M3 - Learner Manual

1. Introduction: Module 3 - Connection to Country

NAT11026004 Interpret kinship and belonging to the land

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2. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Similarities and Diversities

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations and peoples share a common history of cultural development and colonial interactions and impact. There are however, differences in traditional boundaries, languages and customs.

One of the similarities is the structures of kinship. It is through kinship that identity is formed and grows meaning, through links which connect people to people (and groups) and people to country and the universe. It sets out connection and responsibilities to county and each other.

In mainland Australia, Indigenous people lived in semi-permanent / semi-nomadic lifestyles, centred around cultural maintenance responsibilities which reinforced their connection to land. They travelled with seasonal cycles, returning to the same locations tending to cultural responsibilities, hunting grounds and other food sources. Permanent villages were the norm for most Torres Strait Island communities.

Both similarities and differences run through many aspects of Indigenous cultures. These include language, appearance, land usage, the drawing of marriage lines, the handing down of responsibilities, spiritual beliefs and communication protocols.

As a brief example, some other similarities and diversities may include:

3. Kinship

There are three levels of kinship in Australian Indigenous societies: Moiety, Totem and Skin Names.

A person's Moiety can be determined by their mother's side (matrilineal) or their father's side (patrilineal). Moieties can also alternate between each generation (people of alternate generations are grouped together).

People who share the same Moiety are considered siblings, meaning they are forbidden to marry. They also have a reciprocal responsibility to support each other.

The second level of kinship is Totem. Each person has at least four Totems which represent their nation, clan and family group, as well as a personal Totem. Nation, clan and family Totems are preordained, whereas personal Totems recognise an individual’s strengths and weaknesses.

Totems link a person to the universe - to air, water and geographical features. People don’t ‘own’ their Totems, rather they are accountable for them. Each person has a responsibility to ensure that their Totems are protected and passed on to the next generation.

Totems are split between Moieties to create a balance of use and protection. For example, while members of one Moiety protect and conserve the animal, members of the other Moiety may eat and use the animal.

The third level of kinship is the Skin Name. Like a surname, a Skin Name indicates a person’s blood line. It also conveys information about how generations are linked and how they should interact.

Unlike surnames, husbands and wives don’t share the same Skin Name, and children don’t share their parents’ name. Rather, it is a sequential system, so Skin Names are given based on the preceding name (the mother’s name in a matrilineal system or the father’s name in a patrilineal system) and its level in the naming cycle.

Each nation has its own Skin Names and each name has a prefix or suffix to indicate gender. There are 16-32 sets of names in each cycle. For example, in a matrilineal nation, if a woman with the first name in the cycle (One) has a baby, the child’s Skin Name will be the second name in the cycle (Two). All other ‘Twos’ in that community are now considered the sibling of that child, and all ‘Ones’ are considered their parents. When that child grows up and has children of their own, those children will be Threes. This sequential naming continues until the end of the number cycle is reached, then it begins again at One.

For further explanation of kinship structures go to the following YouTube videos:

An Example of Aboriginal Kinship Systems:

Country Kinship and Identity:

Family and Kinship:

4. Tribes and Social Groups

Aboriginal peoples documented events, rituals and other aspects of culture in rock carvings and paintings in many locations throughout the country. Rock art in northern Australia clearly documents stories of some of the changes in Indigenous cultures throughout time.

Even though we have this evidence of change over time, tribal groups and boundaries have largely remained the same, such as the locations of the Eora Nation, Wiradjiri Nation, Yuin Nation and so on.

Pre-1788 it is estimated that there were over 250 distinct Indigenous language groups in Australia, with various dialects within these groups. Today only around 120 of those languages are still spoken and many are at risk of being lost, as Elders pass away.

As Australian Indigenous cultures are oral cultures, language forms the basis for cultural transmission and cultural interchange, and so it is central to identity. Language has a central role in identifying where one comes from – who your people are. Cultural knowledge (ceremony, pathways through and tending country, medicine, etc.) is bound up in language.

Aboriginal peoples spoke some common language where borders met. This enabled trade of goods, negotiations for traverse and passage etc. and inter-tribal marriage. Today, those who speak traditional language, generally speak a range of local, languages where neighbouring language groups connect. This is also due to various language groups being moved off their traditional lands into present day ‘communities’.

In the 1700’s, there was no colonial understanding of the value and importance of language for cultural transmission. As with most colonised and invaded countries, Australian Indigenous people were actively and often violently, discouraged from speaking their languages. Children taken from their families, had little or no access to traditional language. This of course meant that many in following generations were not taught their traditional languages and so some languages became dormant, other have altogether gone.

