aaa wk8 study notes (kinship)

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Australia through Time and Place Module 2: People, Power and Place WEEK 8: STUDY NOTES BY ROSITA HENRY RELATING TO PLACE: KINSHIP, DESCENT AND LAND TENURE INTRODUCTION This week we consider anthropological models of family and kinship in Aboriginal societies. We explore how kinship and social organization relates to land tenure in Aboriginal societies KINSHIP STUDIES: AUSTRALIA Anthropology in Australia used to be dominated by the study of kinship and social organisation. This relates to debates about politics and government and the idea that, though Aboriginal societies did not have institutions of government like police and courts and parliaments and bureaucratic agencies, they were organised in terms of kinship. The idea that the kinship system was the political system led to the focus on kinship studies in the anthropology of Australian Aboriginal societies. In fact, it was an unspoken requirement for anthropologists interested in kinship to come to Australia to do research. It was thought that if you could get your head around Aboriginal kinship systems, you would be able to understand just about any kinship system anywhere in the world. It is important to realise, if you haven't already, that anthropological accounts are sometimes different and conflicting because of the different theoretical approaches taken by the anthropologists. For example, Fred Myers (1986) in Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self and Howard Morphy (1991) in Ancestral Connections adopt quite different theoretical perspectives. Thus, some of the differences you might notice between Pintupi and Yolngu, as recorded by Myers and Morphy, are not just due to the fact that Pintupi and Yolngu live in different geographic and cultural areas and have different systems of social organisation, but due to the different lenses of the anthropologists, and on what they chose to focus. Morphy premises his study on the prior existence of definable social groups, whereas Myers starts with the individual. But before we examine what these authors have to say about kinship and social organisation we shall first look at what their anthropological ancestors and antecedents had to say on the subject of social organisation. Australia through Time and Place 1/15

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Australia through Time and Place

Module 2: People, Power and Place

WEEK 8: STUDY NOTES BY ROSITA HENRY RELATING TO PLACE: KINSHIP, DESCENT AND LAND TENURE INTRODUCTION This week we consider anthropological models of family and kinship in Aboriginal societies. We explore how kinship and social organization relates to land tenure in Aboriginal societies KINSHIP STUDIES: AUSTRALIA

Anthropology in Australia used to be dominated by the study of kinship and social organisation.

This relates to debates about politics and government and the idea that, though Aboriginal societies did not have institutions of government like police and courts and parliaments and bureaucratic agencies, they were organised in terms of kinship.

The idea that the kinship system was the political system led to the focus on kinship studies in the anthropology of Australian Aboriginal societies.

In fact, it was an unspoken requirement for anthropologists interested in kinship to come to Australia to do research. It was thought that if you could get your head around Aboriginal kinship systems, you would be able to understand just about any kinship system anywhere in the world.

It is important to realise, if you haven't already, that anthropological accounts are sometimes different and conflicting because of the different theoretical approaches taken by the anthropologists.

For example, Fred Myers (1986) in Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self and Howard Morphy (1991) in Ancestral Connections adopt quite different theoretical perspectives.

Thus, some of the differences you might notice between Pintupi and Yolngu, as recorded by Myers and Morphy, are not just due to the fact that Pintupi and Yolngu live in different geographic and cultural areas and have different systems of social organisation, but due to the different lenses of the anthropologists, and on what they chose to focus. Morphy premises his study on the prior existence of definable social groups, whereas Myers starts with the individual.

But before we examine what these authors have to say about kinship and social organisation we shall first look at what their anthropological ancestors and antecedents had to say on the subject of social organisation.

Australia through Time and Place 1/15

THE CLASSICAL MODELS In 1930-31, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, wrote a series of articles that were published

in the journal Oceania. In these articles he outlined a model of Australian Aboriginal social organisation.

Radcliffe-Brown and other anthropologists at the time were concerned with finding the key political entity that guaranteed to a society its equilibrium especially in the absence of any state structure or formal political organization.

The Indigenous populations of Australia were seen to be people without politics. The question for these anthropologists was what kept such societies functioning in states of well integrated equilibrium. Why didn't they just fall apart into a condition of anarchy?

The answer was the nature of the kinship systems, i.e. that it was kinship structures that held people together and formed the basis of group cohesion.

