NGUKURR RELIGION

NGUKURR RELIGION . The Aboriginal township of Ngukurr is located on the remote Roper River in southeastern Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory. Its population, which in the 1970s fluctuated between 350 and 500, consists of the descendants of the Aboriginal tribes of the lower and middle Roper River and the adjacent coast, mainly the Alawa, Mara, Ngalagan, Ngandi, Nunggabuyu, and Wandarang. The people of Ngukurr still retain close spiritual and physical ties to their tribal land.

The Setting

The Arnhem Land region has an area of about ninety-five thousand square kilometers. It was set aside in 1931 by the Australian government as a reserve for the Aborigines and remained as such until 1977. Following the passage of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976, the ownership of Arnhem Land was transferred from the Australian government to various Aboriginal bodies.

Arnhem Land, and in particular southeastern Arnhem Land, is physically remote and economically under-developed. The only productive enterprises in the area around Ngukurr are beef-cattle raising and fishing. The country to the south and west of Ngukurr is occupied by large cattle stations (ranches), varying in size from one thousand to seven thousand square kilometers.

Prior to 1969 Ngukurr was known as Roper River Mission and was administered by the Church Missionary Society, an evangelical missionary body within the Anglican Church of Australia. The Aborigines were residents of the mission settlement and lived under the control and direction of the mission staff.

The administrative structure and political control of Ngukurr has undergone sweeping changes beginning late in 1968, when Ngukurr became a government settlement run by the Welfare Division of the Northern Territory Administration. The administration of the town of Ngukurr was transferred to a locally elected council in 1975. Government grants finance the town's budget and the major part of the people's incomes with employment and social service payments. Ngukurr has few productive activities and a very high rate of chronic unemployment.

Religion and the Mission

The Aboriginal community at Ngukurr operates within two religious universes. One derives from the indigenous traditions of the Aboriginal people who make up the present-day community, and the other from the people's subjugation by Europeans, in particular the Christian missionaries.

Christianity and indigenous religion today have an uneasy relationship within the community. Each tolerates the existence of the other, but they are considered as separate. There is no intellectual cross-fertilization, though to an extent they share practitioners and believers.

The structure of Christianity at Ngukurr in the early 1970s reflects its mission origin. From 1908 until 1968, the Church Missionary Society integrated Christianity and social control: Aboriginal residents were able to gain social preference through participation in church activities and nonparticipation provoked negative sanctions. Participation in the church declined dramatically following the transfer of secular control to the Australian government. By 1970 the active Aboriginal congregation was reduced to less than twenty adults, mostly older men and women who had a long history of residence at the mission.

The main point of contact between the local church and the indigenous religion in 1970 was through the composition of the church's lay council. The adult male members were all active participants in the indigenous religious realm. Some, including two of the lay preachers, were leaders in the organization of indigenous cult performances. These men wore their dual positions lightly. As councillors they participated in the church's decision-making process and occasionally attended services at the church, but they fulfilled their main religious role within the indigenous religion. However, their political positions were maintained through participation in both realms.

The Indigenous Realm

The people of Ngukurr, as Aborigines, see themselves and are seen by others as culturally distinct from the mainstream of Australian society, and this distinctiveness is considered a positive value that encapsulates a traditional conception of society.

The conduct of religious cults is the main arena of social life that appears fully contained by this traditional worldview. The social strictures found in the cults, together with the Ngukurr kinship system, provide the framework for social relations in those areas not yet entirely subordinated to the non-Aboriginal world. Today these manifold relations have two main foci: (1) the right to make decisions about and to participate in the religious cults and (2) the distribution of rights and access to the land.

Aboriginal religion is articulated around the relations between groups of people and the land that their forebears occupied and exploited (and that the Aborigines are again seeking to occupy). The foci of the Aboriginal religious systems are supernatural, totemic beings that may or may not be representations of natural species. The more important totemic powers in the Ngukurr pantheon are the nagaran (a supernatural spirit usually represented as a male giant), the plain kangaroo, various species of monitor lizard (goannas), rain and lightning, the gilyiring-gilyiring (which takes various forms, though it is most commonly glossed as a woman or a mermaid), and various species of snakes and fish.

At their most innovative, they are world-creative forces that transform an unfeatured landscape into its known social forms. They pass through the country creating places, leaving their paths, establishing ceremonies, and meeting and establishing structured relations with other powers. Different parts of the country are associated with different powers or ensembles of powers.

