen visiting the coasts of north-east Arnhem Land from 1700 onwards. With the annual visitations of the Macassans to their territories the Yolngu were faced with the need to accommodate the foreigners from Sulawesi within their own Yolngu lifeworld and also to recognise the technology (iron smelting and manufacturing) possessed by the Macassans. Both needs were met (symbolically) by the cult of the Dreaming-being Birrinydji. Ian McIntosh’s essay, ‘The Birrinydji Legacy: Aborigines, Macassans and Mining in North-East Arnhem Land’65 provides an excellent account of this cult.

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Religious Exchanges This discussion is linked to a further theme in contemporary thinking about Australian Aboriginal religions, namely that they are subject to continual change and development, not only in relationship with each other but also with the world of non-Aboriginal Australians. The exchange and trading of ceremonies and rituals between different Aboriginal groups is well known but, as we have seen, there has also been an exchange, from the early 1950s until the present, between Yolngu groups in Arnhem Land and certain forms of Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity.66 The same is true of some Aboriginal groups in the Kimberley region in Western Australia.67 Again, a group of Aboriginal leaders known as the Rainbow Spirit Elders have published a text entitled Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology. This text has the aim of ‘integrating the traditions of Aboriginal culture with the traditions of Christianity’.68 In a perceptive essay on the ritual objects (tjurunga) of the Arrernte people the French anthropologist Marika Moisseeff shows how these objects are used to ‘represent the unrepresentable’ realm of the Dreaming.69 ‘The “Dreaming”, she says, ‘as a substance-free spatial dimension is held to modify matter without being itself imprisoned by it’.70 There are, of course, formidable problems with any attempt at genuine dialogue between Aboriginal religions and Christianity because each is embedded within hugely different socio-cultural contexts. Again, there are large differences between the various forms of Aboriginal religion (as we have said, there is no panAustralian Aboriginal religion) and equally large differences within the various forms of Christianity. While there has been some interchange between Roman Catholicism and Australian Aboriginal religions,71 so far religious dialogue has taken place mostly with Evangelical Christians who focus on religious ‘experiences’ of being converted, of being saved, of repentance for sin etc. But ecumenical dialogue with other forms of Christianity - Roman Catholicism, Greek and Russian orthodoxy, Anglicanism etc. with a sacramental system, a strong doctrinal base and a well-defined hierarchical structure, will be much more difficult. However, the ‘two-way’ approach of the Balgo Aboriginal Catholic community seems to have been an ecumenical success. It may be added that experiments in Aboriginal Christianity are sometimes seen as mixed blessings by Aborigines. Thus Ian McIntosh, writing of the Galiwin’ku people, reports one of his informants, Burrumarra, as saying that ‘Christianity provides an avenue for both reflecting on Aboriginal identity, and also confronting the intellectual marginalisation and powerlessness that many (Aboriginal) residents feel.’72 More generally, ‘often pressured by scholars, Burrumarra had grown tired of their continual presence, claiming that they took up valuable time of the people ... The anthropologist was making people think about a time when they “lived by the law” and were masters of their own destiny. Such reflection made the people feel sorry, if not guilty, for what they had become and resentful at the way they were living ... In private discussion, he referred to anthropologists as miners, “Digging away at the souls of the people”.’73

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15

Finally, something must be said of the bold attempt by David Mowaljarlai to outline a synthesis between Kimberley religious beliefs and practices and Christianity. David Banggul Mowaljarlai (1925-1997) was a distinguished and many-talented north Kimberley man with affiliations to the Worrora, Wunumbal and Ngarrinyin peoples. He was steeped in the traditions of these peoples and became one of the keepers of the Law. At the same time he was involved in Aboriginal political action through the Kimberley Land Council and in the preparation of the Ngarinyin native title case after the Native Title Act of 1993. Although he was brought up in the cultural world of the Ngarinyin people, he also attended a Presbyterian mission school and became interested in the possibility of an ecumenical interchange between Kimberley religious beliefs and practices and the style of Christianity of the Presbyterian missionaries. However, after being groomed for the lay clergy, the General Synod rejected his candidature and Mowaljarlai then abandoned the Presbyterian Church and had nothing further to do with institutional Christianity. At the same time it is obvious that his views of Kimberley religion were heavily influenced by his former Christian beliefs. Jesus plays an important part in his religious thought and there are many borrowings from the gospel stories about John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary, the baptismal rite, the Flood, the Devil and so on. Mowaljarlai's most complete statement of his religious views is given in his highly original book Yorro Yorro: everything standing up alive written in conjunction with the photographer Jutta Malnic and published in 1993. 74 One of the novel elements in Mowaljarlai's account is his emphasis on the role of the Wandjina (spirit beings of a hobgoblin kind) in what might be called the religious economy. The Wandjina are a feature of the peoples of the north-east coast of Western Australia from Derby to Kalumburu, and the extraordinary rock paintings of Wandjina are mostly congregated in that area. Lynne Hume gives a very good summary of what has been written about the Wandjina: 'The Wandjina are said to have come out of the sky or the sea and, like other Dreaming Ancestors, while on earth they wandered about, and fought with each other, established fish traps, built caves, and eventually were transformed into the paintings where their spirits still live. Some of their stories tell oftheir socially disruptive behaviour ... The Wandjina are associated with rain, lightning and thunder and have the power to send them at will. They therefore need to be placated.' 75 In Mowaljarlai's creation account the creator-being (Wallanganda) takes the form of a Wandjina. But the creator Wandjina is appointed, so to speak, by a supreme being, Ngardjin, who is described as 'the Above One, the Master of all Galaxies, the One beyond our understanding'. 76 The creative process elaborated by Mowaljarlai is influenced by the Old Testament account in the Book of Genesis, though the Earth Serpent (Wunggud) also plays a central (and ambivalent) part in matters to do with sexuality, fertility, and the renewal of nature. In an appendix to his book Mowaljarlai provides a fascinating diagram of Australia - 'the Body of Australia/Corpus Australis' - where the geographical continent of Australia is modelled on the form of a human being- head and neck, lungs, navel, pubic area, feet - and is traversed by an intricate web of Wandjina tracks between the geographical-anatomical parts. 77 Andreas Lommel, a German ethnographer who

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

worked on rock paintings in the Kimberley region before the Second World War, has written that Mowaljarlai combined the Christian influence of his early missionary education with elements of his Aboriginal religious culture to produce ‘a synthesis without schizophrenia’.78 Certainly, one cannot but be impressed by the originality of Mowaljarlai’s imaginative philosophico-theological construction. With regard to the Wandjina paintings mentioned above, perhaps the best introduction is by Judith Ryan and Kim Akerman in their book Images o f Power: Aboriginal Art o f the Kimberley.79 Ryan and Akerman also mention the mysterious ‘Bradshaw figures’ (socalled after their discoverer Joseph Bradshaw in 1891), or ‘Gwion Gwion’ figures, as the Kimberley people call them, the term denoting the ‘bird people’ who are supposed to have created them. These beautiful figures, painted on rocks and cave walls, are quite different from the Wandjina paintings and it has been speculated that they are the work of an archaic non-Aboriginal people who entered Australia from outside. However, the archaeological evidence suggests that the paintings are no more than 3000 years old and it is more likely that they are a variant of the figurative style of painting in Western Arnhem Land. Ryan and Akerman also make the point that ‘unlike Wandjina rock art ... the Bradshaw paintings are not part of current religious belief or ritual practice’.80 Mabo and the Hindmarsh Bridge Affair There are a number of politico-legal considerations - the Land Rights legislation of 1976, the invention of the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders’ Commission (ATSIC) the setting up of Land Councils (all quite unlike any traditional Aboriginal organisations) and the Mabo High Court decision and its aftermath which raise fundamental questions about Aboriginal cultures and religions.81 Under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976, a land claim by Aboriginal communities can be made only by ‘traditional owners’ who belong to a ‘local descent group of Aboriginals who have common spiritual affiliations to a site on the land, being affiliations that place the group under a primary spiritual responsibility for that site and for the land, and are entitled by Australian Aboriginal traditions to forage as of right over that land’.82 The religious basis of the legislation is quite clear in that it involves the myths and rituals of Aboriginal groups and the recognition of ‘sacred sites’, that is, places made ‘sacred’ by their connection with the activities of the Ancestor Beings of the Dreaming. The Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair of 1995 raised analogous issues about Aboriginal religious beliefs, politics and the law. Two opposing groups of the Ngarrindjeri clan disputed whether there was an ancient women’s secret tradition, which meant that a bridge connecting the mainland and the island was forbidden by local Aboriginal Ancestral Law.83 The recent work by Margaret Simons, The Meeting o f the Waters: The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair,84 is a comprehensive account of this cause celebre with its rancorous exchanges between both camps of women and their supporters, two Royal Commissions, the resignation of the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and a Federal Court case. Simons is a journalist and some critics have dismissed

Introduction

17

her long book (512 pages) as ‘mere journalism’. But it is much more than that and deserves serious attention from anyone interested in the transmission of secret and sacred knowledge in Aboriginal groups. One of the best analyses of the multifarious implications of the Hindmarsh Bridge affair is that by the anthropologist Robert Tonkinson. Tonkinson’s approach is admirably even-handed: on the one hand, he says, the weight of anthropological evidence about ‘secret’ or restricted religious beliefs among Aboriginal groups is against the Ngarrindjeri women opponents of the bridge. It is then unlikely that there could have been a ‘secret women’s business’ apropos of the site for the bridge restricted to a relatively small group of Ngarrindjeri women. (This view has, however, been hotly contested by Peter Sutton, Howard Morphy, Diane Bell and other anthropologists.) The early work on the Ngarrindjeri people by the anthropologists R.M. Bemdt and Catherine Bemdt has been an important resource in this debate. Even though he is sceptical about the women’s claim to secret knowledge, Tonkinson is also critical of the journalists, politicians, anthropologists and ‘culture warriors’ who have attempted to make political capital out of the affair and to impugn the honesty and good faith of Aboriginal claimants (and their anthropologist advisers) with an interest in particular sites of religious significance.85 As the American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has nicely put it: ‘when Europeans invent their traditions ... it is a genuine cultural rebirth, the beginnings of a progressive future. When other people do it, it is a sign of cultural decadence.’86 The quite novel issues raised recently by the project of a consortium of oil companies to build a pipeline to bring natural gas from the Kutubu oil field in Papua New Guinea to a terminal in Gladstone in Australia also have to be confronted. The Foi people in Papua New Guinea, who live in the Kutuba area, see petroleum as originating from women’s menstrual blood and as having deep religious import. On the other hand, Australian Aboriginal groups negotiating with the oil consortium over the placement of the pipeline on traditional lands in Northern Australia see the project very differently. The pipeline, so to speak, crosses two (Papua New Guinean and Australian) quite distinct religious jurisdictions!87 Rumsey claims that there is, in some respects, a continuum between Papua New Guinea and Australia.88 However, it is difficult to see that there is any kind of religious continuum extending across Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australia. A Comparative Approach? A final remark: so far there as been an almost total absence of any kind of comparative approach to Australian Aboriginal religions. No doubt, this approach is fraught with difficulties and it is very easy to talk nonsense when one attempts to compare widely different religious cultures. Frazer’s The Golden Bough ^1890) is a classic instance of how comparative religion should not be done, but it is not at all clear how it should be done. First, the comparison of religious systems needs to

18

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

be done without any kind of the misguided romanticism that sees Aboriginal cultures and their religions as having all the desirable qualities or virtues that Western European cultures lack. A French anthropologist, Marc Auge, has written that ‘one can descry in anthropological texts the noble but blurred outlines of a savage who, being closer to nature than we are, must have refused in advance all that oppresses us (the Oedipal triangle, the State, abstraction), and whose trace, meaning or testimony one may still find in the Amazonian forests or the Australian deserts ... These savages do better than we do: they know better than we do the secrets of both life and death and the mysterious texture of the real, and how to see and turn away from the sterile schemata of analytic thought.’89 Against this romantic, quasi-Rousseauist, approach we need to emphasise the cultural law that Levi-Strauss has dwelt on so much, namely that any cultural complex or system has its own peculiar cost-benefit structure, so that what a particular culture makes up on the roundabouts it loses on the swings. In other words, cultural advantages are always bought at a price and the benefits of Aboriginal cultures and religions (which are considerable) are, like European cultures and religions, bought at a significant cost. Any honest comparative approach to Aboriginal religions must recognise this. It must also recognise that the denial and devaluation of the values of Western European cultures in order to show up or boost the values of pre-literate cultures are misguided. One wonders, indeed, how some anthropologists who decry Western analytic thought and canons of rationality are nevertheless able to write their books on pre-literate peoples and their cultures. There are a number of examples of what Auge is complaining about in contemporary anthropology of the life-worlds of Australian Aborigines. However, they cannot be discussed here. Returning to the question of comparative religion, the crucial difficulty about comparing religious systems is that the interest of anthropologists and cultural historians in other cultures is itself a culturally shaped phenomenon. One does not need to be a convinced postmodernist or a cultural relativist to appreciate the obvious and commonsense point that people live their lives in different cultures and that the way they see things and think about things is powerfully shaped by the cultural circumstances in which they live. But, again, this does not mean that we are wholly imprisoned within our particular culture and cannot understand or say anything meaningful about other cultures. We can in fact understand or get the hang of other cultures or life-worlds to a degree, even if this is as difficult as attempting to translate a Shakespearean sonnet into, say, Mandarin or Swahili, and requires a great deal of cultural imagination. Nevertheless, it can be done. In the case of Aboriginal Australians, one might remark on the significance of the emergence of Aboriginal intellectuals like David Mowalarjai in the Kimberley, Burrumarra and Narritjin in the Yolngu situation and Eddie Mabo in the Marshall Islands in the Torres Strait. These individuals, while fully participating in their own societies and cultures, have been able to step outside the world of their own lived experience and to reflect and comment on it in relation to the white Australian world or, in the case of Burrumarra, the Macassan world. Many indigenous people, in fact, are to some degree able to adopt a participant observer role. Yolngu people, for example, are interested in European anthropologists’

Introduction

19

accounts of their culture and are very critical of works of which they disapprove. Some observers have claimed that many Aborigines use white anthropologists as the mouthpiece of their own analyses of their culture and its relationship to other cultures. Early Australian anthropologists and historians readily adopted a social Darwinian/evolutionist perspective in which the indigenous peoples were seen as quintessential ‘primitives’ and this in turn conveniently chimed in with the social and political attitudes of the new settlers towards Aborigines. This led to the bizarre denial that the primitive indigenous peoples had any sense of land ownership and that Australia, at the time of invasion, was terra nullius, a land not owned by anyone. Further, the belief that Australian Aborigines were quintessential^ ‘primitive’ was behind the whole tragically misguided endeavour of the early Christian missions. The Lutheran and Catholic missionaries naively assumed that the indigenous peoples must have the simplest and most ‘elementary’ (to use Durkheim’s term) forms of religious belief and practice which they would easily and willingly discard when Christian beliefs were put to them.90 No doubt a number of Christian missionaries were anthropologically sophisticated: one thinks, for example, of the Catholic missionary and scholar Fr Ernest Worms and, to a certain extent, the Lutheran pastor and linguist Carl Strehlow (T.G.FL Strehlow’s father).91 But it is, unfortunately, broadly true that the missionaries were the victims of their own naivety. However, if some Australian anthropologists were (perhaps inadvertently) party to the abusive socio-political attitudes and practices mentioned before, they have also played a significant part in helping to gain white recognition for Aboriginal life-forms and cultures. One may cite as examples: the inclusion of Aborigines as electors (after more than one hundred years of white settlement) in Australian parliamentary elections; the Land Rights legislation of 1976 and its implementation; the Mabo case; and the recognition that Australian Aborigines had a (qualified) right to their traditional lands; the still incomplete Reconciliation process between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians; the partial recognition of Aboriginal customary law; the promotion of Aboriginal art. Moreover, pre­ historians and archaeologists such as John Mulvaney have demonstrated the great antiquity (at least 50,000 years) of Aboriginal cultures and their religions, a fact that has had enormous importance in arguing the Aboriginal cause. In her recent book on the Hindmarsh Bridge affair, Margaret Simons has, a little extravagantly, written that ‘after Mabo there was a burgeoning interest in anthropological consultancy. Aboriginal land councils, mining and pastoral interests and governments needed anthropologists to assess the traditions that bound Aboriginal people to the land.’92 In other words, the Western ‘science’ of anthropology has become indispensable to Aboriginal Australian groups in their pursuit of equality and justice!

20

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

The Dreaming and the Judaeo-Christian View of Creation For all these reservations about the comparison of religious systems, a good deal of (oblique) light might be thrown upon the central idea of The Dreaming’ as a creative period by carefully comparing it with the philosophico-theological account of creation in classical Judaism and Christianity. As we have seen, the formation and shaping of the ‘land’ in Aboriginal religions is very different from the JudaeoChristian-Islamic view of creation ex nihilo. However, the philosophicotheological elaboration of the idea of creation by medieval Jewish, Christian and Islamic thinkers, using a quasi-Aristotelian and elements of a neo-Platonic conceptual framework, offers a valuable perspective on Aboriginal thinking about ‘the beginning of things’. For Aquinas and other medieval thinkers, God, the Supreme Being who is also the fullness of being, is both transcendent with respect to the created world in that the world is totally dependent for its existence on God, but also immanent in that world in that God sustains or conserves every created being in existence. In other words, pantheism - the identification of God with the world - is rejected, but the idea of God existing in splendid isolation apart from the world he has created is also rejected. For the medieval Jewish-Christian-Islamic philosopher-theologians the fact that God is transcendent to the created world does not mean that God cannot be immanent in that world.93 Adopting, for the moment, this way of thinking, one could say that if the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition has perhaps exaggerated the transcendence of God, most Australian Aboriginal religions have perhaps over-emphasised the immanence of the creative Ancestor Spirits. We might also enquire why Australian Aboriginal religions have been so resistant to monotheism and why they appear to be so resolutely pluralist and non­ exclusive with respect to other religions, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. (On the other hand, there have been apparently successful ventures in ‘Aboriginal Christianity’ and in ‘Aboriginal Islam’.) In a chapter of his book Arguments About Aborigines, regarding the widespread Rainbow Serpent myth, Hiatt has rejected ‘the notion of a single, well-defined mythological entity known throughout the continent’ and declared it to be ‘an anthropological fiction’. At the same time he says that ‘we can still speak of a genre, a suite of fleeting forms connected with the rainbow through which the philosophers of Aboriginal Australia have sought to express the idea of an underlying reality’. And he goes on: ‘In the higher reaches of serious reflection, we find a persistent intuition of a presence and power whose Oneness is felt to account for the plurality and impermanence of the sensible world and those who live in it.’94 Finally, one might remark on the growth of interest in comparing indigenous religions with each other. For example, the religions of Australian Aborigines, some Native American groups, and certain African tribes exhibit surprising commonalities. In a recent collection of texts, Indigenous Religions: A Companion,95 Kenneth M. Morrison claims that the Native American Ojibwa people in a region west of Lake Superior reject any kind of metaphysical hierarchy

Introduction

21

- divine beings, humans, animals, plants, inanimate beings. Instead, religion is concerned with human persons and their relationships with each other and with other-than-human persons (spirits, animals, plants etc.).96 In this context the question of monotheism simply does not arise. Again, in an essay on the Karak people associated with the Klamath River in north-west California, Sean M. Connor critically examines claims that Native American peoples as a whole had a quasi-ecological attitude to religion. It is impossible, Connor argues, to speak of a homogeneous Native American view. Before Columbus North America ‘was home to peoples speaking well over five hundred languages, of nine radically different language families as diverse as Chinese from German, or Arabic from English’. ‘From this perspective’, he goes on, ‘Native American religious orientations toward the natural world can be no more homogenous than the environmental diversity of the North American continent.’97 Finally, Berel Dov Lemer contrasts the religious attitudes of two East African peoples, the Azande and the Nuer. The Azande believe in witches and practice elaborate forms of magic but they ‘do not have much in the way of religion. Availing themselves of their knowledge of witches and magical techniques, the Azande, like modem Western secularists, prefer to take matters into their own hands rather than nurture feelings of dependence on higher, spiritual powers.’98 On the other hand, the Nuer with their belief in Spirit (kwoth), who has created everything and is the protector and friend of humans, seem much more inclined to a form of monotheistic religion. This is clearly an important area of scholarly interest for anthropologists, cultural historians and philosophers of religion. Many indigenous religions have had to come to terms with Christianity, and a recent special issue of the Journal o f Religious History edited by Fiona Magowan is concerned with indigenous religions and Christianity.99 The Future of Aboriginal Religions As mentioned before, the fears of Strehlow and other assimilationists that Australian Aboriginal religions were on the verge of dying out have been largely shown to be unfounded. No doubt a number of contemporary Aboriginal groups face enormous problems - alcoholism, unemployment, sexual abuse and violence against women, the collapse of public health in many areas, the education of young children, the suicide of young men in police custody, welfare dependence. And in this context the study of Aboriginal religions can easily be seen as an antiquarian and irrelevant pursuit. While Rome is burning, anthropologists and cultural historians are studying the niceties of the Warlpiri ritual system!100 A number of people, both white and indigenous, have called for ‘culture change’, meaning that Australian Aboriginal cultures cannot cope with all the socio-economic problems of the 20th century and that the only hope for Aboriginal Australians is to embrace white Australian culture and to abandon romantic ideas about their past and what has been called the ‘Dreamtime industry’ and ‘designer tribalism’.101 This kind of cultural chauvinism conveniently ignores the huge social

22

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

and personal costs of Western cultures. But, quite apart from this, there is an intrinsic value in studying Aboriginal cultures and their religions just as there is an intrinsic value in studying the culture and religion of classical Greece and of the European Middle Ages. They are worthy of study simply because they are human creations and because, as the Roman Terence put it, nothing human should be alien to us. It may well be that Australian Aboriginal cultures and their religions will not survive in the long term, just as it is quite possible that the peculiar virtues of liberal democracy will not survive, but it does not follow that they are not of serious human worth and not deserving of sympathetic study. The call for ‘culture change’ is, in a sense, a revival of the assimilationist policy of Australian governments and institutions before the Second World War was one of the primary motives behind the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families, which provoked the later scandal and debate over the ‘stolen generations’. The new assimilationists include leading figures in the various conservative governments, and a number of what one might call the ‘New Right’ or ‘Neo-conservative’ intelligentsia or elites. However, the assumption made by most of the contributors to this anthology is that the persistence of the small and fragile and threatened Aboriginal cultures and their religions is something that is, as has been said, intrinsically valuable and an indispensable part of the Australian experiment in multi-culturalism. In biology we now know that biological diversity is a precondition of ecological well-being, and the same is true of cultural diversity and cultural health. The act of faith that underlies Australian multi-culturalism (which is still a work in progress) is that it is possible for people of widely different life-worlds and religions not just to co-exist but to interact positively and creatively in pursuit of a common good. The opponents of multi-culturalism argue that there cannot be a society unless there is a (mono-cultural) consensus, express or tacit, about a set of basic values, by its members. But in a liberal democratic society that consensus is centrally about the value of personal autonomy and the freedom to engage in a plurality of what John Stuart Mill called ‘experiments in living’. Ideally, in a liberal democratic society, the law should be concerned solely with maintaining this freedom and pluralism and not with the ‘enforcement of morals’ or exacting consent to a set of monocultural values. We conveniently forget that Australia was a multi-cultural society from the very moment Captain Cook arrived and the Australian Aborigines found themselves joined, for good and ill, to the white settlers. As already remarked, the fears of many in the 1930s and 1940s that Australian Aboriginal religions were on the verge of dying out have been shown to be largely unfounded. Though it is true that a number of contemporary Aboriginal peoples face enormous socio-cultural problems, it is also true that there is a great deal of vitality and renewal and inventive adaptability in many quasi-traditional contexts. This has been strikingly shown in the deeply religious (in that it is intimately connected with Dreaming realities) contemporary Aboriginal art of Emily Kngwarreye, Wuta Wuta Tjangala, Linda Syddick, the Balgo group and others. It is also manifested in the creative inventiveness of Aboriginal religions vis-a-vis Christianity and other religions. The essays collected here also testify to that vitality and renewal and provide hope for the future.

Introduction

23

Notes 1 Edited by Max Charlesworth, Howard Morphy, Diane Bell and Kenneth Maddock, St Lucia, Queensland University Press. 2 For this see the splendid The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, edited by Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2000. 3 See Lynne Hume, ‘The Dreaming in Contemporary Aboriginal Australia’, in Graham Harvey, ed., Indigenous Religions: A Companion, London, Cassell, 2000, pp. 125-138. Francesca Merlan, Caging the Rainbow: Places, Politics and Aborigines in a North Australian Township, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 1998. 4 Deborah Bird Rose, Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Aboriginal Australian Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 55. 5 lan Keen, Aboriginal Economy and Society on the Threshold of Colonisation, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2003. 6 See the essay ‘The Diversity of Revelations’ in Max Charlesworth, Religious Inventions: Four Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. See also the recent work of philosophers of religion such as John Hick, Raimundo Pannikar, John Cobb, Karl Rahner, Henry Corbin, Jacques Dupuis and others. 7 Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994. 8 Ibid., p. 163. 9 Ibid., p. 273. 10 Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975, p. 87. 11 See Nancy Munn’s pioneering work, Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Representation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Australian Society, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1973. With regard to bark-paintings see Luke Taylor, ‘Flesh, bone and spirit: Western Arnhem Land bark painting’, in Howard Morphy and Margo Smith Boles, eds., Art from the luind: Dialogues with the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Australian Aboriginal Art,

Charlottesville, University of Virginia, 1996. 12 See Fran^oise Dussart, ‘What an acrylic can mean: the metaphysical resonance of Central Desert painting’, ch. 7 in Morphy and Smith Boles, eds., Art from the Land. See also Geoffrey Bardon, Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert, Ringwood, Vic., 1991, and D. Mellor and J.V.S. Megaw, eds., Twenty-five Years and Beyond: Papunya Tula Painting, Adelaide, 1999. See also H. Perkins and H. Fink, Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Sydney, Art Gallery of N.S.W., 2000. Fred Myers’s recent, and remarkable, book Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art, Durham, Duke University Press, 2002, is perhaps the most complete analysis of the contemporary movement in Aboriginal painting and the complex institutional, administrative, curatorial and economic infrastructures, with mainly white advisers, that made it possible. 13 See Geoffrey Bardon, ‘The Papunya-Tula Movement’, in The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture ', pp. 208-210. See also Perkins and Fink, eds., Papunya Tula.

14 Vivien Johnson, ‘Desert Art’, in The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, pp. 213-214.

15 See Terry Smith, ‘Kngwarreye Woman: Abstract Painter’ in Margo Neale, ed., Emily Kngwarreye: Paintings from Utopia, Melbourne, Macmillan, 1998; see also Jenny Green, ‘The Enigma of Emily Kngwarray’, ch. 6 in World of Dreaming, Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, 2000. 16 Howard Morphy, Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991., p. 77.

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

24

17 Fred Myers, ‘Unsettled Business: Acrylic Painting, Tradition, and Indigenous Being’, Canberra, AIATSIS Conference, 2001, p. 6. This paper contains themes developed more fully in Myers’s later book Painting Culture. 18 See Myers, Painting Culture, pp. 304-310, on the work of Linda Syddick, with illustrations. See also Roslyn Premont, ‘Tjankaya (Linda Syddick) Nappaltjarri’, in Victoria Lynn, ed., Australian Prospecta, Sydney, Art Gallery ofN.S.W., 1993. 19 Luke Taylor, ‘Western Arnhem Land bark painting’, in Morphy and Smith Boles, eds., Art from the Land, pp. 27-28. 20 Rosemary Crumlin, ‘Aboriginal Spirituality: Land as the Holder of Myth in Recent Aboriginal Art’, in Max Charlesworth, ed., Religious Business, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, pp. 96-98. I b id *

22

Piercing the Ground: Balgo Women’s Image Making and Relationship to Country,

Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003. 23 Melbourne, Hyland House Publishing, 1997. 24 D.J. Mulvaney, ‘So Much That Is New ’, p. 392. 25 W.E.H. Stanner, ‘Religion, Totemism and Symbolism’, in R.M. and C.H. Bemdt, eds., Aboriginal Man in Australia, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1965, p. 209. See also Max Charlesworth, ‘The Invention of Australian Aboriginal Religion’, in Religious Inventions: Four Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. 26 See Howard Morphy, ‘Gillen - Man of Science’, ch. 2 in John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy and Alison Petch, eds., My Dear Spencer, p. 41. See also Morphy’s earlier essay ‘Empiricism to Metaphysics: in Defence of the Concept of the Dreamtime’, in Tom Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths, eds., Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1996. 27 See Austin-Broos, Critical review o f ‘My Dear Spencer\ Oceania, 69 (3), 1999. 28 In Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32 (2), 1991, pp. 197-224. 29 See Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: The Totemic System in Australia , London, Allen and Unwin, 1915. 30 See also A.P. Elkin, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1880-1955’, Oceania, 26 (4), 1956, p. 249. 31 Annette Hamilton ‘Daughters of the Imaginary’, Canberra Anthropology, 9 (2), 1986, pp. 5-6. 32 Oceania Monograph, 1959-1961. 33 See Stanner’s brilliant critique of Durkheim, 'Reflections on Durkheim and Aboriginal religion’, in M. Freedman, ed., Social Organisation: essays presented to Raymond Firth , London, Cass, 1967. 34 See L.R. Hiatt, Introduction to On Aboriginal Religion, p. xxxv. 35 See Ian Keen, ‘Stanner and Aboriginal Religion’, Canberra Anthropology, 9 (2), 1986. See also Diane Barwick et al., Metaphors of Interpretation: Essays in Honour ofW.E. H. Stanner , ANU Press, Canberra, 1985, and the references to Stanner in Howard Morphy’s essay, ‘The resurrection of the Hydra: twenty five years in Aboriginal religion’, in R.M. Bemdt and R. Tonkinson, eds., Social Anthropology and Australian Aboriginal Studies: A Contemporary Review, Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988. A new edition of Stanner’s classic study On Aboriginal Religion, 1963, was published in 1989 with introductions by Francesca Merlan and L.R. Hiatt, Oceania Monograph 36, University of Sydney, 1989. 36 Cited in Barwick et al.. Metaphors of Interpretation , p. 42. 37 Ibid., p. 28. 38 Association for the Study of Religions, Bedford Park, S.A., 1978.

Introduction

25

39 See Barry Hill, Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, Sydney, Knopf, 2002. 40 Morphy, Ancestral Connections: p. 48. 41 Bird Rose, Dingo Makes us Human, p.54. 42 See Dianne Johnson's fascinating work. Night Skies of Aboriginal Australia: A Noctuary, Oceania Monograph 47, University of Sydney, 1998. 43 Dianne Johnson, ‘The Pleiades in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander astronomies’, in The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, p. 25. 44 John Morton, ‘Religion’, in The Oxford Companion To Aboriginal Art and Culture, pp. 9-16. 45 Ibid., p. 10. 46 David McKnight, People, Countries and the Rainbow Serpent, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 228—9. 47 See James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth , Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979. 48 Heather McDonald, BloodBones and Spirit, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, pp. 200-201. 49 The Noonkanbah Story, Dunedin, University of Otago Press, 1987, pp. 126-7. s° Ibid. p. 220. 51 See Tim Rowse, After Mabo: Interpreting Indigenous Traditions, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1993; ch.5, on Rose et al. 52 See Hilary Putnam, ‘James’s Theory of Truth’, in The Cambridge Companion to William James , ed. R.A. Putnam, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pintubi Country, Pintubi Self: Sentiment, Place and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines, Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1986. 54 Merlan, Caging the Rainbow, pp. 213-214. 53

55 56 57 58

Carlton, Melbourne Press, 2002. Ibid. White Man Got No Dreaming, ANU Press, 1979, p. 131. Helen Payne, ‘Rites for Sites or Site for Rites’, in Peggy Brook, ed., Women, Rites and Sites, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1989, p. 41. 59 Merlan, Caging the Rainbow, see especially ch. 7. 60 Ibid., p. 212. 61 Ian Keen, Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion, pp. 6-7, 10. 62 Silvie Poirier, Les jardins du nomade: cosmologie, territoire et personne dans le desert Australien, Munster and Paris, Lit Verlag, 1996. 63 ‘Places that move’, in Alan Rumsey and James Weiner, eds., Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2001, p. 120. 64 In Max Charlesworth, ed., Ancestor Spirits: Aspects of Australian Aboriginal Life and Spirituality , Geelong, Deakin University Press, 1990, p. 32. 65 Journal of Aboriginal History, vol. 21, 1997. See also the earlier study by McIntosh, ‘Islam and Australia’s Aborigines? A Perspective from North-east Arnhem Land’, Journal of Religious History 20 (1), pp. 53-77. For further studies of Macassan influence see Marcia Langton, ‘Religion and art from colonial conquest to post-colonial resistance', The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, p. 17. See also John Cawte, The Universe of the Warramirri: Art, Medicine and Religion, Kensington, UNSW Press, 1993. 66 See, for example, the interesting work of the Adelaide/Belfast anthropologist Fiona Magowan, e.g., ‘It is God who speaks in the thunder...: Mediating Ontologies of Faith

26

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity’, Journal of Religious History, October 2003. See also Ian McIntosh, ‘Anthropology, self-determination and Aboriginal belief in a Christian God’, Oceania Monograph, 67 (4), 1997, 273-289, and Ian Keen's report on early Christian-Yolngu movements of the 1950s and 1980s in Knowledge and Secrecy, pp. 276-288. 67 See Heather McDonald, Blood, Bones and Spirit. 68 Rainbow Spirit Elders, Rainbow Spirit Theology: Towards an Australian Aboriginal Theology, Blackburn, HarperCollins Religious, 1997. 69 See also the French anthropologist Marika MoisseefFs essay, ‘Australian Ritual Objects, or How to Represent the Unrepresentable’, in Monique Jeudy-Ballini and Bernard Jullerat, eds., People and Things: Social Mediations in Oceania, Durham, Carolina Academic Press, 2002, pp. 240-262. 70 Ibid., p. 254. 71 See Rosemary Crumlin’s ‘Aboriginal Spirituality: Land as Holder of Story and Myth in Recent Aboriginal Art’, in Max Charlesworth, ed., Religious Business: Essays in Australian Aboriginal Spirituality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 94-102. See especially her remarks (pp. 100-101) on the ‘two-way’ (Aboriginal and Roman Catholic) people of Turkey Creek, north of Balgo, and the two artist elders and religious leaders, Hector Sundaloo and George Mung Mung. 72 McIntosh, ‘The Birrinydji Legacy’, p. 285. 73 Ibid. 74 Broome, W.A., Magabala Books. 75 Ibid., p. 62. 76 Ibid., p. 133. 77 See ibid., p. 205, Appendix 4. 78 Ibid., p. x. 79 Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 1993. 80 See also the very interesting essay by Anthony Redmond, “‘Alien Abductions”: Kimberley Aboriginal rock paintings and the speculation about human origins: some investments in cultural tourism in the northern Kimberley’, in Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2002, no. 2, pp. 54-68. 81 See Frank Brennan, 'Land Rights: The Religious Factor,’ in Charlesworth, ed.. Religious Business. Eddie Mabo was a member of the Meriam people who inhabit one of the Murray Islands (Mir) in the Torres Strait just north of Cape York. 82 Land Rights Act, secns. 50 (i)(a) and 3. 83 There is now a vast literature upon the Hindmarsh Bridge affair: see Robert Tonkinson, ‘Anthropology and Aboriginal Tradition: The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair’, Oceania, 68 (1), pp. 1-26; see also James F. Weiner, ‘Strangelove’s Dilemma or What Kind of Secrecy do the Ngarrindjeri practice?’, in A. Rumsey and J. Weiner, eds., Emplaced Myth, pp. 139-158; Tim Rowse ‘Hindmarsh Revisited: Review Article’, Oceania, 70 (3), 2003, apropos of Diane Bell’s Ngarrindjeri Wurrowarrini: a world that is, was, and will be. Melbourne, Spinfex Press, 1997, and Dulcie Wilson’s The Cost of Crossing Bridges, Mitcham, Small Poppies Press, 1998. For a long and detailed critique of Bell’s book see Richard Kimber, ‘Diane Bell, the Ngarrindjeri and the Hindmarsh Island Affair’: “Value Free'’ Ethnography’, Aboriginal History, 1997, pp. 229-232. 84 Sydney, Hodder, 2003. 85 See Ron Brunton, ‘The Hindmarsh Island Bridge and the credibility of Australia anthropology’, Anthropology Today, 12 (4), 1996, pp. 2-7. 86 Marshall Sahlins, Waiting for Foucault, Still. Cambridge, Mass., Prickly Pear Press, 2002, p. 4.

Introduction

27

87 See Rumsey, Introduction to Emplaced Myth, pp. 1-12. 88 Ibid., p. 7. 89 Marc Auge, The Anthropological Circle: symbol, function, history, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 4. 90 Jean Woolmington, ‘Writing on the Sand: the First Mission to Aborigines in Eastern Australia', in Tony Swain and Deborah Bird Rose, eds., Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, Bedford Park, S.A., Australian Association for the Study of Religions, 1988. 91 See Ernest A. Worms and Helmut Petrie, Australian Aboriginal Religions, English translation by Martin Wilson and Max Charlesworth, 1986, revised edition 1998, Sydney, Nelen Yubu Missiological series, No. 5. 92 Margaret Simons, The Meeting of the Waters: The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair, Sydney, Hodder, 2003, p. 73. 93 On Aquinas's philosophical view of God see David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; see also Max Charlesworth, Philosophy and Religion: From Plato to Postmodernism, Oxford, One World, 2002, ch. 3. 94 Arguments About Aborigines, p. 116. 95 Ed. Graham Harvey, London, Cassell, 2001. 96 Kenneth M. Morrison, ‘The Cosmos as Intersubjective: Native American other-thanhuman persons’, pp. 23-36. 97 Sean M. Connors, ‘Karak Orientations Towards the Land’, pp. 140-141. 98 Bcrel Dov Lerner, ‘Magic, Religion and Secularity Among the Azade and Nuer', pp. 118-119. 99 Journal of Religious History, 27 (3), 2003. See especially the essay by Terence Ranger, ‘Christianity and Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Overview’, pp. 255-271. 100 For a deeply pessimistic, though measured, account see Peter Sutton, The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Policy in Australia since the 1970s’, in Anthropological Forum , 11 (2), 2001. See also Colin Tatz, ‘Aboriginal violence: a return to pessimism’, The Australian Journal of Social Issues, 25, pp. 245-260, and Gary Johns, ed., Waking up to the Dreamtime: The Illusion of Aboriginal Self-determination, Singapore, Media Masters. 2001. 101 Roger Sandall, The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays, Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 2001, p. 3.

PART 1: REVALUATIONS

Broadly speaking, our interest in understanding other cultures and their religious systems is very much a 19th and 20th century development. This kind of understanding requires that we develop an imaginative capacity to ‘stand outside’ our own cultural and religious world and enter empathetically into the world of another culture. This means in turn that we do not see other religions as ‘primitive’ and inferior to the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) of Western Europe and the Middle East, but that we take them seriously and not as some kind of infantile mumbo-jumbo. John Mulvaney’s sensitive account of the work of Baldwin Spencer and his remarkable associate Frank Gillen shows how the early anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries grappled with understanding the extraordinarily complex religious systems of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. On the one hand, Spencer and Gillen were observers of genius and sympathetically described the myths, rituals, ceremonies and the Ancestral Law or ‘Dreaming’ of various Aboriginal peoples. Unfortunately, on the other hand, their ideas were distorted by an evolutionistic theory, which they shared with their contemporaries, about the development of societies and religions. L.R. Hiatt dwells critically on the assumption made by the early anthropologists and others that the Australian indigenous peoples believed in ‘Gods’, and even in a Supreme God of a Judaeo-Christian kind. He also discusses the myth of the Rainbow Serpent which some have seen as being common to all Aboriginal belief systems. W.E.H. Stanner (1905-1982), a professor of anthropology and sociology at the Australian National University in the sixties and seventies, is now commonly seen as the most significant figure in the development of interest in Aboriginal religions. Stanner was a humanist with a profound respect for Aboriginal thinking - a respect that was reflected in his approach to anthropology. In his close and critical analysis of Stanner’s views of Aboriginal religion, Ian Keen shows how central philosophico-religious ideas were for Stanner, but he also uncovers a number of dubious assumptions that he made, particularly about the ‘sacramental’ character of Aboriginal religions and the idea o f ‘sacrifice’. Over the last one hundred years anthropologists have played a major part in promoting a deeper understanding of the religions of Australia’s Aborigines (probably more than 50,000 years old) so different from other ‘world religions’ and other indigenous religions. But there is now an increasing interest in Aboriginal religions by cultural historians, philosophers of religions, theologians and others. Max Charlesw orth

i

Baldwin Spencer and F J. Gillen John Mulvaney

The Arunta: A Stone Age People was published late in 1927 under the joint authorship of Spencer and Gillen, but by now Gillen’s contribution was considerably diluted. It was dedicated T o Our Master, Sir James Frazer’. ‘So our names will go down linked together’, Frazer exulted:1 y o u r reputation r ests...o n the fundam ental facts o f hum an history w h ic h y o u h a v e d is c o v e r e d ...Y o u h a v e o p e n e d u p ...a d eep er m in e into th e past o f hum an in stitu tio n s than a n y o n e e ls e has e v e r d o n e ...I h a v e w o rk ed at the p ro d u cts y o u h a v e b rou gh t up from the m in e , as hu n dred s o f p e o p le ...w ill d o for g e n e ra tio n s to c o m e ...

The mining simile was appropriate, for those golden words were redolent of an age before the gilt began to peel, when academic sages were immortal; Frazer, the author of Questions on the Customs, Beliefs and Languages o f Savages, when asked which particular savages he had worked amongst, simply replied,2 ‘But Heaven forbid!’ Frazer’s reputation today approaches its nadir as critics examine the rotten trunk from which The Golden Bough was hewn. Sir Edmund Leach3 has reflected on the transitory nature of academic fashion which now reveals it to have been merely a ‘Gilded Twig’. Hindsight renders criticism facile and reputations are rarely maintained untarnished into later academic generations. Have Spencer (and Gillen) stood the test of time better than their ‘Master’? Spencer’s anthropology in 1926, as in 1896, was flawed in its theory, through its limited range of informants and by his linguistic deficiencies. Yet his contribution should be assessed from the perspective of anthropological history. Even half a century after his death few anthropologists have written more than he on Aboriginal society. Quantity may be a poor criterion, but he was exceptional in that all his books were based upon personal field research. From the time of his first association with Gillen, whose observation of Aboriginal life then approached a quarter of a century, he spent almost thirty-two months in contact with Aborigines, either as anthropologist, biologist or welfare officer. This constituted an exceptional record for its time.

Extract from D.J. Mulvaney and J.H. Calaby, ‘So Much That is New’: Baldwin Spencer 1860-1925: A Biography, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1985, pp. 385-396. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Gillen’s Alice Springs experience was supplemented by Spencer’s total time spent in that area of over six months. Spencer’s last visit to Alice Springs in a sense symbolized the end of the era of nineteenth-century fieldwork. Almost simultaneously a group of young anthropologists including A.P. Elkin, Donald Thomson and Lloyd Warner entered the field, either directed from the new Sydney University anthropology department or with funding from the Australian National Research Council, both bodies whose establishment Spencer had assisted. It is noteworthy that most researchers were supported financially henceforth throughout their prolonged residence, whereas much of Spencer’s work was self-funded. The new anthropologists were professionals, in the sense that their field research was a full-time occupation, oriented partly towards improving the chances of their future employment as academic anthropologists. Spencer was a busy biology teacher and his excursions were sandwiched into university vacations. Taken together with the financial aspects, these factors explain the brevity of his visits. His two year-long expeditions were made possible only because he sacrificed two sabbatical leave entitlements in that cause. Spencer’s predecessors from Brough Smyth to Howitt had relied for most of their information upon correspondents, or they contacted Aborigines within their immediate and much detribalized areas. They never met many of their correspondents and although the quality of their information varied, they were unable to evaluate it because they seldom possessed any personal familiarity with the region concerned. Spencer either obtained his own information in the outback amongst more traditionally oriented people or he selected his own European agents as a result of these visits. They were men whose opinions he trusted and whom he enthused in the unusual task of recording the life of normally despised natives. His informants were men of character whose often unconventional initiative placed them above the ruck of hardy pioneers. Men of the calibre of Gillen, Byrne, Cowle, Cahill and Field had few equals in the correspondents of the earlier compilers. Their letters are testimony to their pains in obtaining the information which he sought, even grudgingly as in Cowle’s case. Because they respected ‘the prof who yarned and drank with them, he was able to question their findings and because he knew their region, he could direct their investigations. Although some informants previously owned ethnographic collections, Spencer interested them in enlarging them. He personally paid the expenses and freight charges on much of this material, including consignments from Cowle and Cahill. As director and trustee of the museum, he also arranged the purchase from public funds of such major collections as those assembled by Gillen and Field. Items from these collections now enrich displays in many countries and, belatedly, they are contributing significantly towards an understanding of the cultural diversity and creativity of mankind. Fortunately the bulk of these collections remain in Australian institutions and constitute a cultural archive of inestimable value to the national Aboriginal heritage. Gillen was Spencer’s most striking success. A comparison of Gillen’s stilted contributions to the Horn volume (and even that was edited by Spencer) with the stream of ethnographic data which issued from his pen during the following

Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen

33

months establishes that Spencer’s praise and critical questioning converted random comment into directed observation, even though its form was anecdotal and its expression was colloquial. The colourful correspondence from Spencer’s informants should be compared with the formal responses or completed pro forma questionnaires which Howitt received from most of his contacts, for the contrast is striking. The context of the times and circumstances under which Spencer worked should be considered, therefore, in any assessment of his place in Australian anthropology. During his career as a part-time anthropologist, possibly only two observers could have claimed more extensive contact with traditionally oriented Aborigines. One was Daisy Bates. Her reputation is being enhanced as her voluminous notes in the Australian National Library are investigated, but her publications were few and slight. The other claimant is Spencer’s Oxford classmate W.E. Roth, whose stature is overdue for reassessment. His experience as a doctor and Protector of Aboriginals in Queensland spanned more than a decade and much of his factually oriented record of material culture and economic aspects is of outstanding merit, despite his lack of literary polish. Spencer rather disparaged Roth’s work, possibly because Roth was not interested in the social evolutionary models which so preoccupied Howitt, Frazer, Tylor and himself. ‘Curiously he makes no reference to totems...’ Spencer told Frazer rather scornfully, and ‘the rest of his work dealing with ceremonies shows that he has not been fully admitted to all their “sacred” matter though he evidently thinks he has’. (Criticism can be double-edged and Spencer’s critics might advance an identical comment.) Spencer also considered that even if Roth was an anthropologist, he was not a gentleman. Roth dwelt upon ‘ethno-pornography’, while Spencer dealt circumspectly with sexual matters even though he did not suppress them. ‘The one great drawback of Roth’s work’ he confided to Henry Balfour,4 ‘is that he has looked at their customs from what one might call a dirty point of view and the expressions he uses such as “bucks” and “gentry” make you feel wild to think that he should spoil such a valuable piece of work in this way.’ Despite the potential of Bates and Roth as sources, they were individualistic recorders rather than collaborators with local informants whom they guided. They possessed neither Spencer’s intellectual vigour, output nor clarity. His field methodology is best understood as the systematic approach of a trained biologist, who applied his powers of observation and rapid recording to the behaviour of mankind. He was influenced considerably both by Howitt’s example and early guidance and by Frazer’s praise and suggestions and he freely acknowledged this debt. However, he maintained a healthy independence and he worried about methodological and theoretical issues more than some of his critics allowed. Due partly to Andrew Lang’s rather mischievous intervention, undue emphasis has been placed upon the conflicting interpretation of specific matters by Spencer and Pastor Strehlow. From their cosy upholstered armchairs, the social theorists of Edwardian times used the stick of selectively chosen items from Spencer and Gillen to beat the conjectures of their opponents. The effectiveness of their blows was limited from that position, but united only by their unwillingness to attempt fieldwork

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

themselves, they shouted abuse to gain verbal dominance. Probably Spencer and Gillen in their heyday had few readers who did not perceive their publications through the intellectual filter of their chosen exponent of social institutions, such as Tylor, Frazer, Crawley, Lang or Durkheim. It will be shown that the same sieve­ like factor applied both to the presentation and the interpretation of Carl Strehlow’s data. The theorists combed ethnographic sources in their atomistic and opinionated search for survivals or curious customs with which to adumbrate contemporary models of evolutionist and rationalist dogmas. They identified Australian culture simplistically with its celebrated Arunta tribal fragment and shredded, patched and generalized it according to individual taste. By the time that The Arunta was published, these erudite sages were as tired as most of their ideas, so fewer anthropologists may have read it because of its authors’ association with increasingly unfashionable concepts. This is regrettable because this book incorporated fresh data and hinted at new possibilities. Spencer’s constructive attitude towards Radcliffe-Brown is interesting, because his personal opinion of his character was not flattering. When Radcliffe-Brown was appointed to the Cape Town chair of anthropology, Spencer had written to Haddon expressing sentiments which later anthropologists might have endorsed:5 I c a n n o t q u ite m a k e h im o u t.

H e s e e m s so far a s I can j u d g e from th e little tim e I had

w ith h im and from h is p a p er to p la c e h im s e lf in o p p o sitio n to e v e r y o n e e ls e and to try and s h o w that th e y are eith e r w r o n g or h a v e p rese n te d th in g s in th e w r o n g w a y .

I know

o n ly h is A u stra lia n w o rk w h ic h is g o o d so far as it g o e s bu t is rather w ritten a s i f h e w e r e th e g rea t ‘P o o h - B a h ’ w ith o u t s u ffic ie n t regard for th e w o rk o f m en lik e H o w itt.

Radcliffe-Brown transferred to the new Sydney chair of anthropology in 1926, although Spencer was in Alice Springs before he arrived. When Spencer came to write The Arunta he sought Radcliffe-Brown’s advice on spelling. He felt concerned because his version of Aboriginal words did not conform with current usage. He was assured in a cordial response, however, that he should retain his accustomed practice otherwise confusion would result.6 T he spelling of Australian languages has been chaotic in the extreme’, Radcliffe-Brown concluded: A ll that is req u ired o f an y e th n o lo g is t is that h e sh o u ld sp e ll c o n s is te n tly and e x p la in to h is rea d ers the p h o n e tic v a lu e o f th e letters and sig n s h e u se s.

I h o p e that s o m e d ay,

w h e n d ic tio n a r ie s and te x ts in n a tiv e la n g u a g e s are c o n c e r n e d , it m ay b e p o s s ib le to in tr o d u c e a s c ie n tific p h o n e tic sy s te m and attain u n ifo r m ity and e x a c tn e ss .

B u t till th is

h a s b e e n d o n e th ere is n o standard o r ca n o n .

Anthropologists accustomed to another half century of linguistic chaos may echo ‘Amen’ to those sentiments. They also provided fair criteria by which to assess Spencer’s nomenclature within the context of his times. Comparable considerations had influenced Spencer in 1903 to retain some terms in The Northern Tribes o f Central Australia, although he knew of preferable substitutes. Frazer, who volunteered to correct the proofs, was informed:7

35

Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen

Y o u w ill o b se r v e that I am as far as p o s s ib le a v o id in g th e u se o f th e letter s ‘c h ’. T h e y are n o t at all u n d e r sto o d b y fo r e ig n e r s and are m o st p u z z lin g and m is le a d in g . ‘T j’ is j u s t as g o o d for B ritish read ers and p refera b le for fo r e ig n e r s.

In s o m e c a s e s w h e r e a w o r d

su c h as c h u r in g a o r a lc h e r in g a h a s b een fr e q u e n tly u se d I am a llo w in g it to sta n d b u t in o th e r [c a s e s ]...I am a lterin g it and am c o n s is te n tly ...u s in g Tj in all n e w w o r d s ...

It was in keeping with his own admitted lack of linguistic proficiency that even in 1922 he still corresponded with Haddon about the possibility of S. Ray, Haddon’s Torres Strait linguist, working in Central Australia.8 In The Arunta, Spencer deferred to Radcliffe-Brown’s classificatory terminology.9 ‘We have adopted [his] suggestion... in regard to the use of the terms section and subsection to replace class and sub-class, which are liable to cause confusion.1 Many years previously he had written tactfully to Howitt at the time he settled upon ‘class’, for Howitt and Fison had used other terms.10 I h a v e b een p o n d e r in g o v e r th e n a m e s to g iv e to th e d iv is io n s P a n u la , P a n a n g a e tc an d th e ir e q u iv a le n ts in th e v a r io u s trib es and it s e e m s to m e that th e o n ly th in g w h ic h w e can d o is to u se th e term s ‘c la s s ’ and ‘s u b - c la s s ’. I d o n ’t a lto g e th e r lik e p h r a tr y ...‘C la s s ’ is a v a g u e term w h ic h is a grea t a d v a n ta g e.

C la n and phratry h a v e su c h m e a n in g s in

regard to o th e r parts o f th e w o r ld that I d o n o t lik e th e m .

R o th ’s term s are h id e o u s and

m isle a d in g ...

Spencer gathered much additional genealogical material in 1926 and set out the results in detail in The Arunta. Unfortunately it is more confusing than it need have been. He correctly differentiated between male and female relationship terms, but he chose a man and his wife as his point of reference. As they belonged to different sections and lines of descent, it would have been preferable if he had chosen instead a brother and sister. Perhaps he had no choice, for it must be inferred that his basic informant on the relationship tables for sixty-eight individuals was Charlie Cooper.11 Spencer died before the publication of Radcliffe-Brown’s classic memoir on ‘The Social Organization of Australian Tribes’, which incorporated Spencer and Gillen into the canon of modem anthropological lore. In Radcliffe-Brown’s initial attempt to define the structure of Aboriginal tribal society, he chose the kinship systems of two tribes to represent major norms of classificatory relationship. One was the Kariera, the people amongst whom he had worked in Western Australia after Spencer had informed Frazer that he and Gillen were unavailable. The Kariera intermarried with cross-cousins and classified all relatives into two lines of descent. The Aranda represented Radcliffe-Brown’s second type of kinship system, with a prohibition between the marriage of cross-cousins and the classification of relatives into four lines of descent, the preferred marriage being that between certain kinds of second cousins (mother’s mother’s brother’s daughter’s daughter). These models of kinship have been elaborated into four or five systems, but the Aranda system has remained one of them. Although much of the text of The Arunta was transcribed from the first Native Tribes volume, more new material was added than that contained in its kinship tables. Spencer emphasized the great diversity of social organization within tribal

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Australia and regretted that the citation of particular customs of one tribe became transformed by writers into typical of ‘the Australian native’. More than in the two earlier volumes on Central Australia, he stressed the intimate relationship existing between an individual and a locality, not only major features but even separate rocks, trees, ‘or a few square yards’. In order to illustrate what he termed ‘totemic topography’, he drew several sketches to illustrate prominent landscape features and he mentioned variations in local group organization, whether based on divisions of geography, class or totems. Peterson has drawn attention to the fact that because the French sociologist Emile Durkheim exerted great influence on theories of totemism, the notions of Frazer and Spencer relating to conceptiontotemism (totem spirits being localized in particular localities) lost their attraction. In fact, however, the attachment of totem to place was a reality (if not for Frazer’s reasons) and Spencer’s elaboration merits closer examination. Fie not only grasped the bonding between man and landscape but also with the mythical past (Alchera):12 ‘A man’s Alchera and his totem and totem group...and everything associated with the latter, are so closely interwoven in his thoughts that they are practically inseparable’. Surely in this conceptual linkage of people, place and time, Spencer hinted at rational and reciprocal relationships which approached a theory of functionalism, such as his younger contemporaries espoused. This was not a simplistic comparison of a bundle of discrete customs but a description of systematic relationships dimly perceived. He accepted that the Arunta provided ‘a perfectly feasible’ account of the origin of totemic names, once their parameters were accepted. Not satisfied with describing myths and traditions, he attempted to rationalize them in order to derive ancestral tracks and to explain present contacts or barriers between groups. He corrected the crude historicism of their first volume, in which they subdivided the dreamtime into four chronological stages.13 These examples are plucked from pages which offer fresh comment, but most of the book retains the data and outlook of Native Tribes. This is particularly the case in regard to the exchange of material goods over long distances, termed ‘trade’ in the first Native Tribes and republished here intact. Spencer and Gillen had concluded that artefacts such as shields, spears and pitchis were produced as regional specialisms and that an analysis of traditions suggested that these practices possessed antiquity. They noted that although suitable raw materials existed elsewhere, they were not exploited. Consequently ready availability could not have been the causative factor in production. Presumably, they were describing a ceremonial exchange system, but it required the Arnhem Land research of W.E.H. Stanner and Donald Thomson over three decades later to comprehend the dynamics of such exchange cycles. Spencer and Gillen merely acknowledged defeat: ‘why certain things, such as shields and boomerangs, should be traded over wide areas and be common to a number of tribes...it is difficult to understand’. Reuben Spencer’s son was not as interested in the freedom of trade across Central Australia as in its totemic restrictions.14 If Spencer was no ‘new anthropologist’, the qualifications and insertions in The Arunta indicate that he was aware of criticism. This was demonstrated particularly over his differences with Carl Strehlow. The manner in which the paths of these

Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen

37

two men crossed requires clarification in order to attempt an objective appraisal. Strehlow arrived at Hermannsburg shortly after the Horn expedition had passed through. By 1896 he had improved the mission’s management and made it the focus for Aboriginal life in that area, but under his own stem and unbending terms. Gillen visited Hermannsburg during the middle of that year and in an unfavourable report on anthropological prospects there, he foreshadowed the tenor of Spencer’s later criticisms: ‘everything possible has been....done, to blot out old customs’, he told Spencer; ‘corroborees are not permitted in the locality and the rising generation are not permitted to attend them, marriages between the forbidden degrees of relationship are celebrated by the clergyman and all classes live close together’. As to photography, Gillen prudently reported that ‘I confined myself to the “infinitely respectable” as opposed to “the altogether-’” . There was a sense in which Spencer and Gillen condemned the mission because it was too successful in its purpose, with the consequent irritation that potential informants were lost to the anthropological cause; the personal preferences or welfare of such individuals were incidental to their scientific value.15 Gillen was always an optimist and shortly after his return to Alice Springs he evidently wrote to Strehlow. Seeking information on kinship and marriage systems amongst the Loritja people, he must have negated his chances of a ready response and conditioned the pastor’s mind adversely, when he stated frankly that he wanted to know about sexual relations following ceremonies. ‘You may find that there was almost promiscuous intercourse’, he added. This request was directed to an uncompromising missionary-anthropologist who placed obligations to his jealous God first - he never attended a single traditional ceremonial in all his Hermannsburg years.16 Spencer was familiar with Frazer’s Golden Bough before its author first wrote to him. Its thesis that society passed from a stage of magical practices to religious beliefs and eventually to scientific truth appealed to him. His consequential interpretation of Aboriginal spiritual life placed him in opposition to Strehlow’s exposition. Spencer became intrigued by totemic rituals and sought to interpret them and to explain their origin. Before Frazer first contacted him he had inferred that Aboriginal society belonged to the lowest cognitive level and that totemic ceremonials were magical increase rites intended to ensure the perpetuation of the particular species. Frazer’s mentor, Robertson Smith, had predicted that such rites would be found to be practised by a contemporary society. Spencer obliged by reasoning that the ceremonies which he witnessed in Alice Springs were elemental sacramental feasts. This idea first occurred to him in mid-1897, whereupon he sought further details from Gillen, who replied with respect:17 ‘the blackfellow eating the flesh or blood of his totem in the same spirit that the Christian takes the sacrament is a thing that would never have dawned upon my muddy mind’. The fact was, however, that under the subsequent tutelage of Frazer, Spencer adopted a terminology from which creative ‘religious’ actions were excluded. In Frazer’s company at the Anthropological Institute in London a year later, Spencer announced that ‘Mr Frazer would now prefer to designate [Arunta totemism] as magical rather than religion.’ So magical it remained, with all the intellectual denigration of the Aboriginal mind implied by that term. There is no index entry

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

‘religion’ in any of Spencer’s books, although they are numerous under ‘totem’ and ‘magic’. The ‘natives have nothing whatever in the way of a simple, pure religion...’, he assured Frazer later.18 Tylor took this negative interpretation of Aboriginal mentality to the ultimate extreme of degradation. His exposition reflects the rationalistic and pseudo­ scientific world-view, against which Strehlow’s protagonists were to react with a mystical appeal to a monotheistic ‘All-Father’. Spencer claimed that Aborigines made no connection between sexual intercourse and conception, an assertion which received widespread acceptance for decades and one which fascinated Tylor. ‘With regard to coition not being understood as the direct cause of pregnancy’, Tylor wrote,19 I

h a v e b een c o n su ltin g ...n a tu r a lists as to w h eth er an y m am m al e x c e p t m an h as an y

p r o v e a b le k n o w le d g e o f su ch c o n n e x io n o f th e facts. T h e o p in io n se e m s to b e that o n ly m an r e c o g n is e s c o itio n and birth as a n te c e d e n t and c o n se q u e n t.

I f th e state o f m in d o f

y o u r trib es s e e m s to g o w ith that o f the lo w e r m a m m alia, the p o in t is ...v ita lly im portan t to a n th r o p o lo g y ...

Tylor put the seal of respectability of the Oxford connection on this nonsense when he exclaimed that Roth, Spencer and himself constituted ‘a museum trio engaged in digging up theological foundations’. Meanwhile, Pastor Strehlow was probing deeply into the traditions of Western Aranda elders at Hermannsburg, and although he also misunderstood some of his information, he interpreted it with human dignity. By coincidence, while Spencer and Gillen were celebrating Christmas at Borroloola in 1901, Strehlow was busily writing a brief account of Aranda beliefs in a letter to Germany. A copy was forwarded from there to Andrew Lang, presumably because he was a vitriolic critic of Frazer’s interpretation of religion. These opinionated social theorists all claimed adherence to scientific methodology, but without exception they seem to have formulated sweeping and all-inclusive intuitive explanations and then plundered ethnography to support their views. Lang realized immediately that ‘it does not suit Spencer and Gillen and puts a very different face on matters’, for Strehlow claimed the existence of an Aranda High-God or supreme being, Altjira. His rendition of mythology was religious and moral in content. When Lang sent the material direct to Spencer and asked him for an explanation, he was informed immediately that it was ‘rubbish’, whereupon Lang virtuously wrote to Tylor deploring the fact that ‘temper and bias have set in like a flood’.20 It is indeed regrettable that Spencer over-reacted to Strehlow’s information. In numerous letters to Frazer and later, in the introduction and an appendix to The Arunta, he countered all Strehlow’s data with the unfair assertion that his unreliable informants conflated Christian doctrine and tribal tradition. Because he believed that Strehlow simply wanted to discredit Gillen and himself, in turn he disparaged Strehlow’s work so effectively, with Frazer at least, that Frazer omitted all reference to him in his major revision of totemism.21 They had never met. Possibly if they had done so, Strehlow’s sincerity would have convinced Spencer. His heavy-handed treatment of Strehlow was a character flaw which cannot be

Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen

39

excused, but it may be understood in context. Strehlow was virtually a pawn in an international debate over religious origins. Lang’s intervention on Strehlow’s behalf was not the action of a disinterested scholar, but that of a mischievous special pleader. His spiteful letters to Tylor in which he caricatured Spencer’s discomfiture simply reflect exchanges between two partisans united in their bitter opposition to Frazer’s interpretation of religion. By exposing alleged errors in Spencer and Gillen, Lang also sought to discredit Frazer and A. W. Howitt. The arrival of Strehlow’s comments proved opportune, because Lang was publishing his book Social Origins and he was locked in wordy combat with Howitt over his interpretation of Aboriginal mythology. During the ’eighties Howitt had published traditions concerning major supernatural figures in southeastern Australia, named Baiame and Daramulun. Lang seized upon this evidence; much to Howitt’s annoyance, and interpreted it to prove that even the simplest and rudest peoples acknowledged the supremacy of High-Gods; there were ethical and monotheistic principles to be inferred from all this for those who chose to accept the data. It is significant that Spencer had meted out to his friend Howitt the same treatment that he used to counter Strehlow, although in that case his criticism was tempered with charity. In various letters Spencer explained that all Howitt’s contacts were with detribalized informants ‘contaminated’ by Christian teachings. He had harped upon this theme with Frazer over a year before the arrival of Strehlow’s first report. Spencer’s dismissal of Howitt’s testimony on this subject reveals much of his own philosophy and methodology, as our italicized sections below indicate.22 Tn the days when the evidence of Baiame and Daramulun was collected’, he told Frazer, ‘the importance of securing minute and detailed information was really not realized, nor was it imagined that there were men without so-called religious ideas, and...it is the easiest thing possible to be misled by what a native tells you in broken English.’ ‘Howitt’s own experience lies...among the modified tribes’, Spencer reiterated, \..in those days with no such work as yours and Tylor’s to guide him, there was little to show him what to look for in this line’ (totemism). Spencer played a major role in encouraging the elderly Howitt to complete the text of his Native Tribes o f South-east Australia and read and discussed most of its chapters with him. While Howitt disagreed both with Lang’s theories and with the use of his data, he stoutly maintained the validity of his evidence on the High-God theme and he denied that his informants were ‘Mission men’. In a note to Frazer which approached the heretical, Howitt even questioned whether Spencer’s Alice Springs informants were any less uncontaminated. However, he had to compromise, as he warned Frazer: T have in view of Spencer’s objection to the “All-Father business” written a paragraph giving my reasons for believing it to be a. true aboriginal belief.’ The two men remained friends during these testing times and a few months later, as chairman of the Professorial Board, Spencer proposed Howitt for a doctorate of Science.23 Strehlow’s disclosures therefore burst upon a well-rehearsed scenario, but whereas Howitt was a respected friend, Strehlow was personally unknown, a German, a pastor at a mission whose existence Spencer deplored. The situation

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

clouded further during 1907, when Strehlow’s work was published. It was much expanded and edited by von Leonhardi. Because Strehlow’s original draft was roughly expressed, Spencer expected the editing to prove ‘rather free’. ‘Fortunately’, he added,24 ‘1 have a copy of Strehlow’s original manuscript in regard to...the belief of the Arunta in a Supreme Being.’ As Strehlow’s labours resulted in four important volumes by 1920, however, Spencer’s appeal to the initial draft statement wore thin; yet even in 1927 his charges still rested largely upon it. The years after 1903 were taken up with university and museum business, so neither field research nor major publication in defence proved possible. T am lying low’, he reported,25 ‘and Andrew Lang has endeavoured in vain to draw me.’ Not even Lang’s critical Secret o f the Totem elicited a counter-blast and it was 1927 before his public reply to Strehlow. However, by that time Lang was dead and many theories on religion were buried also. In the interim, Lang was not the only purveyor of totemic secrets or critic of Spencer and Gillen to be suffered in silence. Even Haddon had summarized Strehlow according to von Leonhardi in Nature and suggested there was much to be resolved between existing conflicting interpretations.26 Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, was the most influential theorist to reinterpret both Spencer and Strehlow. One of his earliest articles on Aboriginal religion had drawn Spencer’s adverse comment, when Howitt was notified that:27 ‘Sometime I must certainly have a go at Durkheim, but I do not think that he is such a man as Lang. He does not I think deliberately distort things in order to make them fit in with any theory of his own. He simply does not understand matters.’ Durkheim was left unscathed even after publication in 1912 of his influential The Elementary Forms o f Religious Life. There is no doubt that Spencer’s belated return to Alice Springs in 1926 was motivated by a desire to combat his Hermannsburg rival, although Pastor Strehlow now lay in his grave at Horseshoe Bend. By this time Durkheim’s innovatory approach to primitive religion had shaped the attitude of younger anthropologists, particularly Radcliffe-Brown. Spencer arrived in Alice Springs, however, with his Frazerian concepts unaltered. Even his rich experience of Arnhem Land initiation and fertility cults during 1912, which he described in detail, prompted no reflection on their deeply religious content. Presumably Spencer considered that his rebuttal of Strehlow was beyond refutation. The appendix in which he argued the case, supported by an unusual concentration of footnotes, reflects how seriously he felt the challenge to his integrity as a field observer.28 It covered all his objections rehearsed so frequently twenty years earlier and he presented his own translation of Strehlow’s original document. Spencer acknowledged an error in their original book in failing to credit an earlier missionary with priority in describing the Aranda classificatory system.29 Despite his erudition and stout defence, some of his counter-evidence is unconvincing in the light of modem methodology. For example, in order to confirm his interpretation of the meaning of Alchera (Strehlow’s Altjira) he asked Charlie Cooper to translate nineteen phrases into Aranda from English. Even if Spencer had betrayed no personal indication of his expectations, a single informant was an inadequate source, particularly as he was a Central Aranda man, whereas Strehlow’s informants belonged further west.30

Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen

41

Anthropological fashions are as fleeting as those in any other academic pursuit. Spencer was no less a child of his generation for being one of its intellectual leaders. His assumptions were outdated and he was dogmatic on certain issues, yet his systematic descriptions of what was done and seen were remarkable both for their clarity and for their fullness. Few anthropologists today concern themselves with the opinions of Spencer and Gillen on totemism, but they do consult their books for their ethnographic record, or for their systematic account of ceremonies rather than their interpretation of them. The quality of their record, given their time and place, together with their documented collections of material culture, constitute an irreplaceable archive ranging from Charlotte Waters to Borroloola and Oenpelli. Because neither observer was a proficient linguist, they made errors and misunderstandings, but by contemporary standards their record was seldom superficial. It is interesting to reflect that, if Spencer and Gillen had set out in their buggy from London in 1901 and driven across the face of Europe, they would have travelled beyond Warsaw or Naples. They recorded traditional life in a swathe over 1000 miles in length and in a detail and a range of topics without equal. They used ethnographic camera on an unprecedented scale in Australia, while their use of sound and movies gives them a niche in anthropological history. Frazer likened their ethnographic achievement to that of Tacitus, but in their case they actually visited the peoples whom they described. Frazer was their British propagandist, yet he cannot be credited with influencing the American publishing house of Dover, who reprinted a paperbound edition of The Native Tribes o f Central Australia sixty-nine years after the first edition. It is worth reflecting that the formative leaders of western European anthropology of the succeeding generation were grounded firmly in Spencer and Gillen, especially Radcliffe-Brown, Durkheim and Malinowski. Young Malinowski claimed with some justice in 1913 that,31 ‘since the publication of their first volume, half of the total production in anthropological theory has been based upon their work, and nine-tenths affected or modified by if. As the century approaches since the foundation professor of biology arrived in Melbourne, it is time that an Australian chair of anthropology was named in his honour. Notes 1 2

F razer to W B S , 5 O ct. 1 9 2 7 , R .R . M arett and T .K . P en n im a n , Spencer’s Scientific Correspondence, O x fo rd , 1 9 3 2 , p. 126. Frazer, Questions on the Customs, Beliefs, and Languages of Savages (C a m b r id g e , 1 9 0 7 ); W illia m Jam es, q u o ted in E. E v a n s-P ritch ard , Social Anthropology (L o n d o n , 1 9 5 1 ), p. 7 2 .

3 4

Daedalus ( 1 9 6 1 ) , Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 5 F eb .

E. L e a ch , ‘G o ld e n B o u g h or G ild e d T w ig ’,

pp. 3 7 1 - 8 7 ; ‘A ll that

g litters is n o t g o ld ’,

1 9 7 7 , p. 17.

W B S to Frazer; 6 D e c . 1 8 9 7 - P R M SC B o x 5; W B S to B a lfo u r , 2 D e c . 1 8 9 7 - Ib id ., B o x 4 . (T h e s e c o m m e n ts w ere o m itted from the letter in M & P , pp. 1 3 6 - 8 .)

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

42

5

W B S to A .C . H a d d o n , 15 O ct. 1921 - C U L H a d d o n C o ll. B o x 4.

6

R a d c liffe -B r o w n to W B S , 2 Jan. 1 9 2 7 - R C .

7

W B S to F razer, 14 J u ly 1 9 0 3 - P R M S C B o x 5.

8

W B S to H a d d o n , 19 S ep t. 1 9 2 2 - C U L H a d d o n C o il. B o x 4.

9

p. 4 1 , n. 1.

10 W B S to A .W . H o w itt, 2 3 F eb . 1 8 9 8 - L aT L H o w itt P apers. 11

Arunta

pp. 4 6 , 6 5 - 6 .

o f Syd n ey.

W e are in d eb ted for c o m m e n ts to M r G e o r g e M u n ster, U n iv e r s ity

R a d c liffe -B r o w n ’s ‘so c ia l o r g a n iz a tio n ’ pap er w a s p u b lish e d in

Oceania ,

1

Man,

7

(1 9 3 0 -3 1 ). 12

Arunta,

pp. 2 8 - 9 , 6 2 , 6 7 , 7 9 , 8 8 - 9 8 , 3 0 4 ; N . P eter so n , ‘T o te m ism Y e s te r d a y ...’

( 1 9 7 2 ) , pp. 1 3 - 1 5 . 13 14

Arunta, pp. 7 9 - 8 0 , 3 0 7 - th e fo u r sta g e s. T h e s e id e a s w ere Wanderings, Lin W ild , A u str a lia pp. 2 9 5 - 7 . Arunta, p. 5 2 8 ; The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, L o n d o n ,

further ela b o ra ted

in

1 9 0 4 , p. 5 8 7 .

15 FG to W B S , 5 June 1 8 9 6 . S p e n c e r v o ic e d a lm o st id en tica l o b je c tio n s in a letter to Frazer, 10 M ar. 1 9 0 8 - M & P , p. 110. 16 FG to C . S tr e h lo w , 2 6 A u g . 1 8 9 6 , a draft letter on a lo o s e sh e e t in G ille n M S S , v o l. 1, Barr S m ith L ibrary, U n iv . o f A d e la id e . A sy m p a th e tic and m o v in g portrayal o f S tr e h lo w is g iv e n by T .G .H . S tr e h lo w ,

Journey to Horseshoe Bend,

17 FG to W B S , 2 2 O ct. 1 8 9 7 ; cf. 10 S ep t. 1 8 9 7 .

pp. 6 4 - 9 .

T h e first in d ica tio n that S p e n c e r w a s

in te rested in th e th e o r y and m e a n in g o f to te m ism m ay be inferred from G ille n ’s rem ark o n 5 Ju n e 1 8 9 6 - T a g ree w ith y o u that w e h a v e n o t g o t to the b o tto m o f it [to te m ism ] y e t e v e r y m o n th a d d s s o m e th in g to o u r k n o w le d g e ’. 18 ‘S o m e rem ark s on to te m is m ...’

J. Anthrop. Inst.,

2 8 ( 1 8 9 9 ), p. 2 7 5 ; W B S to Frazer, 19

A u g . 1 9 0 2 - M & P , p. 7 6 . 19 E .B . T y lo r to W B S , 13 N o v . 1 9 0 2 - N M V S C B o x 2 1 / 1 - 3 . 20 T h e c o p y o f S tr e h lo w ’s letter fo rw a rd ed b y L a n g is in S p e n c e r ’s c o p y o f C . S tr e h lo w ,

Die Aranda und Loritja-Stamme in Zentral Australien on 1 D ec. 1903.

(Frankfurt, 1 9 0 8 ).

H e r e c e iv e d it

T h er e is a ty p e d c o p y w h ic h L a n g se n t to T y lo r in P R M T y lo r P apers,

B o x 6 ( 1). T h e T y lo r P a pers, B o x 6 (2 ), a lso c o n ta in a se r ie s o f letters from L a n g to T y lo r, from w h ic h c a m e th e q u o ta tio n s u sed in the tex t. S p e n c e r told Frazer o f L a n g ’s a c tio n on 9 D e c . 1 9 0 3 , M & P , pp. 9 5 - 7 . Later s e c tio n s o f S tr e h lo w ’s w ork w ere p u b lis h e d in 1 9 1 0 , 1 9 1 1 , 1 9 1 3 , 1 9 1 5 and 1 9 2 0 . 21 F razer to W B S , 19 A pr. 1 9 0 8 - M & P , p. 116. 22 W B S to F razer, 19 A u g . 1 9 0 2 , 7 June 1 9 0 3 - M & P , pp. 7 6 , 7 9 , cf. p. 122. 23 H o w itt to Frazer, 12, 19 July 1 9 0 4 -T r in ity C o ll. L ib. C am b . A d d . M S . b 3 5 - 7 ; W B S to H o w itt, 17 M ar. 1 9 0 5 - L aT L H o w itt P apers. H o w itt v isite d E n g la n d d u rin g 1 9 0 4 and b e c a m e a target for L ang. O n 7 Ju ly 1 9 0 4 h e se n t S p e n c e r a sa m p le letter in w h ic h L an g a tta ck ed S p e n c e r and G ille n .

H o w itt a d d ed o v e r L a n g ’s virtu a lly in d e c ip h e r a b le tirade:

T h a v e j u s t r e c e iv e d th is from A n d r e w L ang.

I g e t a letter a lm o st d a ily .

b o o k to p r o v e that w e are all w r o n g a b o u t to te m ism and e v e r y th in g e ls e . as I can g a th e r from h is talk and letters.

H e is w r itin g a A t lea st s o far

I sh a ll b e g lad w h e n I am a b le to g o “ o u t o f

to w n ” b e c a u s e h e h a u n ts m e ! ’ (L ette r in R C .) 24 W B S to F razer, 2 5 S ep t. 7 1 9 0 6 - T rin ity C o ll. Lib. C am b . A d d . M S . b 3 7 ; c f. 10 M ar. 1 9 0 8 -M & P , p. 1 1 0 . 25 W B S to F razer, 2 5 S ep t. 7 1 9 0 6 . 26 27 28

Nature, 14 N o v . 1 9 0 7 , p. 4 4 . NTCA, pp. 12 1 - 2 ; W B S to H o w itt, Arunta, pp. 5 8 9 - 9 6

7 O ct. 1 9 0 6 - LaT L H o w itt P apers.

Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen

43

29 Ib id ., p. 5 9 1 ; W B S to F razer, 18 M ar. 1 9 0 4 - M & P , p 9 9 : ‘I ca n n o t th in k h o w it w a s that I m isse d S c h u lz e ’s paper, and in s o m e future p u b lic a tio n m u st g iv e h im c r e d it.’ 30

Arunta,

pp. 3 0 4 - 6 .

31 R e v ie w o f

Across Australia

in

Folk Lore,

x x iv ( 1 9 1 3 ) , p. 2 7 8 .

2

High Gods L.R. Hiatt

The earliest reference to a ‘High God’ among the Aborigines appeared in the records of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-42.1 Although only half a century had elapsed since the arrival of the first British settlers, the Aboriginal tribes of the Sydney area were virtually extinct. Horatio Hale, the chief ethnologist, travelled several hundred miles inland to a new mission at Wellington, where he was told that the natives believed that the world had been made by a deity called Baiame. In the years that followed, information recorded by colonists elsewhere indicated that Baiame was by no means a peculiarity of the Wellington Valley. By the end of the century it could be said that, while given different names in different regions (such as Bunjil, Daramulun, Nurelli), the High God of the tribes of south-eastern Australia was uniformly conceived as a Sky God referred to as ‘Our Father’, who created the earth and instituted culture, and whose presence is manifest in the rumbling of thunder. Hartland, like Tylor, found it hard not to believe that at least some of these characteristics had come out of the Bible. Apart from that, it was not unreasonable to expect any Supreme Being worthy of the name to be eternal, omniscient and moral. Yet in Hartland’s judgment the evidence from Australia was disappointing on all scores. Indeed, once we begin to look carefully at the myths and legends, comparison with civilized conceptions of divinity becomes embarrassing. Daramulan is a cannibal whose name means Teg-on-one-side’ or Tame’; Bunjil, with his two wives and six sons, was blown into the sky by wind released from bags by an angry man who later became a bird. Baiame tripped and fell on his face one day while pursuing an emu. In mystery cults he is shown carved in the earth in this humiliating posture, together with a print of his hand left in the ground when he tried to break the fall. Such childish tales bear no comparison with the sublime conception of the Creator as set forth in the book of Genesis. When Lang read Hartland’s critique, he ‘bounded on his chair’. Later, on surveying the damage in calmer mood, he was relieved to discover that his main position had been left unscathed. In the next issue of the journal of the Folk-Lore Society2 he charged Hartland with having failed to appreciate the critical point, namely, that personified conceptions of a cosmic creative force may coexist with Extract from L.R. Hiatt, Arguments About Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution o f Social Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 103— 119. Reprinted with the permission of the author and Cambridge University Press.

46

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

oral traditions depicting the deity as all too human. The classical exemplification of this notorious truth is Ancient Greece. Two moods have been evident in the history of religion: one of earnest contemplation and submission, the other of playful and erratic fancy. Why it should be so, we do not know. But the Aborigines are no exception; and, behind the articulated trivialities and obscenities of their myths lies a mute striving, most clearly evident in their sacred rites, to express the idea of an exalted and transcendent Power, a Father, Master and Maker. With regard to the borrowing hypothesis, Lang made the following points. First, Aboriginal High Gods have been recorded in circumstances strongly suggesting that the beliefs were in existence prior to contact with Europeans. The missionaries at Wellington were told about Baiame and the songs in which he was worshipped shortly after they arrived. Further north, in 1844-5, in a frontier region well beyond direct Christian influence, a settler named John Manning (inspired by a conversation with Goethe) studied native customs and made extensive notes on Baiame’s similarity to the Christian God. In order to maintain that Aboriginal notions of deity are the product of proselytization, one would have to assume that Christian beliefs caught on at their points of introduction and (like smallpox) travelled ahead of the invaders. Second, detailed information about Aboriginal High Gods has consistently come from initiated adult males, on the understanding that it should not be divulged to women and children. If it were true that the deities of the male cults were borrowed from the missionaries, how would we reconcile the men’s desire for secrecy with the fact that knowledge of Christian doctrine is freely available to all? Furthermore, male elders in Aboriginal society are notoriously conservative. Why, especially in the matter of religion, should they be so ready to abandon old beliefs and embrace the new? In a brief rejoinder, Hartland sought to foster a mood of compromise.3 Victory was not his aim, nor presumably was it Mr Lang’s. In the search for truth, a dialectic triumph may be a scientific disaster. Progress in the present matter is hindered by inconsistencies and infirmities in the record. What we need, above all, are more facts. Unbeknown to Harland, or perhaps too recently for his perusal, a large consignment had just arrived: The Native Tribes o f Central Australia by Spencer and Gillen.4 Spencer had attended lectures by Tylor while an undergraduate at Oxford. Not long after becoming Professor of Biology at Melbourne University, he was invited to join the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia where he hoped to build on his promising studies of the giant Australian earthworm. Instead, after meeting Gillen, he became increasingly interested in the Aborigines, and in the summer of 1896-7 the two men spent four months observing and discoursing with members of the Aranda tribe living near the Alice Springs telegraph station. The manuscript of their first major work was published in 1899. In mid-1897 Spencer had begun corresponding with James Frazer, a distinguished classical scholar at Cambridge University who for some time had been speculating on the evolution of religion and was particularly interested in the Aborigines. Like Tylor, Frazer subscribed to the view that beliefs in the supernatural had evolved through a number of stages, though his theory proceeded

High Gods

47

along somewhat different lines. Of key importance was a distinction between (a) magic, in which men sought to harness or coerce impersonal supernatural forces for their own ends; and (b) religion, in which they supplicated personalized supernatural beings to help and protect them. In the history of the human race, according to Frazer, the first came before the second, and the Australian Aborigines had failed to develop beyond it. Their thinking was almost entirely magical. The formulation of the idea of a Supreme Being would be beyond their unaided mental powers.5 During 1898 Frazer read the proofs of The Native Tribes o f Central Australia and was particularly struck by the authors’ account of ceremonies performed by the Aranda to increase their food supply. Each clan was associated with one or more natural species, and at regular intervals clansmen mimed or otherwise re-enacted stages of the creature’s life cycle. The Aranda believed that these ritual procedures replenished the supply of spirits located in sites on the clan’s territory and activated them so that they went abroad and generated new life. What puzzled Frazer, however, was that in accordance with a strict tribal taboo each clan was prohibited from eating its own totem species. How could one reconcile the voluntary investment of magical effort with a necessity to forgo its benefit? In a long letter to Spencer, Frazer surmised that the taboo originated in a belief among earlier generations of Aranda tribesmen that their magical techniques would not work unless magicians identified sympathetically with the species whose members they were attempting to multiply. Although when regarded narrowly this seemed to defeat the purpose of the ritual, everyone gained from the efforts of others. Taken together, the ‘increase ceremonies’ of the Aranda formed a remarkable system of cooperative magic for the benefit of the whole tribe.6 As befitted a desert landscape, Aranda religion was thus represented as a collective survival strategy orientated to the production of food. Spencer endorsed this conception enthusiastically, and also agreed with Frazer that beliefs in High Gods formed no part of Aboriginal mystical thought anywhere. In a letter written from the Gulf of Carpentaria after a journey through the interior, he told Frazer that: ‘We cannot find a trace of any belief right through the Central tribes from Port Augusta in the south to the Gulf in the north in a being who could be called a deity.’7 Then, in July 1902, he wrote as follows: I fe e l m o re than e v e r c o n v in c e d that, ju d g in g from ou r A u stra lia n tr ib e s a s a fair sa m p le o f sa v a g e s , y o u r th e o r y o f m a g ic p r e c e d in g r e lig io n is th e true o n e .

It is s o e a s y to

ren d er in to E n g lish w h a t a n a tiv e te lls y o u w ith regard to an in d iv id u a l su c h a s B a ia m e or D a ra m u la n s o a s to g iv e an id e a o f a b e lie f in a S u p r e m e B e in g . H o w itt, w h o m L a n g q u o te s tim e after tim e , o n ly m a d e h is sta tem e n ts o n th is m atter as a r e su lt o f ta lk in g to n a tiv e s w h o w e r e s o c iv iliz e d that th e y said th e y o u n g m en w e r e s p o ilt b y th e ir in te r c o u r se w ith th e w h ite s...I d o n o t b e lie v e that a n y n a tiv e A u stra lia n h a s th e s lig h te s t id ea o f a n y th in g lik e an ‘A ll-F a th e r ’.8

All the same, when Spencer revised The Native Tribes o f Central Australia in 1927 after a return visit to Alice Springs, he added a section devoted to a Being known as Numbakulla. The Aranda regarded Numbakulla as ‘the supreme ancestor, overshadowing all others’.9 He created the mountains and rivers, the

48

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

plants and animals, the increase ceremonies, and the sacred icons used in them. Afterwards, he rose into the sky and disappeared forever. In providing scholars with this new information, Spencer felt no need to correct any earlier impressions he may have given. By 1927 the High God controversy, like most who had participated in it, was dead. The spadework for its burial was done mainly by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim in his celebrated work The Elementary Forms o f the Religious Life (published first in French in 1912). In Book I, conceived by the author as a graveyard for the theories of his predecessors, Durkheim argued that the basic flaw in Tylor’s doctrine of animism was evident in the definition of religion itself. There are, he pointed out, religions - indeed, great religions - from which beliefs in spiritual beings are entirely absent. The best-known example is Buddhism. The Buddhist rejects the idea of a divine creator, since the cosmos is eternal. His only aim is to escape from suffering by suppressing desire. The way is through uprightness, meditation, and wisdom. Ultimately, the individual must make the journey alone. Gods, if they exist, cannot help him and therefore are of no interest. We can see that between them, Lang and Durkheim held Tylor in a pincer. At the alleged lower end of religious evolution, the Scottish critique had dwelt on evidence of gods ‘where nae gods ought to be’;10 at the upper end, the Gallic intervention now drew attention to religions where gods ought to be but aren’t. The evolutionist framework was under siege. At the very least, a surrender of Tylor’s definition was called for. In the meantime, Durkheim proposed an alternative.11 All known religious beliefs, he said, presuppose a division of the world into two categories, the sacred and the profane. Sacred things, it is true, are often associated with spiritual beings; but their sacredness does not necessarily derive from them. The four noble truths of Buddhism are sacred, even though Buddhist doctrine in pure form is atheistic. Moreover, even in deistic religions, there are rites and interdictions whose sacredness is independent of gods and spirits. We may therefore define religion as a unified set of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things. By sacred we normally mean set apart and in some sense forbidden. A religion typically unites its adherents into a single moral community. If sacredness exists independently of beliefs in spiritual beings, from where or what does it obtain its force? To find the answer to this question, Durkheim turned to what he regarded as ‘the most primitive and simple religion which is actually known’,12 namely, that of the Australian Aborigines. Drawing on the work of Spencer and Gillen (though with a different end in view from Frazer’s), he focused attention upon a category of highly sacred ritual entities known as churinga. A churinga is an engraved object, made of stone or wood, and normally oval or oblong in shape. It is the religious property of one clan, and one only, and may be said to represent the clan’s existential essence. Typically it is conceived as a tangible relic of the clan’s totemic ancestry, that is to say, its descent from a primordial power responsible for the reproduction of both the clan and its associated natural species. It is kept in a secret place, whose holiness spreads

High Gods

49

beyond its confines to the area around it, and is seen and touched only by initiated males. It is the central object of worship in the religious life of the clan. In Durkheim’s view, the churinga is best understood by approaching it in the first instance as a kind of flag. In this capacity it symbolizes the corporate identity and continuity of the clan; and it acts both as a stimulus for sentiments of love and loyalty, and as a nodal point around which they crystallize. But it also represents the totem god, and it is from this source that ostensibly it draws its religious character or sacredness. In reality, no such god exists. May we not infer, therefore, that the power from which the symbol actually draws its sacredness is no more or less than the social solidarity of the group itself? The god, in other words, is the clan ‘personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem’.13 Durkheim went on to argue that the same basic principles, so conspicuous in the case of Australian totemism, form the foundations of the religious life everywhere. But before leaving the Aborigines he briefly reviewed the High God controversy. As to the provenance of the beliefs, he agreed with Lang that they were beyond reasonable doubt autochthonous. There was no need, however, to regard them as in any sense extrinsic to totemism, and certainly no need to attribute them to some mysterious intuition of a cosmic creator and universal legislator. On the contrary, the High Gods of Australia represent a transposition of the principles underlying clan totemism to higher levels of social organization. They are ‘the logical working-out of these beliefs and their highest form’.14 The characteristic form of totemism is egalitarian. Each clan within a language area or tribe has the same status, rights and obligations as all the others. Correspondingly, the totem god of each clan is on a par with all other totem gods. Nevertheless cases occur in which particular totems rise to a position of special esteem within the ceremonial cult life (for example, the Wild Cat totem among the Aranda). This may be accompanied by a tendency to aggrandize the creative powers of a particular clan ancestor and to emphasize his human form, or even to attribute to him an unqualified humanity. Here we would have an incipient High God, who was merely a clan god with a higher prestige ranking than others. The critical step towards a true High God in Australia depended upon a surrender of some degree of clan autonomy in the interests of coalition and tribal unity. An integral component in this development was the organization of male initiation at a level beyond the individual clan. Above all else, according to Durkheim, Australian High Gods are tribal gods of initiation. Initiation rites were not inaugurated in order to worship High Gods; rather, High Gods were invented in order to authorize the rites. Typically the god of the initiatory cult is human, though vestiges of totemism remain (for instance, in associations with carnivorous birds such as the eaglehawk and the crow); and myths relate how the All-Father transcended the milieu of parochial totemism through conflict and struggle. In south-eastern Australia, initiation cults are not confined to a single tribe but incorporate varying numbers of neighbouring tribes. The unusually high status enjoyed by gods such as Baiame is a consequence of internationalism and religious confederation. We may say (though Durkheim did not put it quite this way) that the height of the god depends on the breadth of the polity.

50

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Durkheim’s book on religion was published in the same year that Andrew Lang died. We can assume that, although Lang would have been pleased to read that Australian High Gods are without a doubt indigenous, he would not have welcomed the view that they are merely a product of totemism and political evolution. After all, Hartland15 had dismissed Baiame as the apotheosis of a tribal headman, and Durkheim’s formulation was essentially a sophisticated version of the same opinion. A more serious matter was Durkheim’s description of Lang’s position as ‘theological’, as contrasted with the ‘sceptical’ hypothesis of Tylor.16 In his reply to Hartland, Lang explicitly denied that he attributed beliefs in a Supreme Being to divine revelation. The basis on which early man had formed such a conception could only be a matter for conjecture, but Lang’s own guess was that once humans formed the idea of making, through making things themselves, it would not be long before they arrived at the idea of a divine Maker. If the lowest savages are capable of explaining dreams and death through a theory of souls, as the doctrine of animism asserts, why would they not be equally capable of postulating a World Creator on the model of everyday human manufacture? Lang may or may not have had a hidden agenda. According to one biographer, he was an essentially religious man who wished to demonstrate that belief in a powerful, kind and righteous deity is part of the heritage of people everywhere.17 However that may be, his arguments were embraced not long before he died by a scholar whose religious convictions were unmistakable. In 1908-9 Wilhelm Schmidt, a Roman Catholic priest of Vienna, defended Lang against Hartland in the journal Anthropos and shortly afterwards began publishing a series of volumes that he described as a continuation of Lang’s work on High Gods.18 However, whereas Lang dissociated himself from revelation, the assumption implicit in Fr Schmidt’s project was that men have formed the idea of a Supreme Being because a Supreme Being exists. A primordial intuition of God is evident in all religions, even though it is frequently overtaken by a corrupt and degenerate mythology. The essential truths revealed in the Bible are pristine and universal. Durkheim referred to Schmidt’s alliance with Lang in a footnote. He had no objection to the description of Australian High Gods as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient guardians of the moral order so long as such adjectives are understood in a relative sense (e.g. having more power or knowledge than other sacred beings). But ‘if they want to give these words meanings which only a spiritualistic Christian could attach to them, it seems useless to discuss an opinion so contrary to the principles of the historical method’.19 In the wake of this magisterial aside, further preoccupation with High Gods was left by and large to theologians. The expression itself virtually dropped out of use in scientific writings on the Aborigines for about sixty years, when it was re­ introduced by the eminent student of comparative religion Mircea Eliade in his book Australian Religions.20 In the meantime the field of study was captured almost entirely by Durkheim and his followers, with the result that research was directed primarily to elucidating the relationship between religion and society. In professional writings on the Aborigines, religion and totemism became synonymous and interchangeable.

