The Embodiment of Sorcery: Supernatural Aggression, Belief and Envy in a Remote Aboriginal Community
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The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2017) 28, 286–300 doi:10.1111/taja.12228 The embodiment of sorcery: Supernatural aggression, belief and envy in a remote Aboriginal community Victoria Burbank University of Western Australia Anthropologists have long attempted to come to grips with Indigenous Australian sorcery beliefs and especially with the idea that acts with no understandable efficacy bring about illness and death. In this ethnographic interpretation of sorcery beliefs in the remote community of Numbulwar, I follow those few who have attempted to find a link between these apparently harmless acts and real physiological consequences, arguing that the fear of sorcery that pervades Numbulwar contributes directly to the stress of daily life and indirectly to the premature mor- bidity and mortality of too many lives. Belief is posited as the mechanism whereby the human stress response is activated to a harmful extent, a process in which the projection of envious feel- ings may often be critical. Keywords: sorcery, belief, envy, Aboriginal Australia INTRODUCTION: AN EMBODIMENT VIEW OF SORCERY Starting from a position of disbelief in the techniques said to be responsible for a sor- cery death, outside observers of Aboriginal Australia have largely avoided the question of magical practices’ efficacy in bringing sickness, death and other misfortune to their victims. The Berndts, for example, say: Do Aborigines really perform sorcery, or magic? In one sense, it does not matter whether they do or not. If they believe that such performances take place with the results that are claimed for them, this has almost the same social consequences as if they actually did so. It is the belief, influencing their behaviour in relation to one another, which counts (Berndt and Berndt 1992:305). At least one outside observer, however, the physician Don Eastwell (1982), attempted to discover the mechanisms whereby known victims of sorcery died. His report that extreme dehydration actually effects such deaths, does not, however, look to the pur- ported activities of the sorcerer, but instead to the body’s physiology.1 Here I present an interpretation of sorcery’s efficacy that somewhat resembles both of these Accepted date: 27 February 2017 286 © 2017 Australian Anthropological Society Aboriginal sorcery, belief and envy examples: Eastwell’s insofar as I look at biomedical factors, the Berndts’ insofar as I highlight the power of belief in bringing about concrete results. I argue that via the fear it creates in the remote community of Numbulwar, sorcery contributes directly to the stress of daily life and indirectly to the premature morbidity and mortality charac- teristic of Aboriginal lives more generally. I assume, however, and with good reason, given the prolonged experience of subordination and marginalisation of Numbulwar’s Indigenous population, not to mention Indigenous populations across Australia, that the postcolonial regime imposed upon it from outside is the principal source of harm- ful stress in this community (Burbank 2011; Sapolsky 2004; cf Musharbash 2014). Feelings of fear, anger and general distress, neuroscientists tell us (e.g. LeDoux 1996; Panksepp 1998), are our conscious experiences of the activation of our stress system, the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal, or HPA, Axis. This system is a part of our vertebrate inheritance and, clearly, its motivation of flight or fight has main- tained our species’ existence. In our current circumstances, however, and particu- larly in the circumstance of people like those at Numbulwar, our stress system may be undermining our wellbeing. It is generally understood by social determinants of health researchers (e.g. Brunner and Marmot 1999) that an overactive HPA Axis is a major source of just the kinds of ill health that plague Indigenous Australians: high blood pressure, kidney disease, diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease. Regrettably, Numbulwar appears to provide an example of the relationship between unhealthy levels of stress and premature morbidity and mortality, where some cul- tural beliefs may make matters worse. I have seen there more grief, anger and fear over the premature death of family members than I have cared to. This distress is, I suspect, exacerbated by beliefs that a kinsman’s life has been taken by another person, possibly, by someone in the community, sometimes, with the assistance of ‘family’. The HPA Axis works well when a threat is specific and momentary. It moves us to act, and may save our lives. But when a threat is amorphous, unseen and continuous our HPA Axis remains activated longer than it should be, eventually creating the kinds of medical conditions that may lead to early death (Brunner and Marmot 1999). Thus a vicious circle is set in motion in communities such as Numbulwar. A young man or woman dies, sorcery is suspected and feared, an unhealthily