Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

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Recommended: Introduction paragraph aboriginal cultures

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were social beings who were linked to other people (including ancestors), through a number of totemic relationships. These relationships were very complex and test the intellectual agility of those who try to understand them. Most commentators speak and write about Aboriginal social relationships using the word tribe. "The system is worked out according to certain principles which are observed by the Aborigines: (i) A start is made from the family and close blood relations reckoned to the second generation up and down, and also collaterally to the second line on both the father’s and mother’s side of any particular individual (but) we should remember that the Aborigines do not distinguish ‘own’ or blood relations from those related only by marriage or by ‘legal’ fiction (in other words, every member of a tribe is considered to be a relative). (ii) But in reckoning collateral relations, aunts, uncles and cousins, they employ a principle which distinguishes their kinship system from ours; they regard brothers as equivalent and sisters as equivalent, and apply terms according to this principle. Thus, mother’s sister is classified with and called mother, and father’s brother is classified with and called father. Likewise grandfather’s brother is ‘grandfather’ and so on. Moreover, certain consequential relationships follow from this; thus, since father’s brother is my ‘father’, his son is my ‘brother’; he is not my cousin as with us; and likewise mother’s sister’s children are not my cousins, but my ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’; or a brother’s children, in the case of a man, are not his nephews and nieces, but his ‘children’, or if a woman be spe... ... middle of paper ... ...ng-makers, or song-men, who specialize in ‘Gossip Songs’ dealing with contemporary people. A songman of this kind usually attributes each new song to a non-inherited ‘familiar’, a spirit or creature which reveals it to him during a dream." (Berndt,1992,pp233) The primary relationships of Aboriginal males compared to the western system, are summarized as follows: • Western / Aboriginal: • Grandfather / Grandfather • Grandfather’s Brother / Grandfather • Father / Father • Aunt (Father's sister)/ Aunt and her children cousins. • Uncle (Father's brother) / Father and his male children brothers. • Mother / Mother • Aunt (Mother’s Sister) / Mother and her female children sisters. • Uncle (Mother’s Brother) / Uncle and his children cousins. • Brother / Brother and his children sons and daughters. • Sister / Sister and her children nephews and nieces.

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