Inspired by Will Self’s The Butt, I went in search of the controversial anthropologist Ted Strehlow. Melbourne Uni library had his major work, Songs of Central Australia, but you had to go in and read it on site, so I settled for Northern Aranda Traditions, published in 1947.
It seems to be quite fashionable to bash Strehlow. It does seem from various online biographies I have read that he went a little weird in his final years, but this book was written at the height of his abilities. He did the research in the 1930s but held off until his informants had all died before the book was published.
One of the difficulties about being a white Australian who is sympathetic to indigneous causes is the lack of information about what, exactly, Aboriginal culture consists of. It isn’t really surprising, given that so much of these cultures involves access rights to certain bits of knowledge or parts of stories, but you can feel a little in the dark about exactly what you are sympathising with.
A great struggle I have personally is the traditional owners’ requests not to visit certain places. As someone who feels intensely about the landscape it is hard to be told that there is only one way of interacting with a particular place - especially when that one way utterly excludes you. I can’t help feeling, secular person that I am, that it is crazy to expect everyone to interact with a particular place in exactly the same way. It is a bit like expecting everyone who visits the Sistine Chapel to be a devout Catholic, or everyone who sees the Taj Mahal to be an observant Muslim. Maybe they should be!
This book is obviously untouched by modern political considerations, for both good and bad. It is not so good if you’re interested in Northern Aranda women, for example, because they barely rate a mention except to point out that they are completely excluded from the religious life of the groups (although Strehlow was obviously writing without consulting any women, so it is perfectly possible they had their own initiations and special knowledge to pass on).. But as an explanation of exactly how things worked in a traditional Aboriginal society, among men who were older than contact with white settlers, it is very interesting.
It also underlined just how much has been lost. The complex initiation process is seen very much as a vetting process, to discover exactly who was worthy of access to the various secrets. If no one was deemed worthy, they weren’t passed on and died with their keepers.
Interestingly, according to this book, the traditionally inherited secret/sacred objects that represented totemic ancestors were seen as private property – the current ‘owner’ of these objects was apparently entitled to do as he pleased with them. This conflicts with a lot about what I had assumed about traditional Aboriginal culture – you do tend to assume everything must have been shared.
Strehlow also points out how unchanging the culture of the Northern Aranda was; how everything was so proscribed that there was really no room for technical or literary innovation whatsoever. He even referred to it as a ‘decadent’ culture, which surprised me a lot. We are so used to thinking of the unchanging nature of traditional indigenous culture as a strength - which it is - but of course an unchanging culture can also be an oppressive and hidebound and restrictive one.
The main feeling I got from the book, however, was just a sadness at the complexity and interestingness of what has been lost, all over Australia, over the last two centuries. Strehlow deserves all credit for insisting on the intricacy and significance of Aranda culture at a time when this was anything but fashionable.
It seems to be quite fashionable to bash Strehlow. It does seem from various online biographies I have read that he went a little weird in his final years, but this book was written at the height of his abilities. He did the research in the 1930s but held off until his informants had all died before the book was published.
One of the difficulties about being a white Australian who is sympathetic to indigneous causes is the lack of information about what, exactly, Aboriginal culture consists of. It isn’t really surprising, given that so much of these cultures involves access rights to certain bits of knowledge or parts of stories, but you can feel a little in the dark about exactly what you are sympathising with.
A great struggle I have personally is the traditional owners’ requests not to visit certain places. As someone who feels intensely about the landscape it is hard to be told that there is only one way of interacting with a particular place - especially when that one way utterly excludes you. I can’t help feeling, secular person that I am, that it is crazy to expect everyone to interact with a particular place in exactly the same way. It is a bit like expecting everyone who visits the Sistine Chapel to be a devout Catholic, or everyone who sees the Taj Mahal to be an observant Muslim. Maybe they should be!
This book is obviously untouched by modern political considerations, for both good and bad. It is not so good if you’re interested in Northern Aranda women, for example, because they barely rate a mention except to point out that they are completely excluded from the religious life of the groups (although Strehlow was obviously writing without consulting any women, so it is perfectly possible they had their own initiations and special knowledge to pass on).. But as an explanation of exactly how things worked in a traditional Aboriginal society, among men who were older than contact with white settlers, it is very interesting.
It also underlined just how much has been lost. The complex initiation process is seen very much as a vetting process, to discover exactly who was worthy of access to the various secrets. If no one was deemed worthy, they weren’t passed on and died with their keepers.
Interestingly, according to this book, the traditionally inherited secret/sacred objects that represented totemic ancestors were seen as private property – the current ‘owner’ of these objects was apparently entitled to do as he pleased with them. This conflicts with a lot about what I had assumed about traditional Aboriginal culture – you do tend to assume everything must have been shared.
Strehlow also points out how unchanging the culture of the Northern Aranda was; how everything was so proscribed that there was really no room for technical or literary innovation whatsoever. He even referred to it as a ‘decadent’ culture, which surprised me a lot. We are so used to thinking of the unchanging nature of traditional indigenous culture as a strength - which it is - but of course an unchanging culture can also be an oppressive and hidebound and restrictive one.
The main feeling I got from the book, however, was just a sadness at the complexity and interestingness of what has been lost, all over Australia, over the last two centuries. Strehlow deserves all credit for insisting on the intricacy and significance of Aranda culture at a time when this was anything but fashionable.
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