Australian Aboriginal Kinship An introductory handbook with particular emphasis on the Western Desert Digital Proofer Australian Aborigina... Laurent Dousset Authored by Laurent Dousset 8.0" x 10.0" (20.32 x 25.40 cm) Color Bleed on White paper 144 pages ISBN-13: 978-1463740412 ISBN-10: 1463740417 Please carefully review your Digital Proof download for formatting, grammar, and design issues that may need to be corrected. We recommend that you review your book three times, with each time focusing on a different aspect. Check the format, including headers, footers, page 1 numbers, spacing, table of contents, and index. 2 Review any images or graphics and captions if applicable. 3 Read the book for grammatical errors and typos. Once you are satisfied with your review, you can approve your proof and move forward to the next step in the publishing process. To print this proof we recommend that you scale the PDF to fit the size of your printer paper. Marseille pacific-credo Publications 2012 Australian Aboriginal Kinship An introductory handbook with particular emphasis on the Western Desert Laurent Dousset Cover image: © Markilly Lizzie Ellis, all rights reserved © pacific-credo Publications ISBN 978-1463740412 Australian Aboriginal Kinship About the series Les manuels du Credo (The Credo Handbooks) The Manuels du Credo is a series published by Pacific-Credo Publications with a particular pedagogic aim: to bring the social sciences, their methods and theories closer to the public and to students of the social sciences and humanities and, at the same time, to tackle social, cultural, linguistic or historical issues relevant for past and contemporary Pacific societies. Conceived in the form of easily portable books at an affordable price, To H. Kumarnarra Giles the Manuels nevertheless cover the latest scientific achievements in a particular domain or on a particular question. They are written and structured in a comprehensive manner, include further reading sections and intelligible summaries, and are accessible without any prerequisites other than curiosity and a genuine interest in the human diversities and complexities of the Pacific. http://publications.pacific-credo.fr/ Laurent Dousset Australian Aboriginal Kinship Acknowledgements Table of contents My deepest gratitude goes to the Western Desert people who have welcomed me over Introduction: the purpose of this book 10 the years and patiently agreed to reply to my incessant questions and explain over and over again their ways of living and of thinking. Amongst them, I particularly thank Markily, Part One: A historical and ethnographic overview 14 Kungnala, Katjarra, Mrs Bennets, Tjawina, Sally, Henry, Leslie, J. Tjakamarra, Adrian and The notion of culture 14 many, many more. What are hunter-gatherer societies? 22 The Ngaatjatjarra 25 I am also particularly indebted to Bob and Myrna Tonkinson, who have from the very Coming into being 28 beginning of my first fieldwork in the Western Desert in 1994 taken me (and my family) A historical perspective 31 under their intellectual and material auspices. Language, the unifying criterion 34 Western Desert dialects 38 I am also grateful to those who have accepted to read and review preliminary versions of Summary and conclusion of Part One 42 this book for their comments and help, and in particular Bob Tonkinson again, Ian Keen, Further reading 43 Serge Tcherkézoff, Elodie Fache and Maïa Ponsonnet. Their comments and corrections have greatly improved the work. Of course, any shortcomings or mistakes remain my sole Part Two: Some basic concepts of kinship 45 responsibility. What is kinship? 45 Symbols, abbreviations and conventions 47 Last but not least, I thank my colleagues at the CREDO (The Centre for Research and Docu- Kinship terminology 51 mentation on Oceania, Marseilles), who have collectively enabled Pacific-Credo Publications The Eskimo system 54 to exist. I am particularly proud this is one of the first books this publisher has brought The Dravidian system 56 out. I also thank Deborah Pope for her critical reading of the manuscript’s English expression Crow-Omaha, Sudanese and Hawaiian systems 62 and Emilie Courel for her work in formatting the manuscript and in getting it physically out Other conventions concerning kinship terms 65 into the world. Filiation and descent 66 Marriage and marriage alliances 69 The cover image is an extract of a painting by Markilly Lizzie Ellis. I am very grateful she Summary and conclusion of Part Two 73 has allowed me to use her work. Further reading 74 Work on this book was made possible thanks to the Australian Research Grant AustKin Part Three: Western Desert kinship ethnography 75 (ARC DP0878556). Western Desert kinship terminology 75 Finding a spouse 81 On the family and related issues 85 Domestic group, household and adoption among the Ngaatjatjarra 88 Summary and conclusion of Part Three 93 Further reading 94 Part Four: Social category systems 95 What is a category? 