Thomas O...Mr Manduway Yunupingu had a nice causeway and recording studio built for his "private island"...all paid for by Rio Tinto so they could get at the Bauxite to feed the Gove Alumina plant.

Meanwhile, his brothers and sisters lived in the same conditions they were in previously...so much for equality blah blah blah. He may have done some great things, but like so many other "hoomans" (black/white/bridle) in history, the $$$ he skimmed off from royalties could have been better accounted for.

Joe, you are correct about the cultures being different between areas. There were multiple differences from whether men are circumcised or not, how many skin groups a tribe developed, art type, language, dance, etc.
For instance, the didgeridoo belongs to parts of northern Australia but not the Kimberley. Dug out canoes belonged to some places whilst others used log rafts.
You get the gist.
And I agree that the stagnant culture was a curse not a blessing. They were the only race to never evolve past the Stone Age. Even small changes, like discovery of pottery could have brought enormous benefit because that would have enabled a form of water storage. Or food preservation, like salting or smoking could have helped in times of drought and poor seasons.
Whilst anthropologists may drool over access to a culture that truly represents Stone Age the lack of innovation meant continuation of a very hard, short and sometimes painful life for most people.

Hi Nick,

Taplin was talking mainly about one dialect group of the Ngarrindjeri, the Jaralde, who occupied the regions around the Narrung Peninsula, and the lower Lakes Alexandrina and Albert. Even then, his use of the term 'lakalinyeri' [plural: 'lakalinyerar'] seems to have referred to groupings of clans, perhaps post-settlement. One grouping, east of Lake Albert, seems to have included perhaps a dozen 'clans', family groups, most with the same dingo totem.

Berndt and Berndt (1993) listed close to a hundred 'clans', including half a dozen on the southern Adelaide Plains alone which their informant, Albert Karloan, claimed as Ngarrindjeri (there would be much dispute about that). By 1860, there may have been many more, particularly north of Lake Alexandrina around Strathalbyn and along the Bremer and Angas Rivers. Those clans may have joined others nearby. Some of the Tangane (Coorong) clans may also have amalgamated.

The upshot is that there were perhaps a hundred, perhaps many more, land-holding groups amongst the Ngarrindjeri, each guarding its boundaries closely.

As for the Tendi, or older men, it met to decide who had killed whom, since death was not seen as natural except for old women and young children: men had to present their ngadungis (voodoo dolls) to see if they had been burnt recently, a sign of ill intent. Sometimes enemies exchanged ngadungis and carefully dismantled their own.

The old men in each 'clan' would have had the last word on the exchange of women between groups. That was about it. There was no Ngarrindjeri-wide council - battles between dialect groups, yes: most groups regularly fought the Coorong tribes. So 'a centralised and hierarchical structure'? There is no evidence of one: no clan would have submitted to any over-arching 'hierarchy': each was master of its own land. Sorry.

Joe

Loudmouth
Probably they didn't talk , just grunted and picked up democracy from the colonial governor. The Rupulli was nobody but the dingo with the most pups.

The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra hold that man has a tendi, a begu, and a body. The first disappears at death; the body perishes; the begu survives.
Old Javanese ( 800-1300 AD).: tendas
1. head
2. a kind of tax (per head?)
Old Javanese lewu "very, in a high degree, violent ".

Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/96 ...

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Native_Tribes_of.../96
May 10, 2012 -
A seat in the tendi is called "tendi lewurmi," the judgment seat. All offenders are brought to this tribunal for trial.

Here is the Ngarandjeri term "ngarampar" meaning "secrets". Sumatra was a Buddhist centre 1000 years ago. Ngarampa means the elders' camp and an elder's title on the Darling river.

" Lun newalengk ngrattin angk nammuldi tungarar inye nganuwe ngrampar mant lu:ku kringkarir . So we learnt to hide our language and secrets from white man ."
tungarar " language " .
inye nganuwe :Our
ngrampar : secrets.

