Travel Tips

We were extrememly priveledged and lucky to have an Aboriginal guide during a recent bush camping trip in Central Australia. During our two evenings around the campfire, Jabba took the opportunity to explain various aspects of traditional Aboriginal culture to a captivated audience.

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What follows is bound to be an inaccurate and certainly incomplete retelling; we only learned a little and even that has been tainted by our Western views and memories. However, we were fascinated, and we want to share what we understood with people who might know even less of Aboriginal culture. We very much hope that this catches the spirit of a way of life, and the incompleteness does not render it misleading.
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The Warlpiri diet is no longer high-protein. In the last 50 years, high sugar and high fat foods have been much more readily available than their traditional staples. Women have much higher body fat, and as a result menstruate more regularily and for more years; the Warlpiri population is increasing! Unfortunately, the new diet is also wrecking havoc with bodies adapted for protein. Diabetes and heart disease, in that order, are the leading causes of death for Warlpiri today.

Female initiation is no longer done. I don't know what went on, since Jabba didn't know. Suffice it to say that the practice has been stopped because it is now considered cruel.

Male initiation is now 3 months rather than 14 years.

The social rules about who one might marry have relaxed, interestingly because Australian law allows one to marry one's second-cousin, not just third-cousins as the original Warlpiri traditions allowed. Marriages are not often arranged any more, and the taboo on speaking to one's mother-in-law is not usually practiced.

Families still disappear for a week whenever there is a funeral, and all of a dead person's belongings are eliminated. In fact, there are several photos in the museums which are covered up because the person has since died. One of the reasons that Aboriginals don't like to have people climb Uluru (Ayer's Rock) is that whenever anyone dies, they believe the travellers's soul is lost there and doesn't know how to get home.

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We learned more, but I'm forgetting already. We were fascinated. Thank you, Jabba, for the insight into a culture so different from ours.
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Our guide, Jabba, is a member of the Warlpiri tribe. (Tribe is not an accurate word -- an Aboriginal guide we had on a separate tour called the different Aboriginal groups "countries" in his attempt at a translation.)

The Warlpiri tribe, in traditional times, lived in Central Australia to the North West of Alice Springs in an area the size of Britain. Surviving in this Arid Zone and desert required about 25 square kilometers for hunting and gathering, per person per year. The population was stable at about 1600 people.

The Warlpiri hunted and gathered. Or rather, the men hunted and the women gathered; a common element between all Australian Aboriginal tribes is their strong deliniation between Men's Business and Women's Business. All knowledge about animals and hunting, men's initiation rites, and associated dreaming locations was only told to initiated men. All information about plants, childbearing, women's initiation rites, and associated dreaming locations was told only to women. In fact, the Warlpiri had three different dialects to keep the information isolated: one which only men knew, one which only women knew, and one for both men and women but not children!

There were some plants that Jabba knew the name of, but not their medical uses since they were Women's Business -- something to do with monthly stuff was all he knew. In contrast, when he mentioned men's initiation, he said that he could not tell us what went on since there were women present around the campfire. He offered to provide details to the men in our group if they came up and asked him separately.

Walking around Uluru, there are areas of the rock that are marked off as "Men's Sacred Sites" and "Women's Sacred Sites." These locations are off-limits to the public, since they are so sacred in dreamings that it is unconscionable that the opposite sex would wander through and look at them. More on dreamings and sites later.

The men hunted and the women gathered in family groups of about 18 people. It is amazing how many animals and plants there actually *are* in an Arid Zone, as we learned from Jabba and the Desert Park. Kangaroos, emu, snakes, and mice. Plants to suck on for salt, sweet juice that comes out of the back-end of honey ants, Witchity grubs found at the root of the wichity tree (supposedly taste like uncooked egg when raw, and like peanut butter when they are cooked!), and seeds to grind and mix with water to make damper bread. One of their food-gathering styles when times were difficult was to initiate a controlled burn of land. Animals would go running straight towards the waiting hunters, and new green shoots would appear soon after the fire -- food both for the Warlpiri and yet more animals. Nonetheless, it took 8 hours a day of hard work every day to put food on the table.

There are several interesting ramifications of this lifestyle. One is that it didn't leave much time or energy for music, painting, innovation, dancing or other creative endevours. The Aboriginal people on the Coasts have a much more developed art scene and this is most likely one of the reasons. (The art we did see near Uluru was sketches, using the walls as a blackboard to teach children the dreaming stories.)

The diet also played a vital role in population control. Their high-protein diet left the Warlpiri tall and thin, with very little body fat. In an attempt to reduce the number of babies which are born into what the body assumes to be very harsh conditions, the female body automatically makes several adjustments in low-body-fat conditions (as with athletes today). Not only do women menstruate only about 3-4 times per year, they begin menopause at about age 25! As you can imagine, this had an impact on their social structure, described below.

At the age of about 11 or 12, a girl would go through woman's initiation and then be ready for marriage. Marriage is arranged soley by the girl's mother. The mother scopes out all of the eligable men who have just returned from their initiation and picks one! A man can have more than one wife or no wives... the better a provider he is, the more mothers will pick him, and the more wives he'll have. When boys are about 11 or 12, they were mysteriously taken by the wrist one day and taken off to initiation, to return 13 years later as men. No one but initiated men knew what went on during these years, other than education about dreaming stories.