95 Generational moieties: general principles 97 Generational moieties in the Western Desert 99 Patrimoieties and matrimoieties 102 Sections: a formal presentation 105 7 Laurent Dousset Australian Aboriginal Kinship Figure 1: Geographical map Sections in the Western Desert 109 ACT Australian Capital Subsection systems 112 Territory Where did sections originate? 115 NSW New South Wales Summary of Part Four and concluding remarks 117 NT Northern Territory Further reading 119 QLD Queensland SA South Australia TAS Tasmania Conclusion: the concept of relatedness 120 VIC Victoria A critique of kinship studies 120 WA Western Australia From consanguinity to consubstantiality 122 From model to process 124 Glossary 125 List of figures 133 References cited 134 Figure 2: Map of approximate location of cited languages and tribes (also see the map of Figure 6 on page 38 for the location of more Western Desert dialectal groups) 8 9 Laurent Dousset Australian Aboriginal Kinship Introduction: Importantly, this work is also written for the Western Desert Aborigines themselves. After a meeting in Warburton in 1995, where I submitted my project to study kinship and social the purpose of this book and how to read it categories in a desert community to a Ngaanyatjarra Council General Meeting, some people approached me, asking whether I thought it would be possible to produce a little booklet Everyone familiar with Australian Aboriginal communities understands how very important about Western Desert kinship that could be of use to children and students, among others. kinship is in daily interaction. Some anthropologists have claimed that the concept of This work is a belated response to these initial requests, which, I should add, were not kinship, and thus kinship studies, are ethnocentric and biased, if not useless. They suggest prompted by any kind of anxiousness to record a disappearing culture or out of fear that that centring social phenomena on kinship is a particularity of the Western world and see knowledge about kinship and its use as a tool to organise indigenous processes might kinship studies as a domain invented in Western academic circles. Although it may well be soon be lost forever. Indeed, relatedness (the sense of being somehow related to others true in philosophical and epistemological terms, such a viewpoint neglects the fact that and of sharing something with them) is a very important feature of Western Desert culture life in Aboriginal societies is structured around what social scientists label ‘kinship’. This as an underlying motive for action and thought; kinship, as we outsiders call it, is its handbook draws attention to this important social domain and explains how such ‘kinship’ dominant structuring vehicle, involved in most, if not all, social processes. The request systems work; it also offers an accessible introduction to this fascinating field. Far from was in fact an expression of Aboriginal people’s understanding of what the global system those academic discourses that attempt to deconstruct a field that Aboriginal people in which they are embedded is about: functioning with the ‘written word’ as the dominant themselves value, this book is directed towards those who are, or may soon be, living and medium for permanence and power. Indigenous people have learned and understood that working in Australian indigenous communities. what has been written down is evidence and what has not is volatile and even non-existent. Since 1994 I have worked as a researcher in Aboriginal Australian communities, in par- Taking into account the imposed necessity to ‘write things down’, Aborigines have had to ticular in the Western Desert. I have always been astonished by the lack of understanding learn to deal with and accept the difficult and intangible notion of the anonymous: the of Aboriginal culture, and especially of kinship, shown by non-indigenous students and complete unpredictability of the interpretations made by readers of books about them. staff who live and work in these communities, to say nothing of in Australian society The idea of communicating, in this case writing, without knowing who the reader will be is generally. Throughout these years I met many teachers, shop managers, community perhaps one of the most bizarre consequences of Gutenberg’s revolution. advisers, nurses, mechanics, PhD students, but most lacked any understanding of kinship All of the above entail important ethical and methodological problems. Why would an principles and structure or indeed of much of Aboriginal culture in general. Most inter- outsider want