High Gods

51

The most influential exponent of Durkheim’s views in British anthropology was Radcliffe-Brown. At the Fourth Pacific Science Congress in 1929 he presented a paper entitled ‘The Sociological Theory of Totemism’,21 in which he summarized Durkheim’s analysis and commended it to the audience as the most valuable treatment of the subject to date. On one important matter, however, he found himself in disagreement. Durkheim had accounted for the sacredness of the totemic emblem in terms of its role as a symbol of corporate identity, but he had failed to give a convincing answer to the question why it should be based on a natural species. He merely supposed that because animals and plants lent themselves to artistic representation, they made good emblems. The choice was a matter of convenience. Such a view, in Radcliffe-Brown’s opinion, misunderstood and trivialized the relationship between Aboriginal man and nature, not only in Australia but among hunting and gathering peoples in general. Where survival depends on wild animals and plants, nature as a whole is regarded as in some sense sacred. Totemism is to be understood as a special development of this general relationship, in which particular social segments become correlated with particular sacra, i.e. natural species. No doubt the sacredness of the totemic emblem is intensified by sentiments of collective identity, but it is not created by it. The emblem is sacred because the species it represents is already sacred. The process by which a body of sacra becomes differentiated through social segmentation is, Radcliffe-Brown observed, by no means exclusive to totemism. Take, for example, the saints of the Roman Catholic Church. The saints are sacred to members of the church as a whole, but each local congregation is placed in a special relationship to a particular saint to whom its chapel is dedicated. Likewise, while nature in general is sacred to members of an Aboriginal tribe, each clan has a special ritual relationship to a particular species, which we designate in anthropological jargon as its totem.22 Now this is undoubtedly an interesting and helpful analogy. But how far can we take it? We know that the saints of the Catholic Church occupy exalted places in a heavenly hierarchy with God at the apex. Is there anything over and above the totems in Aboriginal religious doctrine? Or is it on this point that the analogy breaks down? If such questions occurred to Radcliffe-Brown, he passed over them in silence. Three years earlier, however, he had published a short paper in the Journal o f the Royal Anthropological Institute that might have seemed to contain the outlines of an answer. It concerned a meta-totemic entity known throughout Australia as the Rainbow Serpent.23 In 1930 Radcliffe-Brown published a second paper on the subject, this time following a period of field research in New South Wales. The significance of the Rainbow Serpent in Aboriginal religion is summarized as follows: ‘The rainbow-serpent as it appears in Australian belief may with some justification be described as occupying the position of a deity, and perhaps the most important nature-deity...The rainbow-serpent may be said to be the most important representation of the creative and destructive power of nature, principally in connection with rain and water.’24 In his writings on Aboriginal religion, Radcliffe-Brown evinced little interest in the High God controversy, perhaps because he considered the matter had been

52

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

settled by Durkheim. However, in a lecture on ‘Religion and Society’ presented in London in 1945, he made several noteworthy points about Baiame. First, he placed greater emphasis than earlier fieldworkers on Baiame’s role as a law-giver, and agreed with Andrew Lang and Fr Schmidt that ‘Baiame thus closely resembles one aspect of the God of the Hebrews.’25 Second, Baiame’s powers are not believed to include the control of nature. That function is held by another deity, the Rainbow Serpent whose sinuous image is sculpted in earth at the sacred ceremonies of initiation inaugurated by Baiame and held in his honour. By bringing together these various statements, we could summarize RadcliffeBrown’s position as follows. The basis of Aboriginal religion is an attitude whereby the whole of nature is regarded as sacred by the whole of society. In many parts of Australia, the Rainbow Serpent is conceived to be a transcendent symbol or ruler of Nature. In some parts, notably south-eastern Australia, a FatherGod is conceived to be the creator and ruler of Culture. At lower levels of organization, ritual responsibilities for divisions of nature (e.g. species) are undertaken by correlated divisions of society (e.g. clans). From the perspective of parochial religious history, divisions of the land (e.g. clan territories) are attributed to the creative activities of totemic ancestors (‘Dawn Beings’), on whom the various natural species and their human counterparts depend for their existence and reproduction. In 1926, the year Radcliffe-Brown took up his appointment at the University of Sydney, Lloyd Warner arrived from America to work under his auspices in the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve. In the north-east comer where he established his base, the Rainbow Serpent was known as Yurlunggur, or ‘Great Father’. The central narrative in vernacular religious traditions concerned a cataclysmic meeting between Yurlunggur and two women known as the Wawilak Sisters. During a primordial journey of creation the latter, with their two infant sons, camped by Yurlunggur’s waterhole. One of the sisters accidentally profaned the sacred pool with her menses. Yurlunggur rose from the depths, drawing up the water with him and flooding the earth. He swallowed the women and their children, regurgitated them, repeated the process several times, finally retained the boys but spewed up their mothers, who turned to stone. The spirits of the Wawilak Sisters later taught men the songs and dances they have performed ever since in their mystery cults. Whereas in southern Australia the Rainbow Serpent and Baiame were distinct Beings (albeit closely associated), Yurlunggur seemed to be simultaneously a meta-totemic Nature God and an ‘international’ God of Initiation. Thunder was his voice, lightning his tongue, and the rainbow his body. Each year he sent the north­ west monsoon and flooded the land. When boys approached puberty, they were told by senior men: ‘The Great Father Snake smells your foreskin. He is calling for it.’26 Soon afterwards the lads were taken from their mothers and circumcised. Warner described four great initiatory rites associated with Yurlunggur, of which the most powerful and dramatic was a cult called Kunapipi (an alternative name for the Rainbow Serpent). Late on the final night of the ceremony, the novices were placed on the concave side of a crescent-shaped trench, representing the generative organs of the Wawilak Sisters. Enormous symbols of Yurlunggur

High Gods

53

then emerged from the darkness and moved slowly towards the trench. The ceremony ended as they rose and fell above it, then went into it. A notable feature of the Kunapipi was the use of a bull-roarer27 to simulate Yurlunggur’s voice. Warner rendered its name as Muit, which was also another name for Yurlunggur himself. Half a century earlier Howitt had recorded virtually the same name for the bull-roarer used in the Father-God initiatory cults of south-eastern New South Wales, some 2000 miles away.28 Radcliffe-Brown’s successor at Sydney University was Adolphus Peter Elkin, clergyman-turned-anthropologist. In 1939, two years after the publication of Warner’s book A Black Civilization, Elkin received a communication from a legendary bushman named Bill Harney about a Kunapipi cult in southern Arnhem Land.29 The intriguing fact was that whereas among the northern tribes the name Kunapipi referred to a deity manifest as the Rainbow Serpent and known as ‘Great Father’, here it was the name of a deity spoken of as the ‘Old Woman’ or ‘The Mother’. Moreover, the bull-roarer, typically a symbol of male thunder-gods, was in this case said to be the Mother’s womb. The climax of the ceremony was the symbolic rebirth of novices from an earth trench, also said to be her womb. Elkin was convinced that Harney had discovered for the first time in Australia a genuine Mother-Goddess, originating perhaps in Hindu beliefs brought to Arnhem Land by pre-Islamic Indonesian fishermen. Unbeknown to Elkin, so it would seem, his younger colleague W.E.H. Stanner had witnessed initiations into a fully fledged Mother-Goddess cult four years earlier, some 300 miles to the west at Port Keats.30 The details did not become available until 1959, when Stanner published the first article in his Oceania Monograph, On Aboriginal Religion. Among the Murinbata, whom he visited in the second half of 1935, the Old Woman or ‘The Mother of All’ was known as Karwadi. The induction of novices followed their circumcision and extended over a period of several months. On the third day after the youths were taken to the secret ground, they were anointed with blood and told they were about to be swallowed alive by Karwadi. Concealed men approached the ceremonial ground swinging bull-roarers to signify the awesome proximity of the Mother. Then, as tension reached a peak, they sprang into view. Following this climactic introduction to Karwadi, the novices spent a lengthy period of seclusion and instruction away from women and children. At the end of the ceremony they re­ entered the general community by crawling towards their mothers through a tunnel of legs formed by initiated men. As well as witnessing the Karwadi ceremony, Stanner made another remarkable discovery. The Murinbata knew the Rainbow Serpent as Kunmanggur, conceived as a man of great size and superhuman powers, whose mythology impinged ‘more widely and deeply on the mystical beliefs of the Murinbata than any other’.31 He was described as the First Man, who ‘made us all’, whose spit was the rainbow, and whose image remained in ancient rock-paintings. Yet within living memory no ceremonies were performed in his honour, and no cult existed in his name. Stanner conjectured that as colonization progressively dislocated and demoralized the Murinbata, they turned away from the Father towards the Mother in search of succour and renewed vitality.32

54

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

It is interesting that Elkin and Stanner independently attributed the emergence of Mother-Goddesses to external impacts and historical contingency. As the spectrum of data widened after the Second World War, however, another possibility came into view, namely that the apotheosis of the reproductive and nurturing properties of both sexes was a generative principle inherent in Aboriginal religious thinking throughout the continent, and therefore probably of great antiquity. For reasons that are not clearly understood, the degree of prominence given to one sex compared with the other differed from time to time and place to place. Thus we have Father-Gods eminent in the south of the continent, and Mother-Goddesses conspicuous in the north; and, if Stanner’s conjecture is correct, a Father-God displaced by a Mother-Goddess within the same culture. But there is a further manifestation of the principle that may provide the best key of all to its inner dynamics: the conjunction of male and female reproductive powers, residing either in deities of opposite sex or, more intriguingly, in a single deity of indeterminate sex. Shortly after the war Elkin made arrangements for two of his students, Ronald and Catherine Bemdt, to begin fieldwork in Arnhem Land. The location chosen was east of Warner’s base and north of Harney’s. Here Ronald Bemdt was able to study male secret cults intensively, and in the early 1950s he published his findings in two books, one called Kunapipi, the other Djanggawul. As expositions of sexual conjunction in myth, rite and reality, they are probably without peer. Whereas Warner had reported that Kunapipi was the Rainbow Snake, and Hamey said it was ‘The Mother’, Bemdt maintained it was both: ‘In north-eastern Arnhem Land, the name Kunapipi expresses a dual concept: on the one hand it refers to a Fertility Mother, or Mothers, and on the other to the great Rainbow Snake. This is the symbolism of the Uterus and the Penis, natural instruments of fecundity.’33 The formulation has an immediate appeal. Unfortunately, however, there are certain features of the Penis that can only be described as problematic. First, the sex of the Rainbow Snake in north-eastern Arnhem Land is usually said to be female. Bemdt writes reassuringly that this ‘does not affect its role as a Penis symbol’,34 but we are left to wonder why not. Second, while the swallowing of the Wawilak Sisters symbolizes coitus, regurgitation signifies rebirth.35 The Rainbow Snake, it seems, contains within itself the generative properties of both sexes. Third, as well as expressing the dual concept of Rainbow Snake and Fertility Mother, the word kunapipi also means ‘subincised penis’. As the incised urethra allegedly simulates the vulva, the male organ symbolically acquires the bisexuality of the Rainbow Serpent. It becomes, so to speak, an instance of the Rainbow Serpent.36 In the year following the publication of Bemdt’s Kunapipi, a German anthropologist named Andreas Lommel presented an account of the Rainbow Serpent among the Unambal people of Western Australia.37 According to the Unambal, the Rainbow Serpent is a bisexual snake named Ungud who, with the help of the Milky Way, made the world. Natural species came into existence when Ungud dreamed itself into their various shapes. In the same way Ungud created clones of itself, known as wonjina, and deposited them in various places, particularly waterholes. The wonjina in turn generated the human spirits that enter

High Gods

55

women and become babies. Ungud is thus above all an archetype of life itself - an All-Soul, perhaps, rather than a Father-God or Mother-God. Representations of the wonjina have excited the interest of anthropologists and others since they were discovered on rock walls by George Grey in 1838.38 The Unambal say they were left there by the wonjina themselves. They usually appear as figures with strongly delineated heads and truncated bodies, though in some cases bodies are missing altogether. The faces are always mouthless. It would be consistent with the description of Ungud as bisexual if the apparent facial configuration of the wonjina was meant in fact to represent the male genitalia (testicles and penis) inside the vagina. The horizontal segmentation of the ‘nose’ would then be explicable as a differentiation of the glans from the shaft, and the absence of a mouth would no longer be a mystery.39 What are the properties of rainbows and snakes that have attracted Aboriginal thinkers in their search for godhead? Since the formulations are ancient, we have no sure way of telling. But we may reasonably presume that the quest, by its very nature, leads the mind away from the known (whose existence is the object of explanation) into the unknown. Cosmologically, the unknown worlds nearest at hand and most accessible to the imagination lie in the regions above and below the earth’s surface - the sky and the underworld. Rainbows appear in the former, and snakes emerge from the latter. Their unification in the concept of the Rainbow Snake constitutes not merely an imaginative connection between the two domains of mystery impinging on the everyday world but a theory of an external source of the latter’s Being.40 It is true that snakes are not the only things that emerge from the ground, nor are rainbows the only things that appear in the sky. Two points, however, are in their favour. First, they share a rough similarity of shape, so that the notion of the rainbow as a huge snake rising from the ground into the sky has a basis in empirical observation. Second, snakes are tubes that enter holes and have the ability to extrude objects as well as ingest them. They thus have properties that, at the level of analogy, combine in a single creature the salient activities of the human male and female generative organs. By an act of intellectual transposition of the observed conditions for the production of individual lives, the Rainbow Snake is equipped with the means for the production and reproduction of Life itself.41 Can we say, then, to bring this small segment of anthropological history to a tidy ending, that the High (or Highest) God of Terra Australis was the Rainbow Serpent? Not unless we want to start another argument. In a brief but challenging essay published in 1978 Kenneth Maddock maintained that the notion of a single, well-defined mythological entity known throughout the continent as the Rainbow Serpent is an anthropological fiction. The accumulated evidence indicates that there is no constancy of form, powers or role among the mythological creatures who manifest themselves as the rainbow. As well as snakes of various species, there are also crocodiles, lizards, and amalgamations of features of different species. Sometimes the Rainbow Serpent is ritually important, sometimes inconsequential. Even within a single culture it is often unclear whether it is one or many, male or female, serpent or human. And in many tribes the most important deities have little or no connection with the rainbow at all.

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

56

Nevertheless (and here Maddock would agree), we can still speak of a genre, a suite of fleeting forms connected with the rainbow through which the philosophers of Aboriginal Australia have sought to express the idea of an underlying reality. Metaphysical abstractions, being hard to grasp, lend themselves to vulgarization; and the ontological quest easily lapses into the pleasurable and useful pastime of telling fireside stories to frightened children. But in the higher reaches of serious reflection, we find a persistent intuition of a presence or power whose Oneness is felt to account for the plurality and impermanence of the sensible world and those who live in it. Totemic archetypes achieve this effect within specific limits. The concept of a cosmic One is naturally less well articulated, since it is the archetype of everything and therefore indescribable. Verbally, mortals can do little more than give it a name, such as Ungud, and affirm its existence. The impotence of language forces inquiry to call on other helpers, particularly art, music and dance. It is through these forms, elaborated and reworked in a rich mosaic of religious history, that men have reached towards the One and tried to become part of it and to make it part of themselves. In 1990, sixty years after the appearance of Radcliffe-Brown’s Oceania article on the Rainbow Serpent, Luke Taylor published an essay entitled The Rainbow Serpent as Visual Metaphor in Western Arnhem Land’. Kunwinjku artists of western Arnhem Land use the English word ‘rainbow’ to describe two distinct Beings, Yingama, the first mother, and Ngalyod, her son. Both are thought of as bisexual, and both are typically represented as a combination of elements drawn from different species, including the feral water buffalo introduced in post-colonial times. The paintings, in Taylor’s view, ‘express the generalized message that the diversity of life masks an ultimate relatedness’.42 In sharper contemporary focus, they also express the political relatedness of all Kunwinjku. The need to fashion a wider unity in the face of white domination was affirmed recently when a painting of the rainbow by a Kunwinjku artist was adopted as a logo by the Northern Land Council representing Aboriginal interests throughout the Top End of the Northern Territory. On an even larger stage, devised to proclaim pan-Aboriginality on the two-hundredth anniversary of the colonization of Australia, urban Aborigines performed against the background of a Kunywinju painting of the Rainbow Serpent in the Rainbow Serpent Theatre at World Expo in Brisbane. Durkheim would have approved. Notes 1

H iatt is referrin g here to an article w ritten in 1 8 9 8 b y S id n e y H artland, T h e “ H igh G o d s ” o f A u str a lia ’, and to A n d r e w L a n g ’s b o o k ,

Myth, Ritual and Religion,

1899.

S e e ch. 5,

‘P e o p le w ith o u t P o lit ic s ’ a b o v e , pp. 8 1 - 4 . F o llo w in g th e p u b lic a tio n o f H artland ’s paper, s o m e e v e n ea rlier refe r e n c e s w e r e u nearthed b y N .W . T h o m a s (1 9 0 5 ). 2

Lang 1899.

3

H artland 1 8 9 9 .

4

S e e ‘G rou p M a rria g e’ a b o v e , pp. 4 5 - 6 ; T h e d e fin itiv e a cco u n t o f th e co lla b o r a tio n b e tw e e n S p e n c e r and G ille n is in M u lv a n e y and C a la b y 1 9 8 5 .

High Gods 5

Frazer 1 9 3 6 [1 8 9 0 ]: I, 2 3 4 .

6

M arett and P en n im a n 1 9 3 2 : 2 4 -7 .

7

M arett and P en n im a n 1 9 3 2 :6 9 .

8

M arett and P en n im a n 1 9 3 2 :7 5 .

9

S p e n c e r and G ille n 1 9 2 7 :3 5 6 .

57

10 L a n g 1 8 9 9 :1 3 2 . "

D u rk h eim 1 9 1 5 :4 7 .

12 D u rk h eim 1 9 1 5 :1 . 11 D u rk h eim 1 9 1 5 :2 0 6 . 14 D u rk h eim 1 9 1 5 :2 9 0 . 15 H artland 1 8 9 8 :3 0 0 . 16 D u rk h eim 1 9 1 5 :2 8 9 . 17 R o s e 1 9 5 1 :2 5 . 18 S c h m id t 1 9 1 2 :5 4 . 19 D u rk h eim 1 9 1 5 :2 8 9 , n o te 4. 20 E lia d e 1 9 7 3 . S e e a ls o W o rm s 1 9 5 0 . 21 R a d c liffe -B r o w n 1 9 5 2 [ 1 9 2 9 ], 22 F or an a c c o u n t o f th e d eriv a tio n o f th e term from an A m e r ic a n Indian w o rd , s e e L e v iS tra u ss 1 9 6 3 :8 6 . 23 R a d c liffe -B r o w n 1 9 2 6 . 24 R a d c liffe -B r o w n 1 9 3 0 :3 ,8 . 25 R a d c liffe -B r o w n 1 9 5 2 [1 9 4 5 ]: 17 2 . 26 W arner 1 9 3 7 :2 6 1 . 27 A b u ll-ro a rer is a flat, e lo n g a te d p ie c e o f w o o d w ith a h o le in o n e e n d th r o u g h w h ic h a co rd is a tta ch ed .

W h en sw u n g , the b u ll-ro a rer tw ists an d m a k e s a w h ir r in g so u n d .

It is

o f in terest that w h e n P y th a g o ra s w a s in itia ted in to a D io n y sia n c u lt in C rete in 5 3 0 B C , h e n o te d th e u se o f a b u ll-ro a rer to sim u la te th e v o ic e o f the g o d . 28 H o w itt 1 8 8 4 :4 4 6 .

29

Fdkin 1951 :x v ii.

30 I in fer E lk in ’s ig n o r a n c e o f th is from th e fa ct that in 1951 h e w ro te that th e c u lt o f th e O ld W o m a n had sp rea d to Port K ea ts b y 1 9 4 4 , an d g a v e a s h is so u r c e a se r v ic e m a n n a m ed P a rk es w h o had b e e n sta tio n e d there d u rin g th e w ar (E lk in 1951 :xx, fo o tn o te ). 31 S ta n n cr 1 9 6 3 :9 5 . 32 S ta n n er 1 9 7 9 :8 5 . 35

B ern dt 1 9 5 1 :1 2 .

34 B ern d t 1 9 5 1 :2 1 . 35 B ern d t 1 9 5 1 : 3 1 - 2 . 36 B ern dt 1 9 5 1 :1 6 . V a r io u s e x p la n a tio n s h a v e b een o ffe r e d for th e p ra c tic e o f su b in c is io n , but th e r e lig io u s o n e im p lie d in th is fo rm u la tio n is p rob a b ly th e b est: b y sy m b o lic a lly b is e x u a liz in g th e org a n , m en draw on the su p rem e b ise x u a l c r e a tiv e p o w e r o f th e R a in b o w S erp en t. 37 L o m m e l’s a c c o u n t w a s in G erm an, and

I

h a v e relied h ere o n M a d d o c k ’s su m m ary

(M a d d o c k 1 9 7 8 : 1 5 - 1 6 ) . 38 S e e ‘P e o p le w ith o u t P o lit ic s ’ a b o v e , p. 8 4 . 39 H iatt 1 9 7 1 . In S y d n e y d u rin g 1 9 9 2 I a sk ed D a v id M o w a lja r li, an A b o r ig in a l au th o rity o n the r e lig io n o f the K im b er le y r e g io n , w h eth er the o ld p e o p le e v e r ta lk e d a b o u t th e a b se n c e o f m o u th s.

H e rep lied that

wonjina

sp irits

th e r e p resen ta tio n s s h o w th em w ith o u t m o u th s.

do

h a v e m o u th s. N o o n e k n o w s

why

H e said th e m atter is in sc r u ta b le and

b e y o n d hu m an u n d ersta n d in g . 40 F or a stim u la tin g a ltern a tiv e in terp retation , s e e M a d d o c k 1 9 7 8 :7 .

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

58

41 A third c o m m o n prop erty is sh in in e s s and lu m in o sity , w h ic h are se e n b y A b o r ig in e s as m a n ife s ta tio n s o f c o s m ic p o w e r ( s e e M o rp h y 1 9 8 9 ). 42 T a y lo r 1 9 9 0 :3 4 2 .

References Kunapipi: A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Religious Cult.

B ern dt, R. 1951

M elb o u rn e:

C h esh ire .

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. L on d on : A lle n and U n w in . Patterns in Comparative Religion. N e w Y ork: N e w A m erica n Library. Australian Religions. Ithaca: C o rn ell U n iv e r sity P ress. 1 9 3 8 The Australian Aborigines: How to Understand Them. S y d n ey : A n g u s and

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L o n d on :

M a c m illa n . H artland, E .S . 1 8 9 8 T h e ‘H ig h G o d s ’ o f A u stra lia . --------. 1 8 9 9 A u stra lia n G o d s: R ejo in d e r. H o w itt,

A .W .

1884

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Som e

Anthropological Institute

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9 :2 9 0 -3 2 9 .

1 0 : 4 6 -5 7 .

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of

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Folk-Lore

1 0 : 1 -4 6 .

--------. 18 9 9 b A re S a v a g e G o d s B orrow ed From M issio n a ries?

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Nineteenth Century 4 5 : 1 3 2 ^ 4 .

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--------. 1 9 6 6

and N ic o ls o n .

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1 3 : 4 3 2 -5 9 .

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A Chromatic Piece, pp. 1 - 2 1 . T h e H agu e: M o u to n . --------. 1 9 8 2 The Australian Aborigines: A Portrait of Their Society,

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P e n g u in . M arett, R .R . 1 9 3 6

Tylor.

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O xford : C la ren d o n

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Man

2 4 :2 1 -4 0 .

A . 1 9 2 6 T h e R a in b o w -S e r p e n t M yth o f A u stralia. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 5 6 : 1 9 - 2 5 . --------. 1 9 3 0 T h e R a in b o w -S e r p e n t M yth in S o u th -E a st A u stralia. Oceania l ( 3 ) : 3 4 2 - 7 . --------. 1931 The Social Organization of Australian Tribes. S y d n ey : O c e a n ia P u b lic a tio n s. --------. 1 9 5 2 [ 1 9 2 9 ] T h e S o c io lo g ic a l T h eo r y o f T o te m ism . In Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses, pp. 1 1 7 - 3 2 . L on d on : C o h e n and W est. S c h m id t, W . 1 9 0 8 - 9 L ’O r ig in e d e l ’id e e d e d ieu . Anthropos 3 : 1 2 5 - 1 1 2 0 ; 4 : 2 0 7 - 1 0 9 1 . --------. 1 9 1 2 - 5 4 Der Ursprung der Gottesidee: Eine Historisch-Kritische und Positive Studie. R a d c liffe -B r o w n ,

11 v o ls . M unster: A s c h e n d o r ffsc h e V e r la g sb u c h sh a n d lu n g .

The Native Tribes of Central Australia. L on d o n : M a c m illa n . The Aranda. L o n d o n : M a cm illa n . W . 1 9 7 9 White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-73. C anberra: A u stralian

S p e n c e r , B . and F. G ille n 1 8 9 9 --------. 1 9 2 7 S ta n n er,

N a tio n a l U n iv e r s ity P ress. --------. 1 9 6 3 --------. 1 9 6 6

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59

Journal of the Anthropological Institute

2 1 :2 8 3 -3 0 1 .

Journal of the Anthropological Institute 2 1 :3 9 6 —4 1 1 . Primitive Culture. L o n d o n : M urray. 1 9 3 7 A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. N e w Y ork :

--------. 1 8 9 2 b A n n iv e r sa r y A d d r e ss. --------. 1 9 0 3 [ 1871 ] W arner. W .L . H arper.

W o rm s. E. 1 9 6 3 R e lig io n . In H. S h e ils , e d ., M e lb o u rn e: O x fo rd U n iv e r s ity P ress.

Australian Aboriginal Studies,

pp. 2 3 1 - 4 7 .

3

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion Ian Keen

W.E.H. Stanner has been rightly regarded as one of the more important anthropological students of Aboriginal religion. His ideas on Aboriginal religion were developed in a series of essays published in Oceania between 1959 and 1963, and published together as a monograph in 1963. His main views are summarized in a separate paper published in 1965. Stanner’s description and interpretation of ethnographic data on Aboriginal religion has been widely assessed as thorough, sensitive, successful and astute (Hiatt 1975:10; Beckett 1982; Mol 1982:17; Charlesworth 1984:7; Swain 1985:127). Koepping (1981:379) regards Stanner’s approach as innovative in breaking away from the sacred-profane dichotomy and in its comparative perspective. As far as I am aware, however, there has been no extensive critical examination of his work by an anthropologist. Now that anthropological and sociological thought has in general moved well beyond the Durkheimian paradigm in which Stanner’s intellectual roots lay, and against which he reacted, it is time for an assessment of his contribution. In this chapter I focus on the consequences of Stanner’s reaction to the limitations of structuralfunctionalism, and his approach to interpretation.1 General Orientation Stanner’s academic activities cannot be divorced from his humanitarian concerns, for he was active in Aboriginal affairs and wrote in support of Aboriginal interests (Beckett 1982:273). His writings on Aboriginal religion are motivated in part by his humanitarian outlook, for it is clear that he was anxious to show, on the assumption that religion is of high value, that certain Aboriginal beliefs and practices are religious; he was surely right to connect the early anthropological denial of religiosity to Aboriginal culture with a pervasive attitude of derision (Stanner 1965). Stanner was also committed to the treatment of ‘religion’ as a sui generis phenomenon and not as a reflection of society or psychological development. In a scathing attack on Durkheim and Freud he remarks, ‘One made religion an ecstatic, Extract from a revised version of Ian Keen, ‘Stanner on Aboriginal Religion’, Canberra Anthropology, 9 (2), 1986, pp. 26-50. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

the other a neurotic, phantasm.’ Both men, along with Frazer, ‘set back understanding while appearing to advance it’ (1965:211). As Swain points out (1985:123), Stanner held in common with Levi-Strauss, Elkin and Eliade the premise that Aboriginal religion can best be understood ‘internally’, interpreted in terms of its meaning without reducing it to a social epiphenomenon. These commitments were apparently connected - Aboriginal culture is of value in partaking of a religious ‘high culture’; religion is down-graded in value if it is reduced to being a reflection of something else, such as society. The concomitant of these attitudes is an approach to description and analysis in which religion is separated from social organization (except through totemic organization), and given its own objects and meanings. Stanner’s approach to explanation reflects a general reaction in social anthropology against the limitations of structural-functionalism. Along with Firth (1951) and Leach (1964), Stanner questioned assumptions of social system stability and social structure as an explanatory construct. In his writings he places transaction rather than structure at the core of a social theory, and stresses social flux as opposed to stability, the heterogeneity of the social order as against system integration, the absence of a unified system of belief, and the importance of history (Barwick, Beckett and Reay 1985). Such problems evidently had been exercising his mind at least since 1956, when he read a version of a paper on Firth’s concept of social organization, published a decade later (1966). 1 consider the effects of this perspective on his interpretation of Murinbata religion later in this chapter. First I outline his views of the nature of Aboriginal religion, and some of his generalizations about it. The Nature of Religion Stanner avoided defining religion, but quotes with approval Radcliffe-Brown’s formulation that in studying religion one is concerned with the ‘larger structure in which society and external nature are brought together and a system of organized relations established, in myth and ritual, between human beings and natural species or phenomena’ (1965:223). The larger structure is not appropriately called totemism, he argues, and indeed Stanner resists giving it a name as it is not united by any one principle (1965:224). He opposed both a narrow theistic and philosophical approach (1963:vii). Aboriginal religion must be described and analysed as significant in its own right, and as ‘expressions of human experience of life’ (1965:222). Yet his writings betray an evolutionist bias: ‘A foundation existed for a systematic belief in gods and for institutions of priesthood, prayer, and sacrifice’ (1965:214); or again, ‘it becomes clear that the Aborigines had taken, indeed, had gone far beyond, the longest and most difficult step toward the formation of a truly religious outlook’ (1965:215). These views are evolutionist in the sense that they judge Aboriginal religion in terms of development towards a goal, that goal being a European standard of the nature of religion. The etymology of the word ‘religion’ suggests to Stanner two dispositions: ‘to ponder on the foundations of human life in history, and to unite or reconcile

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oneself with the design incorporated in those foundations’. If so, the Aborigines were ‘a very religious-minded people’ (1965:215). But the study of religion should not be equated with the study of its myths and rites, this is too restrictive. An Aboriginal religion combines a cosmogony, cosmology and ontology, linked by a totemic system. It incorporates a view of the structure of the world and its past; myths which depict the Dreamtime ‘marvels’; a totemic organization or persons, places and signs; rites; and an order of social relations. Religion is not the reflection of society, for religion and society ‘each pervaded the other within a larger process’; totem groups, for example, are ‘sacred corporations in perpetuity’ (1965:237). The end of Aboriginal religion is ‘to unite hearts and establish order’. Murinbata religion has the form o f ‘totemic sacramental ism’, of which totemism is the foundation - the principle of ‘endowment’. Murinbata religious practice celebrates dependence on other-worldly powers, but it conceives of life as a joyful thing that has taken a wrong turn at the beginning of things (1963:39). Rite is an exchange of signs indicating dependence on powers for life-benefits, and institutions are ‘the plan for dispensing the flow among men’ (1963:28). In this way Stanner depicted Murinbata religion as a transaction. To find the objects of religion, according to Stanner, one must look beyond the symbol to the symbolized (1965:237). The objects of Murinbata religion are ‘intuited dualisms supposed to compose the life process’ (1963:155). Myths are allegorical statements about this dualist reality; the objects of rites are ‘mysteries’; the objects of religious symbols are ‘ultimate or metaphysical things’, belonging to a ‘category of ontological fact’. They are ‘theorems of life implicit in liturgical and mythical dualities’ (1965:233, 234). Stanner sums up: ‘All the symbolism defers to the ontology there started. At the core is a concern with man ’s being’ (1965:234, original emphasis). Thus he conceives of Aboriginal religion as a transitive, almost contemplative, signifying practice, the point of which is to represent intuitive conceptions about the nature of life and existence. The Positive Features of Aboriginal Religion Now let me summarize Stanner’s valuable, implicitly comparative, generalizations about the character of Aboriginal religion, and Murinbata religion in particular what he referred to as the ‘positive features’. He sketches these in an early paper (1958:518) in this way: there are no just or unjust gods who adjudicate the world; no notion of grace or redemption; no concept of inner peace and reconcilement; no heaven of reward or hell of punishment; no prophets, saints or illuminati'.; the concept of goodness lacks true scruple; and ritual uncleanness can be removed by a simple mechanism; there is a moral law, but men are both good and bad, as in the beginning of things; there is a metaphysic of assent to the terms of life. These and other generalizations are elaborated in the later works (1963:152-154; 1965:213232): 1. Aborigines conceived of the world as one in which spirit powers had a major role, although no one spirit or power had authority over all, and not everything

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

in the world was believed to be influenced by spiritual authority. For the Murinbata, daily life provided continuous evidence that spiritual forces intervened, although they were believed to be under human control to a degree. 2. The religion incorporated a view that the structure of the world and of life was fixed in the remote past, existing things were types or symbols of ancient things. Everything came to be as it is in ‘the great founding drama’, although there was no doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The character of the founding drama varied, however, from that o f ‘self dedication’ to ‘sad finality’. 3. According to this doctrine of the ‘Dream Time’, things were instituted in an enduring form, endowed with good and bad properties. There was therefore no entelechy, no ‘tension between past, present and future’ (1965:214), no yearning for a perfect future, no notion of people as free or perfectible (1963:57). 4. Murinbata life was marked by a mood of assent, and a deep traditionalism. Since life was believed to be ordained once for all, its terms were put beyond human initiative (1963:57). As a consequence there was no abandonment of the self, as in sacrifice, for the compassion of invisible powers is given once for all. The necessity of suffering was ‘part of the founding covenant’ so that voluntary suffering could not result in an increase in merit (1963:57). There was therefore no conception of moral freedom or corruption, and a hazy sense of conscience. 5. The dramas or ‘marvels’ have to do with the instituting of a moral-rational order, not simply setting up of the world. People are bound to live according to that foundation; however, the authority of spirit and other powers was only vaguely of a moral or ethical nature. There was no strong, explicit, religious ethic or religious creed; the religion was morally amorphous. However, some myths had a moral quality, and rites were supposed to bring about a moral and spiritual, as well as physical, change in initiands. 6. The (material) world was full of ‘signs’, taken as signs of intent towards people. People moved not in a landscape but in a ‘humanized realm saturated with significations’ (1965:227). Of considerable interest are Stanner’s examples of the kind of discourse which establishes belief in powerful but non­ specific, mysterious, presences (1965:231). The concept of non-intentional pattern - of paintings, shells, unexplained spatial arrangements in rites - was foreign to Murinbata thought; patterning was assumed to be the handiwork of beings, or the outcome of events with significance for people, and so indicative of the mythical past (1963:63). 7. Myths depicted the past as a set of dramas in each of which things became determinate at the climax. The myths were more cosmological than cosmogonical (that is, concerned with the structure of the cosmos rather than its origins), ‘giving a pattern of relevances between things, a moral order between structures of existence such that the totality of life was a cosmological structure’ (1963:152). 8. Transmission of the myths was marked by a strong traditionalism. Places in the countryside were taken as evidence that the dramas had occurred, and were imbued with a sense of long legitimate occupancy; living persons were thought

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion

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of as connected historically, mystically, substantially and essentially with the beings, places and events in the myths; these connections and the right which flowed from them were represented by totems as signs. 9. Initiation rites were ‘disciplines’ which fashioned and transformed a man into ‘a being of higher worth’ (1965:219). They were used to subdue refractory and unfinished personalities, and bring some understanding of traditional mysteries (1963:153). 10. Experience of the rituals had certain effects on young Murinbata participants: deepening their interior life, heightening their sense of mystery, putting them in fear of authority, creating a sense of fellowship. Passing through the rituals had the (normative) effect of granting males ‘the seal of manhood’ (1963:154). 11. Stanner makes some interesting suggestions about the techniques through which these effects were gained: ‘The instructive artifices were extremely skilful. Throughout the ordeals fear was in some sense countered by security, isolation by comradeship, privation by sustenance, and pain by reward.’ All this was achieved in the context ‘of high excitement, secrecy and beauty’ (1963:154). 12. In the rites nothing much is taught or learnt in a Western sense. In Murinbata ritual there was ‘little evidence of abstract, explicit teaching’ (1963:20). Moreover, a questioning approach was out of character with Murinbata ritual; men told Stanner: ‘We looked, we stayed quiet, we did not ask’ (1963:60). 13. People valued the ritual symbols for their own sake; indeed people may have been ‘imprisoned by them through the aesthetic pleasure of taking part’ (1965:221). 14. There was no tradition of intellectual detachment, no class of interpreters with the task of encoding principles, and no challenge to find anomalies in morals and beliefs. Ritual is ‘something to do rather than to talk about’ (1963:20). 15. Although there were no specialized philosophers, and no sceptical tradition, there was a ‘principle of assent to the disclosed terms of life’ (1965:220). 16. The Aboriginal religious and social cultures were in a dynamic state when Europeans colonized Australia. Modem regional cults are subject to processes of rise and decline. Recently a new dynamism emerged in Murinbata religion replacing adherence to tradition with a succession of new cults. 17. Totems are ‘reminders’ of the perennial order and the events that instituted it, and as ‘signs’ or ‘symbols’ of the unity and membership of groups over time: ‘for the possible membership, over all space and time, of the sets of people symbolized by it - the dead, the living, the unborn’ (1965:229). The person is identified with the totem, which is a kind of property of the person, as well as places. Murinbata totems expressed the historical, mystical and substantial, and essential connections of living persons with personages, places and events of the ‘dramas’. The rights and benefits of groups of persons were believed to be instituted by the ‘dramas’. 18. Political force dominated Murinbata religion in the interests of men, but ‘only in their secular interest’ (1963:153), Stanner claims. Some facts such as pack rape in the context of cults can be interpreted as ‘an abuse or corruption of the religious cults’ (1963:154).

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Some particulars of these analyses are debatable, and we find contradictions in Stanner’s position. On the one hand he finds that there is no abandonment of the self as in sacrifice, yet he represents the rite of Punj as having the form of sacrifice. The language of ‘signs’ does not sit very well with aspects of the constitution, certainly of the Yolngu (northeastern Arnhem Land Aboriginal) social world, and perhaps not the Murinbata world either, for the Yolngu see a causal relationship as existing between, say, designs and Ancestral Spirit Beings, or between marks in the landscape and the beings who made them. More seriously, Stanner does not show how totemism articulates with the organization of ritual, with the exception of a tantalizing hint that totems figure in a major Murinbata rite. Certain other generalizations are also open to debate. For example, I am not sure that rites were universally intended to ‘maintain and renew’ the design incorporated in the ‘order and foundation of human life in history’ (1965:215). Neither is it clear that Aboriginal religions incorporate spirit powers who ‘care’ (1965:216). Spirit Beings in Yolngu (northeastern Arnhem Land Aboriginal) religious beliefs, for instance, strike one as being above all dangerous and aloof, even though they are the ultimate providers. Furthermore, whereas Stanner does consider the position of women in Murinbata religion, his is very much a male-centred view of religion, without acknowledgement that this is the case. Political interests are depicted as degradations of the noble character of religion. Stanner writes that A b o r ig in a l re lig io n w a s n o t a lo n e in b e in g infiltrated and, in so m e r esp ects, m ad e partp riso n er by e x p e d ie n c y ,

p o w er,

A b o r ig in a l m a n ’s d ig n ity .

It fla w e d , but did n o t d estroy, the esta te in to w h ic h he ca m e

and v e ste d

interest.

B u t all that o n ly

q u a lifie s

in th e D ream T im e ( 1 9 6 5 :2 1 7 ).

These views may reflect Aboriginal ideals; however, other analyses (Bern 1979; Hamilton 1980) depict religious thought as a political ideology and religious organization as a mode of political organization. It is certain that Yolngu religion is at the centre of government and political competition (Keen 1978). The Theory of Action Stanner begins his essays on Murinbata religion with a critique of anthropological theory. He regarded anthropology as being in transition. It seemed to him to be more useful to study human affairs as a ‘dynamic or developmental structure of operations, exemplified in transactions about things of value’, rather than as a structure of enduring relations of persons in role positions. Such operations cut across structural domains such as the political or economic. ‘An “operational” anthropology would substitute a study of real relations - giving, taking, sharing, loving, bewitching, fighting, initiating - and make human sense of their cultural varieties’ (1963:vii). Transactions entail tetradic relations of the form ‘A to B concerning 0 in respect of Z’, and not simply the diadic or triadic relations of interaction. Such an approach, which should include among its variables

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operational roles, operations, situations, objects of life, ends and values, requires that social reality be followed closely: models must be ‘of or after reality’. The perspective also ‘forces an analyst to study the historical dimension or...to explain stability, not to assume it’ (1963:vii). Stanner’s transactionalism owes much to Radcliffe-Brown’s concept of harmonization of individual interests or values (Beckett n.d.), as well as the maximizing man of Firth. He also cites with approval the historian Usher, who wrote that ‘a particular culture must be conceived as an array of systems of events that are incompletely integrated’ (Usher 1954:25; Stanner 1966:72; see Barwick, Beckett and Reay 1985 for the wider context of Stanner’s action theory). Setting aside the concept of social structure and the assumptions of social system integration and stability, Stanner preferred to think of Murinbata social life as based on multiple principles (1963:37), as not fully integrated, as showing evidence of having changed in recent times, and being in the process of change still. Flux, he argued, ‘is the natural law of human affairs’; it is recurrent stabilities which have to be accounted for, rather than change (1963:157). Murinbata social life was a ‘struggle between circumstance and principle, identity and relation, independence and interdependence’ (1963:164); Murinbata beliefs were ‘not at all well stitched together’ (1963:157); and in Murinbata life ‘there were only workings towards system and transient captures of unity’ (1963:165). These views informed his investigation of the position of the Murinbata on the border of two culture areas, their acceptance of circumcision initiation, abandonment of an older rite and transformation of another, as well as changes due to White incursions (1963:142143). The Interpretation of Rite Stanner’s interpretation of the Murinbata rite of Punj is closely related to the theory of operations. Taking ritual as a series of enactments or operations, rather than focusing on roles, Stanner contends that the intent of many of the operations is unclear. Men said that the purpose of the rite was to make the young men ‘understand’, and to ‘follow up the dreaming’. However, for Stanner the problem of analysis lies with features which the instructors apparently did not themselves understand. Operations are carried out which the Aborigines perceive only dimly, if at all, since they can offer no explanation of the ‘intention’ of the acts (1963:3). Rather than provide a ‘just so’ account of the ceremony, Stanner follows his method of comparing the obscure with something known and familiar (1958). In this case he compares the structure of the rite of Punj with a model of sacrifice, which he finds best fits all the features of the rite. The core elements of sacrifice are these: consecration, or setting aside; immolation or offering; the return of the sacrifice with its nature transformed; and the sharing among those who sustained the loss (1963:3-^1). Stanner believes that the rite ‘conforms generically to the operational character of sacrifice’, but that the operations are ‘caught up as a core within a very different order’ (1963:4). There is a homology between the two forms, however:

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

68 The

[Punj]

id io m

c e r e m o n y m a y b e d e sc r ib e d as a litu rgical tran sa ctio n , w ith in a to te m ic

o f s y m b o lism , b e tw e e n

th e m s e lv e s to b e d e p e n d e n t.

m en and a sp iritu al b e in g on w h o m

th e y c o n c e iv e

T h e m o tiv e o f g a in is th e co n tin u a tio n o f a p lan o f life ,

g iv e n o n c e -fo r -a ll in T h e D r e a m in g , but in c o n tin u o u s d a n g er o f corru p tio n b y th o s e w h o in th e c o u r s e o f nature m u st carry it o n .

I put th is forw ard as an ir r e sistib le

in terp reta tio n o f th e sy m b o lis m w h ic h is e n a c te d d ay b y d ay in the c e r e m o n y .

It is th is

w h ic h th e o ld e r a b o r ig in e s try to m a k e y o u th u n d erstan d ( 1 9 6 3 :4 ).

Punj and sacrifice share the structure of an economic transaction (1963:4). In both there is a productive activity: something of value is taken for an end which requires its transformation; there is an exchange: the transformed object is replaced through a transaction by another thing of another nature and greater worth; and in both there is a distributive activity: the replacement is shared by those who have sustained the loss. (At such a level of abstraction, however, we seem to have come a long way from sacrifice, and even further from Murinbata practice.) In the rite, youths made nameless and naked, and so constituted as ‘wild flesh’, were taken to a place where The Mother was said to manifest herself and where the youths feared that they would be swallowed and vomited up (1963:11). The evidence is not good, however, that this ‘operation’ was conceived, explicitly or implicitly, as a ‘precious offering’, or indeed that the older men were trying to make the younger men understand the nature of the ‘liturgical transaction’. But Stanner believes that ‘we are dealing with a deposit or stock of intuitions only in part revealed by external acts and formed ideas. And of that part which is drawn upon a still smaller part is made explicit’ (1963:12). Thus Stanner looks beyond what is intended for hidden meanings, but, I shall argue, he imposes meaning of a kind which can only be constituted by a statement of intention (or an unambiguous gesture). In his second essay Stanner clarified his intentions, which were to use the words ‘lineaments of sacrifice’ precisely because he ‘had elicited an implicit general form, which might be considered a logical and conceptual possibility of the religious culture’ (1963:29). Nevertheless, even given this disclaimer, the general form elicited involves the imputation of meanings to a series of ritual actions about which the participants were silent. Stanner believed that the Murinbata men had no clear intellectual conception or formal symbolism of what they were doing. Stanner generalizes from the analysis of Punj to characterize the quality of Murinbata as ‘totemic sacramental ism’ (1963:28). Following Robertson Smith and Roheim, ‘sacramentalism’ implies dependency on other-worldly powers, and accounts for a certain order in the ‘ontology’ and the motivation of rites and the institution of totemism. He writes: T h e m ain rite is m arked b y th e u se o f ex tern a l and v is ib le s ig n s b e to k e n in g m e n ’s d e p e n d e n c y o n o th e r w o r ld ly p o w e r s for an e n d o w m e n t and f lo w o f life -b e n e fits . th e

se t

of

rela tio n s

w h ic h

sa c ra m e n ta l ism ( 1 9 6 3 :2 8 ) .

o b ta in

b e tw e e n

th e se

e le m e n ts

w h ic h

It is

c o n stitu te s

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69

In this sense, he argues, Murinbata religion is ‘sacramentalist through and through’, and could be labelled ‘totemic sacramentalism’. The ‘totemic foundation’ is the ‘nature and principle of endowment’; the rite is ‘an exchange of signs’, and social institutions are ‘the plan of dispensing or distributing the flow among men’ (1963:28). Stanner is claiming, then, that the Murinbata conceived themselves as dependent on other-worldly powers; that in the main rite people use signs which ‘betoken’ that dependence, so that ‘the flow [of benefits] is accompanied - or is held to be - by external signs signifying that a solidary relation holds between that ground and men’ (1963:28). Such a ‘religious “economy”’, comparable with ‘an “economy of salvation”,...is not the whole of a religion but is an important part of it’ (1963:28-29). Interpretation of Myth: The Moral Imperfection of Social Being Stanner adds a second element to the notion of dependence in depicting the character of Murinbata religion: it is ‘a celebration of values and at the same time a dramatization of the moral imperfection of social being’ (1963:38-39); Murinbata religion ‘might well be described as the celebration of a dependent life which is conceived as having taken a wrongful turn at the beginning, a turn such that the good of life is now inseparably connected with suffering’ (1963:39). This thesis seems to imply, if not a conception of the possibility of moral perfectibility, then a perception that the absence of suffering would be desirable. The important insight is that the myths do not represent humans as having fallen from a state of perfection; the spirits are both good and bad, kind and cruel. To support the view that Murinbata myths depict the way in which ‘life took a wrong turning’ Stanner interprets the myth of Mutjingga in this way (1963:41-42). The myth tells how the Old Woman, left to look after children, showed them how to bathe, and pretending to look for lice, swallowed them. People chased her, accused her of wrongdoing, clubbed her and slit open her stomach to reveal the children still alive in her womb. The children were washed, ochred, given the marks of initiands, and returned to their mothers. Mutjingga’s wrong was that she should have waited till the children were grown. And because of her death men have the bullroarer, made to take her place. Thus the myth is a clear analogue of initiation, as well as an explanation and justification for men rather than women having control of the bullroarer cult. However, Stanner interprets men’s comments about the actions of the Old Woman, which included the expression pirimbun madaku, meaning something like ‘getting nowhere’, with expressions such as ‘the loss to man was irreparable’, and the event was a ‘sad finality’ with overtones of ‘loss and waste’. He thus substitutes expressions with complex connotations in English without providing evidence that the connotations match those of the Murinbata expressions or narrative elements.

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Religion as Ontology In his essay on religion, totemism and symbolism Stanner argues that the significance of rites is best understood in terms of universal dispositions to ‘ponder on the foundations of human life in history, and to unite or reconcile oneself with the design incorporated in those foundations’ (1965:215). Totems were not the essential content of the Murinbata religion, but rather the objects of the myths and rites were things of ultimate concern, ‘the intuited dualisms supposed to compose the life-process’ (1963:155). Thus myths and rites have ontological objects. Murinbata religion is an ‘ontology of life’, a contemplation of life’s mysteries; Murinbata myths seemed to him to be ‘the first springs of contemplative religion, using allegorical idioms’ (1963:167). Stanner argues that The Dreaming in its widest sense corresponds to ‘absolute or whole reality’ characterized by a pervasive dualism, and encompasses the religious order and the social order (which partly overlap in his diagram; 1963:26). From within the Aboriginal system of thought The Dreaming is the referent of everything: all relations are from the wider circle which represents it. Religion brings people closer to ontological reality than purely social activity; religious rites are ‘acts towards whole reality, myths are allegorical statements about it, and social customs are acts within whole reality’ (1963:27). ‘The successive initiations deepen the interior life and, at the same time, widen the experiential world until, at Punj, it approaches whole reality as understood’ (1963:27). Aborigines refer everything to The Dreaming as ‘ground and source’ of everything, for example when they say that they ‘follow up’ The Dreaming. The object of initiation rites was to bring young men to an understanding of mysteries - ‘obscure but powerful intuitions of men’s life and condition’. Being complex, the mysteries ‘could only be adumbrated by means of symbolisms couched in familiar idioms’ such as sexuality, kin relations, and parricide. The symbolic idioms were mediating expressions whose (more immediate) significata were ‘structures and transactions...instituted for men by the transformative marvels of The Dream Time’ (1963:153). The common signification was a paradox, antimony or dualism common to all the structures of existence: C erta in m y th s, p rin c ip a lly but n o t o n ly th o s e c lo s e ly a ss o c ia te d w ith r e lig io u s rites, d ea lt w ith d iv is iv e th in g s , d u a litie s or o p p o s ite s , that s o m e h o w w e r e r e c o n c ile d or b r o u g h t to a term , th o u g h o n ly m o m e n ta r ily , and w ith e ffe c ts that w e r e b oth u n itiv e and d is u n itiv e and c o n tin u e d a s c o n c o m ita n ts o f e x is te n c e thereafter.

T h e w h o le se t o f d e fin itiv e ,

in stitu tiv e d ram as g a v e th e p r o c e s s o f life a k in d o f d u a listic o n to lo g y ( 1 9 6 3 : 1 5 2 ) .

The dualisms are only apparent, a ‘kind of counterpoise, a unity of opposites’: in the myths an ancestral spirit being was killed by human agency, yet mourned; the Rainbow Serpent was killed, in death gave ‘benison’, then deprived men of fire (1963:45^16). Thus the dominant theme of several myths w a s an irreparable injury to m an at th e b e g in n in g o f life u n d er in stitu ted fo rm s.

The

s e n s e o f in ju ry - w h e th e r a n e e d le s s or a n e c e s sa r y injury w a s hard to m a k e o u t - w a s e x p r e s s e d in se v e r a l m eta p h o rs, but th e c o m m o n s ig n ific a tio n se e m e d to b e a p ara d o x ,

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion a n tim o n y or d u a lism c o m m o n to all the stru ctu res or e x is te n c e .

71 T h u s, it d id n o t ap p ea r

that M u rin b a ta s o c ie ty c o u ld b e regarded as the r e lig io n ’s so u r c e and o b je c t. R ath er, th e r e lig io n

a p p eared as th e s o c ie t y ’s c o m p le tio n , w ith in th e am b it le ft b y th e in ju ry

( 1 9 6 3 :1 6 7 ) .

In this way Murinbata religion is concerned implicitly with metaphysical questions. Myths are allegorical statements about a dualistic reality (1963:27), as well as ‘a declaration about the penalties of private will, and by implication a thesis on the spoiling of possible unity’ (1963:46). The Relation of Myth to Rite Space does not permit a detailed examination of Stanner’s analysis of myth in relation to ritual, so I will comment on some aspects of Stanner’s interpretative methodology. (Hiatt has examined Stanner’s analysis of myth in some detail in his Introduction to Australian Aboriginal Mythology (1975). Stanner’s view is that a type of analysis of myth and rite is required that links them to the ontological system, although there are methodological and analytical difficulties (1963:46). Adopting Robertson Smith’s position that ‘if there is no theory of rite then there can be no theory of myth’ (1963:50), he rejects the notion of myth as language, but is concerned with ‘the use of language or speech-forms as myth in a situation o f rite’ (1963:47, original emphasis). ‘If the rite of Punj has an ontological significance then so has the [related] myth’; both express ‘something about the macro-experience of living’; each ‘has to do with a mystery’ (1963:50). Murinbata thought is profoundly analogical; myth is allegorical. The myth of Punj is an ‘attempt to make an identity between a social reality and a new intuition of a suprasocial reality’. Stanner goes on, ‘The known and non-mysterious - the social order - provides both a literal and a figurative language of shapes by which to interpret the unknown and mysterious...It is an allegory made up of extended metaphor formed from analogies of resemblance’ (1963:51). A second aspect of Stanner’s analysis of the relation between myth and rite is Van Gennepian. He divides three rites and the myth of Punj into episodes, then finds formal correspondences on the basis of assigning positive and negative values to episodes. In an interesting account of the spatial features of ceremony, which the Murinbata did not interpret, Stanner proposes that the forms are conventional signs which ‘designate and indicate mysterious first things of the long ago, the mythical past’. When elaborated by language, music and gesture, they ‘express and communicate first things as last, permanent and continuous things’ (1963:63, original emphasis). The spatial symbolism, which is independent of language,, appears to have a formal sequence congruent with the general phases of the rite ‘withdrawal, destruction, transformation and return’ (1963:71). The important insight in this interesting set of conjectures is that the form, like the patterning of all things, need have no explicit meaning to be significant; the Murinbata take them as patterns laid down at the beginning of things - the significant feature is the

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belief that the Spirit Beings laid down forms which must be followed, and which are not the creations of people. Totemism It is ironic that in spite of the strong stand on the independence of Aboriginal religion from social organization, Stanner’s analysis of the constitutive role of beliefs in clan organization is so illuminating, and demonstrates just such a link. Totemism, which Stanner does not define, is ‘the foundation as well as the frame of the sacramental plan’ (1963:31). When considering clan totemism Stanner remarks that he is trying to give an account ‘not of social structure as it is usually understood, but of the way in which groups are constituted and have a set of functions under what may be called on these evidences a totemic determination’ (1963:35). He summarizes Murinbata conceptions or relations among persons, species and places, then provides an interesting account of the constitution of clans in which personal identity and rights are founded in certain beliefs, characterized by a relation of dependence. ‘The totemic system has a threefold efficacy, (a) It provides a wisdom or principle or logos by which the aborigines conceptualize groups of people. (b) It unifies sets or collections of people as...“group” property...(c) It points ...back, to a ground and source which are self-authorized and self-authorizing; and on, to powers and rights.’ Members of groups ‘have their being - and a fortiori the powers and rights - only by virtue of the authority set up’ within the totemic system (1963:35, original emphasis). Here we find an analysis of a mode of organization which recognizes the relations of entailment between belief and practice, ideas and action, a mode which Stanner was unable to extend to action. Problems of Interpretation It is the lack of an adequate theory of action that accounts for what I regard as the flaws in Stanner’s approach to the analysis of religion in social life, pervaded as it is by a thoroughgoing dualism of a kind which assumes that the true significance of actions and ‘symbols’ is hidden from view. Actors’ descriptions of and comments about actions are undervalued, and the way is open for the analyst to represent his ‘interpretations’ as hidden significances. (Ironically, he criticized Durkheim for his tendency to dichotomization and dualism (1967:229).) In discussing Murinbata religion as an ontology of life Stanner moves uncomfortably between a phenomenological viewpoint and an analytical one in trying to give an account ‘from within the aboriginal system of thought’, but in terms of analytical categories such as ‘religious order’, ‘social order’ and ‘ontological system’. In the work on Murinbata religion there is a vast conceptual gap between the sketch of a theory of transactions and the subject matter of religious belief, ritual symbolism, and ritual action, as well as the modes of organization which

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion

73

encompass them. The gap accounts for the ad hoc nature of Stanner’s explanations, and for the inadequate methodology of interpretation. Perhaps it exists because Stanner’s search for a theory of action pre-dated the profound influence of the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action on anthropology, linguistics and social theory, as a result of which it is possible to begin to see the relation between ‘meaning’ and social action. (Weber’s account of action and meaning was perhaps too incomplete to have had such an effect.) As an example of his undeveloped theory of action, Stanner regarded operations as observable: ‘What one sees at Punj is the structure of operations (S); one has to infer or construct the structure of functions (S) and the segmental structure (SS)’ (1963:37). On the contrary, however, one cannot ‘see’ such operations, for they require for their interpretation knowledge of the descriptions by which the actions, as well as the total context in which they are embedded, are constituted.2 Moreover, Stanner’s interpretation of the rite of Punj as a whole, which he represents as having the form of a sacrifice, is based on mistranslation, in my view. A number of writers have received his interpretation with approval, however (Eliade 1968:255; Koepping 1981; Maddock 1985:144; Strehlow 1963:248). However, Berndt (in Sheils 1963:253) regarded the use of the notion of sacrifice as ‘a superimposed European concept’, a view with which I agree. The grounds for regarding Stanner’s interpretation as mistranslation are these. The use of the expression ‘sacrifice’ as a label for Murinbata practices is justified if Murinbata practices fulfil our criteria for applying the term to a useful degree (for example, as outlined by Hubert and Mauss 1899), so that the expression within certain contexts is at least a partial paraphrase of equivalent Murinbata expressions, and its use is therefore illuminating. But in this case there does not appear to be a Murinbata expression which is translated as ‘sacrifice’, and the constituent acts of the sequence described do not appear to be described in ways which are adequately translated as ‘precious offering’ etc., for they seem not to be described in purposive terms at all. A practice such as ‘sacrifice’ (to a Spirit Being) is framed in terms of certain beliefs, and the constituent actions are described as having certain effects in relation to those beliefs. The beliefs and descriptions are constitutive in the sense that the actions can only be taken to have those effects - and so be actions of those kinds - in the light of those descriptions. It is precisely evidence that the Murinbata conceive of their actions in the ceremony as an offering in the expectation of a return that is lacking. As Maddock comments (1985:144), we are not told what effects the rite has on The Mother, or what blessing she would give if the rite did affect her. And as van Baal remarks, the object of sacrifice is destroyed, whereas the object of initiation is ‘promoted’ (1971:139; see Maddock 1985:134). Why go to such lengths to interpret Murinbata practices as at least the ‘lineaments of sacrifice’? Since the work of Robertson Smith and Durkheim, the practice of sacrifice has been taken as one of the hallmarks of religion. Perhaps Stanner strove to show that the central rite was like sacrifice in order to demonstrate that what Aborigines believe and practise counts as religion. Worms’s response to Stanner’s analysis supports this belief. Worms asserts that

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Australian initiation ceremonies ‘may stand revealed as a profound, religious institution and an essential act which bears a sacrificial character’ (Sheils 1963:238, cited in Maddock 1985:134). What of the concept of ‘totemic sacramentalism’? One could agree that the evidence (teased out from Stanner’s interpretations) suggests that the Murinbata conceive of themselves as dependent on spirit beings who instituted the order of life, and that the elements of the rite may suggest something of that dependence, but the language of ‘external and visible signs’ seems strained. Do the Murinbata really hold that objects and acts in the rite stand for the proposition ‘there is a solidary relation between the spirit powers and living people’? Ritual actions and beliefs may imply such a relation, but the language of sign and signified does not capture the complexities of ritual belief and symbolism. For example, my Yolngu experience suggests that Aborigines identify an object or ritual action with a Being or the action of a Being; the object or action ‘follows’ or ‘copies’ that of the Being. Where meaning is hidden there is an explicit relation drawn between ‘outside’ explicit sense and ‘inside’ esoteric interpretations of a song phrase or design (Keen 1976; Morphy 1977). The point is that the dichotomy between sign and referent or signifier and signified is insufficient to capture the complexities. Nevertheless these forms of esoteric meaning are explicitly constituted. What Stanner was trying boldly to capture was the implicit, a much more formidable task. Not that Stanner thought of symbolic relations as simple dualisms. Following Parsons (1937:421), symbols can have a ‘double incidence’, or even a multiple incidence including feelings, valuations and aspirations as well as conceptualizations. The ‘double incidence’ of ‘Rainbow’ in an Aboriginal universe is ‘(1) word —►event and (2) event —> totemic ancestor’ (1967:235). ‘[T]he organized sense-perceptions of the first are replaced in the second by ideas...which refer to an imagined object’, already conceptualized, and often taken from familiar situations of social life. Nevertheless, Stanner argues, ‘neither the imagery, nor the situations from which it is drawn, are themselves the referents’; they provide ‘only an idiom in which the referents are conceptualized’ (1967:235). The referents are ontological. I would not deny Stanner’s important insight that part of the ‘genius’ of Murinbata religion is that it ‘affirms reality as a necessary connection between life and suffering’ (1963:56), or that the content of the Punj myth affirms that such a connection has existed from the beginning: suffering is not the result of a fall from grace. But Stanner’s interpretative procedure imposes a decidedly Protestant flavour on Murinbata thought, transforming myth into Bunyanesque allegory. Given his assumption about the allegorical intent of myth, Stanner attempts ‘to extract’ the allegory in the Punj myth. To do so he provides a cryptic interpretation, dividing the myth into eleven episodes. The first part tells how people asked Mutjingga the Old Woman to look after some children while they went to collect honey. While they were away she swallowed the children one by one. Stanner’s commentary is this: ‘Innocence or new life (childhood) in mortal peril (death) from private motive’. In the third clause, the creek mentioned in the myth being used as concealment becomes ‘the flow of life’; and in the fourth the winding creek is ‘Life becoming tortuous and secretive’ (1963:51). The myth as

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion

15

translated, however, says nothing about private motive; indeed Stanner admits that myths are silent about the ‘why’ of the actions. The analysis of the content of rite is similarly marred by dubious interpretative procedures: the killing of a child in the myth becomes ‘Something - trust, young life, innocence - is destroyed there’ (1963:104). Do the Murinbata attribute ‘innocence’ to children? Indeed do they use concepts strictly parallel to the English concepts of innocence and guilt at all? Similarly, ‘suffering’ as a religiously significant construct requires to be constituted in the relevant thought and discourse. It does form part of Stanner’s interpretation of Murinbata myth and rite, but the evidence that it is constituted in Murinbata practice is less than clear. Consequently the following hypothesis about the symbolic effects of the experience of rite is unconvincing: T h e r e -en a ctm en t o f th e p rim ord ial tra g ed y b rin g s u n d ersta n d in g - or s o it is h e ld - to th e y o u th s th ro u g h w h o m life is to c o n tin u e . by and on a n e w g en e r a tio n .

T h e c o v e n a n t o f d u a lity is th u s e n d o r se d

E ach y o u n g m an is taken o u t o f h is e m p ir ic a l an d s o c ia l

se lf, as th o u g h to m eet h is e s se n tia l s e lf, is to u c h e d b y s o m e th in g tra n sc e n d e n ta l - T h e M o th e r ’s b lo o d , w h ic h is a sy m b o l b oth o f life and o f su ffe r in g - and is th e n retu rn ed b ea rin g her s ig n ...to h elp p erp etu a te the rela tio n , w ith in a su ffe r in g a c o m m o n so u r c e and a j o in t

imperium ( 1 9 6 3 :5 6 ,

logos

w h ic h g iv e s life and

o r ig in a l e m p h a s is).

Conclusions Despite the overworked and sometimes obscure style, Stanner’s writings on Aboriginal religion repay study for their ethnographic sensitivity, theoretical insights, and illuminating generalizations. They also offer us a challenge. Stanner was indeed writing at a time of transition in social anthropology. Like several of his contemporaries he wanted to escape the limitations of the functionalist paradigm and, following Firth, attempted to sketch a theory of action. But he lacked a framework to link his action concepts to descriptions of actions, statements of intention and belief, the constitution of social relations and entities, the significance of cultural forms, and political aspects of the social order. Recent developments in social theory and the philosophy and anthropology of action (for example, Giddens 1979; Bourdieu 1977) go some way towards linking action concepts to the structure and reproduction of social life as a whole. We ought to be in a better position to overcome some of the problems which arose from Stanner’s questioning of orthodoxy, and to make some further progress in understanding the role of religious belief and practice in Aboriginal social life. There is not the space here to develop this theme in any detail, but let me comment here on political aspects of Aboriginal religion. In so strenuously denying a necessary connection between religion and social structure Stanner hedged around the essential role of Murinbata religion in the regulation or governance of social life, and depicted the use of religious forms as a medium for political action as an aberration. (Indeed there are no live actors in his analysis of Murinbata religion.) In his generalizations about Aboriginal religion he does attribute several governmental functions to religious beliefs and practices, but he sees the inner meaning of religious forms as lying elsewhere.

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There can be no single explanation or analysis of Aboriginal (or any other) religion, of course, for Aboriginal religious beliefs and practices are complex and heterogeneous in the motives behind them, their purposes and significance. They are, moreover, the sedimented products of complex histories. Nevertheless, whatever the details, the particular forms taken by Aboriginal religions have a lot to do with governance and politics. Aboriginal religious beliefs and practices give diverse social activities and relations the force of religious law, and provide the basis of authority, and hence the enforcement of law. They are thus key aspects of governance as well as a medium for political competition. Yolngu religion, for example, unites a heterogeneous set of activities (initiation, revelation, burial of the dead, purification, exchange, dispute settlement, fighting, etc.) into a coherent and interrelated body of religious practice, through the manner in which each of these activities is performed, and the beliefs which inform them. Other practices are brought under the religious law through the dogma that the rules and categories which govern them, and through which they are framed, were established by ancestral Spirit Beings. The control of religious practices, and access to religious knowledge and apparent spiritual powers, is one basis of relations of power and authority and a major aspect of the currency of political competition. Because of the articulation of distinct domains through the religious law, the politics of religion is bound up with, for example, the politics of marriage and land tenure (Keen 1978, 1982). Political competition and conflict in the field of Aboriginal religion cannot be seen as an aberration, for it is an inevitable aspect of governance; where some human beings seek to control the activities (and the conditions for the activities) of others, there will be resistance. Moreover, where people seek to control the same resources, in this case religious forms, there will be conflict. Furthermore, as Bern points out (1979), the use of force and the threat of sorcery underpin the control of esoteric religious knowledge and practice, and hence the authority which rests on secrecy. Political force was not simply in the ‘secular’ interest of Murinbata men, for religious and secular interests are inseparable. Furthermore, in the light of the above interpretation, the apparently over-simple statements which Murinbata men made about the purpose of their rites appear highly salient. That the purpose of the rite is to make young men ‘understand’ or render them ‘knowledgeable’ is no mystery, but an aspect of an economy of religious knowledge which is at the very heart of power relations and authority. Older men control access to valued religious knowledge and apparent spiritual powers, to which young men are gradually given access, and from which women (as in many, but not all Aboriginal systems) are excluded. Certain aspects of the symbolic form of myth and rite relate to this governmental role of religion, I would argue. The myths state beliefs which underpin the value and validity of religious practice. It is just because the sacred objects are regarded as transformations of Spirit Beings and imbued with their powers, and because rituals ‘follow’ the events in the myths, that norms can effectively have a religious grounding, that control of forms of religious practice

Stanner on Aboriginal Religion

11

has value and can be the basis of authority as well as the subject of political competition.

Notes 1

1 thank J erem y B e c k e tt, A th o l C h a se , L e s H iatt, R ob ert L e v itu s, H o w a rd M o r p h y , J oh n M o rto n and P eter S u tto n for c o m m e n ts on ea rlier d rafts o f th is ch ap ter.

2

L each (1 9 6 4 ), sim ila rly h am p ered , d istin g u is h e d te c h n ic a l a sp e c ts o f a c tio n -

th e ir

fu n ctio n as m e a n s to e n d s - from ‘ritu a l’ a sp e c ts w h ic h ‘s a y ’ s o m e th in g a b o u t em p ir ic a l r ela tio n s.

T h e re la tio n sh ip b e tw e e n th is e x p r e s siv e a sp e c t o f a c tio n as w e ll as s o c ia l

structure as a se t o f ‘id e a s ’, and th e ‘e m p ir ic a l’ facts o f s o c ia l re la tio n s, h o w e v e r , is c o m p le te ly arbitrary in L e a c h ’s v ie w , and so are a n th r o p o lo g ic a l a c c o u n ts o f ‘e m p ir ic a l fa c ts ’ ( 1 9 8 2 ).

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M e lb o u r n e : O x fo r d U n iv e r s ity P ress.

PART 2: RELIGIOUS BUSINESS

‘Business’ is the English word used by Aboriginal people in many parts of Australia to refer to ritual activity. Indigenous Australians are very astute at selecting English language words to describe aspects of their own society. The word ‘manager’ is widely used to apply to individuals who take responsibility on behalf of ‘owners’ for running ceremonial business. The word ‘embassy’ is used to describe cases where a number of groups have small pockets of land in the estate belonging to another group. The choice of words seems at first surprising but there is always a reason behind it. Use of the term ‘business’ emphasises the seriousness of ritual and ‘law’ in Aboriginal people’s lives. It also stresses the immense amount of work that goes into ceremony, the complex organisational structures involved and the holistic nature of ritual - it is an integral part of life. Business is often assumed wrongly to be equivalent to men’s business. In this selection we include two articles both of which centre on women’s business, though there is plenty of space elsewhere in the volume devoted to men Dianne Bell’s chapter deals both with the general issue of women’s business and the particular case of the Ngarrindjeri women and their dispute over the Hindmarsh Island bridge. The failure to see Ngarrindjeri women’s business is a particular example of a more general failure of vision - a failure to see what women do in general. The added complication is the secrecy of some of the matters that fall under the rubric of religious business. However even without raising the mask of secrecy Bell shows something of the variety of women’s religious life and in her conclusion shows how universal themes get woven into cross-cultural discourse. Fran^oise Dussart’s chapter follows the career of Judy, a businesswoman, and leaves the reader in no doubt of the aptness of the indigenous analogy. She shows how Judy followed a career in which she accumulated rights and responsibilities, learnt to act strategically, acquired knowledge and ceremonial paraphernalia and used it to advance the cause of her ‘company’. Women’s business articulates with the interests of society as a whole and Dussart emphasises cross-gender assistance in the development of men’s and women’s ritual careers. She also shows the dynamism of religious business as it connects with ‘new’ institutions such as the Women’s Museum to provide access to new resources such as the women’s Toyota. H ow ard Morphy

4

“W omen’s Business”: What is It? Diane Bell

Much of the disputation of the past four years turns on existence or otherwise of so-called “women’s business”. I have spent some time attempting to establish the provenance of this term in the anthropological literature.1 The earliest use I can find is in Charles Mountford and Alison Harvey (1941: 156) writing of the Adnjamatana of northern South Australia. There it glosses a range of beliefs and practices very similar to those that are documented in the written sources and known to certain senior Ngarrindjeri women today. Interestingly, Ngarrindjeri women report the existence of more items than are noted by Mountford and Harvey for the Adnjamatana. First, an elaborate theory of conception is given in detail, but the reports of several Ngarrindjeri conception beliefs have few details. However, I think we should consider the miwi-ngatji-ngia-ngiampe relationship the framework for such a theory. Second, pregnancy and birth practices are almost identical to Ngarrindjeri practices and both observe food taboos. Third, no infanticide is reported for the Adnjamatana, but for the Ngarrindjeri there are reports in Taplin and the Bemdts, and there was resistance from the husbands and horror on the mission. Fourth, at an Adnjamatana birth no men were present, except sometimes a medicine man and then only during the early stages. The Ngarrindjeri report female doctors/midwives and have elaborate business associated with the umbilical cord. Fifth, menstruation practices and fear of blood are similar for both. Sixth, at puberty rites no men are present. This is similar, with one exception, for the Ngarrindjeri. Of course, we need to do more than quantitative analyses but, given Ngarrindjeri women have been put forward as an exception in the Australian anthropological literature, this comparison has some merit. Placing their discussion of “women’s business” in a social context, Mountford and Harvey (1941: 160) note that, for young children, “moral upbringing is moulded by their environment and the telling of no stories and legends”. Since women have primary responsibility for young children, the women must know stories. Unfortunately we have only fragments of the Seven Sisters story; but what we have links Ngarrindjeri practice with Ngarrindjeri law. One story that is being told has to do with the construction of the barrages and the earlier building of the jetty at Point Extract from Diane Bell, Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrini: a world that is, was and will he, Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1998, pp. 528-544. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

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McLeay. It provides context for the women's fears regarding the damage that a bridge will inflict on their bodies and reproductive lives. In continuing my literature search for "women's business", I turned to the work of women anthropologists such as Catherine Berndt ( 1950, 1965), Jane Goodale ( 1971 ), Nancy Munn (1973), and Phyllis Kaberry (1939), all of whom have written first-hand accounts of Aboriginal women's religious lives. On revisiting their accounts, I found reference to women's ceremonies, secret women's ceremonies, secret sacred women's ceremonies and women's rituals (all terms that I also use), but scant reference to "women's business". Jane Goodale tells me that, even when writing of the muringaleta, a Tiwi girl's puberty ritual, she did not use the term. Catherine and Ronald Berndt ( 1942-5), in their report on their Ooldea fieldwork, write of "men's business" and "women's business". In the section on "Women's Life", Catherine (ibid.: 230) writes: "Their secret life, in which men have no share, centres round the ancestral myths and songs told by the old women. Young girls, children and men may not listen to these; they are women's business." She does not dwell on the term, but the "secret life" that she documents, includes a woman's own "special duties ... her own sacred and magical life in which man has no share. She has a part to play in some of men's ceremonies, as he has in some of hers (e.g. the initiation ritual of both sexes)" (ibid.: 259). The section concludes with "the bulk of the data [are] being reserved for later publication and discussion". Such publications were not forthcoming. I also asked a number of colleagues when they first heard the term and the answers are fairly consistent. They heard it in the field from Aboriginal people and they read it in my work. In papers I gave in 1976, I spoke about the range of activities in which women were engaged and the ways in which they were belittled by being called "love magic" (a hang-over from the sacred/profane dichotomy), rather than being understood as part of the religious life of a community and as an activity which invoked the power of the Ancestors. I argued that categorising activities as "magic" rendered women's religious beliefs about land invisible. At that time I did not gloss women's rituals as "women's business". I heard the term used routinely by Aboriginal people (and used it myself) while I was in the field in 1976-8. At that time "men's business" and "women's business" were useful shorthand for the complex of gendered behaviours in desert society. As I began to publish, and to undertake consultancies, I continued to use the term and heard it used more often at conferences. I have unearthed a submission I made to the Alyawarra Kaitatj Land Claim in 1978, where I used the term to gloss the women's yawulyu 2 which was performed for the Aboriginal Land Commissioner as evidence of women's relationship to land. That is the first use of the term which I have been able to locate in a publication of mine. Looking back, I have a sense that, at the time, the term "women's business" fell upon fertile ground. The late 1970s and early 1980s were a time when women, Aboriginal and Anglo, were engaged in debates, direct action and conferences to address issues of sexism and racism. The women in the field have compiled a formidable record of scholarship, but their research was not informed by the feminist critiques of knowledge that developed from the late 1970s onwards (Bell 1993). The term "women's business" now has a life of its own and has been

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What is It?

appropriated by mainstream culture. I cannot speak for its usage in common parlance today; but I can specify what I meant by the term in the 1970s. I can also suggest why it might still be useful; why it might be open to abuse and misunderstandings; and why, in each situation, we need to specify; rather than assume, what it might encompass. In “Women’s Business Is Hard Work” (Bell 1981), I spelt out what I meant by the term for central Australian Aboriginal women’s practice.3 C ru cia l to w o m e n ’s sta tu s is th eir rela tio n to A b o r ig in a l law . In s e e k in g to m a k e p la in to w h ite s th e im p o r ta n ce o f their la w , A b o r ig in e s draw u p o n an e x te n d e d w o r k m eta p h o r. T h e la w is term ed “ b u s in e s s ” and is m a d e up o f “ w o m e n ’s b u s in e s s ” an d “ m e n ’s b u s in e s s '.

N o p e jo r a tiv e o v e r to n e s a d h ere to th e q u a lific a tio n o f b u s in e s s a s w o m e n ’s.

R itual a c tiv ity is g lo s s e d as “ w o r k ” and p a rticip an ts as “w o r k e r s” an d o w n e r s . s to r e h o u s e for ritual o b je c ts is k n o w n as th e “ o f f ic e ” .

The

R itual is in d e e d w o r k fo r

A b o r ig in e s, for it is th ere that th e y lo c a te th e r e s p o n s ib ility o f m a in ta in in g th e ir fa m ilie s and th eir land.

In central Australia, there is “business time”, usually around the Christmas holidays when people can gather for the business of “making young men” through initiation ceremonies. By exploring the dimensions of “women’s business” and pointing out that women’s ritual activity was not simply individual activities that had to do with women’s physiology, but rather behaviours integral to beliefs about land, the ancestors, and women’s rights and responsibilities, I had hoped to draw attention to the importance of “getting it right” in the first place. I was trying to avoid the “add women and stir” recipe for Aboriginal culture, while seeking to acknowledge that distinctive and gendered bodies of knowledge exist. I had seen what had happened in Alice Springs in the late 1970s over the proposals to build a dam; had worked on issues of site registration in the Northern Territory (Bell 1983) and issues of law reform, particularly recognition of traditional marriage (Bell 1988). My constant refrain at the time was that it is not sufficient to consult only with men. Women, for example, have distinctive interests in how marriages are contracted and sustained (Bell and Ditton 1980). Women have interests in land that should be recognised in their own right. I had worked on land claims where women were brought forward to talk about foraging, but were not relied upon as witnesses regarding their relationships to land (Bell 1984-5). At one level, the argument ran, it didn’t matter in land claims that were strong because the claimants would win anyway, and adjusting the hearing to accommodate women was inconvenient. But it does matter, as we continue to find out. The consultative structures stay predominantly male, as do the land councils, and women are at a disadvantage in being heard in these forums. Too often they enter when a situation is already in crisis. There they find a dearth of senior women lawyers and anthropologists who can work on their claims, few women judges, few women Ministers of Aboriginal Affairs. The mass media are titillated by claims that concern women’s bodies, doubt that women know anything of any consequence, and are convinced they are being “stirred up” by feminists (Bell 1993).

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As far as anthropology goes, it is, I think reasonable to say that “women’s business” is not a precise term of art; it can be used to gloss a range of traditions, observances, customs and beliefs that are, in certain critical ways, the province of women, albeit different in different regions. It may include practices associated with women’s reproductive lives and women’s bodies, but that does not exhaust the possibilities of beliefs and practices that might be encompassed by the term, nor does it mean that the knowledge encompassed by the term does not also relate to land. Ruwe fuses land and body in one word, and it is a gendered body and a gendered landscape that are implicated. One needs to look to context to determine what “women’s business” means. The term has a wide currency now, but it is my sense that this is from the mid-1980s onwards. It is also my sense that, for better or worse, I had a hand in popularising the term. The above is not intended as an exhaustive review; it merely indicates the lack of anthropological discussion of the term “women’s business” and flags the questions of power differentials. The definition of “women’s business” in the Terms of Reference for the Royal Commission cobbles together two passages from Deane Fergie’s report of 1994, which in no way could be read as conceptual or categorical definitions of “women’s business”. For the purposes of the Royal Commission, “women’s business” became “the spiritual and cultural significance of Hindmarsh and Mundoo Islands, the waters of the Goolwa channel, Lake Alexandrina and the Murray Mouth within the tradition of Ngarrindjeri women which is crucial for the reproduction of the Ngarrindjeri people and of the cosmos which supports their existence” (Stevens 1995: 4). In Chapter 6 of her report, “Defining the Women’s Business and its Place in the Literature”, Stevens (ibid.: 229-85) does little to clarify what the term might mean to those who have used it. Instead, not having had access to the contents of the “secret envelopes” and, with one exception, not having heard from the proponent women, she offers a list of features she has inferred from a range of sources. The result is a curious combination of attempts to guess the contents, informed by a belief that there was a fabrication by Aboriginal activists, feminists, and fellow travellers. Deane Fergie (1996) has unpacked the “inferential tautology” on which the findings of the Royal Commission are based; she shows how the focus quickly shifted from “women’s business” to “secret sacred women’s business”. Unfortunately the scholarship and time entailed in such an analysis does not make headlines. In the definitional section of the applicants’ representation to Justice Mathews (1996: ix), there was no mention of “women’s business”; rather they relied on “women’s knowledge” and “restricted women’s knowledge”. These are the categories with which the women were comfortable. Over and over I heard people saying, it was the media that made it secret, we said “sacred”. They spoke of the knowledge of “privileged women”, not just any woman. During the oral representations, the women did not often initiate use of the term. More often it came from counsel in a question. Indeed “women’s business” was rejected outright by a number of senior women, who said “women’s rituals” instead. The term as understood by the Royal Commission and as it came to be understood by the general public was a poor fit with the wealth of knowledge in the community. I have avoided the term and instead have written of ceremonies, rituals, beliefs,

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practices, traditions and knowledge as appropriate. There is a good deal that is the business of women. Deborah Bird Rose (1996) writes of women’s business as including the knowledge, songs, dance, designs, story and myths which belong to and are transacted by women. Birth, she points out, can be seen as “the window through which the existence of the sacred is glimpsed”. In glimpsing the sacred here, I have returned to the topic of miwi and the navel cord relationship (ngia-ngiampe) and to reinterrogating the sources on women’s rites of passage. Whether the configuring of gender values around these facts is one of equality is not the point. There are specialists; there is a differential access to knowledge; there are rules for transmission and sanctions for violations. There is a strong basis for the existence of “women’s business” in the sources, flawed, hostile, ethno-centric as they are. What Do We “Know” about Women and their Business? Given that the sources support the existence of women-only spaces and the existence of knowledge restricted on the basis of gender, age, place in family and so on, perhaps we should recast the question about “women’s business”. It is not how could the existence of restricted women’s ritual activities have escaped the notice of so many observers, but why, when observers learnt something of women’s activities, were they so reluctant to name it as significant in the ritual life of women and the religious life of the Ngarrindjeri? Rarely is a work devoted solely to what women do, think, feel and know. When women do appear, it is to supplement what men say (as did Pinkie Mack on the topic of birth); in some cases it is to highlight the way in which men appropriate women’s life-giving powers.4 I have been focusing on what women are doing. What this means in terms of gender relations is another question. The dispossession of land, depopulation through disease, the male character of the frontier and the prurient interest shown in women’s bodies have all shaped what is the business of women and, more particularly, the power of women to pursue their business. Are women equal partners or junior partners? Is it appropriate to describe their roles as complementary? If so, does this preclude the existence of separate ritual practices which draw on knowledge that is gender-specific? However we might answer such questions is largely irrelevant to establishing whether or not certain practices occurred. Catherine Bemdt (1989: 11) writes: “Gender-based differences, in the sense of inclusion-exclusion, in religious and other affairs, were minimal” and suggests this as one of the remarkable features of Yaraldi society. Tonkinson (1993: xxix) goes further: “Yaraldi ceremonial life was public, and there was apparently no secretsacred men’s religious domain, which is rare in Aboriginal societies.” Yet there is ample evidence of a men’s domain and a women’s domain that was sacred, hedged in with taboos, and off limits to the opposite sex. Ceremonial life was not public in the sense that any person, of any age, male or female, initiated or uninitiated, local or foreign should be present and “know”. Tonkinson’s assessment of Yaraldi ceremonial life is not supported by the Bemdts’ own work, let alone the material

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from Norman Tindale, Alison Harvey, Dorothy Tindale, David Unaipon, Reuben Walker, Milerum, Albert Karloan, Pinkie Mack, and many others. When the Bemdts (1993: 210) characterise Ngarrindjeri society as open with no restricted information and no secret-sacred ritual, they qualified this description in a footnote: “While a certain element of the male initiation ritual was said to be secret-sacred, the ritual as a whole was not.” However, as we have seen, there were rituals which they did not record, and there are other ways of understanding what they did record. The Bemdts (ibid.: 287) stress complementarity. It is at this point that I think they have conflated the nature of gender relations in Ngarrindjeri society with the existence of gendered knowledge, places and restricted access to same. There were times when women gathered with other women under the leadership of a putari, when songs were sung, rituals were enacted, and men were excluded. A seclusion is a seclusion; a prohibition is a prohibition; a women-only space is a women-only space. To be narambi is to be sacred, dangerous, separate the presence of red ochre is an indicator that one is in the presence of the sacred. The structure of the activities associated with aspects of women’s reproductive lives may be known to men, but they do not participate, and thus have no knowledge based on direct experience. Just as women sometimes had access to the men’s axes, and were present at some men’s ceremonies, there were occasions when men might be present at certain women’s rituals. Women “know” about male initiation - in fact, some older women may even see some of the most sacred of objects - but they would not claim to be knowledgeable about them, even though, as we have seen, women may be present, or within hearing distance, at the most sacred moments in men’s ceremonies. Similarly men “know” that women are secluded at certain times for ritual activity but they would not claim to know the songs. The ritual worlds balance each other, they are made of the same threads, but they are woven according to the themes being celebrated by men or by women: they are different and separate. The Ngarrindjeri applicants who asserted the existence of “women’s business” believed that disruption to the proposed bridge site would be a violation of that business, but they were not prepared to place certain parts of their stories in the public domain. After working with them, I wondered how one might write of “women’s business” without violating the rules of who might know what. From work with women in other parts of the country, I know that there are women’s practices and restricted knowledge; I have not been shown the details, but I know they exist, not as a matter of blind faith, but a matter of anthropology. Turning to the Ngarrindjeri record, here are eight features of their “women’s business” which were disclosed to the Reporter Jane Mathews and which establish that there were women’s rituals without needing to probe content. First, the structure o f m en’s and women ’s worlds. There is knowledge that is the domain of women and that which is the domain of men (see also Hemming 1996b: 22-6). Men “know” of “women’s business” and may even have a presence at some ceremonies, but there is a separation and neither seeks to probe the content of what the other knows. Rather, one believes in the existence of the other because one is aware of the restricted nature of one’s own gender-specific knowledge.

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Thus “women’s business” is both the domain of women and exists in relationship to “men’s business”. Neville Gollan: I knew the men’s business and I do believe that there is women’s business. Maggie Jacobs: I mean, I can’t say those things to a man. Doreen Kartinyeri: Grandmother’s lore is never tell a man. Sarah Milera: There’s other areas women just sat, because they were tenders of this land while men were out on their lore business, and they were doing lore. Veronica Brodie: We’re breaking a traditional law by telling it...it was never told to men. Bruce Carter: I strongly believe that there has to be women’s business as well as [men’s]...because there is men’s business. Daisy Rankine: I know of parts of the man’s side...Now, whatever that was, women never questioned it. I don’t know what significance it had, but all I was told was that men had the story as well. Kenny Sumner: I believe that women’s business does exist. George Trevorrow: I never come here to talk about the women’s business on that site. Second’ rules which restrict access to “women’s business ”. The question “Do you know something you are not telling me?” requires a person to admit that a body of knowledge, the existence of which cannot be acknowledged, does indeed exist. To do so is an admission of “knowing” about “restricted knowledge” and, in this context, a statement about its content. (Consider that matters of national security have been protected by denying the existence of certain information-gathering bodies.) The existence of restricted knowledge is signalled by the taboos. Doreen Kartinyeri: I couldn’t push my grandmother into telling me very much about things she felt I shouldn’t know. Daisy Rankine: So we all have our different families, we all got our different beliefs. Jean Rankine: If they didn’t give me permission, 1 wouldn’t have been able to speak. Veronica Brodie: It’s restricted to privileged women...before I could discuss it with the younger ones, I had to discuss it with the older ones first. Third, the authority o f the elders. In an oral culture, knowledge is restricted to certain persons; for the system to work, those who are not privy to the “inside knowledge” must accept the authority of those persons who are privy; and the wisdom of the restrictions. They must be willing to believe without “knowing”, but be prepared to participate in the system nonetheless. Applicants often referred, to their “feelings” as one way they “knew” about the existence of “women’s business” and sites on Hindmarsh Island. This way of knowing requires an understanding of what Daisy Rankine called her “miwi wisdom”. One’s elders can confirm that feelings are indeed exercises of the intellect by validating the “feelings” about the significance of places and events. In this way one’s miwi wisdom is strengthened and developed.

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Maggie Jacobs: I don’t read much at all and I mean I did know, but what Veronica said about the beginning of that story is - that’s the story. Veronica Brodie: They’re beautiful things and...they make you very wise and you appreciate the Ngarrindjeri culture. Ellen Trevorrow: I felt it in my tummy. I believe strongly. Grace Sumner: I believe these things. Judith Kropinyeri: When I went to Hindmarsh Island I has this really strong feeling of belonging. I truly believe in the women’s business. Helen Jackson: We believe what our Elders say. Janice Rigney: We support our Elders and we just believe in our mi:minis. Daisy Rankine: I left it up to her what she was going to do, no one else to speak but herself, you know. Fourth, “women’s business'’ is sacred. The women emphasised that they were speaking about knowledge that was sacred, not secret, and that it was the media that had played on the secrecy aspect. To this I would add, issues of contested secrecy come into play in a complex way when an outsider probes Aboriginal religious knowledge. If one is operating within a system of restricted knowledge and is bound by the “respect system”, the issue of so-called “secrecy” takes on a different hue. It is linked to the authority of the elders and to the protection of what is sacred; it is far from the taunt of “I have a secret”, which invites the curious to seek out the contents by fair means or foul. There is a difference between “knowledge” that is embedded in social relations and for which people are accountable, and “information” that is depersonalised and can be traded in the “marketplace of ideas”. The women who hold women’s knowledge for Dreamings in the area were clear that it was their spiritual beliefs, and restrictions on such knowledge, they sought to protect. In this sense “women’s business” is a subset of particular Dreamings, not a free-standing tradition in and of itself. Daisy Rankine: That women’s business is very sacred to us. Veronica Brodie: It was told to women whom they knew would respect and hold the women’s business at heart because of its sacredness - not because of the secrets of it, but because of its sacredness. Fifth, rules governing the transmission o f knowledge concerning “women’s business For a system wherein access to knowledge is restricted, passed by word of mouth, and wherein people move closer to the core of sacred knowledge as they demonstrate competence, there need to be clearly articulated rules for the transmission of knowledge. The who, when, and where of it concerns both structural and idiosyncratic factors. Maggie Jacobs: It was from my grandmother. Daisy Rankine: The thing that I mentioned is the knowledge that was given to me through generation to generation. Doreen Kartinyeri: You must keep it to yourself and one day by and by...you will know who to tell.

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Jean Rankine: My grandmother taught me to be the person I am today....She’s given me strength, she’s given me knowledge to go on, because every day I feel that we’re being tested not by just people here but by other beings. Isabelle Norvill: I’ve got a granddaughter now and I bring her down here as many times as I possible can and with the help of her aunties I’m teaching her so that she doesn’t miss out on some of the things that I feel hollow inside about missing out on. Daisy Rankine: I can let my daughter, now she’s forty-one years old, carry on our traditional family title. Veronica Brodie: I wasn’t going to tell anybody because it wasn’t the right time. You have to earn the right to know the knowledge, or to know of the women’s business. Sixth, the known consequences to disclosure o f “women's business”. The pain, anguish and illness that resulted from earlier disclosures imperilled the well-being of the discloser and others in her social field. The women only disclosed details of the Seven Sisters story after grave consideration, and they withdrew the material when they realised it couldn’t be protected under the rules of a Heritage application. Veronica Brodie: I don’t want to say something and it’s wrong. Eileen McHughes: Lizzie was a putari and I showed what that meant. Sarah Milera: I don’t like talking about those cliffs. I can’t say it here. I don’t want to bring trauma to my Ngarrindjeri women. Grace Sumner: My grandmother was telling me not to go there, but we went there and I nearly drowned through that, not listening. Seventh, “women's business ” is about the sacred business o f being a woman. The Royal Commissioner and the Reporters under the Heritage Act have sought the details about this aspect of women’s knowledge. In working at the intersections of two cultural systems - one that privileges the written text and the other that regards knowledge as embedded in social relations - we have a dilemma. To protect their law, they have to breach their law. Further, to require that the details of a ritual and/or belief must be specified and that, without such a disclosure, the significance of the belief/and or ritual cannot be known is to deny the importance of the details already disclosed. Much information concerning “women’s business” addresses the role of putari and birth, knowledge of medicinal plants, knowledge of the seasons and the getting of food; preparation of girls for womanhood and modes of behaviour, demeanour, speech and so on. It does not arise in response to questions about “women’s business”. Doreen Kartinyeri: So right up until I was a young girl they were still working by the seasons and the stars...the Seven Sisters are the beginning of a lot of things for the Ngarrindjeri women. Val Power: Now, when I was getting into womanhood, they would say...go to your Aunty Janet. Veronica Brodie: Ngarrindjeri women learned about certain ways to behave from this story.

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Daisy Rankine: She just don’t want to talk about it. You know, being a midwife, she was a midwife...she knew about women’s business...the first time I heard about women’s business was...that sacred business...I was 15 years old then, when I started to know about life too as well, you know, and sacred women’s business...I was just a teenager going through life then. Val Powers: Your aunty will tell you about women’s business when you get older. Doreen Kartinyeri: She told about all those things and how she used to cut the cord...we do it differently now. Sarah Milera: Some plants I have to keep secret because they belong to women and only women know about them. Doreen Kartinyeri: That was training the young girls from birth on how hygiene, their own hygiene, how to look after their bodies, how to prepare their bodies for womanhood. Eighth, Hindmarsh Island is not just any island. Later, I will explore the sacredness of the island and its surrounding waters, especially for women and their business. Isobelle Norvill: I believe and very much so in the spiritual and cultural aspects of Kumarangk. Maggie Jacobs: My grandmother told me that this is where things happen with women. Doreen Kartinyeri: This would be like a place where women would visit regular, daily, as this is the closeness, the family closeness, the relationship between each clan. Isobelle Norvill: She just told me this was a very special place for women that she would teach me more when I became a woman. George Trevorrow: We know that this is very special ground over there. It’s important to women. I believe this strongly. Maggie Jacobs: See because that island down there, it was no secret it was sacred. The women’s business was on one part of the island and the men on the other side...it is all connected with women’s business down there. Veronica Brodie: I want to bring my daughters down here one day, sit them down over there on the sand opposite the mouth and tell them about the women’s business. Val Power: Hindmarsh Island has a connection with the whole Ngarrindjeri nation. It is the hub of the Ngarrindjeri nation and in particular what it means to Ngarrindjeri mi. minis for their spiritual beliefs and for our other rituals and beliefs, Daisy Rankine: Hindmarsh Island is a place of our ancestors’ spirits...the meeting of the waters, the Goolwa waters are sacred to mi.minis and the island belonged to them...I knew there was business about Hindmarsh Island and the water and Goolwa but we wasn’t allowed to speak out. Connie Love: I hope there is nothing will happen to Hindmarsh Island because there’s women’s business down there. Val Power. Aunty Janet used to shudder about those things, and she also said that a lot of things went on at Hindmarsh Island which they don’t practise today.

