Tiwi Traditions In Austrailia Summary

Tiwi: Traditions in Austrailia by Holly Peters-Golden covers the major points in the tribes lifestyle. She covers their social organization and their religious and expressive culture. Under social organization fell kinship, marriage, Tiwi wives, power and prestige; religious and expressive culture covered beliefs, taboos, kulama , sickness-reasons they became sick and how healing is common knowledge, death and pukamani .
The most important points I believe this author has tried to make about this particular group of people is everything pertaining to their social organization, religious beliefs, death and pukamani, and sickness and healing. The relationships between the Tiwi is remarkable and rather interesting. It’s believed that pregnancy
But understanding the original marital patterns of the Tiwi was very important to how the social, political and economic system of the Tiwi worked. Traditional culture mandated that all women be married, this belief was more extreme than the tribes of the mainland. Mainland tribe believed marriage was expected but not necessarily required and not set for the baby girl before birth. The Tiwi believed that there was no such thing as an unmarried female they don’t even have a word in their language to describe the concept of an unmarried female. Since, they believe that the woman gets pregnant because a spirit enters her body and a man really doesn’t play a part in the actual conception of the baby they took it a step further. By betrothing every female even before birth-every child would be assured a father. Also, after a woman has been married and her husband dies she has to sit at his gravesite until she is married
The future of his economic, political and social advantage hung in the balance since baby girls were not promised to baby boys their husbands were 20-40 years older than them. The fathers chose men who he thought was a friend or an ally but if he chose someone younger then himself he would have chosen a man in his 20’s that showed the promise of one day becoming a powerful and wealthy man. Some men continued to get bestowals of baby girls into their 70’s.
By the 1950’s the Catholic missionaries did away with polygynous marriages by buying women and having them pick someone in their own age bracket sometimes with their fathers help and negotiations would begin. Even widows were encouraged to not marry anymore but to go back home and care for her father.
Tiwi wives I believe held the most power. As they went through their series of marriages her status and influence increased. Women ran the house, older women were key players in the economy, and as a senior wife she was center in a powerful social and economic that included not only herself but her daughters and co-wives. Mothers also had great influence over their sons. Hart et al. (1988:58) “in the final analysis it was the control of the women that was the most tangible index of power and influence. Women were the main currency of influence and struggle.” This, to me means that without women the men