Kinship and Belonging
Australian kinship systems provide a deep sense of belonging, to other people and community, to the land, the animals, plants, songs, rituals, art, stories and the Law as laid down in the Dreaming.
Traditional Aboriginal kinship systems are born of the Ancestors of the Dreaming and are amongst the most complex kinship systems in the world. They are based upon the concept of reciprocity and are all-embracing. They define an individual’s position within the immediate and extended family and the wider societal structure, and determine the rights, obligations and appropriate behaviours of kinship relations. In this way, kinship systems determine, amongst other things, who you can marry, who you must share food with, who you are to avoid, who you are allowed to joke with, who has responsibility to educate you, who you are to look after and who will look after you. The kinship system reinforces identity and ensures social cohesion and social control. They provide a deep sense of belonging, not only to other people and community but also to the land, the animals, plants, songs, rituals, art, stories and the Law as laid down in the Dreaming.
In other words, Indigenous Australian kinship systems are complex, not only in terms of their structure, but also because they encompass much more than people.
Within the discipline of anthropology, Indigenous kinship systems in Australia are known as classificatory systems of kinship. The classificatory system of kinship has two primary principles:
- Biological (genetically related), affinal (related by marriage) and classificatory kin (people or animals/totems that are considered related but who are not related biologically or through marriage) are considered the same.
- People of the same generation level who are the same sex are considered the same.
Each Indigenous group in Australia has its own variant of the classificatory system of kinship. Across Australia there are commonalities and differences, and, since the arrival of Europeans, there have been some changes due to the imposition of policies and practices, such as the Aborigines Protection Acts and Assimilation policy, and in response to a range of new circumstances. It is important to remember that all cultures change in some ways over time. Some broad commonalities include:
- They are all-embracing; everyone belongs to the kinship system.
- The world, including people, plants, animals, waterways and celestial bodies, is divided into moieties (halves) or further divisions.
- A person has the same mutual obligations to people who are classificatory kin as they do to biological kin.
- There are people you can interact with, and people you cannot.
- Today when Indigenous people meet, for many the first task is to determine where each person fits into the kinship system. Elders, especially women, hold the knowledge of family lines and relations. This knowledge has survived over two centuries of displacement and colonisation.
Who Are Indigenous Australians?
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia traditionally define their identity according to their country or language nation, kinship and skin group and/or totemic association.
Today, Indigenous Australians are also identified according to the government definition of Indigeneity. The primary requirements under this definition are that a person must be:
- A descendant of an Indigenous Australian (Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander).
- Identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.
- Be acknowledged by their community as an Indigenous person.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are also known as Indigenous Australians and acknowledged as being among the world’s indigenous peoples. Note that when we talk of Indigenous Australians we use a “capital I”, but when we talk of indigenous people around the world, we use a small “i”. Terminology used to refer to Indigenous people can be quite complex and words considered to be appropriate have changed over time.
Who Are Indigenous Peoples Globally?
Indigenous peoples live in Australia but also in other parts of the world, such as New Zealand, Japan, North and South America, Europe and Asia. Indigenous peoples around the world have very different cultures but share similar experiences of being colonised and continue to deal with the presence of other people living on their land.
The United Nations (UN) does not have a ‘universal definition’ of indigenous peoples and does not consider it necessary. It does have a ‘working definition’ which contains the following elements:
“Self- identification as indigenous peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member. Historical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies. Strong link to territories and surrounding natural resources. Distinct social, economic or political systems. Distinct language, culture and beliefs. Form non-dominant groups of society. Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and systems as distinctive peoples and communities.” (United Nations, n.d., p.1) According to the UN the most fruitful approach is to identify, rather than define indigenous peoples. This is based on the fundamental criterion of self-identification as underlined in a number of human rights documents (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, n.d.).
Moieties
A major structuring principle of Aboriginal societies in Australia is the moiety system. The term moiety basically means two halves of one whole. Under the moiety system each group is divided into two moieties, with each individual assigned to a moiety group depending on whether the group is matrilineal (following the line of the mother) or patrilineal (following the line of the father). There are usually at least four divisions within each moiety.
Moieties encompass people, the land, waterways and celestial environment. They also govern relationships to flora and fauna and custodianship of ceremony, song, art and dance.
Moieties govern(ed) marriage, with partners chosen from:
The opposite moiety. The same generation level (in some instances). A different division. Totems
The Ancestors of the Dreaming could take the form of human and animals, birds, fish and reptiles and as they moved around the landscape they created Dreaming tracks and places of varying degrees of sacredness. When children are conceived, they are imbued with the spiritual essence of the Dreaming Ancestor whose spiritual essence lies in that location and are subsequently related to all other people with that totem across Australia. In this way, each person belongs to a totem or shares the same spiritual essence as their Ancestral being and all the places, songs, stories, rituals and art that belong to that particular Dreaming Ancestor and become custodians of those sacred places, ceremonies, songs, art and stories because they are a part of them.
Ind icon reading activity.svg Required Reading
This short extract explains the meanings of totems for Torres Strait Islanders:
Bani, E. (2004). What is a totem? In R. Davis (ed). Woven Histories, Dancing Lives: Torres Strait Islander Identity, Culture and History. (p. 151). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Available in eReserve. Further Viewing
This link takes you to an audiovisual clip explaining Pintupi skin groups and kinship relations:
http://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/lore-love/clip3/
Ind icon reading activity.svg Required Readings
As you read, identify the kinship features that are explained in these texts:
Keen, I. (2004) Aboriginal Economy and Society: Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation. (Chapter 6: Kinship and Marriage, pp 174-179) South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Available via eReserve. [NB: a second chapter of this book is included in this PDF as optional further reading].
Bell, D. (2002). Appendix 2, 'Kinship'. In Daughters of the Dreaming (3rd ed., pp. 256-59). Melbourne: Spinifex Press. Available as an eBook. Ind icon learning activity.svg Learning Activity
Exploring your classificatory kinship system
Draw your family tree, locating yourself in relation to your siblings, parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, nephews and nieces etc. Then, re-draw your family tree applying the major principle of the classificatory kinship system which is the equivalence of same-sex siblings within a generation level. In other words, siblings of the same sex who are of the same generation level are considered the same. For example, under this principle:
Your mother’s sister/s = your mother/s (thus all of your classificatory mother/s’ children are classed as your siblings, not your cousins). Mother’s sister’s husband = father (your mother’s sister stands as ‘mother’ to you therefore her husband is classified as ‘father’). Mother’s brother = uncle. Father’s brother/s = father (all children of your classificatory fathers/s are classed as your siblings, not your cousins). Father’s brother’s wife = mother (your father’s brother stands as ‘father’ to you therefore his wife is classified as ‘mother’). Father’s sister = aunt. Children of your same-sex sibling/s = your children (not nieces and nephews). Children of your siblings of the opposite sex = your nephews and nieces. This principle also applies to your grandparents' siblings and spouses.
link=http://wikieducator.org/File:Reflect undertake.svg Reflection
How has this changed the family structure as represented in your initial genealogical chart? Have you gained more mothers and fathers and siblings under the classificatory system? Have you acquired children you did not previously have? How do you think it would feel to have grown up in this family structure?
