"MERELY CEREMONIAL"
There is a tendency amongst those who are wedded to a narrowly conceived form of materialism and corresponding interpretations of ‘kinship’ to dismiss what takes place which such serious and formal displays as ‘merely ceremonial’.
My own view is that what is made manifest by such ceremonial displays goes to the core realities of First Peoples and that much of what concerns those who dismiss its importance remain in the realm of epiphenomena or, at least, a lower level of reality than that which informs the lives of senior First Peoples.
Some anthropologists and researchers take ‘sister’s sons’ (in the European sense) to be the literal meaning of ‘kurtungurlu’ and then regard it as being extended to include other men. Nash’s fine work with the etymology supports this interpretation, at least in terms of possible origins of the word.
The narrow focus on family relations is a dominant view for some modern anthropologists.
Ian Keen, for example, in a comparative study of seven different groups of First Peoples across Australia has written that (page 176)
“I agree with Harold Scheffler that Aboriginal notions of relatedness had their basis in genealogical relations – that is, relations between parents and children. … all the nuclear family terms may be extended to distant relations…” (2004 175-176)
Taking a wider view – one which does not privilege as ‘literal’ forms of family relationships which make sense within Western frameworks – is a more difficult challenge. This challenge has been well articulated and raised by some anthropologists - Schneider for example - but I am unaware of it being seriously addressed by mainstream anthropologists in Australia.
The systems of categorisation indigenous to this country may well be informed by very different systems of values and concerns than those which produce Western notions of kinship relations.
The idea that the whole of First Peoples Ways can be grounded in the relationships between parent and child stands in contrast to a view which allows space at the macro end of the scale for something which is akin to sovereignty (but not that of recent the modern nation state form).
My view is that the category kurtungurlu stands on its own as part of cluster of categories which includes kirda. Those who act in certain ways, within highly constrained limits, are categorised accordingly.
Following Burridge’s work in New Guinea (“Tangu Traditions”) is a subtle interplay between ‘behaviour’ and ‘categorisation’ which is not grounded in Western notions of kinship nor of Western notions of biology.
While life in Central Australia is not as plastic as it appears to be for Tangu speakers in New Guinea, neither is it as rigid and fixed as Western thinkers may prefer it to be.
‘Classificatory kinship’ takes us into other social universes. I find these matters very difficult to clearly articulate.
It seems to me that, as much as i admire the fine abilities of many of those who write about these matters, when they privilege the father-son relationship or the mother-child relationship – as ‘real’ - and by way of relying on the ‘standard model’ they put the stress in the wrong place.
The stress should be on the relationship between members of Wurlurru-and-Kingili, not the terms (or subset(s) thereof).
This strikes me as being part of the unstressing of that other important relationship – between the Western academic and First Peoples themselves. A key signature of modern studies is a presumption that this relationship is something which can be taken for granted.
However, each of us is situated within a larger life-formations and there can be no privileged position of the kind which is implicit in ‘the study of other peoples’ by objective researchers.
The introduction into the forms of representation of First Peoples Ways fashioned by conceptual craftspeople of the unconscious foundations of those craftspeople’s own relationships may be unavoidable.
I am thinking in particular of the restricted Anglo-Australian view of First Peoples sovereignty which is taken for granted by some researchers seeking to identify basic land owning units of indigenous social organisation. The resulting representations are those which can be easily accommodated by dominant Anglo-Australian political, legal and social structures without any requirement of reform of those structures.
It may be that corrective measures are available which counter the effects of this constraint. While the best form of corrective measure regarding forms of representation has to be that informed corrections from First Peoples themselves, this may not be easy to achieve in the short term.
There may also be some techniques which, as an aid to correction, enable interested people to move away from modern methods.
For example, in place of forms of representation which stress one aspect of the total field encountered by a researcher – relationships between father and son for example – at the expense of other significant relationships can be required to be seen as part of a configuration with some form of weighting for all the relationships within the configuration.
Also, amongst these techniques are those which employ a ‘both-and’ approach and which reject the claims to dominance of an uncompromising ‘either/or’ logic.
Complementary opposition is a useful tool in this regard. Nash (1982:145) provides a useful summary of Meggitt’s other translation of Warlpiri uses of ‘kurdungurlu’ which include “guru-ŋulu” ‘those outside the ritual’ (Meggitt 1966:202) and ‘those who may not act in a particular ritual’ (Meggitt 1962:203 …)
To the extent that such Warlpiri expressions suggest that kurdungurlu are some kind of (significant) ‘outsiders’ Warumungu practices are better represented by recognising those who decorate the ‘actors’ are fundamentally important complementary opposites.
While they may stand in a different relationship to the relevant ‘Dreaming’ than the reincarnating ‘actors’ they are only ‘outside’ in the sense that a generative context can be regarded as being outside the text.
It is the application of a alien either/or logic by the analyst which puts them ‘outside’ rather than ‘beside’.
As a reincarnation of a Dreaming ancestor, the ‘actor’ is a text. Those applying the decorations are the context. Both are necessary as there can be no text without a generative context.
Ian Keen, in “Aboriginal Economy and Society – Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation” - wrote:
“Networks of regional cooperation underpinned the sharing of ancestral law. People of a wide region, often including people of several regional or language identities, cooperated in the performance of ceremonies that re-enacted ancestral events and made ancestral beings visible and tangible. These networks of cooperation also provided the framework for structures of authority that were moulded around relations of age and gender, imbued with authority, and that transcended local relationships. Male initiation ceremonies combined socialisation practices with these features.” (2004 republished 2008:244)
A both-and logic is required to respect the whole Being of First Peoples.
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