Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Systems of ownership of, access to and responsibility for traditional Aboriginal clan estates differ from place to place, but there are some common elements which indicate the importance of particular areas to particular people. Membership of a particular clan, and hence an association with a particular clan country, is given at birth. In most, but not all Aboriginal societies, clan membership is patrilineal; that is, passed on from father to child. Sons and daughters retain that clan membership for life, even though they may move away and live on other clan estates (such as a husband's or wife's clan country), or into community settlements or towns.
Clan membership provides access rights to the hunting, fishing and gathering resources of the clan estates, and often also some rights to resources on other related estates.
Clan members are also responsible for carrying out appropriate ceremonies, observing various taboos, such as restrictions on who can eat and prepare certain foods, and for physically managing the estate's resources, such as by burning the country in the appropriate manner.
Helen Nunggalurr describes some of laws and customs which relate to the use and management of her clan's resources:
When Yolngu people go hunting or fishing they don't take more than they need for their families and we eat all parts of most animals. For example, after we cook turtle we eat the meat, liver, kidneys, guts, fat, flippers, head, heart, and we even use the shell upside down to make soup from the blood. This means nothing is wasted.
Mangrove worms are a totem for the Mandjikay clans. We must eat them in a special way similar to the way Europeans suck spaghetti. If any Mandjikay person passes away, then all people classified as sister or mother are not allowed to eat those worms. Also they are not allowed to eat any other Mandjikay totems like trevally or cockle shells for one or two years ...
Another law is for women. There are certain times when we are not allowed to eat fish, turtle meat or eggs, wallaby, emu or other red meat. If we don't follow this rule our brothers or husbands might have an accident in the bush or out hunting in the sea.
When women go digging for yams in the jungle they are careful to leave the bottom part of the yam in the ground so it will grow again. Then when they go back next year the yams will still be there.
We are also careful about bushfires. People burn the bush soon after the wet season. They do this to make it easier to hunt animals and find honey and to help clear the bush for the new plants to grow. When people burn at the wrong time they can start big bushfires which make the landowners very upset. 5
It was this inherited association with a particular country and its sacred sites, Dreaming tracks, stories, totems and other features, which in pre-colonial Australia provided Aboriginal peoples with their individual and group identities. The severing of that relationship to a particular country, as happened across much of Australia during the colonial period and into recent times, denied Aboriginal peoples a place in their kinship system, access to resources and their basis of spiritual belief.
The importance of maintaining a connection with their traditional country continues to be of fundamental importance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' identity and wellbeing across much of Australia today.