Work by anthropologists in Africa had resulted in the construction of models of society based on unilineal principles (unilineality refers to the concept that descent occurs down a single line, paternal or maternal). Anthropologists applied these models in Australia. In the absence of large, unified, and politically organised tribal structures, such as those found in Africa, Radcliffe-Brown argued that the basic political unit in Australia was a small patrilineal, patrilocal entity, which he called the Horde. THE HORDE MODEL The horde was a small group (Radcliffe-Brown calculated membership of the

horde to around 50) of lineally connected men, their wives, children and the unmarried sisters of the men.

Together this group owned a certain area of territory, the boundaries of which were known, and had common proprietary rights the land they owned.

Membership in the horde is determined by descent, patrilineal descent, so that children belong to the horde of their father.

Radcliffe-Brown stated that people could not be adopted into another horde or be dispossessed of their horde membership.

Usually the horde is exogamous, so men marry women from outside of their own horde.

Women, upon marriage, leave the horde and join the horde of their husbands. Each horde is independent and autonomous, acting as a corporate unit in relation

to other hordes. Radcliffe-Brown calculated that for its survival the horde required a territory that

did not exceed 100 square miles. This area coincided with the land that the horde members were spiritually affiliated with and had primary spiritual responsibility for. So there was a neat correspondence between the land owned by the horde and the land they used.

DEMISE OF THE HORDE MODEL In the late 1960s anthropologists, Les Hiatt and Mervyn Meggitt, argued that nothing like the horde actually existed anywhere in Australia. They argued that: the composition of groups was flexible; membership in groups was based on a number of criteria, not just descent;

Australia through Time and Place 2/15

the male members of different descent groups did not live on different, separate pieces of land;

people foraged on land that extended beyond the area of sites they owned Hiatt, L.R. 1962. Local organisation among the Australian Aborigines. Oceania 32(4):267-86 Meggitt, M. 1962. Desert People. Sydney: Angus & Robertson STANNER’S MODEL In 1965, Stanner modified Radcliffe-Brown's model. He suggested that we should think in terms of two types of groupings: the band the clan Stanner, WEH 1965. Aboriginal territorial organization: estate, range, domain and regime. Oceania 36:1-26 THE BAND The band is the group found in the area at any given time. The band has the right to hunt and gather resources of the area at that time. Stanner referred to the area of country the band occupied and exploited as the

range. THE RANGE The range has a core membership of men belonging to the local clan and their

families but contains visitors from other clans. Stanner referred to the group that owned the land as the clan. THE CLAN The clan consists of the people descended patrilineally, who have the primary

rights and responsibilities related to the mythology and rituals associated with the area.

Stanner referred to the area owned by the clan as the estate. THE ECOLOGICAL MODEL According to this model, adaptation to resources is the principal structural feature

of foraging societies People did/do not live within exclusive, bounded and defended patrilineal

territories Variations in local group organisation is the result of social adaptations to

different ecological zones In Arnhem Land, the richly endowed region can support much higher population

densities and that is why clans are found in this area In the desert, limited resources and periods of scarcity give rise to more fluid

forms of social organisation. While correctly recognising that people did not live within exclusive, bounded and

defended patrilineal territories, the ecological model assumes that territorial organisation can only be understood in terms of actual on-the-ground groups of people.

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This approach sees variations in local group organisation as being the result of social adaptations to different ecological zones.

In Arnhem Land, for example, it has been argued that the richly endowed region can support much higher population densities and that is why clans are found in this area, while in the desert limited resources and periods of scarcity give rise to more fluid forms of social organisation.

This approach sounds good and makes a lot of sense to us. However, the approach does not tell us how societies reproduce themselves through time. It only accounts for the existence and composition of a foraging group at one point in time and space.

It takes snapshots of society, where culture or society is the product of a particular environment.

This approach was very popular during the 1960's and 70's among a number of anthropologists and archaeologists who worked in Australia. However, very few anthropologists these days would advocate such an approach.

