The
Tiwi Tribe of Northern Australia
By:
Stephanie
Doucet, Kelly LeBlanc, Bryan Logan, Janine Morris and Tracey Webb
Photos:
Google Images
Geography:
The
Tiwi tribes reside in the Melville and Bathurst Islands, located off
the
northern coast of Australia. Melville is the bigger of the two islands
and is
Australia’s second largest island, after Tasmania. Although both
islands are
inhabited, only Bathurst Island is accessible to the general public. In
order
to travel to Melville, you must be part of an organized tour, or
fishing
charter.
Melville
Island was first sighted by Abil Tasman in 1644. It wasn’t until 1818
however,
that the island was explored by Phillip Parker King. King named the
island after
Viscount Melville. Ownership of the island was turned over to the Tiwi
people
in 1978 and is run by the Tiwi Land Council.
In
total, the islands measure approximately 3000 square miles. The land is
generally flat and monotonous, although along the southern coast of
Melville,
there lies the headwaters of nine rivers that flow north to the Arafura
sea.
Along the north coast of Melville Island and in some of the deep bays,
there
are long, clean beaches and varicolored clay cliffs. Most of the land
on both islands
is heavily forested with:
·
Ironwood
·
Stringy-bark
·
Woolly-butt
·
Paperbark
·
Cyprus
pine
·
Tall
cabbage palms
·
Kapok
Some
edible plans that inhabit the land
are: cycad, fan, pandanus, wild plum, apple and cabbage palm.
Photo:
Portrait of a People: The Tiwi of Northern Australia by
Heide Smith
Values
and Beliefs:
Because
of missionaries
hundreds of years ago the Tiwi people are followers of the Roman
Catholic
religion. However Tiwi people do have their own believes and values in
their
society. When in morning, it is part of their belief to paint their
bodies and
to not feed themselves. Therefore another person would be responsible
for
feeding them.
Body
painting is also
practised and have been for thousands of years. This is a very
important part
of any ceremony, a natural ochre pigment is used. For Tiwi people it is
important to hunt and fish traditional foods such as, lizards, carpet
snakes,
pig, turtle and seagull eggs with a large variety of various fish. It
is valued
within Tiwi culture to participate in rituals, this participation will
assure
success and health and gives the participant opportunities to express
themselves.
Photo:
Portrait of a People: The Tiwi of Northern Australia by
Heide Smith
Kinship:
The
Tiwi
organize their society around kin groupings anthropologists call
totemic clans,
within which the elderly are accorded high levels of respect. However,
as seen
in this description of Hart’s early fieldwork, the severe physical and
cognitive
decline of a particular Tiwi woman set in motion a dramatic ritual for
dealing
with this situation.
"After
a
few weeks on the islands I also became aware that [the Tiwi] were often
uneasy
with me because I had no kinship linkage to them. This was shown in
many ways,
among others in their dissatisfaction with the negative reply they
always got
to their question, "What clan does he belong to?"
Tiwi
custom,
when an old woman became too feeble to look after herself, to "cover
her
up." This could only be done by her sons and her brothers and all of
them
had to agree beforehand, since once it was done they did not want any
dissension among the brothers or clansmen, as that might lead to a
feud. The
women who was now completely blind, she was constantly falling over
logs or
into fires, and they, her senior clansmen, were in agreement that she
would be
better out of the way. The Tiwi, like many other hunting and gathering
peoples,
sometimes got rid of their ancient and decrepit females. The method was
to dig
a hole in the ground in some lonely place, put the old woman in the
hole and
fill it in with earth until only her head was showing, leave her for
two days,
so that she could die in peace. This is not considered killing her, it
is
considered dying a natural death (Sokolovsky, 1997).
Within
the Tiwi
tribe men can, and usually are married to any number of women. With
that comes
the importance on women being continuously married. Goodale, (1971)
outlines
five types of matrilineal units, they are the following:
the unnamed matrilineal sibling sets, the
named matrilineal siblings, the matrilineal super-sibs or phratry
segments, the
matrilineal phratries, also unnamed, and lastly, the two matrilineal
moieties
(Goodale, 1971).
