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THE LAW PEOPLE HISTORY of BORROLOOLA NT.Pdf Joh" lit''' .,1n't J v<,'- 11151> . 'e>--n?,j 5Yl ."of ~O?...IO;) ."..,,.....,, -;y,ry) Of .AO"'\..}""""V ...pt'-I"L"J ot fC,n ~, ,S;v'II ~~I -d \ 10) 'lE-.: THE LAW PEOPLE: History, society and initiation in the Borroloola area of the Northern Territory by John Avery A thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology, the University of Sydney, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1985 Abstract. Before European contact the Aborigines of the Borroloola area were distributed in small groups of fluid composition pursuing a hunter-gatherer way of life coming together for seasonal ceremonial activities. The territories of populations marked by language and culture coincided with ecologically significant areas where a particular way of life was followed. The Yanyuwa, the main subjects of the thesis, made a highly specialised socio-cultural adaptation to their mainly marine environment. One important factor in this was the annual visiting of Macassan trepangers to the Sir Edward Pellew Islands. They traded dugout canoes, iron tools and other exotic goods to the Aborigines, and this helped compensate for the natural disadvantages of the Islands for the hunter-gatherers. The seasonal ceremonial cycle still occurs and male initiations draw large numbers of Aboriginal people to Borroloola at the end€ the dry season. The initiation ground is a prominent feature of the main camp at Borroloola; and it is argued in this thesis that it represents a central moment in the articulation of social relations as they can be discerned in residential patterns. The semi-moiety organisation participates in the same structure of relations, articulating ritual relations with mainly female reproductivity in the social relationship of marriage. CONTENTS Preface Abbreviations 1 INTRODUCTION........................... ....1 1.1 Subject and main themes of the study. • ••• .1 1.2 Fieldwork and related issues............ ...... ... 16 1.3 Borroloola today........................ ..... .25 1.4 Records of the Borroloola Aborigines.... ••••• • ..37 2 THE LANGUAGE OF THE WORLD ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 4 2 2.1 The enchanted 11fe-world .•••..•..•••..•..•.••••.•••••• 46 2.2 Action and the sacred: ritual roles ••••••••••••••••••• 65 2.3 Dreaming as a regulative principle •••••••••••••••••••• 75 2.4 The semi-moiety system .•..•..•.........•...•..•..••..• 82 3 ENVIRONMENT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE •••••••••••••••••••••••• 88 3.1 Ecology and territory ••••••••••••••.••.••.••.••••••••• 91 3.2 Islands and mainland in the McArthur River delta ••••• 102 3.3 Macassans in the Sir Edward Pellew Group •••••••••••••• 112 3.4 Islanders and mainlanders: the ritual dimension ••••••• 128 3.5 The Yanyuwa language .•....•..•...•.•..•...•.••...•.... 145 3.6 Territorial identity •.••.•••••••.••...••••.••••••.•••• 152 4 THE BIG CAMP AT BORROLOOLA •••.......•.••.•..•...•.•••••• 166 4.1 The islanders go to town .•••••••••••.••.••••.•••..•••• 166 4.2 Population, residence and employment •••••••••••••••••• 175 4.3 The Rocky Creek camp ••••••••..•••.•.••.•••...••••.•••. 180 5 SEMI-MOIETIES AND THE SUBSECTION SYSTEM ••••••••••••••••• 200 5.1 The subsection system as the plan of a community •••••• 202 5.2 Demographic catastrophe and cultural readaptation ••••• 205 5.3 The diffusion of subsections •••••.•••••.••••••••...•.• 210 5.4 The distribution of named semi-moieties ••••••••••••••• 217 5.5 Semi-moieties as cosmological classes ••••••••••••••••• 220 5.6 The structure of the semi-moiety system ••••••••••••••• 228 6 THE MARNDIWAR: FROM MOTHER-RIGHT TO FATHER-RIGHT •••••••• 232 6.1 The sequence of rites ..•••••••.....••••••....•••••••• 240 6.2 Two myths •••..•.•••.•••••••.••.•.••.•.••••.••••••••.•• 281 7 SELF, OTHER AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIAL WORLD ••••••• 326 7.1 Circumcision and male identity ••..•••••.••..•.•••••••• 327 7.2 The structure of the social world ••••••••••••••••••••• 356 8 CONCLUSIONS ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 381 REFERENCES •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 387 PREFACE. This study is based on fieldwork among Aboriginal people living at Borroloola in the Northern Territory where I livp for nearly two years. How exciting this period was for me and the depth of the formative experiences I had with the Borroloola people I am unable to adequately express. Furthermore, without the great kindness and generosity of the Aboriginal people, and some Europeans, my life there would have been very difficult indeed. There are many people at Borroloola to whom I am indebted in one or another way and I cannot acknowledge all of them individually here. However, I must name members of the Timothy, Miller, Finlay, Harvey, Hammer, Simon, Isaac, McDinny, Friday