PRINCIPLES OF KIN CLASSIFICATION Two key principles of Aboriginal systems of kin classification are: the equivalence of siblings of the same sex. the non-limitation of range. This means that people who are of the same sibling line and who are of the same sex are considered to be equal. For example, if a person recognises a man as his/her father this person must also recognise that man's brothers as fathers (and not uncles). In the same way, mother's sisters are classified as mothers. So if your Father’s Brother is your father then your Father’s Brother’s children are considered to be your siblings, and if your Mother’s Sister is your mother, then her children are your siblings. The system of classification is not limited in range because it can be extended to include everyone in an Aboriginal person’s social universe (including the anthropologist!). THE YOLNGU OF NORTHEAST ARNHEM LAND Lloyd Warner who worked in the area in the 1930's referred to the people as

Murngin, Ronald and Catherine Berndt called them the Wulamba while Warren Shapiro identified them as the Miwuyt. Both Morphy and Williams (and other anthropologists) refer to these people as Yolngu.

The reason why anthropologisits used such different names was that Aboriginal people did not have a name to refer to the wider related group of clans, only names for the clans themselves.

In all the dialects of northeast Arnhem Land the word for Aboriginal human being is yolngu, and linguists adopted the convention of referring to the Yolngu dialects as comprising the Yolngu language, and of their speakers as Yolngu-speaking peoples.

Today Aboriginal people in northeast Arnhem Land also call themselves Yolngu. However, we need to remember that Yolngu is a created construct which does not

necessarily refer to any discreet or easily recognised or reproduced group of people on the ground and Yolngu most frequently refer to themselves by a more

Australia through Time and Place 4/15

specific name which identifies them with a more narrowly defined group of people. - eg a clan or a dialect group.

Yolngu therefore is not a tribe with a corporate identity (although it may become that in the future).

SAME-SEX SIBLING EQUIVALENCE AMONG YOLNGU The notion of sibling equivalence emphasises relatedness. (i.e. it emphasises

sameness over difference). So Mother and Mothers's sister are considered equivalent and therefore both are called Mother and children of same sex siblings are all brother's and sister's to each other.

However, there is another scheme operating in the kinship system that emphasises difference. Although Yolngu consider same sex siblings to be equivalent, they differentiate between siblings of the opposite sex.

Thus, although siblings of opposite sex belong to the same moiety and clan, their children do not.

Children of opposite sex siblings are not regarded as brothers and sisters. This distinction between those children from men and those from women is

important in terms of the identification of possible in-laws. Cross- cousins (children of opposite-sex siblings) fall into the category of spouse.

Among the Yolngu, the fundamental kinship category and relationship is not husband and wife, but between brothers and sisters. It is the gender distinction between siblings which is the key.

On the one hand, the same-sex sibling relationship is the basis for emphasising relatedness so that Yolngu people can refer to a wide range of people as kin.

On the other hand, the brother-sister, or opposite-sex sibling relationship forms the basis for differentiation of kin from affines (relations through marriage). Descent from opposite sex sibling pairs is important in creating distance.

This distinction between brothers and sisters is important for marital alliances, the organisation of ritual and relationship to country, as we shall see later.

MOIETIES Yolngu society is divided into two exogamous patrilineal moieties (two

categories) called Dhuwa and Yirritja. Exogamy refers to the practice of marrying someone who belongs to a different

group from your own. Thus people in the Yirritja moiety must marry someone who is identified with the

Dhuwa moiety. Patrilineal refers to membership based on descent in the male line. Moieties are social categories and not, social groups. Groups and categories are

different things altogether. Groups refer to actual, living aggregates of people who regularly interact in some meaningful way. Categories, on the other hand, are conceptual and abstract entities, which, however, can form the basis of a social group.

An example of social category in our society would be the category ‘bachelor’. This category has certain criteria that must be met in order for humans to be included in it. Thus the category bachelor is defined in terms of not being married and male. The category bachelor does not refer to a living, breathing group of single men who regularly act together and have common aims and aspirations,

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though it could provide, at any point in time, the basis for such a group. Moieties are like this.

In some contexts, such as ritual, moiety categories will provide the basis for the organisation of individuals into ritual groups. But only for this context, and the ritual groups formed certainly do not contain all of the people who are classified as part of that moiety nor do the groups formed endure through time as a reproducing social unit.