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Muriel Van Der Byl: The whole island...she’d say, it was like a medicine place, like a hospital, but that’s as far as I can go about that.

Notes 1

P eter S u tto n lo c a te d an ea rlier r e feren ce in D a isy B a te s (1 9 3 3 ): “ M o o ly a d a b b in ’s fath er has b een a w a y b e y o n d G o o m a lu n g (th e p la c e o f the. g r e y p o ss u m ) o n B ib b u lm u n “ b u s in e s s ”

2

H o w e v e r , is n o t clea r w h a t kind o f “ b u s in e s s ” that is.

T h e s e la n d -b a se d c e r e m o n ie s h a v e o p e n se g m e n ts and o th e rs from w h ic h all m en and y o u n g c h ild ren are e x c lu d e d (s e e B e ll 1 9 9 3 ).

In th is p articu lar c e r e m o n y th e w o m e n

e x c lu d e d all m en d u rin g th e restricted se g m e n t in c lu d in g th e j u d g e and h is party. 3

T h is is the p u b lish e d form o f a p ap er I d e liv e r e d at th e W e n n e r -G r e n -F o u n d a tio n s p o n s o r e d c o n fe r e n c e on “ W o m e n , D e v e lo p m e n t an d th e S e x D iv is io n o f L a b or” in A u stria , 1 9 8 0 (B e ll 1 9 8 1 ).

T h ere I w a s a d d r e ssin g is s u e s that w e r e o n th e a g e n d a o f

fe m in ism and a n th r o p o lo g y at that tim e, i.e. w a s se x u a l a sy m m etr y a u n iv e r sa l or w e r e there m o re eg a lita ria n s o c ie tie s ; m ig h t w e k n o w g iv e n th e m a le b ia s in th e literatu re? T h e fe m in ist d e b a te s h a v e g r o w n m o re so p h is tic a te d and d iv e r s ifie d so m e w h a t s in c e then. M y in te rests n o w lie in th e fie ld s o f fe m in is t e p is t e m o lo g ie s and th e p o s s ib ilit ie s o f w r itin g and d o in g fe m in is t e th n o g r a p h y (B e ll 1 9 9 3 a , 1 9 9 3 b ). 4

In

A World That Was

(B ern d t

et al.

1 9 9 3 ) “ w o m e n ’s b u s in e s s ” is c o v e r e d in

C h ap ter

E ig h t, e n title d “ S o c ia liz a tio n ” , w h e r e a s “ m e n ’s b u s in e s s ” , in C h ap ter T e n , is c a lle d “ M a le In itia tio n C y c le ” . B o th ch a p ters w o u ld b e in th e se c tio n o f th e m a n u sc r ip t c ite d as th e w o rk o f R o n a ld B ern dt until 1 9 7 4 and th u s it is p ro b a b le that th e in c lu s io n o f P in k ie M a c k ’s in fo r m a tio n w a s an a d d itio n to an a lrea d y -d rafted ch ap ter.

References B a te s, D a isy . (1 9 3 3 ).

F ather and so n - an in c id e n t in B ib b u lm u n h isto ry .

West Australian,

N o v e m b e r 18. B e ll, D ia n e . (1 9 8 1 ). W o m e n ’s b u s in e s s is hard w o rk . B e ll, D ia n e .

(1 9 8 3 ).

Signs,

7 ( 2 ), 3 1 4 - 3 7 .

S a cred sites: T h e p o litic s o f p r o te c tio n .

M a rcia L a n g to n (E d s),

Aborigines and Land Rights

In N ic o la s P e te r so n and

(pp. 2 7 8 - 9 3 ) .

C anberra: A u str a lia n

In stitu te o f A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s. B e ll, D ia n e .

(1 9 8 4 -5 ).

e x p e r ie n c e . B e ll, D ia n e.

A b o r ig in a l w o m e n and land: L e arn in g from th e N o rth ern T erritory

Anthropological Forum ,

( 1 9 8 5 ).

5 (3 ), 3 5 3 - 6 3 .

R ep o rt o n th e W a ru m u n g a L and C la im , J u ly 15, m a p s, d ia g ra m s,

b ib lio g r a p h y , E x h ib it 2 8 0 . A lic e S p rin g s: C entral L and C o u n c il. B e ll. D ia n e . ( 1 9 8 8 ) . A b o r ig in a l w o m e n and th e r e c o g n itio n o f cu sto m a r y la w in A u str a lia . In B radford W . M o r se and G o rd o n R. W o o d m a n (E d s),

Indigenous Law and the State

(p p . 2 9 7 - 3 1 4 ) . D o rd rec h t, H o lla n d : F o ris P u b lic a tio n . B e ll, D ia n e .

( 1 9 9 3 ).

Daughters of the Dreaming.

(S e c o n d e d itio n : n e w p r e fa c e an d a d d ed

e p ilo g u e , pp. 2 7 4 - 3 2 4 . ) M in n e a p o lis: U n iv e r sity o f M in n e so ta P ress. B e ll. D ia n e and P am D itto n . ( 1 9 8 0 ).

Australia speak out.

Law: The old the new: Aboriginal women in Central

A b o r ig in a l H isto ry for th e C entral A u stra lia n A b o r ig in a l L e g a l A id

S e r v ic e , C anberra. R e v is e d e d itio n , 1 9 8 4 . C anberra: A b o r ig in a l H isto ry . B ern dt, C a th erin e H.

L'Homme,

1, 1 - 8 7 .

(1 9 5 0 ).

W o m e n ’s c h a n g in g c e r e m o n ie s in N o rth ern A u stra lia .

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B e m d t, C a th erin e H. (1 9 6 3 ). T h e s o c ia l p o sitio n o f w o m e n , com m entary. (E d .),

Australian Aboriginal Studies (pp.

In H e le n S h ie ls

3 3 5 - 4 2 ) . M elb ou rn e: O xford U n iv e r sity P ress.

B ern d t, C a th erin e H. ( 1 9 6 5 ). W o m en and the “ se cret life ” . In R on ald M . and C ath erin e H. B em dt

(E d s),

Aboriginal Man in Australia

(pp .

2 3 8 -8 2 ).

S yd n ey:

A ngus

and

R o b ertso n . B ern dt, C a th erin e H.

( 1 9 8 9 ).

P e g g y B r o ck (E d .),

R etro sp ec t, and prosp ect: L o o k in g b ack after 5 0 years.

Women, Rites and Sites,

In

(pp. 1 - 2 0 ) . S yd n ey: A lle n and U n w in .

The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History, Society and Culture (pp . 6 3 9 - 4 0 ) . C anberra: A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s P ress.

B e m d t, C a th erin e H. (1 9 9 4 a ). P in k ie M ack . In D a v id H orton (E d .),

B e m d t, R o n a ld M . and C a th erin e H. B e m d t. ( 1 9 4 2 - 5 ) . A prelim in ary report o f fie ld w ork in th e O o ld e a r e g io n , W estern S o u th A u stra lia .

Oceania,

1 9 4 2 , 12 (4 ), 13 (1 ) (2 ); 1 9 4 3 ,

1 3 ( 4 ) 1 4 ( 1 ) (2 ); 1 9 4 4 , 14 (3 ) (4 ); 1 9 4 5 , 15 ( 1 ) (2 ) (3 ). B ern dt, R o n a ld M . and C a th erin e H. B e m d t.

From Black to White.

(1 9 5 1 ).

M elb ou rn e:

F .W . C h esh ire . (1 9 9 3 ). A World That Was: The Yaruldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia. M elb ou rn e:

B ern d t, R o n a ld M . and C a th erin e H. B e m d t w ith John E. S tan ton . M e lb o u r n e U n iv e r sity P ress at the M ie g u n y a h P ress. B e m d t, R o n a ld M . ( 1 9 7 9 ).

A p r o file o f g o o d and bad in A u stralian A b o rig in a l r e lig io n .

C h a r le s S tr o n g M em o ria l Trust L ecture. (E d .),

R e p u b lish e d (1 9 9 8 ).

In M ax C h arlesw orth

Religious Business: Essays on Australian Aboriginal Spirituality

(pp . 2 4 - 4 5 ) .

M elb o u rn e: C a m b rid g e U n iv e r sity P ress. F erg ie, D e a n e . ( 1 9 9 6 ).

Studies,

S e cret e n v e lo p e s and in feren tial ta u to lo g ie s.

Journal of Australian

4 8 , 1 3 -2 4 .

G o o d a le , Jane.

( 1 9 7 1 ).

Tiwi Wives: A study of women on Melville Island, Australia.

S ea ttle: U n iv e r sity o f W a sh in g to n P ress. M a th e w s, Jane. (1 9 9 0 ). C o m m o n w e a lth H indm arsh Island report pursuant to S e c tio n 1 0 (4 ) o f th e Aboriginal G o v e r n m e n t Printer.

and Torres Strait Islander Act

M o u n tfo rd . C h a rles P. and A lis o n H arvey.

( 1 9 4 1 ).

(1 9 8 4 ).

C anberra:

A u stralian

W om en o f the A d n jam atan a o f th e

Oceania, 12 (2 ), 1 5 5 - 6 2 . Walbiri Iconography. C h ica g o : U n iv e r sity o f C h ic a g o

northern F lin d ers R a n g es, S o u th A u stralia. M u n n , N a n c y D . (1 9 7 3 ).

R o s e , D eb o ra h B ird. ( 1 9 9 6 ).

P ress.

S lo u c h in g to w a rd s o b liter ation : R e fle c tio n s on the a m b ig u ity

o f sile n c e and sp e e c h . U n p u b lish e d paper. S te v e n s ,

Iris.

(1 9 9 5 ).

Report on the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Royal Commission.

A d e la id e : S o u th A u stra lia n G o v ern m en t Printer. S u tto n , P eter. ( 1 9 9 6 a ). P o st-c la s sic a l A b o r ig in a l s o c ie ty and n a tiv e title. D is c u s s io n pap er p u b lis h e d b y th e N a tio n a l N a tiv e T itle T ribunal. Perth: C o m m o n w e a lth L aw C ou rts. S u tto n , P eter. ( 1 9 9 6 b ) . T h e S e v e n S isters, w o m e n ’s fertility, and the H indm arsh Island area. R ep o rt to J u d g e M a th e w s, 3 M ay.

5

Big Businesswomen Fran9oise Dussart

Judy Nampijinpa Granites was bom “out bush” sometime in the early 1930s. Hospital records provide an exact date— 1934—but this figure, like all such data of the period, is of dubious accuracy. Judy was at the peak of her ritual career when I first arrived at Yuendumu in 1983. A yamparru in full control of her ritual faculties, Judy was a business leader whose authority extended far beyond the residential kin group in West Camp with whom she resided and from which she derived so much of her support. Bolstered by the other yamparru of her residential kin group—one that dominated much of Yuendumu’s ritual life as well as its secular domain—Judy vigorously pursued the strains and satisfactions of ceremonial life, diligently performing, overseeing, and competing with noteworthy virtuosity, which regularly earned her personal recognition as a “big winner.” Of course, to say she was bom “out bush” is grotesquely general for the Warlpiri. Specifically, Judy was conceived at Wamipiyi, a site located due west of Yuendumu, situated on the itinerary of the Creeper Dreaming known as Wayipi Jukurrpa.' Though Judy had no patrilineally inherited rights to the Creeper Dreaming, her conception site (identified through a men’s ritual that invoked the kurruwalpa) granted her ownership of its myth and resources. Her claim was additionally bolstered by her membership within the subsection (J/Nampijinpa and J/Nangala) associated with the Dreaming. From her father and her father’s father, she inherited ownership rights as kirda to at least three more Dreamings: the Water Dreaming (Ngapa Jukurrpa) that passes through the sites of Kurlpulunu, Puyurru, and Mikanji; the Fire Dreaming ( Warlu Jukurrpa) of Ngama; and the Butterfly Dreaming (Panjirti Jukurrpa) that travels through Nyirrpi. In addition to these inherited Dreamings, Judy received from her father’s father kirda-ship to a ceremony, specifically the Jardiwanpa. This ceremonial inheritance gave her rights to the Emu Dreaming evoked in the Jardiwanpa but not to any of the other Dreamings that the conflict resolution ritual required. To this collective birthright Judy managed to add other forms of kirda-ship, some associated with specific ceremonies, others constituted more generally. Her ownership over this material ultimately evolved into performative authority. She An extract from Fran^oise Dussart, The Politics o f Ritual in an Aboriginal Settlement: Kinship, Gender and the Currency o f Knowledge, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2003, pp. 114-137. Reprinted with the permission of the author and Smithsonian Institute Press.

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acquired her ownership through residential connection to individuals who themselves possessed kirda ties to ceremonies or Dreamings. For example, it was through a member of her residential kin group, the spouse of a close maternal uncle, that Judy learned to perform and nurture the Wattle Dreaming ( Watiyawarnu Jukurrpa) connected to the site of Yamurrdurmu, located to the south and west of Yuendumu.2 This nurturance led to her ownership and ultimate control of that Dreaming in various ritual events. The first time I tried to register the scope of Judy’s ritual expertise, she made no mention of her ownership of and profound fluency in the songs, dances, and designs of the Emu Dreaming enacted in Jardiwanpa. She did so only when the event was about to take place. Such selective demonstrations of knowledge, emerging on a need-to-know (or rather need-to-show) basis, are the norm among leaders. Yamparru tend to attach their claims of ritual authority to specific Dreamings that are connected to specific ceremonies enacted in specific contexts to specific ends. In this case, it was the potential honorific of “big winner” that stirred Judy to mention previously uncited ownership and performative control over the Emu Dreaming invoked during Jardiwanpa. Though sedentarization facilitated and indeed multiplied opportunities for uninherited, personally negotiated ownership claims, Judy says such mechanisms of nonpatrilineal ritual acquisition were present before she and her kin were forced to settle at Yuendumu. She cites, by way of example, her acquisition of rights to the Seed Dreaming (Lukarrara Jukurrpa), owned by her mother’s mother, a woman with whom she lived prior to sedentarization. This “proof’ presents a conundrum common to any attempt at tracing the origins of ritual ownership. Judy’s residence at Jila was limited to a moment in her youth—the exact age is impossible to provide, but she was certainly not yet a teenager—predating ritual activity. However, her subsequent leadership position enabled Judy to combine knowledge acquired from other kirda and kurdungurlu with her childhood associations with the maternal grandmother who “owned” the material. The knowledge was acquired from one source and legitimated by connection to another. Close kinship ties reinforced by residentiality often serve as the basis on which nonpatrilineal claims of ownership can be established. Such claims are additionally substantiated when the source of the knowledge is a marlpa (marlpa is a term of social commitment inadequately translated as “friend”). This bond of friendship— predicated on the sharing of lodging, hunting trips, and food; indeed, upon the exchange of resources in general—can also include the gift of ritual knowledge. Whether that knowledge finds subsequent display in the ritual domain, reformulated as ceremonial currency, depends on a variety of factors. Judy explained that two of her important Dreamings had their origins in the principal marlpa friendships she established at different moments in her life. Early on, prior to her settlement at Yuendumu, she was granted rights to the Seed Dreaming (.Lukarrara Jukurrpa) through a wurruru association with her mother’s mother— an association outside the link of patricoupled sub-sections by which such material is formally inherited. The acquisition was substantiated not only because of residency and the friendship that grew out of it, but because of the geospecific

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relationships between the paths of the wurruru's Seed Dreaming and the Water Dreaming Judy had properly inherited from her father. The two itineraries crisscrossed and commingled. Thus, the space the two women shared on the ground reiterated and indeed reinforced the space that their inherited Dreamings shared in the ancestral landscape, providing further confirmation that Judy was within her rights to perform and later control the myths of her mother’s mother. Judy’s managerial responsibilities were also extensive. From her mother’s patrilineal inheritance, she acquired kurdungurlu rights to the Euro Dreaming (Kanyarla Jukurrpa) and Red Kangaroo Dreaming (Marlu Jukurrpa). Marriage added the Initiated Woman Dreaming (Karnta Jukurrpa) to her managerial repertoire. And because many of her residential kin in the opposite patrimoiety owned the Goanna Dreaming ( Wardapi Jukurrpa), it was natural, she said, for her to manage that Dreaming as well. These, then, were the primary Dreamings Judy declared to be hers for the purpose of ceremonial enactment. However, other ritual knowledge, to which ownership and managerial claims were attached, emerged in nonceremonial contexts. With the acrylic art movement that began to flourish at Yuendumu in the mid-1980s, ritual leaders and their kin started to draw designs for which they held claims. The process by which the designs were selected and then executed (and sometimes later effaced or modified) clarified how much ritual knowledge is never mentioned unless utility requires it. It was only by the acrylic designs Judy applied to canvas that she recognized long-dormant connections to the aforementioned Butterfly Dreaming, an activity also taken up by the other female patrikin who had inherited the designs. When I asked why the ritual material never found ritual expression, Judy explained that though she possessed all the necessary knowledge as kirda, she lacked the requisite support from other knowledgeable owners. I mentioned the other female kirda, and she said that they were too inexperienced to handle the burdens of performance properly executed. She said that despite repeated attempts to train them, she had never been able to reestablish that Dreaming in the ceremonial repertoire. The Butterfly Dreaming now existed only on the nonceremonial surface of acrylics. She told me this with neither regret nor remorse, but rather with the presumption that all ritual, though overseen by an individual, was by its nature a collaborative act, and that without those collaborators it was relegated—temporarily, to be sure—to the memories of the ritual leaders and to the margins of their ritual life. When I inquired about the origins and path by which she acquired her authority, Judy was very clear about the stages that marked her ceremonial engagement. She said there was, at first, a long time of observation, during which she was directly involved only in her own initiation and in kurdiji events that implicated her brothers. These involvements, she said, occurred before she was forced to settle at Yuendumu in 1947 and are only vaguely recalled. Limited observation of ritual continued when Judy, as a young wife, was obliged to reside at Yuendumu. Active regular participation did not begin until her first son was ready to be circumcised; this happened in the early 1960s.3 That kurdiji marked the next stage of Judy’s ritual involvement, the point at which she entered the performative sphere as a businesswoman, under the oversight of senior kin and in

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particular of her kin yamparru. Only after years of such participation and the death of her husband in 1974 did Judy attain of the status of big businesswoman—of yamparru. This was the penultimate stage of her ritual life, one followed a decade later with relinquishment of yamparru status to a younger married sister. These, then, in the broadest terms, serve as the markers of Judy’s ritual trajectory. Because the final transition coincided with my first years of fieldwork, I found Judy in a liminal state between leader and ex-leader that made her especially reflective about the nature of ritual and authority. Judy’s earliest memories of ritual were of sitting with her mother and her mother’s mother, prior to sedentarization, during the performance of a now unpracticed initiation ceremony for girls. The ceremony was, as Judy recounts, conceived as a two-step process. The first required that her torso be painted with a ritual design taken from those Dreamings for which she was kirda. This application was intended to enhance her sexuality. (Remnants of this currently unpracticed ceremony regularly surface in the yawulyu body designs drawn to enhance the breast size of young girls.) The second stage of the event focused on educating Judy about matters of menstruation and proper kin relationship with future in-laws. After this initiation, Judy explained, she began to attend, passively and in total silence, the ceremonies of her female kin. Her activities in these events extended only so far as the reapplication of her kirda body designs, which Judy explained were executed to maintain her health, both spiritual and physical—a distinction less obvious to the Warlpiri. Some of these events, she explained with no small pride, were supposed to be restricted to older initiands, but she was taken under the wing of her mother and a classificatory father’s sister, the latter a Nangala who was also connected to Judy through marriage. (She married Judy’s actual mother’s brother.) Though Judy’s mother was helpful in matters of ritual, it was the Nangala, a powerful yamparru, whom Judy most regularly cited as the source of her ritual knowledge. The patricouple link between a father’s sister and brother’s daughter was amplified by friendship that precipitated a decade-long association nourished by the pleasures and challenges of ritual pedagogy. Though this woman gave her access to all manner of ritually restricted information, Judy was not allowed to display that material in ceremonial contexts. Until her first son’s kurdiji, Judy’s involvement in these activities extended little beyond being painted up, viewing the dances and listening to the songs of others, and sitting next to her residential kin as the Kankarlu, Kajirri, Kura-kurra, and yawulyu were performed by older, more experienced women. Her active participation in ritual and the start of what, at the risk of extending the commercial metaphor, might be called her career as a businesswoman came only when Judy participated in the kurdiji ceremonies in which the first of her five children (all sons) was circumcised. Circumcision of a first son is regularly cited as the most important event in the ritual life of a woman, an act that simultaneously repositions the child into the sphere of men and redefines the mother’s role of nurturance. (If a woman does not have a son of her own, she may enter active ritual life by participating in the mother’s role for the kurdiji of an actual sister’s son.) Though the ceremony in no way reduces the responsibilities that bond mother and son, it enlarges the

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obligations of the mother to nurture not just the child (in Judy’s case five children) but the larger community as well. This community extends to kin and the Dreamings associated with those kin. As such, the initiation of the son is in fact an initiation for his mother as well. Judy remembers that she greeted the kurdiji of her first son with great eagerness as an event that legitimated years of passive commitment to a ritual life she could now pursue with vigor. It was during this event that Judy acquired the basic paraphernalia crucial for her involvement in ritual. From her mother’s sisters (her own mother had passed away by this time) and her father’s sisters, Judy received head- and armbands made of hair string (wirriji) covered with red ochre, ritual digging sticks (karlangu), and ritual site markers identified in Warlpiri as kurturu or, more regionally, nullah nullah.4 Her mother’s brother also provided her with ritual bounty. He cut and shaped an elliptical board of mulga {Acacia aneura), a wood commonly used to make boomerangs. The board, Judy explained, was provided by her maternal uncle to declare in concrete terms the transformation in the dynamic between mother and child. This “dancing board,” known as a yukurrukurru, found service in the ritual activity Judy subsequently started to undertake actively. The board, more than any other item, identifies entry of the initiand into the community of men (though not into active ritual participation) and marks, too, the entry of women into active ritual participation (if not the community of men). It, along with the kurturu, is the primary ritual object used by women. As Judy pursued her ritual activities, she acquired additional paraphernalia, which indicated her expanded and deepened ceremonial associations. These objects served as a measure of the regularity and virtuosity of her efforts. Some of these items, such as nullah nullah dancing boards, baby carriers, and water carriers, were almost always made by male relatives, specifically mother’s brothers, mother’s husband, or brothers-in-law. Women, Judy included, restricted their production of ritual objects to arm- and headbands and painting sticks (jipiji) used to decorate the body. Exchange of these ritual objects is a regular feature of ritual preparation. Businesswomen almost never use ritual objects they themselves make. Only unexpected exigency—the absence of a needed item possessed by someone else—will prompt such use. More commonly, women exchange ritual objects to extend the bonds of caring and nurturance. Such exchanges privilege marlpa (friendship) connections over all others. For example, a marlpa tie will systematically overshadow obligations between sisters when it comes to the redistribution of paraphernalia needed to transact business. Judy was very direct about one point when showing me her cache of objects: a woman who does not accumulate ritual paraphernalia cannot be considered a good businesswoman. But the nature of this accumulation must be understood more fully. Accumulation is undertaken with the intention of almost immediate redistribution. It is by giving others the objects they need to undertake events that one’s role as a businesswoman is confirmed. The hoarding of objects is denigrated and impossible to maintain for any length of time. Accumulation and quick redistribution of objects is a defining characteristic of ritual responsibility, though not a constituent component of ritual leadership per se. Objects do not, in themselves, sanction any action or authority. And among ritual objects there is no

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hierarchy of value. One dancing board has the same measure of utility and value as any other (see Weiner 1992). Once a woman possesses the ritual paraphernalia necessary for her particular performance—most pervasively dancing board, nullah nullah, and arm- and headbands—she maintains her efforts to gather additional objects, for to do so allows her to extend her bonds of friendship broadly.5 The act of redistribution confirms one’s concern for the Dreaming of the recipient and is an acknowledgment of her nurturance of it. The principal objects of women’s ritual—dancing boards and nullah nullah— are typically painted with designs associated with the Dreamings of those who use them. When subsequent events requiring different designs are undertaken, the women erase previous patterns to apply the new ones. An especially old dancing board (and here I mean one that has been in use for five or ten years, not lost or discarded) will often reveal traces of previous designs and wood stained a deep red from repeated administration of ochre; such a board is a palimpsest of ritual endeavor. The descriptions above are restricted to the exchange of ritual objects within women’s business. Men’s paraphernalia and the relationship men have to it differ dramatically. For starters, the palimpsestic qualities of the yukurrukurru (and kurturu)—the serial application and erasure of ritual designs on the surface of the wood at the start of events—do not saturate the equivalent objects employed in the rituals of men. In fact, the most potent men’s objects, engraved stones and shells of a highly secret nature, resist the very modification that gives women’s objects some of their value as objects of renewal and sustenance. Even among those men’s ritual objects that could accept modification—men do indeed use items shaped from wood that are painted—most tend to be discarded at the termination of each ritual cycle. The material differences of the objects speak to certain material differences of the rituals in which they are employed. Men guard many of their secret items in much the same way they guard the secret, dangerous, “dear” material associated with them. Women exchange theirs publicly because of the less dangerous but equally obligatory nurturance for which those objects are used. This is not to say that the women of Judy’s stature do not know what those secret designs found on the stones of men are, but rather that such knowledge never finds display in performative contexts, or even acknowledgment in the discourse among senior women. Besides those objects fashioned by men for women’s ceremonies, cross-gender exchange of objects at Yuendumu is limited to the redistribution of hair string.6 The significance of this material in ceremony must not be undervalued. Men and women exchange hair string as a means of maintaining the authority and strength of their kin group in the ritual life of the settlement. Men proffer string to women in formalized fashion at the end of both conflict resolution and initiation events. The female recipients sometimes pass on the spiritually potent material to other men immediately, but more commonly the string is retained for later strategic distribution to men within their residential kin group. The abundant display of hair string in ritual is seen as a measure of vigor and prominence, and men rely on women regularly to supplement their own holdings from hidden supplies provided

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at the end of past events. Judy said she generally redistributed her hair string soon after ceremonies, but certain female members of her kin group often hoarded balls of the powerful material to insinuate themselves into the ritual discussions of their male kin.7 Implicit in Judy’s comment was the assertion that her strength as a leader had never required such machinations. This points to a fact often undervalued in assessments of gender and ritual, namely, that concern and nurturance bring men and women together even though they may not perform together and that, more often than not, cross-gender bonds require membership within a residential kin group. Shared responsibility, however, is not identical responsibility. In their oversight of dangerous material, men use and distribute ritual objects, and in particular secret engraved stones, wood, and shells, in ways far different from the patterns of distribution described by Judy and corroborated by other businesswomen. Soon after the circumcision of her son, Judy, recognized as a businesswoman, began to have dreams (see Glowczewski 1991:81). By this I do not mean that previously her sleep had been unencumbered by nocturnal visitations, but rather that she now dreamt of events identified by senior residents of the settlement as allied to the Jukurrpa. This is an oft-mentioned symptom of entry into ritual activity, and an important means by which ceremonial life is itself reconstituted and invigorated. (A linguistic aside on visitation, the archaism I employ here: though the word is commonly used to suggest a unilateral receipt of dream material from some otherworldly source, 1 wish to clarify that the “visitations” of the Warlpiri, and indeed all Central Desert groups, in manifesting spiritual value, propel the dreamers into the domain of the Ancestral Present, wherein Ancestral Beings interact with the pirlirrpa of individual Warlpiri. This and other aspects of nocturnal dreams and their ties to the Dreaming will be amply explored later.) By themselves the dreams Judy had did not peg her as a future leader, but they did situate her among the female yamparru (and other senior businesswomen) of her kin group, women whose early morning analyses were instrumental in assessing the spiritual value of all visitations, and the merits of integrating their content into ritual activity. What did mark Judy as a potential yamparru, however, even in her early years of ritual engagement, was her perspicacity as a ritual performer, a talent recognized by both men and women of her kin group, especially then-current and erstwhile business leaders. No one pushed Judy to involve herself in ceremony, but her efforts to acquire ritual knowledge were greeted favorably, a response that is by no means a given. The struggle to attain ritual leadership is a choice, but one that must be socially sanctioned. Consider the example of a Nangala who died in 1992, a woman whose recent death requires that she be identified as kumanjayi. Though she expressed, from an early age, the same ritual aspirations as Judy, her efforts to involve herself in ritual activity were discouraged. She displayed many of the skills needed to be a ritual leader, but these were regularly downplayed by the businesswomen of the settlement. The reason: familial obligation. The premature death of a daughter (in a horrific car accident) demanded that the Nangala care for a grandson whose anti-social behavior required constant vigilance. It was deemed inappropriate for the Nangala to pass the burden of the troubled child’s care to

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younger female kin, the usual protocol for the ceremonial aspirant, and so, without residential support, the would-be leader was discouraged from participation in Yuendumu’s ritual life. The bond of kinship between mother and deceased daughter extended maternal responsibility to her daughter’s difficult son. The Nangala was warned that the risks of ritual involvement, even if it meant only temporary separation from her grandchild, were far too great to be justified. Her role as a mother’s mother superseded ritual responsibility. This restriction diminished somewhat when the grandson began to attend the local school. Yet while the Nangala was welcomed back into the domain of ceremonial performance, she could never elevate her standing to the yamparru-ship she had long sought. Caring for the grandson meant that she could engage only in yawulyu undertaken during school hours. Nocturnal participation in various important joint ceremonies eluded her, despite her known performative skills. The principal context in which Judy acquired early ritual knowledge was yawulyu ceremonies, both “big” and “small.” These women’s events not only provided her with the specific segments and associated dances and songs, but reinforced the sensibility of obligation that ritual activity codifies. How she should behave with other women, and toward men in those rituals jointly undertaken— these and other protocols were provided by the older women during these genderrestricted events. While any ritually active woman can, in principle, attend yawulyu, participation is usually limited to senior ritual performers, specifically menopausal (muturna) women. Judy’s precocious engagement in yawulyu was another indicator of her potential leadership role. During my fieldwork, no more than half a dozen premenopausal women regularly attended yawulyu events. Of these, only two were routinely encouraged and sought out. Encouragement of this kind, coupled with extra-ritual displays of ceremonial knowledge, is the closest the Warlpiri women come to identifying or supporting potential leadership. While she was attending the yawulyu of her older female kin, other women of Judy’s cohort limited their ritual activities, if they undertook any at all, to joint ceremonies. In this way, Judy acquired much of her ritual knowledge earlier than her peers. It would be wrong, however, to characterize such acquisition as “premature”; her trajectory was never perceived as such, not by Judy nor by her older relatives. Precocious engagement is, in fact, seen as common to potential yamparru. When I noted a young woman dancing knowledgeably in a Kura-kurra event generally restricted to muturna women, I asked Judy whether such action was unusual. Judy replied, “ Wirntijarna, nyuruwiyi, ngaju-piyajarna ngampurrpcT which means, “No. I danced the same way a long time ago. She’s eager like me.” Judy’s precocity as a ritual participant, particularly in the domain of yawulyu, coupled with her keen memory, kin support (principally from her father’s sister), and strong personal pirlirrpa (which she said enabled her not only to withstand night-long joint events, but to be invigorated by them), led to a leadership role within her kin group, though not one considered as yet to express yamparru-ship. Whenever possible Judy attended rituals that implicated other camps within Yuendumu and other settlements within the region. She was constantly—some claimed voraciously—bolstering her knowledge of rituals owned by others, committing to memory repertoires and itineraries for which she had no

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genealogical responsibility but which were crucial for ultimate broad-based recognition as a leader. Encouragement by her kin intensified, especially among older businesspeople. Senior women with whom she shared kirda rights asked her to paint on their torsos the body designs they shared with Judy, a gesture of great trust. Such a gesture imposed significant responsibility on Judy, for the quality of a body design—a complex evaluation based on, among other things, the beauty (marrka) of the application—directly influences the health and performative capacities of the individual who is painted.8 When Judy was able to display this beauty regularly, she was no longer explicitly asked to undertake the design; that role, though never formally sanctioned, became hers presumptively. Indeed, so skilled was she in matters of corporeal decoration that her kurdungurlu often asked that she paint them up, a pattern of engagement uncommon at Yuendumu.9 As for the support she received from men in those early days of leadership, Judy never described this specifically, though she says such support existed. Cross-gender assistance of women struggling for leadership in ritual is now made manifest by certain exhortations and offerings that follow lines of kinship. During events, husbands, brothers-in-law, and mother’s mother’s brothers can shout praise of a performer. After events, fathers, brothers, and husbands often express their satisfaction with a woman’s performance by providing additional ritual information to supplement the aspirant’s cache of knowledge. This information generally takes the form of a song or design and associated narrative. I was present, for example, when a woman on the path to yamparru-ship was shown, immediately following her performance of a Fire Dreaming she owned, a male portion of that Dreaming, one she had never before seen. The presenter of this material, her brother, told the woman that the segment marked a stretch of the Fire Dreaming’s itinerary that traveled through Pitjantjatjara country. He then narrated a brief story, one concerning the illness of two brothers, material known by both to have been “dear.” The presentation confirmed the proto-yamparru's ritual competence and repositioned a small measure of men’s material into the domain of women’s ceremony, a transmission that both acknowledged the ritual abilities of a sibling and carried larger cross-gender resonances. In 1974, at roughly the age of forty, Judy became a widow. This change in marital status resituated her in one of the quarters for single women (jilimi) of West Camp, populated by older women from her residential kin group, and intensified her ritual activity. The decision not to remarry was one reason (but by no means the only one) she was able to expand her ritual engagement. After years of marriage to a man who drank heavily and thus demanded much care, Judy was well aware that a second formal liaison might carry various nonritual responsibilities that could impede ceremonial involvement. However, this should not be taken to mean that widowhood is the means by which women attain or constitute their status as ritual leaders. There is substantial evidence of women amplifying their ritual authority through marriage, but only when such union is made with a man who is himself a yamparru. When Judy determined that none of her potential preferred spouses would in any way amplify her desire to orchestrate ritual, and that the principal liability of her first husband—alcohol abuse—was common to this new crop of preferred

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spouses, she foreswore all attempts at remarriage and devoted herself to ritual business. She told me she was aware of the risks of a bad marriage. Unstable familial environments of any kind can (in fact must) negatively affect one’s efforts in ritual; witness the kumanjayi Nangala who was denied a role in ceremony because of the troubled son of her deceased daughter. Judy knew that if her future husband took to drink, as her first husband (and their sons) had, no measure of ritual knowledge would counter the obligations of nurturance she would have to undertake. Knowing that weakness in one’s family circumstance weakens one’s capacity as a ritual leader, she chose to avoid such risks. Judy lingered on the specific pool of potential husbands and not remarriage per se when discussing her prolonged widowhood and ritual activities. All of this argues against any attempt to attribute ritual leadership directly to marital circumstance. In Judy’s case, widowhood did not diminish her ritual status; in fact it helped. And though she was repeatedly pressured by her kin to marry again, these pressures in no way restricted their assistance of her ritual development. Marital and ritual pursuits were never seen as oppositionally constituted. From the time her eldest son completed his kurdiji cycle, it took Judy about a decade to attain the status o f yamparru. This status was never formally bestowed upon her, but was transmitted unceremonially (in all senses of the word) by her classificatory father’s sister. The older yamparru, with whom Judy had a marlpa tie and from whom so much had been acquired, had passed away a few years before, so it fell to other senior performers to express confidence and support in order for Judy to orchestrate events involving ceremonies implicating businesspeople outside the residential kin group. Judy noted that it was this intergroup sanction and her ability to round up and include ritually active women beyond the residential kin group that marked her, at last, as a leader. Early performances were restricted to the presentation of ritual knowledge already known in the other groups, but this was quickly followed by “exchange” events. This touches on a qualitative difference found in ritual performance. When a ritual (or part thereof) is presented before another group and that group has not seen the material before, that interaction constitutes an exchange, and as such is treated with a larger measure of caution and oversight than usual. Negotiation of the new material’s value, and the compensatory action it demands, must be resolved. Indeed, such negotiations often bracket such events. In some exchange ceremonies, ritual knowledge is reciprocally presented. A sand design that was previously unknown to one group is shown in order to compensate another group for the rendition of an unknown song linked to an important itinerary. In other circumstances a group’s presentation of new Dreaming material prompts payment of a nonritual nature: money, blankets, cloth. Exchanges, seen as collaborative acts between and among performers and viewers, commonly combine currencies of a ritual and nonritual nature. To reject that collaborative quotient or to offer inadequate compensation is to challenge the authority of those who present it. For this reason, exchange rituals are scrupulously overseen by yamparru. Indeed, in the context of exchange yamparru lead the songs and dances presented.

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The death of Judy’s husband coincided with the exigencies of the Land Rights Movement. In the same year Judy was widowed, the Warlpiri—with the help of lawyers, anthropologists, and linguists—initiated their substantially successful attempt to reclaim land through which the Dreamings of the Warlpiri traveled. The intercultural negotiations surrounding this reclamation of a tract of vacant Crown land implicated all Warlpiri ritual owners and managers, since claims could be made only by displays of ritual knowledge and proof of genealogical allegiance, the combination of which served as a stimulant for public ceremonial display. The links between ritual and land, always mutually constituted by the Warlpiri, were now acknowledged by governmental authorities as well. And in light of the often arbitrary dispersal policies of the white authorities during sedentarization, legal claims for the lands required kin from different settlements who shared country (and thus claim) to come together to testify and perform. Because she manifested both a knowledge of ritual and the desire to display it, and because those displays were appreciated by Warlpiri throughout the settlement, Judy acquired a prominent position in the flourishing ritual discussions that the change in governmental policy precipitated. She was regularly called upon by various governmental and nongovernmental agencies and panels to discuss issues of land rights and identity ritual sites with which she was familiar. Some of these visits brought her to patrilineally acquired lands she had not seen since forced sedentarization. To this day she recalls one such trip, to Puyurru, a site along the itinerary of the Water Dreaming inherited from her father, as a moment of deep joy—one compounded when she and her kin received that land back in 1978. The non-Aboriginal imperatives that instigated such visits also allowed for the augmentation of intersettlement ritual discussion and ceremonial performance of a nonlegal nature. Not surprisingly, Judy’s memories of these trips in the late 1970s and early 1980s often precipitate recollections of earlier travels she undertook as a child, prior to sedentarization. Her memories of presettlement travels, in which her kin met up with other groups, evoke a ritual life that implicated men and women during broad migratory activity. Such recollections are noted here because they run counter to the observations of Meggitt, who characterized intergroup ritual gatherings prior to settlement as being restricted to men (1962). Judy recalled that though before settlement men undertook the majority of such ceremonial travels (most of these associated with initiation expeditions), there were also frequent trips of ritual consequence in which both men and women participated. From the 1970s on, testimonies of a ritual nature by both Aboriginal men and women were employed to establish kin “ownership” in the courts of the Northern Territory. These efforts, coupled with newly permitted and provided travel (a number of non-Aboriginal researchers emerged willing and able to drive longsedentarized Aborigines back to homes and countries from which they had been banned), not only enlarged the arena and significance of ritual but enlarged, too, the role women played in it. Consultation with knowledgeable senior members of the settlement of both genders was essential to legitimate land claims. And among women and men, it fell to the yamparru, current and former, as controllers of ceremony, if not the Dreamings they celebrated, to broker the intercultural legal exchanges and the resources that emerged from them. Judy and other yamparru of

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her generation reflect on those land claims as a major moment in the history of the settlement’s ritual activity, granting as it did ownership that the Warlpiri had always declared and the government only now grudgingly acknowledged. All the Warlpiri, whether directly implicated in negotiations or not, were cognizant of the seriousness of the intercultural discussions, but yamparru felt the pressure of the exchange more than others. As correlative opportunities for administratively sponsored “selfdetermination” grew, ritual leaders such as Judy found they could—and were in fact obligated to—extend their yamparru-ship far beyond ritual. Judy sat on committees dealing with matters of land rights, health, women’s issues, and child welfare. She also became co-president of the Women’s Museum, a title that gave her control over an invaluable commodity: a four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruiser. Though the primary use of the truck was daily domestic activity—wood collection, hunting, general transport—it served ritual functions as well. Runs for ochre (a material essential for both men’s and women’s ceremonies) and trips to other settlements for ceremonial activity represented a significant portion of the mileage clocked on the (soon broken) odometer. While on the surface, negotiations regarding the movements of the truck were undertaken in seemingly collaborative fashion, control of the vehicle represented an intense, indeed incessant competition that pitted camp against camp, men against women, and women within camps against each other. At the time, no women at the settlement were able to drive themselves, and the men who did possess the needed skill were often deemed unreliable chauffeurs, their propensity for alcohol resulting frequently in “drink runs” that threatened both the vehicle and its occupants. (Settlement laws at Yuendumu, which is “dry,” allow authorities to confiscate any unsanctioned car found to be used for the transport of alcohol. The sanctions, in the form of permits, were generally restricted to the non-Aboriginal population of the settlement.) When Judy spoke of coordinating the use of the vehicle she often lingered on the stresses of resolving conflicting demands. Though no direct connection was made, the language and sentiment closely resembled those raised when describing the reconciliation of competing interests in matters of the repertoire of ceremonial performance. Efforts of accommodation are part and parcel of yamparru-ship, whether the commodity in question is vehicular or of a religious nature. Trucks helped greatly to revitalize the settlement’s ritual life. This is not to argue that external policy or governmental largesse in itself transformed indigenous ceremonial activity. Nor do I wish to suggest that the four-wheeldrives be seen as vehicles of spiritual expansion unless the other form of spirit— that is, alcohol—is also factored into the assessment of effects that attended increased access to transportation. Indeed, Judy isolates among her many tasks as a yamparru the search for businessmen out on “drink runs,” so as to promote the sobriety needed for the proper enactment of ceremonial life. That the Toyota Land Cruiser may be seen simultaneously as the vehicle of ceremonial renewal and ceremonial assault is but one of the many ironies of the intercultural nexus. Judy was relatively successful in employing the Toyota for purposes that benefited the settlement in general, and her camp in particular. Inevitably that

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success, when localized within her residential kin group, led to intergroup fights, with the Toyota (and its successor vehicles) the focus of almost weekly conflict. The ethos of sharing on which so much Warlpiri exchange is based was difficult to reconcile with the competing demands the rare item triggered. In negotiating these multiple requests, Judy suffered the stresses of judicial compromise. Stress, as I have said, is a primary part of the yamparru's job. That is true whether leaders are rounding up kin to collect and redistribute firewood (with or without the Toyota) or precipitating collective action for the redistribution of ritual knowledge. The authority o fyamparru-sh\p is essayed in all gestures and all acts, which is what makes it—and business in general—“hard work.” When Judy and other ritual participants invoke the phrase “hard work,” which they do regularly, they mean to suggest that leadership requires both strength of spirit and the related quality of social stamina, neither of which can be maintained indefinitely. By the same token, “hard work” establishes the value of the activity pursued and is transformed into prestige for the individual undertaking it. More often than not, “hard work” involves the resolution of conflicts—though by using that phrase I make no allusion to the various conflict resolution rituals. Rather, I refer to the workaday struggles to suppress the frustrations of those denied the limited resources granted to others. Competing for the preservation of harmony no doubt accounts for the often ambivalent nature of yamparru rivalry. I said earlier that Judy was co-president of the organization that controlled the truck. The other titular leader, Lucy Napaljarri, a yamparru of Southeast Camp, regularly skirmished with Judy. To observe the two women engage in negotiations about using the truck to travel to big events was to witness a mix of feigned collaboration and hidden resentment, of ritual assistance constituted in ways promoting personal and residential authority at the expense of intergroup cohesion. The words rebuffed and anger appear frequently in my notebooks to describe occasions when the two yamparru came together. Usually it was Judy who had the upper hand in ritual activity, since her group’s domination of ceremonial life compelled Lucy and her kin to rely on them during “big” events. But just as often, Lucy was denied a voice in secular decisions as well. Indeed, the introductory account of the circumstances leading to the subject of this book—my mundane search for suitable housing—was merely one of many disputes between two women vying for personal and residential recognition. Many of their run-ins involved the nuances of ritual and its proper enactment. Lucy and Judy, for instance, were forever undermining—via third parties, to be sure—the virtuosity of the other’s yawulyu performances, a triangulated censure supported and even encouraged by the kin living in their camps. As close cross-cousins, Judy and Lucy were tethered to each other in ceremonial performance. In particular Judy inherited kurdungurlu rights for the Red Kangaroo Dreaming for which Lucy was kirda by inheritance. Lucy inherited kurdungurlu rights over the Fire Dreaming for which Judy was kirda. Had the two leaders been on better terms, they would have extended their reciprocal associations to other ritual material each owned, a reciprocity confusingly identified by a secondary application of the term kurdungurlu. However, little such expanded sense of mutual kurdungurlu obligation in the ritual sphere found

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expression. The competition between the two, a mirror of the competition of their respective residential kin groups, made such collaboration impossible, and indeed, their unwillingness to assist each other much beyond the strict rules of kinship points to the importance of residency in modifying such rules; kurdungurlu-ship between individuals of the pan-ceremonial kind is most commonly constituted within a residential kin group informed by the bonds of kinship. Though obligated to share in ritual activity, each displayed a silent antagonism, a passive resistance to the other’s actions. When Judy performed in a Jardiwanpa as kirda, a role that called for Lucy’s kurdungurlu assistance, the resentful cross­ cousin—who had garnered managerial rights over the ceremony through marriage—often overlooked her reciprocal responsibilities, avoiding the Jardiwanpa altogether. This weakened the ceremony and the status of its kirda overseer. (Withdrawal from ritual obligation generally indicates conflict but not the attitude of the individual who withdraws. In some circumstances, individuals will avoid the ceremonial arena to diminish rather than exacerbate tensions, even if by doing so the ceremony is impaired.) Judy was equally capable of expressing her disdain for the ritual endeavors of her cross-cousin rival. In the ten years I conducted fieldwork at Yuendumu, one of the most divisive moments in its ritual life came during a large-scale intersettlement yawulyu exchange. The event, which transpired at the Yuendumu Weekend in 1984, brought together Aboriginal groups from numerous neighboring settlements, including Lajamanu, Kintore, Willowra, Papunya, Mt. Liebig, Warrabri, and Mt. Allan. It was the specific yawulyu exchanges between Yuendumu’s Warlpiri women and their Anmatyerre counterparts from Mt. Allan, the settlement that was the locus of the dispute. The chief instigator of the event was Lucy Napaljarri, whose mother’s mother and father’s mother were both Anmatyerre and whose other kin were Warlpiri. As such, Lucy’s ritual associations straddled both groups. Protocol generally calls for preceremonial discussion among ritual performers of two groups exchanging material, if only to confirm that an exchange is indeed planned. But on this occasion no such talks were held. Lucy believed her ties to the Warlpiri at Yuendumu and the Anmatyerre of Mt. Allan made such discussion unnecessary. This turned out to be a mistake. The first day of the four-day event was given over to exchange discussions that did not involve the Mt. Allan performers, and so little tension was apparent. The mood changed, however, on day two. At the end of that afternoon, the Mt. Allan women initiated a yawulyu that was to serve as part of the ritual currency to be exchanged, one evoking the Honey Ant and Bell Bush Dreaming segments. Accompanied by Lucy, the visiting group augmented dance and song with two ground paintings, a medium acknowledged to be of great value throughout the Central Australian Desert but uncommon in the Warlpiri women’s repertoire. Rather than join or praise the actions of their Mt. Allan visitors, Judy and her West Camp mob kept their distance from the Anmatyerre performance, a nonconfrontational rejection noted by all in attendance. On the third day of the intersettlement events, the women from Yuendumu and the visiting settlements all gathered in separate but contiguous groups to continue their yawulyu activities. Lucy, clearly agitated by the West Camp snub to her

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visiting kin, announced that she and her group should be paid for the two ground paintings and performance of the previous day. Use of the first person plural indicated her association with the Anmatyerre and was a challenge to those who had physically (and spiritually) turned their backs on the earlier events. This request was roundly ignored by Judy and her kin from West Camp and represented yet another affront to Lucy’s standing as a ritual leader. Nevertheless, Lucy and the Mt. Allan mob performed the next installments of their Dreaming segments, since obligations to advance the cycle superseded whatever irritations were provoked by the behavior of the West Camp hosts and their leader in particular. Halfway through the Mt. Allan performance, Judy and her mob moved from their spot on the ceremonial grounds of the Women’s Museum to one that offered a direct view of the Anmatyerre actions. Although arrival during a performance is discouraged, in itself it is not a gross violation of ceremonial protocol. However, the subsequent departure of the West Camp group during the ceremony represented a direct abandonment of ritual etiquette. The other groups present, including Yuendumu Warlpiri from other camps, were agitated by this gesture of rebuke. After the day’s events were finished, women from other Yuendumu camps approached Judy and informed her that the Mt. Allan women would be shown the ritual paraphernalia of the Women’s Museum. This served multiple purposes. It granted the Anmatyerre women a compensatory measure of ceremonial acknowledgment for their yawulyu. Additionally, because it was Judy who was to give that tour, it served as a warning that her actions, and those of her kin, had been unacceptable. Proper behavior was now called for. Unable to reject the request—despite her title as co-president, the museum belonged to all businesswomen—Judy restricted her tour to an unhelpful minimum, pointing out Dreaming designs on various objects but providing none of the ritual knowledge associated with the designs. This behavior was seen as yet another negation of the legitimacy of the exchange that preceded the tour. Matters deteriorated still further on the final day of the events. When the Mt. Allan mob completed the Honey Ant and Bell Bush yawulyu cycles, their West Camp counterparts failed to show up on the ceremonial ground. Absence at this juncture, when material and intellectual property normally is exchanged, was seen by all as an act of unalloyed contempt, though it must be noted that very little of this dispute expressed itself verbally. The confrontation was more of attitudes and gestures than of articulated dissatisfaction. What was Judy’s rationale for such undiplomatic actions? Much later, when tempers calmed, she explained that she and her kin were only responding to the unilateral (and thus even more impolitic) decision by the Mt. Allan mob and “their” Yuendumu yamparru, Lucy, to undertake an exchange. The absence of preceremonial discussion was counter to the modus operandi of ritual transaction, she emphasized. By leaving early and avoiding further negotiation with her rival and her rival’s Anmatyerre kin, Judy evaded a ritual exchange that was improperly constituted from the start. That dispute pitted kin and Aboriginal groups, individuals and settlements against each other, though again such distinctions were never expressly stated. It was, to be sure, an extreme case of zyamparru's control by noninvolvement, and of rivalry run amok. More subtle expressions of micro-

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and macromanagement, however, find their way into ritual life with greater frequency. Indeed, such control is considered part of the yamparru's job. Oversight of ritual performance (its fidelity, its order, its appropriateness), the rivalry such supervision triggers in leaders of overlapping authority, protection, and nourishment of the Jukurrpa, the risks of sorcery, the stresses of travel, changes in health or spousal status—all are cited as reasons that leadership is never retained for life. At the peak of her yamparru-ship, Judy supervised exchanges of yawulyu ceremonies at other settlements several times a year. Even though the travels rarely lasted more than a fortnight—to minimize the risks of becoming yirrarru, or homesick—Judy felt constant pressure while she was away. In one particularly demanding period, involving ritual exchange of yilpinji, yawulyu, Kankarlu, and Kajirri material, Judy traveled between Yuendumu and Docker River (a distance of some 1,600 kilometers, about 1,000 miles) three times in three months. Because the travel was tiring, she explained, it could have the long-term effect of weakening her essence (pirlirrpa). This in turn could increase the dangers of sorcery, which is effective only on individuals with debilitated essence. Though Judy generally considered herself strong enough to counter malevolent yarda singing, she knew, too, that the stresses of leadership were taking their toll. The orchestration of ritual activity and the concomitant diplomacy that required her to extend her sense of nurturance and obligation to a large network of kin lasted roughly a decade. The yamparru-shlp of Judy Nampijinpa Granites ended in 1985, soon after she decided to remarry. The decision to suspend her ritual authority was Judy’s and Judy’s alone. When a leader acts properly, as Judy did most of the time, pressure is never exerted to extend or to shorten tenure. This did not mean that the decision was received uncritically. Judy’s kin did indeed express frustration about her decision among themselves, but never to Judy directly. Though a change in marital status coincided with a change in her role as a leader, it would be wrong to predicate leadership on spousal disencumbrance, as noted previously. Widows make up roughly half the female yamparru population, but their authority is no greater than that of their married counterparts, women with whom they regularly organize events. Indeed, Judy relinquished her authority to a married sister. It was not the marriage per se that necessitated Judy’s renunciation of her role, but the obligations to the particular man whom she married and to her new husband’s close kin. Because the new spouse resided with his first wife outside the settlement and had offspring who required much attention, Judy was precluded from continuing her yamparru activities. She refocused her energies away from the broad-based, residential matters of West Camp and onto the more intimate needs of her new husband, his children, and her five sons from her first marriage. Such shifts in attention are typical of yamparru relinquishing their leadership role. This does not mean, however, that they suspend all ritual responsibility. Active participation in ceremony can still take place, and the analysis of significant nocturnal dreams—a task required of all senior businesspeople regardless of their

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links to leadership— is still obligatory. Suspension of leadership is usually progressive and informal. Although yamparru women try to instill in their female children interest in ritual, their authority is passed on to other kirda with whom they share Dreamings, usually a younger sister. Such siblings must demonstrate desire and competence to carry on the complex orchestration of ritual their older siblings no longer oversee. These new leaders must possess a relationship of friendship and support to allow for the gradual effacement of the former leader and the subtle expansion of her replacement’s authority. In Judy’s case, that heir was her close younger sister, Dolly Nampijinpa Daniels, an aspiring yamparru who held rights to many of the same Dreamings as Judy and shared ownership acquired by both patrilineal and personal connection. Although an accomplished ritual participant, Dolly never organized events without her older sister’s approval before the remarriage. Within a few months of Judy’s changed status, however, Dolly was rounding up her kin for big yawulyu performances, extending her kin obligations throughout West Camp and beyond. In short, she began to act the part of the yamparru. How was she received? Both in the West Camp and outside, Dolly had little difficulty taking over the tasks previously maintained by Judy. Her skillful body paintings, her faithful replication of song and dance required to invoke Dreamings (hers and those owned by others), her temperament, and her position within West Camp were all seen as worthy expressions of a yamparru. The intimacy she and her sister maintained enabled her to extend her authority to spheres of influence of both ritual and secular nature. Soon after she started leading rituals, Dolly expanded her involvement in various politico-economic organizations at the settlement. The titles and authority she acquired—co­ president of the newly constituted Women’s Center, board member of the Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Association and Tanami [Satellite] Network— mirrored many of the earlier roles her sister had undertaken. For example, the control Judy had over the truck, under the aegis of the Women’s Museum, was reconstituted by Dolly, whose yamparru-ship gave her control over a newer vehicle owned collectively by the Women’s Center. In short, the baton of ritual authority and its secular obligations had been passed from one sister to another, thus sustaining the bonds of residential kinship. When Judy had reconciled the time-consuming circumstances of her new marriage, a process that took nearly two years, she was able to renew her involvement in Yuendumu ritual. However, she never attempted to regain the status she had renounced. She restricted herself to a participatory role, invoking her former authority only when it benefited Dolly in contexts of intercamp contention. When she and Dolly did disagree, a circumstance I witnessed only once, Judy withdrew from ceremonial action entirely to avoid displaying that conflict. Such struggle between the two sisters was rare, however, and Judy regularly expressed support for the actions of her younger sibling. Judy did say that had she wanted to, she could have reclaimed her more visible role in ritual, and with it the title of yamparru, but that her sister’s competence and strength made such reclamation unnecessary. Without any long-term survey of

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multigenerational ritual authority, Judy’s confident assessment is impossible to prove or disprove. The lengthy narrative of Judy’s authority, at the most basic level, forces rethinking of those analyses attempting to minimize the role of ritual leadership and the vital part that women play in it. Also resonating through Judy’s reflections on becoming a yamparru is a fact worthy of repetition: that ceremonial engagement is by no means bordered and separated from the rest of settlement life. Judy’s capacities as a ritual leader found expression plurally in other arenas of social engagement beyond the ceremonial grounds. In those arenas, as in the religious one with which she was principally identified, the force of residential allegiance was a constant and palpable presence. Furthermore, this brief account of Judy’s ritual career elucidates that the falsity of the theoretically constructed boundary does more than wrongly suggest the sacred kept at arm’s length from the secular. The polyvalence of gender support— the very real ties of men to women—is also reflected in Judy’s ritual career. Her prominence was not one constituted by or among women alone, but was instead regularly assisted and recognized by men, too. Her prominence, it must be added, was susceptible to the judgments (positive or negative) of her male and female kin. Judy’s leadership coincided with her status as a widow, but it must be stressed once again that this spousal circumstance was not a structural component of the authority she achieved. She shared her yamparru-ship with married women of her residential kin group and ultimately bestowed her personal authority on a younger married sister—facts that suggest the locus of authority cannot be linked to the “independence” of a female ritual leader. Did it help Judy that she emerged from a strong residential kin group? Most definitely. But such allegiance in itself did not enable her to claim the role of yamparru. Long-term ritual education, a head for song and dance, skill in the presentation of both, familial stability, the encouragement and pedagogic assistance of close female kin, friendship, the diplomatic talents required to temper “greed” (her own and that of others)—all of these were components that led to her ultimate performative control of ceremony. Judy not only “knew a lot”—a common refrain among admiring kin—but she knew, too, how to use that knowledge. This capacity was not restricted to Aboriginal contexts. As intercultural engagements increased—land reform, “self-determination,” and, later, a flourishing international market for acrylic canvases (see Myers 1994a, 1994b, 1995)— leaders such as Judy, especially female leaders, were propelled into European contexts of intense ritual exchange. The list of qualities required of a yamparru is a long one. The rewards that accompany that recognition are not numerous. Certainly the ritual objects Judy acquired for performance were no measure or source of that prestige, for like so many items of value in the Warlpiri universe—intellectual property, money, food—these were quickly redistributed among her kin, and in particular among those kin with whom she had marlpa ties. Indeed, whatever personal satisfactions Judy may have acquired often tended to be subsumed under a discourse that emphasized the stress and “hard work” of her efforts. The language of leadership,

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a language filled as much with burden as with joy, is not unique to Judy. All leaders feel the collective pressure that attends ceremonial orchestration, a pressure sensed most strongly in the obligations to residential kin. For it is there, in the end, where leadership truly resides, constituted by the aggregate force of the relatives’ kin with whom and for whom Judy performed. That residential force was felt in all spheres of settlement life, secular and religious. However egalitarian the goals of ritual performance may be, their enactment is very clearly hierarchic in nature, and that hierarchy functions on a personal level within the residential kin group and at a broader level in the manner by which intergroup ritual politics is conducted. Hence the importance of giving full measure to the language of victory, with its lexicon of jijami and “winning.” To neglect this spirit in Warlpiri ritual is to deny one of its energizing components. Ritual competition does exist within groups and among them, implicating their women as much as their men. From the employment of these pairings, however, it should not be presumed that competition is rife between genders—it is not. Still, does the struggle to win weaken the harmony sought in the exercise of ceremony? Not in the least, for it is through that very competition that the cohesion of the residential kin group—a fundamental locus of Warlpiri identity that links men and women—is maintained.

Notes

2

Wayipi (Boerhavia diffusa) is a floral creep er w ith an e d ib le Watiya-warnu is k n o w n b o ta n ic a lly as Acacia tenuissima.

3

T h e in d iv id u a l w is h e s to rem ain a n o n y m o u s.

1

tuber.

4

H air strin g ( wirriji) can a lso b e m a d e o f tw iste d cr o c h e t thread s o f m e r c e r iz e d c o tto n .

5

T h e list o f p o te n tia l ritual o b je c ts e m p lo y e d by w o m e n is m u ch lo n g e r than th e o n e c ite d here.

D iffe r e n t D r e a m in g s req u ire slig h tly d ifferen t m aterials.

In itiated

W om an

D rea m in g

(Karnta Jukurrpa),

p o s s e s s io n o f sp e c ia l sto n e s . D rea m in g ( Ngarlayiji

for e x a m p le ,

T h e e n a c tm e n t o f th e req u ires

th e

h id d e n

P erfo r m a n ce o f a certain se g m e n t o f th e B u s h C arrot

Jukurrpa)

n e c e s sita te s th e b r a n d ish in g o f a b o o m e r a n g , th o u g h in

its a b se n c e , th is p r in c ip a lly m a le o b je c t m ay b e r e p la ced w ith o u t lia b ility b y a d a n c in g board (yukurrukurru ). 6

S e e G lo w c z e w s k i 1 9 9 1 .

O ther m a teria ls that are e m p lo y e d in ritual, su c h as fe a th er s

(fro m the M ajor M itc h e ll c o c k a to o , em u , and w ild tu rk ey), m o v e b e tw e e n m en and w o m e n , but in w a y s that d e fy an y o b v io u s e x c h a n g e d y n a m ic. 7

S e e W e in e r 1991 on th e im p o r ta n ce o f c lo th in the P a c ific .

8

For m ore a d e ta ile d d is c u s s io n o f W arlpiri a e sth e tic s, s e e S u tton 1 9 8 8 .

9

T h e p a in tin g o f

kirda

b y th eir

kurdungurlu,

in at lea st o n e other nea rb y se ttlem en t.

kurdungurlu

w h o ty p ic a lly pain t

kirda

n o t very c o m m o n at Y u e n d u m u , is th e n orm G lo w c z e w s k i n o te s that at L ajam an u it is

(pe rso n a l c o m m u n ic a tio n , 1 9 8 4 ).

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

112

References G lo w c z e w s k i, B . 1 9 9 1 .

Du Reve a la Loi chez les Aborigenes.

P r e ss e s U n iv e r s ita ir e s d e

F ra n ce, P aris. M e g g itt, M .L .

Australia , M y e r s, F.

1962.

Desert People: A Study of the Warlbiri Aborigines of Central

A n g u s and R o b e r tso n , S y d n e y .

1994a.

B e y o n d th e In ten tio n a l F a lla cy : A rt C r itic ism an d th e E th n o g r a p h y o f

A u stra lia n A c r y lic P a in tin g , --------. 1 9 9 4 b .

10 ( 1 ):2 0 —4 3 .

American Ethnologist, 2 1 : 6 7 9 - 9 9 . Inalienable Possessions. U n iv e r s ity o f C a lifo r n ia P ress, B e r k e le y . (e d .). 1 9 8 8 . Dreamings: Art from Aboriginal Australia. B r a z ille r , N e w Y ork .

G a lle r ie s, W e in e r , A . S u tto n , P.

Visual Anthropology Review,

C u ltu r e -M a k in g : T h e P e r fo r m a n c e o f A b o r ig in a lity at T h e A s ia n S o c ie t y

1992.

PART 3: SACRED PLACES

In a distant past (one immune to the deceptive rigor of carbon dating or the tyranny of the time line) the Ancestral Beings of Aboriginal Australia emerged to shape the earth. They did so through a complex overlapping network of marvellous and perilous acts now commonly catalogued under the catchall words “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming” or “Stories.” The essays in this section approach this cosmological terrain with differing (though by no means oppositional) purposes, and they do so with distinctive voices. Merlan, concerned with broad theoretical issues of place and its relationship to identity and influence, explores the notion of permanence, change and “the properties of place” at a sacred site located to the south and west of Katherine, the Northern Territorian town where she conducted research. As for Langton, she brings to this section a lyrical voice that focuses on the site-specific nature of the extraordinary art created by the Pintupi living in the Western Desert community of Papunya. In the last chapter of this section, Sutton concerns himself with the mythological and historical dimensions of cultural identity. To that end, he draws on his fieldwork in northern and central parts of Australia, as well as in the Cape York Peninsula, to make persuasive claims about the plural pressures that inform the nurturing of site-specific Aboriginal myths. All three essays identify one ever-present component of religious space: the dynamic nature of the sacred locale. And yet it would be ill advised to mistake this fluidity and flux for impermanence. Quite the opposite is the case. As Merlan, Langton and Sutton show us, Aboriginal myths exhibit an extraordinary tenacity, even after more than a century of post-colonial pressure. Aboriginal myths can be retrieved, remembered (and re-remembered), reshaped, and reclaimed, even after lengthy periods of amnesia, taboo, and neglect. These essays tell us that sacred places, like the rituals that maintain them, may shift and change; myth and history may meld together; political imperative may take precedence over ceremonial concerns; but the end result of these dynamic influences is the maintenance of an Aboriginal existence that is tethered to a specific locale under assault. Franqoise Dussart

6

Do Places Appear? Francesca Merlan

What may be appropriate anthropological positions on the investigation of issues relating to place and the possibility of new places? Do we demand evidence of the long-term nature of meaningfulness of places, aligning ourselves with a “heritage” perspective that focuses upon significance as already fixed and in places, and regard everything else as illegitimate? Clearly not, for that denies the possibility of contemporary agency and of interpretations of “culture” that move away from notions of it as “object” and toward understandings of modalities of social action and the ways in which these relate to each other. On the other hand, do we accept a fluid constructionist view that whatever indigenous or any other people say about a place ipso facto constitutes its present significance? A cynical version of this view has gained popular ground in Australia as an understanding of Aboriginal “sacred sites issues,” that Aborigines can be made to say just about anything at all about places and that their objections to proposals concerning places are made up to suit particular situations. In reducing understandings of contemporary action to ones featuring pure opportunism and denying genuineness of Aboriginal concern and legitimacy of interest, this view is clearly unacceptable. One must, however, recognize the importance and responsibility, in the current context, of establishing the social character of meaningfulness. In my experience in the Katherine region and elsewhere in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, Aboriginal people continually “produce” places, assessing and reassessing their significance in terms of current conditions and relationships. A few of these places are new. That is, Aborigines sometimes identify as places locales where the concept of distinct, socialized place had not existed or been only indeterminate before, appear to modify their notions of the significance of places, or both.1 Below is an account of one instance of such production, which I saw, in certain of its aspects at least, as involving recent production.2 Despite recency, there is, 1 believe, no reasonable way of seeing the processes involved as straightforward ones of opportunistic constructionism. Nevertheless, I also want to argue that the character of meanings, and the way in which they are produced in this particular An extract from Francesca Merlan, Caging the Rainbow: Places, Politics and Aborigines in a North Australian Township, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 1995, pp. 209-228. Reprinted with permission of the author and the University of Hawai’i Press.

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instance, provides insight into changing relations of Aboriginal people with places, in two ways. First, the way in which meanings are produced changes as Aborigines’ lives are lived under different conditions of being in places from those that characterized earlier forms of Aboriginal social life (and inform such discussions about country as that of Myers 1986). Second, and linked to this, the production of meaning changes as a result of the significances that Aborigines now attribute to places emerging into, and being part of, an intercultural social context (of socially specific and changing character). In this context, kinds of meanings are possible, are attributed social value, and often have material implications in the constantly changing sociopolitical field. Recognition of these two dimensions requires us to move beyond inadequate polarities between continuity or discontinuity, authenticity or opportunism, and motivated construction versus “authentic” cultural expression as the sole terms of understanding new places. It forces us to attempt to understand contemporary social processes as perhaps involving all of these, not as polarities but all potentially at play in the shaping of action. Permanence, Change, and the Properties of Places Munn (1970) and Myers (1986), in particular, have convincingly shown the commonality of cultural patterning of human movement and ancestral or Dreaming movement. Places are “the topographic remnants of the centered fields of ancient actors,” “stretching out from a reference point to vague peripheries” (Munn 1996:454). Metamorphosis of ancestral bodies or parts of bodies into landscape (and ancestral bodies into landscapes of connected places that are given regional coherence in this imaginative mode, see Tamisari 1995) is frequently the kind of event that Aborigines consider to repose in places. The productive quality of human relationship with country is often imagined as a metamorphosis of body into place (Munn 1970). Further, the transformations of ancestors’ bodies into places do not simply involve “their bodies in some generalized sense, but [are] situated in particular stances or states such as lying down, sitting, dancing, standing and looking at something, or scattered into fragments from a fight—all forms conveying some momentary action or participation in events at a given location” (Munn 1996:454). The identity of a particular ancestral figure may not necessarily or easily be read off from the sensible properties of places (although they may apparently offer stimuli to the objectification of meaning). In many cases, the character of the Dreaming event is complex and opaque, relative to those sensible properties. Though the meanings of place may be suggestively linked to them, they cannot be simply read off from them. Overtly, traditional Aboriginal mythopoeia works from Dreaming event to physical form, not the other way round. For example, that Chambers Pillar in Aranda country is the phallic body of a knob-tailed gecko ancestor (Morton 1985, frontispiece) is not, in Aboriginal conception, to be read off from the shape of the country. Gecko inheres in this place as its truth, and this is crucial knowledge to be transmitted concerning it. The place looks the way it

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does because gecko inheres in it. Around this direction of coding, from Dreaming event to the visible world, lurks the ever-present possibility and ambiguity of physical form as a dimension informing the production of meanings. Thus, a place must be learned. Continuing “production” of it is strongly mediated by existing human concepts of its meaningfulness, which are partly maintained and generated in terms of mythological schemata, which are not consciously systematized by Aborigines, but which have systematicity and may be analyzed. An example of such a scheme is the deflection of ancestral traveling figures from places on the basis that they are already occupied, replete with someone or something with which encounter must be prohibited (such as a sacred object, a mother-in-law, or the like; see Munn 1996 on “negative spaces”). Particular knowledge sustained by such a schema, and in turn sustaining it, might be the specific identity and sacral object forms of the creative agent. To the uninvolved, learning this kind of “deep” significance of places might seem puzzlingly meaningless and engender a “So what?” reaction. For a place to be recognized as such, meanings must have been socially constructed at some time or combination of times by and in the presence of actors in relation to locales that become repositories of meanings through the social objectification of that intersection in a more or less definite, shared manner. There is always the possibility of varying or even competing interpretations. With codification of the intersection as an enduring basis of future relations of others to places, there comes acceptance and reinforcement of a particular set of meanings over time, repeatedly evoked at other “present” moments. The specific circumstances of such future intersections may result in modification in how meaning is understood and transmitted. Aborigines are often heard to say about places that their meanings are forever and sometimes in invidious comparison, that whitefella meanings are transitory (see the quotes in Rose 1992:56). The apparent permanence of certain kinds of Aboriginal meanings of place, their “forever” quality, enthralls not only Aborigines’ imagination, but also that of non-Aboriginal Australia. Myers (1986) has shown the extent to which specific meanings are actually produced and contested in interaction, in culturally distinctive modes. To put all of these elements together reveals what Strathem (1992b:40) calls a “naturalism” as cultural construct: Aborigines maintain that the meanings of places do not change; anthropologists can show that meanings are produced and shaped. As an activity of social inquiry, anthropology is not satisfied with the naturalism of the permanence of places but also seeks understanding of how Aboriginal feelings for permanence are reproduced even as the meanings of places are both socially sustained and altered. To do this is to go beneath the surface of Aborigines’ as well as others’ readily available understandings of social process, which they may explicitly formulate only in terms of the naturalism of permanence rather than investigating how they sustain this through change. Myers’ account shows that fixity of particular meaning cannot be assumed to be a necessary and objective property of the relation between people and places, despite Aborigines’ claims of enduring significance. He shows to be problematic the assumption that the ontology of Dreaming correlates with objective fixity of

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particular meanings. I have mentioned that this assumption, nevertheless, appears as a working presumption of Aboriginal people and also of the wider Australian public, to the extent that they are prepared to regard the significance of a place as authentic. In showing how Pintupi social practice works to sustain that presumption, Myers reveals something profoundly different about this Aboriginal order of human relationships with places compared to Western ones, and different therefore from what most outsiders might expect. Myers describes the Dreaming as having for Pintupi a phenomenologically external, authoritative, emotively powerful character. To this notion of places as “Law,” they subordinate consciousness of their practices as involving negotiability and practical unevennesses in the construction and transmission of meaning. Myers thus shows objective continuity in the meanings of particular places to be problematic not necessarily because of externally induced change, but as a result of the ordinary social processes through which such meanings are constructed and transmitted. But, we may ask, how much may the meanings of places differ and vary over time? And at another level, what of continuity in the practices through which such social construction is accomplished—are these subject to transformation? My answer to the last question is yes, of course. Changes in what Aborigines say about places are not only to be understood as loss of previously shared knowledge, though this is undoubtedly an aspect of what is going on for many. And certain semiotic tendencies, such as some transparency in the relation between a place’s physical aspects and the attribution of meaning to it, illustrated below, have always been aspects of the processes of meaning-formation. But there are changes in degree and in kind in places like Katherine. In the context of changed relationship to country, Aboriginal people are not only more commonly proceeding from physical form to meaning, but are also relativizing Dreaming significances of place to other, known significances. Many of the latter do not relate to Dreaming but arise out of the recent, shared past of black-white interactions, work relations, and the usurpation of country that Aborigines see as having been “blackfella country.” Aboriginal claims concerning these kinds of significance come into arenas of public debate in which a mythic dimension of place is often accorded priority by powerful interests and agents, to the extent that it can be seen as of long standing. If suspected to be of recent origin, on the other hand, the mythic significance is seen as inauthentic. Those who have studied accounts of traditional Aboriginal relationships to country often wonder about the contemporary constraints on the wellsprings of mythic creativity. Some constraints are produced in the very yearning of the non-Aboriginal public for the maintenance of Aboriginal culture, as part of the search for unquestioned naturalisms. However, the historical facts of settlement and the long-term intercultural nature of the resulting scene seem to me to disallow the notion of “culture” as completely independent, for instance, as completely Aboriginal. Such a notion dissolves in analysis of forms of action and representation, their authorship, intersection, and the sense in which they may be said to embody greater or lesser continuity with other actions and representations. But to say this is to say no more than we already think about the concept of culture

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in general: we should never delude ourselves that it is anything other than an abstraction that allows us ways of talking about complexity Catfish Not far southwest of Katherine town is a place that has become known to many Aborigines and some whites as Catfish Dreaming. Right next to the camp called the Rockhole (after the enlargement of the nearby Katherine River), the focal feature of Catfish Dreaming is a stone formation about a meter in length, fairly flat and elongate, which lies directly on the ground on a flat, reddish, sandy plain near the river. Its resemblance to a fish of some kind—perhaps, without too much stretch of the imagination, a flat-tailed catfish—is striking. Use of a native-language term as a way of establishing the object’s identity—as Catfish and also, as things developed, as Jawoyn—began, to my knowledge, in the following way. Alice Mitchell, with whom I visited the place in the early 1980s on first hearing of it (she was one of the people who assisted in its declaration as a site in 1984), referred to the object as lorr, that is, invested it with a Jawoyn name.3 The use of a native-language term was a powerful performative assertion of recognition and identity. Alice also began referring to this place as Lorr-luk, where -luk is the Jawoyn locative suffix. This appellation creatively indexed not only the stone, but the surrounding area in terms of it. Aborigines had lived at locations in this area before World War II, working on farms along the river and at Manbulloo Station. Given this, there had been ceremonial use of areas in the vicinity of the Rockhole and movement of small encampments of Aboriginal people up and down the river between Manbulloo and town. Associations of different kinds and time depths existed around the Rockhole location. Aboriginal association with the area was less intense after the war, which had resulted in great dislocations, until the establishment of Rockhole as a nondrinking camp in the 1970s following the closure of CSIRO. Gradually, the establishment of the camp created a change in conditions. Features in the immediate vicinity of the camp began to be found and seen as things of importance, and new feeling for this place as camp and home, with a density of human associations, to form in relation to them. During this period, the unusual object was noticed and appeared as something, as Catfish. At a meeting in June 1995 (held concerning the relevance of Catfish Dreaming to Aboriginal identity of Katherine town area, in a context of discussion of town camp development), one middle-aged woman, a long-term resident of the Rockhole area, succinctly told a story about the “discovery” of Catfish a few years before: “Hannah brother been hunting around here and come around and find this thing and come back tell us, that one got accident.” (“Hannah’s brother was hunting around here, came and found this thing, and came back and told us, the one who was killed.”)4 Other people had similar stories to add. Such accounts formulate a time at which the object was not known even to local Rockhole residents. It was distinctly “found” in the sense of first coming to the attention of a person, and the finding reported to others. This sequence of affairs does not

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diminish the importance for Aboriginal people of the thing’s having been there before. Looked at in this way, the story is one of the object’s coming to people’s attention. Such a view complicates any definition of the situation as one of novelty, or “invention” of the place’s significance—a definition I am sure many of these people would reject. Aboriginal people evoke a combination of familial and other associations, mostly stemming from the postwar period, as relevant to the place’s contemporary importance. One man at the 1995 meeting said, “We had camp on this side of river. Ring place [ceremonial ground] was on this side river, O’s [his wife’s] father been organize, and bla Andrew[’s] grandfather [referring to a senior Mayali man]. This country belong to Jawoyn [the usual identity attributed to his wife’s family], they been get all the Jawoyn, and Mayali and Ngalkbon; and used to come from Manbulloo.” Catfish was first noticed as an interesting particular feature in the landscape. It could be enduringly identified in a way that could signal, and be an aspect of, Aborigines’ (now intense) relationship to this place and could also influence future human relations with it. But when it was found, its possible role was inchoate and indeterminate. Shared knowledge and concept of what the object was emerged gradually rather than immediately and rippled out from a small core set of people to others. The identification of the object as Catfish was clearly very much based on the sensible properties of the stone, in a way that resonates with Levi-Strauss’ (1966) notion of the “science of the concrete.” This involves “constant attention to properties of the world, with an interest that is...alert to possible distinctions which can be introduced between them.” Levi-Strauss (1966:3) would have this attention to the sensible serve an attitude toward the world as an “object of thought.” I prefer to see this attention to the sensible here as a degree of continuity in the habitus (Bourdieu 1977) of Aborigines’ interactions with places, of producing meanings that may be turned into more- and less-lasting bases of significance for human action, and some continuity in particular ways in which it is invested with meaning. Even so, the relation of this place to others remained for a time indeterminate and unspecified. But events in the 1980s turned a spotlight on this area and raised an issue of its having wider connections. The Katherine Area Land Claim was prepared and heard in the early 1980s. With Katherine Gorge the main issue, a small claim area called number 3, adjacent to the Rockhole camp, was of little moment. However Aboriginal relations to it might have been characterized, it was clear that the claimant group would have to be somewhat differently constituted from any claimancy to the large areas north and northeast. My research had by then yielded considerable, scattered, oral historical evidence of Aboriginal representations of the Rockhole as within an area earlier conceived as Dagoman (independent of Arndt’s material, which I had not yet seen).5 For purposes of managing what promised to be a contentious and difficult claim, area 3 was set aside for future action. The bases of attachment with the Rockhole area, and the Catfish Dreaming, were diverse.6 People’s connections

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with the area, and their remembering of the past in it, had been refreshed since the solid establishment of the Rockhole camp. In the midst of discussions in 1995 generally relating to the town’s socio­ territorial identity and possibilities for town camp development, Julie Williams interjected, “Bla my grandfa this place, where Rhoda been have ’im, my jabuj.” (“This place belonged to my grandfather, the one Rhoda was married to.”)7 Here Julie was expressing her sense of continuing relationship to places around Katherine, as is her wont, in terms of family connections to them. Her words were scarcely taken up, quite possibly because her statements were not organized around issues of identity at the higher socio-territorial level in terms of which this issue had come to be strongly defined following the land claim and the growth of Aboriginal organizations. The outcome of the Katherine Area Land Claim has been significant for the way in which the Rockhole area has subsequently played a part in the politics of Katherine Aboriginal organizations. In the wake of the largely successful Katherine Land Claim (in which the Gorge was granted to the claimants, along with other areas northeast of town), the newly formed Jawoyn Association remained dormant for some time after its establishment in 1984. It was galvanized into action by the dispute over mining at Coronation Hill, northeast of Katherine, from around 1987 onward (see RAC 1991, Merlan 1991a). After that, the association became a focal manager of affairs of that large group of people who were original claimants to the Katherine area portions. A subset of them have subsequently gained title (in 1995) to Gimbat Station even farther north, within which Coronation Hill is located. The Jawoyn Association has become involved in most major issues that concern the Katherine Aboriginal population, including many sites issues around the town. Its establishment gave support to long-standing conceptions, already present in Arndt’s time, of the town area as Jawoyn. In 1984, Catfish Dreaming was declared a site by the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority,8 based on information from senior people affiliated with three different socio-territorial groupings—Jawoyn, Wardaman, and Mayali. The area was not formally attributed to only one or another of these identities. There was recognition that some people of all of them had attachments to the area. As far as I was aware then, there was no notion of the Catfish as having any “storied” or mythic connection to other places. But gradually, views about such linkage grew around the question of the “tribal” identity of the Rockhole area— particularly, whether it was “Jawoyn,” or not— in a way that was intensified by another site-related development issue. In 1985, a dispute emerged about the development of a gravel quarry a few kilometers from the Rockhole. Objection to the development was recorded by the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority working with Katherine Aboriginal informants, on the grounds that a Kangaroo Dreaming had moved through the area and on toward the Roper River. I was not involved in this issue but was aware of stories of this kind having previously existed concerning the proposed development area. I had not specifically investigated how the Kangaroo travels were conceptualized. The quarry matter came to participate in all the indeterminacies around issues of the town’s socio-territorial identity in Aboriginal terms.

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Debate over the socio-territorial identity of the Rockhole area was sharpened by a further development from the Katherine Area Land Claim. In the early 1990s, the Jawoyn Association entered into what has become known as the “Mt. Todd agreement” with Zapopan, a mining company. With exploration, Zapopan had determined there was a prospective gold deposit at Mt. Todd, a site previously mined. Having failed in the land claim to gain the area (well to the north of Katherine) within which the Mt. Todd mine is situated, Jawoyn Association lodged a repeat land claim over it.9 Rather than struggle with the uncertainties of a repeat land claim and other possible complications, a negotiated deal to which the Jawoyn Association and the Northern Territory Government were party cleared the way for Zapopan to mine, in return for certain benefits to the Jawoyn Association. One of these was the agreed handover of title to area 3, Catfish Dreaming.10 The Jawoyn Association wanted the area handed over to them. Some Wardaman people felt that they should be recognized as title holders, even if jointly with others, in recognition of their relations with the area. (The Wardaman Association had recently been established in Katherine.) Mayali people were least demonstrative, but they reminded everyone of their connections to the Rockhole and the town. In the end, title to area 3 was handed over to Jawoyn Association representatives at a ceremony in Sutherland Shire Council chambers, Sydney, in 1994.11 Some members of the Wardaman Association were annoyed at not being invited to the handover. On the town scene, at the level of relations among Aboriginal organizations and actors in them, the Jawoyn Association was resented by some for usurping a leading, if not exclusionary, role in the attempted negotiation by Katherine Combined Aboriginal Organizations for new Aboriginal living areas, or town camp areas, within and near the town. In the lead-up to the grant of area 3 to the Jawoyn Association, two women prominent in Wardaman Association affairs organized a women’s ceremony and held it at Catfish Dreaming. They claimed this could be done on the basis of a link to a Catfish Dreaming place at Wave Hill to the south and west, in Mudburra country. Some other Aborigines in Katherine commented adversely on this, including some Wardaman people who said they had never heard of this association. Some statements were made by Aboriginal people from Roper River, well to the east of Katherine, that Catfish was to be seen in relation to their own Catfish tradition many miles away, at Lake Allen near the Gulf of Carpentaria. This suggestion appeared to be based on the presumed identity of Dreaming-Catfish in both places.12 This suggestion was heard around Katherine as the voice of senior Roper River people supporting the Jawoyn Association—and, more broadly, adding weight to the defense of Catfish as a place of significance to Aborigines. Eventually, some senior people (mainly western siders who were skeptical of connections of the Rockhole with Wave Hill) within local camp contacts and intermittent attendance at Aboriginal organizations began explicitly to doubt the identity of the place by questioning the identification of the object as Catfish. One woman, for instance, observed on a number of occasions that it looked more like a

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combfish: “a catfish is flat, not like that stone.” A man contributed to this, “It looks more like a shark.” Both seemed to be implicitly accepting the possibility of identifying the object in terms of resemblance, what it looks like. But as in the Levi-Straussian “science of the concrete,” they were paying attention to sensible properties to make differences, in this case expressing alternative possibilities concerning the stone’s identity that they considered more in keeping with its physical properties. Neither made a definitive, alternative identification, but both spoke with a clear understanding of the kinds of claims they could be seen by others to be denying with these remarks. These events point to these people’s sense of a problem of the authenticity of this particular identification, given their own traditionalism, or a strongly felt sense of the importance of remaining within the bounds of accepted and shared understandings that they saw as incontrovertible against the upstart claims of others. Some spoke bitterly about people “making things up,” without there being any clear way of focusing this criticism under the circumstances. This discussion brings us back to the issue of transparency in the relation between physical form and the understood significance of places. The episode is one in which the physical character of the place had a simple referential function, merely suggesting some specific entity as Dreaming. There was no elaborate Dreaming story. In this area, the regionality of Dreaming stories had been severely disrupted over long-term events involving the growth of the town. There were few securely established concepts of connections of places in the Rockhole area with others over the wider region. In their questioning of the stone’s identity, the people quoted were showing how easily such identity can be contested where there has been significant disruption of regionwide senses of “country as story” to which subsequent renewals and changes in meaning of objects must be related. Where this exists, Dreaming must be linked to, and distinguished from, the existence and “truth” of other places. In the terms of its finding, Catfish was simply there; there was no immediate issue of its connections to other places. Since the war, in particular, stock working and other patterns of Aboriginal presence and absence over the countryside had been largely discontinued. The concepts of connections of Catfish Dreaming to other far-flung places (e.g., Roper River) originated in the rounds of Aboriginal organizational politics, beyond the regular and most meaningful contacts of most Katherine camp residents, and were not supported by their local knowledge. In the Rockhole area, the mythic significance of this place was now strongly relativized to Aboriginal people’s sense of their historical occupancy of the area. There was less sense of Dreaming presences than there is, for example, at nearby Manbulloo—another instance of the growth of unevennesses in the landscape in a relatively small compass. But the object and place had significance, especially for Rockhole people. Although Catfish had, in my understanding of Aboriginal people’s relationship to it, little numinous quality (see Kolig 1981, 1995), it was the kind of familiar and even beloved object that makes of place a home—the object crystallization of a kind of relationship much smaller in scope, and more intimate, than it was permitted to have in the circuits of representation into which others drew it.

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Anthropology, Aborigines, and Invention 1 asked what attitudes anthropologists might take toward current issues involving the meaningfulness of places, and “new” places, in the light of changing anthropological points of view on place. I suggested that it is inappropriate to assume rampant constructionism as a fundamental approach or to demand evidence of complete fixity of meaning, for both would be at odds with fundamental anthropological understandings of social process. I argued, however, that it is important that anthropologists take a critical approach to the meaningfulness of place, and that such an approach must involve problematizing certain current processes in human relations with places that we are in a position to observe over the long term. Anthropologists have sometimes allowed themselves to be identified with defending the historically continuous nature of specific Aboriginal conceptions of particular places. My own view is that we need to attempt to clarify the processes in which meaning is produced, changed, and transmitted, even while recognizing the pressures and constraints under which such work is often carried out. Clarification must involve the effort to understand transformation at different levels, two of which may be usefully distinguished here. One is particular, having to do with whether the application of specific meanings in relation to particular places appears to be characterized by continuity or discontinuity. The second level is more general, having to do with continuity and discontinuity in the broader set of concepts or practices through which we understand the production of place to be carried on. Once we separate these two dimensions, we see that no particular history of place production that 1 have given is simple or susceptible of absolute characterization as either continuous or discontinuous. We also see, in the example I have given, that there has been considerable shift in the conditions under which the production of place can occur, and become routinized, among Aboriginal people of Katherine. All the evidence I have concerning Catfish points to this object having been unknown to Katherine Aborigines, at least in recent times. Its particular Dreaming association must be said, in this sense, to be new. But this newness does not preclude Aboriginal people’s envisioning the process by which it became known as one characterized by continuity: as one woman described it, Hannah’s brother found this thing and came and told us about it. The thing was already there, with its own presence and meaning. From this perspective, the only problem is to define that presence and meaning. The attitude in terms of which the finding of something, and the recognition of it as other than a human discovery, might, to some skeptics, be falsifiable, its authenticity as Aboriginal practice questionable. But assessment of this requires that we have first made appropriate distinctions among kinds and levels of social process and context. How Catfish came to be found is relevant: Hannah’s brother came across Catfish in the course of an everyday, ordinary expedition from the Rockhole camp to the surrounding riverine country. The predisposition to read the countryside as meaningful in a certain way, to see it as full of meanings that make a difference to humans but are outside human manipulation, stimulated in-camp interest in the object. There is an element of continuity in the specific nature of

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this kind of relationship with places. That Catfish was close to a place of recently renewed human association made it particularly interesting: it is constantly nearby, a continuing presence. Aboriginal association with this area had been attenuated for some decades before Rockhole was established. Many people, like the young man who found the stone, were newcomers to the Rockhole area at the time the camp was established. Given this discontinuity, the stone’s meaningfulness was understood in basic terms of its having a Dreaming identity. The specific identity was motivated by its resemblance to a living creature. I have suggested that the principle of transparency between sign and object assumes greater scope in a case like this than it did in the past, when there was more continuous and fuller relationship of people with places. Under those conditions there was greater elaboration of country as storied. I allow for the possibility that meaningfulness of Aboriginal places, and of particular objects in the landscape, may regularly have involved the dimension of resemblance in some ways. But with Catfish, resemblance was apparently all that people had to work with. For several years after its identification became established, there was little concern, as far as I know, about the relation of this to other places—whether, for example, it was part of a Dreaming track or the like. Such questions no doubt were regularly part of Aboriginal attention to most, if not all, places in days when the mode of life involved regular, close, bodily movement through the landscape. In this case, however, the stimulus to define the meaningfulness of Catfish regionally and relationally arose in the context of recent Aboriginal affairs: land rights, sites matters, and the definition of living areas around the town. Had it not been for these, it seems to me that wider connections for Catfish might not have become an explicit issue. Once the place had begun to be established through small and everyday acts of imagination and communication, “it” as inchoate social entity was made to bear much greater burdens of significance in relation to contemporary issues than it possibly could, given its origins. Attempts were made to make the place speak to the struggles of Aboriginal people with others—among them townspeople and business interests—for socio-spatial definition and legitamation. But the place had had its beginnings within a smaller compass. It had not achieved such a broad basis of significance as would have been required for it to serve in these ways. While I hope to have clarified the nature of Catfish as a place in Aboriginal terms, I also intend to have clarified the extent of change in those terms, and the complexity of intersection of terms in relation to this place that make it impossible to see the process as the simple preservation of tradition. Anthropological forms of representation clearly play a complicated role in cases like this: they usually play a more limited role in site declaration (where emphasis is often upon the nature of places in Aboriginal terms), but another kind of role in the fuller, more analytic sort of account of the situation I have given here. How incompatible are these two roles in the sort of highly politicized climate I have described? Also, has the account of Catfish brought any clarity to the question I earlier posed—whether analysis of this (or, for that matter, of changes in the socio-territorial identity of the town) unconscionably removes constraints on cultural representations.

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Culture Struggle: “All Mixed”? The local relevance of Catfish largely took the form of a question whether the place is Jawoyn or of other social identity. This has been connected to issues arising from the Katherine Area Land Claim and the subsequent Mt. Todd mining arrangements. It is also coming to be linked to the emerging question of the persistence of native title around the town and how any claim to this might proceed. As the Catfish story showed, local understandings bear relationships to wider agendas but may become reinterpreted within them. As the scope of Catfish issues widened, certain local perspectives—such as those of some Rockhole residents—tended to become residual, called upon as mere support for one or another position in a field of possibilities that they had little ability to affect directly. The widening of perspectives in these ways is relevant to how Aboriginal culture and heritage are coming to be understood, a topic I mentioned earlier. In recent decades, it has become conventional to talk about the importance of maintaining Aboriginal culture—for its own intrinsic worth, for its heritage values to the national and international community, and as part of processes of support and recuperation among Aboriginal people themselves. Ideas of cultural maintenance, in other words, inherently involve an objectivizing moment (Bourdieu 1977), in which some aspects of present and past life are crystallized as “cultural.” Many ideas come to local communities through the expanded contacts and networks of contemporary Aboriginal affairs, sometimes intersecting with locally held concepts, and sometimes not. Emphasis on culture and its maintenance, naturally, has intensified concern with how culture is to be understood and conserved. This, in turn, stimulates many processes of the mimetic sort, in which representations of Aboriginal practices—including how practices are to be understood as “Aboriginal culture”—come to play a material role in the shaping of Aborigines’ lives. Aboriginal people, of course, participate in these processes in various ways. A young Aboriginal woman and mother at the Rockhole recently made some pessimistic-sounding remarks about issues of cultural “loss” and maintenance to me, forms of thinking about culture as a negative quantum that have gathered strength with the emphasis on culture. She did so partly in complaining about everyday activities in the camp. She said though it was very important for children to “learn culture,” such learning was not going on in camp: “These people here don’t move, only siddown and play cards. They [boys and men] always thinking about women. No kids know their culture, they just grow up and start drinkin’, Bye! and off to pub.” She identified “mixing” of Aboriginal people of different origins, increasingly common in the Katherine camps, as a problem for cultural maintenance: “But trouble is, they all from different sides, like one from Jawoyn, and other from Wardaman. Nobody have wife or husband from same place, so nobody learning.” She sees herself as having experienced something like this problem, having been raised by two old women from “Wardaman side,” but “I’m really supposed to follow Jawoyn side, like my mother and grandmother.” She spoke of certain upper-generation links of her family to certain other Katherine families, evoking

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1 27

what I have come to understand as some of the crucial Dagoman identities in those upper levels. She also spoke of a (white) employee at Kalano who was trying to encourage pride and interest in culture by encouraging her and others “to learn and go around, pick up ideas that way, learn some language.” But she said that was hard unless people were prepared to “move” (be active). Thinking in terms of the encouragement she was given to “keep the culture,” she asked herself what she and others could do in their situation of “mixing” and the whirl of town life. She thought maybe “we have like X from [an Arnhem coastal settlement], and old Y, and they should get together, get a white board and teach the kids. Maybe we could have all mixed. It’s important for them to learn culture. But all they wait for is to play cards or watch TV.” Like some of the Katherine Area Land Claim witnesses, underlying what she says is the mimetic idea of assimilating “Aboriginal culture” to practices of schooling. Her idea involves the use of representations and practices of “white culture” to foster the practice of Aboriginal culture, objectified and rendered teachable. There are, in other words, old people who know the (high?) culture—that which can perhaps be most easily formalized and made explicit—and even though they are from different places, they could pass it on. But, she mused, perhaps the younger ones don’t want to learn that. Her thinking seems to suggest the possibility of a less locally bound Aboriginal culture that can be taught by old people from different places to young people who are “all mixed.” Contemporary emphases on cultural revival as a positive element of Aboriginal self-identification have, particularly in southeastern Australia, involved increasingly explicit borrowing, teaching, and diffusion of “culture” in the reified and generalized sense she envisions (Creamer 1988; see also Myers 1988, who illustrates the attempt to show off Aboriginal culture in an international environment). Her attitudes illustrate a rising awareness, similar to that of many anthropologists and other outsiders, of difference between selected aspects of the traditional “culture” and today’s social practices. The idea of culture she concretizes and has come to value most as such (though not as preferred practice in her everyday life) is past oriented. Those attached to culture in this sense may feel powerless to recapture what is “theirs,” though some make an effort. What are now to some extent shared (Western and Aboriginal) objectifications of “culture” as language, art, dance—the vivid, the material, the special event as opposed to the everyday flow of social action, while themselves important, nevertheless support a “high” view of culture as divorced from everyday social practice and experience.

