Warlpiri women's yawulyu ceremonies : a forum for socialization and innovation

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.