Warlpiri women's yawulyu ceremonies : a forum for socialization and innovation
Date
1988
Authors
Dussart, Francoise
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Abstract
This thesis examines the ritual life of Warlpiri women in the Central
Desert community of Yuendumu. Though there is now a growing literature on the
ritual life of Aboriginal women, these works present generalized accounts of women as a
category in their ritual activity which obscures the social dynamics and processes that
are central to women's religious life. I argue that a fuller understanding of
women's ritual life in Warlpiri society in particular and of Aboriginal women's
lives more generally is dependent on seeing women as individual social actors. The
thesis therefore concentrates on the activities and motivations of individual women in
the most common form of women's ceremony at Yuendumu, the yawulyu. The analysis provides
access to the complex issues of power and competition among Aboriginal women, and goes
a long way to defining the role of women in the ritual life of the community at
large.
The introductory chapter reviews the literature on women and their religious
lives. Chapter two provides an overview of the main Warlpiri religious
concepts, in particular of the principal features of the Dreaming and its
manifestations and the formal aspects of women's rights and duties that
fulfil in the ritual domain. The third chapter describes women's life
cycle in terms of their ritual career and argues that women continue their
role as nurturers beyond the end of their reproductive life by
redirecting their energies into ritual activities. Chapter four examines the
acquisition and transmission of knowledge. Chapter five defines the ritual
domain of yawulyu, and distinguishes this ceremony from others performed by
women. The sixth chapter provides a detailed case study of the
organization and performance of yawulyu ceremonies. And chapter seven describes
the integration of 'new' Dreams and dances into an existing ceremony. I
conclude by recapitulating some of the major points made in the
thesis and by making some suggestions concerning the future of Warlpiri
women's acquisition of status and prestige in the social and ritual spheres.
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ritual, religious life, Warlpiri, women, Central, Desert, community, Yuendumu, social, dynamics, yawulyu
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Thesis (PhD)
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