Notes 1

E sse n tia l A b o r ig in a list w r itin g s o n th e c o n c e p t o f p la c e s , or “ co u n tr y ,” in c lu d e M u n n 1 9 7 0 and M y ers 1 9 8 6 ; se e a ls o n e x t se c tio n . O n in n o v a tio n in A b o r ig in a l r e lig io u s life , s e e S ta n n er 1 9 6 6 , K o lig 1 9 8 1 , M a d d o c k 1 9 8 2 , S ta n ton 1 9 8 3 , T o n k in so n 1 9 9 1 , M y e r s 1 9 8 6 , and R o se 1 9 9 2 .

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

It w ill b e c o m e cle a r that th e s ig n ific a n c e o f th e p la c e w a s partly b u ilt up in lig h t o f p r e v io u s h u m an a ss o c ia tio n w ith it. T o that ex te n t, and in term s o f oth e r fa cto r s e x p lo r e d h ere, A b o r ig in a l p e o p le c o n c e r n e d w o u ld reject an y n o tio n o f its c o m p le te n o v e lty .

3

A lte r n a tiv e ly sh e referred to it as

morroporU

a term that refers to (a p p a re n tly m e d iu m ­

s iz e d ) fo r k -ta ile d c a tfis h e s. 4

T h is w a s a r e fe r e n c e to th e y o u n g m a n ’s d eath in a m y ste r io u s road a c c id e n t that, w h ile c le a r ly b e in g a lc o h o l-r e la te d , w a s a lso se e n b y s o m e m em b er s o f h is fa m ily as d u e to in im ic a l r e la tio n s w ith certa in o th e r A b o r ig in e s w ith w h o m h e had b een d r iv in g arou n d , p e o p le w h o w e r e n o t o f th e im m e d ia te to w n area.

5

A r e a 3 a d ja c en t to th e R o c k h o le w a s e x c lu d e d from th e K ath erin e A r e a L and C la im o f th e e a rly 1 9 8 0 s b e c a u se it w a s u n d e r sto o d that a n y cla im to it w o u ld n e c e s s a r ily b e c o m p le x and w o u ld h a v e to in v o lv e s o m e su b s e t o f c la im a n ts for th e oth e r areas, p erh a p s to g e th e r w ith s o m e d iffe r e n t p e r so n n e l.

6

M a y a li p e o p le from th e north had w o r k e d o n p ean u t farm s in th e v ic in ity o f th e R o c k h o le ;

so

had N g a lk b o n ,

from

th e so u th ern

fr in g e o f A rn h em

L and;

so

had

W ard am an, m a n y o f th e m a lso h a v in g liv e d at nearby M a n b u llo o S ta tio n o n th e river. W ille r o o and D e la m e r e s ta tio n s farther so u th , to g e th e r w ith M a n b u llo o , w e r e o w n e d b y th e sa m e c a ttle c o m p a n y , V e s t e y ’s, for a c o n sid e r a b le tim e.

M a n y W ardam an w e r e

b r o u g h t to M a n b u llo o a s w o rk ers. 7

T h e w o m a n o f w h o m sh e w a s sp e a k in g as h a v in g b e e n m arried to her gran d fath er, N o lg o y m a , w a s w ith u s o n th is o c c a s io n . T h u s J u lie ’s rem arks n ot o n ly w e r e in te n d ed to e s ta b lish a cla im o n her o w n b e h a lf, but a lso w e r e s e n s itiv e to n o rm s o f e tiq u e tte c o n c e r n in g p o s it iv e in c lu sio n o f p e r so n s p resen t in th e fo rm u la tio n o f th e r e le v a n c e o f th e cu rren t sp e e c h situ a tio n to o n g o in g iss u e s. fro m

S u ch a rem ark o fte n a lso e lic it s su p p o rt

th e p e rso n m e n tio n e d w h o is p resen t o n th e sc e n e and is th u s a sig n ific a n t

d im e n s io n o f o p in io n m a n a g e m en t. 8

T h e A b o r ig in a l S a cred S ite s P r o te c tio n A u th o r ity (n o w ren am ed th e A b o r ig in a l A r e a s P r o te c tio n A u th o r ity ) is a N o rth ern T erritory a g e n c y , e s ta b lish e d u n d er c o m p le m e n ta r y le g is la tio n at th e tim e o f th e p a ss a g e o f th e fed era l A b o r ig in a l L and R ig h ts (N o rth er n T errito ry ) A c t 1 9 7 6 .

9

T h e area o f M t. T o d d w a s n o t r e c o m m e n d e d for grant o n the g ro u n d s, a s th e land c o m m is s io n e r w r o te in h is report, that “th e e v id e n c e d o e s n ot esta b lish an y c o n sid e r a b le stren g th o f a tta ch m en t to that la n d ” (A b o r ig in a l L and C o m m is sio n e r 1 9 8 8 :3 4 , para. 1 6 5 ).

10 A lo n g w ith E v a V a lle y S ta tio n , a n o th er p ro p erty that w a s to b e th e ev e n tu a l o b je c t o f furth er c la im , ju s t to th e e a st o f land w o n d u rin g th e K ath erin e A rea L and C la im . 11 Part o f m y p o in t is to illu stra te th e m u c h -e x p a n d e d circu itry and im p lic a tio n s o f is s u e s su c h a s th is o n e .

In lig h t o f th is, it is w orth n o tin g that th e h a n d o v er w a s o r g a n iz e d as

part o f th e c o n fir m a tio n o f a “ siste r c ity ” arra n g em en t b e tw e e n th e S u th erlan d S h ire C o u n c il

(r e le v a n tly ,

th e

Syd n ey

e le c to r a te

o f th e

in cu m b en t fed eral

m in iste r

for

A b o r ig in a l a ffa irs) an d w h a t w a s c a lle d on th e in v ita tio n s th e “J a w o y n n a tio n ”— th e id e n tity that had b een e m p h a s iz e d in e v e n ts o f th e p r e v io u s fifte e n y ea rs and that had b e c o m e a p rin cip a l term o f th e K a th erin e r e g io n ’s and th e A u stralian n a tio n ’s r e c o g n itio n o f m u c h that w e n t o n in term s o f d e v e lo p m e n t and o th er iss u e s arou n d K ath erin e, in c lu d in g th e C o r o n a tio n H ill s ite s d isp u te. 12 l a m n o t a w a re that su ch a c o n n e c tio n e x is te d p r e v io u sly .

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7

Sacred Geography Marcia Langton

The artists represented by Papunya Tula are heirs to one of the most localised of existences still permitted in the world. These artists are intimately connected to their traditional land estates through a set of beliefs in the sacredness of places and the necessity of celebrating that sacredness through ceremonial acts. These places, they say, originated in the primordial adventures of spiritual ancestor beings whose ‘creative dramas’ established the appearance and patterns of life experienced today. Whether belonging to the Arremte, Warlpiri, Pintupi, Luritja, Ammatyerre or other language groups, they share the idea of a sacred landscape and, in most cases, an artistic style derived from ritual adornments of ground sculptures, bodies, sacred boards, rock faces, and ceremonial objects such as decorated poles. The features of the style are typically the bird’s-eye view and the abbreviated cartographic representation of landscapes whose places and species are familiar and familial. The paintings are also iconographic, and gender-specific responsibilities influence the choice of subjects. Men paint men’s dreamings, and women paint women’s dreamings, and where the dreamings are shared, either men or women represent aspects of the ancestral adventures appropriately. In some cases, grand cartographic paintings are painted jointly by groups of men and women. Men are responsible for particular aspects of sacred sites, and their authority over particular water sources, increase ceremonies, rainmaking and related matters is legendary. The great majority of Western Desert paintings represent the extent of the landscape and its sacred elements - biota and geographic features for which the painters are responsible as traditional owners. These are large estates, sometimes including neighbouring estates in which they have interests. Concentric circles represent water sources and the degree of their permanency in this arid land. Many waterholes are highly secret-sacred, and usually genderspecific. Thus senior male or female traditional owners, as appropriate, lead the approach to them, protecting those accompanying them from spiritual danger and authorising the drinking or removal of water under the strictest of conditions. Such places are refugia for the species of the region, and are highly susceptible to human From Marcia Langton, ‘Sacred Geography: Western Desert Traditions of Landscape Art’. This article first appeared in Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, eds Hetti Perkins and Hannah Fink, Art Gallery of N.S.W., Sydney, 2000. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the Art Gallery of N.S.W.

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pollution. The iconography of the master painters is usually concerned with the sacred elements of large regional landscapes and the particularities of such water sources, the revered superhuman ancestors whose species are depicted, and their creative dramas. As gatherers of vegetable foods and small mammals, women often paint plant species and the dreamings associated with them. Let me explain further by reference to Pintupi/Luritja cosmological concepts, inasmuch as I can claim to understand them. Imagine yourself crossing a vast arid terrain with its traditional Aboriginal owners who speak only Pintupi/Luritja, a language whose words for place or land in the generic sense of these terms in English compact social and religious connotations into the geographic idea of ‘place’. It is difficult, without a Pintupi sense of the world, to ask with any of the English implications, ‘What is this place?’, or ‘What is that place?’. The answers would be Pintupi answers, their translation dependent on the questioner’s comprehension of the multivalent levels of Pintupi concepts, such as tjukurrpa and ngurra. How then do you refer to a place? In Pintupi/Luritja there is no sense of the English meaning of the term ‘land’. Rather, if one were to categorise land artificially for the purposes of explaining this problem, there might be at least categories of kinds of places. These categories are artificial, post facto constructions that belie the meanings of these places, yet I should state this falsity in order to return to a discussion of place inspired by the conception of place, or one’s relation to it, that the Western Desert painters present to us. The linguistic distinctions made might in any case be helpful to our understanding. First, there are named features of the landscape deriving from dreamings, such as ‘sites’, ‘estates’, ‘dreaming tracks’, and other types of features which have been translated into English terms to document land claims and protect sites. Physical features of the land are not simply mere places but, along with the biophysical characteristics of a place, constitute the evidence of spiritual dramas that occurred during a creative period whose powers persist in the geographical features that originated in those times. These physical features of landscape are referred to as ‘tjukurrtjanu (n. belonging to the dreaming; used to describe a physical geographical feature that was created as a result of the activity of a dream time hero in the distant past)’ or ‘tjukutitja (n. that which belongs to the dreaming; used in describing the origin of a physical feature)’.1 These words share the core part of the word for dreaming, ‘tjukurrpa (n. dreaming; dream time; birth dreaming; a dreaming is any mythical hero from the distant past concerning which there are stories and songs, these heroes are understood to be responsible for the creation of physical features throughout the land; dream time is the time when these heroes and the physical features came into being; birth dreaming is determined in a number of ways depending on the mother’s whereabouts around the time of conception)’.2 These terms are expressions referring to the spiritual essence that imbues the relationship of people to their country with meaning. Truth, straightness, a way to a higher place, and leadership are connotations of the root of these terms and are used in a variety of ways. There is much more than can be said here that is implied

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by the concept of tjukurrpa, a religious expression of fundamental spiritual origins and the place of phenomena in the world. And, second, there are camps or ngurra - home. Person and place are coterminous in expressions such as ‘ngurraritja (n. camp dweller; camp sitter; one who stays in camp; one. who does not go out hunting)’.3 Or there is the term, ‘ngurrakutu yanu (went to camp...went to one’s own country)’.4 For the Pintupi, a place is a named place, although as American anthropologist Fred R. Myers points out, ‘Pintupi names of places should not be understood as proper names’. A lte r n a tiv e n a m e s or r e fe r e n c e s are freq u en tly e m p lo y e d , su c h a s w o r d s fro m a s o n g or so m e o th e r referen tia l sy ste m .

A la rg e sa lt la k e in th e w e s t is k n o w n v a r io u s ly as

N g u n a rrm a n y a , P in a rin y a , or N y a ru . T h e la st term refers to th e fa ct that at th e d r e a m in g e v e n t there w a s a fire that left a h u g e b u r n ed -o u t area (o r

nyaru).

T h e s e c o n d n a m e an d

p ro b a b ly th e first d e r iv e from th e w o r d s o f a ss o c ia te d s o n g s , a lth o u g h th e y h a v e a m e a n in g in th e m s e lv e s .

T o th e P in tu p i, th en , a p la c e it s e lf w ith its m u ltip le fe a tu r e s is

lo g ic a lly prior or cen tral; its n a m e s are s im p ly sta n d a rd ised fo r m s o f r e fe r e n c e o r d e s c r ip tio n .5

Myers lived with the Pintupi at various intervals from 1973 until 1988. Fie eventually published a fine ethnographic account of the inner logic of their social organisation in space, Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self, in which he explains: T h er e are tw o sig n ific a n t but c o n tra d icto ry t e n d e n c ie s in P in tu p i s o c ia l o r g a n isa tio n . O n e is th e lo g ic o f e x p a n s iv e n e s s , th e p r in c ip le that e v e r y o n e in th e r e g io n is r ela ted (w a ly tja tjurta), that th e y are ‘all o n e fa m ily .’ ‘c l o s e ’ r e la tiv e s (th o s e w ith w h o m

T h e o th e r is th e d is tin c tio n b e tw e e n

o n e reg u la rly in teracts, ‘o n e c o u n tr y m e n ’) an d

r e la tiv e s from far a w a y , w ith w h o m o n e c a m p s le s s fr e q u e n tly .6

The paintings of the Papunya Tula movement tell us that here are people who lived in and knew an immense territory as their home. They journeyed on foot to their far-flung camps within these landscapes. Each ngurra was reached after days of walking, sometimes carrying water in wooden vessels, and on the way side journeys were taken for hunting macropods, or gathering vegetable foods, or collecting firewood. Reaching their ngurra, they cooked in ground ovens, and before sleep, around their fires in the night, they could gaze at the other great sacred geography in the night sky where ancestors reside among their stellar marvels. People who live in the open air read the light and shadow of the day, the movements of the stars, the colour, direction and shape of clouds as they traverse the sky, the signs of smoke and dust in the landscape, the level of water in waterholes, the direction of birds flying across the sky in the evening, and the tracks and scats of animals. They predict the weather from the rings around the moon, the season, and the movement of ants and birds. To eat and live well depends on attention to these details. Living under a vast sky and knowing what lies beyond the horizon is a geographical legacy that is intimated in the cartographic representation of these landscapes in paintings. These graphic designs are marked out in sacred sand

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sculptures with feathers and sacramental matter, prepared by gathering groups of men or women affiliated with particular ancestors and sites. These sculptures are decorated as if painting the body of a relative. The designs are also painted onto boards, held up in ceremonial dance as the evidence of their inheritance. This socially intimate engagement with place - indeed with vast areas of dusty red plains of spinifex, acacia, mulga and other ancient species, intersected sparsely by precious waterholes and rocky ranges erupting out of the earth - has fascinated many observers, including the philosopher Edward S. Casey. He contends that the Pintupi and other native accounts of place are a priori more accurate as descriptions and more valuable as heuristics in the understanding of place than the usual accepted methodologies. For Casey: w e are n e v e r w ith o u t e m p la c e d e x p e r ie n c e s . o n earth - are in e lu c ta b ly p la c e -b o u n d .

H um an b e in g s - a lo n g w ith o th e r e n titie s

M o re e v e n than e a rth lin g s, w e are p la c e lin g s ,

a n d o u r v e r y p ercep tu a l a pparatus, ou r s e n s in g b o d y , r e fle c ts th e k in d s o f p la c e s w e in h a b it...p la c e , rather than b e in g a m ere p ro d u ct or p ortion o f sp a c e , is as prim ary a s th e p e r c e p tio n that g iv e s a c c e s s to it...p la c e , far fro m b e in g so m e th in g sin g u la r, is s o m e th in g g e n e r a l, p erh a p s e v e n u n iv e r s a l...7

And this is why to categorise places abstractly - without regard to local knowledge - is to mislead as to the nature of place and our being-in-place. Casey explains: ‘1 do not take place to be something simply physical. A place is not a mere patch of ground, a bare stretch of earth, a sedentary set of stones.’8 He asks, ‘What kind of thing is it then?’: R a th er than b e in g o n e d e fin ite sort o f th in g - fo r e x a m p le , p h y sic a l, sp iritu a l, cu ltu r a l, s o c ia l - a g iv e n p la c e ta k e s o n th e q u a litie s o f its o c c u p a n ts, r e fle c tin g th o s e q u a litie s in its o w n c o n stitu tio n an d d e sc r ip tio n and e x p r e s s in g th em in its o c c u r r e n c e as an ev e n t; p la c e s n o t

are ,

th e y

happen.

(A n d it is b e c a u se th e y h ap p en that th e y le n d t h e m s e lv e s

s o w e ll to n arration, w h e th e r as h isto r y or a s sto r y .) Just as a p articu lar p la c e is at lea st se v e r a l k in d s o f th in g s, s o th ere are m a n y so r ts o f p la c e s and n o t o n e b a sic k in d o n ly o n e s u p p o s e d ly su p rem e g e n u s. S o rts o f p la c e s d e p e n d o n th e k in d s o f th in g s , as w e ll a s th e a ctu a l th in g s , that m a k e th e m u p ...If, a s W a lla c e S te v e n s put it, ‘a m y th o lo g y r e fle c ts its r e g io n ’, then a r e g io n r e fle c ts b oth w h a t is h e ld to g e th e r there (its ‘c o n t e n ts ’, its c o te n a n ts) and h o w it is so h e ld .9

A vast region of formidable terrain and sparse water sources, occasionally blessed by rainfall, and offering up a precious harvest by season and circumstance, has been socialised and shaped as a vast mind-map, remembered in sacred designs and songs. As Myers points out, the logic of Pintupi sociality attempts to overcome distance as a threat to relatedness. While they establish wide-ranging relatedness among individuals, ‘the Pintupi do so partly at the expense of preventing any social center from emerging’.10 This means that their social life is a dynamic round of negotiations about place: L o c a l g r o u p s c a n n o t iso la te th e m s e lv e s a s u n its from

in d iv id u a ls w h o c la im

tie s.

W ith o u t firm b o u n d a r ie s to d e te r m in e w h o h a s an in terest and w h o d o e s n o t, a c tio n is su b je c t to o n g o in g n e g o tia tio n a s th e m e m b e r sh ip o f lo c a l g r o u p s c h a n g e s .11

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Aboriginal concepts of land estates refer simultaneously to social, physical and metaphysical matters. Space and temporality are intertwined as contingent dimensions of life in Aboriginal philosophy. The meanings of social responsibility - the bonds of being related to one another - are expressed through the rituals and ideas of the sacred landscape, through symbols of the past and present (the living and the dead) embodied in particular places. These places are themselves part of the fabric of relatedness in Aboriginal life in the desert. In this life lived under the stars, places are marked not through physical inscriptions, but through kin and dreaming ties that inscribe the self in place and place in the self. That is, places are inscribed through metaphysical relationships. Places are not simply ‘out there’, but experienced through relationships with the emplaced dreaming beings who gave rise to the original ancestors. Both sense of place and rights to place are marked by ancestral connections passed down through indigenous law, not simply through humanly created physical signposts. In turn, the places of memory and experience are sensual proof of the truth of Aboriginal law. Through the authority of the elders as keepers of law and customary land tenure, cultural memories become inscribed in the places of tradition, and such places become ‘site-markers of the remembering process and of identity itself.12 It becomes apparent as we consider the ethnographies of Myers and Eric Michaels of the desert societies that produced this magnificent artistic tradition that ancient values about being in places are capable of sophisticated renegotiation in the challenging circumstances of post-colonial Australia. Colour, materials, design and even gender roles have been reconsidered and reshaped around the core traditions to permit the painting tradition to continue in the new circumstances of globalism and large uneducated audiences. This dynamic response to the expansion of global European culture was most critically expressed in the exodus of Central Desert peoples from the government Aboriginal settlements, such as Papunya, from the early 1970s. People returned to the homelands to be near their sacred places and to renew their affiliations with these places and their histories and meanings. This was the essential step in ensuring the survival of their cultures. Painting the sacred designs for an audience prepared to pay for the privilege enabled the leaders of this cultural movement to pursue their philosophical traditions and to offer the paintings to a marketplace as signs of their ownership of these estates. The late Eric Michaels, American anthropologist and diarist, described Papunya as ‘the mother lode of the western Desert painting movement’.13 He attributes the efflorescence of works from the painters of the various scattered communities and outstations to the use of commercial art materials. Michaels remarked on the colour range made available by these materials, presenting choices in the interpretation and representation of the local environment previously not possible: D e se r t A b o r ig in a l g ro u n d , b o d y , im p le m e n t, or ro ck art e m p lo y s earth p ig m e n ts , a n im a l p r o d u c ts, p la n ts, an d fea th er s.

E ach m a teria l, in a m a n n er L e v i-S tr a u ss a s s o c ia t e s w ith

* b r ic o la g e \ reta in s its a s s o c ia tio n w ith its so u r c e , o r ig in , an d lo c a le , an d b r in g s t h e s e in to th e w o rk as e le m e n ts o f its m e a n in g ...E v e n th e w o r d s fo r th e e le m e n ts u se d m a y

136

Aboriginal Religions in Australia s ig n ify all o f th e a s s o c ia tio n s : red o ch re from Karrku M o u n ta in is c a lle d karrku, w h ic h m ay s ig n ify ‘r e d ’ g e n e r a lly . T h u s c o lo u r is o n ly o n e b a sis for id e n tify in g , c h o o s in g , and

th en ‘r e a d in g ’ a m ed iu m .

B u t w ith a c r y lic s, c o lo u r is th e o n ly b a sis for d iffe r e n tia tio n .

T h is ra d ica l d iffe r e n c e in th e s e m io lo g y o f m a ter ia ls can take so m e g e ttin g u se d to, but in th e e n d m a y free th e artist in a n o th er se n s e , p r e se n tin g n e w c h o ic e s u n a v a ila b le to th e ‘ bricoleur\ M y a rg u m en t is that there is n o th in g that can b e c a lle d ‘trad ition al c o lo u r s ’, as th e c o n c e p t is q u ite a lie n in th is c o n te x t.

N e v e r m in d th e e v id e n c e that p rec o n ta c t

p a le tte s in fa ct c o n ta in e d g reen o x id e s , p in k and b lu e flo w e r s, and oth er sh a d e s n o w ju d g e d n o n tra d itio n a l. T h e v ery id ea o f c h o ic e s b a se d s o le ly on c o lo u r is it s e lf a resu lt o f c o n tem p o ra r y c o n d itio n s and m a te r ia ls .14

The depiction of sacred geography in new media and the relative readiness with which this ancient artistic style was accepted by urban audiences presented other problems, not only of interpretation by non-Aboriginal audiences but for other Aboriginal people from the desert confronted by the public presentation of sacred depictions previously circulated only in very restricted ritual circumstances. In 1971, when Australians knew little about Aboriginal people, and few people from the desert had ventured to the cities, art teacher Geoffrey Bardon ‘recognised in the old men’s wall paintings something eminently worth encouraging’.15 The resulting paintings on board and canvas were initially, and briefly, commercially successful, but, as Fred Myers reports, dispute arose as to the public display of sacred designs when Pitjantjatjara men from the Warburton Range area of the Great Western Desert saw an exhibition of these paintings in Perth in 1974: F o r se v era l y ea rs, P in tu p i m en w ere in v o lv e d in c o m m e r c ia l p a in tin g on c a n v a s o f th e ce r e m o n ia l d e s ig n s o f their sa cred sites.

T h e m en in sis te d th e d e s ig n s w e r e im portan t,

b e c a u se th e y w e r e ‘from th e d r e a m in g ’, but th e y ju s tifie d p a in tin g th em for sa le in that th e y w e r e n o t th e m o st sa cred ‘d a n g e r o u s’ o n e s.

T h e y c la im e d th e right to d o so ,

c o n fid e n tly : m en p a in ted th e p articu lar d e s ig n s for w h ic h th e y w ere c u sto d ia n s, th r ou gh th e ir fa th ers and s o o n .

T r o u b le a ro se w h en an e x h ib it o f th e se p a in tin g s on d isp la y in

P erth w a s se e n b y Pitjantjatjara m en from W arburton R a n g e.

T h e s e m en had sim ila r

so r ts o f c e r e m o n ie s and a c tu a lly shared so m e d rea m in g tracks w ith th e P in tu p i.

T hey

c h a rg ed th e P in tu p i p a in ters w ith e x p o s in g se c r e t d e s ig n s that w ere o w n e d b y all o f th e m .

T h e P in tu p i a c c e p te d th e c o m p la in t and m a d e restitu tio n for th eir ‘tr o u b le ’ w ith

an o ffe r in g o f sa cred o b je c ts .16

The symbols of the sacred were disguised by incorporating them into other designs or erasing them altogether. Subsequently, the painting movement spread throughout most parts of the Central and Western deserts, and is now classified into a number o f ‘genres’. By the early 1980s, the style was attracting considerable interest among cognoscenti in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1988 Michaels raised the question: ‘Were the Papunya painters totally passive, while their art advisers conspired with the market to invent Papunya Tula aesthetics, to define both the “good” and the “tasteful”, and to construct the painters’ authenticities in the process?’ His answer is shocking and subversive of the fine art market which privileges the style as original and pure against the flowering of subsequent ‘Aboriginal’ styles, particularly the tourist trade in

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13 7

‘dot dot’ kitsch: ‘Art advisers can deny influencing indigenous art until they are mauve in the face’, he writes.17 After the event, hindsight might permit us to be less cynical than an American post-modernist encountering the raw edge of the engagement between desert Aboriginal painters and privileged white Australian art audiences. We might also allow that the acceptance of ancient Aboriginal visual iconography was a thrilling, visceral experience in pre-Whitlam Australia, a country divided over its role in Vietnam, shocked by feminism, and outraged by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy protests at Parliament House. This last had subverted the suburban comfort of white Australians grown thoroughly accustomed to Aboriginal people as welfare mendicants on the edge of extinction, and definitely on the outer edges of town. Suddenly, there was a radical movement afoot, the men of the rigorous hunting and gathering lifestyle in the great red desert bursting onto the art market in Australian cities grown tired of modernism and bored with pop art. With the spate of texts published on Aboriginal art since the 1980s, and the recognition of new artists and styles, we may have forgotten just how revolutionary the instigators of the Papunya Tula art movement were. We have become inured to their extraordinary productivity and their originality and innovation in using the new media - boards, canvases, primers, acrylic paints and the new palette. The shock of the ancient which these paintings represented for Australian art audiences weary of modernist renditions of a land they hardly knew still reverberates in this uncomfortable post-colonial society. To see this art in abundance, and all its styles, is a timely reminder of their creators’ great struggle to regain their homelands, too. At least two hundred people went back to their homelands, escaping from the misery of governmentadministered settlements in the late 1970s. The emergence of Papunya Tula as an important school of art has much to do with this longing for their land, expressed in courageous caravans across difficult terrain to remote places in the Central and Western deserts to re-establish their original homelands around their ngurra. Their art expresses a love of place we can sense in the physical exertions and sacrifices of their outstation movement - the establishment of ngurra in remote places throughout the Pintupi, Luritja and Western Desert homelands. And that is the public secret of the Papunya Tula style: these paintings are themselves ritual invocations of ancient peoples and places which are sensed and revered by the present-day inheritors of these art traditions. It is not coincidental that the styles of Papunya Tula artists changed and adapted so quickly and eventually gained acceptance in the fine art galleries of distant cities. The intensity and vibrance of the artists’ longing for homeland, the agony of their exile, and the joy of returning are expressed clearly and forthrightly in their distinctive style. At the same time, the starkness and abstractness speak a language which is grasped by audiences everywhere: Pintupi art signs an intimate belonging to spiritual landscapes inherited from marvellous ancestors who humanised the heart of the Australian continent. Mythology and a profound sovereignty are thus joined in Pintupi signification to produce the images that fascinate and entice audiences from far away.

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I once knew a gentle, funny Pintupi man, whose name (one among several) was Pinta Pinta, or butterfly. He liked to wear stalks of brilliant red desert flowers arranged through the hole in his septum to remind him of the beauty of his country and for the sheer enjoyment of wearing lovely flowers. It would be a mistake to believe that only Aboriginal women are concerned with supposedly mundane vegetation, while men, it is purported, are concerned with more sacred issues such as the stories and the adventures of the ancestors themselves. The deserts flower briefly after rain, vast fields of gentle, pretty blossoms emerging from the soil as if by magic, then disappearing soon afterwards. These breathtakingly beautiful but fleeting events are as much a legacy from the ancestors as are the waterholes, ranges, and other tangible, permanent features of the landscape. Many dreaming stories celebrate these ephemeral events of the ‘natural’ world. Yiparinye songs remind us of the incarnation of the yiparinye as caterpillar moths, fluttering northwards along the sandy riverbed. Ngarrinyin initiation song verses convey the power of the gracefully athletic motion of the wings of cockatoos as they land on tree branches. In other stories, the crackle of mud in dry waterholes is sung to remind us of the pain and hardship when there is no rain. These verses also bring to mind the experiences of the ancestors, linking our lives with their primeval world where their adventures were bold and dangerous, and when the processes of life-giving and life-forming were established to enable our ‘being’ in this world. The fascination with the cosmological view of the Pintupi and other Central and Western Desert groups lies as much in the gender-specific separation of roles, the relative equality of men and women and the subtle differences in their representations of the Pintupi homelands, as in the awe-inspiring engagement of the Pintupi with harsh and intimidating environments. How they have transformed the idea of their landscapes as being harsh and intimidating to representations of the spiritual bodies and adventures of people who lived long before them, through stark, yet visceral, iconography, is the key contribution of this tiny group of people living on the edges of the global art market. Pintupi ideas about belonging to a place and engaging with the flora and fauna with which they share these wondrous landscapes, combined with their vivid iconography of a glowing arid landscape, have crossed the boundaries of post-modernism with its attendant cynicism and ultra-relativism. The Pintupi have persuaded their audiences of the authenticity of their emplacement and embodiment in spiritual landscapes. The way that Aboriginal people perceive landscapes is rather like the way that someone with a reasonable astronomical knowledge in western culture perceives the night sky resplendent with shining stars. As one looks at the stars, there is the simultaneous sense of perceiving something that is present, the view itself sensed visually at that time, and of perceiving things that are past, the stars whose deaths many thousands of light years ago are perceived as the twinkling radiances in the black depths of space. What I see in the sky are ancient traces of light emanating across vast distances from giant bodies of fire. And at the same time, there is the knowledge behind these perceptions that we can only know these things because of our understanding of time as past-present-future. The future is implicated in our understanding of the past and the present. These temporalities are inscribed in our being as fields of experience, memorialised as the landscapes we know.

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Notes 1

K .C . and L .E . H a n sen ,

Pintupi/Luritja Dictionary,

3rd e d itio n , In stitu te fo r A b o r ig in a l

D e v e lo p m e n t, A lic e S p r in g s, 1 9 9 2 , pp. 1 4 8 - 9 . 2

Ibid.

3

Ib id ., p. 8 7 .

4

Ibid.

5

Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, place, and politics among Western Desert Aborigines, S m ith so n ia n In stitu tio n P ress, W a sh in g to n . 1 9 8 6 , p. 5 9 . F red M y ers,

6

Ib id ., p. 166.

7

S .S . C a s e y ,

The Fate of Place: A philosophical history,

U n iv e r s ity o f C a lifo r n ia P r e ss,

B e r k e le y , C a lifo r n ia , 1 9 9 6 , p. 19. 8

Ib id ., p. 2 6 .

9

Ib id ., p. 2 7 .

10 M y ers, "

Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self,

p. 166.

Ibid.

12 A . T a y lo r , ‘T h e S u n A lw a y s S h in e s in Perth: A p o s t-c o lo n ia l g e o g r a p h y o f id e n tity ,

Australian Geographical Studies, V o l. 3 8 , N o . 1, 2 0 0 0 , p p. 2 7 - 3 5 . Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, media and technological horizons, A lle n & U n w in , S y d n e y , 1 9 9 4 , p. 153. m e m o r y and p la c e ’,

13 E ric M ic h a e ls , ‘ B a d A b o r ig in a l A r t’ ( 1 9 8 8 ) , in 14 Ib id ., p. 155. 15 Ib id ., p. 152. 16 M y ers,

Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self p. Bad Aboriginal Art, p. 1 5 5 .

17 M ic h a e ls ,

166.

8 Myth and History Peter Sutton

In this essay1 I discuss a particular aspect of the role of myth in the older Aboriginal traditions and the role of history in the construction of cultural identity by present-day Aboriginal people, particularly those in urban and rural centres. This is followed by an analysis of conflict between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal historians over the domain of Aboriginal history. Finally, the chapter shows in what ways traditional myth and urban Aboriginal history both resemble each other and differ. Myth as History In 1976 Hiatt published a summary of earlier interpretations of the purpose of Australian myths. He suggested that these fell into four main categories, none of them mutually incompatible: myth as history, myth as charter, myth as dream, and myth as ontology. Under the heading of myth as history he summarised the views of Mathew, Ehrlich, Spencer and Gillen, Roheim, Tindale and others. Their conjectures included the views that myths recorded the migrations of different ‘races’, ancient customs and forms of social organisation no longer practised, cataclysms of nature and environmental changes, and the previous existence of extinct or absent animal species. Hiatt (1976, 16) felt, however that for the purpose of categorising the then present and future trends of Australian myth interpretation, ‘probably “Myth as history” could be closed down, at least for the time being, and the space used instead for “miscellaneous influences’” . Furthermore, a new box would have to be opened up to accommodate the Dutch and French structuralists, and certain compartments would need to make room for more eclectic approaches (Hiatt 1976, 16-17). While accepting the usual arguments for abandoning speculative historicist interpretations of traditional myth, the category should be retained. This is not because several scholars have continued to fancy that Aboriginal myths record, far From Peter Sutton, ‘Myth in History and History as Myth’, in Ian Keen ed., Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled Australia', Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988, pp. 251-265. Reprinted with permission of the author and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

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example, a 1793 eclipse (Tindale 1974, 135), the creation of crater lakes 10,000 years ago (Dixon 1972, 29), possible memories of extinct megafauna (Tindale 1974, 119; Flood 1983, 145^47), ice age land bridges (Dixon 1972, 29), and even the arrival of Homo sapiens in Sahul (Flood 1983, 29-30). There are other, less ethnographicalIy and logically shaky grounds for seeing myths as transformed history. Hiatt (1976, 16) takes the general view that Australian myths were best understood as ‘proto-analytic insights into the stuff that dreams are made o f. In conjunction with initiation ceremonies they were ‘a form of applied psychology in which, to put it perhaps too boldly, principles underlying the nightmare are transposed to a conscious and collective level for the purposes of social integration and adaptation’ (Hiatt 1975, 16). The psychological experiences of the growing child are thus a key element in the construction of Aboriginal cosmogony through their projection as myth and their enactment as ceremony. In this work, Hiatt leans heavily toward a psychoanalytic approach to myth and is sceptical about most other approaches. Stanner concentrated on myth as ontology, and R.M. and C.H. Bemdt are identified by Hiatt as the key proponents of a functionalist view of myth as moral and social charter (see Bemdt 1970). The last, in particular, was a view he was at some pains to refute (Hiatt 1976, 5-7). It is a view still occasionally espoused by other scholars (e.g. Yengoyan 1979, 406; see also discussion in Swain 1985, 111-14 of the ‘charter hypothesis’ of literature). Hiatt again attacked the charter approach in a paper given at a meeting of consultants to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Aboriginal Customary Law Reference (Hiatt 1983). He said that while certain anthropological authorities backed the view that Aboriginal law and morality had their foundations in religion, and it was a view readily appreciated by what he calls ‘the ordinary White Australian’, in his opinion it is false. He then gives evidence for his view, mainly citing myths which could hardly be interpreted as moral tales. He adds, ‘it seems to me that the really serious content of Aboriginal religion from the point of view of law is the mythological ratification of land ownership’ (Hiatt 1983, 10; see further discussion in Jones and Sutton 1986). This last statement can be seen as adding a whole new category of interpretations to those Hiatt had established nearly ten years earlier. I suspect, in passing, that this development is related to the involvement of anthropologists in detailed land ownership studies in Cape York and in land claims research in the Northern Territory since the late 1970s. This is myth as charter, but as charter for rights and obligations of possession, control and custodianship, not as charter for a moral system. In a sense it is also myth as history, since so many places in the Aboriginal landscape have specific mythic creation or transformation stories characterised as taking place in a distant past, or at least in a logically prior dimension of the timeless. Significantly, the entities which are called Dreamings over so much of north and central Australia are instead called ‘Stories’ in a large area of northeast Australia, and ‘Histories’ in northern South Australia. Their sacred sites are called Story Places and History Places respectively (cf. von Sturmer 1985, 263). There is no need to see the narrative details of the myths simply as imagery which is based on the psychology of childhood and dreams, and then applied to

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landscape in an arbitrary way. There is a strong argument for seeing site-related Aboriginal myths - and most of them are so related - not merely as invented pasts, but as in many cases a combination of invention and memory. This hypothesis is ostensibly easier to sustain, on the basis of my own field experience, in northcentral Australia than it is in Cape York Peninsula. In one area of north-central Australia, the paths taken by certain Dreamings in their travels closely match the residential life-histories and ceremonial histories of certain key men associated with those Dreamings. In most of these cases the shifts of the Dreamings from one area to another also parallel very closely the history of their owners’ succession to site interests held in the recent past by others who have either failed to produce agnatic descendants or who have been politically eclipsed. These cases recall Howitt’s speculation regarding the eastern Lake Eyre Aboriginal traditions, that the pinnarus, living leaders’ ‘bosses’ were the mura-muras, the patrifiliative ceremonial totemic beings at Dreamings (Howitt and Siebert 1904, 129). Some of the more modem literature has contained similar suggestions. Strehlow (1970, 95) says that the 400 mile route of certain Honey Ant mythical beings in central Australia could ‘surely be explained most readily by assuming an historical basis for events described in the corresponding...myth’, although he offers no fine-grained evidence of how such a transformation from event to religious narrative took place. Worsley also indulges in what he calls ‘conjectural history’ in suggesting that human migration-routes in the Groote Eylandt area have become embodied in certain clan myths, but he also offers some ‘probably historical material’ as supporting evidence (Worsley 1967, 148). In one case I have studied in north-central Australia an individual was marginalised by the movement of others, justified by Dreaming travels. In another case I am certain that the decision to allot a certain set of sites to a group with previous primary land attachments some distance away has amounted to the superimpositon of the interests of this group, in a politically and ceremonially dominant position, onto those already held in the area by three other groups. I am sure of this case because two other anthropologists have left evidence of the relevant land tenure situation as it was in the 1930s (Stanner 1934; Strehlow 1938). Moreover, I was present for a critical afternoon on which this case of succession was established by means of a long discussion of mythology. A new, territorially expanded version of the key relevant myth was floated at a meeting of senior men who, after some debate, settled on ‘one story’ and ratified the correct version. This version had been publicly stated for at least three years before this time. The meeting appeared mainly to function as a ratification, or at least a speeding up, of a change already well advanced. A combination of the earlier documentary evidence and my own observations, supports the view that one of the roles of mythology in that region is to provide an idiom, a legislative code in the third person, in which relationships between known people, their residential histories, their pursued claims to land attachments, and their totemic ‘selves’ must not only be ratified but negotiated. The individuals concerned seem to be viewed as though they were primary instantiations of the

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totemic group, somewhat like the ‘kinship I’ and ‘heroic I’ reported for some more hierarchical societies (see Sahlins 1983, 523, 536). Malinowski stressed the post hoc ratification of social change by means of myths, although in the Australian case it is necessary to add, I think, that myths go further than enshrining the status quo — they are also, in real speech situations, a code in which changes in the status quo are effected by the interlocutors and their audience. Malinowski (1926, 264) said, for example, W h a te v er th e h isto rica l rea lity o f their u n reco rd ed p ast m ay b e, m y th s se r v e to c o v e r certain in c o n s is te n c ie s crea ted by h isto rica l e v e n ts, rather than to record th e se e v e n ts e x a c tly .

T h e m y th s a ss o c ia te d w ith th e spread o f p o w erfu l su b -c la n s s h o w o n certain

p o in ts a fid e lity to life in that th e y record fa cts in c o n sis te n t w ith o n e an oth er.

The

in c id e n ts b y w h ic h th is in c o n sis te n c y is o b liter a ted , i f n ot h id d e n , are m o st lik e ly fic titio u s; w e h a v e se e n certain m y th s vary a c c o r d in g to th e lo c a lity in w h ic h th e y are to ld . In o th e r c a s e s the in c id e n ts b o lste r up n o n -e x is te n t c la im s and righ ts.

In the area of north Australia with which 1 am concerned here, senior men, at least, spend a lot of time not only discussing but debating mythology. One such debate took place, briefly, before the Aboriginal Land Commissioner in the early 1980s, in the middle of evidence during a land claim. This was not a disagreement of innocent and differing memories, nor a case of ‘cultural breakdown’ or ‘decaying traditions’. It was, as such debate often is, systematically normal and, for want of a better word, traditional. This same region, like others reported in the literature (eg Munn 1964, 92 on the Warlpiri; Munn 1970, 146 on the Pitjantjatjara), is one where men not infrequently refer in ordinary conversation to Dreamings as ‘me’, ‘my father’, or ‘my father’s father’. In the third person they may refer to particular Dreamings by the names of living people (cf similar Maori practice, Sahlins 1983, 523). One of my first gaffes in working in this area was, after being given an account of how various men and their fathers used to meet at a certain site to hold ceremonies, to ask in what season of the year they had done so. The men speaking to me had been referring to mythic rather than personally remembered events, and my question caused some confusion for a moment. On reflection it seems, though, that the question was not as wide of the mark as it may have seemed. Of Dreamings, men in that area often say, ‘He was a man then, you know’. Dreamings are people in their other aspect; people are Dreamings in their human aspect. Narratives occasionally blur the person-Dreaming distinction. This approach seems strongest in the wider central Australian region. It is far less pronounced in coastal western Cape York Peninsula, where it is rather easier to maintain an analytical distinction between myth and history. Curiously, though, this is an area where historical narratives are often told, involving remembered human kin, but where the content, form and nature of delivery of the narratives, as well as their political import, are highly similar to those of religious myths. There are many contrasts between desert culture and Cape York culture in this domain, and I will outline some of them briefly in order to avoid supporting the equation of desert culture with ‘Aboriginal culture’, an equation still often encountered but one which is erroneous.

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In western Cape York Peninsula there is far less identification of site-specific mythic beings with the spirits of the relevant site-owning group members than one finds in central Australian systems. There simply is no uniform relation between clan sites and clan totems. While a clan’s totems are referred to as ‘dear father’s father’s’ (puul + waya) or as ‘sibling’ (kooenhiy), depending on language, the sites containing the essences of a clan’s totems may in many instances lie in the estates of distant and different clans or in no known estate at all. Conversely, a large proportion of site totems have no counterpart in the totems which identify their owners’ clan. Furthermore, few myths in the region yield ‘Dreaming tracks’ which pass through long ordered series at sites; of those which take this form, few could be said to effectively define the territorial interests of particular descent groups. Relative human sedentism and the sedentism of mythic characters are rather well matched. In spite of this, mythic events are, as elsewhere in drier Australia, highly site-specific. But rights to publicly recount (perform) myths, at least within one broad regional population of many hundreds, seem relatively unrestricted. People are extremely relaxed about telling stories from neighbours’ countries, as a normal after-dinner adult pastime. This is not the same in the areas of desert Australia with which I am familiar. In western Cape York there are song genres (e.g. Pilthai Thaatharam) which have no associated mythology or mythological site reference, and many site-specific myths which have no associated ceremonial songs. Finally, the proportion of totemic sites in Cape York Peninsula which lack any associated narrative mythology seems extremely high by comparison with inland Australia, in spite of their designation in English as Story Places. History as Myth There is a category of Aboriginal stories that is distinguishable from Dreaming myths, at least in most instances. One of their distinguishing marks is that key figures are identified as particular kin of the living, usually with remembered personal names (including English names), and they are not generalised ancestral beings or uniformly agnatic forebears of clan members, for example. One may call them historical narratives but this has its drawbacks, for some such stories are interwoven with events of the Dreaming (e.g. Goetz and Sutton 1986). Even living people have associated with them experiences which are merged, in the telling, with Dreaming encounters, at least in inland desert Australia. (In western Cape York Peninsula people frequently encounter ghosts and monsters, but do not as readily interweave mythic identities and remembered actual kin.) Even where Dreaming events and characters are absent and the narrative may be labelled more historical than mythological, the approach to historical evidence is essentially the same as that in myth. The narrator constructs a version of the facts that may have some relationship, even a recognised one, with events recorded in documentary sources, but it is unconstrained by those sources. This is exemplified well by the Roper River case presented by Morphy and Morphy (1984), and by accounts of a visit to the upper Victoria River system by Captain Cook (P. McConvell personal communication; Rose 1984), a well-documented

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historical person, but one whose logs make no mention of inland travel in Australia. Another case is the popular account of Dutch exploration of Cape York Peninsula, documented for the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, which Aurukun people believe took place in the life-times of ancestors who lived roughly between 1870 and 1950. In this case a mission superintendent is said to have brought to Aurukun a book recounting the Dutch visits, and I have put forward the hypothesis that this written version has been interwoven with selective memory of actual events (Kamtin and Sutton 1986). In other cases, biblical myths have been superimposed on local landscape by Aboriginal story tellers. Noah’s Ark is found in part of Western Australia (Kolig 1980) and the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth occurred at Nambucca Heads in New South Wales (Calley 1964; Sutton 1983). These instances bring to mind relevant generalisations of Malinowski (1926, 284): T h e h isto rica l c o n sid e r a tio n o f m yth is in te restin g , th erefore, in that it s h o w s that m yth , taken a s a w h o le , ca n n o t b e so b e r d isp a s sio n a te h istory, sin c e it is a lw a y s m a d e ad h o c to fu lfil a certain s o c io lo g ic a l fu n c tio n , to g lo r ify a certain g rou p , or to j u s tify an a n o m a lo u s statu s. h isto r y ,

T h e s e c o n sid e r a tio n s s h o w u s a lso that to the n a tiv e im m e d ia te

se m i-h isto r ic

le g e n d , and

u n m ix ed

m yth

flo w

in to

one

an oth er,

form

a

c o n tin u o u s se q u e n c e , and fu lfil the sa m e s o c io lo g ic a l fu n ctio n . A n d th is b rin g s u s o n c e m o re to ou r o rig in a l co n te n tio n that th e rea lly im portan t th in g a b o u t th e m yth is its ch aracter o f a r e tr o sp e ctiv e, ever-p resen t, liv e actu a lity .

It is to a

n a tiv e n eith e r a fic titio u s story, nor an a c c o u n t o f a d ead past; it is a sta tem e n t o f a b ig g e r reality still p a rtia lly a liv e .

With those comments in mind (but with a critical sense of the limits of dispassionate sobriety!) I want now to move the discussion from traditions that have come down in a long line from the Aboriginal cultural past to a related set of cultural innovations. History and the Construction of Identity The last two decades of cultural reconstruction in rural and urban Australia have been characterised by a search for roots and history, attempts to revitalise certain elements of what is perceived as traditional culture, efforts by Aborigines to control Aboriginal studies and the teaching of Aboriginal culture as domains of paid work, and the emergence of a new form of Aboriginal intellectuality. The last of these is perhaps the most complex and elusive; it also pervades the others, as attempts are made to have it serve as their controlling ideology. In its most distinctively evolved form, this new intellectuality is both reflexive and inventive. It requires occasional rituals of public speaking, but it is only identifiable with difficulty as being in a direct line of descent from traditional Aboriginal intellectuality, which is so concerned with formal performance in its public expressions. The practitioners of the new intellectuality are concerned centrally with constructing a metaphysic of identity. They promote a belief in

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inherited and inherent Aboriginal powers of perception and understanding, and in historically constituted contemporary identity. A number of people engaged in this activity, which is part of a general Aboriginal cultural revitalisation, have spoken of it essentially as a process of self-realisation: ‘We didn’t know who we were’; or ‘I had to find out who 1 was’. This movement should be placed in historical context. For some decades before the 1960s there was a long period of real if partial and gradual assimilation to the dominant Anglo-Australian culture, if not everywhere then certainly in much of Australia. By assimilation I mean that many of the cultural changes experienced by Aborigines have been toward, rather than away from, the European Australian lifestyle. Aboriginal culture thus reached a point where many people lived, at least superficially, more like Europeans than like traditional Aborigines (cf. Barwick 1964; Beckett 1964). Apart from a resurgence of ceremonial activity in the Great Depression in northern New South Wales, for example (see Elkin 1975-76, 147), it was not really until the 1970s that there seems to have been a sudden wave of realisations amounting to the view that assimilation did not necessarily result in absorption, total sameness or disappearance. This view is now dominant, and is facilitating assimilation to the dominant white-collar professional Australian culture more successfully than official assimilationist policies of the past, which were based on an expectation of absorption. Particularly since the 1970s, official sponsorship of Aboriginal culture and the gradual removal of public policies of assimilation have lent support to a development whereby it is no longer exceptional for Aborigines to explicitly proclaim their distinct cultural identity. Much of the ideological push for this development, as well as much of its early rhetoric and techniques of public demonstration, was absorbed from the black rights movements of the USA (Pearson and Cocks 1982), and received added pushes from the general recognition of a Fourth World component in modem states, the multiculturalism phenomenon, and a heightened awareness of minorities generally. These have been international developments. (See Keesing and Tonkinson 1982 on island Melanesia for another example.) At the same time, the last twenty years has also been a period of unprecedented incorporation of Aboriginal people into pockets of the Australian economy and its administrative structures, mainly in the service sector and associated activities. The terms of this incorporation probably could not have been predicted thirty years ago. To maximise access to this arena of incorporation one must proclaim, not suppress, one’s Aboriginal identity. There is, of course, a catch. In exchange for special recognition, jobs and earmarked funds, many Aboriginal people have been willing to knuckle down to the nine-to-five requirements of the bureaucracy, although somewhat loose approximations to official hours and performance levels are tolerated in many cases. The stock in trade of these Aboriginal employees has had to be not only an ‘ability to communicate effectively with Aboriginal people’, as the job advertisements put it, but also a committed combination of sameness and difference. To get and hold the job one has had to possess or learn many basic skills and attitudes required of

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public servants in an industrial state, but at the same time one has had to be self-identified as ‘different’. In a minority of cases this difference-from-others may be largely at the diacritic level - that is, one’s distinctive Aboriginally may consist to a large extent of repeatedly asserting it. In such instances a pressure to evolve a distinctive intellectuality can be said to have arisen partly as a result of reflection, as well as of debate, on the problem of justifying demands for special consideration and powers in the absence of conspicuous evidence of individual disadvantage. This pressure also comes from exposure - for some, an exposure intensified and subsidised by special educational programmes - to non-Aboriginal intellectual traditions. As the ‘melting pot’ and the colonial ‘worker’s paradise’ have given way to the replacement dreams of perpetual ethnic diversity and culture-as-industry, it has become a matter of shame, rather than pride, to have severed the bonds to one’s tradition. If the tradition you had in the past was taken from you, you must reconstruct one. Even in the majority of cases, where Aboriginal identity is much more than merely diacritical, the sense of cultural disinheritance is strong and the move to reconstruction is rapidly growing. Urban conditions, in which Aboriginal contact with non-Aborigines is perhaps at its most intense, are not inhibiting but possibly even enhancing these processes. Gale and Wundersitz (1982) have found, for example, that the importance of kinship in Aboriginal residential arrangements in Adelaide is not decreasing but increasing. I have already mentioned the role of contact with international political and cultural movements, and of contact with mainstream Australian education, in the rise of the new Aboriginal intellectuality. Non-Aboriginal sponsorship of the relevant ideologies has played an important role in their espousal by Aborigines. Another important role in this process is now also being played by urban Aboriginal contact with the old Aboriginal intellectuality. Through employment in remote Aboriginal agencies, and in some cases through participation as claimants or witnesses in land claim tribunals, Aborigines from ‘settled’ Australia have in the last ten years come into intensified relationships with other Aborigines from more traditional Aboriginal cultural backgrounds. Literate Aboriginal people from coastal Queensland cities, for example, have become liaison officers, clerks, researchers and receptionists in land council bureaux, legal aid offices and remote servicing agencies. Adopted and welfare-reared urban people in Darwin, Katherine, Adelaide and elsewhere have traced lost links to parents and other relations in the bush. These developments have required a new form of cultural adaptation, a process of learning to live a lifestyle containing both the new and the old, and to use unfamiliar language; for example, it has required urban Aborigines to deal with their stereotypes of bush Aborigines as wild and dirty. For the more traditional people, simultaneously, these contacts have sometimes required them to take on a radically new conception of urban Aborigines. This set of changes amounts to an incipient trend toward breakdown of both social closure and cultural distinctions between urban and remote Aboriginal people. The communication networks of the individuals concerned are linking

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Aborigines to each other on a continental scale to a new degree. It is still not uncommon in a large city, for example, for long term urban people to have a relatively restricted personal acquaintance with other Aborigines. Several such people have told me, ‘The Aborigines I know have mostly been just my own [extended] family’ (cf. Gale and Wundersitz 1982, 83). Occupational and geographical mobility are changing this. Such changes, especially as new kinship links become established through parenthood, are contributing toward a pan-Aboriginal connectedness that has been lacking in at least the recent past, except in the realm of political rhetoric. It has been the new material conditions of life, underpinning new forms of consciousness and new personal linkages, and many of them won by an originally political activism, that have begun the process of construction of the continent­ wide Aboriginal consciousness which political proselytising alone has failed to achieve. The failure of attempts to revive traditional practices such as initiations, with perhaps two exceptions (Borsboom and Dagmar 1984, 47 on the Gascoyne District, Western Australia; R. Kelly, personal communication 1986, on northern New South Wales), is to be contrasted with the vigorous and widespread Aboriginal interest in discovering and publishing the histories of families and communities from the longer ‘settled’ parts of Australia. Scores of individuals and groups are now researching their own pasts, both through written and photographic records and the collecting of old people’s memories. The desire to unearth or reconstruct genealogies and mission histories is strong. Much of this work is officially encouraged and funded, for example by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, the National Estate grants programme, and by other bodies such as the state museums. While a proportion of the research or writing involved is carried out by non-Aborigines, and there is a certain amount of concealed ghost-writing, Aboriginal interest is certainly vigorous at a grass-roots level. Usually intensely local in focus, the Aboriginal history movement is nevertheless sweeping the whole of urban and rural Australia, and has even reached southern Cape York and the Kimberley. As one Aboriginal colleague has emphasised to me, this type of cultural selfrealisation has in part been made possible by knowledge of English, by literacy, and by interaction with academically trained non-Aboriginal researchers (R. Kelly, personal communication 1983). Yet these have been facilitating factors, not determining ones. A particularly important factor has been an emerging new Aboriginal intellectuality with its own world view. In traditional Aboriginal culture the historic past, including genealogical memory beyond two or three generations, is usually quickly forgotten and often actually suppressed, except perhaps as it is selectively maintained for a time or transformed into myth (Stanner 1966, 139-40; Sharp 1970, 386; Maddock 1982, 36; Morphy and Morphy 1984, 461). But the new approach to the past is different. Written, photographic and taped records are seen as highly useful in history making, no matter how far back in time they go. Archaeological records are also used, and denied, depending on who is using them. For some, radio-carbon dating has established a powerful political weapon in the fight to have Aboriginal prior occupancy of Australia recognised. I heard ‘the Dreamtime’ identified as ‘40,000

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years ago’ one day near Kempsey, a contrast with more traditional views which combine a view of the Dreaming as the timeless present with a sense of the ‘Creative Period’ happening about three generations before the present. Urban Aboriginal history construction is a statement, moral and political, about the suffering, resilience and persistence of a colonised and displaced people, but it is also a search for a background and underpinning to what must now be assumed to be an indefinite state of future difference. In this sense it is the creation, as much as the explanation, of a separate identity. In these terms urban history construction is remarkably similar in function to the Dreaming. The past is also the present, as one of its aspects. The past is not transcendent or remote, but underpins and echoes present and continuing reality. Just as the Dreaming is the person, in one facet of its complex nature, the Aboriginal person is likewise the historical Aborigine - not merely the survivor but the embodiment of the scarifying processes of conquest, dispossession, resettlement, missionisation and welfareism. In this view the contemporary white Australian can sometimes also be defined and identified as the historic coloniser, not merely as their descendant or beneficiary. This became particularly clear to me late one night as I walked along Adelaide’s Hindley Street and came upon the following scene. A policeman was kneeling on the back of an Aboriginal man, handcuffing him. An incident of violence had just occurred. Other Aboriginal people were looking on; most of them were vocal. Some were boys in their early teens and younger. My friends and I arrived in time to hear one of the young Aboriginal boys shout at the policeman, ‘Captain Cook cunt!’ A Clash of Views The emergence of an urban Aboriginal intelligentsia, however, loosely interlinked and internally competitive, at the core of which have been people with an interest in history, has been accompanied by a clash of their views with those of academics. Some Aboriginal people in urban Australia believe that non-Aborigines are inherently incapable of understanding Aboriginal history and, therefore, should leave the field. ‘Our heritage, your playground’ has become a slogan for this camp (although see Kelly 1982 for a contrary Aboriginal view). Similar attacks have been made on anthropologists - I was told recently by an urban Aboriginal woman, ‘You just wouldn’t know or understand [traditional culture] because you’re not Aboriginal.’ These views sometimes rest on an explicitly expounded theory of racially inherited ability which resembles genetic determinism and, therefore, racism. The inborn-capacity theory, unlike the attack on non-Aboriginal appropriation of Aboriginal cultural property allegedly entailed in Aboriginal studies, is possibly an exception to the generalisation that the source of ideas among the Aboriginal urban intelligentsia has largely been external. It has, though, struck a sympathetic chord among disaffected European Australians, and has given Aboriginal culture, perhaps for the first time, an exportable form. Yet from the defensible (if ex

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cathedra) ‘We Aborigines can get the feel of things [Aboriginal]’ (Moriarty 1969, 76) to the hippie paparazzi grooving on Dreamtime vibes (see Simpfendorfer 1980), there seems to be a descent into kitsch. Between some of the urban Aboriginal modem mystics and the counterculture movement, cultural appropriation appears to have been mutual. Other clashes have been over matters of tact and reflect a conflict of views on the nature of historical or anthropological evidence. On one occasion an anthropologist was publicly attacked by some urban Aboriginal seminar participants for referring to what he regarded as the historical inaccuracy of oral traditions about a voyage of Captain Cook in 1770 (C. Anderson, personal communication). As in the Victoria River case cited above, these traditions had Cook visiting places which his log does not say he visited. The exchange became heated when Aboriginal participants defended the truth of the oral traditions against the non-Aboriginal documentary approach to evidence. On another occasion, an Aboriginal participant in the Australian Law Reform Commission’s seminar on customary law in 1988 vigorously opposed the views of the anthropologist Les Hiatt, who had been arguing against the view that Aboriginal law and morality were based on myth and religion. Hiatt’s view seems to have been interpreted as an attack on urban Aboriginal views of traditional society. In particular, ‘owning’ the Aboriginal past seems to have been at issue, at least in the mind of Hiatt’s opponent (McBryde 1985; Donaldson and Donaldson 1985, 19-20). Although Aboriginal historians represent a range of attitudes, those at one extreme of the spectrum see research and publication on the Aboriginal past as a claim to a political and occupational owning of that past, something they say is the exclusive property of Aborigines. Hiatt was making universalist observations in what some others would prefer to see as a territorialist context. This was a clash not merely of interpretations of fact, but of cultural standpoints and power groups. The fact that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal historians often have different approaches to verification, for example, is sometimes interpreted as arising from different levels of intellectual or scholarly quality. Under the received canons of objectivist method taught at universities, this may be true. In that sense, and where approaches to empirical rigour do differ fundamentally, calling both approaches ‘history’ may be misleading. It cannot be assumed that this ambiguity is either innocent or unintended. Without this single umbrella label it is difficult to argue that the two approaches compete for a single precious space, that of legitimate authority on the Aboriginal past. Although proponents of both approaches have argued for dominance or exclusive possession of this space, neither have argued for its existence. This is curious, since a moment’s reflection shows that it is clearly problematic. The creation of problematic single spaces is not confined to those concerned with Australia since colonisation. Archaeologists have been somewhat puzzled, even rocked, to find that some urban Aborigines express resentment at the use of the term ‘prehistory’ to cover Aboriginal archaeology before the time of written records. Although the term was never intended as a put-down, it has been interpreted as such by people who resent the juxtaposition of 200 years o f ‘history’ with 40,000 years of ‘prehistory’. And the tactical shock value of defining history

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as the total past, rather than as a documentary time span, has been great. It is also in the heavily lexicalist tradition or urban Aboriginal rhetoric.2 Some urban Aborigines now believe that the Aboriginal people originated in Australia, angrily denying the assertion that they migrated here from Asia in the Pleistocene.3 These beliefs are not the some as those of the older mythic traditions, especially as they have arisen in opposition to a fundamentally contrary schema rather than simply in juxtaposition to an array of like explanations, as Aboriginal myths did in the past. It is now time for anthropologists, historians and archaeologists to move more rapidly toward understanding this ideological conflict instead of merely playing their assigned roles in it. In this case, understanding involves more than personal acquaintance with proponents of both sides of any particular argument. It involves delving into the cultural and sociological origins of the debate. We should try to understand it just as we would if we observed it happening between two groups in another culture. One element of such an understanding must bring to consciousness the philosophical underpinnings of the two contrasting views. There needs, for example, to be an analysis of what constraints are perceived as defining one’s ability to understand another culture. The relationship between world view and the tests one applies for assessing the factuality or supportability of assertions needs to be compared for both sets of disputants. Another element in such an understanding must be a grasp of the competitive relationship between those scholars, bureaucrats and activists who are Aboriginal and those who are not. This is more than just a question of salaried and grant-funded jobs, although the matter of job competition cannot be ignored. It is importantly a question of competition for control of the construction of information about Aboriginal culture in the public domain in Australian society. In Sansom’s (1980) terms, it is competition for ownership of ‘the word’ on Aboriginal history in books, educational institutions, museums and the media. To represent this totally expectable activity as a simple contest between Aborigines and whites, or between academics and non-academics, or between a right wing and a left, would be to misrepresent it. The alignments are both more numerous and less conveniently prefabricated than these. Because a perception of history is now powerfully constitutive of urban Aboriginal identity, it has on occasion given rise to perhaps unexpectedly high levels of emotion and to practical efforts to exclude non-Aborigines from the field in recent years. The domain being contested is not, for many Aboriginal people, a set of propositions about the world ‘out there’; it is a dimension of what they increasingly perceive themselves to be. From a bird’s-eye view - that privileged position none of us ever really attains - the domain of Aboriginal history will necessarily be seen to include this identity construction, but it must also include the of scholarly documentary work, and the clashes - and collaborations - of the various participants in the field. There is something about bird’s-eye views which confers on them a highly persuasive power, even where they may be most closely identified with the ideology of a ruling culture and, for that reason, reviled. Interpretations which account intelligibly for all other interpretations, as well as for the social roles of their purveyors, have a built-in advantage in any debate.

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Conclusion In a number of ways, traditional Aboriginal approaches to myth and remembered events, and the newer Aboriginal understandings of history, resemble each other. Neither is heavily committed to the canons of empiricism. Both are heavily constitutive of identity, and charged with strong feelings. Both are highly local in reference. Both focus on identities and events without giving central importance to generalisations about processes or external forces. Both reflect mixtures of, on the one hand, the social solidarity of the group and, on the other, social conflicts and boundaries. Both are linked to competition for economic and political benefits. Both constitute an interactive code for re-negotiating the status quo. Both emphasise history as the property of particular people rather than as the province of everyone. And they emphasise past (or eternally prior) states of existence that bear tenuous (or only superficial) resemblances to the known and physically observable present. The two are also different in several ways. They have divergent approaches to both absolute time and relative sequencing. They treat documentary sources with radically different degrees of interest, but with not too dissimilar degrees of scepticism when occasion demands. They differ fundamentally on the acceptability of the specialised occupational role of the historian-of-others, and of the linked cultural domination, political incorporation and economic entrenchment entailed in such a role as a paid professional in modem Australia. They differ radically in the degrees to which they attempt to account for, and therefore to intellectually encapsulate and come to terms with, the existence, arrival and dominance of nonAborigines in Australia (cf. Sharp 1970, 395-96). Doubtless these lists of comparisons can be extended. On balance, 1 think the similarities outweigh the differences.

N o tes 1

T h is p a p er w a s p r e se n te d at th e 1 9 8 5 C o n fe r e n c e o f th e A u str a lia n A n th r o p o lo g ic a l S o c ie ty in D a rw in . I w ish to than k to f o llo w in g in d iv id u a ls fo r p e r so n a l c o m m u n ic a tio n s and c o m m e n ts o n a w ritten draft o f th e paper: C h risto p h er A n d e r s o n , P h ilip J o n e s, R a y K e lly , G a y n o r M a c d o n a ld and J a n ice N e w to n .

2

T h is m e th o d se e k s o u t k e y w o r d s ( ‘A b o r ig in a l’, ‘p r e h isto r y ’, ‘h a lf- c a s te ’, ‘in fo r m a n t’, ‘p r im itiv e ’, e tc .) and a tta ck s th eir u n w a n ted im p lic a tio n s in ord er to r e m o v e or r e p la c e th e m a s s y m b o ls o f o p p r e ss io n and w h ite in te lle c tu a l h e g e m o n y .

D e lib e r a te p u b lic

stu m b lin g o v e r lo n g or eru d ite E n g lis h w o r d s w e ll k n o w n to th e sp e a k e r is a n o th e r d e v ic e o f th e sa m e rh eto rica l sty le . 3

S e e B ra d y ( 1 9 8 3 , 1 4 - 1 6 ) fo r a sim ila r a c c o u n t o f C a n a d ia n In d ian r e s e n tm e n t o f th e ‘s e lf-s ty le d e x p e r t is e ’ o f a r c h a e o lo g is ts o n th e sa m e su b ject.

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PART 4: ART AND RELIGION

The essays in this section make clear that Aboriginal art can be used to affirm, celebrate, record and nurture the indigenous view of the world. And beyond the precincts of religion, paintings of the Central Desert and bark paintings of Arnhem Land serve as affirmations of social identity, of commerce, and of political engagement. Morphy’s essay tackles the matter of art among the Yolngu with broad bold brushstrokes. This is done through a close reading of three bark paintings in particular: two by a famous male painter, Narritjin Maymuru, and a third work by his daughter Nyapililngu Maymuru. From his analyses emerges a real sense of the complex connections among art, religion and knowledge and how control over religious knowledge among the Yolngu has changed since colonization—in that it has given women a more central role. Myer’s approach, similarly enriched by decades of exacting fieldwork, provides us with a challenging exploration of art, religion and ideology among the Pintupi of Central Australia. Specifically, Myers analyzes how a single Aboriginal painter, Linda Syddick, enters into a dialogue with a non-Aboriginal world to readjust herself and her Aboriginality. He peppers his ethnographic canvas with references to Christian myths, to E.T., and other unexpected sources of transcultural influence, to present us with a stunning account of cultural appropriation. Jenny Green amplifies many of the theoretical arguments presented by Morphy and Myers by offering us a judicious and accessible piece on one of Central Australia’s most prolific and well-known artists, the Anmatyerr woman Emily Kngwarreye. In the process, Green not only decodes many of the deeper meanings in Kngwarreye’s fecund work; she also traces the artist’s connections to the Land and Mythical Ancestors, and registers her exploration of stunningly new graphic techniques. Taken as a whole, these essays show us how well-known figurative and geometric designs of Aboriginal Australia, whether relying on the use of traditional or non-Aboriginal materials, can provide a direct link to religious knowledge of the past and the present. Bark painting, acrylics and batiks all tell stories that clarify the ties between the artists, the Ancestors, and an art market hungry for the vivid luminous motifs. FranQoise Dussart

9

Yolngu Art and the Creativity o f the Inside Howard Morphy

Introduction Yolngu art is both an important institution and one that exemplifies features of the structure of Yolngu society and the Yolngu system of knowledge. Paintings, dances, songs, and power names are collectively the mardayin, the “sacred law” through which knowledge of the ancestral past—the wangarr—is transmitted and re-enacted. Paintings are integral to the process of the transmission of the wangarr and also to the way in which it articulates with present structures and purposes. Yolngu art is in this respect, as Munn (1973: 5) following L6vi-Strauss has argued for the Warlpiri case, an ordering structure. As such, an analysis of the properties of the artistic system should reveal structural features of the articulating systems as well as demonstrating how the artistic system contributes to the way relationships are established between systems. From a Yolngu perspective paintings are not so much a means of representing the ancestral past as one dimension of the ancestral past: paintings are mardayin, they are wangarr miny'tji (ancestral designs) The ancestral past is both a metaphysical system that provides explanations for relations in the world by creating powers, values, origins, and destinies, and an integral part of the process of social categorization: relationships are recast to make them accord with the ideology of continuity with the ancestral past (see Myers 1986: 242). In keeping with those dual aspects of the ancestral past, Yolngu art provides a means of socializing people into a particular worldview in which certain themes become meaningful, in which certain values are created and by which certain things can be done. Yolngu art also provides a framework for ordering the relations between people, ancestors and land. However, the analyst must not carry these dualistic distinctions too far since the metaphysical and sociological value of paintings are not neatly parcelled out in Yolngu conceptualizations of them. For example, in talking about clan designs, people may say, “That is your ownership, that is your A revised version of ch. 13 of Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System o f Knowledge, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991. Reprinted with the permission of the author and Chicago University Press. Artwork reproduced with the permission of the Baku Larmgay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala.

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power,” implying that the designs are simultaneously objects of power and signs of ownership. In a society in which ancestral creativity underlies everything, ancestral creations inevitably become part of the way other things are defined. Paintings thus have this dual aspect of representing relationships between things and being integral to those relationships; the paintings, together with other mardayin components, set the terms in which things are going to be defined. Thus, a clan can best be defined as that set of people who hold a set of mardayin in common, and claims of ownership over land are linked to rights in and control of knowledge over mardayin. It is in processes such as these, processes involving the cultural definition of social categories, that structural continuity is produced. Paintings gain value and power through their incorporation in such a process, through being integral to the way in which a system (of clan-based gerontocracy) is reproduced and through being part of its ideological support. Paintings gain power because they are controlled by powerful individuals, because they are used to discriminate between different areas of owned land, because they are used to mark status, to separate the initiated from the uninitiated and men from women. Their use in sociopolitical contexts creates part of their value. However, their value is also conceptualized in other terms, in terms of their intrinsic properties. Von Sturmer (1987: 64) takes up this issue in an interesting discussion of the power of songs in western Cape York Peninsula. He is particularly concerned with the relationship between songs and the personal power of the singer and concludes his discussion by defining the issue in the following terms: “Is it the song which allows the controller/owner and/or performer to produce the effects, or is it the power which is seen to be vested in the controller and/or performer which allows the song to produce its effects?” He concludes, rather as I do, that these two dimensions of power come together in events that have a certain definitional quality in which both dimensions of power are co-implied (ibid.: 73). I want to go beyond the simple statement that different dimensions of the power of paintings contribute to the power of paintings as a whole, to see if there are similarities in the way paintings operate in relation to their functions in different contexts of action (ritual/political). My basic argument is that, in relation to functions such as the encoding of meaning, integration with the system of restricted knowledge, and articulation with the political system, paintings operate by connecting the general with the particular, the collective with the individual, and that this connection is reflected in the formal and aesthetic properties of the system. The properties of paintings that are relevant to one context of their use are relevant to other contexts too; properties that are exploited in the system of encoding meaning are also central to the way in which paintings articulate with the system of knowledge and the system of clan organization. The implication is that we are dealing with a system that has been developed over a considerable period of time and which, though it is multiply determined, nevertheless has a unity as a system that crosscuts function. It is a unity that involves the operation of analagous processes and the exploitation of different potentialities of similar formal properties, in different contexts.

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Paintings, Meaning and the System of Knowledge Yolngu art as a system of encoding meaning articulates with the system of restricted knowledge (see Morphy 1991, chapt. 5). As a person (in the past, in particular, a man) moves through life, he gains increasing access to knowledge and to contexts in which knowledge can be acquired. The whole process of life in Yolngu terms can be seen as one of movement from the “outside” (the mundane and unrestricted) to the “inside” (the sacred and restricted). As a person follows along this continuum, he moves from a position where meanings are defined for him to one in which he in turn influences the way in which things are presented to others; he moves to a position of potential creativity. Such creativity takes the form of deciding the order of ritual elements in a ceremony (Morphy 1984), of determining the components of a painting, and of controlling the release of meanings to others, in the process of which meanings can be changed. The outside-inside continuum is associated with a movement from figurative to geometric art. The most inside paintings are almost exclusively geometric, whereas the most outside ones have a high figurative content. There are some exceptions, some generalized geometric designs that are, relatively speaking, outside, and some figurative paintings that are relatively inside, but the general trend is from inside geometric to outside figurative. Paintings frequently occur in sets associated with particular places. At the center of each set is an inside painting of geometric form that corresponds closely to the template underlying the set. Other paintings in the set are all outside relative to that painting. Paintings can be seen as versions of the template produced by selecting elements of meaning encoded at particular loci and representing those meanings in a figurative representation. At the place called Djarrakpi there are three loci of ancestral activity—a brackish lake, the high sand dunes to its seaward side, and the low bank that defines its inland edge. In the most inside version of the set of paintings associated with this place, these three loci are represented by oval shaped digging sticks, creating a predominantly geometric painting (see Plate 1). The artist is Narritjin Maymuru. In other paintings different figures may be selected to represent the different loci. In Plate 2, for example, a painting by his daughter, Nyapililngu, the central figure is a representation of an ancestral woman also named Nyapililngu. Digging sticks continue to represent the seaward and inland sides of the lake, but in the context of this particular painting they have quite different outside connotations. The painting ostensibly represents Nyapililngu using her digging sticks to walk up and down the sand dunes. Plate 3 is another painting of the landscape at Djarrakpi by Narritjin. The central features in this case are two emus with spears. The emu is connected symbolically with the spear, since the emu’s leg scratching the ground is an analogue for the spear. Hence just as the central stick in the first painting could represent the ancestral woman Nyapililngu who always carried a digging stick with her, so too could it represent the emu whose leg is a spear. The figures on either side represent the digging sticks that mark either side of the lake modified to represent possums, who accompanied the emus, climbing up and down the trunks of a tree.

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The power of the geometric art lies in both its multivalency and in its ability to express an order of relationships between things that figurative representations cannot. Geometric elements at particular loci encode relationships between land forms and the mythological events that took place there, without giving priority to any one meaning. If the element is replaced by a figurative representation, then the multivalency is masked—priority is given to its figurative meaning. Geometric art, through its multivalency and its encoding of relationships rather than things, establishes relationships between objects and events that at other levels seem unconnected. In particular it can show relationships between things which are left unconnected in outside interpretations and in paintings modified for public consumption. For example in the outside interpretations of the Djarrakpi paintings no connection is made between the wangarr emu and the female ancestor Nyapililngu. The two are associated with separate places in the outside stories— the emu with the lake bed and Nyapililngu with the sand dunes. In outside paintings this separation is confirmed, with Nyapililngu shown figuratively walking up and down the dunes and the emus looking for water. In inside interpretations, however, connections can be made between Nyapililngu and the emu. The emu elsewhere on his journey created waterholes by scratching in the ground. At Djarrakpi he was unable to find fresh water. He dug in the lake but discovered there was already water there—salt water. From other myths we learn that the salt water originated from the blood of Nyapililngu that flowed into the lake when she mourned her dead brother the Guwak (koel cuckoo). Hence a connection between the emu and Nyapililngu begins to be established. It is not so much that the geometric art actively encodes the connection as that the figurative art, as it is used, obscures any link. The paradox of Yolngu art is that the geometric representations are multivalent, but their interpretation is initially obscured by the non-iconic nature of the elements, whereas the figurative representations obscure the multiplex relationships between things by orienting interpretations in a particular direction. Nevertheless it is possible for a Yolngu man of knowledge to extend interpretations beyond the boundaries of the themes explicitly encoded in them. Once we have the key to basic geometric painting it then becomes readily interpretable. Thus, in the case of the digging-stick painting, the knowledge that each locus represents a position around the lake at Djarrakpi immediately establishes it as a grid onto which a series of external referents can be mapped, a grid to which knowledge gained from outside the artistic system can be applied. Knowledge of the landscape at Djarrakpi, of some of the mythological events that took place there, of the taste of the lake’s water, and of the colour of the sand in the lake’s bed can all be applied once the basic structure is known. I suggest that much of the power of the geometric art — the inside art — lies in the fact that a painting that was previously unknown to an individual through its restriction, and that eludes immediate interpretation, provides a framework for encoding and showing the relationship between so many things, learned separately in a wide variety of different contexts. In this respect Yolngu art is an ideal component of a system of restricted knowledge since it encodes a multiplicity of meanings and condenses

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them into abstract forms which become highly productive once the code is revealed. Generality, Specificity, and Spiritual Power The movement from inside to outside coincides largely though not entirely with the movements from generality to specificity, multivalency to uni valency, ambiguity to individuation. Yolngu paintings, songs, dances, and sacred names have the capacity to connect the general with the particular: the same component is able to signify meanings at a high level of generality and at a precise level of specificity depending on context (see also Merlan 1987: 149). The outside referents of things tend to be concrete objects of the environment—particular places, social groups, and individuals. The power name of an object or ancestral being is a person’s name, the design signifies a particular area of clan land, the dance strengthens people for an avenging expedition, and so on. The specificity of meaning of ritual elements comes to the fore in the organization of ritual, where the elements gain specific meanings in the context of sequences of ritual action directed towards particular objectives. In a mortuary ceremony, for example, the sequences of songs represent sets of people participating in the ceremony; the coffin painting represents a place on the soul’s journey; the power names represent predeceased relatives called upon to assist the soul on its way; and the connotations of the dances reflect the emotions felt by the participants in the ceremony. Specificity is created partly on the outside because it is on the outside, relatively speaking, that things are used, and use causes that juxtaposition of themes, particular purposes, and known individuals that creates specific meaning (cf. Volosinov 1986: 102). Of course this does not mean that generality cannot be reached in outside contexts. The potentiality for connecting meanings beyond their immediate referent always exists as a potential of Yolngu ritual, sometimes extending the meaning of ritual actions on an individual basis (see Morphy 1984). Generality, moreover, can enter the outside through the use of words like mardayin (“sacred”) to end discussion about something, and specificity can enter the inside by locating the meaning of a word as one of the names of a particular ancestral being. However, the use of the word mardayin in outside contexts is a form of closure that refers to the inside, and the use of a word to refer to a specific ancestral being is in some respects the springboard for the generality of the inside. The ambiguity of the meaning of a Yolngu object or song-word (Keen 1977) lies in part in the fact that meanings are spread out as a continuum from outside to inside. On the outside they refer to everyday things, to a particular species of tree, to a bird or an item of material culture; on the inside they refer to an ancestral being or manifestation of that being. Again the process is one of moving from specificity or individuation to generality and multivalency: ancestral beings provide a point of condensation for a number of chains of connected meaning, since the same ancestral being is the referent for many outside things. The tracing back of their connections brings them together at that supreme locus of connection, the ancestral past. As Munn (1973: 212) writes of the Warlpiri, “In the ... design system or, more generally,

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when the graphs are directly linked in Walbiri thought with the ancestors, then the ‘connective’ function of the visual elements may come to the fore and serve to release the boundaries between different meaning items and domains of experience.” The distinctions between the general and the specific can clearly be applied both to components of the form of paintings and to the different categories of paintings that are associated with different contexts. The more geometric paintings are the more general. As figurative representations function partly to make explicit certain meanings encoded in the geometric art, they operate to fix meaning in a particular way. The underlying geometric paintings provide a structure for encoding meaning that, in association with an interpretative template, encodes multiple meanings at different loci, and makes possible the creation of a network of connections and relationships between ancestral actions, landscape, theme, and social group. Specific meanings are produced in the geometric art by selecting certain relationships and focusing on certain meanings as opposed to others. The digging-stick painting becomes a map of Djarrakpi by the interpretation of various loci as geographical features. Specificity is produced by selecting out of the template, but the template itself provides the framework for cross-referencing and generalizing the meanings by placing landscape in the context of mythical action. The geometric art enables the complex relationship between ancestral event, time, and geographical space to be condensed into a single productive form. Nyapililngu is associated with both the lake and the sand dunes through her creative actions: the lake is her blood, the sand dunes were transformed from the possum-fur string she made, yet she in turn lived around the lake and in the dunes. Nyapililngu had children at Djarrakpi, hid from men, and mourned the death of her brother the Guwak. Connected with different themes of Yolngu life, these events, some of them contradictory, fill out the picture of Nyapililngu and create a reservoir of productive imagery. Replacing the central digging stick by a figurative representation of Nyapililngu reduces the multivalency and creates a specific image associated with a particular event: Nyapililngu climbing up and down the dunes. There is also a system of clan designs that contributes to the process. At a general level a particular design—it might be a diamond pattern, a set of wavy lines (Plate 1) or a circle-line motif—is associated with a particular ancestral being or complex of ancestral beings and with a set of clans connected through the travels of those beings. Underlying the set of variants on the diamond design is the generalized concept of the design itself, which is not associated with any particular group or place but with the ancestor. In this case the generalized design can occur in outside contexts as an outlined non-infilled body painting. In contrast to the generalized diamond design, each clan’s variant does signify precisely, representing a particular clan and a particular area of that clan’s territory associated with that ancestral being. In public contexts the association between clan design, ancestral being, and land is said to be immutable: it was set in the ancestral past and extends into the future. In practice such associations are subject to political process and relationships continually vary over time: groups die out and others divide in two

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and take their place (Morphy 1988). At the general level, however, ancestral connectivity is maintained. The same ancestral being will be associated with the land, only the particular connections with the social group will have to be remade. The Yolngu system of knowledge creates a space between the general and the particular where these adjustments can be made in such a way that political process is masked. Changes in the ownership of designs are acknowledged on the inside by the group of elders who have control of the men’s ceremonial ground, and knowledge that changes have occurred is also contained on the inside until eventually it disappears from memory. When a new public association occurs between design and social group, it will soon be recast in the form of something that always was. The sedimentation of the history of change on the inside gives the appearance that change (or nonchange) always originated on the inside, in harmony with the movement from the general to the particular, from the ancestral past to the present day. The space between the general and the particular is the space where political action occurs, where decisions are made as to which clan owns which design, who should have which name, which ritual element should be used in a particular ceremony, and which meaning should be told to an initiate. When we look at the form of paintings as a whole, the most general component is the final one that is added—cross-hatching. In isolation from any particular context cross-hatching is something that produces a visual effect, bir’yunamirri (the property of shimmering), that is associated with that ultimate general phenomenon, ancestral power. Cross-hatching creates that intense flash of light that is ancestral power (see Morphy 1992). It is highly significant that in the past women were denied access to cross-hatched paintings in their unmodified form and would have been able only to glimpse them at a distance or see them when their surface brilliance had been removed by smudging the design. In excluding women from paintings in their cross-hatched form, men were excluding women from direct access to one of the manifestations of ancestral power at its most general. The whole process of exclusion indeed was one in which men kept control of ancestral power to themselves. Women had contact with ancestral power when it was directed toward them: ancestral power entered their bodies in the form of conception spirits, ancestral power is manifest in their being through the blood of menstruation and afterbirth, but they were denied access to the contexts in which men produced the most general humanly controlled manifestations of ancestral power and in which the general began its transformation into the specific. The inside is simultaneously the most structured and the least structured space in the Yolngu system. It is created from within by exclusions, by controlling the process whereby people gain access to it, and it is maintained from the outside by the danger it emanates and by restrictions and constraints on where people can go and in what they can do. Yet once the inside has been reached, it is the space of maximum freedom, the place where creativity is centered, and the origin of new arrangements and understandings that may eventually appear on the outside. Although I have been using the concept of inside space partly as a metaphor for the logical core of the system of knowledge, as the end point of the connections that lead from the outside to the inside and coincide with the point of ancestral creativity, it is more than a metaphorical construct: Yolngu society involves a

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hierarchical structuring of space that articulates with the system of knowledge. This hierarchy of space involves a movement from the totally unrestricted public space, where despite restrictions of avoidance relations and gender distance people are able to witness all that goes on, through partially restricted spaces, such as the place where a coffin lid is being painted, where temporary and partial barriers are created to the observation of what is going on, to the context of maximum exclusion—the men’s ceremonial ground. And undoubtedly the men’s ceremonial ground, which from the outside appears as a highly dangerous and restricted space, appears from the inside as a space of great freedom, of relaxation and humour. On the whole people who gain freedom of access to the men’s ceremonial ground have the maximum freedom of movement that Yolngu society allows. As Myers (1986: 235) writes of the Pintupi: “Initiation is a step towards the possibility of exercising ... autonomy.” Creativity and Change The Yolngu artistic system, and other expressions of the mardayin, exist in a state of creative tension. Yolngu art mediates the ideology of immutable forms and order originating in the ancestral past and the reality of sociocultural change and political process. It is in part through the use of art that, to slightly modify Stanner’s (1966: 137) memorable phrase, “society and cosmos are made correlative.” Creativity is integral to the way in which Yolngu art is used, for its production involves the selection and organization of elements of the mardayin for particular purposes and it is through their use in particular contexts that the mardayin is reproduced. Yolngu art is in a constant state of readjustment to current political realities, and is part of the way those new realities are achieved and accorded recognition. It is also possible to see how changes have occurred which affect the form and meaning of paintings. The structure of the system permits the generation of an almost infinite set of outside paintings by the use of the template as the basis for creativity. The particular paintings that appear depend on the particular metaphor or theme being highlighted, the particular topographical relation that is focused on, and the particular combination of figurative and geometric representations used. These processes operate to produce open-ended and changing sets of related paintings. Thus Yolngu art has changed over time, in details of the form of paintings, in the meanings that are communicated, in the categories of people who are excluded from knowledge of painting, and in the contexts in which paintings are used. Song cycles that referred once to Macassan trepangers are now associated with the activities of mythological Europeans, referring, for example, to bulldozers being started rather than to iron being forged. Ancestral designs are continually being applied to new contexts on new objects, to outboard motorboats and house-opening ceremonies, to coffin lids for Yolngu burials and to table mats for sale to Europeans. Yolngu art has gained an important economic role through the development of an art and craft industry and has perhaps had an even more important role in the political relations between Yolngu and their colonists. The struggle for land rights and the implementation of land rights legislation has made

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the function of paintings in establishing relations between people, ancestral beings, and land no less important than ever it was. The tension of the system caused by the apparent contradictions between ancestral inheritance and sociopolitical realities has if anything increased since it has become a matter of debate in European courts of law (Williams 1986). Some things that were masked by their restriction to the inside have had to be brought, at least temporarily, into the open and made more explicit than perhaps they once were. Art was part of a process of forgetting past connections and giving authority to present ones. When European courts demand to know the details and mechanisms of how such processes of succession and of change of ownership take account of the exigencies of demographic change and political fortune, then such a masking process becomes no longer as possible. Paintings perhaps begin to function a little more like title deeds in the European sense, since they are required to operate in a context where Yolngu practice articulates with European law. Nonetheless they still continue to function in ways very different from European deeds in that they establish spiritual connections and responsibilities between people, land, and the ancestral domain. The Yolngu system has almost certainly always accommodated to changes in the ownership of land; today more people have to know that it does. The use of paintings in political and legal relations with the state and the increasing importance of the art and craft industry have both been factors underlying shifts in the categories of paintings and the opening up of the inside. Anything that enters into public relations between Yolngu men and European outsiders cannot realistically be kept restricted from Yolngu women. If, as I have argued, men used their control over the mardayin to keep women as outsiders, then increased access to the mardayin may function to shift women towards the inside. Yolngu women from early on were actors in political relations with European colonists; women were signatories of the bark petition sent to Canberra asking for land rights, and from the 1960s onwards women took an increasingly important role in the production of art for sale. By the 1970s, women as well as men were inheriting rights to paintings from their fathers, proclaiming those rights, and beginning to exercise them in ceremonial as well as commercial contexts. Although these changes are clearly a consequence of European colonization in their timing and in the form in which they have occurred, it would be wrong to see them as a consequence of a breakdown of the system, caused by the release of paintings to outsiders. The changes began to occur well before nearby mining operations at Nhulunbuy presented a direct threat to the Yolngu way of life and autonomy. They are best seen as part of a relatively considered, though by no means universally adopted, attempt by certain Yolngu to, in Maddock’s (1972: 1) terms, “remodel their society” as a response to the emerging colonial situation. Yolngu attempted to incorporate Europeans within their world and to get them to enter discourse on their terms (Bemdt 1962; Maddock 1972; Morphy 1983). In order to do this, certain barriers within Yolngu society had to be broken down and certain categories reformulated. Women’s access to sacred knowledge became integral to this process. Europeans became a new element in the system, a new set of people who had to be incorporated within the inside-outside continuum, and perhaps, relative to Europeans, women became part of the inside group. Certainly

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senior men did not refer to women’s increased access to knowledge in negative terms, as a consequence of leaks in the system, but in positive terms in relation to women’s attachment to their culture, the work they put into ceremonies and to painting, the efforts they put into learning. The emphasis was perhaps shifting towards passing on a particular way of life and set of cultural practices that exist in opposition to the encroaching European world, rather than using access to knowledge as a means of marking the difference between men’s and women’s relationships to the mardayin. Such a shift in access to the inside may not have been such a radical break with the past for two complementary and to a certain extent opposed reasons: the inside is not necessarily threatened by the release of knowledge, and women were always more inside than public ideology acknowledged. As a system of meaning and value, knowledge was and is widespread. What people were denied access to were contexts in which knowledge was created and in which decisions were made about its use. They were denied access to certain forms, and the inside referent of certain objects and words, and they had no way of gauging how much there was to know. Power, however, resided not so much in the substance of the inside as in the control of the system of knowledge, and through the creation of an inside space that was the male domain. The inside space is generative, and while people possessing knowledge of the system still have the power to create and occupy it, objects (and knowledge) can still flow from the inside to the outside without destroying the inside. Yolngu men continue to create inside spaces, continue to exclude outsiders in a systematic way from access to certain contexts, still indeed maintain the restrictedness of certain forms and certain meanings. The current position of women in relation to the inside represents a shift towards a position that has for long been implicit. The ambiguity of women’s roles in Yolngu myth reflects underlying contradictions in the relations between Yolngu men and women. Female symbols lie at the heart of much Yolngu myth and ritual, female ancestral beings have a major role as autonomous generators of culture and society, yet women are excluded from inside contexts and were in the past excluded from access to the most powerful and direct manifestations of ancestral power, from blood, sacred objects, and cross-hatching. Women’s access to ancestral power was mediated and modified, sounds were diffused, body paintings came out in modified form, the sacred objects had their messenger forms that were known more widely, but women were denied direct access to many of the ancestral women’s most powerful creations. The increased access that women have gained to the inside may be construed as a movement towards the ancestral position, bringing to the surface something that was previously implicit in some inside contexts. Indeed in contrast to the situation presented by Warner (1958), some Yolngu elders refer to women as intrinsically sacred and as possessors of power. Conclusion Overall, the sense I got during my period of fieldwork at Yirrkala in the 1970s was of a system in the process of continual adjustment and transformation as a

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consequence of the impact of colonialism and the effect of incorporation within the Australian political and economic system. Among the changes that were occurring were shifts in the relations between men and women. The artistic system has clearly undergone a process of transformation since the early days of effective European colonization in the 1930s. This is exemplified by the changes that have occurred in the categories of painting and in women’s increased access to and involvement in the production of paintings. Nevertheless, many aspects of the system appear to be in continuity with the past. Rather than passively responding to external change, Yolngu have tried to transform their system while keeping it “the same,” in order to maintain control over the direction of their future. The changes in their artistic system are both a consequence of and an element in this more general strategy.

R e fe r e n c e s B ern dt, R .M .

1962.

An adjustment movement in Arnhem Land. P aris: M o u to n . Canberra Anthropology 1 : 3 3 - 5 0 . The Australian Aborigines: A portrait of their society. L o n d o n : A lle n

K e e n . I. 1 9 7 7 . A m b ig u ity in Y o ln g u r e lig io u s la n g u a g e . M a d d o c k , K.

1972.

L ane. M erla n , F.

1987.

C a tfish and a llig a to r: T o te m ic s o n g s o f th e w e s te r n R o p e r R iv e r ,

N o rth ern T erritory.

In M . C lu n ie s -R o s s , T. D o n a ld s o n , and S. W ild , e d s ,

Aboriginal Australia ,

6 3 -7 6 ,

O c e a n ia

M onograph

N o.

32.

S ydney:

Songs of O c e a n ia

P u b lic a tio n s. M o r p h y , H.

1 9 8 3 . “N o w y o u u n d ersta n d ” : A n a n a ly sis o f th e w a y Y o ln g u h a v e u se d sa c r e d

k n o w le d g e to retain their a u to n o m y .

In N . P e te r so n and M . L a n g to n , e d s .,

land, and land rights, 1 1 0 - 3 3 . C anberra: --------. 1 9 8 4 . Journey to the crocodile's nest.

