hi Otokonoko, the concept of separate men's and women's legislatures has already been discussed at length on this forum http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3513&page=1. If you have anything further to add perhaps you could start a new thread.

hi bitey, the prohibition on using the name of a deceased usually refers to ceremonial or skin names, a strategy derived from small, intimate and independent family groups to assuage grieving and assist with recovery from loss. The tradition survives in modern law with the notification of a death to family members before public announcement and can assist the grieving process in the modern world. Missionaries, contractors, government workers and even anthropologists were only occasionally included in ceremonial or skin business so were largely unaware of the use of names which could no longer be used, which would appear to be Loudmouth's experience, and who'd share their private business with someone who calls themselves loudmouth anyway? The classic example is women's business. For the better part of two centuries scholars, occasionally accompanied by their wives, conducted ethnographies in first Australian communities, almost unanimously concluding decision-making was controlled entirely by men. It was not until the late 1970's and early 1980's that female anthropologists, independent of men, were introduced into women's business, decision-making controlled entirely by women complementary with men's business, Dianne Bell's 'Daughters of the Dreaming' the standout narrative. Male scholars had never been told about women's business because it was none of their business and their wives had never been told because they were dependent on a man. The use of ceremonial and skin names in public is more common nowadays with greater public interest thus the warning.

hi ALGOREisRICH, the problems of which an imbalance of male power are at cause are ubiquitous as you point out but hopefully none will pale into insignificance without remedy.

Whistler,

Is it possible for you to write anything but rubbish ? Women's business indeed.

Incidentally, when we worked up at the settlement on the Murray, I was a laborer, mowing the lawns, collecting the garbage, pruning, picking, rounding up sheep, ploughing, the odd jobs. And I've always been an atheist, although I have had missionaries as very good friends.

Joe

Pericles: << But I'm afraid the motivation of people who claim such personal affinity with random historical events, eludes me. >>

The Coniston Massacre wasn't a "random historical event". Rather, it was well-documented mass murder that occurred in Australia less than a hundred years ago, for which nobody was ever held to account despite the perpetrators' identities being well known to the responsible authorities. I imagine that those whose grandparents and other kin were murdered would have little difficulty in having "personal affinity" with those appalling events.

I have to say that I think your historical analogies are spurious, not least because the English/British were colonial invaders in each case. While that was also the case in Australia prior to 1901, since that time Australian governments have had nominal sovereign authority over the semi-independent Australian State, including the responsibility to protect the legal residents thereof (including non-citizens, as Aborigines were until the 1960s).

Joe - are you seriously suggesting that massacres of Aborigines didn't occur, and that "women's business" didn't/doesn't exist? I'm hoping I've misunderstood you.

CJ,

No, of course not, there must have been many massacres across the country, it's a matter of corroborating rumour and oral history with evidence wherever possible.

As for women's business, I fear that there has been a great deal of confusion about what this means: of course people, including women, had obligations to particular sites and stretches of land - in the patriarchal areas on the Centre, by definition (and Diane Bell goes into this early in her book) women had to move away to marry, i.e. to live in their husbands' country for life, and usually never saw their own land again, but still had on-going obligations to carry out ceremonies to keep it in health.

So those women carried out private ( = secret) ceremonies (= business) at various times in relation to their own particular obligations. But a common ceremony which they all participated in ? I don't think so, since particular stretches and sites related to individual women, not to all women per se, who may have even come from different language-groups. A particular women-only ceremony ? Not even Diane Bell had the cheek to claim this in her 'Daughters of the Dreaming'.

Sisterly solidarity is a recent, fragile flower.

As for secrecy, in the sense of being known only to initiates, from memory, Diane Bell was told about 'secret' women's' 'business' on her first day in her study area.

And it certainly was a pity that there was no evidence of any such ceremony/site/legend amongst the Ngarrindjeri, who were NOT patriarchal (or strictly virilocal) - it would have been so convenient otherwise. Nor, in such permanently good country, was there any need for increase ceremonies like up in the drier country.

However, having imposed this bogus notion on the next generation, the task now should be to re-install some of the proper legends which the elders used to pass down. It's a pity also that almost none of the women involved in inventing this tradition of secret knowledge passed on from mother to daughter, had mothers or grandmothers or great-grandmothers who actually were Ngarrindjeri.

hi Loudmouth, the Federal Court recognised Ngarrindjerri women's business in 2001 and "[on] July 7th 2010, the Government of South Australia endorsed the finding that "Secret Women's Business" was genuine in a ceremony at the foot of the [Hindmarsh Island] bridge" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindmarsh_Island_bridge_controversy. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/05/2944724.htm
With Diane Bell it's best to let the reader decide. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=0MB-m2gjlWwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=daughters+of+the+dreaming&source=bl&ots=R1usv6xCC_&sig=Q5gEbZnTLtGgB-5CGPhccbafJSQ&hl=en&ei=6364S7qdGoqg6gOC3pyGCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=true

Come on ALGORE,
First it was about the failure of multiculturalism, now it's about the rantings of some discredited Canadian extremist and religious intolerance against Christians.

It's actually about the premediated murder of aborigines by Australians - apparently for economic reasons.