Aboriginal Death Rituals Essay

Death is universal, and every culture has its own ways of coping with it. Death rituals and grief can range from how someone is laid to rest to how he/she is memorialized. Every culture and religion has a unique way of burying, grieving and memorializing their dearly departed. Personally, the most interesting of rituals come from Native Americans, Tibetan Buddhist, Malagasy people from Madagascar, and Australian aboriginal mortuary rites.
The Native Americans believe that if you hear an owl it may foresee death. The cry of coyote is believed to be a sure sign of looming evil or death. They never completely close the coffin to permit the spirit to be free. When the grave is dug the space around it is carefully checked. No foot prints should
Small ceremonies, or rituals, are still practiced in some remote parts of Australia, such as in Arnhem Land and Central Australia. These take the custom of chanting, singing, dancing or ritual action to summon the Ancestral Beings to guarantee a good amount of food. The death of a person in this culture is a time when people often paint themselves white, cut their own bodies to display their sorrow for the loss of their loved one, and conduct a series of rituals, songs and dances to ensure the person’s spirit leaves the area and returns to its birth place, from where it can later be reborn. There are two full types of burials that are to be conducted. The primary burial is when the body is laid out on an raised wooden platform, sheltered in leaves and branches, and left several months for the skin to rot away from the bones. The secondary burial is when the bones are collected from the platform, painted with red ochre, and then distributed in different ways. Sometimes a family member will bring a portion of the bones with them for a year or more. Sometimes they are wrapped in paperbark and put in a cave shelter, where they are left to disintegrate with time. In parts of Arnhem Land the bones are placed into a big dead log and left at a designated area of bushland. The dead log is a dead tree trunk which has been naturally hollowed out by the action of