EXAMPLE OF A STATUTORY DEFINITION
The 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act provided a statutory definition of ‘traditional Aboriginal owner’ which included, in part, a requirement that to be recognised as such First Peoples had to be members of a ‘local descent group’.
There has been a lot debated and written about the notion of ‘descent’ in this definition, but there has been no change to it. Reasons given for not changing include the fact that bureaucrats have learnt to live with it.
But, as we are seeing with the bitter dispute at Muckaty, it is First Peoples who pay the real price for “having to live with it.”
Muckaty is a pastoral lease on Warlmanpa land, north of Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory. After a successful traditional Aboriginal land claim, under the 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act, the land was converted to Aboriginal freehold title.
One group of ‘traditional Aboriginal owners’ (as identified by the Northern Land Council and defined by the statutory definition) within the Muckaty area has volunteered a site for a radioactive waste facility and will receive $12m for doing so, This group of ‘traditional Aboriginal owners’ was identified by the Northern Land Council using a statutory definition in the Aboriginal Land Rights Act.
Other Warlmanpa people with ties in the Muckaty area are disputing the rights of the group who volunteered the site.
This raises additional and stressful problems for all of them – and they are already overloaded with stressful problems as a result of the means used to colonise this country.
The role of the notion of ‘descent’ in modern anthropology and in statutory definitions of First Peoples realities would take some time to tease out.
Briefly stated, the expression ‘local descent group’ makes use of a notion of patrilineal descent which stresses the relationship between fathers and sons. A patrilineal descent model was considered by some to provide a reasonable account of First Peoples social organisation.
My interest is in providing a contrast to that model with the aim of better approximating First Peoples realities.
NON-RECOGNITION OF MANGAYA (DREAMING) IDENTITY
Generally speaking, non-recognition of First Peoples lies at the heart of the British colonial process in this country. Non-recognition has also been a main part of the processes and practices which have maintained privileges rooted in British colonisation here, up to - and including - the present day.
The particular non-recognition issue i seek to raise here goes much further than non-recognition of First Peoples in general.
Briefly stated, the particular issue is the unqualified right of First Peoples authorities to specify the Dreaming persona of members of their world. And, to do this in keeping with their own Ways, free of Western systems of metaphysics.
‘Dreaming Persona’ can be thought of as a sort of spiritual identity which is given to people born into the Ways of First Peoples. This identity is framed in terms of how the whole of life – cosmos – is signified by ‘Dreaming’. Everything is subject to a process of signification, including people.
A ‘Dreaming Persona’ identity provides people with a place in the overall scheme of things, including relations with country and other aspects of life.
It will be teased out a little more in relation to the Warumungu concept of mangaya which follows.
In 1901, Spencer and Gillen had conducted fieldwork with Warumungu people at the Tennant Creek telegraph station.
In their 1904 book, ‘The Northern Tribes of Central Australia’ - written as a result of their careful fieldwork with senior lawmen in 1901 – Spencer and Gillen wrote about the reincarnation beliefs of First Peoples in Central Australia.
They wrote:
“In every tribe without exception there exists a firm belief in the reincarnation of ancestors.” (1904 1969:145)
That is to say, not only were the Dreaming ancestors who gave shape to cosmos reborn in some form or other (e.g. bandicoots, kangaroos etc) but that people themselves were/are reincarnated ancestors.
If we take a look at part of the picture at the start of the 20th century – when European forms of certainty dominated life in this country – we find Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia in 1901 coming into contact with senior lawmen. They believed they were documenting, for the benefit of distant British theorists and future men of science, the ways of life of a rapidly disappearing dying race, Reincarnation, in such a context, would have appeared to be a forlorn hope,
For the benefit of distant theorists and future men of science, then, they wrote
“Emphasis must be laid on the fact that this belief is not confined to tribes such as the Arunta, Warramunga, Anula, and others amongst whom descent is counted in the male line, but is found just as strongly developed in the Urabunna tribe, in which descent, both of class and totem, is strictly maternal.” (1904 1969:145)
Spencer and Gillen themselves took a keen interest in what they called the ‘descent of the totem’.
“Passing northwards from the Kaitish we come to a group of tribes, including the Warramunga, Walpari, Wulmala, Worgaia, and Tjingilli, in which the ideas with regard to totems agree in essential features with those of the Kaitish and Unmatjera people, but at the same time differ in certain important details. In the first place every individual is, once more, the reincarnation of an Alcheringa spirit who belonged to some particular totem, or, as the Warramunga call it, mungai.” (1969:161)
Mangayi is a modern spelling (Simpson n.d.?) as is mangaya in the report of the Aboriginal Land Commissioner on 1985 Warumungu land claim (e.g. 1988:55).
The appropriateness of the term ‘totem’ has been subject to much debate. It is part of the vocabulary of Australian anthropologists and has found its way, to a certain extent, into wider public use both by indigenous and non-indigenous people.
‘Totem’ is an unfortunate term which, removed from its original context, has taken on a life of its own to mean something life a special relationship between a person or people and some other aspect of life such as a species of plant or animal.
In place of ‘descent of the totem’ i prefer to talk about how Being is signified. That is, how newly emerging life is assigned a place in the greater scheme of things as viewed through the systems of signification associated with Dreaming.
In 1901, Spencer and Gillen took a keen interest in these matters:
“In the Warramunga group the descent of the totem, almost without exception, follows in the paternal line, and the totems are markedly divided into two groups, one belonging to the Kingilli half and the other to the Uluuru.” (1969:163-164)
Wurlurru (Uluuru) and Kingili (Kingilli) are two interrelated and complementary opposite parts of Warumungu life – moieties - which, like two hemispheres in our brain, make up a whole. They are complementary and opposite, like yin and yang, with Wurlurru being aligned with fire and Kingili with water. Both are required for a full life.
“At the same time, in very rare instances we do meet with a man whose totem is not the same as that of his father; but it would be quite possible, amongst a camp containing a hundred or more individuals, not to find a single one whose totem was not the same as that of his father.”(1969:164)
“Amongst the Warramunga we did not meet with a single instance of an individual who was a member of a totemic group belonging to the moiety of the tribe to which he himself did not belong, and, further, we only met with rare cases in which a child was not the totem of his or her father.” (1969:165)
Spencer and Gillen documented how men are decorated for ceremony with the design of their mangaya and how they preform ritualised dances as part of the ceremonies which re-creates Wirnkarra (Dreaming). Spencer and Gillen were struck by how the men of the other moiety played a key role in preparing the men of the opposite moiety for ceremony.
The 1901 picture seems unambiguously clear – descent of the totem (so-called) is deemed to be normally directly patrilineal with only rare cases by way of exception, and these rare cases do not cross the moiety line between Wurlurru and Kingili.
In their opinion:
“… in the Warramunga the descent of the totem is not absolutely but for the most part strictly paternal.” (1904 1969:29)
But, as we shall see – and full credit to W.E.H. Stanner’s work in 1934 - this clear analytically tidy picture is not to be mistaken for life as lived by the people it purports to represent.
more to come ...
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