Some people became partial speakers or spoke ‘broken-English’ or Creole. Thankfully, many place names and a few other names for animals, etc. have remained in use and more Aboriginal language names for significant places have been reinstated e.g. Uluru, Dja Dja Wurrung Country (in Central Victoria), Fraser Island had its name officially restored to K’gari (‘paradise’ in the Butchulla language).  Lutruwita (Tasmania), Kinjarling (Albany in Western Australia).

5. Language and Tribal Boundaries

Figure 1: Map of Indigenous Tribal Groups in Australia

Created in 1994, the Aboriginal Australia map is an attempt to show the diversity of Australian Indigenous languages using sources available at the time. The information in the map is contested by some traditional landowners.

 Source: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/aiatsis-map-indigenous-australia

Today there are Aboriginal language centres and programs being developed to support keeping language and culture alive.  In NSW, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs supports five Aboriginal Language and Culture Nests. These are:

·       Bundjalung – East of (approximately) a line running from Grafton to the Qld boarder

·       Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay – Area approximately bordered by Collarenebri, Walgett and Goodooga

·       Gumbaynggirr – Mid NSW north coast – Area south of Grafton to Nambucca and inland to Dorrigo

·       North West Wiradjuri – Areas around Dubbo – south to Peak Hill, east to Mudgee, North to Gilgandra and west to Trangie

·       Paakantji/Baarkintji - includes the communities of Broken Hill, Wilcannia, Menindee, Bourke, Mildura and Coomealla.

You can access further information on each Nest at the following link:

https://www.aboriginalaffairs.nsw.gov.au/policy-reform/language-and-culture/nests

Consider the following question in preparation for your weekly Q&A sessions with your trainer:

Whilst there is a lot of discussion on the loss of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander verbal/oral language, are there other forms of language that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people use?

6. Kinship in Contemporary Contexts

Kinship structures and obligations are a defining part of many cultures throughout the world. Australian Indigenous kinship arranges clan groups and skin groups within a larger tribe. This puts everyone in a specific kinship relationship to everyone else and gives specific, governing everyday life such as food sharing and who can communicate with whom. On the coming of adulthood these practices are expected to be adhered to.

These structures define which relatives can talk to one another, and who should not be address directly. Partnering could change how people related to each other due to kinship taboos, such as sons-in-law and mothers-in-law being forbidden to speak or even have eye contact.

Kinship brought with it a set of obligations that one had to perform when relating to others. These obligations were not just part of the past, they are part of Aboriginal Lore and are still active in many parts of Australia today, especially in Dessert and Northern Australian communities.

Kinship is at the heart of Indigenous society. A person’s position in the kinship system establishes their relationship to others and to the universe, prescribing their responsibilities towards other people, the land and natural resources. Traditional kinship structures remain important in many Indigenous communities today.

Source: https://www.australianstogether.org.au/discover/indigenous-culture/kinship/

7. Personal and Work Relationships

Despite colonial history, Aboriginal kinship and family structures remain cohesive forces which bind Aboriginal people together in all parts of Australia. They provide psychological and emotional support to Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal family obligations are often seen as nepotism by non-Indigenous Australians. There can be some confusion where they are only partly observed. If there is inconsistency with how they are kept, it makes it look like they are being used as an excuse rather than as an obligation.

Personal and work relationships and status within Aboriginal communities are important, as they connect and reconnect people to relatives, broader tribal groups, and back into communities. They also are central to how people identify themselves. Today many people in urban, regional and rural setting often introduce themselves by their family group and then tribal affiliations.

Personal relationships can often impact work relationships. People are expected to declare involvement and relationship. for instance, if you are appointed to an interview panel, you are expected to declare any family ties, personal or business relationship as this may present a conflict of interest. With Indigenous people, second and third cousins are often viewed as part of the close network, which may confuse people who are not engaged directly in the community. This can create some complication and requires considerable finesse, when meeting obligations to family and meeting the rule of law and best practice at the same time.

Bureaucratic structures set up by non-Indigenous people and organisations (such as the government) often fail because they do not account for kinship structures and whose authority counts. Those set up in positions of authority can only really have an influence over related individuals.

8. Aboriginal Spirituality - Land and Sacred Sites

The following definition of Aboriginal spirituality gives some sense of the scale of spirituality in the lives of Australia’s first inhabitants:

Aboriginal spirituality is defined as at the core of Aboriginal being, their very identity. It gives meaning to all aspects of life including relationships with one another and the environment. All objects are living and share the same soul and spirit as Aboriginal peoples. There is a kinship with the environment. Aboriginal spirituality can be expressed visually, musically and ceremonially^.