Coming
of Age Rites:
Coming of age rites are found throughout the description
of pregnancy
and motherhood within the Tiwi tribe, the focus being primarily on
women. There
are five major coming of age rites (steps) that a young woman will go
through:
1.
“According to
Tiwi belief, individuals exist in the universe before birth into Tiwi
society.
Unborn individuals are called pitapitui”
(138). This is not just restricted to girls, but boys as well, however
this is
the only coming of age rite that both sexes receive the same name.
2.
The next coming
of age rite happens “4 months after reaching puberty, the girl is now
referred
to as a Murukubara, a young woman”
(130). This is the time in a girl’s life where she is now able to have
children
and create a status for herself in the tribe, however status will not
come
until a child is born by the woman herself.
3.
It is when the
young woman (remaining in the Murukubara
classification) “becomes pregnant, when she will take on a new
classification, poperirjanta” (136). This is the time
when the young woman is beginning her steps into having status in her
tribe,
something that all women desire.
4.
Once the baby
has been born, the mother is left to two options of her new
classification: “If
she is the mother of a girl, she is called pernamberdi,
or if the mother of a boy, awri-awri”
(148). The mother will remain with these terms until she has another
child of
the opposite sex (where she will be classified as the other) or reaches
menopause (148).
5.
Once a woman
reaches menopause, she is classified under the term parimarirja,
which is the same name as a woman who is barren. Women
who are barren (that is, unable to reproduce) will eventually gain
status in
the tribe through time, however it will be more difficult and lengthy
than a
woman who will experience childbirth.
Photo:
Portrait of a People: The Tiwi of Northern Australia by
Heide Smith
Male
Initiation Rites:
Typically
a male initiation would be a
puberty rite but as puberty is hard to identify among males, initiation
is more
based on ones chronological age. Most
Tiwi man are initiated around the age of fourteen.
This young man’s household is likely to be a
home with many wives as his father or stepfather may have many as
twenty wives
(Moore, p. 134). Therefore, social tension
often presents itself within the household as several of these wives
are
twelve, thirteen of age or younger and some are of the same age as the
young
pubescent boy. Solution to social
tension presents itself in the boy’s initiation rites because his
father does
not have the time to police him all day long when his young wives are
scattered
everywhere in the bush (Moore, p.134).
The wives are out in the bush gathering all kind of foods they
can find
such as hunting small animals, picking berries ect.
These
rites are very long since the
“father sends his son away to make a man of him, and it takes six years
of
transition and isolation to do it. The
father calls upon an adult kinsman of the boy, usually a cousin engaged
to be
married to the boy’s sister and therefore in the father’s debt for the
promised
wife” (Moore, p.134). At this point, the
father and kinsman agree on a day to begin the boy’s initiation. This kinsman gathers a war party of adult men
and on the day chosen the war group makes their way to camp and begin
this
boy’s initiation process. The warriors
enter the camp and captures the young boy as women run away in fear and
the
terrified father watches his son be carried away into the bush. This horrific event is a scam organized by
his father in which only the young boy is unaware of.
Once transported into the bush, the young man
realizes he is not the only one facing this transition when he sees
other
fourteen year old boys. In the bush
young men are trained in hunting and gathering (Moore, p. 134).
Once
the young men have accomplished their full six years, they are
considered fully
initiated and graduates to the status of marriageable.
Photo:
Portrait of a People: The Tiwi of Northern Australia by
Heide Smith
Pregnancy
Rites:
It is important to begin with the way a woman becomes
pregnant within this culture (other than the obvious). Although the
woman will
be a wife to a husband, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she is the
only wife
in which her husband possesses. A woman is known to have a lover, with
whom she
meets in the ‘bush’ and has sexual relations with. The husband
typically is
aware of the situation, but doesn’t do anything about it. That is, as
long as
she doesn’t bring shame and dishonour to him in front of the tribe.
When a
woman is asked, once becoming pregnant who the father is, she replies
with her
husband’s name. However, if asked ‘who made
the baby’ she will reply with her lover’s name (137).
The pregnancy rites in the Tiwi tribe do not begin
with the mother’s conception but by the father who dreams
of the unborn child and when he sees the child and informs
he/she which mother it will be within, the mother-to-be becomes
pregnant. This
is an important step to the Tiwi tribe, because the father-to-be does
not only
have one wife, he may have up to three. Once the father has dreamed
of the child, the “baby begins
to grown inside its mother’s body, making some food taste bad to its
mother,
and by this sign the woman knows she is pregnant” (143). (The father
never
mentions to his wife that he has dreamed of their child.)