Aborigines,

A u stra lia n In stitu te o f A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s . C anberra: A u stra lia n In stitu te o f

A b o r ig in a l

S tu d ie s . --------. 1 9 8 8 . M a in ta in in g c o s m ic u nity: I d e o lo g y and th e rep ro d u ctio n o f Y o ln g u c la n s. In T. In g o ld , J. W o o d b u m , and D . R ic h e s , e d s, Hunters and gatherers: Property, power and ideology, 2 4 9 - 7 1 . O x fo rd : B erg. --------. 1 9 9 1 . Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. C h ic a g o : U n iv e r s ity o f C h ic a g o P ress. --------.

1992.

F rom d u ll to b rilliant: th e a e s th e tic s o f sp iritu al p o w e r a m o n g th e Y o ln g u . In

J. C o o te and A . S h e lto n e d s,

Anthropology, art and aesthetics,

1 8 1 -2 0 8 .

O x fo rd :

Walbiri iconography. Ithaca: C o r n e ll U n iv e r s ity P ress. The Fame of Gawa. C a m b rid g e : C a m b r id g e U n iv e r s ity P ress. 1 9 6 6 . On Aboriginal religion. O c e a n ia M o n o g r a p h N o . 11.

S yd n ey:

C la r e n d o n P ress. M u n n , N .D .

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M y e r s, F .R .

1986.

S ta n n er, W .E .H .

O c e a n ia P u b lic a tio n s. V o lo s in o v , V .N . 1 9 8 6 .

Marxism and the philosophy of language.

C a m b rid g e : H arvard

A b o r ig in a l s in g in g and n o tio n s o f p o w e r .

In M . C lu n ie s - R o s s ,

U n iv e r s ity P ress. V o n S turm er, J. 1 9 8 7 . T. D o n a ld s o n ,

and

S.

W ild ,

ed s,

Songs of Aboriginal Australia ,

6 3 -7 6 ,

O c e a n ia

M o n o g r a p h N o . 3 2 . S y d n ey : O c e a n ia P u b lic a tio n s. W arner, W .L .

1958.

A black civilization. C h ic a g o : H arper an d R o w . The Yolngu and their land: A system of land tenure and its fight fo r

W illia m s , N . M . 1 9 8 6 .

recognition.

C anberra: A u stra lia n In stitu te o f A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s.

10

Linda Syddick on Longing Fred Myers

The work of Linda Syddick is illuminating of Western Desert Aboriginal painting as a contemporary social practice. It is widely known that most Western Desert painters represent the events of their “country” (ngurra) that are understood to have occurred in the mythological period known as The Dreaming. In acrylic and canvas, and produced for sale to an art market that is both national and international, such paintings are valued, locally and interculturally, by virtue of their connection to “Dreaming-places” (see Dussart 1988, 1993, 1994; Kimber 1977; Megaw 1982; Myers 1989, 1991). Syddick’s work, however, has extended to representations of Christian themes and Western popular culture. The authenticity of apparently hybrid Western Desert paintings has been a focus of considerable ambivalence, as the paintings are now argued to belong to the domain of “contemporary fine art” (Johnson 1990, Crocker 1981). Yet the understandings of “place” in Aboriginal painting remain as limited in understanding the activity as were the former categories of “primitive art.” The key, I argue, is that places are meaningful not simply in reference to stories they signify but just as importantly by their participation in the transmission of identity. Linda Syddick’s work shows what and how a place signifies, both in its relationship to local Aboriginal identities and in an engagement with wider themes of disruption and loss, often implicitly coded within the meanings of “place” itself as a social formation. The activity of painting, which she traces as coming from her adoptive father and is enabled by his giving her the right to paint his place, is an activity of recuperating identity. In grasping this we better grasp Linda’s artistry—as perhaps the first “modem” Pintupi artist—in conveying this complex understanding of place, loss, and identity. Place Most accounts of Western Desert Aboriginal painting emphasize their mediation of The Dreaming, the vital conception of Aboriginal religion (Stanner 1956) that From Fred Myers, On Longing: A Contemporary Aboriginal Painter in Australia, based on the author’s book Painting Culture: The Making o f an Aboriginal High Art, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2002. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the journal Visual Anthropology 2004.

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constitutes the very framework of Aboriginal society. Aboriginal ceremony is typically described as “totemic” or more suitably, in Strehlow’s (1970) terms, as “land-based.” Derived from the mythological period—The Dreaming—in which powerful ancestral beings gave the world its shape and meaning, Aboriginal ceremonies both re-enact the events of The Dreaming and come from it (hence, their authenticity). Aborigines say that in doing the ceremonies they merely “follow up The Dreaming” (Stanner 1956), sometimes called “the Law.” Knowledge is restricted, and the ceremonies are revelatory: presenting the story of what happened at a particular place and how it shaped the geography there. Thus they make available knowledge of fundamentally important and invisible events and structures. Typically, the acrylic painting of such named places is cast as a representation of such ancestral realities, even if the focus of analysis is on the formal dimensions of presenting this complex reality (see Johnson 1994). However, Levi-Strauss’s (1962, 1966) dictum about totemism as a system organizing social identities is entirely relevant, although it must be understood as a more complex system of practices than he envisaged. The meaning of these places, their value, must be understood as constructed in activities that constitute relationships within a system of social life that structures difference and similarity among persons, a system of practices for which “land” is one medium. Put otherwise, as Nancy Munn has shown somewhat abstractly in her work on Central Australia, place or places are meaningful as tokens of social relationship, acquiring value by virtue of their participation in the transmission of identity (Munn 1970; see also Morton 1987; Myers 1986, 1988, 1993). Persons literally come “from” The Dreaming, from named places of ancestral potency; the relationship to these places is understood as central to a person’s identity. In this process, one needs to recognize, a “named-place” is an objectification, a material signifier lifted out of a direct relationship to persons as one might expect from environment as “being-in­ place.” That is, place enters into the life-world of subjects already objectified as a location of a Dreaming event and known as such in ritual and mythological practice, acquiring meaning in those practices. As Francesca Merlan (1998) has written most succinctly, “However absolute the ‘dreaming’ significance of places may seem, they were also always constituted ... within and through the range of practices which linked people with places.” Tjungkaya Napaltjarri The questions of what and how a place signifies are critical to understanding some paintings by a Pintupi woman known as Linda Syddick, or to me initially as Tjungkaya Napaltjarri. Her paintings are not only an example of this sort of construction, but they also—as good art should—offer us Linda Syddick’s insight into it. Linda Syddick was the daughter of one of my principal informants and close friends, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi. Shorty was a wonderful man and gifted painter, who helped me to understand much of what I came to know about Pintupi social life and culture. He died in 1987. I understood that one of his

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daughters, Tjungkaya, had been bom in the bush, but she seemed to have turned her back on the traditions embraced by Shorty in moving to Alice Springs. In 1981, Shorty’s wife Napulu told me a story of the killing of her first husband by a revenge expedition (warrmala), long ago when she still lived “in the bush.” This is a story which I narrated in the central chapter of my monograph (Myers 1986: 168-69), a chapter in which I thought I was distilling the essential tension of Pintupi social life as that between relatedness and differentiation, a tension between closeness and distance mediated in and through a range of socio-spatial practices. Napulu’s husband was speared by the killers and thrown into the fire. Napulu was a young woman at the time, with only one child. She remembers seeing a group of men: T h e r e v e n g e party sto o d there, a g ro u p o f m en . a tta ck .”

I sa id , “ H e y , th e r e ’s tr o u b le ... lo o k , an

H is n a m e [her h u sb a n d ] w a s R iin tja , T ju n g k a y a ’s father.

c h ild , v ery sm a ll.

S h e w a s th e o n ly

I tried to w arn h im ; th a t’s h o w I tried to te ll h im .

I sta y e d th e re all

d a y , sa w th e w h o le th in g .

Napulu remembered her own actions in detail: I to o k sp ea r s, a fir e stic k , a sp ea rth ro w er. T ju n g k a y a , c r a w lin g .

I fe lt m y w a y a lo n g .

o n ly s p in ife x [a sp ik y g ra ss].

S w iftly — a lo n e — I c r a w le d a w a y , c a rry in g T h er e w e r e n o tr e e s to h id e in, n o sc ru b ,

T h e y d id n o t s e e m e; I w a s lu ck y .

W h at h a p p e n e d ?

I

b e c a m e m a g ic a l [la u g h s ], truly! ... I tried to tell h im .

According to her story, Napulu crawled and hid at the side of a sandhill. From there, I sa w th e m c o m e forw ard , all th o s e m en , w ith sp ea rs. o n th e ca m p .

I left a rabbit c o o k in g in th e fire.

c h ild , ‘"Look o u t!”

T h e y burst in.

It j u s t k ep t c o o k in g .

T h ey d escen d ed I sp o k e to th e

T ju n g k a y a w a s cr y in g , her sto m a c h w a s bad, from th e w a y I h ad

ca rried her. I sa id , “ L o o k o u t, w e ’d b etter le a v e .” H e w a s j u s t a y o u n g m an ...

The revenge expedition killed Napulu’s husband and tossed his body on the fire. She remained hiding at the base of the sandhill, barely sheltered from the cold, while her daughter cried. They had no fire. Darkness fell, but it was not until the moon rose that she went back to the camp, gathering coals to start a fire. She made a firestick and left, returning to her own relatives. In the commotion, Napulu escaped with her small daughter, Tjungkaya, crawling off away from the camp. This must have occurred in the early 1940s in the Gibson Desert. I knew Tjungkaya in the early 1970s, when she and her husband Musty Syddick lived near Shorty at Yayayi, a Pintupi community in the Northern Territory. I knew her as a tall and hearty woman, who lived with this part-Aboriginal initiated Aranda man—somewhat outside the local community, with long stays in the fringe camp of Morris Soak in Alice Springs. Imagine my surprise to see two paintings by Linda Syddick in the Gondwana Gallery in Alice Springs in early July 1991. The two paintings were set up as a series and, I was told, they represented “her story.” The first painting (Figure 10.1) shows “her father being speared and put on the fire and her and her mother hiding near the

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Figure 10.1 Linda Syddick, Father’s Body Thrown in Fire, 1991. Reproduced from Fred Myers, Painting Culture, London: Duke University Press, 2002. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004.

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fire.” The second painting (Figure 10.2) represents “spears—men spearing the clouds and washing away the blood.” That is, they cause it to rain and cleanse the earth. I was greatly affected by seeing these paintings, for personal reasons. Tjungkaya was not Shorty’s biological daughter, but adopted by him when he married Napulu—after the death of her first father, known as Riintja Tjungurrayi, about whom I had heard in Napulu’s account but also in Shorty’s life history accounting for his experiences as a young man who had hoped to have Napulu for a wife. I was also interested to discover that Linda (Tjungkaya) had made a name for herself as a painter of Christian religious images—such as those of the Ascension and the Last Supper (Figures 10.3 and 10.4). Apparently, the painting of the Ascension draws on the fact that “men of high degree [Aboriginal shamans] were buried with their arms and legs tied up,” which is how Linda paints Jesus in this image. Initially, 1 thought of her work as interesting as an introduction of historical narrative into Pintupi painting, informative as an indication of how Pintupi people might experience over time the loss of a parent through violence,1 and as becoming Christian, using some of the iconography of Pintupi painting to tell Christian stories. I thought the second painting referred to her state of mind, perhaps a Christian sort of peace, not recognizing any deeper links in the image. It was when I returned in 1996 that I gained a deeper understanding of these images, both as “artistic communication” and as evidence of the way in which place and its representations might convey significance for Pintupi. When I strolled with another Aboriginal painter friend into the gallery where Linda’s paintings were sold, I was recognized by the dealer (Roslyn Premont), who said she wanted to talk to me about Linda. There was interest in doing an exhibition of her work, she said, but Linda was troubled. Actually, I realized, she “had trouble” in the Aboriginal sense: someone had accused her of doing wrong, as a woman, in painting Tingarri stories. These are part of a class of Dreaming stories that are associated with the travels of ancestral beings who were instructing post-initiatory novices. The dealer thought Tjungkaya might want to talk to me; I assume Tjungkaya’s interest arose because she knew me to have been very close to her father and because she thought me unusually suited, for a white person, to understand her predicament. The dealer rang Linda on the telephone, calling Taree where Linda was living in South Australia with her current husband, a white man who had met her when serving as a dentist for the Aboriginal health service in Alice Springs. I spoke to her in Pintupi and to her husband in English. She had a story, she said, about emu men who were “perishing” (dying of thirst) at Walukirritjinya, so they got some “clever men” to fashion spears (kularta) and to use a “mirror,” throwing spears into the sky to bring a cleansing rain. This is, I realized, a story associated with Shorty Lungkarta. It is a Tingarri story, part of their cycle of activities, but the key to understanding its significance is that it involved Emu Ancestral Beings at a place called Walukirritjinya. This is a place that I knew to be closely identified in almost everyone’s mind with Shorty Lungkarta. His father had died there, and Shorty was ceremonially in control of its stories and ritual. I hadn’t known about the Emu beings part of the story, but I had seen Shorty paint

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Figure 10.2 Linda Syddick, The Cleansing Rain, 1991. Reproduced from Fred Myers, Painting Culture, London: Duke University Press, 2002. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004.

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Figure 10.3 Linda Syddick, TheAscension, 1991. Reproduced from Fred Myers, Painting Culture, London: Duke University Press, 2002. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004.

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Figure 10.4 Linda Syddick, The Last Supper, 1991. Reproduced from Fred Myers, Painting Culture, London, Duke University Press, 2002. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004.

1 Narritjin Maymaru, The Three Digging Sticks, 1971. Reproduced with permission of Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala.

2 Nyapililingu Maymaru, The Ancestral Woman Nyapililingu, 1974. Reproduced with permission of Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala.

3 Narritjin Maymaru, Djarrakpi Landscape, 1976. Reproduced with permission of Buku Larrngay Mulka Art Centre, Yirrkala.

4 Linda Syddick, ET, 1991. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004. Photograph by Fred Myers.

5 Linda Syddick, ET and Friends, 2000. Reproduced with permission of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan. © Linda Syddick. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004. Photograph by Fred Myers.

6 Emily Kngwarreye, Anatye (Wild Potato), 1989. Reproduced with permission of the National Gallery of Victoria. © Emily Kngwarreye. Licensed by Viscopy, Australia, 2004.

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versions of this story numerous times. Following his own logic, the husband wanted to know what the “mirror” was, and Tjungkaya told me it was a tjakulu, that is, a pearl shell—an item often associated with rain in Aboriginal understandings. As Tjungkaya talked, I realized that this story was the second of the ones I had seen in her paintings a few years before: this one is identified with Shorty and Shorty’s place or country while the first, of the spearing and fire, was of her first father, Riinytja. The issue for her, and for her husband, concerned her right to paint. Her own country, she told me (1 knew), was near Kiwirrkura, considerably further to the west, where she was bom and from which her mother came as well.2 She told me that before he died, Shorty Lungkarta had told her she could paint his country, the Tingarri there. Linda’s husband suspected that the jealousy of a sister had been the basis of recriminations of wrongdoing, but Linda was unquestionably concerned by it and insistent on the right to paint Shorty’s country, insistent on what this meant about their relationship. The emotional tone made me realize something in the paired paintings I had seen, a pair that Tjungkaya had insistently told the dealer should be a set. If the cleansing rain represents Shorty Lungkarta, then his fathering of her—indexed not just in the painting’s iconography but also in the transmission to her of the right to paint his country—represents a settling of the upset of the first loss, signified by the fire. Iconographically, this occurs at another level of mediation: water soothes the fire, cleanses, makes grow, cools the pain. The activity of painting, which comes from Shorty and is enabled by his giving to her the right to paint his place, is an activity of having a place and of recuperating identity. In this way, Linda’s paintings represent a powerful symbolic formulation of “loss,” “estrangement,” and “redemption.” 1 had the extraordinary fortune, at this same time, of meeting Alison French, the curator of the government art gallery in Alice Springs, who had written a grant proposal3 for Linda Syddick to obtain funding for her painting. In order to write this submission, French had asked Linda and her husband to make a tape answering the questions she thought were important for the proposal. In short, she needed to know, what did Linda want? Alison felt that she really didn’t understand much of what Linda had said, because most of it was in “language” (Pintupi), but she felt it was somehow important. So she asked me if I would listen to it and see if I understood. Beginning in somewhat labored English, Linda talked about how her father, Shorty Lungkarta, taught her his country, his Dreaming, and told her—his eldest daughter—that she would paint these when he was dead. Thus, she paints Tingarri stories, the stories of the carpetsnake (known as kuniya, probably referring to a place Lampintjanya, which Shorty often painted), and “God’s word” (Katutjaku wangka). What the tape was supposed to elicit was what she wanted to do with the grant—and she said she wanted money “for my property, for ngurra [that is, “country,” “camp,” or “home”] here” (in South Australia where she was living at the time). Then she said she was getting tired of talking. When he took up the microphone, her husband reported that Linda was “singing to her painting,” apparently wanting Allison to know that something authentic was going on. “Singing” would indicate to him that the painting was traditional, associated with

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ceremonies. He recorded what she was singing, saying it was “men’s stories.” But, as I realized when the singing went on, what she was singing was the class of song/story known as yawalyu and sometimes identified in English as “love magic.” She tells Allison this, addressing her in Pintupi and English: “Did you understand my word (what I said)?” And then she sings more songs. She seemed to me to be redefining the relationship between herself and Allison, reconstituting who she was, performing herself more and more as Pintupi in shifting to that language. Instead of being the supplicant, responding to questions in English, she offers herself as knowledgeable, autonomous. Her comments are intended for Allison. She says, “You Allison, you are woman alone” (single). “This story is bringing man, making him ‘see’ you” (bringing you to his thoughts). She sings verse after verse and narrates the event in it— initially with an emphasis on women singing to bring a man, because “she doesn’t want to be alone.” Increasingly, however, Linda’s narration turns to feelings of “sadness” (ngaltu) in the songs—not just of the longing to overcome separation and desire, of “love magic” premised on the desire to be recognized by certain others. The narration describes a man’s sadness at his distance from a daughter. In the account she is giving on the tape, she describes the man of the story as having moved away “yuntaltjirratjcT—wishing for his daughter. These are also probably the feelings that Linda is concerned with herself, having moved to South Australia with this husband after the sequential deaths of her children. Her loss, or losses, have been crushing—a father to violence, three children at an early age, two husbands. Addressing Allison initially as a woman without a man, she establishes a common human ground, but one which she controls as the possessor of ritual and its knowledge. While her husband wanted to emphasize Linda’s authenticity, referring to the songs, she centers herself and defines first a relationship with Alison, whom she addresses directly, but says “You [are] white woman; you can’t sing inma [ritual], can you?” This shows something important in her possession. Second, she defines herself as an Aboriginal. Finally, she invokes “sadness.” “Tired,” as she says, of responding in the terms initially established by Allison (about the grant, about publishing), Linda shifts the ground of the communication. This seems apparent as the tone of the tape shifts. Linda’s concern with “loss” and “salvation” is palpable. It is the story of the loss of her first father and her life being cleansed and repaired by her second father, Shorty, who gave her—in his adoption and in the transmission of his country—a new life. Unexpectedly, it is also the story of the substantial body of paintings she did of E.T., the extraterrestrial figure in Steven Spielberg’s film of that name: the alien estranged from home (Plate 4). She watched this Hollywood film absorbedly, over twenty times. “Linda is fascinated by this movie,” Ros Premont (her dealer) has written. “Her empathy was sparked by ET longing to return home.”4 These are the feelings—homesickness, pining—of grief, of loss, which Central Desert Aborigines articulate in song and ceremony. These are feelings signified in and through “places”—as Walukirritjinya and its story of bringing the rain does for Linda. And this is the story of Christianity, offering similarly a

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salvation from her loss and estrangement—the loss of her children, of her father, and to some extent now of her culture. In the Pintupi behavioral environment, places such as Walukirritjinya are already objectified. Shorty Lungkarta gave Linda the right to paint it, and doing so is central to her. The specific iconography of the place, the story elements of its fashioning in The Dreaming which are already socially objectified and define it as a token of identity and exchange, takes on a doubled use which is part of its aesthetic function (to borrow a usage from Roman Jakobson 1960). Jakobson describes the aesthetic function of any communicative event as one oriented to the message for its own sake. It is not only the possession of the place and the right to paint that establishes an identity, but also the specific imagery of spearing of the clouds and the cleansing water poetically reverses the loss of her first father in the fire. Herein, at least in part, lies Linda’s artistry, in conveying this complex understanding of place, loss, and identity. Longing It is difficult to ignore the larger themes—of how place signifies “at homeness” or wholeness— in narratives of uprootedness, displacement, and loss. This connection is invoked through the E.T. paintings, and it is a theme about place one also finds expressed in the formulation of diaspora cultures. Linda seems to have found something of value in the film £.71, something paralleled by the longing of the Jewish diaspora for the place (Zion) tied to ancestors, continually evoked and kept alive in ritual (such as the Passover seder).5 E.T. is one of several films—which has included also Schindler's List—by Spielberg, a filmmaker whose attention to Jewish themes of exile and return have been pointed out by many critics. Undoubtedly, the Pintupi construction of place is not built on separation from a homeland in the same way, but in an uncanny and perspicacious manner, Linda has picked up on Spielberg’s concerns in her art. Rather, Linda’s painting suggests that separation/longing/recognition are fundamentally encoded or activated in the transmission of relations to place. It should be no surprise that Linda Syddick can formulate this relationship of place in her art. The sensibility of this complexity is central to Aboriginal communications about place. In 1983, when the hearing for the Mongrel Downs land claim—on which I worked—was held, the Aboriginal land commissioner visited some sites with the claimants. That night, the claimants performed an enactment of a Tingarri sequence to demonstrate their rights to the area—since the Tingarri ancestors, known in this region near Lake Hazlett as Wimtiki (the stone curlew bird who led) passed through the region and made the country by their actions. The main performer, Allen Wintu Tjakamarra, was understood to have been conceived from the essence of the Wimtiki, and therefore was its real life embodiment. The men chose to perform the sequence in which the stone curlew passes with the novices under his supervision through a raging (ceremonial) fire. He looks back sadly to the country from which he came, his own country, and calls out “Goodbye my country; I will see you no more.”

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Linda Syddick’s paintings extend and discern in painting practice a particular formulation of identity, loss, and replacement that must have had long standing in Western Desert life. Distilling this cultural formation, she articulates a more general longing—one we can now see to have been imagined more concretely in practices we regarded narrowly as love magic—in reflecting on common themes of modernity across distinctive discourses. Her paintings of loss, redemption, and longing are a reflection of states of being and an economy of desire defined by Pintupi understandings of “sorrow”—yalurrpa—as the loss of an object fundamental to one’s identity. Postscript There is stunning support for this view in one of Linda’s own paintings, one I discovered when lecturing in Seattle in 2003. Margaret Levi and Bob Kaplan had one painting of Linda’s in their collection; it turned out to be one entitled “ET and his Friends” (Plate 5) The documentation was as follows: In th is

p a in tin g ,

L in d a d e p ic ts b o th

her c e le s tia l and terrestrial a n c e s to r s at th e

W a la k u rritje [W a lu k irritji] R o c k h o le in th e G ib so n D e se r t o f W estern A u str a lia . th r ee rather b o ld

The

h u m a n -lik e fig u r e s to th e cen tr e o f th e p a in tin g rep resen t n o t o n ly E T

and h is fr ie n d s, but a ls o th e c e le s tia l sp irits o f L in d a ’s fath er and u n c le s all w h o m h a v e b r ie fly returned to th eir p la c e o f birth. T h e U -sh a p e s a b u ttin g th e lo w e r h o r iz o n ta l lin e an d r o u n d e ls (s y m b o liz in g th e W alak u rritje r o c k h o le and su rr o u n d in g so a k a g e c o u n tr y ) s ig n ify L in d a ’s fath er and u n c le s as th e y e x is te d b e fo r e their d eath s.

[D o c u m e n ta tio n

c o lle c t e d b y B r y c e P o n sfo r d , G o n d w a n a G a llery ]

The identification is striking, of E.T.’s and his friends with her father and her uncles (his “brothers-in-law”). This “father” and “uncles” are undoubtedly Shorty Lungkarta (father) and Wuta Wuta Tjangala (uncle) and probably George Tjangala (uncle). Shorty was strongly identified with Walukirritjinya through his father, the very site and story through which Linda has also articulated the “cleansing rain.” Moreover, in a stunning formulation of fusion, they too return to their home.

Notes 1

T h e is s u e s o f g r ie f, lo ss , and orphan sta tu s are sig n ific a n t q u e stio n s in m y m o n o g r a p h .

2

F o r d e ta ile d d is c u s s io n s o f th e m u ltip le rig h ts to co u n tr y , s e e M y ers 1 9 8 6 , 1 9 8 8 .

3

T h is w a s a su b m is s io n to th e A u str a lia C o u n c il fo r th e A rts.

F rom it, L in d a r e c e iv e d a

grant o f $ 3 5 ,0 0 0 to liv e o n , in ord er to p ro d u ce an e x h ib itio n a n d /o r b o o k o f h er w ork . 4

P rem o n t, R o s ly n , “ T ja n k iy a (L in d a S y d d ic k ) N a p a ltjarri.”

Australian Perspecta 1993 ,

e d ite d b y V ic to r ia L y n n . S y d n e y : A rt G a llery o f N S W , 1 9 9 3 . 5

F a y e G in sb u r g (p e r so n a l c o m m u n ic a tio n , w o rk .

1 9 9 7 ) p o in te d ou t h o w th is p ara llel m ig h t

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183

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li

The Enigma o f Emily Ngwarray1 Jenny Green

Emily Kam Ngwarray (Kngwarray, Kngwarreye) has been acclaimed by some as one of the major abstract painters of the 20th century. As an elderly Aboriginal woman living in remote Central Australia, her trajectory from relative obscurity to the status of international art world icon was rapid. Ngwarray first began experimenting with newly imported art materials in 1977 when she participated in a community arts project at Utopia and learnt to make tie-dyed fabric and batik. She started painting in acrylic on canvas in 1988, and in 1990 had her first solo exhibitions in the state capitals of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.2 These were followed by her inclusion in many group exhibitions, both in Australia and overseas, and by her posthumous representation of Australia in the XLVII Venice Biennale in 1997.3 She worked with immense speed and assurance, and in her brief eight-year painting career, Ngwarray produced an extraordinary number of canvases reputed to be as many as 3,000 works, or an average of one canvas each day.4 To the art world both her prodigious output and her seemingly ‘abstract’ gestural style were unlike anything previously seen from an Aboriginal painter. Ngwarray was essentially traditional in her life and outlook, yet her work challenges pre-existing notions of the ‘traditional’ in Aboriginal art. She rarely used the familiar imagery of Western Desert paintings - motifs such as concentric circles, animal tracks and stylised implements - which allow the viewer some literal reading of the work.5 As her painting style evolved, the residual iconicity in her work became increasingly obscured. For many, the ‘story’ that links her art to cultural interpretations is not immediately apparent, and in an art world hungry for explanation, the effect of her perceived reticence to explain has led to much speculation about the meaning of her work, and to the mystification of her persona. Ngwarray was bom around 19166 and she grew up in her traditional country, before significant incursions of European settlers into the region. Like many Aboriginal people of her generation, Ngwarray spoke little English. Her Anmatyerr syntax and grammar was barely influenced by the spread of English, with which she had little or no contact until her teenage years. In the following account she describes those early days: A revised version of ‘The Enigma of Emily Kngwarreye’, in World o f Dreamings, Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2000. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the National Gallery of Australia.

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Mer Alhalkerel, ikwerel inngart. Kel akely anem apetyarr-alpek Utopia station-warl. Mem arlkwerremel akeng-akeng mwantyel itnyerremel, lyarnayt tyerrerretyart, tyap lyarnayt. Mern angwenh, ker kaperl arlkwerrek, ilpangkwer atwerrerl-anemel netyepeyel arlkwerrerl...Mam atyenhel mern anatyarl itnyerremel, anaty itnyerremel, anaty, amern akeng-akeng lyarnayt, tyap alhankerarl utnherrerl-anem, arlkwerrerlanemel. Ikwerel anerl-anemel, arlkwerrerl-anemel. Mern anaty mam atyenhel itnyerlenty-akngerleng artnepartnerleng, akely-akely akenh artnelh-artnelh-ilerrerleng mernek-mern akely-akelyek. Kel alperliwerl-alhemel mer-warl, mern ampernerrerlanemel, anwelarr ampernerrety-alpem... Tent anetyakenhel-antywa arterretyart, antywer renh arterrerl-anemel. Kel alelthipelthipek arterl-anem kwaty akenh atnyepatnyerleng. Arrwekeleny ra. Long time kwa. [I was bom] at the place called Alhalker - right there. When I was young we all came back to Utopia station. We used to eat bits and pieces of food, carefully digging out the grubs from Acacia bushes. We killed different sorts o f lizards, such as geckos and bluetongues, and ate them in our cubby houses...My mother used to dig up bush potatoes, and gather grubs from Acacia bushes to eat. That’s what we used to live on. My mother would keep on digging and digging the bush potatoes, while us young ones made each other cry over the food - just over a little bit o f food. Then w e’d all go back to camp to cook the food, the anwelarr yams...We didn’t have any tents - we used to build shelters o f grass. When it was raining the grass was used to stop the rain coming in. That was in the olden time, a long time ago.7

Utopia, established as a cattle station in the 1920s, is but part of a larger region known as the Sandover. After about 50 years of pastoral occupation, parts of these lands were converted, through the land claim process, to freehold title.8 In this region there are now about 20 small communities or outstations, located on two main Aboriginal-controlled freehold areas or land trusts which flank the Sandover River, and on a number of smaller excisions of land from neighbouring pastoral leases and stockroutes. The freehold area alone covers some 3,500 square kilometres of country and forms a small part of the traditional country of Eastern Anmatyerr-, Alyawarr- and Kaytetye-speaking peoples. Ngwarray spent her life in this country. Painting History Women’s traditional methods of mark-making include the use of pigments made from ochres which are applied to the body using brushes called tyepal, made from sticks bound with thread. This body painting is central to the performance of awely - women’s ceremonies - and the marks themselves symbolise the actions of Ancestral Beings or Dreamings. Another traditional narrative form is called tyepety. The women recount these stories in word and gesture, tracing the storyline in the sand with their hands. Batik on silk and cotton was the first major innovation in artistic media which provided the creative link between the traditional and the contemporary for Utopia women. Ngwarray spoke of tie-dye and batik as the beginning of her ‘other’ artistic life - and in her view distinctions between art and craft practices held no

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particular sway. Batik began at Utopia in 1977 and it was immediately popular for its recreational as well as its economic potential.9 For many of the women batik was their first experience of using brushes and painting materials and most, like Ngwarray, had almost no previous exposure to non-traditional art forms. The Utopia women developed a distinctive, spontaneous style - ‘the art of free gesture and wandering line’10 - of which Ngwarray’s early batiks are typical. Frustrated by malfunctioning cantings,n which frequently become clogged up with fine red sand, she worked on regardless, unperturbed by the resulting puddles of wax which she freely incorporated into her designs. This integration of the ‘accidental’ has become the hallmark of the work of some Utopia artists, and of Ngwarray’s in particular. Her disregard for convention was carried over into her acrylic work. She readily adapted brushes to her own requirements and if no brushes were at hand she would use found objects - such as pieces of old thongs to apply the paint. The acrylic style of so-called ‘Western Desert’ painting began in Papunya in the early 1970s. Although some of the men at Utopia experimented with acrylics on small boards in the early 1980s, acrylic painting did not flourish at Utopia until 1988 and 1989 when the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) commissioned ‘A Summer Project’ and distributed 100 small canvases to artists in the outstation communities. Although paint provided many new graphic possibilities, the resonances of batik style are apparent in Ngwarray’s early works on canvas - the overlaying of colour and images are reminiscent of the layering of wax. Some of the Utopia artists preferred painting to batik - it was more immediate and involved less technical processing. For Ngwarray, the change from batik to acrylic painting was based on pragmatic considerations - she regarded painting as ‘easier’ and on other occasions gave her failing eyesight as a reason for the change: Batik-ek-amparr tha mpwarek, kel batik-arl mpwarek-penh an ayeng akalty anem akalty anem irrek, akwet anem ayeng painting-warl irrenhek...Arntapant anem. Not angwenhakwey, ipmentyarl angwenh, clothes-an tha ipmekarl. Boilem-ilerlan-kerr. Ipmenty lazy bugger-too much hard work-kety. Hard work mpwarerlan-kerr. Sick of it anem ayeng irrek...Awetharl hard warrk mpwarerlan-kerr awetharl boil-emileynepeynerl awetharl arrtyeparrtyerl awetharl thwep akenh irriny-ilep-ilerl. Alanhkety ayeng ipmelhek ipmenty, an ayeng arntap-warl anem easy-wari irrenhek. Alknga ayeng apat-irrek ampwa anemarl irrekarl, too much ikwereng tha ipmek. Paint yanhey tha ipmek. Nhwelker silk one-paint-ant mwerrarl atyeng.1 1 did batik at first, and then after doing that I learnt more and more and then 1 changed over to painting for good...Then it was canvas. I gave up whatsitsname - fabric - to avoid all the boiling to get the wax out. I got a bit lazy - 1 gave it up because it was too much hard work. I finally got sick o f it...I didn’t want to continue with the hard work batik required - boiling the fabric over and over, lighting fires, and using up all the soap powder, over and over. That’s why I gave up batik and changed over to canvas - it was easier. My eyesight deteriorated as I got older, and because o f that I gave up batik on silk - it was better for me to just paint.12

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Ngwarray always worked on the ground, sitting cross-legged in much the same way as she would sit to prepare food, boil tea, dig grubs or yams from the earth, tell tyepety stories, or paint up for awely ceremonies. She rarely viewed her work as a vertical surface except on infrequent occasions when she travelled to see it hung on gallery walls. She usually worked from the periphery of the canvas to the centre, although for extra-large canvases she sat in the middle. Her reach extended an arm’s length, augmented by her brush. The stylistic consequences of the outdoor working environment were also clear in her early batiks - the breadth of the artist’s stroke with brush or canting was that of her lap, around which she wound the fabric to secure it from the disruption of the wind. Symbolism and Interpretation There have been many attempts to explain Ngwarray’s work and to reconcile the traditional nature of her origins with the contemporary appeal of her art. Analogies have been drawn between her work and that of past masters such as Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Kandinsky and de Kooning.13 Some commentators have interpreted the monumental black lines on white, or white on black, in her yam paintings of 1995 as statements of reconciliation between black and white Australia,14 and others have read into her work a world-view of cosmic and transcendent proportions.15 The plausibility of these readings is contentious to the extent that these various cultural interpretations are attributed to Ngwarray herself, and they reflect particular problems both in understanding and reconciling the artist’s point of view with perceptions of their art by the viewing public. Ngwarray’s work demands a reworking of the terms of contemporary art discourse and requires a reading that goes beyond Eurocentric projections.16 The fact that Ngwarray spoke little English, and that the majority of her interlocutors spoke even less of her Anmatyerr language, has added to the problem. According to Ngwarray, the themes of country and Dreamings remained a constant in her work, persisting throughout the transformations of her style. This symbolism is essentially derived from the Altyerr - the creative principle which saturates the world with meaning. Popularly called ‘the Dreaming’, the essence of the Altyerr remains in the world today, manifesting itself in the topography of the land, in its life forms, and in the Law-codes of social behaviour by which people endeavour to live.17 For Ngwarray, the focus of this power lay in Alhalker country, the country of her spiritual origin and the place for which she maintained a connection inherited through her fathers and their fathers before them. For artists from Utopia and the Sandover region the choice of imagery for use in contemporary art is by no means random - artists usually paint designs associated with particular country, and this reflects the very precise knowledge they have of their environment and their cultural Law. Although the nuances of difference between various species of plants and animals may seem inconsequential to the outside observer, they are of paramount significance to the custodians of these Dreamings. While the restraints on subject matter operate in the community at an ideological level, this does not preclude experimentation, and

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the divergence of styles characteristic of these artists is evidence of their creative licence. Ngwarray’s main traditional concern was with the anwelarr (pencil yam),18 a creeper with bright green leaves, yellow flowers and edible roots. Ngwarray also painted other Dreamings associated with Alhalker and with the closely related country, Atnangker. These include ankerr (emu), intekw (fan-flower), akatyerr (desert raisin), and tywerrk (wild fig). Her name itself, Kam, is that given to the seeds of the pencil yam plant, and the practice of naming a person after a particular feature of a Dreaming emphasises their personal connection to that Dreaming and to the place of its origen. This was her ‘private one’, of which she could say unequivocally, T am Kam now’. Over and over in her imagination and on canvas she recreated the underground network of roots and tubers of the pencil yam - visible as an underlying tracery in earlier works, almost entirely obscured by dots in others, and emerging in bare linear form in her later works. Alhalkerarl anwenekakerrenh. Anwelarr. Atyenh arrernek mem, mem ayengarl itniwelhek-mern annga yanh-lkwer ayengarl itniwelhekek. Kam arreyn ap ra. Kam. An amern anwelarr-warl itniwelhek. Me Kam now. Mem anwelarr mer nhenh-areny-kenh aylernekakenh. Anwelarr ra. Arnkarrel ap ra antyem, arnkarr lakenh petyalperleng. Painting anem renh tha do-em-ilek. Mer anem tha atyenh urlertarrp arrernepernem. Alhalker country is ours - so is the anwelarr yam. I paint my plant, the one I am named after - those seeds I am named after. Kam is its name. Kam. I am named after the anwelarr plant. I am Kam now. The pencil yam grows in our country - it belongs to us - the anwelarr yam. They are found growing up along the creek banks. That’s what I painted. I keep on painting the place that belongs to me - I never change from painting that place.19

Ngwarray also painted designs associated with the women’s awely ceremonies from Alhalker country. Through the singing, painting and dancing associated with awely, women exercise their particular responsibilities towards the country. The women perform awely to look after country, promoting feelings of happiness, health and well-being in the community. They sing to ensure that bush plants continue to grow in abundance, bush animals proliferate, and to make babies healthy and fat. The younger women and girls are taught the songs and dances which have been revealed to the generations of women before them, thus ensuring the continuity of culture and Law. In the 1970s the symbolism of awely found a new form in batik designs on silk and cotton, and later in acrylic paint on canvas. In 1994 the profuse dotting which had characterised Ngwarray’s earlier work was replaced by more austere works of bold, often monochromatic, linear gesture. This imagery has been interpreted as signifying the markings, called arlkeny, which are the basis of the body painting for women’s awely ceremonies. The comparative economy of this style may have been prompted by a decline in the artist’s health, and particularly her eyesight, but regardless of the motivation these paintings remain breathtaking in their power.

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Ngwarray was a great singer - her powerful voice began the verse, on a high note and an inhalation of breath, and descended beyond the melodic range of her co-singers. She often led the dancing and carried the ceremonial pole called kweler to where it was ‘planted’ in the ground. She supervised the grinding of the ochres and the application of paint and was in local terms what is known as a ‘boss’. In her extraordinary and long life she experienced at first hand the consequences of the invasion of her country by Europeans, and some of the major transformations of Australian society during the twentieth century. Despite the increasing pressures of her latterly acquired fame, Ngwarray remained close to the country of her origin until her death in 1996. In the visual legacy of her work the strength of her voice remains with us.20

Notes 1

P r e v io u s ly th e n a m e N g w a rra y h a s b e e n sp e lt a s K n gw array or K n g w a rrey e.

T h ese

m in o r d iffe r e n c e s in s p e llin g d o n o t su b sta n tia lly alter th e p ro n u n cia tio n o f the w o r d s. The

w ritten

form

o f so m e

A b o r ig in a l

la n g u a g e s

in C entral A u str a lia

is a rece n t

p h e n o m e n o n . T h e au th o r is cu rren tly p rep a rin g a d ictio n a ry o f A n m a ty err , th e la n g u a g e sp o k e n b y N g w a r r a y .

T h e o r th o g ra p h ic

c o n v e n tio n s agreed u p o n b y th e c o m m u n ity in

th e re n d e r in g o f w o r d s in A n m a ty err are u se d in th is essa y . 2

S e e Isa a c s ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 19 2 and N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 1 46.

3

A lo n g w ith tw o o th e r in d ig e n o u s artists, Judy W a tso n and Y v o n n e K o o lm a tr ie .

4

S e e D o u g H a ll in N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 3.

5

T h is c o m m e n t d o e s n o t d o j u s t ic e to th e ra n g e o f a c r y lic art b e in g p ro d u c e d in b oth th e w e ste r n an d th e ea stern d ese rt areas. F or c o m m e n t s e e B e n ja m in in N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) pp. 4 7 48.

6

E stim a te s o f h er d a te o f birth vary b e tw e e n 1 9 1 0 and 1 9 1 6 .

N o a ccu rate r e co r d s o f th e

b ir th d a tes o f A b o r ig in a l p e o p le e x is t fo r th is era, w h ic h p re-d ated sig n ific a n t E u ro p ea n c o n ta c t in that r e g io n o f C en tral A u stra lia . 7

E m ily K a m N g w a rra y , p e rso n a l c o m m u n ic a tio n to J. G reen , 1 9 9 0 .

R e c o r d e d at C a m e l

C a m p o u tsta tio n , U to p ia . 8

In 1 9 7 6 th e le a s e to U to p ia S ta tio n w a s a cq u ired o n b e h a lf o f th e trad ition al o w n e r s b y th e A b o r ig in a l L and F un d C o m m is s io n , and in 1981 title to U to p ia S ta tio n w a s h a n d ed o v e r to th e tra d itio n a l o w n e r s , a s th e c u lm in a tio n o f th e L and C la im p r o c e s s.

A lh a lk e r ,

N g w a r r a y ’s paternal g ra n d fa th er’s c o u n tr y , w a s n o t in c lu d e d in th is c la im a s it lie s su b s ta n tia lly to th e w e s t o f th e c la im area o n a n e ig h b o u r in g p astoral p roperty. 9

F or d is c u s s io n o f th e b e g in n in g s o f th e batik m o v e m e n t at U to p ia s e e e s s a y s b y G reen and M urray in R yan and H e a ly (1 9 9 8 ).

10 R yan ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 7 9 . 11 A

canting

is a sm a ll to o l sh a p e d lik e a p ip e that is u sed to d irect fin e lin e s o f m o lte n w a x

o n to fa b ric in th e p r o c e s s o f b a tik m a k in g . 12 E m ily

K am

N g w a r r a y , p erso n a l

c o m m u n ic a tio n

to J. G reen ,

13

S e p te m b e r

1992.

R e c o r d e d at A tn e lty e y o u tsta tio n , U to p ia . 13 S e e T erry S m ith in Isa a cs ( 1 9 9 8 ) pp. 2 4 - 4 2 , and N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 2 3 . 14 D a n ie l T h o m a s ( 1 9 9 8 ) sa id that, 4W e ca n n o t h elp but read th e se a u ste r e ly g ra cefu l c a n v a s e s as g ran d sta te m e n ts o f b la c k /w h ite racial e q u iv a le n c e ’. Isa a c s ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 41 w h e r e h e refers to th e c o n tem p o ra r y

S e e a ls o T. S m ith in

A b o r ig in a l art m o v e m e n t as

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191

‘part o f th e b r id g ew o rk b e tw e e n c u ltu r e s’. S e e a lso R o g e r B e n ja m in in N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 48.

Time Magazine

Ju ly 16, 1 9 9 0 , and L a n g to n in B ritton (e d .) ( 2 0 0 0 ) pp. 1 1 - 1 6 .

15 A n in fo r m a tio n p an el at th e Q u e e n sla n d A rt G a llery in 1 9 9 8 stated: ‘Later, sh e d e c la r e d that her w o rk e n c o m p a ss e d “th e w h o le lo t” , s u g g e s tin g that K n g w a r r e y e w a s w e ll aw a re that her art d ea lt w ith tr a n scen d en t rea litie s.

“ W h o le lo t” is an oth er w a y o f s a y in g that

her p a in tin g s e x p r e s s w h o le n e s s , a se a m le s s to ta lity .’ 16 S e e N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 2 3 fo r d is c u s s io n .

R o g e r B e n ja m in in N e a le ( 1 9 9 8 ) p. 5 3 refers to

‘th e fa lla c y o f iso m o r p h ism - that sim ila r m e a n in g s can b e attrib u ted to im a g e s that h a p p en to h a v e sim ila r v isu a l c o n fig u r a tio n s ’. H e sa y s o f N g w a rra y that ‘th e tim e is ripe for her w o rk to e s c a p e th e d o m in a n t E u ro c en tric r e a d in g s’. 17 T h e e x p r e s s io n s ‘D r e a m in g ’ and ‘D r e a m tim e ’ h a v e b een a d o p ted in E n g lis h a s te r m s fo r a ra n g e o f r e lig io u s c o n c e p ts c o v e r e d b y se v era l w o r d s in A b o r ig in a l la n g u a g e s.

In th e

A n m a ty err la n g u a g e th e m e a n in g s o f th e w o rd A lty err in c lu d e th e act o f ‘d r e a m in g ’, and th e ‘C rea tio n t im e ’ - th e sp iritu a l d im e n s io n in w h ic h A n c e str a l B e in g s are e te r n a lly p resen t.

The

w o rd

A lty err

u su a lly

refers to

‘D r e a m in g s’ or

‘A n c e s tr a l

B e in g s ’

o r ig in a tin g in a p e r s o n ’s m o th e r ’s co u n tr y - the term A n g a n e n ty refers to th o s e fro m th e fa th er’s sid e . S e e S u tto n ( 1 9 8 8 ) fo r d isc u s sio n . 18

Vigna lanceolata. A n m a ty err anwelarr and arlatyey.

19 E m ily

p e o p le n a m e tw o d istin c t v a r ie tie s o f th is p la n t —

K am N g w a r r a y , p e rso n a l c o m m u n ic a tio n

reco r d e d at A tn e lty e y o u tsta tio n , U to p ia .

to J. G reen ,

13

S e p te m b e r

1992,

P e rso n a l c o m m u n ic a tio n to J. G reen , 1 9 9 0 ,

reco r d e d at C a m el C am p o u tsta tio n , U to p ia . 20 T h a n k s to P eter S u tto n , Judith R yan , R ob ert H o o g en ra a d , A lis o n F ren ch , F e lic it y G reen , M y fa n y T u rp in and J u lia M urray fo r c o m m e n ts o n th is tex t, and to V e r o n ic a D o b s o n for a ss ista n c e w ith tra n sla tio n s.

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paintings of Emily Kame Kngawarreye D ig g in s F in e A rt, 1 9 9 8 .

Earth's creation: The

( e x h ib itio n c a ta lo g u e ), M e lb o u r n e : L au rain e

PART 5: DIFFERENT DREAMINGS

These chapters are all concerned with the metaphysical basis of Aboriginal religions, symbolised by the word Dreamings. This word is used by some Aboriginal people and avoided by others. Writers about Australian religions are faced with their diversity and with the fact that they continue to change over time and have responded to different historical circumstances. Yet at the same time transcendent themes recur. There is the continual reestablishment of relationships with the spiritual dimension, there is the reference back to land and place, there are orderly parts but the possibility of disorder is ever present. John Morton’s chapter provides an excellent entry point into this complexity. He notes the presence in Aboriginal religion of ‘a kind of ecological consciousness’, but at the same time that the stories are the ‘very stuff of political competition’. He sees in recent history a move to the general indigenous identity from the particular. He detects a move from a relatively amoral spiritual dimension to one in which the Dreaming is associated with positive values of autonomy, respect for nature and reconciliation. The differences and the contradictions, the elegance and the complexities of Aboriginal cosmologies come out well in the chapters by Bird Rose and Mowaljarlai that follow. Deborah Bird Rose offers a systems view of the cosmology of the Yarralin people, a view of the cosmos as a network of connections, but not one that is centrally coordinated. Knowledge is both localised and dispersed but there is no centralised system of control, no one has complete knowledge and no-one organises the whole. The analogy with Gaia is there, but so too is the articulation with history, the past as precedent but also, and not surprisingly given the recent past, something to be changed. David Mowaljarlai presents what at first seems a much more ordered view of the cosmos from the perspective of Wallaganda, who brought life to the planet in the form of the Wandjina. The Wandjina created the form of the earth and gradually it began to take its differentiated shape, divided into place by gender and social structure. Structure was created through a process of differentiation but all was drawn back together by the process of spirit conception that perpetuates human beings but maintains the primacy of the spiritual dimension. ‘Mankind had been organised into peaceful co-existence’. Yet the story ends with disruption. The ancestral snake introduces sexual reproduction into the equation, resulting in choices, separating gender roles, offering solutions through ritual but leaving things open ended. H ow ard Morphy

12

Aboriginal Religion Today John Morton

W h en

my

father

w as

a liv e

th is

is

w hat

he

tau gh t

m e.

He

had

ta u g h t

tr a d itio n a l...d e sig n s ...H e ta u g h t m e h o w to sin g s o n g for th e b ig c e r e m o n ie s .

me

P e o p le

w h o are related to u s in a c lo s e fa m ily th e y h a v e to h a v e th e sa m e sort o f ju k u rrp a D rea m in g , and to sin g s o n g s in th e sa m e w a y as w e d o our a c tio n s lik e d a n c in g , and p a in tin g s on our b o d y or sh ie ld s or th in g s ...M y D rea m in g is th e k an garoo D r e a m in g , th e e a g le D rea m in g and b u d g erig a r D rea m in g so I h a v e three k in d s o f D r e a m in g in m y ju k u rrp a ...[T h is] is w h at I h a v e to teach m y so n s, and m y so n h as to tea ch h is s o n s th e sa m e w a y m y father ta u g h t m e, and th a t’s the w a y it w ill g o o n ...a n d n o oth e r fa m ilie s w ill c o m e a lo n g and take it a w a y from us, it is g o in g to b e rea lly strict...T h at is w h a t m y father taugh t m e and th is is w h a t it w ill carry o n to th e future, and n o -o n e k n o w s w h e n the juk u rrp a w ill e v e r en d (P a d d y Japaljarri Stew art 1 9 9 4 ). T h e land, for A b o rig in a l p e o p le , is a vibrant spiritual la n d sca p e. form

by a n c e sto r s w h o

o rig in a te d

It is p e o p le d in sp irit

in the D rea m in g, th e c r e a tiv e p e rio d

o f tim e

im m em o ria l. T h e a n c e sto r s tra v elled the co u n try e n g a g in g in ad v en tu re s w h ic h crea ted the p e o p le , th e natural featu res o f the land, and e sta b lish e d the c o d e o f life w h ic h is to d a y c a lle d ‘the [D J rea m in g ’ or ‘th e [ L ] a w \

T h e [L ]a w h as b een p a sse d o n th r ou gh

c o u n tle s s g e n e r a tio n s o f p e o p le ...S o n g , d a n ce, b o d y , rock and san d p a in tin g , sp e c ia l la n g u a g e s and the oral e x p la n a tio n s o f the m y th s e n c o d e d in th e se e s s e n tia lly r e lig io u s art fo rm s h a v e b een the m ed ia o f th e L aw to the p resen t d a y ...T h e a n c ie n t an d en d u r in g id e o lo g y

and

p h ilo so p h y

o f the

D rea m in g

is to d a y

c h a lle n g e d

b y th e

in s id io u s

e n cro a ch m en t o f w h ite id e o lo g y ...T h e s e tw o sy s te m s c o e x is t...[b u t] are fu n d a m e n ta lly in c o m p a tib le ...T h e d iffe r e n c e b e tw e e n the tw o p e o p le s is cle a r ly d e fin e d in that th e o r ig in s o f w h ite A u stra lia are m a teria lly b a sed , as o p p o se d to A b o r ig in a l so c ie ty w h ic h h a s n o c o n c e p t o f m a teria lism and is sp iritu a lly b a sed (M ic h a e l A n d e r so n 1 9 8 7 ). W h en I sto p p ed d rin k in g I sa id the seren ity p rayer...T h at little p rayer d u g d e e p in to m e and m a d e m e fe e l at p ea c e .

I w e n t to the church se r v ic e for th e v ery first tim e in a lo n g

tim e ...I n sid e that ch u rch th is lig h t ca m e, v ery bright, but b ea u tifu l. v is io n ...A fte r a w h ile , th e lig h t started fa din g .

It blurred th e

It w a s all h a p p e n in g in m e n o w ...a n d I

felt rea lly g o o d , and I n ev er w a n t to ev er g o b ack to that part o f m y life that d id all th o s e h orrib le th in g s ...1 am starting to p u ll...th e sto ries from th e B ib le , in to ou r w a y o f liv in g ,

From John Morton, ‘Aboriginal Religion Today’ in The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Melbourne, Oxford University Press: 9-16. Reprinted with the permission of the author and of the copyright holder, the Australian National University.

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196 an d that is im portan t.

In terp retin g th e sto r ie s that w e r e to ld b y J e su s and that w e r e to ld

b y th e o ld p ro p h ets, p u llin g th o s e sto r ie s and r ela tin g th e m to our w a y o f liv in g , ou r life s ty le , o u r cu ltu r e, o u r la n g u a g e , p u ttin g th o s e p ie c e s togeth er . peace.

B o th g iv e m e that

I ca n n o t se p a ra te th is fro m th is, I’v e g o t to h a v e them to g e th e r ( A g n e s P alm er,

c ite d in R in to u l 1 9 9 3 ).

Paddy Japaljarri Stewart, Michael Anderson, and Agnes Palmer share an Aboriginal heritage, but they come from different parts of Australia and have experienced different histories. To read what they have to say about their religion is to be struck by diverse, yet closely connected, events and themes. Japaljarri is a Warlpiri-Anmatyerre man who belongs to the Mt Allan-Mt Denison area about 250 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. He is a well known artist with an international reputation, his work was represented in the ‘Dreamings’ exhibition which toured the USA in 1988-89. Anderson, whose Gamilaraay country is in northern New South Wales, has had a prominent career in Aboriginal education and politics, and was among the leaders of the group which erected the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972. Palmer is an Arremte woman whose country is just north of Alice Springs, although she grew up at Santa Teresa, about 70 kilometres south-east of the town. She is involved in alcohol rehabilitation schemes in Alice Springs. Stewart, Anderson, and Palmer all believe in something known as the Dreaming. But they seem to want to tell us different things about it, Paddy Japaljarri Stewart’s account of Jukurrpa or ‘Dreamings’ resonates most closely with anthropological and popular portrayals of traditional Aboriginal society. He was bom about 1940. While he has never known a life free from the influence of colonisation, he has lived at least part of that life in times when the influences were relatively slight. Consequently, his narrative style is close to the old ways. In the main, he speaks of Jukurrpa in the plural: kangaroo Dreaming, eagle Dreaming, budgerigar Dreaming - these are the stories that he and his ‘close family’ hold to the exclusion of others. He has inherited these from his father and will endeavour to pass them on to his sons. In this way, and in spite of the fact that they are not common property, Stewart assumes that the Dreamings - the ‘traditional designs’ and the ‘song for the big ceremonies’ - will continue forever. He also assumes that his Dreamings have existed since the very beginning of time. They are eternal and transcendent, which is why the idea of the Dreaming has been memorably described by anthropologist. W.E.H. Stanner as ‘everywhen’. But Stewart does not speak of the Dreaming, for the Dreaming in the singular sense is largely an Anglo-Australian translation of a general idea that he would call the Law. The phrase ‘the Dreaming’ has its origins in the late nineteenth century when the postmaster of the Alice Springs telegraph station, Frank Gillen, in his research with Baldwin Spencer, coined the term ‘Dream times’ to capture in English the Arremte word Altyerrenge. ‘Dream times’ underwent a number of transformations to become the Dreaming or the Dreamtime, both of which came to be applied on a continental scale to the fundamental religious conceptions of all Aboriginal groups. Altyerrenge, derived from the word Altyerre, is found only in dialects of Arremte, the language spoken throughout a large area of semi-desert in central Australia,

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although in the form rendered by Gillen - ‘Alcheringa’ - it has passed into widespread usage. While other Aboriginal languages use terms with meanings similar to that of Altyerre - including Jukurrpa in Warlpiri - Arremte is one of the few languages that make an explicit link to dreaming. In Arremte, the phrase Altyerre areme is used to describe the process of having a dream. It literally means ‘to see Altyerre’. But dreams are not the only road to Aboriginal religion. The core meaning of Altyerre in Arremte lies somewhere else, in the idea of the ongoing creation of the world and all that it contains. Altyerre, Jukurrpa, and similar terms are fundamentally cosmologies, although they may have other meanings as well. For example, the Arremte phrase Altyerre Heme describes the process of telling a story. While not all stories are regularly referred to as Altyerre, stories are nevertheless fundamental to the entire cosmology that Altyerre describes. As is well known, Aboriginal people throughout Australia tell stories of the creation of the world by totemic ancestors - marvellous beings, essentially human (yet also superhuman) in form, but often also associated with particular species of animals and plants or other phenomena. These are the kangaroo, eagle, budgerigar, and other Dreamings spoken of by Paddy Japaljarri Stewart. The totemic beings are original in every sense of the term. They were the first to exist in the world and the first to institute a global regime of cause and effect. It was the totemic ancestors who created an ongoing dynamic field relating features of the landscape, the heavenly bodies, all living things, rules of human association, and religious observances. These things are only marginally associated with dreams. Particular ancestors and their creations may well be referred to as ‘Dreamings’, but this term is a gloss on what we might otherwise call ‘totems’ or ‘stories’. When Aboriginal people allude in English to the complete field of ancestral precedent, they speak not so much of the Dreaming, but of ‘the Law’. The Law governs the world of all Creation. It encompasses not only the rules and regulations by which people live, but also the laws of nature. Without the Law, nothing would exist or persist. In that sense, the Law is the Constitution, a charter of all that was, is, and shall be. By the same token, the Law is everywhere, binding the whole world together in a systematic way. Hence, as we delve deeper into the complex associations of ‘the Dreaming’, it begins to appear as something much, much more than ‘dreaming’. It is, in effect, a First Cause, a synthetic principle to which all minor causes are subordinate. While manifested through the material world, it is not in itself a material entity. It has been described by anthropologist T.C.H. Strehlow (1971) as ‘eternal, uncreated, sprung out of itself. Nym Bandak’s 1958-9 painting All the World, best known as the endpiece illustration for W.E.H. Stanner’s White Man Got No Dreaming (Stanner 1979), illustrates the way in which traditional Aboriginal religion reconciles the synthetic cosmology of the Law with the plurality of Dreamings. Bandak, a Murrinh-patha man from Port Keats, depicts the world as a unified totemic cosmos, made up of four strata. The outer band illustrates distant stars and the passage of the sun, which takes totemic and gendered forms. The next band depicts the Milky Way, while the next shows the planets, the morning star and the phases of the moon, also totemic in form. The final, earthly band of the universe is carefully represented

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with highly differentiated forms. Bandak had good reason for doing this, because different parts of the landscape were created by particular totemic beings. Moreover, these landscape parts remain more or less exclusively associated with particular ancestral beings, so that one cannot really speak of a single moment of earthly creation, but rather of many independent ancestral moments. While one may rightly say that there is a single Law, each totemic ancestor was effectively ‘a law unto itself. Totemic beings have something in common with Judaeo-Christian notions of power, since, like the Christian God, who is sometimes referred to as the Word, they called or ‘sang’ the universe into being so as to make it consubstantial with themselves. If a totemic being is said to have created a particular place, that place, or ‘sacred site’, cannot be separated from the ancestor, and people refer to it in personal terms as ‘him’ or ‘her’. Clusters of such sites coalesce to form estates or ‘countries’ held by particular family groups who likewise see themselves as consubstantial with the ancestors. Hence there is a threefold identity between people, places, and ancestors. As Paddy Japaljarri Stewart implies, no family surrenders its Dreamings or its country lightly. Ancestral knowledge is owned and jealously guarded. Each country is protected from intrusion under a regime of ‘really strict’ Law. Hence Bandak’s care in differentiating place from place. There is a profound relationship between an ancestor and the material entity created through his or her agency. A hill or tree might be an ancestor’s body, or some part of it, such as an arm or leg. A shallow depression or saddle on a range might have been caused by an ancestor making an impression there, either through direct bodily agency or through the operation of some tool. Alternatively, it might be said that part of the country has been formed by the ancestor externalising something, a complex idea that is in many ways the key to understanding the general process of ancestral creation. For example, while an ancestor might create a pile of rocks by, say, vomiting, other forms of extemalisation are essentially noncorporeal in nature. Sometimes an ancestor dreams a landscape feature before it is projected into reality. More regularly, the ancestors create such places by giving them names. But these names are not those of ordinary language: they are sung as verses of a song. Indeed, ancestral existence is essentially captured by songs which systematically describe journeys, activities, and creations as mythic cycles. Uta Uta Tjangala’s 1990 painting Woman at Yumari (see Kimber 1990, painting no. UU900151) illustrates something of these dynamics of creation, revealing how they are conditioned by a notion of visceral expression. The painting shows a number of landscape features that are part of a larger site complex in Pintupi country known as Yumari, near Lake Mackay. Uta Uta in this painting represents the ‘mother-in-law’ lying in a sexually provocative way. The roundels, which are also conventionally signs for places in the landscape, represent her breasts, vagina, and knees. Other paintings done before his death in 1990 depict different features of the place, particularly the ‘old man’ whose body was transformed into the main rock hole there. Yumari was part of Uta Uta’s own country. It is associated with his family, and Uta Uta himself most strongly identified with the old man of the Yumari story. He is known to have painted the story in strategic fashion, using it as a statement of his power and authority in laying claim to his country, so that his expression of his Dreaming was at the same

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time, as Fred Myers has described it, ‘an expression of his personal identity’. In Arremte, the language from which the Dreaming comes, one word that describes ancestral composition of songs, and therefore the very process of creation itself, literally translates as ‘to call by name’. Strehlow (1971) demonstrates that the same word also means ‘to trust’ or ‘to believe’ and, in its reflexive form, it also carries the sense of ‘to boast’. Indeed, all ancestral creation begins in the proud boast of calling oneself by name, with the ancestor conforming to the maxim ‘know thyself. After that, the ancestor names the place where he or she first came into existence, thus creating a major sacred site. Then the ancestor names all the other places, things, and creatures that are the outcome of his or her potent intervention - these are forever after bound to ancestral will. Those who come after the first beings, and are identified with them, inherit this very same potential. Uta Uta activated one local instance of that potential when he laid fresh claim to his country and re-created Yumari as a vehicle of his power, authority, and selfexpression. Virtue in Aboriginal religion lies in the obligation to follow ancestral precedent, which involves keeping the stories and countries alive as part of a living tradition steeped in ritual sensibilities and regulations. As Uta Uta’s relationship to Yumari shows, the obligation is not disinterested: the traditions should repay the interest of the living and they are the very stuff of political competition. Stories are there for the telling, but they are communicated in a number of different ways to different people. Some ‘outside’ versions are public and known to all. Some of these are especially suitable for children, while others may be ‘just so’ stories or moral tales. The most important versions of stories, generally called ‘inside’ knowledge, tend to be restricted to senior men, although in many places women also deal in restricted knowledge. Moreover, each person’s life has it own unique trajectory marked by characteristics of age, gender, and family affiliation which determine which stories, and which versions of those stories, will be revealed to them. The revelation may come through ritual drama - particularly during the commemorative events which re-enact the lives of totemic beings. Aboriginal rituals can consist of public dances and healing and mortuary practices, but these are usually subordinate to or articulated with male initiation, or other elements of ‘men’s business’, or ‘women’s business’, which are the primary means of sustaining countries in the form originally instituted by the totemic ancestors. Looking after country can fairly be said to be a kind of supreme good. But Aboriginal people do not really follow ‘the Dreaming’. Rather, they follow particular Dreamings and build ritual careers out of unique clusters of totemic association. In certain respects this care for Dreamings merges into economic maintenance and a kind of ecological consciousness. Looking after country enlivens it and makes it productive. But in other respects the care has more in common with nationalism. When the ancestors called the environment into existence, they sang songs steeped in sentimental biases towards the particular countries to which they were thereby bound. Each and every country was the most beautiful, the most bountiful, the most inspiring of all. Initiation rites induct novices into similar regimes of spatial commitment, while rituals designed to care for country repeat

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the very same songs and sentiments that originated with the totemic ancestors. Obligations towards ancestors and countries mean that Aboriginal people are in one sense owned by the land: they belong to it; they are identified with it. But this is not a denial of human ownership and agency. Religious identification with country is a negotiable matter that can lead to a sense of mutual possession and belonging. For example, Ian Keen shows that Yolngu people in north-eastern Arnhem Land refer to connections between countries, ancestors, and living people through the metaphor of likan, which literally means ‘elbow’, but signifies a more general notion of conjoint existence. When people become ‘conjoined’ with ancestors and country, their own agency and power of possession are enhanced. As one Yolngu man, Wurrpan, once said in relation to his Dreaming: ‘The big paperbark fell at honey bee country. I called that. It is my knee or elbow...and I called the likan name...This, the knee or elbow, is power. I have a lot of power; no one gets the better of me, white or black. I have the law for everyone. I am the elbow. I have...the power.’ It is a fact, however, that many Aboriginal groups in Australia have not always been able to make such confident assertions. Many Aboriginal people have had their ‘elbows’ dislocated since the European invasion of Australia began in 1788. Many were unable to sustain connections with country in the wake of urban and rural development. And many were unable to sustain connections with Dreamings in the wake of the battle for hearts and minds that accompanied the battle for land. While Aboriginal people were not entirely powerless in their exchanges with settlers, on balance their history is one of a sense of dispossession and, for those who survived the onslaughts, a renegotiation of identity. Michael Anderson has said that ‘the most important characteristic which distinguishes [Aboriginal people] ...is that they have refused to surrender identity’. They are ‘survivors of the traditional form’. While the ‘balance and harmony [of the traditional way of life] was lost...the strength of it lived within the survivors, and it gave rise to the identity that Aborigines will carry with them into the 21st century and beyond’. Not surprisingly, that identity is framed with reference to religious sensibilities. Anderson speaks of the ‘ancient and enduring ideology and philosophy of the Dreaming’ and of the ‘vibrant spiritual landscape’ that is Indigenous Australia. He also speaks of Aboriginal society being ‘spiritually based’ and having ‘no concept of materialism’. This account echoes Paddy Japaljarri Stewart’s concern with continuity and descent from original beings who were at one with the land, but its emphasis is different. It is first of all a general account. The identity spoken of is a broad Indigenous one, specific to the colonial situation that characterises the Australian nation state. While Stewart speaks only of his own family’s Dreamings, Anderson employs the Dreaming to signify the religious and historical grounds for Indigenous Australian identity as a whole. Hence something new has been added to the ‘ancient and enduring’ philosophy. The Dreaming has almost become pantheistic, a singular spiritual essence belonging to all Aboriginal people and connecting them to one Aboriginal country - Australia. Most non-Indigenous Australians know the Dreaming in this light. They are aware that Australia is a country with an extensive history and a land which has been honoured for countless generations. They believe there is an Australian

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Dreaming and that its secrets are held by Indigenous people. The recent upsurge of interest in Aboriginal art, both ‘traditional’ and ‘urban’, is in part testimony to Australia’s fascination with the ‘sacred’ underpinning of the nation. The land, and its Dreaming, have come to be signified in many ways - not only by familiar Indigenous motifs, but also by introduced styles of representation. For example, artist Fiona Foley’s 1985 painting Sacred Land depicts the artist’s hand reaching from above to connect with an item of traditional material culture lying on the ground as evidence of an ancestral past. Hence the work depicts the same connection between people, ancestors, and place that is central to all Dreamings and to the practice of holding country. Along with countless other Aboriginal paintings (or images thereof), Sacred Ground has entered into widespread circulation, illustrating to all an ongoing honouring of Aboriginal heritage and the land, and thereby affirming that the Dreaming will never end. For many Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, this affirmation is reassuring, and Foley’s image of an anonymous hand reaching respectfully to sacred land is something with which they can identify. If interest in the Dreaming is no longer restricted to Indigenous Australians, this raises the question of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous religious ideas. After many decades of missionary influence, a great many Aboriginal people are now Christians, and even combine Christian tenets with those embodied in Indigenous religion. But they have often rejected or reworked the most fundamental biblical ideas. Ancestral beings are not, like God, distant figures. There is no story of the Fall consistent with ancestral creativity, nor any notion of sin that would require the intervention of a Saviour to reconcile human beings with the far flung reaches of heaven. There is no myth of a past or future Golden Age, no utopian vision, and no hint of an outcast Devil, whose function is to bear responsibility for the cracks in God’s erstwhile heavenly kingdom. In Aboriginal religions, not only do people live in close proximity to their totemic ancestors, but those beings also synthesise contradictory qualities within themselves - not least insofar as they are the paradoxical embodiment of all that is both good and bad. As Strehlow (1947) has written, ancestral stories tell of men and women whose lives were ‘deeply stained with deeds of treachery and violence and lust and cruelty’. In central Australia I have encountered one Aboriginal synthesis of Christianity with traditional religion that teaches, without the vaguest hint of shame, that Satan was the origin of all totemic ancestry. While this can be interpreted as a direct response to Christian teaching about traditional forms of worship being the work of the Devil, it has taken a specifically Aboriginal genius to turn a denigrating statement into a myth that contains virtue. Yet the typically Christian struggle between good and evil is now often used to measure the Dreaming. Michael Anderson speaks of an Indigenous world of ‘harmony’ and ‘balance’ before the coming of Europeans, who broke ‘this circle of perfection’. Aboriginal history is therefore marked by a fall from grace and an eternal spiritual struggle against the materialist influences of Euro-Australian society. The land is honoured for being a paradise, much as it is in ancestral song. But while totemic verses are projected onto the landscape of the here and now, this paradise is projected onto an ideal past sensed as being potentially out of reach.

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There is, however, a promise of redemption since, if people recognise the failings of colonial history, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people will be able to move forward to share a common bond with the land - a common Dreaming. As Anderson says: W e se e k o n ly w h a t is o u rs, a n d th e la n d is o u r s...W e d o n o t w is h to m a k e r e fu g e e s o f th o s e d e sc e n d a n ts o f th e in v a d e r s ...W e w ill w a lk b e s id e th e m in fr ie n d sh ip an d in g o o d w ill, b u t w e w ill n o t b e su b ju g a te d n o r w ill w e a llo w th is la n d to b e su b ju g a te d to a lie n d e m a n d s or g re e d . T h is is o u r w o r ld . W e are prepared to share it, but n o t to g iv e it aw ay.

This redemptive vision has now come to be known as reconciliation. Like traditional Aboriginal religion, it is a fundamentally political project. But to what extent do Aboriginal people assent to the view that Euro-Australian society lacks spiritual depth? Agnes Palmer’s own story of redemption suggests an alternative path to reconciliation. Palmer is just one among thousands of Aboriginal Christians. As an alcoholic, she experienced her own version of a fall from grace, but her redemption lay partly in a religion that had been introduced by invaders and partly in a uniquely Aboriginal way of life. In reconciling differences, it is important to remember that the invaders were not exclusively materialist they have had their own spiritual orientations and Aboriginal people have often sensed this and taken it to heart. Furthermore, colonial intrusion is not exclusively bad. The ‘stories that were told by Jesus’ and by ‘the old prophets’ can participate in the old ways and become inseparable from them. The life and career of Jarinyanu David Downs, a Wangkajunga Law man who converted to Baptist Christianity in the mid 1960s, demonstrate his conviction that it is necessary to ‘make-em whole lot family’. Jarinyanu saw parallels between the ancestral and biblical heroes, who each travelled the desert; he linked the floods of his ancestor Piwi and of Noah, and equated the Wati Kutjarra (Two Men) with Moses and God. Such syncretic themes are reflected in his 1989 painting Moses Belting the Rock in the Desert, which depicts an Old Testament event using traditional local symbolism. The habit of mind that radically separates good from evil, the spiritual from the material, and self from other seems quite alien to this conception, just as it is absent from Dreamings. One could argue that the genius of Aboriginal religion has long lain in its capacity to reconcile believers to unity and harmony without denying the forces that create divisions. Namerredje’s 1974 painting Dismembered Kangaroo (Taylor 1996:181) illustrates the totemic metaphor of the divided (dismembered) body, commonly used in western Arnhem Land as a means of giving visual form to the paradox of the one and the many. This symbolism of division is as fundamental as any contrary idea of unification, and the former is not thought to spoil the latter. Rather, true harmony and balance obtain in a world where one cannot fully ‘separate this from this’; where one cannot hastily distinguish good from evil, spirituality from materialism, or black from white; where Indigenous and other Australians can possess their own stories, yet

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recognise the potential of each other’s Dreamings within the scope and principles of a more general Law.

References Anderson, M., ‘Aboriginal philosophy of the land’, Empire Times, vol. 19, no. 11, 1987. Keen, I., Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion: Yolngu of North-East Arnhem Land, Oxford, 1994. Kentish, B., ‘Jarinyanu David Downs’, in A. M. Brody (ed.), Stories: Eleven Aboriginal Artists, Sydney, 1997. Kimber. R.G., ‘Friendly Country, Friendly People \ Alice Springs, 1990. Myers, F.R., ‘Aesthetics and practice: A local art history o f Pintupi painting’, in H. Morphy and M. Smith Boles (eds), Art from the Land: Dialogues with the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Australian Aboriginal Art, Charlottesville, VA, 1999. Rintoul, S., The Wailing: A National Black Oral History, Port Melbourne, 1993. Spencer, W.B., Through Larapinta Land’, in W.B. Spencer (ed.), Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, London, 1896 Stanner. W.L.H., White Man Got No Dreaming,: Essays 1938-1973 , Canberra, 1979. Stewart, P.J., ‘Dreamings’, in D. Horton (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia , Canberra, 1994. Strehlow, T.G.H., Aranda Traditions, Melbourne, 1947 Strehlow, T.G.H., Songs of Central Australia, Sydney, 1971 Taylor, L., Seeing the Inside: Bark Paintings in Western Arnhem Land, Oxford, 1996.

13

Life and Land in Aboriginal Australia Deborah Bird Rose

The first satellite photos of ‘spaceship Earth’ launched a radical shift in perspective: an ‘external’ view that might provide us humans with the sense of shared place and purpose we so frequently seem to lack. James Lovelock has formulated the most challenging scientific analysis of this perspective: the Gaia hypothesis. Against all probability Gaia is a living organism: a ‘complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life’ (Lovelock 1979:11). Yet, as Peter Bishop explains in his beautiful essay ‘The Shadows of the Holistic Earth’, with the emergence of the Whole Earth image inspired by satellite photos comes both hope and despair: T h e e c o lo g ic a l im a g in a tio n e m b r a c e s fea rs o f fra g m e n ta tio n , c h a o s , o f im p r is o n m e n t w ith in th e w e b o f life , w ith a lo s s o f h u m an id e n tity ...C e r ta in ly th e im a g e o f h o lis t ic Earth p o in ts to th e u rg en t n e e d fo r im a g in a tiv e v e s s e ls to h o ld , c o o k an d d ig e s t th e fa n ta s ie s o f ou r tim e .

B u t fr a g m e n ts a ls o h ea l.

T h e q u e s tio n s p o s e d b y g lo b a l

im a g in in g are in th e m s e lv e s sh a tterin g . ( 1 9 8 6 : 6 8 - 9 )

Lovelock notes that his understanding of Gaia as a living organism is not new. When Yarralin people speak of mother Earth they speak to a similar understanding. They are the inheritors of a theory and practice of participating in living systems. They understand these systems scientifically, through observations and hypotheses developed and tested through time. They also understand them metaphysically. Dreaming law tells the story, often obliquely, frequently in bits that people have to put together for themselves. Dreaming and ecology intersect constantly, providing a rich understanding of universal and local life. In saying that life is good, Yarralin people are asserting that every kind of living thing has its own place, its own origins, its own right to exist. They place no species at the centre of creation. Their understanding contrasts forcibly with human-centred cosmologies and with the nihilism of despair.

Extract from Deborah Bird Rose, Dingo Makes Us Human: Life and Land in an Aboriginal Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 218-229. Reprinted with the permission of the author and Cambridge University Press.

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

In a human-centred cosmos non-human life is thought to serve, or to be susceptible of being made to serve, human interests. A human-centred concept of the cosmos poses spiritual and moral challenges of a particular order: if humans are at the centre of creation, why is life so hard? Why do we suffer, and why do we die? Christians have grappled with these questions for almost two millennia, not making much progress, but generating many extravagant answers. Elaine Pagels (1988) examines these issues as they were debated during the first four centuries AD. She notes that in the fourth century Julian argued that the facts of suffering and death do not mean: T h a t w e p a rticip a te in g u ilt - n e ith e r A d a m ’s g u ilt nor our o w n . T hat w e su ffe r and d ie s h o w s o n ly that w e are, b y nature (a n d in d e e d Julian w o u ld add, b y d iv in e in te n t), m oral b e in g s , sim p ly o n e liv in g s p e c ie s a m o n g o th ers. (Ib id .: 1 4 4 )

In contrast, Augustine’s view, which came to prevail among many Christians, was that we are condemned to suffer for sins we did not commit. In his view, free will is impotent. Augustine thus sets humans at odds with the conditions of their lives, naming the ‘disease’ only to pronounce that there is no cure. Julian, by contrast, asserts that ‘free will provides the possibility of moral action’ (ibid.: 148). The essentially secular world views which now dominate Western thought cannot escape these questions. With a few exceptions, they deny a spiritual understanding; they have ‘killed Nature’, replacing a female and organic conceptualisation with one that is mechanical and dead (Merchant 1980). If Augustine’s views lead to one kind of human nightmare, that of original sin, and perhaps the deeper fear that God must be evil, secular world views lead to others which oscillate between domination and despair. To live in the late twentieth century, for all of us, is to know the fear of ultimate destruction. For many of us it is to walk warily along a knife-edge on one side of which lies the arrogance which leads to destruction, and on the other side the nihilism which equally leads to destruction. Centralised or incorporative ways of organising relationships are familiar to most Westerners and many other people throughout the world. According to David Turner (1987:99-106), things (groups, individuals, ideas) defined as being different are brought together in sets of relationships which achieve a unity; parts are subsumed within a common code or organisation. Like others, he refers to this mode as monism: a system that recognises one ultimate principle. Many scholars have analysed this kind of system (Wilden 1980 is particularly insightful). Edward Said (1979:188) puts the case forcefully: ‘Monocentrism denies plurality, it totalises structure, it sees profit where there is waste...Monocentrism is practised when we mistake one idea as the only idea...’ An alternative to monocentrism is the model of an acentred system. Deleuze and Guattari (1981) provide an excellent discussion of this type of system in an article entitled ‘Rhizome’. They state that an acentred society ‘rejects any centralizing, unifying automaton as “an asocial intrusion’” (ibid.:61). Their analysis leads us to a position profoundly removed from notions of centralisation, hierarchy, privilege, and external frames of reference. ‘Local initiatives’, they

207

Life and Land in Aboriginal Australia

contend, ‘are coordinated independently of central instance’ (ibid.:69). This is a model - a view from the outside which can only be hypothetical; 1 believe that it is an accurate model of the Yarralin people’s world view. However, the view from the inside is one of a multi-centred world in which each centre is structurally equivalent, and linked, to every other centre. Systems at Work Yarralin people tell us that the earth is alive and constantly giving life, the mother of us all. The fact of one mother makes us all kin of a sort, as Riley Young made clear in one of his most eloquent statements: B la c k fe llo w n e v e r c h a n g e h im ...W e b een h o m in g [in ] th is c o u n tr y . [in] th is co u n tr y .

W e b een w a lk a b o u t th is co u n tr y .

W e b e e n g r o w up

W e k n o w all th is c o u n tr y all

o v e r ...B la c k fe llo w b een b o m to p o f that g ro u n d , and b la c k fe llo w - b la c k fe llo w b lo o d [in th e g r o u n d ]...T h is g ro u n d is m o th er. everyb od y.

T h is g ro u n d , s h e ’s m y m o th er.

W e born to p o f th is g ro u n d .

T h is [is] ou r m o th er.

S h e ’s m o th e r fo r

T h a t’s w h y w e w o rry

a b o u t th is g ro u n d .

In Dreaming ecology there is a political economy of intersubjectivity embedded in a system that has no centre. The essential points are: ■ the system is self-contained and self-regulating; ■ parts are interconnected; ■ it is not necessary for every part to be in constant communication with every other part because information from each part stimulates actions which are themselves information for other parts; ■ the system has the potential to get out of balance and to be brought back into balance; ■ there is no hierarchy, no central agency. Everything comes out of the earth by Dreaming; everything knows itself, its place, its relationships to other portions of the cosmos. Every living thing has, and knows, its own Law. The result is a set of interrelated parts which is always in a state of flux. When the cosmos is punyu it is homeostatic. Like political debates at Yarralin, the system works best when nothing happens that can be marked as significant change. The system works, as a system, because its parts are conscious, because they communicate, because they act and react, and because they adhere, as a matter of self-interest and free will, to the same set of understandings. The process can be seen in the seasonal cycle. The relationship between sun (often identified with femaleness) and rain (often identified with maleness) can be set out diagrammatically: if A (sun) then B (rain); if B then A. In ordinary time we experience sequence: A—>B—>A, but in Dreaming the relationship is simply Ag"

i

~ I..

,.

\

~

.,,,..,,,.~

..~ t j .

.t~

~

...~,

~

JI*-,,* ItJn

I "".

...~,~ ...,

l'lrutu~

~

~

Corpus Australis. R e p r o d u c e d fro m D a v id M o w a lja r la i Yorro Yorro: everything standing up alive, M e g b a la B o o k s , 1 9 9 3 .

F ig u r e 1 4 .1 T h e b o d y o f A u stra lia , and Jutta M a ln ic ,

..s

PART 6: RELIGIONS AND THE LAW

It is astonishing to realise that it took until 1976, with the enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, for non-indigenous Australians to recognise that the indigenous inhabitants had any kind of legal rights to their traditional lands. The Land Rights Act applied only to the Northern Territory and the bizarre legal fiction of terra nullius (land not owned by anyone) was effectively retained for the rest of Australia until the High Court of Australia decision in the case of Eddie Mabo v The State o f Queensland, 1992. This meant that, until the decision, the Aboriginal peoples inhabited their lands but did not own them. Frank Brennan, who has had a close personal involvement in the politico-legal debates over the question of Aboriginal land rights, provides a judicious survey of those debates and their practical outcomes. He brings out the important fact that what is at issue is a conflict between two radically different views of land ownership. On the one hand, the indigenous peoples view land as formed and shaped and sacralised by the Ancestor Beings of the Dreaming and therefore inalienable; and on the other hand, non-indigenous Australians view land as property which can be bought and sold, or alienated, and kept for private use. It is for this reason that, while the High Court decision in the Mabo case was an enormous step forward, much more remains to be done to make the legislation practically effective. Analogous issues arose about the celebrated Hindmarsh Bridge affair in South Australia in 1995. The anthropologist Robert Tonkinson analyses how a commercial plan to build a bridge to link the mainland with the island came into conflict with a religious claim by a group of Ngarrindjeri women that the island and its environs were a ‘sacred place’. The conflict was further compounded by the fact that another group of Ngarrindjeri women denied that there was in fact any such secret women’s knowledge. Tonkinson carefully analyses this conflict between the commercial claim and the religious claim of the women. While he thinks that, on balance, the claim by the women’s group that there was secret women’s knowledge about the sacred character of Hindmarsh Island cannot be sustained, he is also critical of those who accused the women of fabricating the so-called ‘secret knowledge’. No doubt, in both the land rights issue and the secret knowledge issue there are ways of reconciling, at the practical level, the two radically different views. But until the religious factor in both cases is fully recognised, it is clear that Australians, both indigenous and others, must face up to continued dispute in these areas. Max Charlesworth

15

Land Rights: The Religious Factor Frank Brennan

As life changes for Aborigines, so too does their relationship to land and to each other. Changes in these relationships effect changes to the religious life of myth and ritual, which also inform those relationships. The state, which has authorised Aboriginal dispossession and cultural invasion, has a duty in justice to provide protection of Aboriginal interests in land and aspirations for community selfdetermination, so that Aborigines may more readily determine the changes offered by new technology and lifestyles. Land rights legislation is essential, providing a protective regime of space and time, acknowledging Aboriginal spiritual responsibility for as well as economic opportunity from their country. Though the religious factor is invoked for the recognition of land rights and the right to restrain outside interests from interfering with the land (even in the public interest), Aboriginal landowners are also seeking political and economic bargaining power to maintain their legitimate self-interest. Attempts to authenticate Aboriginal spiritual relationships with land are usually made by those who are not Aboriginal attempting to weigh up Aboriginal claims over against the claims of others whose value system and worldview more readily accord with those of the state’s decision­ makers. We are yet to let Aborigines make decisions for themselves and for the rest of us regarding the best use of their country. Land Rights In 1492, Europeans and the American Indians discovered each other. To each, there opened a New World. For centuries, Christopher Columbus was described as the discoverer, and the Indians as the discovered. Throughout the world, indigenous peoples were then dispossessed of their lands without consent and without adequate compensation. Their societies were destroyed and slavery was common. In 1537, Paul III in the bull Sublimis Deus condemned those who held that The inhabitants of the West Indies and the southern continents should be

Reprinted from a revised version of an essay by Frank Brennan in Religious Business: Essays on Australian Aboriginal Spirituality, ed. Max Charlesworth, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 142-175, with the permission of the author and The Charles Strong Memorial Trust.

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

228

treated like irrational animals and used exclusively for our profit and service’. He declared that the In d ia n s as w e ll a s an y o th e r p e o p le s w h ic h C h ristia n ity w ill c o m e to k n o w in th e future, m u st n o t b e d e p riv ed o f th eir freed o m and th eir p o s s e s s io n s e v e n i f th e y are n o t C h r istia n s and that, o n th e con trary, th e y m u st b e left to e n jo y their fr e e d o m and p o s s e s s io n s .

In colonial times, the European powers carved the globe into spheres of influence. Having asserted sovereignty by act of state, the coloniser would assert control over the local population and resources. Native systems of land title would continue, but only until they were extinguished by will of the sovereign. Especially where the native population lived a communal lifestyle, hunting and gathering, without a political system operating beyond the territory occupied by the local language group, the colonisers would take over the land as if it were terra nullius. The assertion of sovereignty often resulted in the expropriation of native lands without consent or fair compensation. After the Second World War, the United Nations committed itself to a decolonisation process. Native peoples with an identifiable population and land base were entitled to self-determination. Local populations could make a free choice whether or not to be integrated into the adjacent society administered by the colonising power. When separated by blue water or by identifiable boundaries, such populations could decide to separate and seek their own development. In this post-colonial era, indigenous people have become more political in their struggle. Their rights are an international issue. Their claims to land rights, sovereignty and self-determination are being heard, but are restricted by prevalent notions of private property, national sovereignty and assimilation. In many countries, a just and proper settlement is still to be reached. Land rights is an issue in countries where an indigenous population is in the minority and the law of the new settlers has in the past paid insufficient regard to the traditional owners’ right to land. It is also an issue where indigenous people are the majority but where communal notions of native land title are giving way to individual notions which are more compatible with the demands of foreign investors. In international law, self-determination has applied chiefly to people emerging from the colonisation process being guaranteed a choice of future. It is not allowed to just any group. There must be an inquiry whether there is enough homogeneity or unity or common desire to hold the state together; whether it has economic resources and political capacity. Though there is still no definition of ‘peoples’ in international law, the right of self-determination, carrying with it the entitlement to partition of territory, is exercisable only by a territorial community, the members of which are conscious of themselves as members of such a community. The international community of nations will not agree to interference in their domestic affairs to the extent that outside agencies would be able to adjudicate the claim of indigenous peoples to separate themselves from the nation state, especially when the nation has long been recognised as a member of the world community of nations with boundaries intact. It would be even less likely if the

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229

indigenous population is scattered throughout the land, made up of diverse groups without a long-established nationwide political structure, having inter-married with descendants of the settlers over centuries. Land rights for these groups can provide the economic and spiritual base for them to make a realistic choice between their traditional lifestyle and that of other nationals. In seeking an appropriate social and political organisation for indigenous people, we have to move beyond the primitive notion that assimilation is a precondition for justice for all. Equality does not equal uniformity. Equality of treatment requires recognition of differences which indigenous minorities themselves want to maintain in order to develop according to their own specific characteristics, while still having regard for others and for the common good of society and the world community. An assured land base is essential. Any decision to be integrated into the surrounding culture must result from a guaranteed free choice based on the right of minority group members to live together according to their specific cultural and religious characteristics. This requires the provision of realistic alternatives, backed by the equitable provision of government services to indigenous people, whichever choice they make. Indigenous people are not simply self-identifying groups in the community who are in need of welfare assistance. As descendants of the first occupants and as the primary custodians of indigenous culture and heritage, they have a right to continue the management of their community affairs on their lands as autonomously as possible, provided they do not act contrary to the common good nor interfere with the rights of others, and provided all community members are afforded a realistic choice between their community life and the lifestyle available to other nationals. Though the provision of such choice may require extra resources from government, the cost is justified and necessary, given the history of dispossession of land and kin which was the precondition of the birth of modem nation states which include indigenous peoples within their borders. The evils of assimilation and discrimination will be overcome only by indigenous people determining their future, even if it be inevitably as a part of a nation state in which they are numerically a minority. Recognising indigenous land rights, a post-colonial legal system is able to reverse some of the wrongs from previous generations and to wrap a protective husk around the relationship of the indigenous people with their land (often spiritual as well as economic), affording them the protections and opportunity needed to determine their own future and to manage their own affairs, no longer foreigners nor second-class citizens in their own land. Land rights laws usually preclude tribal elders alienating the land or relinquishing control. The land is to be maintained for future generations. The land is held in trust for the benefit of all tribe members. Special provisions govern access to the land by miners and other developers because such commercial activity can disrupt the spiritual life and traditional lifestyle of the people. The risk of such disruption should be permitted only with the consent of the people.

230

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Australian Land Rights Legislation In 1972 the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission was established and chaired by Justice A.E. Woodward. The government having decided to recognise land rights of Aborigines in the Northern Territory, Woodward was asked to design a process. He set out his assumptions of the aims underlying the recognition of land rights, including The doing of simple justice’, the promotion of social harmony and stability, the provision of land as a first essential to people who are economically depressed and who have no real opportunity of achieving a normal Australian standard of living, the maintenance and improvement of Australia’s standing amongst the world’s community of nations, and ‘the preservation, where possible, of the spiritual link with his own land which gives each Aboriginal his sense of identity and which lies at the heart of his spiritual beliefs.1 Under the legislation which resulted, Aborigines claiming to have a traditional claim to land which is unalienated crown land outside town or city boundaries can apply to a commissioner who may then recommend to the minister that a land grant be made. A traditional land claim can be made only by traditional Aboriginal owners who constitute a lo c a l d e sc e n t gro u p o f A b o r ig in a ls w h o h a v e co m m o n spiritual a ffilia tio n s to a site on th e lan d , b e in g a ffilia tio n s that p la c e th e gro u p un d er a prim ary sp iritu al r e s p o n s ib ility fo r that site and for th e land, and are e n titled b y A b o r ig in a l trad ition to fo r a g e as o f right o v e r that la n d .2

There has been much anthropological ink spilt over this definition. The legislative history is clear. Justice Woodward provided drafting instructions for proposed legislation which included a definition of traditional Aboriginal owners almost identical to that which resulted in the legislation.3 He based his draft substantially on the Northern Land Council’s final submission, which included a specially commissioned paper by R.M. Bemdt on the ‘Relationship of Aborigines to their land, with reference also to sacred and/or traditional sites’. Bemdt submitted that the personal and spiritual linkage of Aborigines with land is expressed through membership of what can be called a local descent group.4 The local descent group would be defined most typically in relation to patrilineal descent: A lo c a l d e sc e n t g ro u p is a ss o c ia te d w ith a stretch o f cou n try w ith in w h ic h sp e c ia l s ite s are lo c a te d .

P o s s e s s io n o f that co u n try is v a lid a ted through m yth o-ritu al sta tem e n ts.

T h e site s w ith in it c o n ta in th e d e a th le ss and eternal spiritual m a n ife s ta tio n s o f th e m y th ic ch aracters: ju s t as th e m em b er s o f su ch a unit are liv in g m a n ife s ta tio n s o f th o s e la n d -b a se d (sp ir itu a lly sp e a k in g ) m y stic b e in g s .5

Australia’s most experienced land commissioner, Justice John Toohey, conducted a review of the Land Rights Act in 1983. At that stage there had been fifteen land claim reports published, each of which had discussed the elements of the definition of Aboriginal owners. The concept had not been confined to an exogamous descent group which is patrilineal and whose members exercise a primary spiritual responsibility for a clan estate. A local descent group could be matrilineal or even

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ambilineal, including managers as well as owners of land. Though there was a good case for broadening the definition, Toohey concluded that it had been interpreted in a way that allowed sufficient flexibility while retaining 'the advantage of identifying with some precision those who answer the description'. 6 He recommended that the existing definition of traditional Aboriginal owners remain. 7 The Daly River (Mulluk Mulluk) Land Claim is revealing. In response to the Mulluk Mulluk claim to traditional ownership there was a claim by other Aborigines to Kamu country. In his report of fieldwork in 1932 Stanner reported the presence of members of eleven tribal groups. Seven other tribal groups, including the Kamu, were formerly in contact with the settlement but, according to Stanner, were either extinct or the few survivors had drifted into the sidings or stations such as Pine Creek, Katherine, and Adelaide River. At the land claim hearing 50 years later, Father John Leary MSC, who had reestablished the mission at Daly River in 1955, said, 'I have never heard an Aborigine talk about that group. I have some faint recollection of Bill Stanner talking about the group, but was absolutely puzzled as to where they fitted in. I got the impression that they had died out many, many years before.' 8 At the time of the land claim, there was only one elderly member surviving, Mrs Pan Quec, and she had indicated a willingness to pass on her traditional rights to the active claimants of the Mulluk MullukMadngele group. In evidence she lamented: Kamu country all been finished up. Nobody alive here, nothing. No old men, old men, my old man. nothing- me ... Let him have it. Mulluk Mulluk, this country. My country all been finished. I might give him this mob, Mulluk Mulluk. But for hunting I can come up here and camp here and go back here like that, you see. I bring all the children and we camp here and we go back again. I give him Mulluk Mulluk this country now because old men. old men, been die. I can't have it- no good health. 9 Toohey observed, 'Although it may once have been Kamu country, it has for many years been thought of as Kamu and Mulluk Mulluk. Once the Kamu had died out or were thought to have died out, the situation was more one of surviving coowners. In my view it does insufficient justice to the evidence to describe the Mulluk Mulluk as simply looking after Kamu sites.' 10 In the end, Toohey was satisfied that the Mulluk Mulluk claimants had common spiritual affiliations to the relevant sites placing them under a primary spiritual responsibility for those sites and that land. Kamu descendants, mostly resident in Darwin, in recent years have agitated their claim with the Northern Land Council for some entitlement to land in the Daly River area. The local community has been happy to share country by the river bank with these Kamu descendants, but they have shown no willingness to share country on which the community is built. It is not a question of spiritual relationship with land, rather a question of power- power of the local community to determine its own living arrangements as a community over against the power of persons wishing to be absentee landlords or wishing to displace present occupants so as to reconstitute on their ancestors' country, when the last surviving traditional

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

owner had indicated the transfer of the land under tradition to another Aboriginal group. Given the history of dispersal, dispossession, and establishment of missions and stations, many links with country have been severed and not just in favour of migrants and their descendants; often other Aboriginal groups have taken over country with encouragement from church, government and pastoralists. In 1983-4 Mr Paul Seaman conducted the Aboriginal Land Inquiry in Western Australia. The Woodward report served as a useful starting point for him. Seaman observed: T h e great m ajority o f p e o p le o f A b o r ig in a l d e sc e n t in W estern A u stra lia can m a k e th e c a s e that th e y or their fo reb ea rs w e r e fo r c ib ly d is p o s s e s s e d o f trad ition al lan d s. w o u ld

b e u n a b le to o b ta in

an y

land u n d er a p r o c e s s w h ic h

d em a n d e d

M any

proof o f

A b o r ig in a l tr a d itio n .11

He found ‘a range of interests from traditional relationships based on spiritual, residential, economic and historical factors to contemporary relationships based on association with settlements, pastoral stations and urban areas’.12 He could see no value in Western Australian conditions in basing the right to claim land upon a definition of traditional owner similar to that contained in the Northern Territory legislation.13 Though Woodward had originally recommended that land be available for claim on the basis of need, the Commonwealth Government rejected all bases of claim from the legislation other than that based on traditional ownership of unalienated crown land. This narrow insistence has resulted in the advocates and commissioners in the land claims process being confronted with the reality that Aborigines succeed either as traditional owners or else are deprived altogether of land grants. Not surprisingly, there has been an extension of land claims under the heading of traditional ownership beyond the bounds of what was expected by the original drafters of the legislation. In his 1974 report Woodward had said: I th in k it is u n d e sira b le from th e p o in t o f v ie w o f th e A b o r ig in e s th e m s e lv e s that large a reas o f co u n tr y , h a v in g little v a lu e to th em sh o u ld b e h an d ed o v e r to th e ir o w n e r s h ip . T h is w o u ld in e v ita b ly lead to the resu lt that th e total area o f A b o r ig in a l o w n e r s h ip w o u ld b e c a lc u la te d and c o u ld b e m a d e to se e m that the A b o r ig in e s had m o re than th eir fair sh are o f land.

