The architectural implications of Warlpiri jilimi

Abstract

Indigenous culturally-derived domiciliary behaviours and lifestyles have been largely ignored by Australian Government housing policies and house designs, aimed at Aboriginal people. This is particularly the case for gender-specific households in remote settlements . In the Central Desert Region of Australia, customary domiciliary organisation involves a three-fold distinction of households into those occupied by married people, single women and single men. This study is primarily concerned with jilimi or single women's camps of Aboriginal people living at Yuendumu. They identify themselves as Warlpiri people who share a language and culture with other Warlpiri people settled over a large area of Central Australia. Limited understanding by outside agencies of Warlpiri women ' s belief systems , social organisation, domiciliary behaviour and physical environments in jilimi represents a serious gap in the knowledge required to meet domiciliary needs through existing housing designs. Thus the aim of this research is to elucidate where and how customary beliefs impact on Warlpiri women's design and use of contemporary living environments. This investigation of jilimi is located at the intersection of cultural, gender and environmental theoretical frameworks and has required a cross-disciplinary methodology (Chapter Three). This was achieved by applying an anthropological approach to the discipline of people-environment relations. An ethnographic literature survey (Chapter Two) reveals written descriptions and some photographic images of Warlpiri living environments at the time of early contact with non-Aboriginal settlers. An historical account of Warlpiri living environments at Yuendumu from the early 1900s until the 1990s reveals the range of cultural change experienced by Warlpiri people and the existence of cross-cultural borrowing of dwelling solutions in Central Australia. Warlpiri people in the 1990s continue to create living environments with structures that bear many similarities to those used by their ancestors. Warlpiri social organisation, particularly kinship and subsection systems, determine the ways in which people establish and maintain their social relationships (Chapter One). Descriptions of the social properties of jilimi were achieved through participant-observation, interviewing and the recording of sand drawings and stories (Chapter Four) . Relationships between the occupants of jilimi were seen predominantly (but not exclusively) to reflect women's matrilines and highlight links between co-wives in widowhood. Clear social demarcations in a Warlpiri person's life were marked with a change of living environment. Jilimi were generally 'women-only' spaces but the author has found a sliding scale of tolerance regarding male access. The gender exclusiveness of single women's or single men's camps can be seen to depend on the age, life experience, and degree of cultural change experienced by the occupants and the social relationship between occupants and visitors . Physical descriptions are provided of an Aboriginal ethno-architecture and domiciliary behaviour located in a culturally-specific belief system and particular to a Central Australian landscape and climate. Four ethno-architectural types were found in Warlpiri living environments. These were the yunta (wind-break), the malumpa (bough shade), the yama-puralji (shade tree) and the yujuku (enclosed shelter). An analysis of the construction, orientation, daily and seasonal use, and scale of these types, as they were built in jilimi, reveals culturally-distinct functional and spatial properties that impact on women's use of contemporary housing (Chapter Five and Six). Yujuku were the only form of enclosed internal domiciliary space created in the past by Warlpiri people. The yunta, yama-puralji and malumpa provide distinct spatial qualities with a minimum of built form that maximised occupants ability to survey their wider environmental setting. Being able to observe environmental and social phenomena and interpret their cause and effect on individual's social experience was and remains a very important property of Warlpiri domiciliary behaviour. Warlpiri domiciliary practice including social avoidance between particular kinspeople, mourning behaviour and concepts of good health, has implications in terms of how people occupy their environments. Beliefs in many forms of spirits (benevolent and malevolent) impact on domiciliary behaviour. The design implications of these findings housing are aimed at future housing policy and discussed in terms of the problems women have experienced when using housing (Chapter Seven). This study concludes with critiques of some aspects of early gender theory by the anthropologist Diane Bell and applied housing research into Aboriginal health and housing. I have demonstrated that Warlpiri women know and understand their domiciliary environments in culturally-specific ways despite experiencing a great deal of cultural change.