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Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane Illustrates the Importance of the Study of Gender in Anthropology

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Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane Illustrates the Importance of the Study of Gender in Anthropology ABORIGINAL WOMAN Sacred and profane Providing remarkable insights into Australian Aboriginal society through the vantage point of women, Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane illustrates the importance of the study of gender in anthropology. Phyllis Kaberry was the first anthropologist to examine and understand the fullness of Aboriginal women’s lives, which had hitherto been classified as restricted and uninvolved with religious practice. She portrayed the Aboriginal woman in a realistic light, as a complex social personality with her own prerogatives, duties, problems, beliefs, rituals and points of view. In her new preface, Sandy Toussaint looks at how Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane came to be written, the book’s original context and its influence on the study of gender in anthropology. Phyllis M.Kaberry (1910–1977) was educated at the University of Sydney. Her first major fieldwork, conducted in 1935 and 1936 in north-west Australia, formed the basis of Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane. She was a reader in Social Anthropology at University College London for twenty-six years. She is the author of Women of the Grassfields (also available from Routledge). ROUTLEDGE CLASSIC ETHNOGRAPHIES bring together key anthropology texts which have proved formative in the development of the discipline. Originally published between the 1930s and the 1980s, these titles have had a major impact on the way in which anthropology, and most particularly ethnography, is conducted, taught, and studied. Each book contains the text and illustrations from the original edition, as well as a new preface by a leading anthropologist explaining the book’s contribution to the development of anthropology and its continuing relevance in the twenty-first century. ABORIGINAL WOMAN Sacred and profane Phyllis M.Kaberry WOMEN OF THE GRASSFIELDS A study of the economic position of women in Bamenda, British Cameroons Phyllis M.Kaberry STONE AGE ECONOMICS Marshall Sahlins THE MAASAI OF MATAPATO A study of rituals of rebellion Paul Spencer THE SAMBURU A study of gerontocracy Paul Spencer HUNGER AND WORK IN A SAVAGE TRIBE A functional study of nutrition among the southern Bantu Audrey Richards CUSTOM AND POLITICS IN URBAN AFRICA A study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns Abner Cohen ABORIGINAL WOMAN Sacred and profane Phyllis M.Kaberry LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1939 by George Routledge and Sons, Ltd This edition first published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1939 Phyllis M.Kaberry Preface to this edition © 2004 Sandy Toussaint 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. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kaberry, Phyllis Mary, 1910–1977 Aboriginal woman: sacred and profane/Phyllis Kaberry; with a new pref. by Sandy Toussaint. p. cm. Originally published: London: G.Rutledge, 1939. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-31999-4 (pbk.) 1. Women, Aboriginal Australian—Australia—Kimberely (W.A.)— Social life and customs. 2. Kimberely (W.A.)—Social life and customs. GN481. K2 2003 305.48/8991509414 21 2003047165 ISBN 0-203-98754-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-31999-4 (Print Edition) Two women decorated for a secret corroboree. To BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE TO NEW EDITION ix FOREWORD xviii INTRODUCTION BY xxiii PROFESSOR A.P.ELKIN I. WIELDERS OF THE DIGGING—STICK 1 II. THE SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL BACKGROUND OF THE 24 ABORIGINAL CHILD III. CHILDHOOD 40 IV. ON THE THRESHOLD OF MARRIAGE 54 V. THE LAWS OF MARRIAGE AND THE NEEDS OF THE INDIVIDUAL 70 VI. RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF WOMEN IN MARRIAGE 87 VII. THE FUNCTIONS OF WOMEN IN THE LARGER SOCIAL GROUPS 104 VIII. THE SPIRITUAL HERITAGE OF ABORIGINAL WOMAN 121 XI. WOMEN’S CEREMONIES 142 X. WOMEN’S SECRET CORROBOREES 165 XI. ABORIGINAL WOMAN—SACRED AND PROFANE 176 BIBLIOGRAPHY 182 INDEX 187 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE TWO WOMEN DECORATED FOR A SECRET CORROBOREE v 1. KIMBERLEY LANDSCAPE 4 2. DIGGING FOR IGUANA 15 3. (a) A WOMAN AND HER SUBINCISED SON 51 (b) A FEAST FOR THE INITIATED 52 4. KIMBERLEY WARRIORS 95 5. SPINNING HUMAN HAIR 105 6. ROCK—PAINTINGS AT FORREST RIVER 134 7. (a) “A DANCE OF BIZARRE, FANTASTIC FIGURES”. 