He reiterated this warning in 1985 at the Australian Legal Convention and suggested that A b o r ig in a l C o u n c ils and their a d v ise r s g iv e ca refu l th o u g h t to the e x te n t o f future c la im s - and e v e n c o n sid e r th e a d v isa b ility o f fo r e g o in g or su rren d erin g s o m e lan d a lread y c la im e d o r granted.

I rea lise that th is c r ea tes p r o b le m s for th e p articu lar A b o r ig in a ls

m o st c lo s e ly a ss o c ia te d w ith th e land in q u e stio n but, i f p ersu a d ed that th eir a c c e s s to th eir land w ill a lm o st c erta in ly rem ain u n restricted , th e y m ay b e w illin g to fo r e g o th e ir c la im s for th e b est in te rests o f A b o r ig in a ls g e n e r a lly .14

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This advice of course has not been heeded. It completely overlooked the fact that the relevant consideration nowadays is more often that of Aboriginal control over outside access to such land, particularly access by miners which can and ought to result in financial betterment and improved social conditions for the Aboriginal land holders. The guarantee of access for the performance of spiritual obligations is not the only concern of Aboriginal land holders. In some instances, it may no longer be the primary concern. When Queensland came to legislate for land rights, though there had been no public inquiry, the government decided to follow the Woodward and Seaman recommendations to the extent that land could be claimed on the basis of traditional affiliation, historical association, or economic or cultural viability. The Queensland Aboriginal Land Act 1991 provides that a claim on the ground of traditional affiliation ‘is established if the Land Tribunal is satisfied that the members of the group have a common connection with the land based on spiritual and other associations with, rights in relation to, and responsibilities for, the land under Aboriginal traditions’.15 Aboriginal tradition is defined as ‘the body of traditions, observances, customs and beliefs generally or of a particular group of Aboriginal people, and includes any such traditions, observances, customs and beliefs relating to particular persons, areas, objects or relationships’.16 But if there be no traditional owners of the land, it can still be claimed by those claiming an historical affiliation, or if there be no historical occupiers, others can make a claim on the basis of need. A priority of bases for claims is likely to reduce dependence on the criterion of traditional ownership, allowing Aborigines a greater parity in power relations with outsiders, without always having to invoke spiritual responsibility for the land in question. The Religious Factor Under Durkheim’s influence, many commentators saw Aboriginal societies as the epitome of primitive religion paralleling primitive social organisation. Religion was seen to be a social instrument for the preservation of law and order. It is still an opinion popularly espoused that traditional Aboriginal religions, particularly in remote desert areas with small populations, shared much in common with monotheistic religions in that they provided a regime for law and order in societies which had to ensure a strict code of morality for survival of the community. The complexity of myth and ritual and the diversity of religious practice belie any simple reduction. Understandably, such reduction has greater appeal for commentators who admit to no religious dimension in their own lives. Admittedly, such reduction may be too readily dismissed by those of us who profess a religious dimension in our own lives and protest its being posited as a consequence of our social conditioning. In contemporary Aboriginal Australia, the religious factor is just one level of relationship, just one justification for, just one perspective on the Aboriginal relationship with land. It is an abiding factor; it is also a changing factor. It can be an independent factor; it can also be an inter-dependent factor. It is a threatened

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factor - threatened not only by non-Aboriginal non-practitioners of the religious belief system but also threatened by Aboriginal owners who choose or are cajoled, persuaded or simply slip into another way of looking at the world and therefore another way of looking at their land. Aborigines constantly see their reality in terms of their relationship with creator beings of the Dreaming, with the land and with each other. There is no ready differentiation between the law, religion and culture. The law is seen to be lifegiving as well as death-dealing. Life is not a morality play but it can be a tragi­ comedy to be lived to the full. There is always time for myth and ritual to be enacted and repeated. Change is neither sought nor a matter for surprise. No change is so great that it need be a challenge to Aboriginal faith. Aboriginal religion is never some idealised system lived in splendid isolation by people yearning for the lives of their ancestors a century ago, having no interest in the attractions of technology and ideas developed in cultural contexts far removed from their own. Contemporary Aborigines are above all else contemporary people open to the world and wanting to assert their own identity. There are many Aborigines in many communities through Australia who are crying out; I have heard them saying: W e k n o w w e h a v e p ro b le m s. W e k n o w th e y are ou r p ro b lem s. W e k n o w m a n y o f th e s e p r o b le m s w o u ld n o t h a v e o ccu rre d bu t fo r th e c la sh o f cu ltu r e s and th e e n fo r c e d d is p o s s e s s io n o f ou r a n c e s to r s and th e c o n tin u e d d isa d v a n ta g e and p o v e r ty w e su ffer. W e k n o w that w e h a v e to fin d th e a n sw e r s and w o rk at im p le m e n tin g th e m . w e n e e d h elp .

W e know

W e w a n t h e lp - but h e lp w h ic h r e sp e c ts ou r d ig n ity and a c c o r d s u s o u r

d u e a u to n o m y as in d ig e n o u s p e o p le .

W e k n o w ou r la w ca n n o t p r o v id e th e a n sw e r s o f

th is n e w ra p id ly c h a n g in g w o r ld w h ic h attracts, sh a p e s, and s o m e tim e s tw is ts o u r c h ild r e n and ou r y o u n g p e o p le . T o s o lv e th e s e p r o b le m s w e d o n o t w a n t to b e c o m e ju s t lik e th e c o lo n is e r s and m ig ra n ts to o u r land.

W e w a n t to s o lv e th e s e p r o b le m s o u r w a y

s o w e ca n c o n tin u e to liv e o u r w a y - th o u g h that n o t b e lik e ou r a n c e sto r s d id . d a y s are g o n e .

A n d n o t lik e o th e r A u str a lia n s liv e .

T h ose

W e w a n t o u r w a y to b e str o n g s o

o u r y o u n g p e o p le w ill b e p ro u d to c h o o s e it w h a te v e r h a p p en s.

Whether it be the proposed flood mitigation dam at Alice Springs or the proposed mine at Coronation Hill, the religious factor in the Aboriginal relationship to land is invoked by Aborigines and their supporters to buttress their claims when the nation state continues to deny to the Aboriginal owners the power to make the decisions about their land, which are really decisions about their lives. Instead, the decisions are made by non-Aboriginal non-practitioners of the religion trying to offset the incommensurable spiritual factor against the so-called national interest or community interest. If freedom of religion were taken seriously in these cases, Aborigines holding the beliefs would also be holding the power to determine the outcome. Having to articulate one’s questioned religious heritage to non-believers whose economic or national interests are presumed sacrosanct simply because they are espoused by the decision-makers demands articulation of the ineffable and independent valuation of the transcendent reality. Inevitably, Bula is parodied as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and Urewe Aterle is seen as a wellspring for Commonwealth interference in domestic Northern Territory affairs.

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Decisions about land use become politicised because the government will not trust Aborigines as the decision-makers, determining their own religious future by weighing incommensurable values and making their own determination when there is a conflict of aims between them and other Australians who want to use the land for their own interests. Economic and social realities impinge on decision-makers whoever they may be and whatever their beliefs. Aboriginal traditional owners are more likely to make the right or preferable determination simply because it is their decision. Wherever there has been conflict in the past, the decision of the state has been that it is for an instrument of the state (whose personnel are not the Aboriginal landowners) to make a determination as to the balancing of rights and interests, they having translated the Aboriginal religious affiliation to land in a way comprehensible to themselves and the Australian community and having gauged the religious interest over against other incommensurable matters all of which impact upon the common good. When the state determines the weighting to be given to the religious factor in the Aboriginal relationship to land, there will always be grounds for objecting that the decision-maker has wrongly weighted that factor against criteria which are not more objective, but simply more comprehensible and appealing to the decision-maker. Though the Commonwealth’s declaration preventing the proposed Junction Waterhole Dam outside Alice Springs for the next twenty years was hailed as a major breakthrough in the protection of Aboriginal rights, the detriment to others which had to be offset was only the in fr eq u e n t d a m a g e to th e ca rp ets and o th er p rop erty o f w h ite p e o p le w h o h a v e c h o s e n to b u ild o n flo o d -p r o n e lan d , n o t to e le v a te th eir h o u s e s or c o m m e r c ia l b u ild in g s to th e sm a ll e x te n t n e c e s sa r y to p la c e th em a b o v e flo o d le v e l or o th e r w ise f lo o d p r o o f th e m , or to b u y b u ild in g s that are k n o w n to b e su b je c t to o c c a s io n a l f lo o d in g at p r ic e s that p r esu m a b ly refle c te d that f a c t.17

Even for economic rationalists having no concern for Aboriginal sensibilities about sacred sites, the dam was a questionable proposition, being ‘an unusually expensive option for flood mitigation’. During its life, the dam would have returned only ‘33 cents for every dollar invested by preventing property and infrastructure damage and business disruption’.18 At Coronation Hill, the question was, ‘To mine or not to mine?’ This recurring question confronts all who have a commitment to sustainable development in Australia. The Hawke Government referred the question to the newly created Resource Assessment Commission (RAC). It provided the government with seven options across the spectrum from ‘no’ to ‘negotiated process for mining applications’ to ‘open mining’. After a heated five-hour meeting, the Cabinet under the leadership of Mr Hawke decided that mining and exploration would not be permitted at Coronation Hill or elsewhere in the Kakadu Conservation Zone and that the whole of the zone would become part of Kakadu National Park. The RAC adopted what it called an inter-disciplinary approach to arrive at conclusions relevant to decisions that seek ‘to optimise the net benefits to the community from the nation’s resources’. The criteria used in the evaluation

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included efficiency of resource use, environmental considerations, sustainability, and equity. In the end, environmental considerations were not determinative as the evidence suggested that ‘a single mine, properly managed and monitored, would have a small and geographically limited direct impact on the known biological resources of the conservation zone’. The decision was to turn on so-called equity considerations, the one of greatest relevance being the well-being and views of the Jawoyn, the local Aboriginal community. Unable to answer the question, the RAC simply stated the dilemma facing the Australian Government: ‘Should it set aside the environmental risks that cannot be eliminated and the strong views held by the Aboriginal people responsible for the conservation zone in favour of securing increases in national income of the order that seems likely from the Coronation project and possibly from other mineral resources in the zone?’ The RAC conducted what it called a contingent valuation survey of the Kakadu Conservation Zone. In these days of economic rationalism, such a survey is an attempt to measure values which are incommensurable. Two thousand and thirty-four Australians were asked how much they would be willing to pay to prevent possible environmental damage from mining in the conservation zone. The survey rendered precise but farcical results, showing that Australians were willing to pay $123.80 per person per year for ten years to avoid the effects of a major impact scenario. If mining were not to have a major impact, Australians were still prepared to expend $52.80 per person per year for ten years to avoid the effects of minor impact. The researchers claimed that these results supported ‘the intuitively plausible proposition that Australians are prepared to pay more to avoid more serious and more likely environmental effects’. No cabinet minister could conceivably have been assisted by the results of this survey. Governments often claim a mandate for a particular programme. Or failing to articulate a mandate, they point to the economic benefits which will inevitably flow to the community at large. In our political system, which does not at present give legal recognition to the Jawoyn claims to the hill, it was for Federal Cabinet to decide, with a discretion unfettered by either the Aboriginal or Commonwealth legal systems. How the ministers reached their decision and on what basis was murky business during a leadership challenge. Mr Hawke decided that his cabinet should implement the wishes of the majority of the elders of the Jawoyn people as they were expressed to and determined by the RAC. When asked by Justice Stewart, who chairs the RAC, those old men said they did not want mining because mining could disturb Bula whom they believe to inhabit the hill. The Jawoyn beliefs about Bula and the hill are religious beliefs. These beliefs are not shared by any other people than the Jawoyn. There are barbaric economic rationalists who regard any religious beliefs, no matter how many or how few who profess them, as quaint, non-rational human quirks with no economic rationale. They dismiss out of hand the religious beliefs of the Jawoyn. It is these people who set the pace in the secularist public domain, which encourages headlines such as ‘Chief Minister Blasts “Stone Age” Mining Ban’. For them, a 50 per cent-plus-one vote and an improved balance of payments settle the matter, whether it be Coronation Hill or a cathedral.

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Fortunately, barbaric economic rationalists do not have the last word. There are Australians of goodwill who respect the religious beliefs and emotional commitments of others, even when there is no economic advantage, and even economic disadvantage, to themselves or the general community. They see that the national interest is about more than the balance of payments. The common good is more than economic development. Many of these people willingly concede the need to respect and take account of Jawoyn religious beliefs. But, they ask, what are the limits? And when should the Jawoyn themselves be allowed to decide? The miners went for broke on Coronation Hill. They and their foreign investment colleagues decided to turn it into the litmus test for Australian economic development driven by foreign investment. Upping the stakes, they decided that a government ban on mining so as to court the green vote or even to protect Jawoyn religious sensibilities was beyond the pale. Setting the limits was at first too difficult for government. That is why they handed it to the RAC. When the RAC handed it back to government, it found that, but for Aboriginal beliefs about Bula, there was no reason why mining should not proceed. In its own fact­ finding the RAC was satisfied that the majority of Jawoyn elders held strong religious beliefs about Coronation Hill, and whatever their previous contradictory testimony to government inquiries, they were now opposed to mining. Even some wishing to accord due respect to Aboriginal beliefs challenged in good faith the process and findings of the RAC. But in the end Cabinet decided not to go behind the RAC findings. It was no longer a question whether the Jawoyn believed in Bula’s power and whether or not they wanted mining. Presuming they did so believe and that they did not want mining, it became a starker, simpler question: who should win out - the Jawoyn or the mining company which had invested $14 million? There was dispute about the benefit the mine would bring to the Australian economy. The RAC said at the end of the day we would only be $82 million better off. The miners claimed we would gain export revenues of $500 million. The simple question this time was answered in favour of the Aborigines opposed to mining. Not only their interests were served by the decision. Inevitably, the decision-makers in that cabinet room also had regard for their own interests. But Aboriginal viewpoints and opinions were a crucial factor in the calculus. For as long as Aborigines are not allowed to make decisions themselves about the exploitation of their land, the decision-makers need to give due weight to their views. There must be better processes than the RAC and a second-guessing, emotional cabinet room wracked by a leadership crisis. Everyone, including the miners, knows their interests could be better served by a legal process which clarifies rights and interests before $14 million is invested and back door deals are done in Canberra. The miners’ in-house theologian Mr Hugh Morgan saw the Coronation Hill decision as evidence of the prime minister’s neo-paganism. The Coronation Hill decision has deprived prospective investors of the certainty which they need in order to invest with any sustained regularity. The recent decision-making process shows that there is no principled procedure for determining the hierarchy of values between conflicting claims, especially between developers and Aboriginal and environmental interest groups.

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Attempts to quantify in dollars and cents the citizenry’s commitment to environmental values and the recognition of the religious factor in Aboriginal land rights are bound to fail. The more complex political and moral arguments are not reducible simply to economic considerations. Neither is the result to be effected by a choice between principle and pragmatism. Rather, where there is a conflict of principles in their practical application to the case at hand, there is a need for a process determining the hierarchy of those principles and the limits of application of each. There is a need for an effective decision-making process which guarantees participation by those most affected by the decision and its outcome. Cabinet should be left to resolve questions only of the highest policy in the national interest. In hard cases, the right answer will be yielded only by the choice of the right decision-maker and an adherence to the right process which guarantees proper access by all parties to the decision-making process. Opinion polls or, as they are now known in their more nuanced variety, contingent valuation surveys, can only be a useful starting point for determining the will of the majority. Any outcome which is contrary to the will of the majority obviously requires justification. Justification by clear enunciation and application of principles or through arbitration and determination by an acknowledged authority may be possible. The hardest disputes are difficult to resolve precisely because there is no clear enunciation of principles possible or because there is no singular application of the principles to the contingent situation. Also, there is no authority who enjoys the respect of all disputants (this may even include the Federal Cabinet). There is no established process for involving disputants, guaranteeing them natural justice, locking them into compliance with the umpire’s decision, and making them own the decision or at least the process. The final decision may or may not reflect a community consensus. Rather, the decision must be a consistent part of the mosaic of national decision-making, which renders sufficient certainty and commitment to shared values (including Aboriginal spiritual values) such that all parties are assured certainty in the instant case, and the community is provided with a predictable and fair range of outcomes for future disputes. This cannot be achieved by equating economics and ethics. Neither can surveys or opinion polls be quoted as the right answer. Commenting on the Coronation Hill decision, Mr Morgan said, ‘it will become impossible for any government to protect the economic well-being, or even the security, of the country if threats arise from doctrines or groups claiming immunity through notions of sacredness or sanctity’. Economic well-being is important, even for the Jawoyn. But it is not always trumps. Some other things are nonnegotiable or superior in the community’s hierarchy of values. In a civilised democracy we ought take into account and provide protection under the rule of law for the religious sensibilities and world views of others, especially the indigenous people of the continent. That account does not have a cash value. Its limits are set by moral argument about the rights and entitlements of citizens and the common good of the society. Preferably, the compromise between religious sensibilities and economic betterment should be effected by those who profess the religious beliefs, especially when they have a claim in justice to a share in the economic benefits. The greatest problems arise when those with the religious affiliation with

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the land have no recognised entitlement to share in its economic riches. There is then no incentive nor moral imperative for them to adapt their religious practices and perspectives to the gains available to all parties, which should include themselves. Whatever the economic cost, there must be some times when we would not permit mining in any circumstances. There are many other times when our economic interest can readily be accommodated with the rights and interests of all. Then even Aboriginal landowners welcome mining and the focus moves to an equitable distribution of the benefits. ‘To mine or not to mine?’ is no longer a straight economic, political lobbying and public relations question. It has a moral and religious dimension. No one community sector holds the key to the right answer, least of all those whose short-term economic interests will be best served. We need to listen to those who have traditional authority to speak for their country. At times, there is good reason for them to have the last word, whether or not we, with a different cultural and religious perspective, agree. Terms such as ‘sustainable development’ point to a search for principles and a hierarchy of those principles and a process for applying those principles to a contingent situation. The commissioning of the RAC or the appointment of eminent persons to make inquiries is an attempt to solve disputes with recognised and legitimate authority using a fair, transparent process, but with insufficient regard for cultural and religious differences. Ian Keen, one of the anthropologists who advised the RAC, has said: G iv e n that th e le g itim a c y o f th e sta te is a c c e p te d , in a p lu r a list d e m o c r a c y th e re are n o g r o u n d s for c o m p la in t a b o u t so m e o n e p u ttin g forw ard a c a s e fo r s e ttin g lim its o n A b o r ig in a l sa cred site c la im s, an y m o re than it is ille g itim a te to p r o p o s e c o n str a in ts o n m in in g in p a rticu la r c a s e s. sa n c tity .

I q u e stio n th e fa ir n e ss o f s o m e o f th e s u g g e s te d cr ite r ia o f

Is it re a so n a b le to d em a n d , fo r e x a m p le , that a m ajority o p in io n b e s o u g h t

a m o n g p e o p le w h o r e c o g n is e r e lig io u s a u th o rity o n th e b a sis o f a g e , g e n d e r an d lo c a l a ffilia tio n ? Is it ju s t to in sist o n a record o f a n c ie n t and w h o lly u n c h a n g in g b e l i e f fro m a p e o p le w h o s o e v id e n tly adapt o ld p r in c ip le s to c h a n g in g c o n d itio n s ? 19

Terra N u lliu s No More

With the advent of airstrips, Toyotas, faxes, telephones, videos and television, there is no Aboriginal community in this country which is spared the pervasive influence of foreign culture and religious values. If I were to ask my Irish forebears who were singing in Gaelic about the theme of their songs, they would probably reply, ‘They are about life’. Similarly requests made of Aboriginal people to explain their songs or paintings result in the response, ‘It’s my Country’. They speak for their country. ‘This is my country’ is one of the proudest contemporary Aboriginal declarations you will ever hear. Aboriginal artists are even painting their country for sale and display in foreign lands. Art has become the bridge of communication and commerce out of which has grown non-Aboriginal appreciation of the land and Aboriginal access to cosmopolitan goods and services. It is a new way of talking

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the history and acknowledging the present - a way that does not threaten the descendants of the European colonisers and that need not undermine the integrity of the Aboriginal landowners who have been dispossessed. It is a way of sharing the land through understanding and respect. The painting both tells the story and evokes it; it is the text and the visual aid; it is the map, the code and the very terrain under which lies buried a world of meaning that expresses values transcending all cultures while being embodied completely in this culture, fully accessible only to the initiated. The new quest for self-expression across cultural barriers has a pathetic 200year history. The self-interested failure of colonists to recognise Aboriginal land rights was part of a cohesive policy aimed at reducing Aboriginal resistance to European progress, development and economic expansion. On the fringes of the new society built on their lands, Aborigines were marginalised from its benefits. The present generation of Aborigines is the first to know formal equality under the law, the first to enjoy the benefit of affirmative action programmes - in housing, health, education and employment - aimed at overcoming past disadvantage and providing equality of opportunity. Their grandparents were supposed to die out; their parents were to be assimilated or at least integrated. They are now supposed to manage their own affairs and to become self-sufficient if not self-determining. They are recognised by the others in the land as people in their own right. In situations of potential conflict, they have to translate the sacred to others outside the world of religious meaning in profane, or at least mundane, terms so that the violent law of a foreign culture might wrap a protective husk around the life-giving and death-dealing relationship they have with clan, Dreaming and land. That relationship is law in its fullest sense, described by Mr Justice Blackburn in the 1971 Gove Land Rights case as a su b tle and e la b o ra te sy s te m h ig h ly a d ap ted to th e cou n tr y in w h ic h p e o p le liv e d th e ir liv e s , w h ic h p r o v id e d a sta b le order o f s o c ie ty and w a s rem ark ab ly free from th e v a g a r ie s o f p e r so n a l w h im or in flu e n c e ., .a g o v e r n m e n t o f la w s and n o t o f m e n .20

‘The lands of this continent were not terra nullius or “practically unoccupied” in 1788.’21 So spoke the High Court of Australia in the case of Eddie Mabo and others v The State o f Queensland on 3 June 1992, the day the Australian legal system came of age. Though the British Crown asserted sovereignty over those deemed to be barbarians in 1788, it would now be barbaric, as it was then, to presume sovereignty automatically wiped the slate clean of native land title. Though a court established by the sovereign has no power to canvass the validity of the assertion of sovereignty over new territory, it has the duty to ensure equal protection of the law for those holding property within the territory. When Eddie Mabo commenced his litigation in 1982 many Australians still saw land rights as a special welfare measure. The defendant states premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, saw it as part of a long-range communist plan to alienate Aboriginal lands from the Australian nation so that a fragmented north could be used for subversive activities by other countries.22 Land rights is now legally classifiable as the restitution, recognition and compensation of property rights.

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The fiction of terra nullius allowed the European community of nations to expand their colonial horizons with minimal concern for indigenous peoples. In the eighteenth century the common law took its lead from international law. In Mabo, three judges, acknowledging their law-making role, said, ‘It is imperative in today’s world that the common law should neither be nor be seen to be frozen in an age of racial discrimination.’23 Governor Phillip may have asserted British sovereignty over the eastern part of the Australian continent on 26 January 1788, but he did not thereby automatically increase unencumbered crown landholdings by another half continent. Native title to the lands continued until the new sovereign dealt with the lands in a manner inconsistent with the continuation of native title. Even after 204 years of unmitigated pastoral, colonial and mining expansion, there are still large areas of vacant crown land, especially in Western Australia. It is now traditional Aboriginal law which determines the Aboriginal titleholders of such land. Like international law, the traditional law or custom is not frozen as at the moment of establishment of a colony. There are four developing sources of law which now impinge on determination of land ownership: international law, Aboriginal traditional law, common law as declared by the High Court, and statutory law as legislated by Australian parliaments within their constitutional limits. Terra nullius was clear and simple; it was also unjust and discriminatory. The law of the land is now more complex and more just. The nation state as sovereign retains the power to extinguish the property rights of citizens. The federal government cannot extinguish title without just compensation, which is guaranteed under the constitution. State parliaments can extinguish title without compensation, but they cannot do so in a racially discriminatory way. Racial discrimination is outlawed by the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act, which implements the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination. Aboriginal ‘traditional owners’ of vacant crown land, national parks and some other public lands are now entitled to the same protection of their property rights as other landholders. Though the High Court has ruled by four to three that there is no guaranteed right to compensation for extinguishment of native title by a state government; public servants and politicians will have to recognise native title as they would any other title to land. Wiping out native title without compensation will pass muster only if other title could be so extinguished in the same circumstances. Aborigines now have a property interest in stock routes and vacant crown lands, even if these lands be subject to authorities to prospect or exploration licences. Increasingly developers, pastoralists and miners will have to deal with Aborigines on an equal footing. Governments will have to treat with them to effect the workable compromises for land use according to Aboriginal law and the common law. The High Court has removed the legal basis for the continued dispossession of Aborigines retaining traditional affiliations with their lands. The court has not undone the injustices of the past. It has set the foundations for just land dealings in the future. By recognising the existence of Aboriginal law and land rights, the court has provided a jurisprudential basis for the calls by Aborigines for selfdetermination on their lands.

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The court has ruled that native title to particular land, its incidents and the persons entitled to land are ascertained ‘according to the laws and customs of the indigenous people who, by those laws and customs, have a connection with the land’.24 It is immaterial that the laws and customs have undergone change ‘provided the general nature of the connection between the indigenous people and the land remains’. According to three of the judges, native title can be extinguished if the clan or group, by ceasing to acknowledge its laws and to observe its customs, loses its connection with the land. Two other judges, having observed that traditional law or custom is not frozen, said, ‘Provided any changes do not diminish or extinguish the relationship between a particular tribe or other group and particular land, subsequent developments or variations do not extinguish the title in relation to that land.’25 They were of the view ‘that, at least where the relevant tribe or group continues to occupy or use the land’, the members would not lose their rights through ‘the abandonment of traditional customs and ways’. Another judge said, ‘So long as occupation by a traditional society is established now and at the time of annexation, traditional rights exist. An indigenous society cannot, as it were, surrender its rights by modifying its way of life.’26 In 1993, the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Native Title Act, which provided what Prime Minister Keating described as ‘ungrudging and unambiguous recognition and protection of native title’.27 In the future, we have to expect further showdowns in the contest between the two laws. During the Noonkanbah dispute, Mr Ginger Nganawilla portrayed the conflict starkly: I f w e are to a llo w A m a x [th e m in in g c o m p a n y ] to return to N o o n k a n b a h th e y m u st s h o w u s L a w , n o t p a p er la w .

P aper is n o th in g .

P aper can b e w a s h e d aw a y .

O u r L aw ,

A b o r ig in a l la w , w ill la st fo rev er. I f A m a x h a s th is L a w then th e y m u st s h o w u s.28

Ironically, the enduring Aboriginal law is being recognised by foreign legal systems at a time when it is coming under greater threat from its own practitioners.

Culture Fading Away The primary custodians of the only culture unique to this land have a rich heritage and an abundant resource which gives value to the political struggle, the physical labour and spiritual trauma of living in two worlds. The genius of Aboriginal religion is summed up by Professor Stanner in his description of Murinbata religion: It a ffirm s rea lity a s a n e c e s sa r y c o n n e c tio n b e tw e e n life and su ffe r in g . r e la tio n as c o n tin u o u s ly in ca rn a te and y e t a s n e e d in g rea ffirm ation .

It s e e s th e

It c e le b r a te s th e

r ela tio n b y a rite c o n ta in in g all th e b e a u ty o f so n g , m im e, d a n c e and art o f w h ic h h u m an b e in g s are c a p a b le .29

Aboriginal law, though now recognised for the first time as part of the law of the land even in the eyes of the colonisers, has to survive under challenge from its own

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practitioners, who sense both new horizons and shifting foundations in their lives. If it is to maintain its appeal to contemporary practitioners, the Aboriginal religious worldview has to embrace, or at least encounter and accommodate, the worldviews of others. Aboriginal cultures are changing, being lost and retrieved at a rate never before experienced. Aboriginal people themselves know best that their system of law is under threat. The breakdown of the law, the abandonment of myth and ritual, and violence in these communities are exacerbated by readily available alcohol, widespread unemployment and concentrations of population which draw together groups from various clans and language groups for administrative convenience and economies of scale. Communities of such size, variety and outside contact never existed previously, except for periodic ceremonial, trading and meeting purposes. As permanent societies, they are new creations in the post-contact era resulting from the push and pull of outside service delivery. Such ‘communities’, as they are erroneously described, do not and never have had a simple or uniformly acknowledged law, religion or culture which could provide the basis for a customary dispute resolution structure or process. Aborigines are living under two laws. But one law is losing its sanction, its appeal, its practitioners and its teachers. It is becoming optional. Some desire its continuation and transmission. Others, especially when drunk, can opt out when it suits them or lose it when living in a social situation where that law no longer makes whole sense of the individual’s new world filled by Toyotas, videos, satellites, faxes, firearms, computers, cash, grog, school and fast food - all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. Outstations are set up as sanctuaries for the preservation of the traditional way. But there is a limit to which outstations can be used as reform schools in the old law for young radicals playing up in their communities or in town. Young men facing initiation or some corporal punishment or young women facing a traditional betrothal to a much older man increasingly want to opt out of the traditional law and opt into the system of individual choices and liberties they see on screen (such as Dallas or LA Law) or in the streets of Alice Springs or Katherine. The whitefella legal system in these instances prizes individual rights and individual freedom of choice over collective rights of the group and the requirements for handing on a tough, wholistic law which is hard work. Aboriginal law no longer controls every aspect of their lives. Free to choose, the young may abandon culture even if only for short-term gain or liberty. Affected by alcohol and confronted by change, the elders may lose their confidence and abandon their duties to the law. Once elders are denied the power to impose their law on the young without their consent, having already been denied the power to impose their law’s ultimate sanction even with the consent of all parties, Aboriginal law inevitably becomes an optional way of living for the new generations, who may want to move freely between two worlds. Customary law is of little use in disciplining the young for grog-related property and motor vehicle offences. Today, law and culture remain strong only while they hold appeal or can be imposed without human rights violations on the young who see and want to roam far beyond the boundaries of their traditional

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country. Culture is breaking down because, as the old say, the young are running away from ceremony. The old law which was all-embracing is shattered by outside contact. It no longer typifies the ineluctable human condition enacted as a celebration of the fearful approach to mystery. However, some of the law may be salvageable and amendable if reshaped by those who have a memory and a vision of the law, having the skill and authority to impart it to the young, who have geographic and cultural choices previously unimagined. Aboriginal communities might then keep afloat and mobile in the sea of all cultures, remaining true to themselves and their ancestors. Imposed solutions will generate further alienation and despair. Government with and at the request of local communities might keep in check needless violence and even remedy the causes embedded in a shattering colonial history. Constancy and Change Future generations of Aborigines will want to live in the best of all possible worlds - Aboriginal but open to all the world has to offer, not being swamped by it, being able to stay afloat, able to make sense of it, able to embrace the mystery of it, even able to shape it, and able to hand on to their children, the successors in title, the uniqueness of their culture and the universal possibilities of life in the modem world. Stanner’s last paper was an anthropological report written for the defence team in a murder case. After the case, I was privileged to receive the last letter he ever wrote: I

am fa sc in a te d b y th e q u e stio n : h o w d o g en e r a l id e a s ab o u t h um an c o n d u c t c h a n g e s o

q u ic k ly ?

I can reca ll a b o u t fifty y e a r s a g o a p p ea rin g as a w itn e s s fo r the d e fe n c e in an

A b o r ig in a l m urder c a s e in D a rw in b e fo r e W e lls J.

H e w a s n o ta b ly u n im p r e sse d b y m y

a rg u m en ts but n e v e r th e le ss relu cta n tly to o k th e m in to a c c o u n t in m itig a tio n , w h ile lo o k in g rou n d th e co u rt as i f e x p e c tin g tro u b le . O r d o I m ean rem ark ab ly q u ic k ly ?

He died within the week while traditional owners were gathering at Daly River for the hearing of the Mulluk Mulluk land claim. The old men told the young anthropologists how they had, 50 years before, ‘been carried on Stanner’s shoulders while he hunted and talked with elders long since gone’. Stanner saw and had a reverence and respect for Aboriginal religious practitioners who embraced the mystery beyond themselves and their own. He had seen them embrace the land they walked on, performing the ritual and telling the myth. Their country and their countrymen had embodied all they needed to confront the ultimate mystery of reflective creaturehood. In his last visit to the north, he saw religion subjugated to a tool for social order in a drink-sodden and crime-ridden Aboriginal community. Now, as then, we all inhabit the nest and the wallow. As always, ‘at the centre of things social, refuge and rottenness are found together’. Ideas and conduct are forever changing and forever the same.

245

Land Rights: The Religious Factor

If only we could be more willing to allow Aborigines to make the decisions about country, we could accord dignity to the human person’s religious sensibilities and we could witness true self-determination by which Aborigines decide whether to mine, to build a dam, or to maintain the status quo for a while longer while they reflect on what is best for them and for us. Why does it remain so unthinkable that they should make some decisions for us when those decisions relate to their country? Any religion has to come to terms with power, wealth and conflicting demands of interest groups. Even in the midst of agonising worldly decisions, we Australians still have the opportunity to count ourselves blessed in this land. Economic imperatives, like the laws of nature, may cloud our vision. We need to discern the justice of Aboriginal claims to land, allowing them to speak for country, thereby according religious freedom to those whose ancestors settled and humanised this land tens of thousands of years before Abraham set out for Canaan. We might then discover the full life-sustaining capacity of the land which is sacred.30 In 1996, the High Court of Australia ruled in the Wik case that Aboriginal native title rights could still survive on lands granted under pastoral lease to other persons.31 Over 40 per cent of the Australian land mass is covered by pastoral lease and the majority of new mining activity occurs on such land. The nation is still debating the appropriate balance of rights between Aborigines and pastoralists and between Aborigines and miners. Native titleholders anxious to maintain their spiritual relationship with the land are also seeking to maintain a statutory right to negotiate with other stakeholders, thereby enhancing their economic base and political standing. Other Australians not convinced of the religious factor in land rights often view the debate as one simply about money and power, rather than one defining of identity and enhancing of culture and religion.

Notes Aboriginal Land Rights Commission 2nd Report, A p ril 1 9 7 4 , p. 2 . Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, 1 9 7 6 .

1

A .E . W o o d w a rd ,

2

S e e s e c tio n s 5 0 (l)(a ) and 3 ,

3

T r a d itio n a l A b o rig in a l “ o w n ers” m ea n s in resp ect o f an area o f land, a lo ca l d e sc e n t grou p o f A b o r ig in e s w h o h a v e co m m o n spiritual a ffilia tio n s to a site or sites w ith in that area o f land, w h ich a ffilia tio n s p la ce the group under a prim ary spiritual r esp o n sib ility for that site or site s and for that land, and w h o are en titled by A b origin al tradition to fora g e o v er that la n d / W ood w ard ,

Aboriginal Land Rights Commission 2nd Report,

p. 162.

4

A b o r ig in a l L and R ig h ts C o m m is sio n , S u b m is sio n b y th e N orth ern L and C o u n c il, January

5

Ibid., p. 2 1 .

6

J.

1 9 7 4 , p. 2 0 . T ooh ey,

Seven

Y ea rs

On,

A u stralian

G o v ern m en t

P u b lis h in g

S e r v ic e

(A G P S ),

C anberra, 1 9 8 4 , p. 3 8 .

Seven Years On, p. 3 9 . Daly River (Mulluk Mulluk) Land Claim,

7

T oohey,

8

J. T o o h e y ,

9

C ited ibid., p. 2 7 .

10 Ibid., p. 3 8 .

A G P S , C anberra, 1 9 8 2 , p. 2 5 .

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

246 11 P. S e a m a n ,

The Aboriginal Land Inquiry,

V o l. 1, S ep te m b er 1 9 8 4 , para. 3 .8 , p. 2 4 .

12 Ib id ., V o l. l,p a r a . 3 .2 3 , p. 3 0 . 13 Ib id ., V o l. 1, para. 7 .1 4 , p. 115.

Australian Law Journal 5 9 ( 1 9 8 5 ), Aboriginal Land Act, 1991 (Q ld ), S e c tio n 4 .0 9 ( 1 ).

14 A .E . W o o d w a r d , 15

p. 4 2 0 .

16 Ib id ., S e c tio n 2 .0 3 .

Significant Aboriginal Sites in Area of Proposed Junction Waterhole Dam , Alice Springs: Report to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, 1 9 9 2 , p. 136.

17 J H. W o o tte n , 18 Ib id ., p. 1 3 4 .

Anthropology Today 8 ( 1 9 9 2 ), p. 8. Federal Law Reports, 1 7 ( 1 9 7 0 ) , p. 2 6 7 . Eddie Mabo and others v The State of Queensland, D e a n e and G au d ron Law Journal Reports (AUR), 6 5 6 ( 1 9 9 2 ), p. 4 5 1 . Queensland Parliamentary Debates, 2 8 7 (1 9 8 2 ), p. 5 1 7 2 . B ren n a n J (M a so n CJ and M cH u g h J co n c u r r in g ), AUR 6 6 (1 9 9 2 ), p. 4 2 2 .

19 I. K e e n , ‘U n d e r m in in g C r e d ib ility ’, 20 21 22 23

JJ,

Australian

24 Ibid.

AUR 66 ( 1 9 9 2 ), p 4 5 2 . AUR 6 6 ( 1 9 9 2 ) , p. 4 8 8 . Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, H o u se

25 D e a n e and G au d ron JJ, 26 T o o h e y J, 27

o f R ep r e se n ta tiv e s ( 1 9 9 3 ) , p. 2 8 7 8 , 16

N o v em b er 1993. 28 C ite d

in S. H a w k e and M . G a lla g h er,

Noonkanbah,

F rem an tle A rts C en tre P ress,

F rem a n tle, 1 9 8 9 , p. 1 9 3 . 29 S ta n n er,

On Aboriginal Religion,

p. 5 6 .

30 A .M . H o w a rd , ‘T h e Land A s S a c r e d ’, M . T h e o l. T h e sis, M elb o u rn e C o lle g e o f D iv in ity , 1 9 9 0 , p. 1 6 8 . 31

Australian Law Journal Reports,

141 (1 9 9 6 ), p. 129.

16

The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair and Secret Knowledge Robert Tonkinson

Early in 1995, the attention of the national media in Australia was captured by public allegations by certain Ngarrindjeri people that other Ngarrindjeri people had fabricated a secret ‘women’s tradition’ concerning Hindmarsh Island and the surrounding lower River Murray region of southeastern South Australia, in order to stop the construction of a bridge (see Map 2). Following the allegations, the South Australian State Government established a Royal Commission of inquiry, in June 1995, to investigate whether or not this set of beliefs was ‘a deliberate fabrication’. In this chapter I consider some dimensions of the many kinds of conflict that emerged from the Royal Commission hearings during the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair. This affair is not the first in which allegations of fabrication of Aboriginal cultural knowledge have been made,*1 but it is probably the first time that such allegations were made publicly by Aboriginal people; also, it is by far the most publicised and controversial instance to date. To at least one observer, Hindmarsh was the culmination of an inevitable historical trajectory of sociopolitical processes relating to Aboriginal land rights as a contested field in contemporary Australian society, and one that has seriously damaged the Aboriginal land rights movement and the anthropology profession (Brunton 1995, 1996a, 1996b; Kenny 1996). To others, the affair constituted a political assault on Aboriginal people and their identity and heritage (Fergie 1996), and undermined the credibility of heritage protection at every level of government in Australia. In this vein, Tehan (1996:10) suggests that [i]t [th e H in d m arsh affair] a lso p r o v id e s c lea r e v id e n c e that th e d o m in a n t p o litic a l an d leg a l sy s te m

h a s y e t to

find a la n g u a g e and m e a n s o f a c c o r d in g a n y s ig n ific a n t

r e c o g n itio n to in d ig e n o u s s y s te m s o f la w , reg u la tio n and b e lie f w h ic h d o e s [s ic ] n o t o p era te to ap p ro p ria te th o s e sy s te m s .

Similarly, Charlesworth (1997:19) concludes that

An extract from Robert Tonkinson, ‘Anthropology and Aboriginal tradition: The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair and the Politics of Interpretation’ in Oceania, 68, 1, 1997, pp. 1-26. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

248

th e e p ic o f H in d m a rsh Isla n d /K u m a ra n g k s u g g e s ts m ajor fla w s in the A u stra lia n le g a l sy s te m w ith r e sp e c t to p r o te c tio n o f In d ig e n o u s h erita g e.

It h as u n d erlin ed th e in a b ility

o f A u stra lia n la w to a c c o m m o d a te certa in fo rm s o f b e lie f and k n o w le d g e in th e little b o x e s it h a s e s ta b lis h e d .2

In any event, the affair has bitterly divided the Ngarrindjeri people, and has incited anthropologists and related professionals to rancorous public debate. Almost without precedent, this quasi-judicial process (the Royal Commission) has directly questioned anthropological practice. The anthropology profession has also been cast in an unflattering light outside the proceedings of the Royal Commission, via public debate and media coverage surrounding the affair. These criticisms come at a time when the profession is already experiencing strong attacks ‘on the credibility of anthropologists as expert witnesses and, to some extent, on the system which makes their presence necessary or desirable within the world of the law’ (Sutton 1996:84).

Mun-ayR.

Murray Bridge St Vincent

Gulf

Rapid Bay Cape Jervis

Tailem Bend

Fleurieu Peninsula

Goolwa Victor Harbour

Poin cLeay

Bay

N.S.W.

Murray

Meningie

Mouth Coorong

LOWER

MURRAY Southern

REGION

Ocean

o

50km

Qld

SA ViC.

Encounter Kangaroo island

N.T.

W.A.

Kingston

M ap 2 Location of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge

A.c.T.

Tas.

The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair and Secret Knowledge

249

A Brief Chronology of the Main Events Plans for a large marina complex on Hindmarsh Island date from 1980, and for the associated bridge project from 1989. Public opposition to the bridge emerged late in 1992 among local residents protective of their visual amenity and/or fearful of the bridge’s environmental impact.3 The opponents of the project drew strong support from various conservationist groups concerned about disturbance to wetlands and associated bird populations on the Island. Hindmarsh Island had originally been the territory of three Ngarrindjeri clans but, following European settlement there from the 1840s, the Ngarrindjeri residents suffered substantial depopulation and over time were displaced; in 1910, the last residents were relocated to Point McLeay.4 Aboriginal participation in anti-bridge activities began in late 1993, when the Adelaide-based Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM), as well as local Ngarrindjeri bodies, notably the Lower Murray Aboriginal Heritage Committee (LMAHC; now the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee), became actively involved with the anti-bridge movement. Issues of protection of Aboriginal heritage, notably archaeological sites on both the mainland (the town of Goolwa) and the Island, became prominent. After the South Australian Government made the decision to proceed with the bridge construction (March 1994), the ALRM sought both state and federal intervention, via appeals to the relevant Aboriginal heritage legislation, to prevent the development. In April 1994, the relevant Federal body responded by requesting additional information on the cultural significance of the Island, since archaeological sites were deemed insufficient to enable the Minister to make a declaration banning the bridge under Section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, 1984. (In a 1990 report, anthropologist Rod Lucas noted that his literature search had failed to unearth any reference to Ngarrindjeri cultural values attaching specifically to Hindmarsh Island.5) The local Ngarrindjeri group opposing the bridge enlisted the assistance of Doreen Kartinyeri, a prominent Adelaide-based Ngarrindjeri woman, well known for her work on Aboriginal genealogies in the South Australian Museum and as an articulate advocate on Aboriginal issues. She visited the area and soon emerged as the chief spokesperson for those Ngarrindjeri who claimed the existence of the secret women’s tradition (The proponent women’ in media and Royal Commission parlance, which designates the opposing group as The dissident women’; for convenience, I use this terminology throughout the chapter). Subsequent archaeological and anthropological reports asserted the existence of a secret women’s tradition concerning the lower Murray region and Ngarrindjeri reproduction, described by consultant anthropologist Dr Deane Fergie as a ‘significant anthropological discovery’.6 Further appeals by the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM) and Ngarrindjeri bodies for Federal intervention to prevent the building of the bridge prompted the Commonwealth Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, in May 1994, to order an investigation by a prominent legal academic, Professor Cheryl Saunders, whose subsequent report concluded that:

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

250

th e b rid g e p resen ts a threat to th e area in the form o f a p erm an en t p ro m in e n t and p h y sic a l link a b o v e the w ater b etw een tw o parts o f the territory w h ic h w o u ld , in a c c o r d a n c e w ith N garrin d jeri trad ition , render th e c o s m o s , and hum an b e in g s w ith in it, ‘s te r ile ’ and u n a b le to rep rod u ce. T h e N garrin d jeri w o m e n b e lie v e that co n str u c tio n o f th e b rid g e w o u ld n o t o n ly injure and d ese cra te their trad ition s but d estro y their cu lture (S a u n d e r s 1 9 9 4 :5 ).

This report was submitted together with one prepared for the ALRM by Fergie, who had met separately with the Ngarrindjeri women. They gave her an account of the tradition ‘entirely consistent’ with that provided directly to Professor Saunders. However, neither report drew the Minister’s attention to a notable discrepancy, namely, that the major ethnographic source on ‘traditional’ Ngarrindjeri society (Bemdt and Bemdt 1993) had characterised the absence of any ‘secret-sacred domain’ as a distinctive feature. Fergie’s report included two secret appendices, to be read by women only. Respecting the proponent women’s wishes, the Minister did not read them, nor, apparently, did he have them read on his behalf by a senior female adviser or consultant from outside his Ministry. He accepted the thrust of the report and placed a 25-year ban on construction of the bridge. Doubts about the veracity of the reported tradition circulated within the Ngarrindjeri community following the ministerial ban, and became public in May 1995 when a number of Ngarrindjeri women (‘the dissident women’) declared the secret women’s tradition to be a recent fabrication. In the uproar that followed, the bulk of Aboriginal support, both local and national, heavily favoured the proponent women and the validity of the tradition. Much of the support could be seen as indicative of what Trigger (1997:111), in another context, has referred to as ‘a national Aboriginal politics of indigenism and ideology of protest’. Many people, including some church groups, took the view that the Royal Commission was yet another example of the state invading the Aboriginal domain and interfering in Aboriginal religious affairs in ways it would never dare do were Christianity under scrutiny (cf. Andrews 1996; Langton 1996). A large majority of the articles and commentary published since then sides strongly with the proponent cause. Much of this writing shows a marked disinclination to concede or acknowledge that the dispute centres on two groups of Ngarrindjeri women, of whom Justice Mathews (Commonwealth of Australia 1996:90) notes, ‘the only thing that appears to distinguish them as separate groups is the position they take with respect to the existence or otherwise of restricted women’s knowledge’. Mrs Iris Stevens was appointed Commissioner and began taking evidence in July 1995. The women who supported the existence of the tradition announced their refusal to appear before the Commission, but expert witnesses and some of the Ngarrindjeri men supporting these proponent women gave evidence and were cross-examined. The Commissioner’s final report, issued in December, found that ‘the whole of the women’s business was a fabrication, aimed at preventing the construction of a bridge between the mainland and Hindmarsh Island’.7 A subsequent Federal inquiry, conducted by Justice Jane Mathews, began in January 1996 and was widely expected to provide a corrective to the harsh

The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair and Secret Knowledge

251

conclusions of the Royal Commission.8 The Ngarrindjeri proponents of the secret women’s tradition agreed to cooperate with the inquiry. Senior anthropological consultants also assisted Justice Mathews. However, the report of its findings, completed in June 1996, was quashed on a technicality, following an appeal to the Federal Court by those Ngarrindjeri women who had questioned the veracity of the tradition. Despite its lack of legal standing, the Mathews Report was tabled in Federal Parliament in September 1996 by the new Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.9 On the basis of his reading of the report, the Minister announced his Government’s intention to introduce special, ‘one-off legislation to ensure that the proposed Hindmarsh Island bridge went ahead. In her report, Justice Mathews commented on the evident sincerity of members of both opposing groups in their ‘genuine and credible’ beliefs about the women’s tradition. Contrary to Royal Commissioner Stevens’ opinion, Justice Mathews pointed to considerable evidence that the mythology claimed to be associated with the women’s tradition - the Seven Sisters Dreaming - is longstanding in Ngarrindjeri society, though its link with restricted women’s knowledge remains a matter of contention. The judge advised the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs that, in her view, and after giving due consideration to pertinent issues of natural justice, there was insufficient material disclosed to enable him to be satisfied that the construction area was under threat of injury or desecration by reason of this tradition (p. 206). Recent events suggest that the bridge may soon be built, but, as a result of the Hindmarsh affair and sustained national publicity, the lower River Murray area appears to have taken on the status of a ‘site of significance’ for many Aboriginal people throughout the continent (P. Sutton, pers. comm.). This is particularly true for the large majority of Ngarrindjeri who appear to identify with the proponent faction. As a result of the intense political and media focus on them, and the emotional energy they have expended in defending their cultural integrity, Hindmarsh Island and the lower River Murray region - and the affair itself - have become for these Ngarrindjeri prime symbols of their group identity and status as a subject people, so the battle will surely continue. As the consultant Lucas (1990; 5.2.1; see fn. 6) had predicted, H in d m a rsh

Islan d

(o r

an y

o th e r

d e v e lo p m e n t

site )

w ill

b ecom e

th e

fo c u s

of

co n te m p o r a r y N g a rrin d jeri c o n c e r n p r e c is e ly b e c a u se d e v e lo p m e n t p r o v id e s an aren a fo r a ss e r tin g id e n tity , r e s p o n s ib ility and a u th ority. T h is d o e s n o t m a k e th e c o n c e r n a n y le s s g e n u in e ; it m erely lo c a lis e s it r e a lis tic a lly w ith in th e realm o f p o litic s .

Anthropologists and the Hindmarsh Affair Anthropologists and their work figured prominently in the proceedings of the Royal Commission and came under close scrutiny. The Australian Anthropological Society (AAS), which is the national professional body for anthropologists, held its annual conference in Adelaide in 1995, while the Royal Commission hearings were in train, and the Hindmarsh affair was discussed during its plenary session. A subsequent AAS media release expressed ‘deep concern at the impact on

252

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Ngarrindjeri people, and on Aboriginal people generally, of the intense media scrutiny and the multiple government inquiries related to the Hindmarsh Island affair’. The Society also protested at serious misrepresentations of the role of anthropology that occurred during the Commission hearings. The media release suggested that the impression was given during the hearings that this role involves judging the truth or falsity of Aboriginal beliefs in a crudely empiricist fashion, ignoring the complexity of living traditions and the way in which they change over time. The statement did not comment on the issue of veracity in relation to the women’s tradition, nor did it mention that the conflict involved two strongly opposed groups of Ngarrindjeri women. My involvement in Hindmarsh stemmed from my having written the Foreword to Ronald and Catherine Bemdt’s study, A World that Was, based on research they conducted in the lower River Murray area between 1939 and 1943, but not published until 1993. Although I had never worked in the area, I was a former student, colleague and friend of the Berndts. My brief was to comment on the Bemdts’ fieldwork and its significance, and to situate their findings concerning Ngarrindjeri culture in the broader literature on Aboriginal Australia, with reference especially to issues such as leadership, politics and gender relations, which have been topics of debate in recent decades. Near the outset of the Royal Commission, which was held in Adelaide, I was asked by Counsel Assisting the Commissioner to advise them on matters pertaining to the anthropological evidence. The Commission was intended to be an impartial inquiry, and I felt that my appearance as a witness was unlikely to be construed as favouring either side. As it happened, I was not called as a witness or asked for a written submission, but I read several thousand pages of submissions and transcripts, and made two brief visits to Adelaide. There, I met with Counsel Assisting for intensive discussions regarding the anthropological evidence and their interpretations of it, and more generally about anthropological theory and practice.10 I was also introduced to, and spoke briefly with, the Commissioner. My assessment of the material is that the existence of the secret women’s tradition (or for that matter, any secret) is a possibility, but on the basis of the anthropological evidence alone, serious questions arise as to how such a hugely consequential body of knowledge could have remained so restricted, and how its status as a secret-sacred category could have failed to leave a visible social imprint of any kind. Land Rights and other Background Factors It was only in 1992 that ‘the Mabo decision’ of Australia’s High Court recognised the existence of native title.11 Prior to Mabo, most of the nation’s states and territories had enacted legislation relating to indigenous land rights and/or to the protection of Aboriginal sites of significance,12 and as a result some land was returned to Aboriginal ownership.13 The advent of such legislation enabled Aboriginal people to have their interests acknowledged and to express their opposition to certain planned developments. Such expressions of resistance were

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253

not new, but they now had some real possibility of affecting the process. For both Aboriginal people and the various other interest groups, including the general public, this state of affairs was unprecedented, and dates from only about the 1970s. In the last decade or so, there has been a marked increase in Aboriginal objections to a variety of development activities perceived by them as impinging on or threatening aspects of their cultural heritage. These protests have occurred all over the continent and have pitted Aboriginal groups against a variety of local, regional and state agencies, as well as private individuals and companies. Conflict between mining interests and Aboriginal bodies (often along with conservationists), in particular, has attracted considerable media attention. The mining industry has been at pains to equate its activities with national economic well-being and to convince the public that indigenous land rights constitute a serious impediment to wealth creation. Aboriginal spokespersons and organisations have affirmed their right to be involved and consulted. However, their attitudes to mining, tourism and other development activities have not been homogeneous, and disputes between supporters and opponents of such activities are not uncommon (cf. Trigger 1997). Issues concerning land and heritage have given rise to a variety of tensions among various interest groups in Australia. In the first place, there are notable deficiencies in both Commonwealth and State laws relating to Aboriginal heritage, some attributable to poor drafting, but more seriously and less easily rectifiable, to ‘fundamental differences between the introduced common law system and the legal system of the indigenous oral culture’ (Commonwealth of Australia 1996:1). The presence of legal processes for recognising Aboriginal ownership or authority concerning land appears to have increased the visibility of disputes among Aboriginal claimants, some of which centre on the possession and control of knowledge about territory and ceremony (cf. Edmunds 1994, 1996). The convergence of Aboriginal and conservation interests and their simultaneous development as movements has led both to strategic alliances, forged out of a common respect for the environment, and to conflicts stemming from divergent views about certain developments. In several parts of Australia, conservationists have sought to support or enlist the aid of Aboriginal people, but these attempts have not always been successful (cf. Anderson 1989; Sackett 1991). In the Hindmarsh case, conservationists and Aboriginal people were on the same side in opposing the bridge development. However, it was alleged by critics of the proponent women that there may also have been a more cynical recognition on the part of conservationists and other interest groups that Aboriginal heritage legislation has the potential to thwart development projects.14 Tensions have also grown within the anthropological and archaeological professions, as a burgeoning demand for consultants has led to underqualified and inexperienced researchers entering these fields. The ability of the relevant professional bodies to monitor research and reporting standards and censure unprofessional behaviour is impaired by inadequate resources. The time constraints under which most consultants labour, as well as the demands of their employers for speedily delivered reports, have widened the gap between

254

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

consultancies and academic anthropological research and writing, thus prompting debate about their interrelationship (cf. Weiner 1996; Hagen 1996). A relevant factor here is the refusal of many anthropologists to undertake consultancies for clients whose interests and activities are seen as inimical to those of Aboriginal people. Some critics point to the codes of ethics of the professional bodies, which privilege the people among whom anthropologists work, as proof that they cannot be ‘objective’ (cf. Forbes 1993). Not surprisingly, there has been strong criticism of anthropologists as prone to ideological influences and of anthropology as an ‘inexact science’ (see Sutton 1996:91).15 A different kind of tension, but potentially very important in the land claims process, is that between Aboriginal conceptions of reality and Western legal precepts. For example, Mardu people with whom I have worked in the Western Desert described how, during dreams, they would sometimes travel in dream-spirit form to their homelands. In this way, they were able to maintain what they would regard as a physical presence in their country, no matter where they were actually living. Significantly, these dream-spirit journeys enabled them to continue their vital role in fulfilling the religious imperative of ‘looking after country’ (Tonkinson 1970).16 The Mardu would be in no doubt that this cultural element satisfies legal requirements for evidence of ‘continued occupation’ of traditional territory. However, in a court of law or a Tribunal hearing, operating according to Western legal precepts, such ‘presence’ would surely be regarded as at best metaphysical, hence of dubious validity in that it cannot be subject to proof or disproof. In this case, the difficulties for claimants are obvious, yet native title is held to inhere in Aboriginal ‘law and custom’, and elements such as dream-spirit journeys are indubitably customary. Such esoteric information has never been part of public discourse on issues relating to sacred sites and land rights. Neither Aborigines nor the anthropological profession have attempted to raise the issue with a populace many of whose members are unsympathetic, if not downright hostile, to Aboriginal aspirations regarding land, and among whom the notion of Aboriginal ‘sacred sites’ is the butt of newspaper comment, cartoons and jokes.17 Tradition and Assimilation in Southern Australia From the foregoing, it should be clear that land and resource development issues have become increasingly volatile in Australia. Given such a potent mix of tensions, an event like the Hindmarsh affair was a virtual inevitability. That it occurred in southern Australia is significant, because it concerns Aboriginal people of mixed descent, a category whose members are regarded by many Australians as assimilated and divorced from their traditional cultural roots. Many of the Aboriginal forebears of people like the Ngarrindjeri had been institutionalised and subjected to strong assimilationist pressures. Southern Australia is where European impacts have been the longest and strongest and the alienation of Aboriginal lands the most comprehensive. (Unlike the situation in the interior and north, mining activities are relatively uncommon, so the threat to Aboriginal sites

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and interests comes principally from other kinds of development.) In recent decades, this part of Australia has seen a great deal of Aboriginal activity constituting what is often called by Aboriginal people and anthropologists alike ‘cultural revival’ - which has also been taken by sceptical Australians as indicating inauthenticity and proof of ‘loss of culture’. Many Aboriginal groups in southeastern Australia have drawn on their own oral traditions, plus a wide variety of cultural forms from other parts of the continent where major elements o f ‘traditional’ language and culture have persisted strongly, in consolidating an identity firmly embedded in what they regard as Aboriginal traditional culture.18 In repudiating the powerful and often negative influences of the encapsulating, ‘Western’ non-indigenous society, they embrace their Aboriginality and assert strong continuities with their Aboriginal past. They are socialising their children into a distinctive, Aboriginal cultural milieu, operating on the firm conviction that ‘cultural revival is survival’ (cf. Tonkinson n.d.). Among the people identifying as Ngarrindjeri, for example, there is a variety of organisations active in the promotion of their interests and culture, among the more prominent of which are the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee, the Ngarrindjeri Action Group, the Ngarrindjeri Tendi, the Nunga Centre Committee, the Coorong Consultative Committee, Camp Coorong, and the Raukkan Community Council (Commonwealth of Australia 1996:88). Many Aboriginal people are determined, wherever possible, to employ the power available to them through various kinds of legislation in pursuit of their goals. A notable feature of events associated with Hindmarsh is this theme of the exercise of power by a previously powerless people. Its locus was clearly among those mainly Adelaide-based members of the proponent group whose prominence as cultural brokers derived substantially from their experience in a much larger political arena than that of the Ngarrindjeri group. Their grasp of the nature of broader possibilities was manifest both in relation to invoking State heritage legislation and in appeals to Federal authorities to intervene against the actions of the State government. The politicisation of the issue of ‘tradition’ was a strategic element in the playing out of the Hindmarsh affair. The Ngarrindjeri Today, there are about 3,000 Aboriginal people with ties to the lower Murray region in the state of South Australia.19 Because of their long history of contact with Europeans, references to the Aboriginal inhabitants of this part of Australia are numerous in the written record; there are reputedly more than 500 sources pertaining to the lower River Murray region, making it one of the most heavily documented areas of Aboriginal Australia.20 The designation ‘Ngarrindjeri society’, used as a kind of encompassing identifier today, must be read against the enormous cultural complexity of this region, and powerful historical forces that have both scattered Aboriginal people and transformed their cultures. The basis of this identifier no doubt relates to the continued significance, for people identifying as Ngarrindjeri, of the old mission station, Point McLeay (now called Raukkan).

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Founded in 1859, the former mission now has the largest concentration of Ngarrindjeri in the Lower River Murray area. However, many others live in nearby towns, in the state capital, Adelaide, and in the Riverland region to the southeast.21 Despite this geographical scatter, there is much intervisiting and a sense of community is maintained via periodic congregations, notably for funerals. As I have noted elsewhere (in Bemdt and Bemdt 1993:xvii), contemporary Ngarrindjeri identity inheres also in shared family histories and beliefs about kinship and spirituality, in the widespread use of a distinctive dialect of Aboriginal English, and in the active efforts of individuals and representative bodies to promote cultural awareness. In her Report, Mathews (Commonwealth of Australia 1996:87-90) notes that continuities with the past continue to be manifest in aspects of the culture of many people now identifying themselves as Ngarrindjeri. Notwithstanding these ties of kinship, community and culture, and in view of the size of the membership, its geographical spread, and diversity of political perspectives and interests, a degree of factionalism among those identifying as Ngarrindjeri is unsurprising (cf. Lucas 1990). Lucas reported that the various representative bodies were not a united block, representing different regional orientations and support bases: ‘At various points and on certain issues they compete amongst themselves for the presentation of an authoritative Ngarrindjeri voice’ (Lucas 1990:5.2.3). There have been tensions among families, residence groups and the various Ngarrindjeri organisations, and in the last case some competition over access to resources. Given the high degree of diversity of Ngarrindjeri experiences, there would inevitably be varying local understandings concerning ‘tradition’. The Hindmarsh inquiry not only revealed some of the dimensions of internal differentiation in contemporary Ngarrindjeri society, but also exacerbated them. Moreover, it is doubtful that the subsequent Federal inquiry, which culminated in the Mathews Report, managed to engender a more conciliatory atmosphere within a now deeply divided community. Salient Issues I turn now to a consideration of some of the issues that arise from the Hindmarsh affair, principally in terms of their relevance to anthropological principles and practice. The affair’s significance extends well beyond the disputes over the existence of ‘women’s business’ and the plan to build a bridge. Hindmarsh will continue to resonate significantly, not only among the Ngarrindjeri and other Aboriginal people, but also nationwide in matters relating to Aboriginal heritage and the frequently competing demands of developers. For the anthropology profession, too, there is a need to focus on internal tensions and debates as well as on public perceptions of its practitioners and their practice. The when and why of the emergence of the ‘women’s business’ were, of course, central to the inquiry. Of the group claiming the existence of the tradition, all but one refused to give evidence to the Commission, whereas of 14 Ngarrindjeri women who disputed these claims, 12 gave evidence. However, many Aboriginal supporters of the proponents attended regularly and were at times quite vocal as an

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audience.22 Disputes among the various expert witnesses were also quite significant, and some of these were about professional competence and qualifications, and whether or not certain people were qualified to refer to themselves as anthropologists23 (the media worried little about the finer points of such labelling). On one side were Dr Neale Draper (Senior Archaeologist, Department of State Aboriginal Affairs), Dr Deane Fergie, the consultant anthropologist, and Mr Steven Hemming, a South Australian Museum historian, and on the other were two Museum staff, Dr Philip Clarke, a cultural geographeranthropologist, and Philip Jones, a lawyer-tumed-historian. All made written submissions and appeared before the Commissioner. The former sided with the proponents of the ‘women’s business’, and were subjected during crossexamination to pointed suggestions by counsel for opposing groups that they were complicit in the ‘fabrication’ of the women’s business. Clarke and Jones claimed that the tradition was of recent creation, for two major reasons: the incompatibility of such a tradition with the existing body of literature on Ngarrindjeri society; and the behaviour of their colleague, Doreen Kartinyeri, in seeking information concerning the cultural significance of Hindmarsh Island and nearby sites. Questions of Timing An important aspect of the Hindmarsh affair, prominent inside and outside the Commission hearings, was speculation as to the causes and timing of both action and inaction. For example, there is clear evidence from the 1930s that despite the compelling fact of Aboriginal disempowerment, Ngarrindjeri people raised protesting voices about environmental degradation (Bemdt 1940; Tindale 1938). Given recent claims concerning the profound cultural significance of Hindmarsh Island, some commentators expressed surprise that there was no record of Aboriginal protest against the building of five massive barrage dams joining Hindmarsh and neighbouring islands to the mainland in the late 1930s (e.g., Brunton 1995). Given the enormous significance of Hindmarsh Island as the claimed locus of the secret women’s business, the question of why no alarms were raised by Ngarrindjeri women in the several years between the bridge proposal and the beginning of construction work was posed by those favouring the position of the dissident women. The proponents’ response, which they supported using evidence drawn from central and northern Australia, was that this is a cultural matter: Aboriginal women are reluctant to speak out about such concerns until the eleventh hour. However, counter-evidence was offered as to recent Ngarrindjeri activism, on the part of women and men, in relation to a number of other environmental concerns. Also apposite was the question of what would be gained by either side in supporting or opposing the bridge construction. Proponents claimed that the real fabrication was that of the dissident group, acting in league with the developers and certain conservative politicians, and by implication in anticipation of future rewards should the development proceed. The dissidents and their supporters suggested that the proponents had been recruited and used by the conservationists

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and their allies in the anti-bridge movement. However, there is evidence of concerns, expressed by some Ngarrindjeri individuals and organisations opposed to the bridge, about environmental impact: the development would at the very least have disturbed archaeological sites. Also, there is no indication that any Ngarrindjeri protesters would stand to gain financially as a result of their opposition to the bridge. How would the consultant anthropologist, the archaeologist, and the museum historian who were aligned with the proponent faction have benefited from their alleged roles in the emergence of the tradition? Their opponents charged the trio with advocacy and activism, with possessing ideological commitments that took precedence over their professional responsibilities and the maintenance of objectivity, and with deliberately distorting source materials on the Ngarrindjeri. Some commentators suggested that these alleged failings are an inevitable consequence of anthropologists’ relationships with oppressed minorities and the overriding need to maintain working relationships with them (cf. Brunton 1995; Forbes, quoted in Brunton 1995:35). The reluctance of anthropologists to lend their services to the Commission was taken by such commentators as further indication that anthropologists avoid situations potentially inimical to the interests of oppressed minorities - though in Hindmarsh, a major question bearing on the politics of representation remains: how were the two conflicting groups of Ngarrindjeri being oppressed, and by whom? Whatever members of any society may proclaim regarding the fixed and immutable characteristics of their traditions, contemporary anthropological approaches conceptualise ‘tradition’, like culture itself, as inherently dynamic (cf. Keesing and Tonkinson 1982). The term embraces a multiplicity of meanings, and much of the debate over Hindmarsh hinged upon whether or not people focused on the distant past as some kind of legitimising baseline for the existence of ‘tradition’. There is considerable anthropological evidence indicating that the creation or revelation of new knowledge, including new sites, was intrinsic to Aboriginal religious life (e.g., Stanner 1966; Maddock 1982; Stanton 1983; Tonkinson 1991). There were recognised mechanisms and conventions in Aboriginal societies to enable such revelations to be validated and thus increase the knowledge base. Through processes of cultural diffusion, many rituals and associated objects were in circulation at any given time, and some were being exchanged while others were falling into disuse. People were excited by the advent of new rituals and were also highly receptive to the intercession of spiritual forces seeking to expand human awareness of the continuing presence and power of the Dreaming. These processes of creation and change have continued into the present in parts of Aboriginal Australia. It would be possible for Aboriginal people to argue that a tradition is of quite recent origin - the result of a spiritual revelation, say - though in the Hindmarsh case and in terms of the Royal Commission’s brief it would presumably be necessary to affirm that the newly acquired knowledge was not deliberately manufactured for the purpose of thwarting development. Those supporting the proponent groups in the Hindmarsh affair emphasised the dynamism inherent in the traditions of oral cultures, and their continuing creativity. They also

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highlighted the fact that the relevant heritage legislation says nothing about timedepth, and therefore does not require that a tradition be of long standing to qualify as such. However, in Hindmarsh the secret women’s business was claimed to be of long standing. Doreen Kartinyeri, the Ngarrindjeri spokesperson and principal source of information about the tradition, claimed in a television interview that she had received this knowledge when she was seventeen,24 and that the tradition had begun ‘40,000 years ago’.25 While the latter statement should not be taken at face value, since claims to this effect have become an almost standard component of Aboriginal political rhetoric, the former comment suggests the tradition has a time depth of at least four decades. A number of other Ngarrindjeri men and women (and at least two non-Aborigines) also testified that they had known of the tradition for a long time. The combination of claims of several decades of antiquity and secrecy for this tradition posed problems of explanation that were central to the hearings. In evidence, Fergie made a distinction between ‘tradition’ (as ‘a dynamic feature of life with no need for a dichotomy of modem and tradition’) and ‘traditional’, which is ‘more appropriately understood as an orientation to the past’. Thus, ‘[i]f the women now believe secret sacred women’s business it has become a tradition. Aboriginal tradition is not set in a point of time. It is constantly evolving and changing like European culture and tradition.’26 Fergie also declared that ‘tradition and belief are not subject to empirical testing’.27 When asked in crossexamination whether or not she had attempted to test the validity and genuineness of the tradition as related to her by the principal proponent of the tradition, Fergie averred that it was not necessary to do any such testing, only to decide whether or not she believed her informant.28 Many anthropologists might take issue with this view, though few would deny that, especially in the aftermath of invasion, colonisation, and the cultural disruptions consequent upon them, knowledge of certain beliefs or traditions could eventually reside in just a few individuals or even one person.29 A crucial issue here is the equation of knowledge with tradition. In discussing the nature of a tradition, it is essential to differentiate between idiosyncratic, highly personal beliefs and activities that are not adopted by sufficient numbers of other people to constitute ‘customary’ behaviour, and those bodies of knowledge that survive an inevitable testing period and eventually attain the status of ‘traditions’. Furthermore, differentiating between innovations whose impacts are transient and/or have the status of fads and those that evolve into traditions would also require some consideration of the ‘critical mass’ necessary to achieve such a status transformation, and of the ways in which processes of social reproduction are maintained in contexts of inequality and competing ideologies. Here, Sperber’s (1985) epidemiological model of culture is useful in clarifying the nature of the processes involved. Sperber conceptualises cultural elements as distributions of representations in a human population, and compares them with viruses because they are transformed each time they are transmitted. Thus, certain representations are more successful or ‘contagious’ in some societies than in others, and an essential diachrony is entailed in the transformation of knowledge or material culture from the status of innovation to that of ‘tradition’. For Sperber, an

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epidemiology of representations ‘has to explain why some representations remain relatively stable, i.e., why some representations become properly cultural’ (1985:75). Given that cultural transformations have time and space dimensions, it is possible to regard the prominence of the extended case method in anthropology as reflecting a growing awareness by anthropologists of the necessity of repeat visits to the field in order more effectively to distinguish short-term, transient, processual or organisational change from significant longer-term structural change (cf. Firth 1951; Gluckman 1965). The processes attendant upon the transition from innovation to tradition are inherently political. In a recent overview of developments in the ‘invention of tradition’ literature as it has burgeoned in the last 15 years, particularly in relation to Oceania, I concluded that ‘tradition’ is most effectively conceptualised as a resource, employed (or not employed) strategically by certain (but not all) of a community’s members (Tonkinson 1993:599). When reporting on the dynamism inherent in ‘tradition’, and in view of recent controversies over anthropological interpretations, anthropologists need to emphasise that re-readings of the past have long been recognised as a universal aspect of social life (cf. Barnett, 1953; Wagner 1975:36). Furthermore, they should make clear that such re-readings of the past need not entail any conscious fabrication or manipulation of fact, since filtering effects, distortions and disremembering are intrinsic to the process.30 Adopting a perspective on tradition that conceptualises it as a resource, strategically deployed by groups of people in the defence or furtherance of their interests, raises larger political issues, particularly in societies like Australia, where indigenous cultures coexist with a dominant nation-state. For example, it poses a considerable challenge to law-makers: how to frame and implement heritage and similar legislation so as to take account of the dynamism inherent in indigenous constructions of tradition and the variety of pressures that influence the nature and trajectory of these constructions. The difficulty here is the tension that exists between the need to ensure some degree of flexibility - to allow for the dynamism inherent in these constructions of tradition - and legal requirements for sufficient boundedness or closure to allow legislators to formulate widely applicable criteria for assessing ‘significance’ (cf. Brunton 1995). These issues were rehearsed at length by several anthropologists in the Coronation Hill debate (see fn. 2), against the backdrop of a popular conviction on the part of non-Aboriginal Australians that Aboriginal culture is ancient and static. Such a conviction renders the emergence of new traditions in the contemporary situation suspect - if not downright inauthentic, politically motivated and cynical. This wish to deny the legitimacy of what are essentially universal social processes to an encapsulated minority is linked to a deep-seated belief among nonindigenous Australians that the Aboriginal people of southern Australia, being predominantly of mixed descent, and seeming to be culturally similar to other Australians, are themselves inauthentic, not ‘real’ Aborigines, and have long since ‘lost their culture’. Little wonder, then, that in the Hindmarsh case public sentiment strongly supported the ‘fabrication’ hypothesis. Equally predictably, Aboriginal sentiment as expressed by key national figures and major bodies has

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interpreted the Royal Commission as an unethical intrusion, and the women’s business as a genuine and longstanding tradition.31 One of the most noticeable and significant aspects of representations of the Hindmarsh affair by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal commentators supportive of the proponent view is the total erasure of the dissident women from their constructions of the issue. The Hindmarsh affair is thus cast as an ongoing battle for cultural survival in which a seamless, unified Aboriginal collectivity is engaged in resistance against hegemonic state power (see Nile 1996). How Secret can Secret Knowledge be? Particularly germane from an anthropological perspective is the question: how can major secrets, held to be essential to a society’s survival, exist and persist in the absence of any general awareness on the part of the society’s members of the presence of a category of secret knowledge? In other words, while in most societies there is little problem in maintaining unshared knowledge over time, i.e., the content of secrets, the claim that the category can exist undetected over time is much more difficult to sustain. The term ‘secret-sacred’ is well known in the literature on Aboriginal Australia and is used to designate either men’s or women’s religious knowledge, objects and activities that are unshared with the rest of their society. A different but related terminology, ‘outside’/public versus ‘inside’/esoteric knowledge, most often associated with the Arnhem Land literature (cf. Morphy 1991; Keen 1994), also appears. Two highly significant sentences in the final submission of the counsel acting for Fergie (p.86) refer to evidence given on the last day of the Commission’s hearings by one of the proponent women: ‘In relation to the secret women’s knowledge there is clearly an outside layer which may be revealed. However, the inner core has remained secret.’ If ‘inside and outside’ layers of knowledge were indeed recognised in a society notable, among other things, for the absence of such differentiation, it is scarcely conceivable that no mention of the existence of such a dichotomy or categorisation appears in the voluminous literature about these people. The absence of any reference to this by the Bemdts is particularly problematic, since they had extensive fieldwork experience in a range of Aboriginal societies, including those with prominent secret-sacred dichotomies; and in writing the Ngarrindjeri volume they would have been alert to the presence of any such internal cultural boundaries. Instead, they emphasised (as did most other researchers) the conspicuous absence of such boundaries in Ngarrindjeri society, to the point of including an index entry entitled, ‘secret-sacred issues, absence o f (1993:621). Allegations that the secretsacred/non-secret-sacred dichotomy was a recent borrowing from the desert cultures came from those favouring the fabrication theory. The number and extent of exchange networks or ‘trade routes’ provide ample evidence of the openness of Aboriginal societies to influences emanating from far distant places (see Mulvaney 1976; McBryde 1987). In any case, the emergence of a secret-sacred category could be attributable to creative processes of change and innovation during the historical period. Another possibility is that there was some form of dichotomy in

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the lower River Murray societies prior to the European invasion, but both the dichotomy as lived reality, and its social imprint, disappeared in the early traumatic decades of contact and severe depopulation. The issue of secrecy had another dimension in the Hindmarsh case: the Federal Minister’s decision to ban bridge construction rested in part on confidential data relating to religious beliefs linking Hindmarsh Island and surrounding waters symbolically to the female body and its reproductive functions. The precise contents of two confidential appendices attached to Fergie’s report have not been revealed, even to the Royal Commissioner. Requests by the dissident Ngarrindjeri women to be allowed access to the contents of the confidential envelopes were refused,32 and Fergie insisted that only ‘fragments’ of the confidential data exist in the public record. However, important elements of the tradition were referred to by Ngarrindjeri witnesses and in media interviews. Appeals to secrecy figured prominently during the hearings, as a strategy to withstand what was at times quite rigorous cross-examination of witnesses sympathetic to the proponent group. However, in the hearings and in media statements, both Ngarrindjeri and nonindigenous men and women made claims as to the visibility and longevity of the secret women’s knowledge. Their desire to affirm the existence of the secret women’s tradition to some extent weakened the proponent women’s claims that the tradition was both a closely guarded secret and sacred to them.

Unshared versus Secret Domains of Knowledge Among the expert witnesses, a major point of contention was whether or not a domain of secret-sacred women’s knowledge could exist and remain undetected, given the absence in the literature of any indication of its existence. Obviously, absence of a cultural element from the relevant literature does not disprove its existence; and secrets remain secrets until such time as their holders divulge them or lose control over their dissemination and reproduction. From the point of view of the researcher, a substantial part of the contents of one’s field notebooks never enters the public domain, and the principle that we deal with ‘partial truths’ is an article of faith in postmodernist critiques of ethnography. We know, too, that we practise various forms of self-censorship and selectivity in the construction of our ethnographic writings. Also, as the Bemdts said of their study, we make no pretence that our ethnographic inquiries are exhaustive (Bemdt and Bemdt 1993:6). From the considerable body of literature on the lower River Murray peoples, it can be readily ascertained that their societies displayed some distinctive features. Notable among these was a rich and diverse material culture indicative of an aquatic-oriented adaptation, high population densities indicating a more sedentary and less nomadic life than elsewhere, a marked interpenetration of men’s and women’s domains of activity, and the existence of formalised structures of governance (Berndt and Bemdt 1993:xxiv; Jones n.d.:3). Although all of Aboriginal Australia exhibited considerable homogeneity in basic cultural principles, structures, behaviours and worldview, there were significant regional

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variations. The distinctive features of the lower River Murray societies persisted despite considerable interaction with neighbouring groups, influences emanating from desert cultures to the north, and the diffusion of cultural elements up and down Australia’s greatest river system (Bemdt and Bemdt 1993:116-18). One prominent feature of these societies that emerges from the literature is its openness, typified by the reported absence of separate male and female domains of secret knowledge. The Bemdts made a point of emphasising that the huge volume of data they recorded, including detailed accounts of sorcery practices, was in its entirety part of the public domain - though this appears not to be the case today. Secrecy attached to certain personal names (cf. Bemdt and Bemdt 1993:148), but seemingly to little else in this region. They also stressed that their elderly Ngarrindjeri informants were fearful that most of their knowledge would die with them, which is why they were very anxious to have the Bemdts record everything of importance. It is, of course, possible that none of them was aware of the secret women’s knowledge, but given their great interest in, and wealth of knowledge about, their society’s past, to posit such ignorance strains credulity. From a close reading of the Bemdts’ manuscript, I concluded in my foreword that ‘Clearly, no evidence exists that there was any issue of secret-sacred versus public-sacred or non-sacred material that could conceivably have divided senior Yaraldi [the Bemdts’ term for the Aborigines of the Lower Murray] people in terms of whether or not to divulge such information to outsiders’ (Bemdt and Bemdt 1993:xxii). Nonetheless, the possibility of the maintenance of a major secret tradition must be entertained. In Fergie’s second submission, she suggests that such knowledge may have been deliberately withheld from the Bemdts, and she locates a possible domain of such gender-specific knowledge in the role of the female putari (midwife/curer). However, there are several important issues that Fergie did not address. First, the need to make a clear distinction between unshared, genderspecific knowledge typical of all human societies and knowledge pertaining more specifically to the realm of the sacred, with socially visible processes that operate to protect any powerful secret. Second, the need to establish the criterion or criteria according to which such secret and sacred knowledge is divulged to others. In the Hindmarsh instance, the inevitable question arises as to why such paradigmatically significant knowledge, held to be essential to the reproduction of the entire culture, had been kept restricted to three or four women. Why would these women withhold this knowledge from others in the cohort of older Ngarrindjeri women who lived cheek by jowl in the Point McLeay community, the residential focus of Ngarrindjeri identity for over a century? Fergie’s view that Tn Aboriginal communities knowledge is restricted and selectively transmitted’33 is unexceptionable, but she does not provide information about the dynamics and the conventions of knowledge acquisition, transmission and diffusion. Endeavouring to account for a situation in which knowledge of the tradition was not divulged to close relatives and congeners, possessing a great deal in common, but rather to a woman (Doreen Kartinyeri) who was much more distant genealogically from the sources and had much less contact with them, Fergie argued that the knowledge was in no way predicated on genealogical links. She characterised genealogies as partial, incomplete and partisan, and relatedness as negotiable, multifaceted and

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‘open to interpretation’.34 There must be, however, limits to this flexibility. In Australian Aboriginal cultures, classificatory kinship systems provided a pervasive blueprint for social behaviour that was unlikely to have been ignored for more than brief interludes of emotional excess. Since colonisation, these kinship systems have been subjected to strong alien influences, which have altered but by no means extinguished their considerable role in everyday social life (cf. Chase 1981; Sutton 1981). The two dominant dichotomies of secrecy in Aboriginal Australia separated initiated males from the rest of society and ‘men’s business’ from ‘women’s business’. The dichotomy between certain mature women and other mature women and the rest of society, as claimed in Hindmarsh (where, it should be noted, such separation is not predicated upon important internal boundaries, such as clan membership), is to my knowledge unique. The major criteria suggested by the proponent women were a demonstrated ‘interest and appreciation’ of the culture and tradition,35 and a ‘tribal’ rather than Christian orientation. The difficulty with the latter criterion is that most Ngarrindjeri have professed Christianity for over a century, having been first exposed to it in the 1850s, when a mission was established in their midst. Those designated as the custodians of the tradition were described as committed and active Christians. Consonant with the strong cultural revival that has characterised many societies in southern Australia, a great deal of interest in, and appreciation of, their cultural heritage has been shown by all manner of Ngarrindjeri people in recent decades. Assertions by expert witnesses and their counsel that the existence in Ngarrindjeri society of restricted domains of secret-sacred knowledge is ‘consistent with the literature’ are open to challenge.36 No elements of the detailed accounts of birth, midwifery, miscarriages, abortion, menstruation and other gynaecological issues provided by Ngarrindjeri women and men to female researchers in the 1940s were identified as secret or sacred, and none of these accounts was site-specific.37 Counsel for Fergie, in attacking the credibility of these researchers, claimed that the lack of any esoteric or mythological detail in the material concerning these kinds of physiological processes indicates the absence of relations of trust between these researchers and Ngarrindjeri informants. For this line of argument to carry weight, supporting evidence would need to be adduced from elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia that female physiological processes were of central cultural importance, or at least the subject of secret-sacred ritual elaboration. Certainly, in some regions there was temporary segregation in exclusively female settings (e.g., for childbirth), and in many cases the observance of certain food taboos. Miscarriages and abortion, particularly, appear to have been a private affair and not something to which women drew the attention of others. As with aspects of male physiological processes, the predominant cultural concern was with the role of spiritual forces in human conception, birth and growth (cf. Hamilton 1981:1.9-28). Alternatively, this line of argument might suggest the possibility that, in the aftermath of European impact, a kind of ‘sacralisation’ of certain physiological processes has occurred as part of the evolution of tradition. Changed Ngarrindjeri attitudes to sorcery, away from the openness reported by the Bemdts’ informants, could conceivably provide a basis for such conjecture.

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The Anthropologist’s Role as Cultural Translator/Interpreter Under cross-examination,38 Fergie suggested that it would be impossible for opposing counsel to understand the concepts she was adumbrating because their 'Eurocentric logic’ rendered these lawyers incapable of bridging the cultural gap. Here the vital role of the anthropologist as ‘cultural translator’ - one who renders alien ideas and concepts into language accessible to members of our own and other societies and graspable in terms of our own cultural logic - is apposite. Some complex concepts are admittedly difficult to explicate in this manner, but anthropologists should be well placed to achieve a good approximation of them in translation. According to Fergie, she and Doreen Kartinyeri, who was the principal source of the new knowledge, engaged in intensive discussions about the tradition. Kartinyeri ‘elaborated the fragments of tradition...to an extent that provided me with a basis for examining the internal (cultural) logic of the traditions’.39 These fragments were apparently at this stage not synthesised into a narrative that would account for a seemingly major paradox: the belief that the proposed bridge would render Ngarrindjeri society sterile and hence precipitate its destruction, when similar concern had apparently not been expressed about the construction of a major series of barrage dams (completed during the 1940s) and a ferry system (also involving extensive pinning to the channel floor), both of which connect Hindmarsh Island to the adjoining mainland. The first of the two confidential appendices to Fergie’s 44-page report to the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs was compiled by her and Kartinyeri; it contained details of the secret women’s knowledge and the threatened impact of the bridge on Ngarrindjeri traditions and land. The second, four pages long, is solely the work of Fergie, and is her interpretation of the account in the other confidential appendix, plus a preliminary analysis of the broader cosmological significance of Aboriginal beliefs and their relationship to the future of the Ngarrindjeri people (Saunders 1994:12). This appendix is presumably her formulation of what the Ngarrindjeri women to whom she spoke were unable to articulate but which would be crucial to the Federal Minister when he considered whether or not to ban construction of the bridge: specifically, why the bridge had the potential to destroy their culture whereas the barrage dams and ferry structures had not done so. Fergie advanced an argument that the bridge would ‘form a permanent link between two parts of the landscape whose cosmological efficacy is contingent on separation’.40 She stresses the mediatory properties of water, stating that ‘the separation of all the major organs in this system is mediated and achieved by water’ (quoted in Saunders 1994:42). Thus neither the barrages nor the ferry supports are threatening because both rest in water and are thus mediated by it, whereas a bridge is presumably ‘unmediated by water’ and thus acts as a kind of concrete contraceptive that would render the Ngarrindjeri sterile. Clearly, what is at issue here is the limit of valid, reasonable interpretation, and the problem of assessing where the line between plausibility and what some critics of the discipline have labelled ‘creative anthropology’ (Brunton 1996a:6; 1996b:6)

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is crossed. All good anthropology is in some sense ‘creative’, but it must rest on interpretations and generalisations that can be plausibly read back from the data base, and can permit their validity to be tested in some way. In the Hindmarsh case, the conceptual gap between seemingly non-threatening barrage dams and culture-threatening bridges is simply too great to be overcome, without further substantiation, by reference to ‘mediation’.41 Issues of Interpretation Fergie’s initial report, which was apparently influential in the Minister’s decision to place a moratorium on construction of the bridge, presented conclusions that are at variance both with a large corpus of literature and with recent anthropological and archaeological reports. However, in a subsequent submission, she made detailed rebuttals to the criticisms of the first report, and denied that there is any striking inconsistency.42 A key focus of criticism of the report was her assumption of the representativeness of the gathering of women at which the secret information concerning the women’s tradition was transmitted. Fergie chose not to check these assertions, either with other Ngarrindjeri women or with colleagues knowledgeable about Ngarrindjeri society. Given the brevity of the consultancy and writing-up period and, especially in view of Fergie’s unfamiliarity with Ngarrindjeri society and culture, it would have been prudent of the Federal Minister to view her conclusions as necessarily tentative and preliminary, and to act accordingly. Expert assessment of both Fergie’s report and the Saunders Report would in all likelihood have prompted him to delay his decision until further research and consultation had occurred. Fergie’s announcement of a significant anthropological discovery, one of paradigmatic significance for the future of the Ngarrindjeri, gives rise to an important methodological consideration: the use of congruency or pattern recognition by anthropologists in attempting to assess or analyse newly acquired data. In normal circumstances, it is basic to anthropological research to test such data against what is already known of the lineaments of the culture concerned, to look for a degree of fit, for indications that it is of a piece with other elements, and follows an internally consistent logic. Anthropologists understand that knowledge is differentially distributed, generally biased in consistent directions, shaped ideologically, and so on; so when judging the likely validity of newly encountered cultural data, they must bear such factors in mind. Material that continues to confound the researcher’s expectations about ‘fit’ and patterning, even after making allowances for the distorting effects of change, tends to be treated with scepticism. Rather than engage in any suspension of disbelief, the researcher would conventionally subject such data to rigorous cross-checking in an attempt to obtain independent verification. In cleaving to a view of culture as symbolically constructed and subject to contestation and manipulation by interested agents, anthropologists should ideally seek to avoid an excess of either positivism or the kind of hyperrelativistic, deconstructionist perspective that sees everything as relative, contingent and

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ungeneral isable.43 There have to be standards of judgement and valid criteria for assessing both old and new interpretations or ‘facts’. As Haraway (1989:331, quoted in Linnekin 1992) suggests, [o ]n e sto ry is n o t as g o o d as a n o th er ... A tte n tio n to narrative is n o t in stea d o f a tte n tio n to s c ie n c e , but is e m p h a s iz e d in ord er to u n d erstan d a p articu lar k in d o f s c ie n tif ic p r a c tic e that r em a in s in tr in sic a lly sto r y -la d e n - a s a c o n d itio n o f d o in g g o o d sc ie n c e .

Similarly, Linnekin (n.d.:9) notes that ‘prior observations, socially embedded and grounded in assumptions as they may be, have some ontological status and should be accounted for; some explanations are better than others in addressing, rather than excluding, prior narratives’ (cf. Linnekin 1992). The Commission hearings certainly demonstrated the political uses of anthropological knowledge, and underscored a further point made by Linnekin (n.d.:6): the criteria that m a n y o f us e s p o u s e as h a llm a rk s o f g o o d sc h o la r sh ip - th e p r o b in g o f c o m p le x ity , n u a n c e and a m b ig u ity , the rejectio n o f pat s o lu tio n s and e a s y a n sw e r s m a k e o u r w o rk p o o r ly su ite d to p o litic a l d o g m a but a lso , p a r a d o x ic a lly , su b je c t to m u ltip le rea d in g s b y o th ers.

The tendency of anthropologists and many other social scientists to qualify and equivocate stems directly from their understandings about human agency, social dynamics, the essentially dialectical relationship between individual and society, and the nature of culture. One of the many challenges faced by the profession is to convince the world at large that such caution is a strength rather than a weakness. Representing Encapsulated ‘Tradition’ In the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, 1994, the definitions of ‘tradition’, ‘significant Aboriginal area’ and ‘injury and desecration’ are all broad. In not attempting to specify any time depth for a set of beliefs or customs that may constitute ‘Aboriginal tradition’ or any minimal degree of social consensus within an Aboriginal collectivity as to what constitutes a ‘tradition’, the Act would appear to allow for the fact that culture and tradition are dynamic. Although it sets out the conditions under which Aboriginal people may invoke traditional claims for protection of given areas, the Act does not contain any process for testing claims of Aboriginal tradition or for identifying authoritative voices.44 In any society, new traditions begin with individuals or small groups, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding their origin, they enter a social context where contestation of some kind will ensue. The dynamics of emic ‘testing’ may not be all that different from those of the anthropologist, since acceptance and establishment of new knowledge are partly dependent on the social standing and identity of the innovator, and partly on perceived congruency with pre-existing cultural constituents. In a highly charged political field, marked by rivalries within

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given communities, acceptance of the new knowledge may be restricted to only a segment of the population and also subjected to attacks on its legitimacy or validity by rival groups - sometimes regardless of its intrinsic ‘fit’ with other cultural elements (cf. Trigger, n.d.). However, when assessing external constraints on Aboriginal people’s ability to generate new traditions, the overwhelming reality of their encapsulation in a nation-state is a crucial factor: Aboriginal claims are subject to challenge by those who have the power to pronounce on the authenticity and legitimacy of Aboriginal traditions. Such pronouncements often lean towards invention (or suspicion of it) as characterising emergent indigenous traditions, and claims that such traditions are therefore fabricated and unacceptable, regardless of the fact that such dynamism is an intrinsic part of cultural dynamism in all societies. Attacks such as these are especially likely when emergent traditions threaten in any significant way the interests of governments or the private sector, and potentially large financial returns are seen as endangered by successful invocation of Aboriginal heritage legislation. A problem for Aboriginal people about ‘tradition’ is the tendency of nonindigenous Australians to limit it to the past and to things ‘cultural’, and to exclude the possibility that its authenticity is retained when it includes components that clearly post-date the European invasion and/or have economic significance. This dilemma has been eloquently expressed by Beckett (1988, quoted in Keen 1993): ‘Aborigines, like native Americans and others, face the unending task of resisting attempts, on the one hand to cut them off from their “heritage”, and on the other to bury them within it as “a thing of the past”.’

