Bodily Connections and Practising Relatedness: Aboriginal Family and Funerals in Rural North Queensland

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. This research was undertaken during my doctoral candidacy and subsequent employment at James Cook University, Townsville, from 2000 to 2005, with the assistance of an APA(I) grant, and of the Central Queensland Land Council Aboriginal Corporation. My thanks to Kudjala women and men who generously put up with my presence and questions. I also thank Mike Wood and Rosita Henry for their most helpful comments on an earlier draft. I sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful editing. 2. This legislation and Amendments in 1901, 1934 and 1939 severely restricted Aboriginal men's and women's wages, marriage, association, travel and living arrangements. Underlying these restrictions was the ability of local ‘Protectors’ to remove individuals or whole families to settlements and missions. 3. People who were sent to Cherbourg, Woorabinda or Yarrabah settlement/mission have returned in much fewer numbers than those who were sent to Palm Island. 4. I did not set out to conduct research on funerals during my fieldwork. Rather, once ‘out of the field’, the material arose out of my impressions of the impact and relative frequency of these events. 5. About 45 per cent of deaths among Indigenous males, and 34 per cent among Indigenous females, occur before the age of 45, and most (males 76 per cent, females 65 per cent) die before the age of 65. This is compared to other Australians, amongst whom most males and females (73 and 84 per cent) live beyond the age of 65 (UN Human Development Report 2003 in Indigenous Health Statistics—Summary, www.antar.org.au/health/health_stats/html; accessed 21 July 2005). 6. All of the personal names in this paper are pseudonyms. 7. In this case, the mothers of the deceased's wife and Doris are first cousins rather than sisters, but are ‘considered sisters’, I am told, by their descendants. The relationship is also multiple, because the deceased's eldest daughter is a long‐term partner to Doris's brother. On the basis of these family relationships, Doris said that she should have been told by someone ‘close’. Through her brother, Doris was a ‘sister‐in‐law’ to the deceased's eldest daughter; however, the partnership had been unstable in the previous months. It is possible that there was an element of these tensions being played out in the daughter of the deceased not informing Doris sooner, but also possible that there was a disjunction in the two women's understandings of their relationship. 8. In the last two years it seems that this concern might be minimised, since people can now nominate when during the fortnight they will be paid their benefits. 9. Ingrid runs cross‐cultural training workshops for industry, such as mining and exploration companies, teaching them some aspects of Aboriginal kinship, relationships to land, history and bush tucker. 10. While some people attend church services regularly and others say they were ‘brought up Christian’ on Palm Island, there is minimal overt practice of Christian ritual among Aboriginal people in Charters Towers, and there has never been a Christian mission in the town. 11. Funds come from the organisations themselves or trust funds administered by these organisations. For example, the Aboriginal and Islander Catholic Council contributes $100 to the cost of every funeral of an Aboriginal person in the town. On the other hand, the administrator of the Inland Land Council was often responsible for organising the release of funds from a trust fund for traditional owners. The monies in this fund were the result of compensation negotiations with a multinational mineral and explorations corporation, whose activities impact on cultural heritage and native title claims.