MOIETY AFFILIATION According to Morphy, among the Yolngu individuals are ascribed the moiety

affiliation of their father and marry a person of their mother's moiety, i.e. they are ascribed a moiety according to patrilineal principles.

However, another anthropologist who worked in the area, Warren Shapiro, argues that the principle of recruitment to a moiety is by what he terms "relational affiliation".

In other words the rule is not that one belongs to the moiety of one's father, but that one belongs to the opposite moiety of one's mother.

Contrary to what Morphy argues, there does not appear to be a patrilineal ideology at work here.

Individuals are not given the moiety of their father, but the opposite moiety to their mother, which since there are by definition only two moieties, just happens to be that of their father. In other words it is your mother's moiety affiliation that determines your own moiety affiliation, not your father's.

You may be wondering what difference it makes. In some instances, the identity of the father is unknown or a child is produced which is the outcome of a wrong marriage, an intra-moiety union, say a Yirritja man and a Yirritja woman. If we use Morphy's argument and follow the father then the children would be Yirritja too. However, if we follow what Shapiro argues, then the child produced will be identified as Dhuwa.

Thus, Warren Shapiro argues that moiety affiliation although patrilineal, is matri-determined.

Because it is matri-determined we can predict with 100% accuracy the moiety affiliation of children who result from so-called wrong marriages. They will always be the opposite moiety to their mother.

YOLNGU CLANS Not only are Yolngu conceptualised as belonging to one or the other of these

moieties but they are also members of different clans. Membership in a clan is based on patrilineal descent, which means that people

belong to the clan of their father, which is a clan in the opposite moiety to that of their mother.

Morphy says that each clan can trace back its descent to a single ancestor over about five generations.

The members of a clan acknowledge joint ownership of sacred and ritual paraphernalia such as song cycles, myths, objects, names, etc, which are referred to in Yolngu as mardayin.

Although stressing the existence of clans and their patrilineal nature, Morphy recognises that on the ground there is not a perfect fit. Individuals may be

Australia through Time and Place 6/15

affiliated to clans in addition that of their father's. Clans he says are also subdivided into a number of separate patrilines or sub-lineages.

These patrilines have different sets of ritual responsibilities and may be more closely linked to a particular section of the clan land or to particular clan dreamings.

There is no one to one match between clans and ownership of the dreamings. That is, although each clan is thought to own a unique set of dreamings, individual dreamings can be jointly owned by a number of other clans and are rarely the property of a single clan. For example, the Munyuku share the Yirritja wild honey dreaming with the Dharlwangu and Gumatj clans, and the whale with the Warramirri and Gumatj clans. The performance of a ceremony for these dreamings will involve the agreement and participation of the clans sharing the dreaming.

PINTUPI PEOPLE Fred Myers (1986) argues that in the Western Desert cultural bloc it is misleading

and indeed wrong to think of landownership as vested in concrete, enduring, discrete corporate groups, such as clans.

Rather, groups are extremely contingent entities, where boundaries are relatively undefined and membership is fluid and variable.

Groups in the Western Desert are the outcome of processes of individual choice and negotiation.

Those who share ownership of a country or, more specifically, a place, call each other 'one countryman' and in this regard they could be said to form a group.

Each person, however, has his or her own set of 'one countrymen'. Myers defines 'one countrymen' as a consisting of bilateral descending kindred,

in that an individual can be linked to a site either through their mother or through their father.

This group of bilateral, descending kindred, however, is not a corporate group. It is a group that overlaps with other groups because individuals can affiliate with

a number of different countries. It is this emphasis on individuals rather than groups which distinguishes Myers

work from all the others that had preceded his. In other words, according to Myers, there are no concrete local groups. There are

only individuals joined together as countrymen into a larger regional entity. “It is necessary to conceptualise Pintupi social life at the residential level through individuals. Pintupi maintain that society, as they see it, is potentially boundary-less, that individual networks and ritual links extend beyond any definable group. No one, they say, lived entirely in one place, with a single set of people, at one waterhole, as if "in a paddock". (Myers 1986:79)

In an environment with unpredictable rainfall, scarcity of permanent water sources and dispersed food species, such group flexibility and individual mobility makes a lot of sense.