Reference: Grant, E.K., Unseen, Unheard, Unspoken: Exploring the Relationship Between Aboriginal Spirituality & Community Development. 2004, University of South Australia: Adelaide, pg. 8-9

The land and the stories are the teacher. Creation stories are like parables, they contain both moral and practical information such as kinship taboos, what to eat or not, passage to important places. Lessons are taught that are above the opinions of living people. The stories have authority in their antiquity and collective ownership.

9. Creation Periods

The Creation period, in many stories begins in darkness and the bare earth. Out of these Dreaming stories came great ancestral spiritual beings, who then travelled across a land without form and created sacred sites and other significant places, giving language to people, creating other living beings and shaping the earth. Many different creation stories exist among the different Aboriginal groups. This period of creation is often referred to as Alcheringa, Creation time, the ‘Dreaming” or the ‘Dreamtime’.  The Dreaming was the time before time existed.

Click on the following link for Jacinta Koolmatrie  TEDx Talk: The myth of Aboriginal stories being myths:

Different characters and beings, in Creation stories, created the land and the lore in ways particular to different peoples and landscapes.

The Dreaming refers not to historical past but a fusion of identity and spiritual connection with the timeless present. 

10. Sacredness of Land and Daily Life

“For Aboriginal peoples, country is much more than a place. Rock, tree, river, hill, animal, human – all were formed of the same substance by the Ancestors who continue to live in land, water, sky. Country is filled with relations speaking language and following Law. No matter whether the shape of that relation is human, rock, crow, wattle. Country is loved, needed, and cared for, and country loves, needs, and cares for her peoples in turn. Country is family, culture, and identity. Country is self.” (Kwaymullina, 2005)

Connection to land is the core to identity and spirituality, these three things are intertwined. Maintaining land where there are Dreaming sites, bora rings, water holes, burial grounds, etc. is vital to the maintenance of culture.

Ceremonial activities assist Indigenous people in staying connected and keeping the spirit of the land alive through the process of being present and practicing culture.

Today access to traditional lands can be gained when native title is recognised but gaining this title is a lengthy, costly and complex process. The complexities of native title legislation mean that many applications are not successful.

11. Totemism

Rules and lore differ from one language group to another, depending on the environment and Dreaming stories or lore stories that belonged to that area. In lore, there are many rules associated with totems.

Some Aboriginal people may have several totems associated with animals, plants, landscape features and the weather. People who share the same totem have a special relationship with each other. Knowing a person’s totem means understanding a person’s relationship to the language group and to other people. Totems define people’s relationships to each other and give them particular rights, roles and restrictions within the language group.

Totemism is an integral feature of Indigenous spirituality and belief and best explained by the following quote:

A totem is a natural object, plant or animal that is inherited by members of a clan or family as their spiritual emblem. Totems define peoples' roles and responsibilities, and their relationships with each other and creation.

Totems are believed to be the descendants of the Dreamtime heroes, or totemic beings. Dreamtime heroes are linked to space and place. The places from which they emerged and travelled, and inter-acted with other spirit-beings, all become associated with the particular hero or heroes and are valued according to the importance of that part of creation to the local tribal group.

Each clan family belonging to the group is responsible for the stewardship of their totem: the flora and fauna of their area as well as the stewardship of the sacred sites attached to their area. This stewardship consists not only of the management of the physical resources ensuring that they are not plundered to the point of extinction, but also the spiritual management of all the ceremonies necessary to ensure adequate rain and food resources at the change of each season.

A typical boy’s story might begin before he is even born. As his mother becomes conscious of his first movement in the womb she immediately has to take note of the area so that the infant will become identified with the spirit of the particular area in which she is located. This is based on the belief that the spirit of that area has energised the infant in the womb and the child becomes inextricably linked with the spirit associated with the dominant creation of that place, as his conception totem.

Source: https://www.australianstogether.org.au/discover/indigenous-culture/aboriginal-spirituality

12. Aboriginal Spirituality and Major World Religions

13. Aboriginal Peoples’ Alliance to Religions

The continuous Christian missionary presence in Aboriginal communities since 1821 has seen many Aborigines convert to Christianity. Indigenous communities across Australia’s Top End had contact with the Muslim Macassan traders for many centuries before British settlement. In the 1996 Australian census, more than 7000 respondents indicated that they followed a traditional Aboriginal spiritual belief. (Source: ABC, 2018)

Aboriginal people’s alliance to religions has come about through the interactions and exposure to non-indigenous people their religions and customs. 