The totemic powers organize religious life by bonding particular groups of people with particular sites, paths, or tracts of land. They also articulate the relations between groups that are linked to different sites and tracts of land made by a particular totemic power or constellation of powers. This is made more complex by the fact that people are also related through the interconnections between their different totemic powers. There is in Aboriginal religion, therefore, an intricate interweaving of interests that structures and spreads sociality. Ideally this balances the contradictory tendencies of parochial and universalizing interests.

The Development of Ngukurr Religious Practice

In their traditional habitat and across their own countries, people held ceremonies at the sites being celebrated, but when colonists appropriated the land ceremonies had to be held away from these places.

Mission authorities actively discouraged ceremonies within the mission area, though they continued to be held with difficulty. The mission's attitude prevented ceremonies at Ngukurr until mission policy changed in the mid-1950s. Up to the 1950s Ngukurr was only one of a number of population centers (the others being cattle stations) that shared the cult life of the Roper area. This cult life, richer than that now performed at Ngukurr, included four secret male cults, the Yabuduruwa, Gunabibi (called Kunapipi elsewhere), Balgin, and Maddaiin. An elaborate circumcision ritual and secret women's cults were also part of this religious practice.

All the ceremonies organized by Ngukurr men after 1957 were held in the vicinity of Ngukurr. This occurred alongside the decline in the attendance of Ngukurr men at ceremonies elsewhere in the region, the dropping of the Maddaiin and the Balgin cults from the men's repertoire, and the abbreviation of the circumcision rites. Performance of the women's cults had ceased before this time. Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s about eight Yabuduruwa ceremonies and six Gunabibi ceremonies were held at Ngukurr. Each was associated with one or two of the nine "estate-group territories" (for an explanation of the term estate, see below). It has been described elsewhere (Bern, 1979) the changes that brought about the establishment of a specific Ngukurr society. The changes during the 1950s resulted in the appearance of a ritual life specific to Ngukurr and of a distinct set of Ngukurr religious properties.

The Cults

Indigenous religious practice at Ngukurr centers on the conduct of the two cults of the Yabuduruwa and the Gunabibi. These cults celebrate, with great complexity, the relations between people, between people and the totemic powers, between people and the land, and between the land, people, and the totemic powers. Intergroup relations are specified through the identification of particular kinship-based groups with particular territories. Such groups are called estate groups. Relations between people are also specified through sociocentric categories. Thus patrilineal moiety and semi-moiety affiliations are ritualized.

Moieties and semimoieties

At the most inclusive level the organization of the Yabuduruwa and Gunabibi cults is based on the division of society into two patrilineal moieties, within which context people's positions and actions are defined. People who are related through their fathers to the totemic powers represented in a cult are called mingeringgi, and they have a certain set of rights and obligations. The people of the opposite moiety, who are related to the powers through their mothers and fathers' mothers, are called junggaiyi, and they have a set of rights and obligations complementary to those of the mingeringgi.

The mingeringgi are the celebrants and the human representation of a cult. They bear the responsibility for any errors or damage to the cult's artifacts or integrity. The junggaiyi care for and organize the emblems, paraphernalia, and performances of the cults. The Yabuduruwa cult celebrates the estates and totemic powers of the people of the Yiridja moiety and they are its mingeringgi. The Gunabibi cult celebrates the estates and totemic powers of the people of the Dua moiety and they are its mingeringgi.

The Yabuduruwa and the Gunabibi are also semimoiety cults. At Ngukurr the semimoieties belonging to the Yiridja moiety are called Budal and Guyal. Those belonging to the Dua moiety are called Mambali and Murungun. The semimoiety division is utilized in a number of ways in the two cults.

The totemic powers and the sites represented in the cults are identified with one or another of the semi-moieties as well as with a particular moiety. The nagaran estate-group territories are celebrated in the Yabuduruwa cult. This power is associated with the Yiridja moiety and the Guyal semimoiety. Another Yabuduruwa-cult estate-group territory is the Plain Kangaroo territory, which is also identified with the Yiridja moiety, but which is further identified with the Budal and not the Guyal semimoiety. Similarly, the gilyiring-gilyiring, which is celebrated in the Gunabibi cult, is associated with the Dua moiety and the Mambali semimoiety at Ngukurr, while the king brown snake is identified with the Dua moiety and the Murungun semimoiety.