No set of individuals lives entirely within the boundaries of a single local area. Rights to forage and use resources are acquired in a number of countries because of the multiple links people have to land and the multiple links they have to other

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individuals. Use rights are thus extended to a wide number of 'countrymen' who in turn extend

rights to others. Thus, rights to resources are open to a large number of people including kinsmen, affines, ritual partners, and people who share the same dreaming.

PINTUPI CONCEPTS The important point that emerges from this discussion is that economic relations

to land are informed by and flow from ritual/religious relations to country rather than the other way round.

Country is conceptualised first and foremost as a cosmological phenomenon and not an economic entity.

Thus, a person has rights to forage and use the resources on the land because of his/her spiritual attachments to land, which confers upon that person their individual and social identity.

So when we are attempting to understand Aboriginal social organisation it is better to start with Aboriginal cosmology rather than with our own ethnocentric concepts of people bounded into discrete corporate descent groups.

Rather than starting out with the premise that there are pre-existing bounded entities such as clans or hordes which then claim ownership of certain tracts of land, perhaps it is more useful and correct to start with Aboriginal concepts.

Thus, it is dreaming which confers to people their identity in place and it is this identity in place that subsequently organises social relationships.

Let us now have a closer look at other types of Social Categories that exist in Aboriginal societies, remembering that these, like moieties are conceptual and not necessarily actual social groups. GENERATIONAL LEVELS In some societies, such as in the Western Desert and around Broome, people are not classified in terms of moieties but in terms of generational levels. In Pitjantjatjara society there are two generational levels called: nganantarka (nganana = we, tarka = bone) tjanamiltja (tjanampa = their, iltjanpa = flesh). Yolngu have a similar system of generational levels superimposed on their moiety system. Ma:ri (mother's mother and mother's mother's brother) gutharra (daughter's child-woman speaking, and sister's daughter's child -man speaking). In societies where emphasis is placed on both moieties and generational levels you get a section system. SECTIONS

• Section systems classify all members of a society as belonging to one of 4 categories.

• In section systems, moieties are bisected to create four categories.

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Using the rule of moiety exogamy, and generational endogamy, a man is restricted to only one category of eligible spouse. Exogamy (marriage outside the category): He cannot marry a woman of his own section as they are part of the same moiety. Endogamy (marriage within the category): He cannot marry someone from a section in a different generational level. SUB-SECTIONS Some Aboriginal kinship systems stop at sections but others, like Yolngu, get

even more complicated and not only have sections but subsections. In sub-section systems each moiety is divided into 4 categories (actually there are

16 categories because there are separate male and female categories). The rules of marriage (i.e. moiety exogamy and generational endogamy) restricts

the choice of marriage partner to particular sub-sections. SOCIOCENTRIC CATEGORIES Moieties, sections, subsections and generational levels are sociocentric categories. They are absolute divisions of the world. You either belong to such a category or

you do not. The relationship between the categories is fixed and defined by society and not by

the individual. In other words, they are not relative to the person, i.e. ego-centric. Anthropologists have remarked that because sections and subsections classify

people into these absolute divisions they are useful in working out the kind of relations which are appropriate between people who might not be kin, or who are strangers.

In other words, they are a good way of incorporating people into the widest possible social universe. Everybody is related in some way or another.

Other anthropologists have argued that the categories we find in moieties, section and subsection systems actually function to regulate marriage, and initially these sections and subsections were referred to by some anthropologists as marriage classes. In other words, these classes were thought to be ways in which people avoided incest and created alliances.

The important thing about sociocentric categories such as moieties, sections and subsections are that they order people in relationship to land.

The existence of such categories is particularly useful where group membership on the ground is flexible and fluid.

Sociocentric categories create certainty with regard to who is or is not a holder of country.

For example, among the Pintupi, although individuals have a great deal of flexibility with regard to group membership on the ground and with regard to where they have the right to live and forage, those individuals will still belong to given moieties and subsections which fix not only their kinship relations but also their connection with place.

PINTUPI MOIETIES Among the Pintupi there are two, unnamed moieties which correspond to the

divisions of people into owners and workers. All the members of my patrimoiety may be owners for a site because we have

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relations to that place through father and other men. The members of the other moiety, which is connected to my own through my mother, are in respect of that particular site, workers.