Notes 1

F or e x a m p le , su ch a lle g a tio n s a lso a ro se in a d eb a te in 1 9 9 1 -2 c o n c e r n in g th e C o ro n a tio n H ill area in A rn h em L and, cen tred on th e nature and ex te n t o f ela b o ra tio n o f J a w o y n r e lig io u s th o u g h t in rela tio n to th is area, w h ere a m ajor m in e w a s to b e lo ca ted ; cf. B run to n ( 1 9 9 1 ); K een ( 1 9 9 2 , 1 9 9 3 ); L e v itu s ( 1 9 9 6 ); M erlan (1 9 9 1 ).

2

T h e s e c r itic ism s p o in t to m ajor p r o b le m s ste m m in g from the eth n o c e n tr ism in h eren t in la w and leg a l in stitu tio n s.

In an im portant pap er on C an ad ian A b o r ig in a l title litig a tio n ,

A s c h and B e ll ( 1 9 9 4 ) ca ll for a rejectio n o f th e m yth that ‘th e law and leg a l p r o c e s s e s are v a lu e -n e u tr a l’ and for a n e w ju r isp r u d e n c e that ‘a b a n d o n s o u td ated and in a ccu rate a ss u m p tio n s a b o u t cu ltu re and w h ich

a d o p ts co n tem p orary p h ilo s o p h ie s a b ou t the

e q u a lity o f p e o p le s ’. 3

R ep o rt o f th e H in d m arsh Island B r id g e R o y a l C o m m is sio n , 1 9 9 5 : 7 2 -7 4 .

4

S e e L u ca s (1 9 9 0 ).

5

L u c a s w a s co n tra cted by th e d e v e lo p e r s to report on a n th r o p o lo g ic a l is s u e s r ela tin g to H in d m a rsh Island (id e n tifie d as K u m arangk b y the P o in t M c L e a y m issio n a r y , T ap lin ; th is n a m e h a s n o w b een w id e ly a d o p ted by N garrin d jeri p e o p le ).

H is b r ie f w a s a ls o to

a s s e s s th e h isto rica l and co n tem p o ra r y s ig n ific a n c e o f th e islan d to A b o r ig in e s.

D e s p ite

th e a b s e n c e o f an y sp e c ific r e feren ce to H in d m arsh Islan d in th e literature h e r e v ie w e d ( 1 9 9 0 :3 .5 ) , L u ca s reported that h is d is c u s s io n s w ith three A b o r ig in a l o r g a n isa tio n s in the lo w e r R iv e r M urray reg io n r e v ea led a v ie w that d e v e lo p m e n ta l iss u e s w e r e o f c o n c e r n to th e N ga rrin d jeri p e o p le as a w h o le . 6

R ep o rt o f the H in d m arsh Islan d B r id g e R o y a l C o m m is sio n , 1 9 9 5 :2 5 7 .

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269

7

Ibid. :2 9 9 .

8

C r itic ism s o f th e R o y a l C o m m is sio n by th o s e g e n e r a lly sy m p a th e tic to th e c a u s e o f th e 'p r o p o n e n t' w o m e n cen tred o n its p o litic is e d and ad versarial nature (c f. M e a n d 1 9 9 5 ; F erg ie 1 9 9 6 , 1 9 9 7 ; A n d r e w s 1 9 9 6 ; N ile 1 9 9 6 ).

F or e x a m p le , A n d r e w s ( 1 9 9 6 : 6 2 ) sta te s

that, 'A s th e C o m m is sio n p ro g r e sse d and rep orted , it r e v e a le d that th e S o u th A u str a lia n G o v e r n m e n t m ay h a v e d isc o v e r e d a p o w e r fu l w e a p o n for G o v e r n m e n ts w is h in g to d isc r e d it in d ig e n o u s p e o p le se e k in g to u se le g a l p r o ced u res to p ro tect th e ir in te rests. ap p eared to h a v e a c h ie v e d th e p o litic a l p u rp o se for w h ic h it w a s se t u p .’ A ndrew s

a sserts

that th e

R oyal

C o m m is sio n

‘w a s

c o n d u c te d

as

It

E ls e w h e r e ,

a com m on

la w

ad v ersa ria l tr ia l’. 9

T h e fed eral e le c tio n o f M arch 1 9 9 6 b ro u g h t th e L ib e r a l-N a tio n a l C o a litio n p arties to pow er.

J u stice M a th e w s had b een a p p o in te d b y th e L ab or M in iste r w h o h ad h a lte d th e

b rid g e d e v e lo p m e n t o n th e b a sis o f th e S a u n d e rs R eport. 10 In fin a l s u b m is s io n s o n b e h a lf o f a g ro u p o f N ga rrin d jeri p ro p o n e n t m en , th e ir la w y e r s

I d id

a lle g e d that the fa ilu re o f C o u n se l A s s is tin g to c a ll m e as a w itn e s s su g g e s te d that

n o t su p p o rt th e fa br ica tio n th e o ry , and that d e ta ils o f an y w ritten o r oral in fo r m a tio n c o n v e y e d by m e sh o u ld b e su p p lie d to all p a rties s o that th e y c o u ld h a v e th e o p p o r tu n ity to r esp o n d (T ilm o u th and K en n y , n .d .:7 ). S u b se q u e n tly , leg a l a p p e a ls o n b e h a lf o f o n e o f the

‘p r o p o n e n t’ N ga rrin d jeri m en

h a v e b een

m o u n te d o n

th e b a sis o f p ro ced u ra l

u n fa ir n e ss (in a sm u c h a s I w a s n o t m a d e a v a ila b le for c r o s s ex a m in a tio n b y c o u n s e l fo r th e 'p r o p o n e n ts ’), so far u n su c c e s sfu lly . A further ap p eal w a s heard in th e F u ll C o u rt o f th e S u p r e m e C o u rt o f S o u th A u stra lia in 1 9 9 7 . 11 P rior to 3rd June 1 9 9 2 . A u stra lia w a s th e o n ly fo rm er B ritish c o lo n y that h ad fa ile d to r e c o g n is e in la w th e prior land o w n e r sh ip o f its in d ig e n o u s in h a b ita n ts.

Eddie Mabo and others

v.

the State of Queensland,

O n that d a y , in

th e H ig h C ou rt o f A u str a lia h a n d ed

d o w n an h isto r ic ju d g m e n t that sig n a lle d an im portan t le g a l a s w e ll a s s y m b o lic c h a n g e in rela tio n s b e tw e e n the n a tio n ’s tw o in d ig e n o u s p e o p le s and th e d o m in a n t so c ie ty .

F or

th e first tim e , the C ou rt a c c e p te d the a rg u m en t that, un d er c o m m o n la w , th e n a tiv e title o f A u str a lia ’s

in d ig e n o u s

in h a b ita n ts c o u ld

be

r e c o g n is e d .

In

so

d o in g ,

th e

C ou rt

a b a n d o n e d a 2 0 0 -y e a r -o ld leg a l fic tio n w h ic h h eld that, at the tim e o f first B r itish se ttle m e n t, th e c o n tin e n t w a s

terra nullius,

a ‘land w ith o u t o w n e r s ’.

12 D e s p ite th e fact that m a n y o f th e s ta te s’ h erita g e la w s are r e la tiv e ly to o th le s s , th e y h a v e g e n e r a lly b een e f fe c tiv e in fo r c in g d e v e lo p e r s , lo c a l a u th o rities, p la n n e rs, etc . to in itia te th e n e c e s sa r y c le a r a n c e research rather than run th e risk o f e x p e n s iv e d e la y s to o n g o in g p r o jects as a resu lt o f fa ilu re to c o m p ly w ith le g is la tiv e d em a n d s. 13 T h e la rg est areas o f A b o r ig in a l land are in the N o rth ern T erritory (a b o u t 4 9 p er c e n t o f the to ta l) and th e sta te o f S o u th A u stra lia (a b o u t 5 0 per c e n t) - m o st o f it d e se r t (G ru n d y 1 9 9 5 :1 3 ). 14 C f.

K e n n y ( 1 9 9 6 :4 4 ) ;

R ep o rt o f th e H in d m a rsh

Islan d B r id g e R o y a l C o m m is s io n ,

1 9 9 5 :2 9 0 -2 9 1 . 15 A n th r o p o lo g is t R o n B run to n ( 1 9 9 5 : 3 8 - 3 9 ) a c c u s e s th e a n th r o p o lo g ic a l p r o fe s s io n in A u str a lia o f b e in g ‘ la rg ely , i f n o t to ta lly , co m m itte d m o re to a r o le o f a d v o c a c y than to in d e p e n d e n t sc h o la r sh ip on A b o r ig in a l m a tters’.

Y e t as S u tto n ( 1 9 9 6 : 9 4 ) m a k e s c lea r,

T h e iss u e is n o t o n e o f w h e th e r or n o t a n th r o p o lo g is ts h a v e p o litic a l or o th e r a lle g ia n c e s , in c lu d in g p e rso n a l o n e s d er iv e d from a h isto ry o f so m e fairly c lo s e in te r a c tio n w ith th e p e o p le w h o s e liv e s th e y stu d y , but w h e th e r or n o t th e y a llo w su c h le a n in g s to in te rfer e w ith th e q u a lity o f th eir p r o fe ss io n a l w o r k ’.

S im ila r ly , A s c h and B e ll ( 1 9 9 4 : 5 4 6 - 5 4 7 )

n o te that p r o fe ss io n a l c o d e s o f e th ic s in a n th r o p o lo g y d o n o t call for th e p r o te c tio n o f a c u ltu r e ’s m em b er s b y any m e a n s p o ss ib le ; rather, eth ic a l c o n d u c t sh o u ld b e fo c u s e d o n e n su r in g th e rig o u r and co m p a r a b ility o f th e r e su lts o f research .

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16 T h is fin d in g w a s c ite d

b y a n th r o p o lo g is t K en n eth

im p lic a tio n s o f th e M a b o d e c is io n , in M e lb o u r n e ’s

M addock

Herald Sun

in an a r ticle o n

th e

n ew sp a p er , 2 Ju ly 1 9 9 3 ,

w h ic h attracted a su b -e d ito r ’s h e a d lin e , M d ream ed it, so n o w I o w n it’.

M a d d o c k ’s

r e fe r e n c e to th e sa m e m aterial in a pap er d e liv e r e d at a M a b o and N a tiv e T itle se m in a r in S y d n e y in 1 9 9 4 m o v e d th e

Bulletin

c o lu m n is t, ‘P ie r p o n f , to a m o c k in g and tr iv ia lis in g

r e fle c tio n o n the p o s s ib ilit ie s o f d r e a m in g -p o w e r , in an article e n title d T had to o m u ch to dream last n ig h t. W h en it c o m e s to c la im in g n a tiv e title, th e fle sh is w e a k bu t th e sp irit is w i llin g ’

(The Bulletin,

2 4 M a y 1 9 9 4 ).

17 In a letter to th e E d itor,

The Weekend Australian,

6 - 7 January 1 9 9 6 , a read er c r itic ise d an

a n th r o p o lo g is t for d r a w in g a p a ra llel b e tw e e n th e d isc o v e r y o f sacred s ite s w ith that o f th e p e r io d ic ta b le . q u a n tifie d

an d

T h e reader w rote:

reco r d e d .

‘E le m e n ts can b e m ea su red

in d e p e n d e n tly ,

Elements do not magically come into existence near

development or mining sites.

E le m e n ts are o b je c tiv e .

H o w m a n y o f th e se p r o p erties

a p p ly to sa cred s it e s ? ’ (e m p h a s is m in e ) 18 T h e s e e n th u s ia sm s are n o t u n iv e r sa lly em b ra ced by A b o r ig in a l p e o p le , h o w e v e r .

As

T r ig g e r (n .d .: 17) n o te s, ‘F or so m e , th e w is d o m o f the o ld p e o p le is a c k n o w le d g e d , at lea st ta c itly , but rem a in s perip h eral to e v e r y d a y life c o n c e r n s lik e f e e d in g ch ild r e n , m a in ta in in g a m o to r v e h ic le and k e e p in g up w ith th e latest fa sh io n s in rock m u s ic and v id e o p r o g r a m s.’ 19 ‘N a r r in y e r i’, th e c o lle c t iv e lab el in c o m m o n u se to id e n tify the g r o u p s o f th e lo w e r R iv e r M urray cu ltural b lo c p rior to th e m issio n a r y ,

M ey er , a s m ea n in g

1 9 8 0 s, w a s first record ed in 1 8 4 3 b y a G erm an

‘m a n k in d ’ (C la rk e

1 9 9 4 ).

T h e e m e r g e n c e o f th e

‘N g a r r in d je r i’ s p e llin g ap p ea rs to d ate from J en k in ( 1 9 7 9 ), and is n o w firm ly en tr e n c h e d a s th e id e n tify in g la b el. 20 T ra n scrip t o f e v id e n c e , p. 158; sta tem e n t b y D r R. C lark e, referrin g to th e b ib lio g r a p h y in h is d o cto ra l d isse r ta tio n o n th e cultural g e o g r a p h y o f th e lo w e r M urray R iv e r r e g io n (U n iv e r s ity o f A d e la id e , 1 9 9 4 ).

M y co m m e n t in th e forew o rd to th e B e m d t s ’ b o o k that

‘r e la tiv e ly little h a s b een w ritten a b o u t the L o w e r M urray p e o p le s ’ w a s m a d e p rior to th e a p p ea ra n ce o f C la r k e ’s th e s is ( B e m d t and B e m d t 1 9 9 3 :x v iii). 21 C f. H in d m arsh Islan d S ta tem en t, pp. 2 - 3 (W ritten su b m iss io n to th e R o y a l C o m m is s io n by P .A . C la rk e, 1 9 9 5 ). 22 R ep o rt o f th e H in d m arsh Island B r id g e R o y a l C o m m is sio n , 1 9 9 5 :1 9 . 23 C f. S e c o n d w ritten s u b m iss io n b y F erg ie to the C o m m is sio n , pp. 1 5 - 1 6 . 24 D u r in g th e R o y a l C o m m is sio n h ea rin g s, c o u n s e l for th e ‘d is s id e n t’ w o m e n q u e stio n e d the cu ltural a p p r o p ria te n e ss o f tra n sm ittin g a b o d y o f k n o w le d g e , asserted to b e cen tral to th e su rv iv a l o f th e N g a rrin d jeri p e o p le , to an a d o le sc e n t girl rather than to o th e r s e n io r N g a rrin d jeri w o m e n . 25 R ay M artin S h o w in te rv iew ; R o y a l C o m m is sio n E x h ib it 171. 26 F in a l s u b m is s io n s by c o u n se l a c tin g fo r F erg ie, pp. 1 9 - 2 0 . 27 H in d m a rsh Islan d B r id g e R o y a l C o m m is sio n . T ranscrip t o f e v id e n c e , p. 5 7 1 8 . 28 Ib id ., p. 5 7 2 2 . 29 C e rta in ly , at th e tim e th e B e m d ts c o lle c te d th eir data, th e great b u lk o f m aterial w a s a p p a ren tly k n o w n o n ly b y th e v ery eld e r ly m an and w o m a n w h o w e r e th eir p rin cip a l in fo rm a n ts.

In th e late 1 9 8 0 s, w h e n the S o u th A u stralian M u se u m m o u n te d a m ajor

e x h ib itio n c o n c e r n in g N g u ru n d eri (a m a le c r e a tiv e b e in g w h o w a s th e m ajor a n cestral fig u r e in th e lo w e r M urray R iv e r r e g io n ), su ch had b een the len g th and in te n sity o f c o n ta c t w ith E u r o p e a n s in th is part o f th e c o n tin e n t that very fe w N garrin d jeri w ere a w a re o f th e d e ta ils o f th e N g u ru n d eri m yth or the site s created b y h im (P . A . C lark e, w ritte n s u b m is s io n , p. 3 ). 30 T h e fin a l su b m iss io n o f F e r g ie ’s c o u n s e l m a d e e x te n s iv e u se o f m y 1993 o v e r v ie w o f the to p ic in d is c u s s in g th e c o n c e p t o f tra d itio n , bu t did n ot a c k n o w le d g e the so u r c e and

The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair and Secret Knowledge d isto rted m y m e a n in g .

271

F o r e x a m p le , in liftin g th e a b o v e se n te n c e , th e w o r d s ‘n e e d n o t ’

w e r e c h a n g e d to ‘w ill n o t ’, th u s sig n ific a n tly a lterin g th e thrust o f th e s e n te n c e .

In

a n o th er e x a m p le , th e sta te m e n t ‘T r a d itio n , lik e n o sta lg ia , is n e v e r w h a t it u se d to b e ’, a lso u n attrib u ted , is id e n tic a l to th e o rig in a l, but w h e r e a s th e rest o f th e o r ig in a l s e n te n c e read s ‘and therein lie s its p o te n c y a s a c o n te sta b le r eso u rce in th e p r e s e n t’, th is w a s rep la ced in th e c o u n s e l’s s u b m iss io n b y ‘W h en tra d ition c h a n g e s an d e v o lv e s it is n o t d e lib e r a te ly m a n u fa c tu r e d .’ I w a s p o in tin g to w h a t I tak e to b e th e cen tral ch a r a c te r istic o f tra d itio n as reso u r c e , n a m e ly , its c o n te sta b ility , and w o u ld n e v e r th e r e fo r e h a v e s u g g e s te d that a n th r o p o lo g is ts ig n o r e th e p o s s ib ility that th e cr e a tio n o f n e w k n o w le d g e or tr a d itio n s c o u ld in v o lv e fa b r ica tio n .

T h e p o in t I d id m ak e w a s that a n th r o p o lo g is ts ’

u se o f th e term ‘ in v e n tio n ’ h a s o n se v era l n o ta b le o c c a s io n s b e e n tak en at fa c e v a lu e an d m isrea d a s ‘ in a u th e n tic ’, su g g e s tin g s e lf- c o n s c io u s or w ilfu l a cts o f c r ea tio n . 31 F or e x a m p le , th e A b o r ig in a l and T orres Strait Islan d er S o c ia l J u stic e C o m m is s io n e r , M ic k D o d s o n , issu e d an im p a s sio n e d p u b lic sta tem e n t d e p lo r in g th e C o m m is s io n as a v io la tio n o f b a sic h u m a n rig h ts (r e p ro d u ced in M ea d 1 9 9 5 ). 32 A c c o r d in g to a report in th e J u ly 1 9 9 6

Aboriginal Law Bulletin

3 (8 2 ): 1 0, in January o f

that y ea r D o r e e n K artinyeri d e str o y e d th e e n v e lo p e s c o n ta in in g m a te r ia ls r e la tin g to th e se c r e t w o m e n ’s b u sin e s s. 33 T ra n scrip t o f e v id e n c e , p. 5 3 4 9 . 34 F in al su b m is s io n b y c o u n s e l fo r F erg ie, p. 8 8 . 35 Ib id ., p. 2 5 . 36 Ib id ., p. 8 8 . 37 C f. W ritten s u b m iss io n o f P. G. J o n e s, S o u th A u stra lia n M u se u m , 1 9 9 5 , p. 7. 38 F erg ie, as th e c o n su lta n t a n th r o p o lo g is t and a cen tral actor in th e affair, w a s v ir tu a lly o n trial h e r s e lf d u rin g the R o y a l C o m m is s io n . S h e w a s th u s put in a p o s itio n u n u su a l fo r an a n th r o p o lo g ist: that o f b e in g rep resen ted b y c o u n s e l as o p p o se d to w o r k in g w ith th e m . 39 S e c o n d w ritten s u b m iss io n b y F e r g ie to th e R o y a l C o m m is sio n , p. 4 1 . 40 Q u o te d in S a u n d e rs ( 1 9 9 4 :4 0 ) . A s D o ree n K artinyeri (M a th e w s 1 9 9 6 : 1 7 5 ) p u t it, ‘T o th e N g a rrin d jeri w o m e n , th is is th e sta rtin g o f th e life b e g in s here, o f th e N g a rrin d jeri n a tio n , and h ere th e w a ters fa c e th e sk y and there is n o th in g b e tw e e n th e s k ie s and th e w a ter, an d the stars w ill b e a b le to lo o k d o w n on the w a ters and th e w a ters w ill b e a b le to lo o k up at th e s k ie s .' 41 D r L in d y W arrell, an a n th r o p o lo g ist, had p r o p o se d an a ltern a tiv e in te rp retation to P r o fe s so r S a u n ders: that th e b rid g e c o u ld e q u a lly b e se e n as m ed ia tin g m a in la n d

and

H in d m a rsh

Islan d .

(R ep o rt o f th e H in d m arsh

separation

Islan d B r id g e

o f th e R oyal

C o m m is s io n , 1 9 9 5 :2 4 9 .) 42 In her s e c o n d w ritte n su b m iss io n to th e C o m m is sio n , F e r g ie sta te s (p .5 9 ): ‘5 0 0 or 1 0 0 0 p ie c e s o f h ap h azard or su p e r fic ia l d o c u m e n ta tio n a b ou t a cu ltu r e d o n o t, in an d o f th e m s e lv e s , a m o u n t to th e e q u iv a le n t o f a sin g le in -d ep th eth n o g r a p h ic stu d y . T h e cru d e n u m b er o f s o u r c e s is n o in d ic a tio n that k n o w le d g e a n d /o r p r a ctice restr ic ted [to ] w o m e n d id or d id n o t e x is t in that c u ltu r e .’

T h is p a rticu lar o v e r sta te m e n t w o u ld p r e su m a b ly

in c lu d e th e B e m d t s ’ v o lu m e as o n e su ch p ie c e o f d o c u m e n ta tio n , y e t it is th e sa m e so u r c e that w a s relied u p o n s o h e a v ily b y F erg ie in a tte m p tin g to c o n str u c t w h a t w a s u ltim a te ly a te n u o u s arg u m en t. 43 D u r in g c r o s s-e x a m in a tio n o f e x p ert w itn e s s e s , v a g u e n e s s and ap p aren t o b fu s c a tio n and e v a s iv e n e s s in th e sta te m e n ts o f s o m e o f th em fu e lle d th e s u s p ic io n s o f la w y e r s an d o th e r s a b o u t a n th r o p o lo g y as a s c ie n tific d isc ip lin e .

T h e im p a tie n c e o f th e la w y e r s w ith

s o m e o f th e a n th r o p o lo g ic a l d isc o u r s e led to its p e jo r a tiv e d e sig n a tio n a s ‘a n th r o s p e a k ’, i.e. im p e n e tra b le, and p ro b a b ly v a c u o u s, e v e n i f d e c o d in g its m e a n in g w e r e p o s s ib le . F or a p a rticu la rly u n fo rtu n a te e x a m p le , s e e

Magazine,

1 8 - 1 9 M ay 1 9 9 6 .

‘C lea r a s M u d d le d ’, p. 6 4 ,

The Australian

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

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The

A ct

has

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by

J u stic e

E liz a b e th

E vatt,

w h ose

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R esea rch M o n o g ra p h N o . 10. --------. 1 9 8 1 . L and rig h ts and c o m p e n sa tio n in S e ttle d A u stralia.

Social Alternatives

2 (2 ):6 -

10. S w a in , T.

1993.

A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being.

C a m b rid g e : C a m b rid g e U n iv e r s ity P ress. T ehan, M .

19 9 6 .

A ta le o f tw o cu ltu r es.

T ilm o u th , S an d S. K e n n y n .d.

Alternative Law Journal 21 (1 ): 10—14.

S u b m is sio n to th e H in d m arsh Island (K u m a ra n g k ) B r id g e

R o y a l C o m m is s io n . T in d a le , N .

1938.

A u stra lia . T o n k in s o n , R. (e d .),

P ru pe and K o ro m a ra n g e: a le g e n d o f th e T a n g a n e k a ld , C o o r o n g , S o u th

Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia

6 2 ( 1 )1 8 —2 3 .

1 9 7 0 . A b o r ig in a l d rea m -sp irit b e lie f s in a c o n ta c t situ a tio n . In R .M . B e m d t

Australian Aboriginal Anthropology,

A u str a lia P ress.

pp. 2 7 7 - 2 9 1 .

Perth: U n iv e r s ity o f W estern

The Hindmarsh Bridge Affair and Secret Knowledge --------. 1 9 9 1 .

275

The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia's Desert,

secon d

e d itio n . Fort W orth: H o lt, R in eh art and W in sto n . --------. 1 9 9 3 .

U n d e r s ta n d in g ‘tr a d itio n ’ - ten y e a r s o n .

Anthropological Forum

6 (4 ):5 9 7 -

606. L and rig h ts: A u str a lia a fter M a b o . In J. W a ssm a n n (e d .), Pacific Answers to O x fo rd : B e r g Western Hegemony: Cultural Practices of Identity Construction.

--------. N .d .

(fo r th c o m in g ). T r ig g e r. D . n .d. L and r ig h ts and th e rep ro d u ctio n o f A b o r ig in a l id e n tity in th e G u lf c o u n tr y o f N o rth ern

A u stra lia .

P a p er p r e se n te d at th e an n u al m e e tin g s o f th e A m e r ic a n

A n th r o p o lo g ic a l A s s o c ia tio n . W a sh in g to n D .C ., N o v e m b e r 1 9 9 5 . --------.

1997.

R e fle c tio n s o n

in d ig e n o u s r e s p o n s e s .

C en tu ry

M in e:

p r e lim in a ry th o u g h ts o n

In D .E . S m ith and S . F in la y s o n (e d s ),

Anthropological Perspectives,

pp. 1 1 0 - 1 2 8 .

th e p o litic s o f

Fighting Over Country:

C anberra: C en tre fo r A b o r ig in a l E c o n o m ic

P o lic y R e se a r c h , T h e A u stra lia n N a tio n a l U n iv e r s ity (R e se a r c h M o n o g r a p h N o . 12 ). W a g n er. R.

1975.

W a lla c e , A .F .C . W ein er. .1.

1996.

January 1 9 9 6 .

The Invention of Culture. C h ic a g o : U n iv e r s ity o f C h ic a g o P ress. Culture and Personality. N e w Y ork : R a n d o m H o u se . E th n o g ra p h ers e n c o u n te r th eir o w n rite o f p a ss a g e . The Australian ,

1970.

11

PART 7: RELIGIOUS EXCHANGES

Christianity was introduced in very different ways to various Aboriginal groups by Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist and Pentecostalist missionaries. As a result there are a number of ‘Aboriginal Christianities’. The history of this interaction with the various indigenous peoples has been a very chequered one, with elements of repressive paternalism mixed with enlightened respect for Aboriginal traditions. The 19th century Christian missionaries were children of their age in that they simply assumed without question that white civilisation was superior to indigenous civilisation (if indeed one could use that word of ‘primitive’ peoples) and that Christianity was likewise obviously superior to the belief systems of the Aborigines. For them, in fact, civilisation and Christianisation went together. There was, of course, no thought given to the possibility that Christians could learn from an exchange with Aboriginal religions. Fiona Magowan traces the long history of Christian and indigenous contact among the Yolngu people of Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) in northeast Arnhem Land. She shows how, on the one hand, the Yolngu attempted to educate the Christian missionaries about their own religious beliefs and practices, and on the other hand how they were influenced by different Christian approaches. In general the Galiwin’ku people had a ‘good’ experience of contact with Christians. Music and dancing (and interpretation of dreams) were especially important in this. Release from fear through faith in Jesus, she says, is a major concern of the Galiwin’ku Christians. However, it is not only exchanges with Christianity that have been of interest to the Yolngu since they have also been influenced by their historic connections with Indonesian Muslims. From the 18th century onwards the Macassan traders and sailors from Sulawesi regularly visited Arnhem Land and there was a significant mixing of religious ideas between the two. Ian McIntosh has studied this Macassan-Yolngu ecumenical interaction in a number of articles and emphasises how important this neglected history has been. The Galiwin’ku people showed the same kind of creative adaptablity in their relations with the Muslims as with the Christians. At the present time there are the beginnings of a genuine ecumenical (‘twoway’) dialogue between a number of indigenous peoples and Christianity in which both parties are ready to learn from each other and to radically rethink their own positions. Max C harlesw orth

17

Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity Fiona Magowan

The connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture has generated considerable debate within Australian Christianity. 1 explore the intersubjective flow between faith and fear emergent within these two systems and show how external influences have impacted ruptures of ontological thought and experience. These ruptures have both emerged from and shaped social and political change for Yolngu from Galiwin’ku in north-east Arnhem Land. I examine a range of discourses of religious rupture and argue that Christian influences have, at different times, variously competed with, moulded, and naturalized Yolngu ancestral understanding, leading to a surveillance of the social, spiritual, and political relationship between the Gospel and Culture by Yolngu Christians. Introduction Y o u w e r e a fo rg o tten p e o p le , a fo rg o tten race, m y lo st tribe b u t n o w y o u r n a m e h as b e e n lifted up and p e o p le all a c r o ss the land k n o w a b o u t y o u .

I w an t to b le s s y o u .

Y o u are

m y sin g in g a n g e ls to s in g m y p r a is e s .1

This prophecy was given to a group of about 50 Yolngu from Galiwin’ku in the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia who attended the Alice Springs Christian Convention in Central Australia in 1991.2 It came at a critical time for Yolngu, who had been questioning the relationship between the foundations of the ancestral law and their Christian faith. This prophecy was frequently repeated in testimonies on Galiwin’ku following the convention and served to affirm confidence in their Christian music ministry.3 In the history of Australian missionization, Galiwin’ku Yolngu have been pivotal to internal and cross-cultural dialogues about “traditional” and Christian practices and missionaries in north-east Arnhem Land have played a critical role in advocating land rights for Yolngu since the 1960s.4 Indigenous engagement with.

From a revised version of Tt is God Who Speaks in the Thunder: Mediating Ontologies of Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity’, in Journal o f Religious History, 2003, October, 27(3), pp. 293-310. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

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Christianity along the NT coast began with the arrival of the Methodist Church at Goulbum Island in 1916, followed by Milingimbi (1923), Yirrkala (1935), and Galiwin’ku (1942). World War II intervened in mission activities with the bombing of Milingimbi mission by the Japanese in 1942. When the Methodists amalgamated with the Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches in 1976, Galiwin’ku came under the auspices of the Uniting Church.5 Missionary approaches to religious doctrine have differed dramatically across Australia, resulting in varying degrees of acceptance, rejection, and adherence to localized expressions of Christianity. Arnhem Land was no exception. For example, in seeking to influence social change, the missionary Theodor Webb the Methodist superintendent from 1926 to 1939 at Yirrkala - was the first to emphasize that if Yolngu chose to live in a European way, it must be by choice.6 This perspective differed markedly from Webb’s early views of Aboriginal life as particularly “primitive and crude”.7 The “choice” that Webb had spoken of would prove increasingly contentious as Yolngu encountered new legislation that allowed bauxite mining at Yirrkala and the influx of miners to dig in their ancestral earth, invading their spiritual presence in the land.8 Yolngu were concerned with communicating the ancestral essence of place as part of their spiritual ontology in response to the violation of their land through mining. Edgar Wells, an influential missionary at the height of the early 1960s land rights debate, understood something of the spiritual connection between Yolngu and their land: “We came to believe that unless some Aboriginal leaders retained control of their traditional totemic land, not only would the accumulated wisdom of the people be threatened, but their very survival would be at risk.”9 Fears about the threat to human well-being from the effects of destroying land through mining around the town of Gove, located 12 km from Yirrkala mission, were to resonate across the continent. At Mount Brockman, Bill Neidjie commented on people’s strong reactions to the proposed uranium mining around Oenpelli. He said, “No! We don’t want uranium. Gove e start...enough! We don’t want it here happen again...Killing his body where e digging...That spirit e do something. Might be im bum his house...easy! Or e might blow up car, e might puncture anykind. Because not you’n’me, you’n’me can’t because spirit.”10 Yolngu were also concerned with educating the missionaries about their religious belief system." In 1957 Galiwin’ku leaders decided to show their sacred rranga to mission staff. These ancestral objects were foundational to the ancestral law and when they erected them in the mission they placed a Christian cross set in the middle. This “memorial”, which represented “a history of close cooperation with the missionaries”,12 formed the basis of the “adjustment movement” involving a revelation of ancestral objects formerly restricted for women and children.13 This act was an articulation of ancestral belief following Gospel teaching about not hiding things in secret. For Yolngu, the memorial gave respect to the ancestral law under the Christian Godhead. It signified their understanding of ancestral and Christian beliefs. For the missionaries and other balanda, the visual sculpture offered a means of learning about Yolngu religious belief.14 This significant religious event was followed by a charismatic “Revival” in 1979 of 200-300 people meeting nightly for fellowship, singing, praying, and

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speaking in tongues. The social emphasis of this movement was “love”, “friendship”, “brotherhood”, and ‘sisterhood”.15 Syncretic elements were also present, with parallels drawn between baptism and the traditional purification ceremony on the one hand, and the law of the sacred objects, rranga, and the ten commandments on the other.16 Debate about these elements paved the way for the rise of an “Aboriginal theology”, developed by a prominent clan leader and Christian minister instrumental at the time of the Christian Revival, Rev. Dr Terry Djiniyini Gondarra.17 But by the early 1990s, the Galiwin’ku church was seriously questioning the relationship between the ancestral law and Christianity, leading to a week of discussions on the gospel and culture.18 In this chapter, I examine how Djiniyini and other Yolngu Christians understand the moral ties that bind ancestral law and Christianity together as faith and interpretation.19 I discuss the nature of contested rhetorics that have emerged at key points of ontological disruption in the history and practice of Yolngu Christianity on Galiwin’ku and further explore the complexity of changing social and political conditions that have shaped the experiential nature of Arnhem Land Christianity from the perspective of Yolngu Christians. Expressions of fear, anxiety, strength, power, and peace are shown to stem from the intersubjective flow between people and places mediating the embodiment of spiritual essence, where Yolngu speak of fear as dialectically situated in relation to other spiritual and emotional effects. This flow of spiritual essence regulates Yolngu experiences of harm, illness, and well-being in and through places. An analytic focus serves to draw out points of convergence and divergence with other denominational practices and understandings of ancestral and Christian belief in north-east Arnhem Land and elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia.20 Alternative rhetorics of belief have emerged as a result of significant events that have challenged the accepted norms and caused ruptures between religious thought and practice and social action. Ruptures have occurred when different domains of Yolngu and Euro-Australian meaning have come into competition with one another over symbolic capital, or when new economic or political structures have influenced local belief and sentiment. These rhetorics are generally constructed around communally recognized states of ancestral and Christian emotion and experience relating to fear and the release from fear, producing the internal state of marr (spiritual power or strength) and the structural conditions for magaya (peace or the cessation of internal or external conflict materially, socially, spiritually, and physically). I examine various rhetorics of fear and faith in relation to the activities and expectations of the missionaries on Galiwin’ku and examine the ontological ruptures that ensued in the development of Yolngu Christianity. Thus, I move back and forth between the structural premises of ideology and doctrine, as well as prophecy and testimony and ancestral belief and feeling, to elicit moral responses about the relationship between fear and faith in Yolngu life.

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Theocentric and Christocentric Approaches Today, a number of Yolngu leaders negotiate their faith from a cultural basis, as they seek to serve their communities through Christian witness. However, Yolngu Christians hold a multiplicity of perspectives on their involvement in the tenets and requirements of the ancestral law. Some leaders profess a moral connectedness that is both heterogeneous and homogeneous;21 one that is theocentrically situated and rooted in the placedness of the ancestral law. Other leaders hold to a Christocentric profession of belief and experience, renouncing ancestral rootedness as unnecessary for living with appropriate moral accountability to God. The majority of Yolngu on Galiwin’ku acknowledge that belief in Christianity lies somewhere along a continuum within or between these poles.22 However, not all Yolngu on Galiwin’ku believe in the power of the Christian God over the spiritual efficacy of the ancestral beings, and some reject Christianity as a way of life. As perspectives shift along the continuum, Yolngu contend with what constitutes acceptable thought and action in relation to social and material welfare and ancestral action and involvement. As Yolngu Christians believe in the assurance that Jesus protects, they also hold a healthy regard for abstaining from things that could contaminate the spiritual self. Scripture provides moral codes for living, however, there are contested views about the boundaries of Yolngu cultural practices. Indeed, individuals hold diverse opinions about what might be acceptable or unacceptable engagement with certain ancestral elements and ritual practices, such as singing and dancing. A few Yolngu consider their ancestral identity unnecessary for living, because they believe Jesus offers true life. They speak of walking in the dhunupa dhukarr (straight path) following the yuwalk rom (true law). A significant number of Yolngu struggle to relate their ancestral identity to Christianity. Others seek to bring insight to the idea that ancestral creation and identity reveal a divine relationship of God with his world. A few reject the teachings of Christ altogether. Religious services may have a more theocentric or Christocentric bent, depending on who is speaking and ministering, and whether they are at fellowships, rallies, or national and international conventions. Social and Spiritual Surveillance In addition to this spectrum of belief, Yolngu Christians also engage in a divinely orientated surveillance of their own bodies and their communal expressions of faith. The church elders often discuss external influences requiring social changes amongst themselves and in their homes. These surveillance practices are not new because a melee of alternative ways of knowing has permeated north-east Arnhem Land. The first visitors, fishermen from Macassar (Ujung Pandung) in Sulawesi, landed on the northernmost shores to collect trepang (also known as sea slug, beche-de-mer, or sea cucumber) in exchange for metal axes, knives, fish hooks, wire prongs (for spears), pottery, glass, rice, tobacco, cloth, beads, arrack, and gin.23 They also exchanged their songs and some aspects of Islam.24 More

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recently, other belief systems such as atheism, Baha’i, humanism, materialism, and science have converged upon the area in rapid succession, some arriving and departing without significant impact upon daily practices, others requiring a continual evaluation of appropriate social responses. In this melting pot of contested ideologies, Yolngu Christianity has emerged as a powerful paradigm, gathering considerable momentum since early mission years. From the perspective of many Yolngu and missionaries, the long-term missionaries on Galiwin’ku generally brought a sense of certainty, order, direction, clarity, security, and discipline, as well as the predictability of expectation and reward within Yolngu daily routine until their departure in 1977. They were fondly remembered and the events of mission days are still re-enacted on special occasions in the absence of the missionaries.25 When the Galiwin’ku mission was first established in 1942, it supported Rev. Harold Shepherdson (Bapa Sheppie); his wife, Ella Shepherdson; one nurse; one teacher; Clem and Joyce Gullick; and Harold and Heather Kraak.26 Approximately 700-800 Yolngu were resident in the town during this period. Morning prayer was held at 6.30 AM 5 days per week. At 8.00 AM the bell rang to call men and women to work and the children to school. Church services were held in English with Yolngu interpretations by leaders such as Batangga, Makarrwala, Burrumarra, Rrurrambu, and Bunbatju; and hymns were played on a pedal organ.27 The Galiwin’ku choir became renowned in NT for the quality of its singing. It won numerous awards over several years, beginning in 1969 at the Darwin Eisteddfod. The choir later toured to Brisbane and Central Australia.28 This practical care opened up possibilities for dialogue and an exchange of reciprocal understanding. Some aspects of the missionaries’ “civilizing and Christianising”29 approach to Yolngu life spoke indirectly to a morally interconnective ancestral world. The missionaries’ moral engagement with Yolngu was based on a practical Christianity formulated as a Protestant work ethic and essentially motivated by mutual respect and love. In some ways, they were practising the very foundations of the ancestral law: the rule of djagamirr - caring for or looking after one another. This paradigm of care was manifested through development of gardens and a sawmill, teaching trade skills, and providing a general education that included learning to read and write in English. Killing them Softly When the mission staff left Galiwin’ku, responsibility for Yolngu welfare was transferred to the Galiwin’ku Community Council, which issued fortnightly benefit cheques. A former council chairman lamented the passing of the mission and the changes taking place in Yolngu culture when he remarked: L o o k at G a liw in 'k u .

T h er e are p r o b le m s w ith litter, ch ild r e n s n iffin g p e tr o l, d o g s w ith

d is e a s e s , p reg n a n t u n d e r a g e g ir ls. n o th in g .

Bapa S h e p p ie w o u ld c o m e (d id je r id u )? Nha (W h a t) at 10 o ’c lo c k strict.

W h y ? B e c a u s e e v e r y o n e is s ittin g a r o u n d d o in g

N o t lik e th e o ld m is s io n d a y s.

T h en w e had w o r k to d o a ll d ay an d it w a s

o u t an d sa y ,

“Nha

(W h a t) y o u p la y in g

at n ig h t? Y o u h a v e w o r k in th e m o r n in g .”

yidaki

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Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Today, the bell announces the two services that are held on the island at 10.00 AM and 7.30 PM on Sundays. Morning prayer takes place at 6.00 AM most weekdays and members of the bible translation team lead lunchtime prayer meetings. There are 1200-1300 people resident on the island (800 in the town and 400-500 living at homelands along the coast), of whom 60-130 attend church services in the morning, and 20-200 or more attend at night, depending on the event and its location. Church services may be held in church on Sunday morning, outside the church at night, at a funeral area, on a homeland, or at someone’s house. People may congregate for fellowship during a funeral; for other community rallies; or celebrations such as Easter or Christmas. The Galiwin’ku congregation is continually involved in taking their music ministry to outstations for Christian rallies, both on the island and on the mainland. At these rallies, a wooden stage is generally constructed in a shady clearing encircled by lights and situated a short distance from the camp. Shelters are built from stringybark trunks with leafy branches or tarpaulins stretched across the top to provide shade in the heat of the day. By dusk, a few Yolngu start to drift across the area for worship and spread sheets out on the sand for themselves and their families as they sing, pray, and listen to readings, testimonies, and sermon. Although the principle of djagamirr has remained of paramount importance, people have continued to struggle to ensure their children are woven into the ancestral law of accountability. Parents are confronted with their children sniffing petrol, and they must deal with absenteeism from school, despondency amongst youth, conflicts over the nature of education and ritual responsibilities, and a general loss of control over their own lives. Although Galiwin’ku can police alcohol infiltration to some extent because it is a “dry” island, it is not free from the new youth trend of fermenting cordial with yeast; nor the sporadic influx of kava from Yirrkala; nor, at times, the availability of marijuana from passing contractors working on the island. These drug-related activities impact on the mental and physical health of youths. They separate them from their families and their responsibilities, leading to social alienation and an eventual lack of moral accountability to and by their peers, who view them as irresponsible and unworthy of being entrusted with the ancestral law. The slide down the slippery slope of mistrust and disrespect has been a common route since government intervention. Too often youth have ended up in a spiral of despair and prison sentences. In continually changing social circumstances, leaders speak of mission days as ones of reformation with education, care, and development leading the way. When the transmission of ancestral knowledge has been threatened by social problems - or other destabilizing factors, such as the welfare system that establishes differentials of access to money in the community - rhetorics of fear have been played out in a complex series of irruptions and engagements over conflicting values and priorities, such as time-consciousness, monetary concerns, and work-orientated living in relation to ritual obligations and ancestral priniciples. Although Bos has argued that this situation was easing by 1976 because of selfdetermination policies,30 it is clear that these social pressures did not die out, nor were communities able to completely control the problems they were encountering

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as a result of outside influences. At that time, people also began to speak against church ideals and practice. In this increasing spirit of social and spiritual unrest, the then Minister of Galiwin’ku, Rev. Djiniyini Gondarra, recalls how he began a morning service in 1979: I b eg a n to pray for the p e o p le and th e C hurch that G o d w o u ld p o u r o u t H is H o ly S p irit to b rin g h e a lin g and ren ew a l to th e hearts o f m en , w o m e n and th e c h ild r e n .. . s u d d e n ly the w h o le form o f prayer c h a n g e d and e v e r y b o d y b e g a n to pray an d th e re w a s a grea t n o is e in the ro o m . ...

A fte r th is p e o p le b eg a n to m eet e v e r y e v e n in g in fa m ily g r o u p s an d

p e o p le w ere sin g in g c h o r u se s and h y m n s w h e r e b e fo r e th ere h ad b e e n v io le n t

fig h tin g .31

The effects of the Revival were critical to ameliorating social discontent. Singing was a traditional and transformative catalyst for emotional release as one of the major obligations of Yolngu ritual is to respect and honour one another through song and dance. This principle has been “naturalized” as part of the Christian obligation to witness as Yolngu have developed indigenous expressions of Christian worship. By the time of the Revival, guitars and keyboards had been introduced to worship and Soft Sands (a Gospel music group) had been playing Christian songs in a Country and Western style. The music of the Revival also involved the formation of family singing groups, such as Dhurrkay Praise (who composed their own choruses in Yolngu style and language but with guitars and keyboards), at evening fellowships and as “items” for Sunday morning services.32 By 1990 media technologies and new instruments such as elaborate keyboards with a range of rhythms and sounds were radically altering Yolngu understandings of Christian expressions of worship. Yolngu Christian groups had also taken their songs and dances across the nation and the world to Darwin, Katherine, Sydney, Germany, and Israel among other places. In the past decade, Christian Yolngu on Galiwin’ku have developed a wide range of music through which they dance out their faith to counter feelings of doubt or fear. Youth groups from various homelands practise dance actions to American Gospel choruses on cassette, Sydney’s Hillsong ministries, music from Israel, or music from Ireland such as Revival in Belfast. A number of families have visited the Mary Sisters in Sydney and Germany and some have spent several Easters in Israel. Yet others have attended workshops in Brisbane to learn Christian dance with tambourines and streamers. The flow of these dances is seen to reveal the relationship between the Holy Spirit, the individual, and their moral accountability to God and one another. Speaking of his children’s involvement in this ministry, Colin commented on how they have been used to bring prophetic messages to the congregation in Christian dances set to contemporary music using tambourines and streamers: M a n y tim e s th e Lord h a s u sed them to b rin g a m e ss a g e to th e ch u rch . m e s s a g e s that w a s b ro u g h t to th e ch u rch w a s th r o u gh th is s o n g

Jesus.

O n e o f th e

Turn Your Eyes Upon

It ca m e at a tim e w h e n a lo t o f p e o p le w e r e very fr ig h te n e d an d th e re w e r e

p a y b a ck k illin g s g o in g on and rum ours a b o u t that sort o f th in g and a lo t o f tr o u b le in th e c o m m u n ity .

A n d th e m e ss a g e o f

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

w a s s o m e th in g th at w a s

286

Aboriginal Religions in Australia g iv e n b y G o d at th e tim e and it str e n g th e n e d th e faith o f a lot o f p e o p le .

It c h a n g e d th e

fo c u s fro m w h a t th e D e v il w a s d o in g to w h a t G od w a s d o in g and it r e a lly m a d e a d iffe r e n c e in th e co m m u n ity .

Dancing prophecies are spoken of as clear, sweet sounds in the heart. Some say they are “felt” as frequencies where the foundation of Yolngu being is as a musical note; a vibration of life, matter with frequency emplaced in and arising from the ground on which one stands. Consequently, the dialogue between Christianity and the ancestral law has been played out either in Christian songs that emphasize the centrality of Jesus or in musical items that draw upon traditional song and dance using clapsticks and didjeridu. Some songs have incorporated women’s ritual melodies and some groups sing and dance their own compositions wearing traditional body painting. These local expressions of Christian creativity contrast with other denominational practices across Australia, such as the United Aborigines’ Mission in Halls Creek where: P r e se n t d a y m is s io n a r ie s w is h th ere c o u ld b e m o re A b o r ig in a l cu ltural c o n te n t in th e ir ch u rch s e r v ic e s , that d id g e r id o o s and b o o m e r a n g c la p stic k s c o u ld b e in tr o d u c e d a lo n g w ith A b o r ig in a l la n g u a g e s in s in g in g , and that m ore o f th e D r e a m tim e sto r ie s w e r e k n o w n .33

One explanation for the lack of cultural content comes from the United Aborigines Missionaries’ concern that Aboriginal religion is based on fear resulting in a reserved approach to cultural elements.34 Overcoming Captivity In Arnhem Land, the relationship between fear of the Devil through sorcery and the power of Jesus is at the heart of Yolngu issues between culture and the Gospel. In Yolngu thought, spiritual attack is the possibility of being led to fear and being afraid. It is perceived as a potentially ever-present danger that needs to be addressed by the Church. The “call” to Christian evangelism, then, creates a paradox between local expressions of faith; engagement with Christian and nonChristian relatives; ancestral obligations; problems of sorcery; and social and material living. In this call, there is a tension between the once-and-for-all personal sanctification of baptism and the ongoing resanctification of daily moral outworking through the continual submission and humbling of the self to God’s purposes and cultural obligations. In 1991, assistant minister of Galiwin’ku, Dangatanga, said, “I’m a blood-washed, life-changed Christian. How can we, the Church, grow and nurture our Aboriginal people?” Where and how obligations to the ancestral law fit into the call to witness is perceived as a challenge for the church. Yolngu Christian leaders often reflect on the nature of their moral selves in relation to their ancestral identities as they pertain to the foundational principles of ancestral cosmology. Despite disparate views about the synchronicity between Christian and ancestral belief on Galiwin’ku, all Yolngu share a common concern

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of moral accountability to one another in the ancestral law. Accountability is represented in ritual feather strings that are fashioned for each clan and worn when dancing the journeys of the first ancestral creators.35 These journeys are realized through word, vision, and action manifested in story, song, and dance. They twist and turn like the ritual feather strings used in armbands, head-dresses, and dillybags that metaphorically tie people and homelands together by their designs and spiritually constitute the moral fibre of Yolngu being.36 Each person possesses their own ritual string given in recognition of their development of ritual knowledge signifying the relationship that each individual has towards his or her homeland(s) and reflecting their rights and obligations. Composed of bark fibres, the string is interspersed with feathers that carry moral, social, spiritual, and political meaning. Women roll two strands of the crushed and softened bark of red kurrajong fibres on their thighs, meshing them together. A third element of perhaps orange lorrikeet feathers, white cockatoo feathers, or grey possum fur is incorporated and the substance of string comes to life; women weaving the blood and essence of the feathers and fur into the “marrow” of the string as flesh and sinew into the person on their points of being and journeys of personal growth. Each feathery marking is a sign of place, a focus of becoming, an ancestral event of the emergence of life where the ground and identity of the string maker is also inscribed in the action of rolling in the nostalgia of her own ancestral belonging. Just as a woman rolls fibres of moral and emotional obligations into her relational journey with others as she makes the string, so a man can break his moral duty to a woman by cutting his ritual string if he chooses. On one occasion, Wadaymu tied his ancestral honey string between two eucalyptus trees and sat down at the back of his house underneath it. He spent two days in contemplation. On the third day he rose and, taking a knife, cut the cord in an act of severing his heart and soul from a lifelong commitment and obligation to his next potential spouse. As a Christian man, Wadaymu understood the significance of the third day of Christ’s resurrection. In the process of severance, he enacted the antithesis of Christ’s reconciliatory grace bestowed upon humanity when he rose again from death on the cross, by “hanging” his potential spouse between two trees and severing the string of moral obligation and emotional denial as he cut his ancestral substance from hers. Thus, knowing oneself as ancestrally bound to other people and places by spiritual string begins with the knowledge that the fibre of the ancestral self is dreamt from the land, painted into the ritual body as streaks of lifeblood, ochres of the earth, and sunset-red clouds. These colour-pulses of moral fibre are the life force of river veins and sound over the landscape in the ritual echoes of song, meshing the string of one ancestral journey with another, at the same time that the beat of dancers’ feet on the earth pounds out the heartbeats of ancestral obligation from compassion to love and from fear to faith. This “flow of ancestral life-forces between the living and the dead”37 is remarked upon in a story that Djanggirrawuy told to John Rudder (my emphasis in bold):

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I f h e lo s e s [a m an d ie s] an d p a s s e s a w a y an d lie s b ack on h is e lb o w

djipthun

.. . lik e [a] b ro k en b ran ch , s in g

mayku (barrukala dharpa

likan ngayili

[paperbark tre e ]).

In stea d o f sa y in g , “ H e ’s g o n e ” , I s in g th e s o n g that sa y s, “ H e ’s r estin g in p e a c e ” , and in that s o n g m e n tio n th e p la c e s and a n n o u n c e w ith

guku

my spirit

w h ere h is sp irit h as g o n e .. .

guku (h o n e y b e e ) and fly in g ). T h e s o n g te lls w h e r e h e ’s started and then h is jo u r n e y a s guku. T h en sin g mokuy ([sp ir it b e in g n a m e d ] Murayana). S a m e th in g ... A fte r mokuy, s in g in g a b o u t “ m arr” (a m a n ’s d e e p e s t d e sir e s an d f e e lin g s , lik e n e d to strin g ) but s in g in g a b o u t th e strin g c a lle d Yaliyali and Ratja ... B y s in g in g th e s o n g , it’s lik e p ra y in g h o w m u ch w e lo v e that mokuy (d e a d p e r so n ). O ur lo v e is lo n g lik e th e lo n g strin g . It d o e s n ’t h elp th e mokuy (d e a d p e r so n ), it h e lp s ou r b e lie fs . W e p erfo rm in a sp e c ia l w a y m a k in g c e r e m o n y (bunggul) and s o n g ( manikay )

N e x t I s in g

(m y sp irit tu r n in g in to

s o w e fe e l c o m fo r t in stea d o f hard fe e lin g s or j e a lo u s y .38

The final song of the string is a journey of deep emotional connection between the living and the deceased, mirrored in the earlier song of the honeybee flying, where the honey is the water and clean flowing lifeblood of the person that has just oozed back into the spiritual vein of the earth to be taken home to the pool of spirits to be reborn. Just as a man can choose to cut off his moral ties to a potential spouse, so a person can forfeit their right to be protected by the ancestral law by breaking it. The fear of breaking an ancestral cord of accountability provokes moral and spiritual retribution as violations of personhood and unresolved relational tensions allow toxins to leach into the person’s lifestring and destroy the moral fibre of reciprocity between relatives. The assistant minister of Galiwin’ku remarked: Y o u d o n ’t n e e d to fear u n le ss y o u d o s o m e th in g lik e w a lk in to a m e n ’s b u s in e s s , a

Ngarra

or s o m e th in g lik e that and th en after a fe w m o n th s y o u k n o w y o u ’d d ie. B u t y o u

b ro k e th e L aw .

galka ,

Y e s , I k n o w w h a t fear is.

a h arm ful sp irit, w a tc h in g m e.

S o m e tim e s w h e n I’m o u t h u n tin g I ca n fe e l

I f so m e o n e te lls a w o m a n or y o u n g p e rso n a b o u t

s o m e G u n a p ip i th in g th e n th e y k n o w that th e y w ill m a y b e g e t v ery sic k or d ie to o : th a t’s e v il and th e r e ’s fear there.

Rhetorics of fear take several forms. Most prominent among these are rhetorics of social deprivation and dislocation,39 bodily malaise, and spiritual illness resulting from involvement in inappropriate ancestral activity or intrusion to ancestral places that hold people accountable for their actions. They contain deep, “inside” law that cannot be broken and that is restricted for senior male leaders only. This ontological relationship is not unique to Yolngu. Speaking of ancestral sites in Western Arnhem Land, Bill Neidjie, explains: T h a t se c r e t p la c e ... d rea m in g there. W e frigh t. M ig h t b e s o m e th in g there. Y o u m ig h t g e t hurt or y o u m ig h t sp o il so m e th in g there. Y o u m ig h t sp o il a n y b o d y , n o -m a tter w h ere. S a m e a s c y c lo n e i f y o u sp o il it. First o n e m ig h t b e east, N o -m a tte r C rok er, E lc h o or B r is b a n e ...s a m e .40

For Yolngu Christians the fear of spiritually dangerous places may be covered by the blood of salvation that is to be found by believing in Jesus.41 Whereas

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Yolngu understand the ancestral environment as embodying trickster spirits, Yolngu Christians now perceive nature as mediated by good and healing forces, combating fear in the assurance and peace of God. Dangatanga noted: T h e tre e s ta lk to m e, th e w a v e s are sp e a k in g to m e, e v e r y w h e r e I am ta lk in g to G o d and H e is s p e a k in g to m e.

Y o u k n o w a b o u t th o s e c u r s e s w h e n th e

galka,

h arm fu l sp irit

galka

c o m e s ? O n e m an sa id h e w a s frig h te n e d b e c a u se o f a c u r se from th e lig h tn in g . A

had c u r se d h im th r o u g h th e lig h tn in g . 1 to ld h im th e lig h tn in g c a n ’t c u r s e h im b e c a u s e it is G o d w h o s p e a k s in th e th u n d er and th e lig h tn in g .

T h e v o ic e o f G o d is w h a t w e h ear

and a cu r se c a n n o t sta n d a g a in st th e p o w e r o f th e v o ic e o f G o d .

Ministers such as Mawunydjil further stress that Christian worship should be discerned from the Holy Spirit through communion with Jesus in prayer. He is concerned about the nature of spiritual forces that may come into play during ancestral events. He said: W e k n o w in o u r sa c r e d s ite s th ere are g o o d a n d bad th in g s . M a y b e w e h a v e to o p e n th e B ib le and s e e w h a t it s a y s a b o u t bad th in g s. W h en o u r fo r e fa th e r s h ad v is io n s w h o w a s th e sp irit w h o g a v e it? G o o d or bad sp irits ca n ta lk to u s.

N o w w e a ll c la im w h e n w e

h a v e a v is io n it’s G o d . W h en p e o p le sit and s in g at sa c red s ite s w h o are th e y s in g in g to ? W e te ll p e o p le , “ B e q u ie t th is is a sa cred p la c e , y o u h a v e to b e c a r e fu l” . I a sk , w h o are w e r e s p e c tin g o r afraid to o ffe n d ?

Release from fear is a central concern of the Yolngu Church and a continuous discourse within the community that is often addressed in sermons and local stories about the effects of fear from unexplained deaths. For example, Mawunydjil explained how he overcame fear by trusting in Jesus when he had contravened ancestral law by not observing the proper ritual treatment of cycad nut. He said: O n e d a y I w a s e a tin g

warraga ,

c y c a d nut an d I d id n ’t pu t a p ie c e in to th e sa c r e d g r o u n d

b u t 1 d id n ’t g e t a n y b o ils o r so r e s on m y b o d y . I s h o u ld h a v e b e e n v e r y sic k . I b r o k e th e L aw .

S o I w ill b u ild m y ch u rch o n J e su s' fo u n d a tio n and n o t o n m y

luku,

sa c r e d

a n c estra l fo u n d a tio n .

As Mawunydjil reveals, the articulation of fear is a controlling aspect of social behaviour through ancestral rituals but it may be overcome by the reconciling power of Christ. In another context, regarding the now obsolete practices surrounding the treatment of female menstruation, Yalurr commented: miyalk [w o m e n ] to te a c h th e s p e c ia l la w . [T h e y munydjutj, [g reen p lu m ] or ngarrirri mama [fis h

In th e p a st, p e o p le had to g o o u t and g e t w o u ld sa y ], “ Y o u ’re n o t a llo w e d to ea t e g g s ] or a n y th in g o n th e se a .

Y o u ea t tin n e d fo o d - m ea t - n o t fr e sh .

ngayi ngunhi, lukan."

B u t w h e n th e R e v iv a l h a p p e n e d h e r e ,

[th en th eir] sp iritu a l m in d s o p e n e d .

h a v e p e r io d bu t [th e y sa y ]

It’s fo r b id d e n

bala nhama [s e e ] th e y “ Baydhin limurr dhu lukan dhiyaku Djesuwal limurr dhu

w h e n y o u h a v e a p e r io d u n til it’s o v e r .”

M o s t tim e Y o ln g u

[“N e v e r m in d , w e w ill ea t b e c a u s e J e su s a te .” ] M a n y tim e s , I’v e h eard that.

B e c a u s e , b e fo r e , i f y o u ea t

guya

[fish ] or

miyapunu

[tu rtle] w h ile y o u ’re s till h a v in g a

p e r io d , th e p e r so n w h o sp ea r s that turtle w o u ld n ’t g e t a n y th e n e x t tim e .

Sam e w ay, if

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290

marinydjalk [stin g r a y ] marinydjalk w ith a p erio d . M a n y

y o u g o to g e t

it w ill turn around and stin g y o u b e c a u s e s o m e o n e

ate

tim e s it’s h a p p en ed . Y o .

Yalurr relates how, in ancestral practice, the natural environment responds to the respect afforded it by the correct management of potentially polluting substances, just as its mismanagement results in reprimand or fear of attack from evil spirits. The reconciling element is seen as Jesus’ unconditional love that can overcome the fear of spiritual attack that otherwise would cause illness and possible death. In another ritual context, speaking of the law of circumcision and the Ngarra fertility ritual, Yalurr continued: Ngarramirri

[A t th e tim e o f th e N g a rra fertility ritual] a n e w p erso n th r o u g h th e

g e t s a p a in tin g and p a y p e o p le to d o it. (b r ea d ) to p a y o r

B e fo r e , w e u sed to u se

ngula nhd walal dhu gurrupan gara

warraga

Ngarra

c y c a d nut

[or w h a te v e r w e c o u ld g iv e th e m

lik e sp e a r s]. T h e y w ea r a T -sh irt o v e r it all th e tim e. W h en th e y p ain t th e c h e s t y o u can lo o k .

N o w a d a y s p e o p le ta k e p h o to s o f it ev e r y w h e r e .

c ir c u m c is io n to s e e th e p a in tin g , n o w y o u can s e e it.

B e fo r e it w a s fo r b id d e n in

T h e y m u st n o t w a sh th e p a in tin g

o f f u n til it h as w o rn o f f na tu ra lly , o th e r w ise h e ’ll lo s e h is life .

T o d a y that la w still

a p p lie s.

Cycad nut bread is ambiguous food because the nuts are poisonous before leaching, but peace can be restored between people by eating it. Offering food in compensation that is potentially lethal, but has been thoroughly leached of toxins before being pulped and made into a dough, is a sign of trust and friendship and good food permeates the body of feeling with “sensational properties”.42 By contrast, ill-will can be transferred through the wrong actions carried out on poisonous food resulting in social or physical violations of personhood. The ingestion of “bad food” can take the form of any sense-related poison from seeing, smelling, tasting, or touching a restricted sacred object. On another occasion, Gelung recounted how Djiniyini had a dream about bad feeling between groups that required restorative moral action mediated by cycad nut bread: H e to ld th e w o m e n in a dream to g o o u t and c o lle c t (r ed -fru ited D h o ltji.43

k u rra jo n g s)

and

p repare th em

T h e e n e m y c a m e in th e form o f

warraga

b e c a u se th e

warruyu,

(c y c a d n u t) an d

en em y

(b ats).

w as

balkpalk

c o m in g

from

L o ts and lo ts o f b ats

r e p r e se n tin g a ll Y irritja p e o p le and th e y sat o n a tree at D h a lin y b u y .44 T h e o n e on th e to p , h o w e v e r , w a s

madakarritj

(a n g r y ). T h is rep resen ted D h o ltji.

T h e bat th en fle w to

G a liw in ’ku and sat o u ts id e W a n y m u li’s h o u s e on th e te le p h o n e b o x . It to o k th e form o f J e z e b e l w ith b ra c e le ts and lo n g hair, lik e a lo o s e w o m a n .

Gelung interpreted Djiniyini’s dream as God asking whether they were all prepared to meet Him, given that there had been arguing between different Yirritja and Dhuwa groups. The groups in conflict were the two Yirritja cycad groups (Warramirri and Wangurri) and the Dhuwa balkpalk red-fruited kurrajong, or peanut-tree group (Djambarrpuyngu).45 The image of conflict between the cycadnut and peanut-tree groups symbolized the preparation it would take for them to be

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“made ready” - leached of their bad feeling towards one another before they would be like Jesus. The bats flying from one group’s homeland to another represented the strings of bad feeling, poor relations, and lack of unity that characterized them at the time, because bats and owls are messengers of bad tidings. Dreams such as these are central to the mediation of Christian action and experience. For example, a senior woman, Gudaltji, related a prophetic vision she had prior to the death of her close friend and member of the women’s Gopuru singing group, Tracey. She related how Tracey had been out hunting with some relatives but she had suddenly fainted, and, after being taken to hospital, died on a Sunday night. The news of the death did not reach the community until Tuesday but Gudaltji had a vision before the community announcement. She said: O n M o n d a y n ig h t I w a s at D h a m b a la s le e p in g and I had a d ream that I w a s w a lk in g b y a

gulun

(fr e sh w a te r la k e) that G o d had crea ted , w ith lo ts o f

had m a d e and b ea u tifu l c le a r w ater. G ard en o f E d en .

wakwak (w a te r lilie s )

that G o d

T h ere w e r e lo ts o f a n im a ls th e re to o , j u s t lik e a

A s I w a lk e d to th e o th e r s id e o f th e lak e th e re w a s a tree an d

u n d ern ea th th ere w e r e th e G o p u ru g ir ls, “th e s in g in g a n g e ls ” : Y ik a n iw u y , W u th a n g i, T r a cey , D ja k a lu lu , and M argaret. g iv e n th em .

T h e y w e r e sin g in g all th e n e w s o n g s that G o d had

T h en th e y g o t up and c a m e b a ck a rou n d th e la k e an d sa t w ith all th e

Y o ln g u w o m e n and ta u g h t th e m th e n e w s o n g s .

T h e w o m e n started to s in g in to n g u e s .

T h e y w e r e all d r e sse d in d iffe r e n t c o lo u r s r e fle c tin g th eir d iffe r e n t g r o u p s and p r a isin g in th eir o w n to n g u e s .

T h e n , in th e dream , I w o k e up and I w a s b a ck in m y r o o m at

D h a m b a la but there w a s a lig h t o n th e d o o r, lik e a c a n d le , and I sa w T r a c e y th ere.

At

th e sa m e tim e, a c o o l w in d , a rea lly b ea u tifu l w in d , b le w th r o u g h th e ro o m an d I k n e w [that T r a c e y had d ie d ]. T h e n e x t m o rn in g , I g o t up to m a k e D h a ln g a n d a h is te a at 6

a m

and w a s d r iv in g b a ck in to to w n w h e n W u th a n g i sa id to m e , “ L o o k at all th o s e p e o p le sittin g at G undjirrirr’s h o u s e , th e r e ’s a h ea rin g g o in g o n .”46 I started to cry b e c a u s e o f m y d ream th e n ig h t b e fo r e . I a lrea d y

“marngi” (k n e w

that sh e had d ie d ).

In this vision, the natural environment is the Edenic antithesis of worldly pain and therefore a cathartic conduit for ordering a sense of loss, grieving and detachment from a loved one. Gudaltji’s vision is centred around the encouragement of singing, praising, and praying - just as funeral rituals are centred around singing and dancing - when she senses Tracey’s presence as a cool wind blowing through the room. The light on the door was a visible appearance of Tracey “born” as spirit like the light of a candle.47 In her dream, both ancestral and Christian strings are intertwined as divinely human relational cords. The vision is focused inwards to the sanctification of the sounding, moving corporeality of the self as centred in Christ and as spiritually interacting with a feelingful understanding of the ancestral landscape.48 The varieties of Yolngu religious interpretations suggest a spectrum of approaches to faith, raising questions about the extent to which Yolngu Christianity might be considered theocentric and Christocentric. As MacDonald notes, “The liberal churches in Arnhem Land make a stronger case for continuity between Aboriginal traditions and Christianity”,49 a continuity that has been more conceitedly worked through Djiniyini’s Aboriginal theology:

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I f I am to h a v e m y true id e n tity b e fo r e G o d , y o u c a n n o t lo c k m e in to y o u r w a y s .

Y ou

m u st g iv e m e fr e e d o m to b e m e ...H e h a s g iv e n u s th e v is io n for th e A b o r ig in a l C h u rch to th in k and t h e o lo g is e th e G o sp e l in th e la n g u a g e an d th e cu ltu re o f th e p e o p le .

The Reformation gave Western culture the freedom to explore the dialogue between Gospel and culture in many directions. The Western Church has not, in turn, given that same freedom to Aboriginal people to explore that dialogue through their own culture. We now want to, and must explore that dialogue.50 The effects of this merger have tended either towards theocentric analogies between Old Testament practices and the ancestral law; or towards a more Christocentric faith, often centred on overcoming the fear of spiritual power in ancestral places. However, these positions are ontologically joined by a continuity of “potent substances and energies of the body”.51 Consequently, the dilemma perceived by Christian leaders (who are also senior elders) is the need to discern how to live for Christ while still negotiating cultural issues. Some tend more to a Christocentric perspective that holds to the omnipotent power of Jesus in overcoming fear. However, as has been shown, certain places are known to be dangerous and the “inside” law of the land is still restricted for senior male elders. For Christian leaders, their engagement with ancestral duties is brought to the fore as they have obligations to particular clans to handle rrangga (sacred objects) and make decisions about engagements with place based upon the law. Conclusion By unravelling these entwined strings of social, political, and religious knowing, it has been argued that Yolngu practise a lived faith that is historically and politically situated and experientially dynamic due to the convergence of separate spheres of meaning peculiar to Galiwin’ku. In these contentious and shifting spaces of negotiated belief, some Yolngu are recreating their own faith-centred emplacement in landscape, one that transcends the original context of fear through the presence of divine goodness in the power of Jesus. Alongside belief in Jesus’ love and protection is a concern for ensuring moral accountability between relatives by fulfilling ritual obligations of the ancestral law. These two strands of ontological being have resulted in the Galiwin’ku Church working to shed light through Scripture on what they see as an increasing world of fear and doubt as they deal with ever faster rates of technological, political, and social change. Within this arena of uncertainty, Christian doctrine remoulds the ontological ground of ancestral being and, for Christian Yolngu, it is faith in Jesus’ love that binds kin together in cords of continuous ancestral becoming.

* I am indebted to many Yolngu and balanda (non-Yolngu) who have shared their understandings so generously. In particular: Gudaltji Maratja and Gapany; Djiniyini and Gelung; Dangatanga and Bandil; Mawunydjil and Nyimindja; Colin and Guthadjaka; the Gopuru miyalk; Yurranydjil and Djawut; Wanymuli;

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Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity

Ngandama; George (dec.) and Guymun and Mandjikay Praise; Muwarra; Manydjarri; Johnny; Margaret Miller; and all the Datiwuy families. I am especially grateful to Peggy Brock for the opportunity to present this paper at the symposium, Religious Change and Indigenous People: Australia in an International Context, held at Edith Cowan University, February 2002. I thank the symposium participants, as well as Greg Anderson, John Rudder and two anonymous reviewers for their most helpful comments on this chapter.

Notes 1

T h is p r o p h e c y w a s g iv e n b y D a le Garrett at a c o n v e n tio n to c e le b r a te th e tw e n ty -fifth a n n iv ersa r y o f D a v id and D a le G arrett’s m u s ic m in istr y ,

Scripture in Song.

2

G a liw in ’ku w a s fo rm erly k n o w n as E lc h o Islan d .

It lie s 6 km o f f th e n o r th -e a st A r n h e m

3

T h e p r o p h e c y w a s taken up b y th e w o m e n ’s m u s ic m in istr y g r o u p o n G a liw in ’ku,

4

J. H arris,

L and c o a s t, and is a p p r o x im a te ly 5 5 km x 3 5 km . G op u ru , w h o referred to th e m s e lv e s a s “th e sin g in g a n g e ls ” from th e n o n .

Hope 5

One Blood: 2 0 0 Years Of Aboriginal Encounter With Christianity: A Story O f

(S u th erla n d : A lb a tr o ss B o o k s , 1 9 9 0 ), 8 0 1 .

R. B o s , “ J e su s and th e D rea m in g : R e lig io n and S o c ia l C h a n g e in A r n h e m L an d ” (P h D d iss .. U n iv e r s ity o f Q u e e n sla n d , 1 9 8 8 ).

One Blood,

803.

6

H arris,

7

Ib id ., 8 0 2 .

8

A lth o u g h m issio n a r ie s on G a liw in ’ku had d e p lo r e d th e p r o sp e c t o f m in in g , th e N a p th a P etro leu m C o m p a n y had e n g a g e d in sh a le m in in g o p e r a tio n s o n th e isla n d m u c h ea r lie r

9

in 1 9 2 3 ; H arris, One Blood, 8 0 2 . W e lls, Reward and Punishment

E.

in Arnhem Land 1962—63

(C anberra: A u str a lia n

In stitu te o f A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s 1 9 8 2 ), 4 9 . 10 B. N e id j i q,

Story About Feeling, (B r o o m e : M a g a b a la B o o k s , 1 9 8 9 ), 1 4 8 , 155. The Adjustment Movement in Arnhem Land, (P aris: C a h ie r s d e

11 R .M . B e m d t,

l ’H o m m e ,

1 9 6 2 ), 8 4 . 12 K een h a s a rg u ed that: th e M em o ria l p r o v id e d “ u n ity ” b e tw e e n m en and w o m e n a s w e ll as b e tw e e n g ro u p s; it w a s “ a g ift to th e su p e r in te n d e n t H arold S h e p h e r d so n ” ; it s e a le d th e a u th o rity o f th e M em o ria l lea d ers to p r e sid e o v e r th e ru n n in g o f th e isla n d ; and it w a s “ p a y m e n t” in return for E u ro p ea n k n o w le d g e . S e e I. K e e n , 13

Aboriginal Religion (O x fo r d , C la ren d o n B ern dt, Adjustment Movement, 6 8 .

14 W h eth e r

referrin g to

faith

or ch u rch

is s u e s ,

e d u c a tio n a l

m a n a g e m e n t, Y o ln g u o fte n sp e a k o f lo o k in g “tw o w a y s ” to cu lture.

Knowledge and Secrecy in an

P ress, 1 9 9 4 ), 2 7 6 , 2 7 8 . c o n te x ts

balanda

or

lo c a l g r o u p

cu ltu r e an d Y o ln g u

T o affirm th is w a y o f th in k in g th e f o llo w in g w o r d s w e r e in sc r ib e d o n th e fe n c e

su rr o u n d in g th e m em o ria l: T h is is the la w o f p e a c e , h e lp fu l to us all. N o w w e w ill w o r sh ip to H ea v en to G od . N o w w e h a v e c h a n g e d ou r m in d s and w o r sh ip G o d . B ern dt.

Adjustment Movement,

1 47.

S e e a lso H. M o rp h y, “ ‘N o w y o u u n d e r sta n d ’ : A n

a n a ly sis o f th e w a y Y o ln g u h a v e u sed sa cred k n o w le d g e to retain th e ir a u to n o m y ” , in

Aborigines, Land and Land Rights,

e d ite d by N . P e ter so n and M . L a n g to n (C an berra:

A u stra lia n In stitu te o f A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s , 1 9 8 3 ): 1 1 0 - 1 3 3 , 112.

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

294

15 B o s , “J e su s and th e D r e a m in g ” , 8 8 - 9 9 . 16 K e e n ,

Knowledge and Secrecy,

285.

17 B o s , “J e su s and th e D r e a m in g ” , 2 8 5 , 2 8 8 . 18 R e v . D r D jin iy in i G on d arra w a s train ed o n G a liw in ’ku by R ev . H arold S h e p h e r d so n and a p p o in te d to v a r io u s p o s itio n s as m o d e ra to r o f the N T S y n o d o f th e U n itin g C h u rch , A b o r ig in a l

rep r e se n ta tiv e

to

th e

A u stra lia n

C hurch

C on gress

and

A b o r ig in a l

r e p r e se n ta tiv e fo r the W o rld C o u n c il o f C h u rch es. 19 T h e an cestra l la w is th e b lu ep rin t for m oral a ctio n and a c c o u n ta b ility in Y o ln g u d a ily life .

It is b a sed o n th e b eh a v io u ra l in te g rity and spiritual e m b o d im e n t o f th e first

a n c e s to r s , w h o left th e im prin ts o f h um an e s s e n c e in th e land and s e a in th e form o f v a r io u s a n cestra l b e in g s. H. M c D o n a ld , Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town (M e lb o u r n e : M e lb o u r n e U n iv e r s ity P ress, 2 0 0 1 ) , 8. R. M ile s , Racism and Migrant Labour (L o n d o n : R o u tle d g e and K eg a n P au l, 1 9 8 2 ), 6 5 .

20 S e e 21

22 T h e sta te o f b e in g “ in s id e ” or “o u ts id e ” w ith regard to k n o w le d g e o f th e an cestra l la w is r e la tiv e to c o n te x t and is d e r iv e d from the co n tin u u m o f r estr ic tio n s p e r ta in in g to ritual

23

k n o w le d g e and a u th o rity . S e e H. M o rp h y , Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge (C h ic a g o : U n iv e r sity o f C h ic a g o P ress, 1 9 9 1 ). A . M c M ille n , An Intruder's Guide to East Arnhem Land (S y d n e y : D u ffy and S n e llg r o v e , 2 0 0 1 ), 29.

24 S e e

I. M c In to sh , “ A n th r o p o lo g y , S e l f D e term in a tio n and A b o r ig in a l B e li e f in th e

C h ristia n G o d ”,

Oceania

6 7 (1 9 9 7 ): 2 7 3 - 2 8 9 ; I. M cIn to sh , “A lla h an d th e S p irit o f th e

D ea d : th e H id d en L e g a c y o f P r e c o lo n ia l In d o n e sia n /A b o r ig in a l C o n ta ct in N o r th -e a s t A rnhem

L a n d ”,

Australian Folklore

A u str a lia ’s A b o r ig in e s? A

Religious History 2 0

11 ( 1 9 9 6 ):

1 3 1 -1 3 8 ;

I. M c In to sh , “ Islam and

P e r sp e c tiv e from N o r th -e a st A rn h em

L an d ” ,

Journal of

(1 9 9 6 ): 5 3 - 7 7 .

25 S e e M c I n to s h , “ A n th r o p o lo g y ” . 26 John R u d d er, p ers. c o m m . (J u ly 2 0 0 0 ) . 27 H y m n s had p r e v io u s ly b een ta u g h t in E n g lish at Y irrkala, h a v in g b een tran slated in to G u a p a p u y n g u b y B e u la h L o w e in 1 9 5 5 . 28 S u c c e s s iv e s c h o o l c h o ir s h a v e c o n tin u e d to p erform c o m p e titiv e ly in D a rw in s in c e th eir first m u sic a l aw a rd s, in c lu d in g th e c a te g o r y o f sacred s o n g in

1969.

In

1991, I

a c c o m p a n ie d c h ild ren o f th e G o p u ru w o m e n ’s m in istr y g rou p w h o first c o m p e te d in D a rw in for th e E is te d d fo d and th e y , in turn, w o n b oth c a te g o r ie s o f sac red s o n g . It c o u ld b e a rg u ed that th e ea rly in cu ltu ra tio n o f th e se c h ild ren to sacred s o n g p artia lly a c c o u n ts for th e stren g th o f m u sic a l lea d ersh ip in co n tem p o ra r y G a liw in ’ku C h ristian w o r sh ip . 29 J.

W o o lm in g to n ,

A b o r ig in e s ” ,

“T h e

C iv iliz a tio n /C h r is tia n iz a tio n

Aboriginal History

d eb a te

and

th e

A u stra lia n

10 ( 1 9 8 6 ): 9 0 - 9 8 .

30 R. B o s , “ C h ristia n ritual and th e Y o ln g u d o m a in ” ,

Nungalinya Occasional Bulletin,

13

A u g u st 1 9 8 1 , 4. 31 S e e

D j.

G ondarra,

Series of Reflections of Aboriginal Theology

(D a rw in :

B e th e l

P r esb y tery N o rth ern S y n o d o f th e U n itin g C h u rch in A u stralia, 1 9 8 6 ), 9. K o lig a ls o n o te s

The Silent The Effects of Modernization on Australian Aboriginal Religion

that up to 2 0 0 0 p e o p le a tten d ed th e R e v iv a l at d ifferen t tim e s, E . K o lig ,

Revolution:

(P h ila d e lp h ia : In stitu te for th e S tu d y o f H u m a n Issu e s, 1 9 8 1 ). 32 Item s are sp e c ia l c o m p o s itio n s su n g or d a n c e d b y fa m ily g r o u p s for th e c o n g r e g a tio n . 33 M c D o n a ld ,

Blood, Bones and Spirit,

61.

34 Ib id ., 6 2 . 35 T h e s e j o u r n e y s h a v e n o t b e e n w ith o u t th e ir c o n te n tio n s and so m e in d iv id u a ls h a v e c h o s e n to step a sid e from certa in le v e ls o f in v o lv e m e n t w ith th eir a n cestral ro o ts o w in g to a p p r e h e n sio n s a b o u t the so r ts o f sp iritu a l a c tiv ity th e y are e n g a g in g in.

S e e F.

Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity M agow an,

“The

J oy

o f M o u rn in g :

R e sa c r a liz in g

C h ristia n ity and A b o r ig in a l T h e o lo g y ”,

‘the

295

S a c r e d ’ M u sic

Anthropological Forum

o f Y o ln g u

9 ( 1 9 9 9 ):

1 1 - 3 6 ; F.

M a g o w a n , “ S o n g s o f the S p irit or Spirit S o n g s? : T e n s io n and c o n flu e n c e in Y o ln g u m u s ic sy n c r e tis m ” ,

Manchester Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 5

(M a n c h e ste r :

D ep a rtm en t o f S o c ia l A n th r o p o lo g y , U n iv e r sity o f M a n ch ester , 1 9 9 6 ), 1 - 2 2 . 36 R itual o b je c ts su ch as th e M o r n in g Star h a v e fea th er strin gs a ttach ed a lo n g th eir len g th “ rep r e se n tin g the jo u r n e y o f th e M o r n in g Star to ea c h c la n ’s territory and th e fea th er ed

Aboriginal Art, Yolngu Cosmology: An Unchanging Cosmos Incorporating a Rapidly Changing World? P h D T h e s is, A N U , C anberra, 1 9 9 3 . M c D o n a ld , Blood, Bones and Spirit, 2 2 .

ta sse l at the en d sta n d s for ea ch M o r n in g Star p la c e in turn” . M o rp h y , 2 3 0 : J. R udder,

37

38 R udder, 6 0 . 39 S a n so m d is c u s s e s the c o n c e p ts o f “risk ” and “ d a n g er” arou n d th e fr in g e s o f D a r w in . S a n so m ,

The Camp at Wallaby Cross: Aboriginal Fringe Dwellers in Darwin

B.

(C anberra:

A u stra lia n In stitu te o f A b o r ig in a l S tu d ie s, 1 9 8 0 ), 178. 40 N e id jie ,

Story About Feeling,

8 0 -8 1 .

41 In ritual, Y o ln g u p a in t th eir b o d ie s fo r d a n c in g as sp iritu al p r o te c tio n a g a in st p o te n tia lly h arm ful sp iritu al in flu e n c e s .

T h e m e ta p h y sic a l c o v e r in g o f th e “ b lo o d ” o f th e lam b is

a ls o sp o k e n o f a s sp iritu al p r o tectio n . T h e a ssista n t m in iste r o n G a liw in ’ku to ld m e that he w o u ld g reet “ p o is o n ” rela tio n s in the n a m e o f the L ord b e c a u se h e w a s c o v e r e d b y th e b lo o d o f J esus. 42 C . P e a c o c k e ,

Sense and Content: Experience, Thought, and their Relations

(O x fo rd :

C la ren d o n P ress, 1 9 8 3 ), 8. 43 D h o ltji is W arram iri co u n tr y in th e W e s se l Islan d s. 44 D h a lin y b u y is W angurri co u n tr y in A rn h em B ay. 45 T h e s e g r o u p s stand in th e c lo s e m o th e r -c h ild rela tio n sh ip to o n e an oth er. 46 T h e h ea rin g c e r e m o n y o c c u r s im m e d ia te ly f o llo w in g a p e r s o n ’s d eath , to te ll th e c o m m u n ity c o lle c t iv e ly in s o n g that so m e o n e h a s d ied . 47 Z o r c n o te s that th e term

malng'thun

m ea n s “to b e b o m ” and (m o r e c o m m o n ly ) “to

a p p ear” , “ c o m e o u t” , “c o m e to lig h t” , “ h a p p en ” and “turn u p ” . D . Z o r c,

Dictionary (D a rw in :

Yolngu-Matha

S c h o o l o f A u stra lin L in g u istic s, 1 9 8 6 ), 169.

48 A n o th e r kind o f n a tu ra liza tio n h as b een id e n tifie d at R o p er R iv e r w h e r e lo c a l c o n c e p ts su c h a s “ gud

binji”,

(a fu ll sto m a ch or a se n s e o f se lf-w o r th ), sp e a k to th e d iv in e

ch a r a c te r istic s o f G o d , w h o is a lso sa id to h a v e

gud binji

in th e K riol B ib le . B . S a n so m ,

“ A F rig h ten ed H u n tin g G round: E p ic E m o tio n s and L a n d h o ld in g in the W ester n R e a c h e s

Oceania 7 2 (2 0 0 2 ): Blood, Bones and Spirit, 186. S e e G ondarra, Series of Reflections, 6, 7. M c D o n a ld , Blood, Bones and Spirit, 16. o f A u str a lia ’s T o p E n d ” ,

49 M c D o n a ld , 50 51

1 5 6 -1 9 4 .

18

Islam and Australia’s Aborigines lan McIntosh

In 1996, a group of Aboriginal dancers from Elcho Island in north-east Arnhem Land travelled to Amasser (Jung Pending), in Indonesia, to perform a ritual associated with the ‘Dreaming’ creation figure, Walitha’walitha, also known as Allah. Aborigines are said to share this ceremony, known as the Wurramu, with the people of Macassar, but the Aboriginal version, a mortuary ritual, has never before been performed outside of Australia. The performance has been designed to reunite these old acquaintances, but the ceremony itself, in this context, embodies a paradox. According to senior Aboriginal leaders, the songs and dances are sacred. On an ‘outside’ level1 they are about the new world introduced to Aborigines in pre-colonial times as a result of this first contact experience, but on an ‘inside’ level, they focus on the Aboriginal deaths that occurred as a consequence of contact with these fishing peoples from the north of Australia. The ‘inside’ meaning of the ritual relates to the passage of the soul of the deceased to a heavenly paradise above, the abode of Allah. Australia’s first international industry was the collection and processing of trepang for sale to Chinese entrepreneurs.2 It was carried out by fishermen from Macassar, from what is now eastern Indonesia, sometimes in cooperation with Australia’s Aborigines. The industry lasted from the early 1700s to 1907 and activities were concentrated along the Arnhem Land coast of what is now Australia’s Northern Territory (see Map 3). Despite a significant interest across a range of disciplines in the annual voyages of ‘Macassan’3 trepangers, the question of Aboriginal - ‘Macassan’ relations and the consequent changes brought about in Aboriginal society and cosmology as a result of these first contacts remains largely unexamined.4 In the field of social anthropology, the detailed reports of the Bemdts5 have not been seriously debated, and much of the data they collected in the 1940s remains unpublished. Thus a statement such as that of Worsley that the important religious ceremonies of north­ east Arnhem Land were ‘all shot through with Macassarese influences’6 remains largely unexplained. Apart from linguistic work,7 recent detailed descriptions of Yolngu (north-east Arnhem Land Aboriginal) cosmology8 and systems of knowledge9 omit or play From Ian McIntosh, ‘Islam and Australia’s Aborigines: A Perspective from SouthEast Arnhem Land’, Journal o f Religious History, 20 (1)1997, pp. 53-77. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

298

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

down the significance of subjects which are an obvious legacy of the ‘Macassan’ presence. Similarly, historical and archaeological studies have focused on what might be termed ‘hard’ evidence.10 Aboriginal perspectives, couched as they are in myth, have received little attention. In this chapter I look at one aspect of this diverse legacy - Islamic references in Yolngu mythology and ritual. The aim is twofold. First, it is to investigate the ways in which aspects of Islam have been creatively adapted by Aborigines. Second, it is to show how a ritual associated with introduced ‘law’ is relevant in terms of reactivating what is perceived to be a historical partnership between peoples long separated by time and circumstance. The form of the discussion is as follows. I review an account of Walitha’walitha and the Wurramu ritual as related to me by David Burrumarra, MBE, the immediate past leader of the Warramiri clan at Elcho Island.I11 He spoke to me as a Warramiri elder, and acknowledged that even within his own clan, there was much diversity of belief in this area. He did not speak for the Yolngu as a whole. As far back as 1967, Burrumarra was one of the few people in north-east Arnhem Land with detailed knowledge of ‘Macassan’ contacts and the mythology surrounding their exploits in northern Australia.12 Locally referred to as a master politician and ‘the man who knows everything’, in his later years Burrumarra was seen as a ‘policy maker’ in terms of what was to be known of the Yolngu past. He had been quoted by almost all major anthropologists and historians working in north-east Arnhem Land over the past forty years. Bemdt, in particular, remarked on his extraordinary knowledge of contemporary and traditional matters.13

I Yolngu society is divided into two patrilineal halves or moieties, the dhuwa and the yirritja. Each person is bom into a clan group within one of these. According to Warner,14 the dhuwa moiety is considered to be conservative in relation to the more outwardly oriented yirritja moiety, which is associated with innovations. Burrumarra’s Warramiri clan is yirritja and in his view it was members of his group who were at the forefront in dealings with outsiders in the ‘Macassan’ era. This is reflected in a cosmology rich in myths and legends relating to the exploits of visitors to the north-east Arnhem Land coast. Of particular relevance was Burrumarra’s view on the meaning o f ‘Macassans’, as seen through such myths. Burrumarra understood the ‘Macassans’ to be under the direction of an Arnhem Land based creational being, Birrinydji, who was in the image of the bunggawa or all-powerful boat captain. This being existed in the rich minerals of the ground, from which both Aborigines and the ‘Macassans’ drew their wealth. In a ‘Dreaming’ image of this ‘past’, Aborigines once fashioned iron tools from the red laterite which is so common on north-east Amhem Land shores,15 made pottery, grew rice,16 and constructed and sailed in ships plying the waters to the north and west of Amhem Land. Aborigines and outsiders lived in partnership, following the laws of Birrinydji. Then, in an almost archetypal ‘cargo

Islam and Australia's Aborigines

299

cult’ scenario of loss, Aborigines are said to have turned their backs on this law, explaining why only ‘Macassans’ and now Europeans enjoy the wealth that was once theirs.17 This ‘fall’ was seen to have been based on an actual historical event. As Burrumarra said, the Move’ was lost between Aborigines and the Balanda18 at the ‘beginning of time’. Infighting and also violence towards ‘whites’ nearly spelt the end for a number of Arnhem Land Aboriginal clans. At this point, Walitha’walitha (Allah) descended from the heavens to re-establish order (Figure 18.1). This legacy is reflected in performances of the Wurramu ritual which is to be taken to Macassar for the first time in 1996. In Arnhem Land, this ceremony is performed regularly, particularly during funerals, and reference has been made to it in the anthropological literature as far back as the 1930s.19 Yet to date there has been no attempt to analyse its significance, and published details are obscure. The ritual sequence is referred to as the Wurramu, ‘Collection’, ‘Crook’ or ‘Stealing’ Man cycle,20 and all that is known is that it exhibits external influences, was possibly copied from ‘Macassans’, and is associated with spirit possession and death.

Figure 18.1 Walitha’walitha. Reproduced courtesy of Timothy Buthimang.

300

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Today, as I detail later, many Elcho Islanders look back on the ‘Macassan’ era with great fondness, but the Wurramu ceremony, which is associated with that period, tells a completely different story. Now, while agreeing with the assertion that contact mythology needs to be understood in terms of the ethnographic present of practitioners, I contend that Burrumarra’s views on Walitha’walitha and of the Wurramu ritual allow for speculation on the nature of contacts between Aborigines and ‘Macassans’ in the trepanging era. According to Burrumarra, the performance of the Wurramu ceremony allowed Aborigines to see themselves as being part of a network of peoples united by a single law (i.e., that of Walitha’walitha), but simultaneously, it was also a conceptual weapon in struggles against domination by outsiders. Burrumarra’s account of the ‘Macassan’ past, as seen through the Allah narrative, dwelt on the lack of equality between Aborigines and outsiders, particularly in terms of material wealth. The Wurramu ritual, he said, dwelt on the anti-social consequences of the presence of outsiders on Aboriginal land. In dealings with both ‘Macassans’ and now European Australians, the desire of Aborigines has always been to regain what they had lost by not following Birrinydjfs law. Such an ambition is implicit in performances of the Wurramu ceremony, Burrumarra said. So we have a situation in which a particular ritual, once the vehicle for transmission of sacred knowledge about the place of Aborigines in a world dominated by ‘Macassans’, is now being used to facilitate a reunion with nonAborigines in an environment in which the power imbalance has been overturned. In order to explore this view, I will first give an overview of what has been written on the subject of Islam in eastern Indonesia and northern Australia and then give a detailed account of Burrumarra’s views on the Allah figure and its place in terms of Aboriginal understandings on the nature of the ‘Macassan’ past. Following this, I look at reports of the Wurramu ritual from the literature, and compare these with contemporary accounts of its significance. In the conclusion, Burrumarra’s historical and spiritual perspective is contrasted with the almost contradictory way this ritual is being put forward as a public show of inter-cultural unity. I show how readily Aborigines are able to manipulate sacred ‘truths’ about the past in order to accommodate the new. II In Indonesia, the spread of Islam followed the seafaring routes taken by Moslem travellers from Arabia, Persia and India. As Tjandrasasmita notes,21 while their main objective was trade, their next was religious conversion. They would acquire power in an area, recruit religious preachers from among local populations, build mosques, and encourage the immigration of other Muslims.22 Though Islam had been in the East Indies since perhaps as early as the seventh century, it only expanded rapidly in the sixteenth century. As Schrieke23 says, ‘It is...impossible to understand [this rapid expansion]...unless one takes into account the antagonism between the Moslem traders and the Portuguese.’ Not only was Islam a means of providing a united front against the colonizers; the new religion

Islam and Australia's Aborigines

301

sought to embrace converts into the faith by synthesizing the Islamic creed with existing beliefs. There was no compulsion to abandon older beliefs.24 From as early as 1511, wealthy Moslem traders were being expelled from Portuguese-held territories, and were forced to settle in other centres of the faith such as Aceh, Johor, Banten, Temate, and Macassar, all of which became great religious centres and trading ports.25 Reid26 says the rise of Macassar, in particular, was a phenomenon unequalled in Indonesian history. From uncertain origins around 1500, in a little over one hundred years the kingdom had risen to a position of political and economic dominance. Andaya27 says that the adoption of Islam by Gowa (Macassar) in 1603-5 was instrumental in this. By 1700, according to Gervaise,28 very little of the original ‘Macassan’ origin beliefs were known or followed. Islam had become the religion of the people. As Swain says, v ery little is p u b lis h e d o n p r e -Isla m ic b e lie fs . A c c o r d in g to an e y e w it n e s s a c c o u n t...th e M a c a s sa n s , w h o had th en b e lo n g e d to an Isla m ic ‘K in g d o m ’ fo r 1 2 0 y e a r s, h ad ‘d e fa c e d all th e fo o ts te p s o f th e a n c ie n t r e lig io n , for fear th e p e o p le sh o u ld a g a in return to id o la tr y ’.