The Three Boys: And Other Buddhist Folktales from Tibet
https://books.google.com.au/books?isbn=0824830792
Yeshi Dorjee,John S. Major - 2007
;... studies, leading to the degree of Geshe Ngarampa (the Buddhist equivalent of a PhD).
Tibetan Buddhist Monks Visit to East Lansing :: The Monks
artmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/online/monks/monks.html
In 1995 in front of 400 Monks, he gave both the Sutra and Tantra treatise in a Debate Exam and received his first division certificate, the Ngarampa Degree, ...

Lake Eyre is Kati Thanda "meeting place of bosses".
Old Javanese kuti (Skt hut, cottage) Buddhist monastery.
tanda : headman.
tantu (Skt a succession of sacrificial performances; ) fixed order, establishment of the world order (the world = Java); established holy place

@Albie Manton, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well I'm not going there, I'll stick with what I said thx.

@Loudmouth, Big Nana I believe you are suffering a 'Yardstick Deficit' and tunnel vision/myopia.

eg "the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained"

And who said that? Writers of course - kind of a self-fulfilling self-referencing standard yes?

re ".. writing, literature, and art are the main ways of passing culture from one generation to another, and without these mainstays of civilization"

Writing and literature are the same things - they use 'technology' to convert verbal communication language linguistics thought into something else. At there core is intelligent communication - the aboriginals had that in spades for 60,000+ years.

They also had "art" in multiple forms. I believe you are grabbing at straws. Their stories, their landscape, their art, their rituals, all handed down and down was their form of "writing" as valid as anyone else. iow they had a known "recorded history" and a recorded Law/Lore, and culture, and rules and organiations and instituions essentially the same as the Europeans, Native Americans, Incas, Egyptians etc - the significant difference is they also had profoundly wise cultural survival instincts or wisdoms in all they did and they passed those on tribe ot tribe generation to generation.

Things as obvious as secret mens and womens business is there, and spirituality, and morals and a code of life. It's in Bullroarer, and dance, and at their middens and in the landscapes that their knowledge is 'recorded' just as writing can do. They used sticks in the dirt to "write" communication, that it wasn't a carved in rock or written on paper and filed in the national archives is irrelevant, they still "wrote/drew/marked and counted things and shared that knowledge info.

Now some other yardsticks:
They did not destroy their environment

did not engage in slavery

did not trade in opium

did not send gunships up the Yellow River to hold the Emperor to ransom for making opium illegal for killing his people.

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Aboriginal Peoples did not invade other nations/cultures.
did not rape and pillage for fun
did not have endless wars
did not create nuclear arms
did not send missionaries to convert anyone to anything
did not invade New Guinea
did not steal others gold
did not wipe out whole civilisations with small pox and the flu
did not do a single thing to add to AGW/CC
did not destroy their own land / food / shelter eg Easter Island, even if they could make large stone statues, they still starved to death or whatever.
did not build gas chambers to murder 6+ million people for 'sport' and an insane belief system.
did not use chemical weapons on their own kind
did have death rituals such as cutting out the hearts of living people to please the 'gods'

They may have fought now and then, that's human, but they maintained a respect for each other and for all Life.

Their 'initiations' are similar to Freemasonary and other Initiation wisdom ceremonies. Important Universal not racial psychological spiritual business.

They were sane rational caring responsible as a race and individually relative to all other "civilisations".

Above all - they SURVIVED and they THRIVED - they didn't merely pursue happiness, they were HAPPY and in harmony with Life, nature, spirit, love for each other for over 60,000 years until the white man cometh.

Look what has been done in "our name" in that short time - having the "internet" and a BMW does not mean we are "more civilised" than before.

The Greeks barely lasted 3 centuries!
The Chinese and Egyptians about 50+ centuries?
The Aboriginals have lasted 600 Centuries in harmony!

So who is really the more civilised culture and longest one to ever survive on this blue dot?

The Ancestors should be, must be, HONOURED. Never to be forgotten for this unique human achievement and this GIFT of WISDOM at our fingertips now.

Meanwhile the truly 'uncivilized' world continues to destroy themselves in insane wars and worse, to even to destroy all life to satisfy their Greed and their EGOS.

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