Throughout Australia, Aboriginal peoples have married into families from other spiritual and religious belief, for instance, at Woolgoolga on NSW North Coast where 10% of the population practice Sikhism. Aboriginal people’s worldviews have changed and have been shaped by their interactions with other cultures and religions. Other religious belief systems do not replace Aboriginal spiritual belief but sit alongside it.  Aboriginal peoples belong to the land and their spirituality and identity stem from this continuous connection, irrespective of other influences.

14. Past, Present and Future Connected Through Ritual

Australian indigenous spiritual belief is not separate from other aspects of life, culture and history. It is also difficult to speak of origins because an indigenous conception of time connects past actions and people with present and future generations. Time is circular, not linear, as each generation relives the Dreaming activities. Indigenous people maintain their connection through the daily process of being Indigenous. The concept of circular time collapses past, present and future into a continual present. 

Rituals form part of spiritual responsibility - Obligation to country and maintaining continuity through spirituality happens in the present, honours the past (ancestors) and maintains continuity for future generations.

15. References & Resources

References

'Seeing the Light: Aboriginal Law, Learning and Sustainable Living in Country', Ambelin Kwaymullina, Indigenous Law Bulletin May/June 2005, Volume 6, Issue 11

Research paper by Dr Marion Maddox, Consultant, Social Policy Group
"Indigenous Religion in Secular Australia", 14 December 1999.

Freedom of Religion, Belief, and Indigenous Spirituality, Practice and Cultural Rights.  Paper prepared for the Australian Institute by the Centre for Education, Poverty and Social Inclusion, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, Katja Mikhailovich Ms. Alexandra Pavli, 2011,

https://aifs.gov.au/publications/families-and-cultural-diversity-australia/3-aboriginal-families-australia

www.globaldialoguefoundation.org/files/traditionalfaiths&beliefs.pdf

Other Resources:

Aboriginal Elder: “The land owns us”

Bob Randall, a Yankunytjatjara elder and traditional owner of Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), explains his connectedness to the land and how every living thing is connected to every other living thing.

Essie Coffey's My Survival as an Aboriginal

Essie Coffey's classic documentary MY SURVIVAL AS AN ABORIGINAL was filmed in Brewarrina, far north-west New South Wales, Australia in 1978.

Useful Websites

Community based organisations

·       Gadigal Information Service (Koori Radio 93.7fm) www.gadigal.org.au

·       Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Lands Council (Sydney) www.metrolalc.org.au

·       NSW Aboriginal Land Council www.alc.org.au

Education

·       Tranby Aboriginal College   www.tranby.edu.au

Health Related

·       Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council www.ahmrc.org.au

·       Australian Indigenous Health Infonet  www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au

·       Australian Institute of Health & Welfare www.aihw.gov.au/publications/index.cfm/title/10583

·       Close the Gap Oxfam Report (2008) www.closethegap.com.au

·       National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation www.naccho.org.au

Government Departments & Agencies

·       Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies www.aiatsis.gov.au

·       Indigenous Coordination Centre  www.indigenous.gov.au

·       NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs www.daa.nsw.gov.au

NSW Department of Health http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/search/search.asp?qText=Aboriginal+&Go=Go&collection=wwwsite&queryMode=kword

• Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies www.aiatsis.gov.au
• Indigenous Coordination Centre www.indigenous.gov.au
• NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs www.daa.nsw.gov.au
• NSW Department of Health http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/search/search.asp?qText=Aboriginal+&Go=Go&collection=wwwsite&QueryMode=kword 

·       Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies www.aiatsis.gov.au

·       Indigenous Coordination Centre  www.indigenous.gov.au

·       NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs www.daa.nsw.gov.au

·       NSW Department of Health http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/search/search.asp?qText=Aboriginal+&Go=Go&collection=wwwsite&queryMode=kword

Other general

·       Australians for  Native Title and Reconciliation  www.antar.org.au

·       Koori Mail www.koorimail.org

·       National Directory of Aboriginal Business and Community Enterprises www.blackpages.com.au

·       National Indigenous Times www.nit.com.au

·       National Sorry Day Committee  www.nsdc.org.au

Community based organisations

• Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (Sydney) www.metrolalc.org.au
• NSW Aboriginal Land Council www.alc.org.au
• Gadigal Information Service (Koori Radio 93.7FM) www.gadigal.org.au