AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL INDIGENOUS
In the nineteenth century, Australian Aborigines were used by European scholars as an exemplar of early human forms, and have consequently featured as the crucial case study for generations of social theorists and anthropologists. Arguments about Aborigines examines controversial subjects such as family life, religion and ritual, and land rights through the prism of Aboriginal studies. Professor Hiatt’s book will provide a valuable introduction to Aboriginal ethnography, and is a shrewd and stimulating history of the central questions in Aboriginal studies.
Arguments about Aborigines reviews a range of controversies (some still alive) that played an important role in the formative period of British social anthropology. The chapters cover family life, male/female relationships, conception beliefs, the mother-in-law taboo, various aspects of religion and ritual, political organization, and land rights: all subjects that have been matters of lively interest and long-running research. Along the way, the study traces changes in Aboriginal circumstances and practices and notes the ways in which these changes affected the scholarly debate.

The emergence of anthropology in Britain coincided with the publication of Darwin’s book on the origin of species. In the context of inescapable questions about the natural history of our own species, Australian Aborigines were assigned the role of exemplars par excellence of beginnings and early human forms. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, European scholars bent on discovering the origins of social institutions began a rush on the Australian material that lasted well into the present century. The Aborigines have consequently featured as a crucial case-study for generations of social theorists, including Tylor, Frazer, Durkheim and Freud.
xiv, 225 p. : ill., map ; 24 cm. #090423
1. Prologue
2. Real estates and phantom hordes
3. Group marriage
4. The woman question
5. People without politics
6. High Gods
7. Conception and misconception
8. Dangerous mothers-in-law and disfigured sisters
9. Initiation: the case of the cheeky yam
10. Epilogue.

Aboriginal Australians — History. | Aboriginal Australians — Antiquities. | Aboriginal Australians — Public opinion. | Public opinion — Great Britain. | Anthropology — Great Britain — History. | Anthropology — Great Britain — Philosophy. | Native title. | Social organisation – Kinship – Marriage. | Religion – Rites – Kulama yam. | Reproduction – Conception. | Land rights – Claims, disputes, hearings. | Stories and motifs – Rainbow serpent. | Land rights – Ownership. | Social organisation – Avoidance rules – Avoidance relationships. | Family – Mothers in law. | Tiwi people (N20) (NT SC52-16) | Ceremonies – Initiation. | Gender relations – Polygamy. | Religion – Totemism. | Magic and sorcery – Love magic. | Stories and motifs – Cultural heroes. | Sex relations – Child sexual abuse – Incest. | Art – Subjects – Wandjina. | Stories and motifs – Baiame. | Stories and motifs – Creation / Cosmology. | Tiwi Islands (NT SC52-15, SC52-16)