There are rituals and precautions that the mother-to-be
must take
because “she might offend the maritji (rainbow
spirits) […] By placing food on a fire (cooking) or spitting into the
flames it
will cause a child to twist in the womb and give pain” (143-44). Other
precautions include “sexual relations between husband and wife were
said to be
suspended during pregnancy” (144). This ‘suspension’ of relations
between
husband and wife come from the tribe’s idea surrounding twins. The
tribe does
not consider twins as a good thing (because it would mean that 1. The
wife is
going against the precautions and 2. The wife is continuing having an
affair
while pregnant). If twins do happen, one of the babies is killed
automatically
on spot because it brings shame to the mother. If the twins happen to
be a boy
and a girl, regardless of their order they were born, the boy child
will
instantly be killed (144).
Birth Rites:
It is told that “as soon as a woman knows she is
pregnant she begins to follow the moon” (146). Once the moon is full,
the woman
knows that her time has almost come and she goes into the bush (the
same one
that she goes with her lover) to have birth. “A big mob of people”
(146)
follows her, including her father, mother, in-laws, brothers and
sisters.
Anyone may go with the woman as long as it is not her husband, for “he
may get
too frightened” (146).
Once in the bush, the woman has at least two midwives,
and hot leaves are pressed against the mother’s back and groin, and is
massaged
by the midwife on the swollen abdomen with swift short movements while
another
midwife presses downward on her back (147). The woman is not allowed to
eat
food for “eating food would make the baby come slowly” (147). The hot
leaves
are again applied to the mother’s back, groin, and legs to relieve
cramps
because the woman is in the kneeling position until the birth of the
child has
finished (147).
Once the baby is out, it is allowed to drop to the
ground unsupported. The woman then shifts herself to the left of the
child in
order to place her foot on the umbilical cord. One of the midwives will
assist
the child while the other assists the mother in the afterbirth, getting
rid of
it, then covering it up with soil, ashes and burnings logs (147). The
umbilical
cord is severed by a razor blade and is allowed to bleed out, not be
tied like
Western civilization. It is only when the afterbirth is gone is the
infant
picked up off the ground. The fire will then go out and the mother will
place
herself over the warm earth, while some of it will be placed on her
abdomen.
The child will then be placed on the left-hand side of the mother and
cleaned
off with the warm earth to ‘dry the child’ (147). A midwife will use
“her
little finger to remove mucus from the infant’s throat, for otherwise
the
child’s voice would be hoarse like a willy-wag-tail (bird)” (147-48).
She will
ask the women “to bring some urine (pagini)
with which he would wash the infant’s eyes” (148). However, water can
and have
been used as well. Once these steps have been made, a midwife will warm
her
hands near the fire and “mold the infant’s head by pressing on the back
of the
skull and up on the underside of the chin” (148). It is said that if
this
precaution is not taken, then the child’s head will grow too long.
Throughout the rest of the day, the new mother is
given nothing to eat. She must remain in the bush for five days, not
allowing
for her husband to see her or the child. News is sent to the husband by
one of
the witnesses to inform him of the successful birth. If the father
refuses this
precaution, then it is said that the infant would die of tarni,
the invisible sickness (148). At the end of the five-day
camp out, before returning to the camp of the tribe, the mother and
child are
painted. “The baby is rubbed with milk and then covered with charcoal
[…] The
mother is painted with a red stripe down the center of her body, both
front and
back” (148). (We are not told the reasons for the painting of mother
and
child.) After the painting has occurred, mother and the new born child
as able
to go back to the tribe and begin the life of motherhood.
References:
Goodale,
J. (1971). Tiwi wives. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Moore,
A. (1998). Cultural Anthropology: The Field Study of Homan
Beings. Rowman &
Littlefield.
Smith,
H. (2008). Portrait of a People: The Tiwi of Northern
Australia. Heide Smith
Photographer.
Sokolovsky,
J. (1997). Aging, Culture: The Cultural Context of
Aging. Greenwood Publications.