At the moiety level both semimoieties of Dua are mingeringgi for the Gunabibi. However, there are times when the semimoieties are structurally separated and only one qualifies as mingeringgi. The other semimoiety of the Dua moiety then occupies a position called dalnyin (lit., "mother's mother"). The same applies for the Yiridja moiety in the context of the Yabuduruwa. The dalnyin have a largely supplementary role and can in certain circumstances act as both mingeringgi and junggaiyi.

In each of the cults there are important rites in which the two semimoieties of the mingeringgi moiety are separated and perform distinct segments. A striking example of this separation occurs in the Yabuduruwa ceremony; in parts of this ceremony, those in the opposite semimoiety (but the same moiety) to that of the ceremony initiators can assume the role of junggaiyi in the absence of appropriate senior junggaiyi.

The same separation of semimoieties does not occur within the junggaiyi category. Two of the most important reasons for this are the composition of the estate group, which includes junggaiyi from both semi-moieties, and the importance of individual kinship ties. Ego-centered kinship relations are activated in the organization and conduct of the cults. For example, in the preparation of individual male performers particular tasks can be performed only by cross-cousins and others only by a mother's brother. One's cross-cousins and mother's brothers would normally be found in different semimoieties of the opposite moiety.

The estates

The cults also have a narrower perspective in the celebration and reinforcement of social relations. The social features of the landscape are established by the movements of the totemic powers and the sites that they created. Particular groups have special attachment to and responsibility for parts of the landscape associated with a particular power or ensemble of powers. These are the ritual "estates." The groups associated with each estate have a complex structure.

The core of the "estate group" is composed of people who are related to the estate through their fathers. Individual members of the core group have names that are taken from the names of features in the estate, and collectively the core is known by the name of the estate. Other members of the estate group are people who trace their relationship to the estate through their mothers, their fathers' mothers, or their mothers' mothers. In the context of the estate, the ones who trace their relationship through their fathers are the estate's mingeringgi; those whose relationship is through their mothers or fathers' mothers are the junggaiyi; and those people related through their mothers' mothers are the dalnyin.

A major emphasis in both the Yabuduruwa and the Gunabibi cults is the celebration of particular estates and their totemic powers, in ceremonies initiated by the senior men. The occasion is often to commemorate a recently deceased senior core-member (no less than two years and preferably no more than ten years deceased). However, the reason may simply be that this group has not had a ceremony for its own estate for a long time. Their ownership is acknowledged by the initiated core members, who take the lead in most of the performances of the ceremony, and by the organizers of the ceremony, who are the estate's senior junggaiyi. The main dance ground and associated structures are built to dimensions that are specific to the estate.

Estates are specifically celebrated in certain rites held in both cults. Within these rites mingeringgi perform individual dances, wearing designs that represent a totemic power and site from their estate. The dances, designs, and paraphernalia worn by the performers, as well as songs and myths that particularly concern the estate, are part of the estate's gulinga, a Ngukurr term which encompasses all aspects of an estate's religious property. A group without a gulinga has no ceremony, though they may still have an estate.

Control and participation

Both the Yabuduruwa and the Gunabibi are cults of initiated men; the most important parts of a Yabuduruwa or Gunabibi ceremony's performance, its paraphernalia, and the knowledge it conveys are kept secret from the women, novices, and children of the community (as well as all other uninitiated people). The men also control the organization and most aspects of the conduct of the ceremonies, and perform most of the cult's rites.

Women, however, play an indispensable, though subordinate, part in both the organization and the conduct of the cults. They prepare food on behalf of the male participants, and they have responsibility for the public part of the ceremonial precinct, which is a cleared area within the total ceremonial precinct and which is located about half a kilometer from the main ceremonial ground. In the Yabuduruwa cult they also have the care of the novices, who remain at the public precinct before they are taken to the main performing ground to observe the men's performance. Women also participate as actors in some of the central rites in both cere-monies.

While the two cults together impart symmetry to Ngukurr's religious practice, there are significant differences between them. Unlike the Yabuduruwa, the Gunabibi includes song cycles in its performance. The training of novices is more thoroughly pursued in the Gunabibi than it is in the Yabuduruwa. In the former, dogma prescribes that novices are withdrawn from the community for the duration of the ceremony and put in the charge of initiated young men. However, at Ngukurr, this is usually modified to the extent that novices remain within the male area of the ceremonial precinct for the duration of a session, which usually covers a weekend of performances. In the Yabuduruwa cult, by contrast, the novices remain within the community and are only obliged to attend the ceremony for the duration of each performance. Even then they are kept at the women's area during the period of preparation for a performance.

