Language groups, bands and families

LANGUAGE GROUPS

Before settlement, according to one estimate, there were about 700 or more different Aboriginal languages and dialects spoken. The Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) map shows 390 main languages.

Early settlers referred to language groups as tribes. Today, the word ‘tribes’ would be decidedly misleading; for the most part there were no ‘chiefs’ – in the sense we understand by that word – and many other ideas we normally associate with tribes in other countries do not apply to Aboriginal society. 

CLANS

Each language group is made up of several clans.

Aboriginal Clans might be thought of as similar in some ways to Irish or Scots clans. The O, Mac and Ní prefixes in Irish surnames mean grandson, son or daughter of, to show attachment to a family line. For Aboriginals, some clans reflect patrilineal descent, while some are matrilineal.

The clan is the group which belongs to and lives within a particular area. The boundaries and physical features of an area are defined by Dreaming stories, and so have been largely respected by other clans or by people of a different Dreaming. While there were sometimes animosity and warring between peoples and language groups, land was not generally a possession whose ownership could be disputed. Ownership of land is not an idea that can make sense because it’s not even an idea. Coming from and belonging to and being an integral part of a place are what make sense.

BANDS

Each clan is made up of several bands. We might think of bands as a mobile village; a group of people who live and work as an economic unit, gathering and hunting together with some of the other members of their clan.

FAMILIES

Each band is made up of several families. It would be more useful to think of families as both vertically and horizontally extended families, rather than a few generations vertically extended as in the most common whitefella sense.

The composition of an extended Aboriginal family is determined by who joined or left a family when two separate families were connected by marriage. These arrangements are determined by relationship rules based on moiety or skin.