prolonged activation of the HPA Axis accompanies these experiences and contributes to the probability of premature death for another young man or woman in the community. A sorcery death to outsiders seems unlikely to have been accomplished by the suspected means. According to my argument, sorcery’s potency is real but acts more circuitously than local theory would have it. I think the Berndt’s were right when they said that, ‘it is the belief ... which counts (1992:305)’, although I see its importance to be of greater relevance to the kin of a sorcery victim than to the victim, him or herself. Belief in the ill will of family, neighbours or strangers along with the distress of losing (often many) close kin before their time, and the social and economic disruption that may follow can take a physical toll on survivors, and even on their unborn offspring (e.g. see Bur- bank 2011, 2012), eventually contributing to untimely death. The sorcerer, then, © 2017 Australian Anthropological Society 287 V. Burbank should such an individual exist, may still take satisfaction from his or her act, as will be seen in the pages that follow. A SORCERY CASE AT NUMBULWAR In mid-1978, in this southeast Arnhem Land community, a man estimated to be in his early sixties suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died eleven days later. Following the stroke, Lily, a local woman, visited Tina, the wife of the dead man’s brother, Theo- dore2 . She brought news, she said, from the clinic nurse, who had explained that the stricken man’s brain was, ‘all broke up and full of blood. If the Sister just said nothing we would start thinking about who did it. But the Sister told us about that blood. You don’t think about that kind and you tell that old man not to think about that kind’, ‘that kind’ meaning sorcery. Tina agreed to this and the two women proceeded to discuss how the deceased’s brain might have become ‘broken’, this discussion, however, soon turned to talk of sorcery. Initially, Tina speculated that it might have been the result of a past head wound. She also proposed that her brother-in-law had worked ‘too hard’ drilling bores in his earlier days. Shifting to ideas about sorcery, she said something might have been put in his head before he came to Numbulwar, and Lily agreed, pointing out that when he first arrived he was saying hello to everyone, a peculiarity associated with whitefellas, and a sign that he had something affecting him before he came to the community. The people with whom he had been playing cards when he was struck down could not have been responsible, she added, for they were her ‘family’. Later, in a discussion with Lily on this subject, my suggestion that a brain could simply get old and worn-out made no apparent impression; she continued to speak in terms of human causation. In spite of Lily’s message from the nurse, later that day Theodore told me he was thinking about ‘murderer’: We’ll have to send his clothes to his Dreaming. There his uncle will fix everything. Some- body might fall down on Groote or here or at Roper. Anywhere. Then we’ll know. [His close father’s mother’s brother] wanted to take up his spears straight away, but I told him to wait and we’ll find out properly with the clothes.3 On the night that Theodore was told of his brother’s demise, he stood on a sand dune and made the following accusation: ‘Don’t talk to me about other mob, mu- lunguwa [sorcerers], Old Hat’s mob. It’s you mob here.’ In the days following, vari- ous suggestions were put forth about possible suspects, a visiting group of the deceased’s brothers had a meeting over the cause of death and Theodore had to talk two of his uncles out of fighting. It was decided that the clothes of the dead man could not be used for the divination of his murderer, for his little daughter had acci- dentally touched them after they had been removed from the body. The hair of the dead can also be used to discover a murderer, but they said they had forgotten to get some before the burial. On the day following his brother’s death, Theodore sat 288 © 2017 Australian Anthropological Society Aboriginal sorcery, belief and envy by himself in the nearby bush, so that, explained Tina, his dead brother could send him a sign of the killer. In the past, when bodies were placed on a platform for decomposition, the platform might be burnt after it had served its purpose. Then the murderer’s body would break out in sores. In recent times, with Western–style internment, it was said that relatives of the dead might visit the grave to look for signs of the assassin. SORCERY AT NUMBULWAR Once the Rose River Mission, established in 1952 by the Anglican’s Church Mission- ary Society, Numbulwar is a community of approximately 1000 people, most of whom were originally Wubuy speakers, known as the Nunggubuyu or Numburindi.4 My vis- its to Numbulwar, over a span of 30 years, and the observations of earlier anthropo- logical visitors and mission records, make it clear that this is a community (like many others in remote Australia) characterised both by dramatic change and notable constancy.