The designation of these moieties as owners or workers is contextual and only really gets expressed in ritual contexts.

Together both owners and workers hold the country. Their roles with respect to each other are complementary and reciprocal.

If I am the owner of a place, the workers stand in a relationship of sister's son to me. This expresses the differentiation between children of opposite sex siblings. Remember, because of the classificatory kinship system and the subsection system there are a number of men who are classified in the category of sister's son. The beauty of this system is that at times of ritual, a number of individuals can fill the same role. The organisation of the ritual does not rely on one person as sister's son.

What happens with the subsection system is that individual relationships, such as sister's son or mother's brother, become manifested as a part of a wider social system or structure. They become classes or sections.

Kinship relations are the idiom for constructing wider social categories of people. In ritual contexts, therefore, sister's son or mother's brother are social categories

and not necessarily the specific markers of an individual's identity. SECTIONS AND SUB-SECTIONS The subsection system is relatively new among some Aboriginal peoples. The Pintupi were just beginning to adopt a subsection system in place of 4-section

system in 1933, and some Yolngu groups were adopting it as late as 1950. Stanner, reports that among the Murinbata in the N.T. the subsection system is a

bit like keeping up with the Jones, in this case neighbouring groups of people. He reports the circumstances of one man, who was imprisoned by the Europeans and when he was released some years later, found that everyone in his community was now practising a subsection rather than a section system.

Social categories and systems of kin classification are subject to re-invention and transformation.

Moreover, in support of my argument that such sociocentric categories fix relationship with land, perhaps it could be argued that the apparent spread of sub-section systems in many parts of Australia is a response to increasing uncertainty with regard to land tenure that resulted from the colonial encounter.

YOLNGU SUB-SECTIONS Yolngu call their sub-sections ma:lk or 'skins'. They comprise a set of 16 paired names, 8 for females and 8 for males. In this system the sections relate to each other as ideal kin-relations.

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Yolngu sometimes incorporate an outsider by giving him or her a subsection name after which anyone could work out a specific relationship to that person.

For example, the subsection bilinydjan is the 'mother' of the subsection bangadi. So if you are given the subsection name bangadi then any women belonging to the subsection bilinydjan you can call mother or ngandi.

Similarly, people belonging to the section wamutjan would say they were related to people of the subsection gamarrang as Mother’s Mother (ma:ri) and that gamarrang people are their gutharra.

THE MA:RI/GUTHARRA RELATIONSHIP Ma:ri and gutharra refer to kin in alternate generations. The ma:ri/gutharra relationship is the backbone of Yolngu society, and the

Yolngu refer to it that way (Williams 1986:38). In Yolngu gesture-language the region of the upper back and the backbone in

particular signify gutharra or the ma:ri/gutharra relationship. William's (1986) argues that the ma:ri/gutharra relationship defines continuing

links to land. It is ‘basic to the ordered continuity’ in the Yolngu system of land tenure

(Williams 1986:38) The ma:ri/gutharra relationship is a Yolngu model for the maintenance of

relations between groups through the lands they own (Williams 1986:54). People not only have rights in their father's land but also in their mother's

patrilineal land (ngandi land) and their mother's mother's land (ma:ri land). Yolngu have the right of assent or veto to any major decision that affects their

Mother's land or their Mother's Mother's land. They should be consulted in all matters involving the symbols of the land and of

ritual performance. To put it the other way around, the men of any particular landowning group

cannot make a decision about land without consulting first their sisters' sons (gutharra). Sister's sons are thought of as ‘holding’ their Mother’s Mother's country. They have the obligation to protect that land, their ma:ri land, and also people classed as ma:ri. In return they have permission to make the group's designs, perform its songs and can claim to succeed to the land and its sacra in the event of their Mother’s Mother’s group dying out.

The ma:ri/gutharra relationship is a generational one. ma:ri and gutharra form part of a succession of generations that are the basis for

Yolngu notions of holding or looking after country and people. This notion of holding denotes nurturance. As one Yolngu man put it: 'We, the

gutharra, are the body of our ma:ri' . The ma:ri/gutharra relationship is not only a generational one but also

conceptually a gender relationship. It is a gender relationship in the sense that it flows from kinship categories engendered by the gender distinction between brother and sister.

