Traditional aboriginal culture. Peoples

Let’s call the first and largest group of mainland Aboriginals ‘Peoples’ (unless you are taking an anthropology exam). The western desert Aboriginals who belong to Uluru and Kata Tjuta are known as Anungu. The word ‘Anungu’ literally means ‘person’, or ‘human being’. Although there are 6 different language groups within the Anungu, they all use the same word for human being.

A Particular Type of Human Being

Many of the people of Victoria are Kulin. Like the Anungu, the Kulin is made up of many different language groups. The word for person is shared by all of these groups. The Kulin traditionally thought of themselves as a different type of person from other groups – and this idea of type of person seems to have been quite common throughout Australia.

A non-Aboriginal person could not be Anungu or Kulin, because they could not be the same type of person.

Moieties

The next thing to note about Peoples is that they share the same moieties. (The pronunciation is something like ‘moya-tees’. Moiety simply means “half”.) A moiety is part of a relationship system that comes from Aboriginal Dreaming.

The Kulin of Victoria believe the world was created by Bunjil and Waa, with Bunjil taking the form of an eagle, and Waa the form of a crow. These two major Spirit Ancestors are father and mother. Everything in the world – from rocks to human beings – is either Bunjil or Waa.

To the Kulin, the world is half Bunjil and half Waa, so Bunjil and Waa are the two moieties of the Kulin. Everyone must marry the opposite moiety, so amongst the Kulin, a Bunjil can only marry a Waa and vice versa.

If the idea of everything in the world being either Bunjil or Waa, or male or female sounds a bit strange, we might consider that some European languages are gender based: In Italian and French a table is female, while bread is male. We might also consider the Chinese philosophy of yin and yan, which is a system of strict opposites such as hot and cold.

The single most important distinction between Aboriginal Dreaming and the story of Genesis is that Bible-based religions are monotheistic, whereas in Aboriginal spirituality there are many important spirits rather than just one God.

The importance of place

An Aboriginal person might be ‘conceived’ when one of the Spirit Ancestors or, in some cultures, something created by a moiety, enters the body of a woman. Thus, an individual’s moiety and/or totem could be based on the very place where the mother first became aware she was pregnant, or the place (spirit) in some other way associated with the pregnancy. As one moiety is mother and the other father, place is in a very literal sense, the supernatural parent of an Aboriginal person.

Roman Catholics believe the Gospel of Luke proves that Jesus' mother Mary was made pregnant by God, and told this by an angel.  This belief, and the belief that Mary was born free of sin, had a profound influence on Western culture for nearly two thousand years. 

While westerners can attach history and memory to a place, place is not necessarily a parent in the stronger, Aboriginal sense. The western Bible instructs us to ‘honour thy mother and thy father’. For traditional Aboriginals, the idea of a place being parent is not a metaphor, but a reality. Aboriginal people thereby have a very strong link to, and a duty to, place.

Many Westerners value their right to freedom of religion. People outside Australia have died for their faith in the past, and continue to do so. Faith provides a value system to guide people in knowing right from wrong. Faith of any sort usually provides a rite of passage; during their early years children are aware they’re in training for the day they become adults and take on greater responsibility towards family and community. Faith brings support, confidence, structure and meaning to the lives of many people. Without belief in something such as a set of values, or without a rite of passage or a sense of purpose, people can wither and die.

Fortunately for many non-Aboriginal people, faith can be a portable treasure. Muslims should try to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime but if they cannot, this won’t go down too badly on judgment day. Jewish or Christian people might want to visit the Holy Land, but life goes on if they cannot.

None of us whitefellas, however, necessarily find our support, confidence and life’s meaning snatched away when we cannot remain in our own Dreaming place.

Sub Moieties

In some Aboriginal cultures, more than two Ancestral Beings are significant in Dreaming stories and, instead of the world being divided into halves, it might be divided into four, eight or even sixteen sections. It’s easy for me to say that a Bunjil must marry someone Waa or vice versa, but when there are sixteen subsections it can be pretty complicated working out who is related to whom, how they are related, and what these relationships mean. 

If we say a person must be the right ‘skin’ to marry another, it means they must be from the correct one of two, four, eight or sixteen sections.

Maths was never my strongest subject and combinations and permutations are beyond me, yet Aboriginals somehow understand these systems and know who fits into what category. 

Relationships are not just complex in some parts of Australia, for many people still living in a traditional world, they are central consideration in everything a person can or must do. This has an enormous impact, even today, on things we take for granted like going to a health clinic, or discussing a problem with another person.