172 (b) WOMEN’S LOVE-MAGIC 172 MAP OF KIMBERLEY DIVISION xxxii This book contains photographs of now deceased persons. These images may cause distress to some Australian Aboriginal people. PREFACE TO NEW EDITION Until recently, aboriginal woman has occupied rather an obscure place in Australian anthropology; and in popular imagination, at least, she has too often been lost to view beneath the burdens imposed upon her by her menfolk… It was with the object of making a more specific study of the position of women in an aboriginal community…that I carried out research in North-West Australia, both in 1934 and in 1935 to 1936. (Phyllis Kaberry 1939:ix) The 1939 publication of Phyllis Kaberry’s Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane marked a quiet but defining moment in the history of anthropology. That responses to its original publication and until recently were generally subdued or resistant, reflects the gender-blindness and partiality of its time, rather than the quality of its contents.1 Adapted by Phyllis Kaberry from her doctoral thesis2 titled “The Position of Women in an Australian Aboriginal Society”, Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane provided substantive insights into 1930s Australian Aboriginal life via the vantage point of women. While Kaberry noted that she offered “no new theory of culture” (1939: xii), one of her most significant contributions was that she examined the complex interconnections between gender and culture. By pursuing an approach that emphasised women but did not exclude men, a comprehensive recording and analysis of culture was given life. That Kaberry’s depiction incorporated data on women’s active religious knowledge and authority—some details of which were restricted from men, young people and uninitiated women—enabled her to argue that not only was women’s productive role central to daily survival, but women were also key participants in religion, or the Narungani, described by Kaberry as ‘The Time Long Past’.3 The Aboriginal groups with whom Kaberry worked and her Kimberley field locations varied, but most of her material developed from research among members of the Kija (or Kidja, also known as Lunga), and the “Wolmeri…Djaru, Miriwunn, Malngin, Wula, Kunian, Punaba, and Nyigina” language groups.4 As experiential participant and observer, Kaberry was socially classified into a subsection, or ‘skin’ group, by Aboriginal people then living at the Moola Bulla Native Settlement in the East Kimberley. She was called “Nadjeri”, a name remembered by some Aboriginal people today (Williams 1988; Toussaint 1999, 2002). Kaberry’s evident enthusiasm for her discipline minimised the intellectual, social and political climate in which she lived and worked. Anthropological thought and practice in the 1930s tended to emphasise function rather than process, and to minimise questions related to its own cultural practices. Some of these epistemological influences and behaviours affected Kaberry. On reflection, she may well have paid more attention to the impact of the State, colonial relations and frontier violence, for instance. Seventy years on in a different time and place, Kaberry may also have treated with greater caution, description of certain aspects of Aboriginal culture.5 Kaberry’s challenge to anthropology’s 1930s gender-partiality, however, had the potential at that time to shape the discipline’s trajectory. Her methodology and analysis were progressive with respect to developing an understanding of Aboriginal kinship where loyalty to kin often preceded gender identity, for instance, and her rich description of women’s lives, concerns and aspirations was exemplary. That such findings were overshadowed by those of some of her contemporaries, such as Lloyd Warner’s A Black Civilization (1937), resulted in an absence of attention to the interconnections between gender/culture/religion in a way that has been increasingly explored by recent scholars.6 Placing Aboriginal Woman Sacred and Profane in Context In the comparatively short history of Australian anthropology, women have always been present in some form, as in genealogies or with respect to their nurturing or food production role, and in relation to male/female status. With the exception of Phyllis Kaberry, Ursula McConnel (1935) closely followed by Catherine Berndt (1950, 1965), and later Marie Reay (1970), Isobel White (1970) and Jane Goodale (1971), it was mainly men, rather than women, who wrote about Australian Aboriginal cultures. Roheim (1933) was one of the few men to show an interest in women. Emphasising a Freudian analysis, Roheim argued, on the basis of his 1930s research in Central Australia, that women were excluded from religious activity. His characterisation typified representations that failed to understand or appreciate the fullness of Aboriginal women’s lives. The nature of women’s relationships with other women and men as kin, and women’s broader religious involvements, were also commonly misunderstood or silenced. That women’s knowledge and ritual experience was often restricted to a women-only domain, added to partial representations of Aboriginal societies which, over time, became embedded in the ethnographic record.
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