and Rory families. They helped me in practical waysl they were warm companionsl and what they taught me provided the basis for this thesis. For all of these things I am very greatful. I have also to thank the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney who provided financial and intellectual support. At Borroloola I was assisted in many practical ways by John Chudleigh, Jeff Stead and other officers of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, and I am grateful to them for their support. Finally, I am deeply indebted to Dr. L.R. Hiatt, my thesis supervisor. He has been an unfailingly supportive, patient and stimulating mentor. ABBREVIATIONS In places I use conventional abbreviations for types of kin as follows. B: brother Z: sister Sib.: sibling 0: older Y: younger F: father M: mother c: child S: son D: daughter H: husband W: wife 'MFZDS', for example, is read as mother's father's sister's daughter's son. When 'm.' or 'f.' precedes a kin type string ego's gender is indicated as male or female, respectively. EYLANDT <v ~ GULF OF CARPENTARIA SCALE ALIWA I I I Okm 100km 200km ri ~MORNINGTON MUDBARA V-ISLAND JINGALI WAANYI GURINJI WAMBPiA WALBIRI NORTHERN TERRITORY QUEENSLAND Map! Location of study area and relevant languages Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 The subject and main themes of the study. The main subjects of this study are Aboriginal residents of Borroloola, a town on the McArthur River about sixty kilometres from the southern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory (Map 1). Numbering some 250 people, most are native inhabitants of the littoral and riverine areas on both sides of the McArthur River: traditionally Mara, Yanyuwa and Karrawa speakers. Some others have come to Borroloola from the Barkly Tablelands and a few have come from farther away in the Northern Territory. For reasons partly to do with the course of my fieldwork, influenced by their relatively strong position at Borroloola, I deal most with people who identify themselves as Yanyuwa, whose ancestors once occupied the McArthur River delta and the Sir Edward Pellew Islands. Borroloola is a major focus of activity for 600 or more Aborigines living east of the Roper River to Queensland and throughout the Barkly Tablelands. From Borroloola the 1 horizons of Aboriginal social life extend to southern and eastern Arnhem Land, to the main towns along the Stuart Highway from Darwin to Tennant Creek, to other settlements in northern central Australia and eastwards into north­ western Queensland. Although some individuals are highly mobile within this area knowledge of others is generally a function of propinquity and diminishes steadily with the distance away from ,home. However, what may be called the 'traditional world' - the world embraced by traditional knowledge - in particular that conceived in terms of the routes of ancestral Dreaming figures, some of which cross the continent, extends beyond the social horizon to people unknown but in theory linked through the kinship of common Dreaming. Within the known social world such traditional links cut across differences of language or 'tribe', family, local affiliations and so on. For any of these associations there are complex 'internal and external social structures', to use Stanner's (1979: 48) terms, so that, while they might count as significant indices of status and identity, they do not comprise primary groups or entities such as could be 'natural' points of reference for social inquiry. So it is with the 'law people': they are a particular sub-population within an extended social field focused at Borroloola; they are not strongly defined by internal linkages and they are as much defined in contrast to whom they are not. As the 2 subjects of this study they are to some extent an artifact of it, but reflexively so because the course of my work was powerfully directed by the nature of my encounter with Aborigines at Borroloola at a particular time, that is, by the 'law people' themselves. I have called this thesis 'The Law People' because the idea of 'law', of 'Aboriginal law' and of 'European law' in particular, today is dominant in the Borroloola Aborigines' conception of themselves as a people. They mean by 'law' something much more embracing than Europeans would normally think. For them, law practically covers the whole field of culture. Their insistence on this notion is much the same as that of other Aborigines in adjacent areas and it is shared by many others beyond it, particularly in central Australia. I have heard Aborigines from Arnhem Land, from groups historically less in contact with Europeans, use 'rule' and 'custom' where Borroloola Aborigines would have used 'law'. Those alternatives struck me as less emphatic and more relative than 'law' with its particular connotations at Borroloola. For
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