PEOPLE AND PLACE

• In Yolngu ideology corporate groups are made corporate by their ownership of land.

• They do not pre-exist as corporate groups.

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• Relationships between people are conceptualised as relationships between places.

• A marriage of a Dhuwa woman to a Yirritja man and vice versa is a relationship between Dhuwa and Yirritja country

• It is from the relationships between places that the relationships between people flow.

COMPLEMENTARY FILIATION Like the Yolngu, Pintupi classify holders of any particular country as being either

owners/bosses or managers/workers. Anthropologists call this ‘comlementary filiation’. People are owners for their father's and father's father's country and managers for

their mother's and mother's father's country. The ritual roles of these kirda [boss/owner] and kurdungurlu

[worker/manager/policeman] are essentially interdependent and complementary (Bell 1993:140)Kirda to kurdungurlu is conceptually a reciprocal relationship: the system of mapping people on to land is overlaid with safeguard mechanisms that ensure knowledge will be preserved and transmitted (Bell 1993:144).

Bell, D. 1993. Daughters of the Dreaming. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin KIN CLASSIFICATION AND LAND TENURE In Yolngu and other Aboriginal contexts, therefore, we see that the code for

defining social relations is drawn from the domain of kinship. The system of kin classification and social categories assigns people to a number

of inter-related identities, social roles and social statuses. It is a system, which is capable of transcending the immediate and the local. In

fact, it is highly portable as in the case of subsections, so that men can attend large-scale rituals some distance away and still be able to participate in a socially meaningful way with the other participants.

Thus the spread of the sub-section system in a sense creates a kind of pan-Aboriginal identity. It also creates certainty with regard to land holding. It regulates and legitimates the holding of country.

The ma:ri/gutharra relationship among the Yolngu and the similar kirda/kurdungurlu relationship in Central Australia and among Pintupi people in the Western desert is not simply a coming together of groups for the purposes of ritual. It is a system of linking groups for the purposes of land maintenance and the survival and transmission of the dreaming law. It is a system of mapping people on to land.

In other words, it is a system of land tenure. LAND TENURE AND NATIVE TITLE Mabo v the State of Queensland

The High Court of Australia judgement altered a basic premise of the Australian legal system and society, the legal fiction of terra nullius (that Australia was a land belonging to no-one) In May 1982 Eddie Mabo and four other Islanders (of Murray (Mer) Island in the Torres Strait) began action in the Australian courts seeking confirmation of their

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traditional land rights. The Court rejected the doctrine of terra nullius The Court held that: The Crown gained radical title to the land on settlement but this did not wipe out

existing native title; After settlement, governments could extinguish native title by legislation or by

granting interests in land; The power of the Crown to extinguish native title by legislation is subject to the

Racial Discrimination Act 1975; Native title is defined according to the traditional laws and customs of people

having a relationship to land; Traditional laws and customs may, and can, change over time; Connection to land need not be a physical, unbroken one; Native title is inalienable, ie it cannot be bought or sold, eased or mortgaged. THE NATIVE TITLE ACT After the Court decision the Federal Native Title Act 1993 was created to:

recognise and protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' native title rights and interests;

provide ways to determine native title and protect the existing rights of Governments, industry and the general public;

provide ways to negotiate development on land or waters where indigenous people may have native title rights and interests.

WHAT IS NATIVE TITLE? Native title is defined in s.223 (1) of the Native Title Act 1993 as:

"the communal, group or individual rights and interests of Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islanders in relation to land or waters where:

• a) the rights and interests are possessed under the traditional laws acknowledged, and the traditional customs observed, by the Aboriginal people or Torres Strait islanders; and

• b) the Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islanders, by those laws and customs, have a connection with the land and waters; and

• c) the rights and interests are recognised by the common law of Australia."

NATIVE TITLE VS LAND RIGHTS Native title rights must be determined by the traditional laws and customs of the

Indigenous claimants. In contrast, land rights is granted under statute (legislation). The symbolic value of native title over land rights is that it preceded colonisation. Unlike land rights, Native Title is not something granted by a foreign legal

system. Native title is a pre-existing right PROOF OF NATIVE TITLE Who is a native title holder? Is the definition is based on descent or are other connections with land recognised under Indigenous law and custom? How does one define the actual group of native title owners?