As Jabba said, the downer for a man was that when he arrived back into his family grouping at age ~25, he had no say as to which 11 year old would become his wife. However, there was a benefit to go with this, according to Jabba. After marrying, the man would never have to speak to his mother-in-law again. In fact, he was not allowed to! We were fascinated to understand the reason. Since the mother-in-law had her 11 year old when she was about 12-13 herself, she is now about 23 -- the age of her son-in-law and probably much more attractive and interesting to him than his adolescent wife. Furthermore, the life expectancy of the Warlpiri was about 40 years, so at 23 her husband is over the hill. The social rule which forbid a man to talk to, look at, or touch his mother-in-law (even in a family grouping of just 18 people! They would have to sit at either side of the campfire, looking away from one another. Amazing.) must have done its bit to prevent hanky panky.

Though, biological parents were important, "name-parents" were considered one's true family and identity. The Warlpiri people only had 16 possible names. Eight of the names were for males, and eight for females. The eight male names represented native animals. For example, Jabba's real name is Jabbarula, which means rain snake, or rainbow serpant. The eight female names represented native plants or insects, such as the wichity grub. With about 1600 Warlpiri and 16 names, about 100 Warlpiri had the same name. It was each person's responsibility to protect and preserve their naming animal. This had the effect of preventing over-hunting, since the Kangaroo named people would not allow burning to devistate the local kangaroo population, for example. They were not allowed to kill their naming animal; in fact, at one point Jabba swerved our Land Rover suddenly to the side of the road then turned back to give us all a view of the snake he had (for multiple reasons, we later realized) avoided running over.

These 16 names were important in resourse preservation, but even more importantly they provided a social structure. In a complicated web of arrows, Jabba explained to us that as a Jabbarula, he is only allowed to marry a Shabaruta (unfort, that is not the correct name; we can't remember anymore). All of their sons will be named Jabbajinga, and all of their female children will be named Shabasomethingelse. Their daughters may only marry men named Jabbasomethingelseagain. And so on. By following the arrows, it becomes clear that this arrangement means that no one will ever marry any closer than third cousins -- no inbreeding! Ingenious, given how difficult it would otherwise be to avoid given the small travelling groups.

Again, there would be about 100 Jabbarulas and 100 Shabarutas etc in the Warlpiri tribe, though because of the great distances one might only know about 10 of each name. Nicknames would help to identify further. Not only would Jabbarula not be allowed to talk to his mother-in-law, he would not be allowed to talk to anyone else of her Name. A Jabbarula considers all Jabbajimba his (naming) uncle, or his (naming) brother, depending on how much respect he has for the person. Similarily, a Jabbarula considers all Jabbasomethings his (naming) son or grandfather, depending on how much respect he has. A Shabaruta is a mother or an aunt, and so on. The actual biological family is different and not nearly as important as the relationships between the various names. After a girl has a baby she is likely to leave it with one of the baby's grandmother's to raise. A mother might have to interact with several different travelling groups to find a man of the appropriate name who would be suitable for her daughter. he daughter would then go join her new daughter's travelling group.

Anyway, it was fascinating and I just wish I could remember more of the details.

A name was important not only to establish which animal you protected and your role in social interaction, but also which dreamings became yours. A "dreaming" is a story. The Aboriginals believe that the earth was featureless in Creation Time, and that various animals had journeys across it and left landfeatures in their wake. For example, two snakes might have travelled towards each other, leaving rivers, and then fought and their abandoned spears became certain islands. Something like that. Every Warlpiri with a snake name would be responsible for knowing this story and understanding its relationship to the land. They would learn the dances and songs that describe the journeys which went on for miles. Put together, the members of a travelling group would have knowledge about all the landforms over which they walked.... the songlines intersecting to form a map complete with advice about which paths were treacherous, where there was water, and which sites were sacred. The extent of the Warlpiri songlines also deliniated the borders of the land of other tribes.

A person had an additional type of naming, skin-naming. When a mother was carrying a child and felt the first kick, she carefully remembered where she was. The animal or land-feature that was dominant became her baby's skin name. Later in life, when the child wanted to regain his center and reconnect with himself he would find one of the animals and draw strength from the interaction.

When someone died, they put the body up in a tree so that their spirit would have a chance to be absorbed into the tree, travel down to the roots, and back to the Earth. About a week later, they took the body down and baried it. In the mean time, all members of the person's family went into extreme mourning. They each took off their clothes (actually, in traditional times they weren't wearing much), painted themselves with white dust-water, went to a remote area, and cried and screamed and released all of their sadness and emotions. When the mourners were done, they went home and never spoke of the dead person again. They didn't use his name, didn't have pictures, and didn't tell stories about "the one who used to be such a good hunter." There were no heros. They burned all of the possessions and gave away all the clothes. The reason they so completely rid the dead person from life was that they wanted the soul to return to the earth. There should be no distractions of former life around to distract the soul into becoming lost and not going home.