Abstract
Aboriginal Australian societies are notable among hunter-gatherers for the seemingly contradictory co-presence of high mobility and a deep emotional attachment to their homelands. Totemic geography underlies people’s multiple linkages to place, and certain acts of the living may also be memorialized, inscribed, and objectified in landscape. Using examples drawn from a Western Desert people, I show that, despite a dominant ideology that stresses “immutability” and stasis, there is a lack of closure in their richly complex religious system, allowing the accommodation of an inevitable dynamism. Openness and flux are, in significant measure, consequences of broadly ecological variables in one of the world’s most marginal environments for human survival. Among these desert people, identity politics, though more complex than ideology alone suggests, are significantly constrained by a religiously saturated worldview.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Berger, P. (1967). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New York: Doubleday.
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York: Doubleday.
Bern, J. (1979). Ideology and domination: Toward a reconstruction of Australian Aboriginal social formation. Oceania, 50, 118–132.
Berndt, R. M. (1959). The concept of the ‘tribe’ in the Western Desert of Australia. Oceania, 30, 81–107.
Berndt, R. M., & Berndt, C. H. (1988). The world of the first Australians (Rev. ed.). Canberra: Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Brennan, F. (2005). Land rights: The religious factor. In M. Charlesworth, F. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: An anthology of recent writings (pp. 227–246). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Burridge, K. O. L. (1973). Encountering aborigines—A case study: Anthropology and the Australian Aboriginal. New York: Pergamon.
Hiatt, L. R. (1969). Totemism tomorrow: The future of an illusion. Mankind, 7, 83–93.
Hiatt, L. R., & Jones, R. (1988). Aboriginal conceptions of the workings of nature. In R. W. Home (Ed.), Australian science in the making (pp. 1–28). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963). Totemism. Boston: Beacon Press.
Maddock, K. (1969). The jabuduruwa. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sydney, Australia.
Maddock, K. (1982). The Australian aborigines: A portrait of their society (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Penguin.
Maddock, K. (1997). The temptation of Paris resisted: An intellectual portrait of a Sydney anthropologist. In F. Merlan, J. Morton, & A. Rumsey (Eds.), Scholar and sceptic: Australian Aboriginal studies in honour of LR Hiatt (pp. 39–63). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Meggitt, M. J. (1962). Desert people. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
Morphy, H. (2005). Yolngu art and the creativity of the inside. In M. Charlesworth, F. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: An anthology of recent writings (pp. 159–169). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Morton, J. (1997). Totemism now and then: A natural science of society? In F. Merlan, J. Morton, & A. Rumsey (Eds.), Scholar and sceptic: Australian Aboriginal studies in honour of LR Hiatt (pp. 151–170). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Moyle, R. (1983). Songs, ceremonies and sites: The Agharringa case. In N. Peterson & M. Langton (Eds.), Aborigines, land and land rights (pp. 66–93). Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Munn, N. D. (1970). The transformation of subjects into objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara myth. In R. M. Berndt (Ed.), Australian Aboriginal anthropology (pp. 141–156). Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Munn, N. D. (1973). Walbiri iconography: Graphic representation and cultural symbolism in a Central Australian society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone age economics. Chicago: Aldine Atherton.
Spencer, W. B., & Gillen, F. J. (1899). The Native Tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan.
Spencer, W. B., & Gillen, F. J. (1904). The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan.
Stanner, W. E. H. (1965). Religion, totemism and symbolism. In R. M. Berndt & C. H. Berndt (Eds.), Aboriginal man in Australia (pp. 207–237). Sydney, Australia: Angus & Robertson.
Stanner, W. E. H. (1979). White man got no Dreaming: Essays, 1938–1981. Canberra: Australian National University Press.
Stanner, W. E. H. (1989). On Aboriginal religion (with an Appreciation by F. Merlan and an introduction by L. R. Hiatt). Sydney: University of Sydney. (Original work published 1966)
Strehlow, T. G. H. (1965). Culture, social structure and environment in Aboriginal Central Australia. In R. M. Berndt & C. H. Berndt (Eds.), Aboriginal man in Australia: Essays in honour of A. P. Elkin (pp. 121–145). Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Strehlow, T. G. H. (1970). Geography and the totemic landscape in Central Australia: A functional study. In R. M. Berndt (Ed.), Australian Aboriginal anthropology (pp. 92–140). Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Tonkinson, M. E. (1990). Is it in the blood? Australian Aboriginal identity. In J. Linnekin & L. Poyer (Eds.), Cultural identity and ethnicity in the Pacific (pp. 191–218). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Tonkinson, R. (1966). Social structure and acculturation of Aborigines in the Western Desert. Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Western Australia.