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On what basis does one exclude other Aboriginal people who might also claim an interest in a particular area of land? For indigenous claimants to prove native title in Australia, they need to show:

– that they have rights in country according to their own system of laws and customs

– that such a system is a rightful descendent of an organised society which occupied the relevant area at the time when British sovereignty was established

Native Title, thus, directly raises issues of traditional theoretical concern within the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology:

– how social and cultural groups are constituted historically, and reproduced, sustained, and transformed over time.

THE QUESTION OF CONTINUITY ‘Continuity of course is not an all or nothing affair, and it leaves hanging the question of whether what survives remains important rather than mere folkloric curiosity. Moreover the old institutions may survive but assume a different character in a colonial context’ (Beckett 1994:15) In the Mabo case the defence argued that the Island Court, established by the Qld Government, constituted a substitution of indigenous practice rather than a continuation of it. The plaintiffs argued that the decisions of the court were, in fact, informed by Islander custom. However, was this ‘the same’ custom as that existing 100 years ago? The defence argued that the system had been radically changed as a result of external influences.

Two views can be found among anthropologists:

– ‘primitive culture’ is irreparably transformed by contact with ‘civilisation’, ie cultural loss.

– Cultures survive against all odds, encompassing alien influences, remaining essentially themselves.

‘…if the first view underestimates the resilience of cultural reproduction, the second tends to a romantic essentialism which short circuits the understanding of cultural dynamics’ (Beckett 1994:22) Beckett, J. 1994. The Murray Island Case and the Problem of Cultural Continuity. In W.Sanders (ed.) Mabo and Native Title: Origins and Institutional Implications. Canberra:CAEPR. THE NOTION OF 'TRADITION' To what extent may tradition change and still be identifiable as the 'tradition' of a particular group? There is tension between the notion of tradition and the notion of change Some argue that change of custom equals extinguishment of native title. Some say that Aboriginal people's relationship to land is unchanging. But culture and society changes and, therefore, people's relationship with land can change.

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HERITAGE AND LAND TENURE Legislation specifically designed to protect 'cultural heritage’ Prior to land rights legislation and the Mabo decision, Heritage legislation

provided the only recourse for Aboriginal people. They could not get any title to land but they could attempt to get some form of

recognition and government protection over particular sites. The recognition of Aboriginal rights in terms of sites is a convenient European

construction. Aboriginal people themselves do not envisage the cultural landscape as a series of

isolated dots or sites. All the landscape is culturally important. Focusing on sites only is like trying to understand a book on the basis of having

read the chapter headings. The chapter headings give you some idea of the content of the book but to fully understand you have to connect the headings to all the words which make up the whole text.

THE NGARRINDJERI AND THE HINDMARSH ISLAND BRIDGE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA In 1994 the Federal Labour government halted the building of the bridge from the mainland to Hindmarsh Island on the basis of Aboriginal cosmology (‘Ngarrindjeri women’s business’).There was an outcry from pro-development lobby and from the liberal state government who wished the bridge to go ahead. The SA liberal Government then appointed a Royal Commission to investigate whether the Ngarindjerri women’s business was in fact a fabrication. The Hindmarsh Island case brought to the fore questions about the relevance of anthropology and the role of consultant anthropologists working in the heritage/ native title area. The key theoretical issues raised by the Hindmarsh Island bridge case: Is culture something unchanging, fixed, frozen in time, like an artefact belonging

in a museum? Or is it something dynamic? How is’ tradition’ to be defined? The concept of tradition emphasises the

transmission through the generations of customs, knowledge and practices. As Ulin (1995:519) notes, 'such a concept implies that the younger generation accepts passively the cultural products of its ancestors’.

Anthropologists have argued that all culture is, in a sense, ‘fabricated’, i.e. invented or created by human beings - culture is dynamic. It is always continuously changing. Friedman (1992:853) notes,

– “… the past is always practiced in the present, not because the past imposes itself, but because subjects in the present fashion the past in the practice of their social identity”.

Native title and other cultural heritage issues in Australia, and elsewhere, have brought to the fore the contested nature of the past and the way people ‘fashion’ the past in making their own futures.