The Gunabibi cult emphasizes social control of the emerging generation of males through the separation of novices from the secular world and their subjection to adult male discipline, while the Yabuduruwa cult lays less emphasis on such a rite de passage. The Yabuduruwa's central concern is with the dramatization of exclusion and of the hierarchical order of society. The former has its highlight in the Goanna Tail rite, in which women, the main actors, are led to the men's secret dance ground at night. They keep their heads bowed. They approach a fire on the ground and light rolls of paperbark and then return to the women's precinct. (The rolls of paperbark symbolize the tails of goannas, which are a central motif of the Yabuduruwa. The goanna tails are an important phallic representation and are also the most desired part of the goanna for eating.) If they were to raise their heads during their trip to the men's secret dance ground, the women could see the sacralia of the men. Kenneth Maddock offers a convincing interpretation of this rite as a dramatization of the exclusion of women from the cult's innermost secrets (1982, pp. 133–134).

The issue of hierarchy is encapsulated in the final rite of the Ngukurr Yabuduruwa cult, performed after the ceremony has been officially concluded. The senior men return to the main ceremony ground, taking with them some specially chosen younger initiated men. They give as the reason for their return the need to clean up the ceremony ground. However, a rite is performed there by the two most senior mingeringgi, which is witnessed only by this select group. During the preparation for this rite the men discuss any infractions that have occurred during the course of the ceremony and decide what, if anything, they will do about such infractions.

Religion and the Community

The continuity of Ngukurr religion, in the form outlined here, is not certain. The influences at work have contradictory effects. The rapid changes of recent years have not yet been fully worked out and externally imposed changes are still taking place. One hope, that European authority would be replaced by one based on traditional values, has not eventuated. For a while the Gunabibi cult was seen as a possible vehicle of social control, especially of the teenage males. This hope has not been realized and even the rhetoric of this movement had disappeared by the mid-1970s.

People continue to believe in the bond between themselves and their land, and the myth and structures represented in the cults still mediate these beliefs. The legislation on land rights has given this recent material support, and this, at least, can be seen as supportive of the indigenous religion.

Bibliography

Bern, John. "Politics in the Conduct of a Secret Male Ceremony," Journal of Anthropological Research 35 (Spring 1979): 47–60. In this article I deal with the political dimensions of the organization of a Yabuduruwa ceremony held at Ngukurr in 1970. The article also contains a description of the cult.

Berndt, Ronald M. The Kunapipi. Melbourne, 1951. Berndt describes the organization of a Gunabibi ceremony held in northeastern Arnhem Land in the late 1940s. This ceremony was largely organized by men from east and south Arnhem Land who had connections with the Ngukurr people.

Capell, Arthur. "The Wandarang and Other Tribal Myths of the Yabuduruwa Ritual." Oceania 30 (March 1960): 206–224. Capell presents and translates myths from the Ngukurr Yabuduruwa that he collected in the 1950s. There are versions of both the nagaran and goanna myths.

Elkin, A. P. Two Rituals in South and Central Arnhem Land. Sydney, 1972. This is a collection of Elkin's articles describing Yabuduruwa and Maddaiin ceremonies from different parts of Arnhem Land. The most pertinent is an account of a Yabuduruwa ceremony held at Ngukurr in 1966. Elkin's account is based on a film of the event made by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

Hiatt, L. R., ed. Aboriginal Landowners: Contemporary Issues in the Determination of Traditional Aboriginal Land Ownership. Sydney, 1984. The main theme of this collection of articles is the examination of the structure of traditional rights in land in the context of the current Australian government legislation concerning the granting of title in land to Aborigines. The articles by myself and Robert Layton and by Frances Morphy and Howard Morphy deal with land claims in the Roper River area.

Maddock, Kenneth. The Australian Aborigines: A Portrait of Their Society. Rev. ed. Ringwood, Victoria, 1982. Maddock's study is an important introduction to Aboriginal society written from a structuralist viewpoint. His discussion of Aboriginal religion is comprehensive. He uses descriptions of parts of both the Yabuduruwa and Gunabibi cults in his analysis. His description of these is largely based on his own research in southwestern Arnhem Land.

Stanner, W. E. H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sydney, 1964. Stanner's study is the definitive work on Aboriginal religion. While it is primarily an analysis of religious practice of the western part of the Northern Territory, it addresses general theoretical issues. One of the cults discussed by Stanner is the Karwadi, which is cognate to the Gunabibi.

John Bern (1987)