Tonkinson, R. (1970). Aboriginal dream-spirit beliefs in a contact situation. In R. M. Berndt (Ed.), Australian Aboriginal anthropology (pp. 227–291). Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Tonkinson, R. (1972). Nga:wajil: A Western Desert Aboriginal rainmaking ritual. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Tonkinson, R. (1974). The Jigalong mob: Aboriginal victors of the desert crusade. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings.
Tonkinson, R. (1978). The Mardudjara Aborigines. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Tonkinson, R. (1987). Aborigines. In M. Eliade (Ed.), The encyclopedia of religion (pp. 196–201). New York: Free Press/Macmillan.
Tonkinson, R. (1988a). Egalitarianism and inequality in a Western Desert culture. Anthropological Forum, 5, 545–558.
Tonkinson, R. (1988b). ‘Ideology and domination’ in Aboriginal Australia: A Western Desert test case. In T. Ingold, D. Riches, & J. Woodburn (Eds.), Hunters and gatherers: Vol. 1. Property, power and ideology (pp. 170–184). Oxford, UK: Berg.
Tonkinson, R. (1991). The Mardu Aborigines (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Tonkinson, R. (1997). Anthropology and Aboriginal tradition: The Hindmarsh Island bridge affair and the politics of interpretation. Oceania, 68, 133–147.
Tonkinson, R. (1998). National identity: Australia after Mabo. In J. Wassmann (Ed.), Pacific answers to Western hegemony (pp. 287–310). Oxford, UK: Berg.
Tonkinson, R. (2003). Ambrymese dreams and the Mardu Dreaming. In R. Lohmann (Ed.), Dream travelers of the Western Pacific: Sleep experiences and culture in Australian Aboriginal, Melanesian and Indonesian societies (pp. 87–105). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tonkinson, R. (2004a). Encountering the Other: Millenarianism and the permeability of indigenous domains in Melanesia and Australia. In H. Jebens (Ed.), Cargo, cult, and culture critique (pp. 137–156). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Tonkinson, R. (2004b). Resolving conflict within the Law: The Mardu Aborigines of Australia. In G. Kemp & D. P. Fry (Eds.), Keeping the peace: Conflict resolution and peaceful societies around the world (pp. 89–104). London: Routledge.
Tonkinson, R. (2004c). Spiritual prescription, social reality: Reflections on religious dynamism. Anthropological Forum, 14, 183–201.
Tonkinson, R. (2005). Individual creativity and property–power disjunction in an Australian desert society. In T. Widlok & W. Tadesse (Eds.), Property and equality: Vol. 1. Ritualisation, sharing, egalitarianism (pp. 32–46). Oxford, UK: Berghahn.
Tonkinson, R. (2007a). Aboriginal ‘difference’ and ‘autonomy’ then and now: Four decades of change in a Western Desert Society. Anthropological Forum, 17, 41–60.
Tonkinson, R. (2007b). From dust to ashes: The challenges of difference. Ethnos (Key Informants in the History of Anthropology Series), 72, 509–534.
Tonkinson, R. (2007c). The Mardu Aborigines: On the road to somewhere. In G. Spindler & J. E. Stockard (Eds.), Globalization and change in fifteen cultures: Born in one world, living in another (pp. 225–255). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Tonkinson, R., & Tonkinson, M. (2001). ‘Knowing’ and ‘being’ in place in the Western Desert. In A. Anderson, I. Lilley, & S. O’Connor (Eds.), Histories of old ages: Essays in honour of Rhys Jones (pp. 133–139). Canberra: Pandanus.
Widlok, T. (2005). Introduction. In T. Widlok & W. G. Tadesse (Eds.), Property and equality: Vol. 1. Ritualisation, sharing, egalitarianism (pp. 1–17). Oxford, UK: Berghahn.
Acknowledgement
For her many helpful comments on this chapter, I thank Myrna Tonkinson. This chapter is based on anthropological field research carried out among the Mardu people of Australia’s Western Desert region. Figures 1, 2, and 3 are based on those appearing as Maps 1 and 2 and as figure 5-2 in R. Tonkinson (1991), which is part of the Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology Series, published originally by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and currently by Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. As a Master of Arts student, I began fieldwork in 1963 at a remote Christian mission at Jigalong, on the edge of the desert in Western Australia, and wrote a thesis on intercultural relations (R. Tonkinson, 1966, 1974). My Ph.D. thesis (R. Tonkinson, 1972), which deals with Mardu ritual, was also based on material gathered at Jigalong. See R. Tonkinson (2007b) for a brief autobiographical sketch of my fieldwork in the Western Desert and Vanuatu.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tonkinson, R. (2011). Landscape, Transformations, and Immutability in an Aboriginal Australian Culture. In: Meusburger, P., Heffernan, M., Wunder, E. (eds) Cultural Memories. Knowledge and Space, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8945-8_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8945-8_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8944-1
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8945-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)