T h e au th o r c o u ld learn little o f th e o ld c e r e m o n ie s an d b e lie f s s a v e v a g u e

n o tio n s o f th e c o m p le m e n ta r y d u a lity o f h e a v e n a n d earth g iv in g r ise to lif e .29

Gowa leaders saw it as their religious duty to bring the new religion to their neighbours,30 by conquest if need be, leading to the subjugation of all southern Sulawesi and the islands east of Lombok, as far as the Aru and Kei.31 It is also possible that such missions extended as far as north-east Arnhem Land but there is no evidence for pre-1700 Islamic settlements. One needs to treat with caution the view of Dalrymple in the 1760s, for example, that Aborigines of New Holland (Australia) were ‘Mohammedans’.32 This may merely be a reference to the fact that Aborigines in some areas were circumcized, Macknight suggests. The earliest records of the activities of Islamic peoples on the Australian coast are in the trepanging era. Bemdt and Bemdt for instance say that imams accompanied the praus to Australia,33 and they record an Aboriginal informant saying that when th e m a st o f a prau w a s er e c te d , as it p repared to se t o u t o n th e J o u rn ey to a n o th e r se ttle m e n t or to return to th e C e le b e s [S u la w e s i], a p rayer-m an w o u ld c lim b th e m a st and c h a n t ( djelauwa ). O r at su n se t, the p rayer-m an w o u ld e m e r g e from h is h u t an d b o w to w a r d s th e w e s t, re p e a tin g th e n a m e o f A lla h . c a lle d a ‘sic k m a n ’,

buwagerul,

w a s k n o w n as

T h is p rayer-m an , w h o m th e A b o r ig in e s

Deingaru

or s o m e tim e s a s

Baleidjaka.

H e w o u ld m o v e h is h ea d from sid e to sid e; th e n , h o ld in g it w ith o n e h an d , h e w o u ld s e iz e w ith th e o th e r the p o st o f h is hut, an d lo o k to w a r d s th e su n se t, sa y in g : ‘a m a !’ T h en

he

w o u ld

bow

h is

h ea d

to

th e

g ro u n d ,

c a llin g

out

‘w a la ta ’w a la ta !’

[ Walitha ’walitha\ .34

The earliest reference to Aboriginal ceremonies relating to ‘Allah’, as opposed to Walilhawalitha, is from Warner, who completed fieldwork at Milingimbi and Elcho Island in the 1920s.35 This is a reference to a mortuary ceremony, part of the Wurramu song cycle, which Warner says was performed when the mast of a ‘Macassan’ boat had broken or a man was about to die. He writes:

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

302

[D u r in g th e fu n e r a l]...tw o or m o re m en p ic k up th e d ead b o d y and m o v e it up and d o w n as th o u g h th e y w e r e liftin g a m ast. T h e ch o r u s sin g s ‘O h -a -h a -la !’ w h ile th e m ast is laid d o w n . W h en it is p ic k e d up a g a in th e y sin g ’O -o -o -o -o -a -h a -la ! A - h a -la ! ! A -h a -I a !!36 T w o m en stan d o v e r th e [dea d] b o d y , ea ch w ith o n e han d o v e r h is fa c e and o n e h and thrust o u t stra ig h t o v e r ‘th e m a st’. T h e first tw o m en c o n tin u e to m o v e th e ‘m a st’ up and d o ...tw o o th e r m en d a n c e a s th o u g h th e y w e r e p u llin g on r o p es that raise th e m ast. T w o m en in u n iso n sa y , ‘S i-li-la -m o -h a -m o h a - m o - s il- li- li,’ ‘S i-li-n a i-y u m a -u -la i,’ (th e y are a sk in g fo r s o m e th in g in th e c lo u d s or m a y b e it is in th e m oon) ‘R a -b in -a -Ia la -h a -m a -h a -m a ,’ (th e y are a sk in g fo r so m e th in g from that m an g o d w h o liv e s in th e m o o n ) ‘Ser-ri m a -k a s -s i’ ‘B e -la b e - la ,’ ‘D a u n g .’37

The only other reference to Islam is in relation to Sama-Bajau fishermen who accompanied ‘Macassan’ trepangers on their voyages to Australia.38 Burrumarra referred to them as ‘whale hunters’ or ‘whale killers’ and said: ‘Wurramala, Gelurru, Dhurritjini and BapayilP9...are followers of Walitha ,walitha...\n the teeming sea life they see a mirror reflection of [him]. Allah is the giver of bread to the people. The seafood is their bread. They believe in him.’ So in the literature we have observations of ‘Macassans’ performing Islamic rites, knowledge that people other than ‘Macassans’ also followed Walitha’walitha, and Aboriginal ceremonies relating to Allah, but how they all come together is unclear. Yet even with such a small amount of data, one is able to speculate on similarities between the Wurramu ritual and recorded beliefs and practices associated with situations where indigenous peoples have sought to come to terms with the power and material wealth of peoples who had come to dominate them. In Aboriginal Australia, the All-Father beliefs of New South Wales and Victoria,40 ‘Captain Cook’ narratives of northern Australia,41 and also the Mulunga and Djinimin-Jesus cults of central and western Australia,42 are perhaps the best known of this genre. Such beliefs, Kolig says, are part of a search by Aborigines for a new power stratagem necessary to cope with the breakdown in the status quo that accompanied contact with Europeans.43 In all cases, the perceived source of power of the ‘Other’44 has become embedded in Aboriginal traditions as a means of affirming identity and rights in relation to the newcomers.45 But just as the nature of relations between Aborigines and others has changed over time, so too has the nature of the beliefs associated with the existence and presence of the ‘Other’ on Aboriginal land. This makes analysis and comparative work somewhat difficult. For instance, a Christian mission was established at

Islam and Australia's Aborigines

303

Galiwin’ku, Elcho Island, in 1942,46 and as both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal authors have documented, there has been a major reshuffling of ‘traditional’ Aboriginal beliefs to allow a place for Christianity.47 Walitha’walitha, in 1992, was referred to by Burrumarra and other senior Warramiri leaders as an ‘angel of [the Christian] God’, and while there was some overlap in meanings between the two, statements of belief in Walitha’walitha as a separate entity have all but disappeared from public use. Yet while Elcho Island today is nominally a Christian community, this has not resulted in any change to the view that Aborigines have a privileged place in terms of the land.48 So while Christianity is a vehicle for the coming together of ‘black’ and ‘white’ Australians, it is also the means by which Aborigines assert their dignity as human beings and their autonomy as land owners.49 I suggest that this was also the case with belief in Walitha’walitha in the past. Aborigines utilized and transformed the teachings of Islamic missionaries and observations of their practices in the creation of an ancestral being which displays many of the characteristics of the Islamic God. This is an underlying theme of the Wurramu ritual, which I describe later. Ill The accepted picture of the Aboriginal-4Macassan’ past is that the visitors and Aborigines coexisted largely in peace and harmony, and while there was some impact on Aboriginal ceremonial practices, no significant changes took place in the Aboriginal way of life.50 The fact that the trepang industry lasted 200 years seems to support the view that some form of agreement was reached between the parties over access to land and sea, but there is little evidence for this. For instance, the most detailed records of the trepanging era are from the latter stages of the industry, that is, from the 1890s onwards, and they paint a picture of mistrust as a feature of life in the camps.51 In an account based on experience at Groote Eylandt, Worsley says that Aborigines today make judgements about ‘Macassans’ by comparing what is remembered of their visits with present-day relationships with Europeans.52 The ‘Macassans’ would arrive on the coast each December with the trade winds, departing in early April when the winds began to blow from the south-east. Aborigines saw the regular visits of the fishermen as not posing a threat to their rights as landowners and, on this basis, Worsley suggests, many people now viewed the heroic times of trade and travel to and from Macassar aboard sailing vessels as a sort of golden era. I suggest that for the younger generation, this is also the case at Elcho Island.53 Burrumarra and other Aboriginal leaders had no direct experience with ‘Macassans’ or Islam themselves, although some of what they know may have been acquired in recent times.54 The knowledge that leaders possess of the ‘Macassan’ era comes from the stories handed down over the past 200 years, but primarily, Burrumarra said, from reflections upon the words in the song cycles.

304

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

In Burrumarra’s ‘inside’ interpretations of the ‘Macassan’ past, Walitha’walitha plays an all-important role. While most adults at Elcho Island know that Islam is the religion of the ‘Macassans’, only some older informants appear to be aware of the Walitha’walitha-AWah link. More commonly, Walitha’walitha is seen as a personal familiar for certainyirritja men and women. Rudder, for instance, quotes one informant as saying, ‘Alatha’alatha [Walitha’walitha] are children on yirritja shoulder, something like Timor or Macassar magic’.55 Of its physical appearance, informants said that Walitha’walitha was male, young and had no hair (see Figure 18.1). A lot of people said it was very small, not more than half a metre high, while others said it could fit in one’s pocket. In some cases, Walitha ’walitha is said to wear white cloth from head to foot, and to call the Yolngu ‘owner’ Bapa (father). In describing Walitha’walitha, one informant said that these little creatures were the ‘magic children of Balanda'. They send a message through the pillow to Yolngu if someone has died.56 All agreed that a person has Walitha’walitha with them at all times as a guide and protector, and these beings are owned by specific individuals, and are passed on to family members upon death, on the instruction of the owner. The personal familiar side of the Walitha’walitha belief is but one aspect of this complex being. According to Warramiri clan members, it is also a universal entity that looks down on yirritja lands from the heavens above. It is linked to certain healing rituals in which the left hand is used to remove pain from the sufferer, and has a number of totemic affiliations. It is linked to the whale, to the red clouds of the sunset ( Walung or Djapana), the turtle egg (a symbol of sharing), the bow and arrow (Bininydjirri), and the Bunaka or Ganarri tree from which the bow and arrow were made.57 Walitha ’walitha’s significance is said to be all-embracing. It represents intelligence and a high order of living, Burrumarra said. Yolngu...have tw o b o s s e s , Birrinydji and Walitha'walitha. E ach lim its th e o th e r .58 Walitha walitha is A lla h . H e d w e lls o n to p. I f it is n o t the h o ly spirit, it is an a n g e l o f G o d . Walitha walitha te lls us o f right and w ro n g . It’s sort o f a sixth se n s e . It can j u d g e a situ a tio n . It te lls y o u w h a t is g o in g on in p e o p le ’s m in d s, lik e a w arn in g.

Of the Walitha’walitha belief, Burrumarra said: T h e Earth is fu ll o f bad.

In th e

Garamat

(h e a v e n ),59 is g o o d and bad. W h en w e d ie w e

g o to o n to p , to a w o rld o f b ea u tifu l th in g s, c o lo u r s, and th e bad sp irit c o m e s d o w n . A ll g o e s up. T h e sh o o tin g star g iv e s us th is m e ss a g e that s o m e o n e is to d ie , and th e bad is c o m in g d o w n 60... Walitha

walitha

w ill h a v e its p lea su re in th e sp irit o f th e d ea d ...

W h ere is that p la c e ? ...I t is o n to p .

Murrayilyil,

th e pa ra d ise.

T h e fla g flie s there for u s.61

th in g s w ill c o m e to th e earth and it w ill b e o n e .

At another time, he said,

W e call th is p la c e

B u t there w ill b e a tim e in th e future w h en all th e h e a v e n ly

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Islam and Australia’s Aborigines

W e d o n o t k n o w w h a t h a p p en s after d eath or w h e r e th e p a ra d ise o f lo v e ly th in g s is. T h er e w a s m u c h d is c u s s io n a b o u t th is in th e p ast. [c e r e m o n y ].

It is a b o u t h o n o u r.

a p p o in te d to u s fo r th is.

Walitha ’walitha

H e h e lp s w h e n so m e th in g is w r o n g .

and g iv e s a w a r n in g o n b e h a v io u r. g o n e , at p e a c e . th e

Grokman,62

A ll w e k n o w is th e

bunggul

is c o n c e r n e d w ith truth. H e h a s b e e n H e a d v is e s u s o f d a n g er,

W h en a p erso n d ie s, th e sp irit is d e a lt w ith , s o it is

I f d ea th w a s c a u se d b y n e w situ a tio n s , g u n s, k n iv e s; i f it w a s c a u se d b y then

w e gave

it s o m e th in g

ex tra

[i.e ., a

Wurramu

p o s t w ill

be

c o n str u c te d , s e e later].

According to Burrumarra, Walitha ’walitha came down to Warramiri land (or was sent by God) and his function was to ‘judge the judgements’ of the Yolngu and to protect them from wrong, ‘for at that time [i.e., both the “Macassan” era and, in Burrumarra’s understanding, the “beginning of time”] the people were killing themselves. People were marrying into the wrong Mala [clan]. Bad was coming up, mocking the people. So Walitha’walitha came down to sort it all out.’

Map 3 Eastern Indonesia and northern Australia

306

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

IV Burrumarra said the initial effects of ‘Macassan’ contact were terrible and the outcome was represented in the mythology of the Wurramu or Grokman, which is comprehensible only in terms of Walitha’walitha. To come to an understanding of Burrumarra’s position, we need to look critically at the view that the fundamental nature of Aboriginal society was not changed by contact with ‘Macassans’. It is true but trivial to say that Aborigines came to an understanding that there were other people in the world and that these people followed different laws. What we need to appreciate is the ways in which first contact was rationalized by Aborigines in the way they viewed the world. There was an immense power imbalance between Aborigines and others, and contact with this technologically advanced and virile population from Macassar turned ‘the Aboriginal world upside down’, in Burrumarra’s words. One only needs to imagine the situation where several boats, each carrying perhaps thirty armed men, land on an isolated beach where Aborigines were camped. A typical dwelling area would have had a population of maybe two senior men, their wives and children, as well as various affines and aged persons. The Aborigines were totally outnumbered. In addition, the visitors had possessions which were greatly desired - sailing canoes allowing for long-distance sea travel along the coast, cloth, knives, metal axes, and most significantly, alcohol and tobacco. For Aboriginal thinkers it would have undoubtedly led to speculation as to why Aborigines had to work for ‘Macassans’ in order to get the things they wanted, and why, in many ways, they were beginning to see themselves as being impoverished in relation to, even dependent upon, the newcomers. As a consequence, previously unchallenged understandings about the cosmos would have come into question, as must have the Aboriginal leaders’ authority to direct, through ceremonial means, the affairs of the world. If we look at similar happenings from around the world,63 it might have led to a view from within Aboriginal society that the people themselves must have done something wrong at the ‘beginning of time’, and were living out the consequences of their actions. The end result was that a particular series of historical events came to be seen as having their foundation in the ‘Dreaming’ or creational era. Thus while the origin of beliefs in Walitha’walitha and the Wurramu date from what Burrumarra termed the Murrnginy era,64 a period of great struggles between ‘white’ and ‘black’ at the ‘beginning of time’, it was probably in the late 1700s or early 1800s. In Burrumarra’s reading, in these ‘times of fire’ people would fight amongst themselves and even kill one another, as well as ‘Macassans’, in order to get the things they wanted, and jealousy, greed and hatred reached dramatic proportions. While there is no explicit talk of visitors killing Aborigines, it can he assumed in some cases.65 On the whole, however, the atrocities were said to have been perpetrated by law-breakers and their victims were described in the same way, both ‘white’ and ‘black’. These were ‘military’ times, Burrumarra said, a period of unsurpassed instability. Insight into the atrocities from this time comes from detailed Aboriginal knowledge of ‘Macassan’ weaponry, and what it could do to a person. Bemdt and

307

Islam and Australia's Aborigines

Berndt, for instance, give descriptions of knives such as the djaking or kris which were used for stabbing, and other specialty items used for decapitation or for tearing open the stomach for the removal of entrails.66 In a headlong desire for material gain, Aborigines would forget Gurrutu (kinship), forget ceremonial obligations, and indeed, who they were, Burrumarra said. The ‘spirit of the dead’ was said to land on them from above and take control of their mind and body. Known as the Wurramu or Grokman, this evil force would turn them from an orderly existence. A definition of a Grokman, Burrumarra said was ‘when a lie became truth and truth a lie’. These were times of mayhem, and it is my understanding, following discussions with Burrumarra, that the disruptive forces tearing society apart became personified in a range of ancestral or mythical beings. Thus we have the liar or ‘double-crosser’ spirit, the robber, and the murderer. These ‘crooks’, as the Bemdts referred to them, were said to be based around the activities of real people who had lived in Yolngu territory in the past. There were: Balala g r e e d y , a d o u b le -c r o sse r ; Baluka - robber: Balulu - d o u b le -c r o s s e r , a k ille r , a bad p erso n ; Bakurra - Grokman, ‘s o m e tim e s f e m a le ’; Bawurramu - m urderer; Buwakurru - a W urram u, ‘p erh a p s a G ro k m a n, p erh a p s n o t ’; Djukutjuku - c a p a b le o f an y cr im e , ‘w ill stea l m o n e y , b o a t, c lo th e s , Gayingdingu - m urderer, G rok m an; Manaanggan - G ro k m a n , a ro b b er.67

a h u sb a n d or w i f e ’ ;

The chief of them all was Bawurramu, who represented ‘the head and wishes of the people in Birrinydji's time...the chief Grokman and the head of the dirty business’, Burrumarra said. However, the types of problems introduced into Aboriginal lives in this period were not restricted to the ‘Macassan’ era. They are a consequence of Aboriginal contact with outsiders. Today, the Wurramu or Grokman is roughly equated with the Devil or evil, and Walitha’walitha is associated with the Christian God, and many of the stories of the latter bodies o f ‘law’ have become entwined. Burrumarra in the following quote showed how the Grokman, or ‘spirit of the dead’, worked, and still works today, and he describes the role of Walitha’walitha in restoring order. He said: Bakurra B irrkili

tr ies to m a k e p e a c e .

Yolngu,

o n ly

yirritja.

H e is a W arram iri, G u m atj, W an gu rri, D h a lw a n g u or H e sees

Balulu,

th e k ille r , d o in g th e w r o n g th in g an d h e

in te r c e p ts. H e s e e s h is co u n tr y m e n w ith k n ife and g u n w o u n d s an d b e c o m e s a h im s e lf. H e k ills The

Wurramu

Grokman

Balulu.

en te r s p e o p le , c h a n g e s th e m , m a k in g th e m

b reak la w s, an d sp re a d

d iso r d e r and hatred.

Yolngu ca n b e Balulu o r Bakurra. T h ere is Walitha 'walitha's j o b to ta k e th e bad m em o r y

n o o th e r m e a n in g fo r th e s e w o r d s . out o f

Yolngu...to

It is

ta k e all th e ‘r o b b e r s an d

308

Aboriginal Religions in Australia c r o o k s ’ a w a y w ith ....T o re m o v e th is bad sp irit can take years.

Grokman

in him is a real burden to a co m m u n ity .

T hat p erson w ith the

Walitha ’walitha

so rts o u t th e bad,

m a k e s them g o o d , b rin g s th e m in to lin e. H e b rin g s to that p erson th e sp irit o f th e n a tio n , for th e n a tio n , o n ly . H e b rin g s u nity.

The turmoil brought about by deception, theft or murder, is an ever-present threat to social harmony, and is depicted not only in the narratives of the Grokman, but in the related ceremonies of the Wurramu ‘crook’, ‘stealing’ or ‘collection’ man, which as Bemdt and Bemdt say, come under the general heading of Walitha ’walitha.6* A carved post representing the Wurramu described above was often constructed in the performance of the Wurramu ceremony. It is placed on the grave, and acts as both a grave marker, and, as Burrumarra said, it ‘focuses evil into one place only and [following the performance of the ceremony] it is gone, perhaps to another Wurramu somewhere else’.69 Thomson70 says the post represents the spirit of the dead, and it guards the grave with the great knives that it brandishes. Bemdt arid Bemdt contend that such sculptures are of foreign origin. They write, T h e [ Wurramu] fig u r e s...a r e k n o w n

[W alitha’walitha]. [Wurramu] is a 'c r o o k ’,

as

T h e [ca rv ed

Wurramu]

as [Bakurra]

(th e fe m a le v ariety) or m ore g e n e r a lly

T h e y ca m e from M a ca ssa r in the C e le b e s [ S u la w e s i].

The

‘c o lle c t io n ’ or ‘s t e a lin g ’ m an. fig u r e ...is p o ss ib ly d e riv ed from f o llo w in g c u sto m s r ela tin g to

M a ca ssa n b u rials, as to ld b y a b o r ig in e s w h o had w itn e ss e d su ch in c id e n ts d u rin g th eir v is its to th e E ast In d ies Isla n d s, and as w itn e ss e d o n the A u stralian m a in la n d .71

Some variations of these sculptures include the head and shoulders of a man or woman,72 and Macknight says that such examples have no equivalent in ‘Macassan’ sculpture.73 He suggests that they represent a reworking of an introduced theme, and that one must look to Aboriginal beliefs rather than to Indonesia for a deeper understanding of their significance. Burrumarra, in his account of the meaning of these artefacts, said that people may have a dream about the dead, and then this post, with the head of Bawurramu. It represents life on earth, for this is where the Grokman are, he said. ‘Only on top can changes be made...As a burial post, people remember the dead, what [they] had, what [they] did, and what [they were] capable of. The Wurramu completed things, closed it up, settled matters.’ Of the markings on the Wurramu post, he said, W e n e v e r tell a n y o n e a b o u t th e m e a n in g o f th e m ark ings.

It is to o b ig , to o sacred .

r e p resen ts th e b e lie f o f the W arram iri b e fo re th e c o m in g o f C h ristian ity.

Wurramu

It

is for

b ig id e a s, and g o e s in to the g ra v e w ith the sk e le to n , and then w e sa y g o o d b y e .

Though representing a Grokman or killer, the Wurramu post is simultaneously an image of the highest things, Burrumarra said. It is at once symbolic of Bakurra the ‘crook’, and of salvation in Walitha’walitha. Of the construction of Wurramu posts, Burrumarra said that they had to be made of wood so that they could fade away with time.

309

Islam and Australia's Aborigines Walitha 'walitha

is not o f th is w o rld , but th e h e a v e n s, in the

sta n d s for that law .

Wurramu

sto n e for th is is a ss o c ia te d w ith im a g e o f

Walitha walitha.

Garamat.

The

Wurramu

is n o t rock. T hat d o e s n o t g o aw ay. T h e y c o u ld n o t b e o f

Lany’tjun and th e w h a le and s o .74 Wurramu is in Birrinydji but its p u rp o se is Walitha walitha.

th e

Its form is

The possession of a body of laws such as that encompassed by Walitha ’walitha and the Wurramu shows how readily people negotiated change. As Burrumarra said: ‘In those days we said, “if heaven has this wish for us, if it wants it this way, then we must follow it”.’ In other areas there was no salvation. A number of dhuwa and yirritja groups, including the Yalukal and Girrkirr (Rika) of Elcho Island and the Wurambil Golpa of the Wessels, all closely aligned to the Warramiri, died out earlier this century and it is said that ‘the Grokman mob got them’. Lessons from the yirritja moiety and the Warramiri clan in particular were therefore seen to provide an understanding of what was happening to the Yolngu as a whole in the ‘Macassan’ period onwards. V

The most significant underlying feature of the planned dance exchange with the ‘Macassans’ in 1996 is the fact that the Wurramu ritual, which is still regularly performed in yirritja moiety funerals, was first performed by the early ‘Macassans’ for the Aboriginal dead at Cape Wilberforce, in Warramiri territory, at some unknown point in the past.75 It was the Murrnginy era, Burrumarra said, and hundreds of Aborigines had lost their lives, and the Wurramu ritual was performed by the visitors as a tribute to them in memory of their historical partnership.76 Burrumarra, reflecting on this sacred memory, said the Yolngu ‘took this as their standard’ - that is, the ‘Macassans’ had sympathetically looked upon the fate of the people and the upheaval that came in the wake of their presence. The ceremony was seen to be part of the ‘code of honour’ of Birrinydji, Burrumarra said, and an indication that Aborigines and ‘Macassans’ really were followers of one law, that of Walitha ’walitha. While Bemdt and Bemdt acknowledge that this ceremony is ‘owned’ by certain yirritja clans who are said to have come into contact first with the visitors, they have not associated Walitha’walitha with Allah or acknowledged a possible Aboriginal re-working of an introduced theme. They see it as a direct borrowing. Yet as Burrumarra said, even though the Wurramu dance is directly linked to the presence of early ‘Macassans’, it comes from Birrinydji, who ‘would do the Wurramu bunggul and warn everyone not to fool around and be serious. When the mast was up and the flag flying, he would do the Djambayang dance.’77 The Yolngu leaders contemplated taking to Ujung Pandang a modified and shortened version of the Wurramu mortuary ritual, which has been described in the literature in some detail. The Bemdts, who witnessed this ceremony in the 1940s, for instance, say: T h e actual c e r e m o n y ta k es p la c e durin g the d a y tim e in th e m ain cam p . th e

wurramu

[p o st]

has

a ttached

to

[its]

sh o u ld e r s

lo n g

yirritja

T h e m aker o f b ir d -fea th ered

310

Aboriginal Religions in Australia wurramu

str in g s ...A s m o st tr a d itio n a lly d e sig n e d

are carv ed w ith o u t arm s, th e s e str in g s

rep resen t th e a r m s...W h e n th e o b je c t and its fea th er s are b e in g su n g b y the a rtist...w o rd

[Grokman]

sp r e a d s that th e ‘C r o o k ’ m an P e o p le in th e ca m p k n o w sp a r s...a n d to b a c c o ; fo r

is c o m in g , and th ere is great e x c ite m e n t.

w h a t th e s o n g s m ea n , and run to h id e th eir c lo th in g ,

wurramu

is a ‘s t e a lin g ’ m an, ready to p ic k up a n y th in g ly in g

a r o u n d ...W h e n e v e r y ca m p h a s b e e n v isite d , all th e o b je c ts th e p ile d

up in th e m id d le o f th e cam p .

wurramu

h as taken are

T h e fig u r e it s e lf is firm ly p la c e d

in to th e

g r o u n d ...a n d then th e artist [and ] h is c o m p a n io n s ...b e g in to s in g part o f th e M a c a ssa n s o n g c y c le .

T h e y sin g o f th e

wurramu,

o f th e M a ca ssa n w h arfs; o f th e rice fie ld s;

m o n e y ; th e m a k in g o f iron; th e cu ttin g o f tim ber; th e m a k in g o f praus; o f w o m e n g a th e r in g lily ;...a n d th e lik e.

A ll the co lo u r fu l life o f an E ast Indian to w n is related in

th e s e p o e tic a b o rig in a l so n g s , w h ic h are c o m p o s e d o n trad ition al lin e s b y a b o r ig in e s w h o in earlier d a y s tr a v e lle d to th e northern is la n d s ...78

In another article Bemdt and Bemdt describe the ‘Macassan’ ritual from which they say the Aboriginal ‘collection’ variation was based. They write: w h e n a M a ca ssa n d ie s, a

djira

g ra v e-y a rd is m a d e , and a h o le d u g in th e g r ou n d . A fte r

th e b u ria l, th e o ffic ia tin g M a ca ssa n sin g s; th e o th e rs w a it q u ie tly , and w h e n h e h as fin is h e d th e y all rep ly

djialji! djilalji!

T h en th e

wurramu

p o st is p la c e d o n th e g rave; it

is ca rv ed to rep resen t th e d ea d m a n, and s y m b o lis e s h is spirit. A ll th e M a c a s sa n s d a n c e fo r h im in a s p e c ia l w a y , b e n d in g forw ard in a rin g w ith their [b a c k s] to th e p o st, e y e s c lo s e d and h e a d s b o w e d .

T h e y then o p e n th eir e y e s and sin g ; and th is c o n tin u e s for

se v e r a l h o u r s.79

The sequence of songs outlined by Warramiri and Gumatj clan leaders to be shared with the ‘Macassans’ in 1996 is as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Wurramu (Walitha walitha) - sp irit o f th e dead; Nganadji - a lc o h o l; Yiki- k n ife; Djagura - b o x in g w ith h a n d s, and Lanytja, b o x in g w ith Warraliny - sm o k e from to b a c c o or o p iu m p ip es; Djarrung - c a lic o , a flag; Wayathul - th e cry o f th e scru b fo w l; Lunggurrma - north w in d ; and Djapana - red c lo u d , th e a b o d e o f Walitha walitha.

th e feet;

The words of the songs are a complex mix of Yolngu matha and ‘old’ ‘Macassan’, and are not easily accessible. They are composed in an ‘inside’ language, and keys to deeper understanding are given as a privilege by older men in ritual settings.80 Having witnessed the ceremony on a number of occasions, it is apparent that the dances are of external origin, resembling in form movements commonly associated with dance in south-east Asia. They are also quite dramatic, and depict, amongst other things, the slaughter of men and women by the sword. Some depict men rubbing their hands together preparing a cigarette; others have men engaged in a drunken brawl, while still attempting to manage complex arm and leg dance movements, much to the amusement of onlookers.

Islam and Australia's Aborigines

311

In the text, Arnhem Land: Its History and Its People,81 the Bemdts included a charcoal drawing of the Wurramu ceremony they witnessed. They did not, however, comment in any detail on its significance. Burrumarra says that the Wurramu bunggul is about one’s life and who it belongs to. T h e r e are a lo t o f s o n g s ...[a b o u t ] s a ilin g , e a tin g , c o o k in g ; a ll c o m e u n d e r r e p r e se n ts

th e

Walitha’walitha

lan d

o f each

Mala .

T h ese

dances

o v e r lo o k s th e w h o le p r o c e d u r e .

com e

u n d er

Walitha’walitha

Birrinydji.

th e

sw o rd ,

It but

is th e r e , o n to p ,

lo o k in g o u t to s e e w h o k ille d o n e o f ou r p e o p le . T h e la w is a life fo r a life . O n e p e r s o n d ie s b e c a u s e o f a n o th er .

Grokman h a s k ille d th e m , c a n still Yolngu...T h e Wurramu bunggul fin is h e s th is ,

T h e d e a d sp ir it a fter th e

be a

still harm th e

w ith

Walitha ’walitha

w ill d e liv e r th e b a d o n e s to G o d .

Grokman. T h e d e a d c a n Walitha’w alitha' s h e lp .

R e m o v e th e m a ll fro m w h e r e th e y

s h o u ld n o t b e. H e c o lle c t s th e g o o d an d th e b ad. T h is is th e m e a n in g o f th e ‘c o l l e c t i o n ’

bunggul.

The

bunggul

is a b o u t th e p a ss a g e o f th e s o u l to h e a v e n , th e rich p la c e .

W h e n th e life s t y le is f o llo w e d an d p r o b le m s a rise, th e a n sw e r s w ill c o m e d o w n fro m above,

w h e n th e

Wurramu bunggul

is d o n e p r o p e r ly ,

Walitha’walitha

w ill r e v e a l

a d v a n c e d k n o w le d g e o f u n d e r sta n d in g a n d p u r p o se to th e h e a d m a n .

These dances are very powerful, Burrumarra said. ‘We thought that when we first saw the bunggawa (“Macassan” leader) do them. We wanted it for ourselves.’ In Birrinydji's ceremony, the flag is planted. ‘This is the way law is carried...The flag represents honour and unity of the Yolngu under Birrinydji and for Birrinydji.’ He added: ‘When the flag flies it symbolises that unity, that oneness that the bunggawa achieved for us. There can be happiness, peace and riches, and a long life for the Yolngu'*2 Today, the Yolngu perform these same dances and, when the flag is raised, it is said that the bunggawa (in this case the leader of the Warramiri clan), achieves oneness. This is cryptic, but by all accounts the ceremony is about an idealized unity between all peoples through their joint association with a particular body of law, that is, Birrinydji and Walitha'walitha, but it is also concerned with salvation. Disruptive forces had tom Aboriginal lives apart, and adherence to Walithawalitha’s law brought the promise of a return to the status quo, and in train, dreams of an idyllic future in the hereafter. Burrumarra said the purpose of the bunggul was to show people’s desire for Walitha'walitha. He said that in the old days, everyone wanted this communication with God, but lamented that this was not the case today.

VI Inspiration for the trip to Macassar came from outside Yolngu circles,83 but Aboriginal interest in the project is strong. In 1988, a traditional wooden prau was constructed in Sulawesi and sailed to northern Australia as part of the Australian bicentennial celebrations, and impromptu dances were held on the beach at

312

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

Galiwin’ku, sparking interest in the project. Also, Yolngu groups have been regular visitors to Ujung Pandang for the past ten years.84 However, to take a ceremonial sequence normally associated with yirritja moiety funerals and turn it into a spectacle designed to reunite people is curious. It is especially so because of the Islamic connections, for most Yolngu at Elcho Island identify themselves as being Christian. Yet many of the details of Wurramu and Walitha walitha beliefs are not widely known, and Burrumarra freely admitted that they were concealed by his generation as a means of promoting Christianity. The two religions were seen to be close to one another, he said, and the possibility for confusion was considerable. While the younger generation may be idealizing contact, as Worsley’s findings suggest, this is not so for the older generation. There is also no evidence of heroworship, as Thomson’s account suggested.85 For instance, even though the dancing actions in the Wurramu ritual are known to have been based on those performed by ‘Macassans’ in the past, there is no suggestion that ‘Macassans’ own the laws on which the dances are based. Burrumarra clearly stated that the deeper significance of this ‘law’ is for Aborigines alone, and any suggestion that Birrinydji originated with or belongs to the ‘Macassans’ was denied.86 Indeed, Burrumarra said that the Wurramu dance was as much about local rights in relation to the ‘Other’ as it was about the passage of the soul to the afterworld: ‘When you are in someone else’s country, you must do things the way they do them. If not you are in danger. Birrinydji’s Wurramu dance is a danger one. It’s about people going to other places where they don’t belong.’ A good indicator of the separation of ‘Macassans’ and Aborigines in terms of ‘inside’ views on the Taw’ which unites them, comes from interpretations of the significance of a separate song series, known as Wathi Katika, which was also acquired from the ‘Macassans’.87 According to Burrumarra the songs refer to ‘black’ and ‘white’ people working together to pull up the sails and the mast of a boat, but he insisted that ‘there is no “law” here. “Macassan” talk and action is cheap!’ In contrast, the Warramiri own the ‘inside’ Birrinydji dances, for example, Djambayang, Lilgerun and Lengu, which refer to similar ideas. These songs are also about ‘white’ and ‘black’ men working together, pulling on the boat’s anchor rope and slackening off and then pulling hard once again etc.88 Similarities aside, one is ‘inside’ law and the other is not. As Burrumarra said, ‘We are soldiers for Birrinydji. We are not soldiers for trepang!’ Walitha ’walitha, he said, was only present when Birrinydji's bunggul is performed. ‘Macassan’ songs and ceremonies do not have the same spiritual content. Yet the Wurramu bunggul appears to have both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ aspects. In ‘outside’ interpretations, like the Wathi Katika songs, it is symbolic of a historical association with the ‘Other’. In ‘inside’ versions, the songs and stories of Birrinydji and Walitha’walitha embody a paradox. They are about a partnership in Taw’ between Aborigines and ‘Macassans’, but they also functioned to affirm Aboriginal identity and rights in relation to the ‘Other’. Despite the recorded fact that relations between Aborigines and ‘Macassans’ deteriorated considerably in the late nineteenth century, people at Elcho Island look forward to a reunion with their old trading partners with much excitement. As

Islam and Australia’s Aborigines

313

Burrumarra said, ‘We don’t know for how long the “Macassans” have been coming here. They are a part of our history, and we are in theirs.’ There are ‘laws’ that bind the groups as one. The extent to which Aboriginal ideas are reciprocated, however, is still to be seen, for ‘Macassan’ history over the past 300 years has been turbulent and it is unknown if they still possess the old rituals which they shared with Aborigines in the past. This is but one reason for the interest in the project from the ‘Macassan’ side. So while there is definitely evidence of Islamic influence in Yolngu belief in Walitha’walitha and in aspects of the Wurramu ritual, it is not appropriate to say that Aborigines in north-east Arnhem Land were or are followers of Islam. Rather, they absorbed and creatively adapted aspects of Islam to suit their own needs. Walitha walitha is but one body o f ‘law’ among many in the Yolngu repertoire. In the past, belief in Walithawalitha allowed Aborigines to deal with the social upheaval that came in the wake of contact with the trepangers. Today, this same Maw’ is the basis for the ritual exchange with ‘Macassans’. Yet what senior Yolngu tell the ‘Macassans’ will be a matter of internal negotiation. The exchange may be on a purely secular level. A historical association of long duration is being celebrated. The extent of the Islamic component is indeterminate. I would suggest, however, that in all probability the negative aspects of contact will be downplayed, while the fact that they shared ‘one ceremony’ will be highlighted as a means of reviving relations.

Notes 1

F o llo w in g R u d d er, I u se th e w o r d s ‘in s id e ’ and ‘o u ts id e ’ to refer to se c r e t/sa c r e d an d p u b lic in te rp reta tio n s o f k n o w le d g e r ela tin g to th e D r e a m in g or c r e a tio n p e r io d in A b o r ig in a l c o s m o lo g y . S e e J. R u d d er, Yolngu Cosmology: An Unchanging Cosmos Incorporating a Rapidly Changing World? P h D th e s is , A u stra lia n N a tio n a l U n iv e r s ity , C an b erra 1 9 9 3 , p. 3 0 .

2

W .S . C a m p b e ll, ‘T h e O ld e st Industry in A u stralia: T r e p a n g ’,

Society Journal ,

V o l. 3 , N o . 9, 1 9 1 7 .

Royal Australian Historical

In 1 9 0 7 , M a c a ssa n fish e r m e n w e r e barred from

entry in to A u stra lia n w a ters fo r p u r p o se s o f tr e p a n g in g ( S e e C .C . M a c k n ig h t,

to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia, 3

T h e w o rd

The Voyage

M e lb o u r n e 1 9 7 6 , p. 1).

‘M a c a s s a n ’ is in in v erted c o m m a s th r o u g h o u t th is ch a p te r b e c a u s e th e

e x is te n c e o f a g ro u p o f p e o p le k n o w n b y th is title is in d o u b t h isto r ic a lly .

T h e trep a n g

trade in v o lv e d th e B u g is , B o u to n e se , S a m a -B a ja u , and p e o p le fro m th e S u lta n a te s o f G o w a and T a llo in M a ca ssa r (U ju n g P a n d a n g ).

T h e c r e w s o f b o a ts that c a m e to

A u str a lia in c lu d e d p e o p le from T an im b ar, K ai, T im o r and Irian.

M y u se o f th e w o r d

‘M a c a s s a n ’ f o llo w s o n from its u se b y A b o r ig in e s in referrin g to all n o n -A b o r ig in a l p e o p le s a ss o c ia te d w ith th e industry. 4

S e e A . C a p e ll, ‘E arly In d o n e sia n C o n ta c ts w ith N o rth A u str a lia ’, Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia , V o l. 3 , 1 9 6 5 , p. 7 4 ; T. S w a in , A Place fo r Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being, C a m b rid g e 1 9 9 3 ; and J. U rry an d M . W a lsh , ‘T h e L o st “ M a ca ssa r L a n g u a g e ” o f N o rth ern A u str a lia ’, Aboriginal History , V o l. 5 , N o .

5

R .M . B e m d t and C .H . B e m d t, ‘D is c o v e r y o f P o ttery in N o r th -E a ste r n A r n h e m L a n d ’,

L 1 9 8 1 , p. 9 8 .

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute;

V o l. 7 7 , 1 9 4 7 , pp. 1 3 3 - 4 0 .

314

Aboriginal Religions in Australia Past and Present, V o l.

6

P .M . W o rsley , ‘Early A sia n C on tacts w ith A u stralia’,

7

A . W alk er, ‘M a ca ssa n In flu e n c e s o n the A b o rig in a l L an g u a g e and C u ltu re o f N orth ern A u str a lia ’,

Institute,

7, 1955, p. 5.

Indonesian Studies: Bulletin of the Indonesian Cultural and Educational

V o l. 5, N o .

1, 1 9 8 8 ; A . W alk er and D . Z orc, ‘A u stro esia n L o a n w o r d s in

Aboriginal History, V o l. 5, June 1 9 8 1 ; D . Yolngu-Matha Dictionary, B a tch elo r, N .T . 1 9 86. R udder, Yolngu Cosmology. I. K een , Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion: Yolngu of North-East Arnhem Land, O x fo rd 1 9 9 4 . S e e M a ck n ig h t, Voyage to Marege, and S. M itc h e ll, Foreign Contact and Indigenous Economies on the Cobourg Peninsula, P h D th e sis, N orth ern Territory U n iv e r sity 1 9 9 4 . Y o ln g u -M a th a o f N o r th -E a st A rn h em L a n d ’,

Z o r c,

8 9 10

11 Burrum arra d ied in O cto b er 1 9 9 4 .

T h e author w o rk ed c lo s e ly w ith him from 1 9 8 7 to

1 9 9 2 . H e w a s th e a u th o r’s m ajor in form an t for both h is m aster o f letters and h is d octoral th e sis, and in 1 9 9 4 th e au th or c o m p le te d a b io g ra p h y o f Burrumarra. 12 C .C .

M a ck n ig h t,

‘M a c a ssa n s

and

A b o r ig in e s ’,

Oceania,

V o l.

42,

N o.

4,

1972.

B urrum arra’s father, G a n im b irm g u , w a s d esc rib ed as a ‘front m a n ’ for the M a c a ssa n s, and in an a cc o u n t by o n e o f th e last M a ca ssa n s on th e c o a st he w a s referred to as the

Voyage to Marege, p. 8 4 ). An Adjustment Movement in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory News, 21 F ebruary 1 9 9 5 .

R ajah o f M e lv ille B a y (s e e M a ck n ig h t, 13 S e e R. M . B e m d t, 1 9 6 2 , and a lso

P aris and T h e H a g u e B urrum arra w a s an

in fo rm a n t for th e n o te d a c a d e m ic s D o n a ld T h o m so n , John M u lv a n e y , R o n a ld and C a th erin e B erdt, John C a w te, C a m p b e ll M a ck n ig h t and John M o n ey .

A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe, C h ic a g o The Universe of the Warramirri, S y d n e y 199 3 ; I.S. M cIn to sh , ‘W h o are th e B a y in i? ’, The Beagle: Records of the Museum and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, V o l. 12, 1 9 9 5 , pp. 1 9 3 - 2 0 8 ; and I.S. M cIn to sh , ‘A b o r ig in a l Iron P r o d u c tio n and U s e in N o rth -E a st A rn h em L a n d ’, Aboriginal History, fo r th co m in g .

14 W . L. W arner, 1969.

S e e a lso J. C a w te,

15 S e e M c In to sh , ‘A b o r ig in a l Iron P ro d u ctio n and U s e ’. 16 S e e B ern d t and B e m d t, ‘D isc o v e r y o f P ottery in N o rth -E astern A rn h em L a n d ’.

Can We Be Equal in Your Eyes? A Perspective on Reconciliation from Yolngu Myth and History, P h D th e sis, N orth ern

17 S e e M c In to sh . ‘W h o are the B a y iti? ’; I.S. M cIn to sh , T erritory U n iv e r sity 1 9 9 5 . 18 ‘M a c a s sa n s’ or m o re g e n e r a lly ,

n o n -A b o r ig in e s; p e o p le w ith ‘w h ite ’ sk in .

S e e Z orc,

Yolngu-Matha Dictionary. 19 W .L . W arner, ‘M a la y in flu e n c e on th e A b o rig in a l C u ltu res o f N orth ern A u str a lia ’,

Oceania,

V o l. 2, N o . 1, 1 9 3 2 , pp. 4 7 6 - 9 5 .

20 S e e A .P . E lk in , R .M . B e m d t and C .H . B e m d t,

Art in Arnhem Land,

M elb o u rn e 1 9 5 0 , p.

55. 21 U . T jan d rasam ita, ‘T h e In trod u ction o f Islam and the grow th o f M o s le m C oa sta l C itie s in A r c h ip e la g o ’, in

Dynamics of Indonesian History,

H. S o e b a d io and C .A . du M a rch ie

(e d s ), A m sterd a m 1978, p. 149. 22 M .A .P . M e ilin k -R o e lo fs z , ‘T rade and Islam in th e M a la y -In d o n e sia n A r c h ip e la g o Prior to the A rrival o f the E u r o p e a n s’, in

Islam and the Trade of Asia: A colloquium,

D .S .

R ich a rd s 1 9 7 0 , p. 154.

Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke. Part Two: Ruler and Realm in Early Java, T h e H a g u e and B a n d u n g , 1 9 5 7 , p. 2 3 3 .

23 B .J .O . S c h r ie k e ,

24 E. M cK a y , ‘S ix te e n th to E ig h teen th C en tu ries: T h e S ig n ific a n c e o f th e C o m in g o f the

Studies in Indonesian History, E. M cK a y (e d .), M e lb o u r n e 1 9 7 6 , p. 108. A Brief History of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, S y d n e y 1 9 8 9 , p. 2 2 . ‘T h e R ise o f M a c a ssa r ’, Rima, V o l. 17, 1 9 8 3 , p. 117.

E u r o p e a n s’, in 25 C . T u rn b u ll, 26 A . R eid ,

315

Islam and Australia’s Aborigines

The Heritage of Arung Palaka: A History of South Southwest Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century, T h e H a g u e 1 9 8 1 , p. 1. S w a in , A Place fo r Strangers, p. 102.

27 L A . A n d a y a , 28

29 Ib id ., p. 182. 30 R eid . ‘R ise o f M a c a ssa r ’, p. 117. 31 L A . A n d a y a ,

The Heritage of Arung Palaka,

p. 1.

32 In M a ck n ig h t, ‘M a c a ssa n s and A b o r ig in e s ’, p. 2 9 3 .

Arnhem Land: Its History and its People,

33 R .M . B e m d t and C .H . B e m d t,

M e lb o u r n e

1 9 5 4 . p. 4 6 . 34 W alk er,

‘M a ca ssa n

I n flu e n c e s ’, p. 3 2 , sa y s th e prayer-m an first a d d r e ss e s G o d as

‘F a th er!’, then a d d r e sse s h im as th e ‘ M o st H ig h G o d ’, i.e .,

A Black Civilization, p. 4 2 0 . m an G o d A -h a -la is Walitha walitha,

Walitha walitha.

35 W arner, 36 T h e

a c c o r d in g to Burrum arra.

T h e liftin g o f th e

b o d y , a s d e sc r ib e d in th is q u o te , c e a s e d at the b e g in n in g o f th e m is s io n p e r io d at E lc h o Island

i.e ., th e 1 9 4 0 s.

T o d a y , in the

Wurramu

c e r e m o n y , e ith er th e c o ffin is lifte d and

m o v e d as th o u g h it w e r e a m ast, or m en sim p ly m im ic a c tio n s o f liftin g th e b o d y . 37 T h e la st fe w

w o r d s o f th is s o n g w ere not tran slated b y W arn er’s in fo r m a n ts, b u t

‘S e r r im a k a si’ (ter im a k a sih ) m e a n s ‘than k y o u ’ in B a h a sa In d o n e sia .

B urrum arra w a s

u n su re o f th e full m e a n in g o f ‘B e -la b e -la D a u n g ’ but sa id it related to th e id e a o f ‘th e h u m b le o n e ' b e in g h eld ‘on h ig h ’, and then ‘c o m in g d o w n to th e d u st a g a in ’.

The Sea Nomads: A Study Based on the Literature of the Maritime Boat People of South-East Asia, S in g a p o r e 1 9 6 5 , p. 14 5 . O n ly Dhurritjini (T u rijen e) can b e p o s itiv e ly id e n tifie d as S a m a -B a ja u . T h e y w e r e

38 S e e D .B . S o p h er, 39

a s s o c ia te s o f th e M a c a ssa n s from G o w a from at le a st the ea rly 1 6 0 0 s an d liv e d o n th e isla n d s o f f U ju n g , P a n d a n g (s e e C. P elras, A F e w C o m p le m e n ta r y N o t e s o n A q u a tic P o p u la tio n s

in

S o u th

S u la w e si

and

S o u th

M a laya,

u n p u b lish e d

n o te s

from

th e

Intern ational S em in a r o n B ajau C o m m u n itie s, Jakarta, N o v e m b e r 1 9 9 3 ). T h e id e n tity o f th e o th er g r o u p s is u n k n o w n .

T h e y m ay in fact rep resen t th e p e o p le s o f M a lu k u in

eastern In d o n e sia (I. S. M c In to sh , ‘M alu k u “ T o te m ” H u n ters and S a m a -B a ja u in N o r th A u stra lia n A b o r ig in a l M y th o lo g y ? ’ 40 E.

K o lig ,

Anthropos,

‘P o st-c o n ta c t

R e lig io u s

V o l.

K o lig ,

82;

E.

Australian Folklore, M o v e m e n ts

‘R e lig io u s

in

V o l. 10, 1 9 9 5 , pp. 5 0 - 6 0 ) .

A u stra lia n

A b o r ig in a l

P o w e r and th e A ll-F a th e r in

M o n o th e ism in A u stra lia n A b o r ig in a l C u ltu re R e c o n s id e r e d ’, 41 S e e E. K o lig , ‘C ap tain C o o k in th e W estern K im b e r le y s’,

S o c ie t y ’, th e

S ky:

Anthropos, V o l. 8 7 . in Aborigines o f the West,

R .M . B ern dt and C .H . B e m d t (e d s ), Perth 19 7 9 ; C . M a c k in o lty and P. W ain b urran ga,

42

‘T o o M a n y C ap tain C o o k s ’, in Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions: Ethnographic and Historical Studies, B e d fo rd Park, S .A . 1 9 8 8 ; an d D .B . R o s e , ‘T h e S a g a o f C a p ta in C o o k : M o ra lity in A b o r ig in a l and E u rop ean L a w ’, Australian Aboriginal Studies. V o l. 2 , 1 9 8 4 . S e e S w a in , A Place for Strangers, pp. 2 2 4 - 3 3 , 2 4 7 - 5 2 .

43 K o lig , ‘ R e lig io u s P o w e r and th e A ll-F a th e r in th e S k y ’, p. 2 9 . 44 T h e c o n stitu tio n o f ‘O th e r ’ b y a c a d e m ic s and b y in d ig e n o u s p e o p le s is a m ajor is s u e in co n tem p o ra r y a n th r o p o lo g y (s e e J. F abian ,

Makes its Object,

N e w Y o rk 1 9 8 5 ).

are th e ‘O th e r’, and v ic e versa.

Time

and

the Other: How Anthropology

In its sim p le st form , to A b o r ig in e s, n o n -A b o r ig in e s

T h is article lo o k s at A b o r ig in a l r e p r e se n ta tio n s o f th e

‘O th e r ’, i.e ., ‘M a c a s s a n s ’ in m yth and oral histo ry . 45 S e e A . Lattas, ‘H y steria , A n th r o p o lo g ic a l D isc o u r se and th e C o n c e p t o f th e U n c o n s c io u s : C a rg o C u lts and th e S c ie n tis a tio n o f R a ce and C o lo n ia l P o w e r ’,

Oceania,

V o l. 6 3 , N o . 1,

1 9 9 2 ; A . Lattas, ‘S k in , P e r so n h o o d , and R ed em p tio n : T h e D o u b le d S e l f in W e s t N e w B ritain C arg o C u lts ’, 46 S e e P. S h e p h a r d so n ,

Oceania, V o l. 6 3 , N o . 1, 1 9 9 2 . Half a Century in Arnhem Land,

O n e T ree H ill, S .A . 1 9 8 1 .

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

316

An Adjustment Movement in Arnhem Land ; R. B o s , Jesus and the Dreaming: Religion and Social Change in Arnhem Land, P h D th e s is , U n iv e r s ity o f Q u e e n sla n d 1 9 8 8 ; J.R . G arraw urra, u n title d a r ticle in Crucible ( U n itin g C h u rch in A u str a lia , N o rth ern S y n o d ), M a y 1 9 8 2 ; D . G on d arra, Father You Gave Us the Dreaming, D a r w in 1 9 8 8 : I.R . Y u le , My Mother the Land, D a rw in 1 9 8 0 . S e e Y u le , My Mother the Land.

47 S e e B e m d t,

48

49 T h is is th e su b je c t o f an u n p u b lis h e d p a p er b y th e au th or, en title d T a k in g A b o r ig in e s S e r io u sly : T h e P o litic s o f Y o ln g u B e li e f in th e C h ristian G o d ’. 50 W arner, ‘M a la y I n flu e n c e o n th e A b o r ig in a l C u ltu r e s o f N o r th A u str a lia ’, p. 4 9 3 ; D .F . T h o m so n ,

Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land,

M e lb o u r n e 1 9 4 9 , p. 6 0 .

In Australian Tropics, L o n d o n 1 9 0 9 ; A . Adventures Ashore and Afloat in North Australia, L o n d o n

51 S e e A . S e a r c y ,

S ea rcy ,

By Flood and Field:

1911.

52 W o r s le y , ‘E a rly A sia n C o n ta c ts w ith A u str a lia ’. 53 In th e e a rly 1 9 9 0 s a s o n g w a s r e le a se d by th e Y o ln g u ‘r o c k ’ g ro u p , th e W ir m g g a B a n d , fro m

M ilin g im b i, s u g g e s tin g j u s t that.

‘M a c a s s a n ’ n a m e

g iv e n

to

It w a s c a lle d

a tre p a n g in g

cam p

lo c a te d

‘T a k k e r e n a ’, w h ic h w a s th e n earb y

th e

c o m m u n ity

in

G a liw in ’k u, o f E lc h o Isla n d . 54 T h e y h a v e , h o w e v e r , a c o n sid e r a b le k n o w le d g e o f th e M a c a s sa r e se la n g u a g e , and in

Yolngu matha in c o m m o n

(n o r th -e a st A rn h em L and la n g u a g e s) th ere are h u n d r ed s o f lo a n w o r d s still

u se .

S e e W a lk er, ‘M a c a ssa n I n flu e n c e s o n th e A b o r ig in a l L a n g u a g e ’;

W a lk er a n d Z o r c , ‘A u stra lia n L o a n w o r d s ’. 55 R u d d er,

Yolngu Cosmology,

p. 5 4 .

56 It is w e ll d o c u m e n te d that, u p o n d ea th , th e s o u ls o f W arram iri cla n m e m b e r s are tra n sp o rted o n th e b a ck o f a w h a le to a p a ra d ise in th e north, w ith th e aid o f th e w h a le i.e ., Dhurritjini (W a rn er, ‘M a la y I n flu e n c e ’, p. 3 5 6 ; I. The Bricoleur at Work: Warang (Dingo) Mythology in the Yirritja Moiety of North-East Arnhem Land, M L itt th e s is , U n iv e r s ity o f N e w E n g la n d 1 9 9 2 . In m o d e m h u n ters referred to ea rlier,

M c I n to s h ,

tim e s , h o w e v e r , v a r ia tio n s o n th is th e m e h a v e e m e r g e d . W a rra m iri-M a n d jik a y cla n w o m a n , had a b la c k b u s as d ie d , th e n

Walitha 'walitha,

O n e lad y sa id h er m o th e r , a

Walitha walitha.

I f s o m e o n e had

in th is form , w o u ld c o m e to tak e th e sp irit a w a y . A n u m b e r

o f p e o p le a ls o to ld m e that B urrum arra h im s e lf had a h e lic o p te r as

Walitha walitha.

57 T h e b o w and a rrow w e r e n o t u se d b y A u str a lia ’s A b o r ig in e s , but w a s a fea tu re o f th e m a teria l cu ltu r e o f p o p u la tio n s liv in g im m e d ia te ly to th e north o f A n th e m L an d , in In d o n e s ia . 58 M e m b e r s o f B u rrum arra’s W arram iri cla n are se a p e o p le , and m o st o f th e ir d r e a m in g s c o m e from there: e .g .. th e w h a le , o c to p u s , c u ttle fish , cra y fish , cla m , etc. about

e x tern a l

c o n ta c ts ,

h ow ever,

th e

n a rra tiv es

Birrinydji

and

In d is c u s s io n s

Walitha walitha

p re d o m in a te .

Garamat (Zorc, Yolngu-Matha Dictionary).

59 In th e ‘M a c a s s a n ’ la n g u a g e , th e w o rd m ir a c le s

60 B urrum arra sa id h e d id n o t b e lie v e th is.

is a ss o c ia te d w ith th e w o r k in g o f

H e w a s a C h ristia n , but th is is a sto r y that h e

g r e w up w ith . O th e r b e lie f s a b o u t th e fate o f th e so u l are h e ld co n c u r r e n tly . B urrum arra sa id that w h e n h e w a s y o u n g , h e w a s a ls o to ld that th e so u l o f th e d e c e a s e d tr a v e lle d to an u n k n o w n p la c e to th e north o n th e b a ck o f a w h a le , as m e n tio n e d earlier. 61 T h e fla g d a n c e is a part o f th e

Wurramu

cerem ony.

D o w n in g h as a ls o stated that th e

fla g , in In d o n e s ia , is lin k e d to th e sp rea d o f Isla m , and to b r in g in g all p e o p le s u n d er a s in g le b an n er.

( S e e th e 1 9 9 3 t e le v is io n p ro g ra m m e , D iffe r e n t L iv e s B e lo w th e W in d ,

A u str a lia n B r o a d c a stin g C o m m is s io n , B ig P ic tu re S e r ie s , 13 January 1 9 9 3 .) 62 A n o th e r n a m e fo r th e

Land ,

p. 2 1 4 and later.

Wurramu

o r sp irit o f th e d ea d .

S e e B e m d t and B e m d t,

Arnhem

Islam and Australia's Aborigines

317

New Heaven New Earth! A Study of Millenarian Activities, O x fo r d Rethinking History and Myth; Indigenous South American Perspectives on the

63 S e e K. B u rrid g e, 1971;

Past,

J.D . H ill (e d .), C h ic a g o 1 9 8 8 ; and a lso D .H . Turner, ‘C a ste lo g ic in a C la n S o c ie ty :

A n A b o r ig in a l R e s p o n s e to D o m in a tio n ’, in

Aboriginal Power in Australian Society,

M . H o w a rd ( e d .), B r isb a n e 1 9 8 2 . 64 W arner, ‘M a la y in flu e n c e ’, a p p lied th e term

dhuwa

and

yirritja ,

term s p e c ific to the

Murrnginy

in n o rth -ea st A rn h em Land.

yirritja

to a se r ie s o f c la n g r o u p s, b o th

A s M cIn to sh s h o w s , h o w e v e r , it is a

Birrinydji, w h e n Can We Be Equal in Your Eyes?, p.

m o ie ty and refers to th e d rea m in g era o f

A b o r ig in e s turned their b a ck s on h is law . (M c In to sh , 2 7 .)

65 M a ck n ig h t, ‘M a c a ssa n s and A b o r ig in e s ’, p. 2 8 9 , reports that a c c o u n ts from th e 1 7 6 0 s s u g g e s t that the ‘M a c a s sa n s’ had an a v e r sio n to th e p e o p le o f th e north c o a s t.

P o b a sso ,

w h o m et M a tth e w F lin d ers in W arram iri territory in th e E n g lis h C o m p a n y Is la n d s in 1 8 0 3 , a lso rep o rted p o o r r e la tio n s w ith th e p e o p le o f n o rth e a st A r n h e m L an d tra d itio n ,

A Voyage to Terra Australis, L o n d o n the bunggawa Djeki and Mangirri, fo r

k illers.

In s o m e

F lin d ers,

Birrinydji,

1 8 1 4 ).

in sta n ce, are rem e m b e r e d as s a v a g e

in terp reta tio n s, th e a tr o c itie s th e y

k illin g la w b rea k ers.

(M .

In term s o f A b o r ig in a l oral c o m m itte d

are referred to as

A tte m p ts to lo c a te su ch fig u r e s in h isto r y h a v e p r o v e d

Djeki m a y in fa ct b e Reekee, a trep an g cap tain and o w n e r o f th e b o a t Bondeng Catupa that v isite d A u stra lia in 1 8 2 9 (s e e M a c k n ig h t Voyage to Marege, pp.

d iffic u lt but 1 3 0 -3 1 ).

66 B ern d t and B ern dt,

Arnhem Land.

p. 4 7 .

67 W alk er, ‘M a c a ssa n In flu e n c e s on the A b o r ig in a l L a n g u a g e ’, pp. 3 2 - 3 , s u g g e s ts that a m a jo rity o f th e se term s are v a ria tio n s o f th e M a c a ssa r e se w o r d s w h ic h b oth m ea n rob b er or th ie f.

Manaangan,

pagurra and palakka,

on th e oth e r h an d , is d raw n fro m th e

menangkan, a M a ca ssa r e se w o rd m ea n in g ‘to h e lp to w in ’. Arnhem Land, p. 6 1 . p ra ctice o f c a r v in g Wurramu p o sts w a s d isc o n tin u e d in m is s io n tim e s

e x p r e s sio n

68 B ern d t and B ern dt, 69 T h e

as a p e r so n a l

c h o ic e b y A b o r ig in a l lea d ers, as th e b e lie fs w e r e se e n to b e in c o n flic t w ith C h r istia n ity , Burrum arra sa id . 70 D .F . T h o m so n , ‘A rn h em Land: E x p lo r a tio n s A m o n g an U n k n o w n P e o p le , Part 3: O n F o o t A c r o s s A n th e m L a n d ’, 71 R .M .

B ern dt and

C .H .

American Anthropologist,

Geographical Journal,

B ern dt,

‘S e cu la r

V o l. 1 1 4 , 1 9 4 9 , p. 6 1 .

F ig u re s o f N o r th e a ste r n

A rnhem

L a n d ’,

V o l. 5 1 , N o . 2 , 1 9 4 9 , p. 2 1 4 .

72 S e e ib id .; J.A . H o ff, ‘A b o r ig in a l C arved and P a in ted H u m an F ig u r e s in N o r th -E a st

Form in Indigenous Art, P. U c k o (e d .), C anberra 1 9 7 7 . Voyage to Marege, p. 3 1 4 . Lany'tjun is th e c h ie f m o ie ty fig u r e for yirritja c la n s in n o rth -ea st A rn h em L an d . U n lik e to te m ic and a n cestra l b e lie fs a ss o c ia te d w ith lan d , Walitha walitha is a b o v e th e earth, A rn h em L a n d ’, in

73 M a c k n ig h t, 74

lo o k in g d o w n on h is p e o p le , and r e p resen ta tio n s o f it in w o o d r e fle c t its e p h em era l nature.

Burrum arra d id sa y , h o w e v e r , that in d is c u s s io n s w ith a J a p a n e se p ea rler in th e

1 9 3 0 s, h e w a s to ld a b o u t a

Wurramu

near T o k y o that w a s m a d e o f sto n e , a fa ct that

u n d o u b te d ly a ffe c te d h is in terp reta tio n s o f the m e a n in g o f th is b o d y o f law . 75 G iv e n that there a p p ear to h a v e b een su ch p o o r rela tio n s b e tw e e n A b o r ig in e s and ‘M a c a s s a n s ’ in th is area o f A rn h em L and, it is hard to im a g in e ‘M a c a s s a n s ’ p e r fo r m in g last rites fo r A b o r ig in e s. Y e t as B ern dt and B ern dt n o te

(Arnhem Land,

p. 4 6 ) , th e ea rly

‘ M a c a s sa n ’ p erio d w a s m arked by th e j o in t p erfo rm a n c e o f ritu als o f c e le b r a tio n p rior to dep arture from th e c o a s t at th e en d o f the trep a n g in g se a so n . In th e e x a m p le th e B e m d ts g iv e , th e c e le b r a tio n s w e r e h eld in W arram iri territory, at C a p e W ilb e r fo r c e . 76 T h is sa cred site to d a y is m arked b y tw o c ir c le s o f se v e n sw o r d s ( n o w m a c h e te s), o n e e n c lo s in g a sa n d y d e p r e s sio n , the o th er a s lig h t hu m p . S e v e n fla g s adorn th e g ra v e. It is

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

318

a c e r e m o n ia l area, and o u t o f b o u n d s to

Balanda

and

Yolngu

a lik e u n le s s on c e r e m o n ia l

‘b u s in e s s ’. 77 T h is

is a n o th e r c e r e m o n y

in te rp reta tio n s o f

a ss o c ia te d

Djambayang

w ith

Birrinydji

and

Walitha’walitha.

Local

in c lu d e prayer but in M a c a ssa r e se it is th e form al w o r s h ip

req u ired o f M u slim s (M a c k n ig h t, ‘ M a c a ssa n s and A b o r ig in e s ’, p. 2 9 6 ) , le n d in g su p p o rt to th e v ie w that w h ile e le m e n ts o f th e c e r e m o n y h a v e b een b o rr o w e d , it h a s a u n iq u e p la c e in A b o r ig in a l c o s m o lo g y .

Art in Arnhem Land, Arnhem Land, p. 6 1 .

78 E lk in , B e m d t and B e m d t, 79 B e m d t and B e m d t,

p. 5 5 .

80 I.S . M c In to sh , ‘T h e D o g and th e M yth M aker: M a c a ssa n s and A b o r ig in e s in N o r th -E a st

Australian Folklore, V o l. 9 , 1 9 9 4 , p. 6 7 . Arnhem Land. W arram iri Yolngu are sa id to b e se rv a n ts o f Birrinydji, but Walitha 'walitha is a se rv a n t and p r o te c to r o f th e p e o p le . A s o n e in fo r m a n t said: ‘W e d o n o t k n o w h o w Birrinydji and Walitha’walitha c a m e to g e th e r . T h e y are tw o se p arate th in g s, bu t Birrinydji h a s Walitha ’walitha a s w e l l .’ A r n h e m L a n d ’,

81 B e m d t a n d B ern d t, 82

83 D a n c e p r o m o te r A n d rish St C la ire r e c e iv e d a gran t from th e A u str a lia C o u n c il in 1 9 9 4 to c o m m e n c e n e g o tia tio n s.

Makassar & Northeast Arnhem Land: Missing Links and Living Bridges, The Aboriginal Health Worker [Special Feature; Elcho Island], V o l. 13, N o . 2 , 1 9 8 9 .

84 M . C o o k e ,

B a tc h e lo r , N .T . 1 9 8 7 ; I. M c In to sh , ‘A M e m o r a b le T rip to M a c a s sa r ’,

85 D . F. T h o m so n , ‘E arly M a c a ssa r V is ito r s to A rn h em L and and th e ir In flu e n c e o n its

Walkabout, V o l. 2 3 , N o . 7. Universe of the Warramirri, p. 4 3 . S e e C o o k e , Macassar & Northeast Arnhem Land , 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History, S y d n e y 1 9 8 0 , A .P . E lk in , ‘A rn h em L and M u s ic ’, Oceania , V o l. P e o p le ’,

86 S e e C a n te, T h e 87 88

p. 18;

J.

Isaacs,

Australian Dreaming:

p. 7 5 . 2 4 , N o . 2 , p. 9 1 , r e co r d s a n u m b er o f

W arram iri s o n g s su ch a s th e ‘c a r d -g a m b lin g ’ s o n g w h ic h h ig h lig h ts th is s e n s e o f p a rtn ersh ip b e tw e e n p e o p le s .

Index

A b o r ig in a l art 3 - 5 , 2 2

see also

M o r p h y , H . a n d M y e r s F .R .

B e ll, D . 8 1 - 9 1 c o n c e p t io n b e lie f s 81

A b o r ig in a l a s tr o n o m ie s 9

N g a r r in d je r i p e o p le 81

A b o r ig in a l h isto r y m o v e m e n t 1 4 8 - 9

N g a r r in d je r i w o m e n , 8 6 - 9 0

A b o r ig in a l id e n tity 1 4 8 - 5 2

‘w o m e n ’s b u s in e s s ’ 8 1 - 9 1

A b o r ig in a l in te lle c tu a ls 1 8 - 1 9

R o s e , D .B . o n 8 5

A b o r ig in a l L a n d R ig h ts A c t (N o r th e r n

sa c r e d ch a r a c te r o f 8 8

T e rrito ry ) 1 9 7 6 19

u s e o f term 8 1 - 8 5

A b o r ig in a l L e g a l R ig h ts M o v e m e n t 2 4 9 50

see also

T o n k in s o n , R .

B e m d t. R .M . an d C a th e r in e 5 4 - 5 , 8 2 ,

A b o r ig in a l S a c r e d S ite s P r o te c tio n A u th o r ity 12 3

8 5 -6 , 252 B ir r in y d ji, ‘D r e a m in g ’ b e in g , 1 3 - 1 4 , 2 5 2

A d n ja m a ta n a p e o p le 81

B r a d s h a w , J. 1 6

alchera,

B r e n n a n , F. 2 2 9 - 4 8

A n c e s tr a l p a st, 3 6

A k e r m a n , K. 16

C o r o n a tio n H ill 2 3 4 - 5 , 2 3 7 - 9

A lh a lk e r c o u n tr y , 1 8 6 , 1 8 9

‘D r e a m in g ’ a n d la n d r ig h ts 2 3 4

a lte r e d m o d e s o f c o n s c io u s n e s s , 12

H ig h C o u r t o f A u s tr a lia

altyerr,

‘D r e a m in g ’, ‘C r e a tio n T im e ’

1 9 0 -3 A n m a ty e r r , W e s te r n D e s e r t la n g u a g e 1 8 5 - 6 , 18 8

M a b o d e c is io n , 1 9 9 2 , 2 4 0 - 1 W ik d e c is io n 2 4 5 in d ig e n o u s p e o p le s 2 2 7 - 8 la n d r ig h ts le g is la t io n 2 3 9 - 4 2

A n d erson, M . 1 9 5 -6 , 2 0 2

M u llu k M u llu k c la im 2 3 1

a n th r o p o lo g y a n d A b o r ig in a l r e lig io n s ,

N o o n k a n b a h d is p u te 2 4 2

ap p roach es c o m p a r a tiv e 1 7 - 1 8 e v o lu t io n is t 7 , 8 , 19, 2 2 , 3 1 , 3 7

P o p e P a u l 111 2 2 7 - 8 R e s o u r c e A s s e s s m e n t C o m m is s io n 2 3 5 -7

p h e n o m e n o lo g ic a l 1

terra nullius

r e d u c tio n is t 1

U .N . n a tiv e p e o p le s ’ r ig h ts 2 2 8 - 9

str u ctu ra list 1 9 , 61

T o o h e y , J. J u stic e 2 3 0 - 1

e f f e c t s o f a n th r o p o lo g is ts o n A b o r ig in e s 14, 19 A q u in a s , T . 2 0 A r a n d a (A r u n ta , A r r e m te ) p e o p le 1 4 , 3 6 ,

2 3 9 -2 4 2

W o o d w a r d , A .E . J u s tic e 2 3 0 B u rru m arra, D . W arram irri e ld e r 14, 2 9 8 -3 0 0 , 3 0 3 -4 , 312 B r u n to n , R . 2 6 5

4 7 -8 A u g e , M . 18

C la r k e , P. 2 5 7

A u g u s tin e , S t 2 0 6

C a p ta in C o o k m y th , 1 4 5 , 151

A u s t in -B r o o s , D . 7

C h r istia n ity , 2 0 1 - 4

A z a n d e p e o p le 21

churinga ( tjurunga )

4 8 -9

c o m p a r a tiv e r e lig io n , 1, 1 7 - 1 8 B a ia m e , H ig h G o d 4 5 - 6 B a lg o p e o p le 14

C o n n o r , A .M . 21 ‘C o r p u s A u s tr a lis ’ ( B o d y o f A u s tr a lia ),

p a in te r s 5

d ia g r a m 15

‘t w o w a y ’ C h r istia n s 14

c r e a tio n ,

B ardon, G. 3, 136

J u d a e o -C h r is tia n v ie w o f 2 0 - 1

B a te s , D . 3 3

K im b e r le y v ie w o f 2 1 7 - 2 3

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

320 C r u m lin , R . 5

G o v e L a n d R ig h ts c a s e , 2 4 0 G r e e n , J. 1 8 5 - 9 0

D a n a y a rri, H . 9 , 2 1 5

a c r y lic p a in tin g 187

D e le u z e , C . 2 0 6

A lh a lk e r c o u n tr y 1 8 8 - 9 1

d iv e r s ity o f A b o r ig in a l r e lig io n s , 2 - 3

altyerr , c r e a tiv e

D o u g la s , M . 3

A n m a ty e r r la n g u a g e 1 8 5 - 6 , 188

D o w n s , J u rin y a m u 2 0 2

anwelaar , p e n c il awelyi, w o m e n ’s

‘D r e a m in g s ’ 9 - 1 2 a n d ‘G a ia ’ h y p o th e s is 1 1 , 2 0 5

p r in c ip le 188 yam 189 c e r e m o n ie s fo r

c o u n tr y 188

a s site -r e la te d m y th s 1 4 3 , 1 4 5

b a tik p a in tin g 1 8 5 , 187

in te r p r e ta tio n s o f 1 9 7 - 8 , 2 0 2 - 3

b o d y p a in tin g 1 8 8 - 9

P in tu p i v e r s io n 171

e u r o c e n tr ic in te r p r e ta tio n s 188

tr a n sc e n d e n ta list v ie w 11

see also

W a rlp iri v e r s io n 4 , 9 , 9 3 - 6 , 1 9 6

K n g w a r r e y e (N g w a r r a y ), E.

G w io n G w io n fig u r e s 16

D ia m o n d , S . 2 1 5 D u r k h e im , E . 9 - 1 0 , 3 5 , 4 0 , 4 8 - 9

see also

M u lv a n e y , J.

D u ssa r t, F. 9 5 - 1 1 2 d is p u te s o v e r ritu al m a n a g e m e n t 1 0 8 -1 0

H a m ilto n , A . 10 H a rtlan d , F .S . 4 5 - 6 H a w k e , R .J. 2 3 6 H ia tt, L .R . 4 5 - 5 6 B a ia m e , S k y G o d 4 6 , 51

d r e a m v is ita tio n s 101

G reat F ath er S p irit, Y u r lu n g g a r 5 2 - 3

‘D r e a m in g s ’ 9 5 - 7 , 10 3

H ig h G o d s 4 5 - 6

e x c h a n g e o f h a ir -str in g 1 0 0 - 1

K u n a p ip i, R a in b o w S e r p e n t c u lt 5 2 -

e x c h a n g e o f ritu al p e r fo r m a n c e s 1 0 0

4

N a m p ijin p a G ra n ite s, J. 9 3 - 1 2 0

L ang, A . 4 5 - 6

N a m p ijin p a D a n ie ls , D . 1 0 9

L o m m e l, A . 5 4

e x c h a n g e o f h a ir strin g 9 8 - 9

M o th e r o f A ll c u lt 5 3

e x c h a n g e o f ritual p e r fo r m a n c e s 1 0 0 -1

R a d c liffe B r o w n , A . 5 1 - 2 W a w ila k sis te r s, sp irit b e in g s 5 2

ritu a l o b je c ts 9 7 - 8

H ill, B . 8

tr a in in g in ritual 9 6 - 7 , 1 1 0

H in d m a rsh Isla n d B r id g e A ffa ir 1 6 - 1 7 ,

yamparru, ritu al le a d e r 1 0 0 , 1 0 2 ^ 1 yuwulyu c e r e m o n ie s 1 0 0 , 1 0 6

2 4 7 -6 8

see also

B e ll, D . an d T o n k in s o n , R.

H u m e , L. 1, 12 E lia d e , M . 5 0 , 6 2 E lk in , A .P . 5 3 , 6 2 e x c h a n g e s b e t w e e n A b o r ig in a l r e lig io n s a n d C h r istia n ity , 1 4 - 1 5

see also

M a g o w a n , F.

in d ig e n o u s r e lig io n s 2 2 9 - 3 0 and C h r istia n ity 21 ‘in s id e ’ and ‘o u ts id e ’ m e a n in g s 2 6 1

see also

M o r p h y , H . 163

in te rp retin g th e ‘D r e a m in g ’ 9 - 1 2 F e r g ie , D . 2 4 9 , 2 5 7 - 9 , 2 6 2 - 6 F o i p e o p le , P a p u a N e w G u in e a 17

J a m e s, W . 11

F ra zer, J. 17, 3 1 - 2 , 3 7 - 8 , 4 6

J o h n so n , D . 9

F rench, A . 1 7 9 -8 0

J o h n so n , V . 4 , 1 22

‘G a ia ’ h y p o th e s is 2 0 5

Jukurrpa (tjukurrpa )

J a w o y n p e o p le , 2 3 8 - 9 108, 1 9 6 -7

G a liw in ’ku (E lc h o Isla n d ) p e o p le 14

see also

M a g o w a n , F.

K arak, n a tiv e A m e r ic a n , p e o p le 21

G e c k o A n c e s to r 12

K a th e rin e L an d C la im 121

G ille n , F J . 7 - 8 , 1 9 6 - 7

K a w a rd i, M o th e r o f A ll, c u lt 53

see also

M u lv a n e y , J.

K e a tin g , P. 2 4 2

Index K e e n , I. 6 1 - 7 6 , 3 1 , 2 4 1 c r itiq u e o f S ta n n e r ’s th e o r y o f a c tio n ,

321 L o m m e l, A . 5 4 L o v e lo c k , J. 1 1 , 2 0 5

see also

6 6 -7

R o s e , D .B .

M u rin b a ta v ie w o f r e lig io n 6 1 - 7 7 a n d o f the ‘D r e a m in g ’ 7 0 - 1 M u tjin g g a , m y th o f 6 9 m y th a n d rite 71 n atu re o f r e lig io n 6 2 - 3

Punj a s

a s a c r ific ia l rite 6 5 , 7 4

p o s it iv e fe a tu re s o f A b o r ig in a l r e lig io n 6 3 - 5 r e lig io n a s an a u to n o m o u s sp h e r e 6 1 -2

M a b o , H ig h C o u rt D e c is io n , 1 9 9 2 2 5 2 - 3

see also

B r e n n a n , F.

M a c a s sa n p e o p le 1 7 , 2 9 7 - 3 0 0

see also

M c I n to s h , I.

M c D o n a ld , H . 10, 2 9 1 M addock, K. 5 5 - 6 , 271 m a g ic an d r e lig io n 3 8 , 4 7 M a g o w a n , F. 2 7 9 - 9 3 A b o r ig in a l t h e o lo g y 2 8 1

to te m ic s a c r a m e n ta lism 6 8 - 9 , 7 2 - 3

a d ju stm e n t m o v e m e n t cy ca d nut fo o d , 2 8 0 , 2 8 9 - 9 0

K im b er , R . 13

D a n g a ta n g a 2 8 6 - 7

K im b e r le y C h r istia n ity 15

dream s 2 9 0

see also

M o w a la r ja i, D .

K n g w a r r e y e , (K n g w a r r a y , N g w a r r a y ) E .

D jin iy in i G o n d arra, R e v . 2 8 1 , 2 8 5 , 2 9 0 -1

a c r y lic p a in tin g 1 8 9

fea r in r e lig io n 2 8 1 , 2 8 6 , 2 8 9

a rtistic ca ree r 1 8 8 - 9 0

G a liw in ’k u ( E lc h o Is la n d ) 2 7 9

e u r o c e n tr ic in te rp reta tio n o f 1 9 0

C o m m u n ity C o u n c il 2 8 3 - 4

p a in tin g sty le 1 9 0 - 2

R e v iv a l M o v e m e n t 2 8 0 , 2 8 5

see also

G r e e n , J.

ap p roach es 2 8 2 . 2 9 1 - 2

K o lig , E. 10, 3 0 2 K u n a p ip i c u lt,

see

an d m u s ic 2 8 5 - 6 th e o c e n tr ic an d c h r is to c e n tr ic

k n o w in g 2 1 1 - 1 3 E lk in , A .P .

K u n w in jk u p e o p le 5 , 5 6

W e lls , E . R e v . 2 8 0 Y o ln g u C h r istia n s 2 8 0 - 3 M a th e w s, J. J u stic e 8 4 , 2 5 2 , 2 5 8

la n d r ig h ts 1 0 3 , 2 2 7 ^ 5

M c I n to s h , I. 2 9 7 - 3 1 3

la n g u a g e s , A b o r ig in a l A u str a lia n 2

A lla h 3 0 1 - 2

L ang, A. 4 9 - 5 0

R .M . B e m d t o n M a c a s s a n s , 3 0 2 ,

L a n g to n , M . 1 3 1 - 8

3 0 9 -1 1

e m e r g e n c e o f W e s te r n D e s e r t art 131

B irr in y d ji, c r e a tio n b e in g 2 9 8 , 3 1 1

h o m e la n d s a n d sa c r e d p la c e s 13 3

B urrum arra, D . W arram irri e ld e r

ngurra,

c a m p , h o m e , c o u n tr y 133

n ig h t sk y as a sa c r e d p la c e 1 3 3 , 1 38 o u ts ta tio n m o v e m e n t 1 3 7 P a p u n y a T u la m o v e m e n t 1 3 3 , 1 3 7 , 13 8 P in tu p i c o s m o lo g ic a l c o n c e p t 1 3 2 , 1 3 4 , 138

2 9 8 -3 0 0 , 3 0 3 -4 , 312 Is la m in e a ste r n In d o n e s ia an d n orth ern A u str a lia 3 0 1 - 2 s o n g s e r ie s

Walitha'walitha,

A lla h , 2 9 7 , 3 0 4 —6 ,

312 W arram irri an d G u m atj 3 1 2

sa c r e d la n d s c a p e s 131

Wathi’katiki 3 1 2

sa n d sc u lp tu r e s 1 3 3 - 4

W u rram u ritu al 2 9 8 - 9

site s , e s ta te s, d r e a m in g tra ck s 1 3 2 Lardi 1 p e o p le 10

M c K n ig h t, D . 10 m e a n in g s o f A b o r ig in a l art 4 - 5

L e a c h , E. 3 1 , 6 2

M a lin o w s k i, B . 5 - 6 , 4 1 , 1 4 4 - 6

L e m e r , B .D . 21

mardayin,

L e v i-S tr a u ss, C . 11, 18, 6 2 , 1 2 0

M ard u p e o p le 2 5 4

L in n e k in , J. 1 5 - 1 6 , 2 6 7

M e g g itt, M .L . 103

likan,

M e r la n , F. 1 1 8 - 2 9

c o n jo in t e x is te n c e 2 0 0

sa c r e d la w 1 5 9

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

322

A b o r ig in a l S a c r e d S ite s P r o te c tio n A u th o r ity 121 a n th r o p o lo g y a n d p la c e s 1 2 4 - 5

W a lla n g a n d a , su p r e m e b e in g 2 1 7 - 2 1 W a n d jin a , sp irit b e in g 2 1 7 - 2 0 W u n g u d d (u n g u d d ), p r im e v a l E arth Snake 2 1 7 -2 0

C a tfis h ‘D r e a m in g ’, K a th e r in e 1 1 9 — 24 c h a n g e s in m e a n in g o f p la c e s 1 1 9

M u llu k M u llu k la n d c la im 2 3 3 , 2 4 0

G e c k o A n c e s to r 1 1 6 - 1 7

M u lv a n e y , D .J. 3 1 - 4 1 , 6 , 2 4

K a th e r in e A r e a L a n d C la im 121 m y th s , fr o m ‘D r e a m in g ’ e v e n t to p h y s ic a l fo r m 1 1 6 - 1 7 p r o d u c in g n e w p la c e s 1 1 5 - 1 6 R o c k h o le area 1 1 9 - 2 2

see also

B a ld w in S p e n c e r , W .

M u n n , N . 1 1 8 , 1 6 5 - 6 , 1 78 M u rin b a ta p e o p le 5 3

see also

S ta n n er, W .E .H .

M y e r s , F .R . 1 7 1 - 8 2

E.T.,

s o c ia l id e n tity a n d ‘m ix in g ’ 1 2 6 - 7

on

tr a n sfo r m a tio n s o f A n c e s to r s ’ b o d ie s

o n c u ltu r e 1 3 5 - 6

in to p la c e s 1 1 6

L in d a S y d d ic k , T ju n g k a y a

M ic h a e ls , M .E . 1 3 5 - 6 m o n o th e is m , A b o r ig in a l r e s is ta n c e to 2 0 M organ, H . 2 3 9 - 4 0 M orphy, H . 1 5 9 - 6 9 a n c e str a l d e s ig n s 1 6 8

extra-terr estria l b e in g 1 8 0 - 1

N ap altjarri 1 7 1 - 8 2 p la c e s 1 7 1 - 2

Tingarri

sto r ie s 1 7 5 - 6 , 181

m y th an d h isto r y 1 4 5 - 6 m y th o f p r im itiv e p ie ty 31

c la n d e s ig n s 1 6 4 c r o s s -h a tc h in g an d ‘s h im m e r in g ’ 16 5

N a m p ijin p a G r a n ite s, J. 9 3 - 1 1 1

D ja rra p k i, Y o ln g u s ite 1 6 1 - 2 , 1 6 4

N a p u lu , m o th e r o f L in d a S y d d ic k 1 7 9

g e o m e tr ic art 1 6 2

N arritjin M a y m u ru , Y o ln g u artist 2 3 ,

‘i n s id e ’ a n d ‘o u t s id e ’ m e a n in g 16 3

mardayin,

sa c r e d la w 1 6 3 , 1 6 8

N y a p ililn g u , A n c e s tr a l w o m a n 1 6 1 , 164 N a rritjin , M a y m u r u , Y o ln g u artist 161, 164 Y o ln g u art 1 5 9 - 6 9 a n d s y s t e m s o f k n o w le d g e 1 6 1 , 1 65 s in c e E u r o p e a n c o lo n ia lis a t io n 1 6 8 - 9

1 6 1 , 1 65 n e o -c o n s e r v a tiv e c r itic s 2 8 N g a ly o d , b is e x u a l A n c e s to r sp irit 5 6 N g a r d jin , sp irit b e in g 15 N g a rrin d jeri p e o p le 1 7 , 2 1 - 3

see also

B e ll, D . an d T o n k in s o n , R .

N g w a r r a y , E.

see

K n g w a r r e y e , E.

N o o n k a n b a h 12

M o r r is o n , K .M . 2 0 - 1

n ig h t sk ie s 9 , 135

m o th e r g o d d e s s e s 5 3 - 4

N u e r p e o p le 21

M o r to n , J. 1 9 5 - 2 0 3

N u m b a k u lla , su p r e m e A n c e s to r 4 7 - 8

A r r e m te ‘D r e a m in g ’ 1 9 7 c o n jo in t e x is te n c e b e tw e e n c o u n tr y ,

O jib w a , n a tiv e A m e r ic a n p e o p le 2 0 - 1

A n c e s to r s an d p e o p le 2 0 0 g o o d an d e v il 2 0 1 - 3 p a n th e is tic in te r p reta tio n o f ‘D r e a m in g ’ 2 0 3

P a lm er, A . 1 9 5 - 6 , 2 0 4 P a m a -N y u n g a n la n g u a g e s 1 3 2 P a p u n y a T u la p a in tin g 3 - 4 , 1 3 2 , 1 3 6 - 7

r e c o n c ilia tio n 2 0 3

P a y n e , H . 12

to te m ic s o n g s 1 9 9 - 2 0 0

P in tu p i p a in tin g 1 3 3 - 5

th e L a w as first c a u s e 9 , 1 9 7 - 8

p la c e s , sa c red 2 , 12, 1 1 5 - 2 7

M o w a lja r la i, D . 2 1 7 - 2 3 D ja r a n b o llo i, m a ster o f th e h e a v e n s

221

see also

L a n g to n , M . an d M e r la n , F.

P le ia d e s , c o n s te lla tio n 9 P o ir ie r, S . 13

G i, to te m sp irit 2 2 0

P o p e P aul 1 1 1 , 2 2 7 - 8

M ilk y W a y 2 2 3

P o p p er , K. 11

N g a d ja r , In c o m p a r a b le O n e 2 2 1

Index R a d c liffe -B r o w n , A .R . 7 , 3 4 - 5 , 5 1 - 2 R a in b o w S e r p e n t 2 0 , 5 1 - 2 , 5 3 , 5 4 - 5

see also

H iatt, L .R .

323

see also

K e e n , I.

S te w a rt, P a d d y Japaljarri, 1 9 5 - 6 , 2 0 0 S tr e h lo w , C . 3 6 - 4 0

R a in b o w S p irit e ld e r s , 14, 2 5

S tr e h lo w , T .G .H . 9 , 19, 1 9 9

R edm ond, A . 1 6 -1 7

S u tto n , P. 1 4 1 - 3

R e s o u r c e A s s e s s m e n t C o m m is s io n 2 3 5 -

A b o r ig in a l h isto r y m o v e m e n t 1 4 8 - 9 A b o r ig in a l u n d e r sta n d in g o f h isto r y

7

1 5 1 -2

ritual 3 - 5

see also

D u ssa r t, F.

c o n f lic t ab o u t p r e -h isto r y 151

R iv e r s, W .H .R . 7

M a lin o w s k i o n m y th s 1 4 6 , 1 4 8

R o s e , D .B . 2 0 6 - 1 5

m y th s a b o u t C ap tain C o o k 1 4 5 - 5 1

a c en tred s o c ie tie s 2 0 6 - 7

m y th s an d c o n str u c tio n o f A b o r ig in a l id e n tity 1 52

b a la n c e an d e q u ilb r iu m 2 0 9 - 1 0 C a p ta in C o o k m y th 2 1 5

urban A b o r ig in a l in te llig e n t s ia 1 5 0 - 1

‘D r e a m in g ’ a n d e c o lo g y 2 0 7

S y d d ic k ,L . (T ju n k a y a N a p p a ltja ri)

‘G a ia ’ h y p o th e s is 11 , 2 0 5

W e ste r n D e s e r t p ain ter , 6

‘w o m e n ’s b u s in e s s 8 5

an d C h r istia n ity 1 8 1 - 2

Y a rra lin p e o p le 2 0 5 , 2 0 7

see also

F .R . M y e r s

R o th , W .E . 3 3 R u m se y , A . 17

T a y lo r , L . 5 , 5 6

R y a n , J. 16

terra nullius, 2 3 9 - 4 2 , see also B r en n a n , F.

S a h lin s , M . 2 2

T o n k in s o n , R . 2 4 7 - 6 8

245

a n th r o p o lo g is ts ’ r o le 2 5 1 - 4 , 2 6 5 - 6

S a id , E. 2 0 6 S a n d a ll, R. 2 8

B e m d t, R .M . an d C . 2 5 2 , 2 6 3

S c h m id t, W . 5 0

C h a r le s w o rth , H . 2 4 7 - 8

S e a m a n , P. 2 3

c h r o n o lo g y o f H in d m a r sh B r id g e a ffa ir 2 4 9 - 5 1

se c r e t k n o w le d g e 2 6 3 - 6 S e v e n S is te r s c o n s te lla tio n 8 9

F e r g ie , D . 2 4 9 , 2 4 7 , 2 5 9 , 2 6 2 , 2 6 5 - 6

S h o r ty L u n g k a rta T ju n g u rra y i 1 7 9 - 8 1

K artin ye ri, D . 2 4 9 , 2 5 7 , 2 6 5

S im o n s , M . 19

M a th e w s, J. J u stic e 2 5 0 - 1 , 2 6 9

so r c e r y 1 0 8

N garrin d jeri p e o p le 2 5 5 - 6

S p e n c e r , B .W . 7 - 8

N garrin d jeri C h r istia n s 2 6 5

A b o r ig in a l v ie w s o f h u m a n c o n c e p tio n 3 8 and E m ile D u r k h e im 3 6

S a u n d e r s, C . 2 4 9 - 5 0 se c r e t k n o w le d g e 2 6 1 trad ition 2 5 8 - 6 5

and A .P . E lk in 3 2

‘w o m e n ’s b u s in e s s ’ 2 5 6 - 7

and F.J. G ille n 3 1 - 2

see also

B e ll, D

and ‘H ig h G o d s ’ 3 9 , 4 6

T o o h e y , J. J u stic e 2 3 2 - 3

and S ir J a m e s F ra zer 6 , 3 1 . 3 2 , 3 7 - 8

to te m ism , 3 7 , 4 1 - 5 6 , 6 2

and A .W . H o w itt 3 2 , 3 5 , 3 9

T urner, D . 2 0 6

and A n d r e w L a n g 3 9 - 4 0 and m a g ic 3 7 - 8

U n a m b a l p e o p le , 5 4 - 5

and B . M a lin o w s k i 41

U n g u d d (W u n g u d d ) R a in b o w S e r p e n t

and A .R . R a d c liffe B r o w n 3 4 - 5

5 4 -5

and W .E . R o th 3 3 and C . S tr e h lo w 3 6 - 9

U ta U ta T ja n g a la , 1 9 8 - 9

see also

U to p ia 1 8 8 - 9 2

H iatt, L .R . and M u lv a n e y ,

D .J. S ta n n er, W .E .H . 8 - 9 , 5 3 - 4 , 6 1 - 7 7 , 1 9 8 , 2 1 2 -1 3

V o n S tu rm er, J. 1 6 0

Aboriginal Religions in Australia

324

W a lla n g a n d a , K im b e r le y sp irit b e in g

see

a ls o M o w a la r ja i D .

2 1 9 -2 3 W a r d a m a n p e o p le 1 2 2 , 1 2 6 W a n d jin a , sp ir it b e in g 1 5 - 1 6 , 54—5 , 2 1 7 ,

220

1 02, 1 0 4 - 6

Y a n g u r a p e o p le 10

W a n g a rr, a n c e s tr a l p a st 161

Y a rralin p e o p le 10, 2 0 7 - 9 , 2 1 2

see also

W a rn er, W .L . 5 2 W a tso n , C . 1, 5

R o s e , D .B .

Y o ln g u r e lig io n s 12

W a w ila k S is te r s 5 2 , 5 4

a n d art, 1 5 9 - 6 9

W ik , H ig h C o u r t d e c is io n 2 4 7 ‘w o m e n ’s b u s in e s s ’

Yamparru, ritual le a d e r see also D u ssa rt, F.

see

B e ll, D . and

T o n k in s o n , R .

an d C h r istia n ity 14, 2 7 9 - 9 3

see also

M o r p h y , H . M a g o w a n , F.

an d M c In to sh , I.

W o lf e , P . 7

Y uen d u m u 1 0 6 -7

W o o d w a r d , A .E . J u s tic e 2 3 2 - 4

Y u r lu n g g a r , G reat F ath er S p irit 5 2 - 3

W o r m s, E . 19

Yuwulyu c e r e m o n y

W o r s le y , P . 9 , 1 4 5 , 2 9 7 , 3 0 3 - 4 W u n g u d d (U n g u d d ) ea rth se r p e n t 2 1 9 — 23

8 2 , 10 2