Abstract
Based on research with Warlpiri people at the Aboriginal town of Yuendumu in Central Australia, this chapter provides ethnographic material on and analysis of an Aboriginal extended family group’s nightly play sessions, focusing on three toddlers (between 2 and 2.5 years old). These sessions happen after dinner and before the toddlers fall asleep, when family members spend the evening in the camp, socialising. All action focused on the toddlers during this time has to do with inducing and relieving fear. I relate these sessions to others described in the anthropology of Aboriginal Australia and read them as part of larger processes of social learning through which Warlpiri children acquire understanding of their world and how they fit into it.
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Notes
- 1.
Please note that I employ pseudonyms throughout.
- 2.
Children certainly are made frightened during the day as well, for example, when misbehaving they are threatened with ‘that policeman who will come and lock you up’. There is, however, an important difference between daytime scaring of children (as an example of scolding) and the playful nature of evening time lani-mani sessions.
- 3.
The Warlpiri cosmos is populated by a great many monsters, of varying degrees of scariness. It is significant in itself that during lani-mani sessions, monsters, who have the potential to kill Warlpiri people, like jarnpa (see Meggitt 1955; Musharbash 2014), are never employed. Their suspected presence terrifies adults (and children), and to jokingly engage them might actually draw them to the camp, with dire consequences.
- 4.
Hamilton (1981, p. 55) reports an interesting twist on the use of non-Indigenous people in scare play. She details: ‘Today, an even more potent threat is used when the child is out of its immediate camp area and in the territory of Europeans, e.g. at the canteen, the hospital or in the dining room. This is wongera balanda, literally ‘debil-debil white man’. When threatened with this, the child characteristically buries its face into its mother’s knees or shoulders and may not start to timidly look around again for 5 min’.
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Acknowledgements
My first thanks must go to Sachiko Kubota, upon whose invitation I joined the RNMH Project. Professor Kubota looked after me like ngurra-jinta. Heartfelt thanks also to Professor Hideaki Terashima, who made my participation in two stimulating workshops possible. For wonderfully fruitful discussions, I thank Akira Takada, Lye Tuck-Po, Barry Hewlett, Samantha Disbray and Victoria Burbank. Ute Eickelkamp provided useful feedback to a first draft of this chapter and, even more generously, shared invaluable references with me. As always, thank you from the bottom of my heart to the Warlpiri people of Yuendumu for teaching me and especially to Kumunjayi-mob for helping me understand what lani-mani sessions are all about. The time to work on the final version of this chapter was made possible under a fellowship by the ARC (FT130100415) for which I am immensely grateful.
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Musharbash, Y. (2016). Evening Play: Acquainting Toddlers with Dangers and Fear at Yuendumu, Northern Territory. In: Terashima, H., Hewlett, B.S. (eds) Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers. Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans Series. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55997-9_14
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