Kûnai people of Gippsland, Victoria

Kûnai people lived (and many of their descendants remain) in what is now Gippsland, Victoria, in a rich environment of temperate forest, rivers, lakes, estuaries and coast, with high year-round rainfall. The resulting population density was probably medium to very high, estimated at 1 person per 2.5-20 km2, highest around the lakes, lower up the rivers. The southeast flora and fauna provided a wide array of foods, with ‘root’ foods of various kinds dominant among the vegetable foods. The technology included a bark canoe adapted for use on the lakes, spear of stone flakes hafted in resin, large nets for fish and birds, bone fish-hooks, and skin cloaks as protection against the cool winters.

            Kûnai settlement had a marked seasonality. For groups living near the coast, the evidence suggests summer in temporary camps at the beaches, estuaries and lakes’ entrances primarily to exploit the fish. In Autumn people were more mobile, and moved inland for forest foods including mammals, and aggregated into larger numbers for ceremonies. In winter people moved further up-river for fishing and forest resources, and where they lived in huts; they headed back towards the wetlands in spring for wildfowl, eels and fish.

            Kûnai comprised five, broad regional identities, across a region of about 30,000 km2. They overlapped somewhat for some people had dual identity, and categories such as “westerners” were perhaps relative to one’s perspective. Three or four  local dialects may have been recognised. Kûnai also identified by gender totems and patrifilial guardian totems. The latter seem not to have born a direct relation to locality. Local groups were identified by topography or place name, or a leader’s name. Personal nick-names were ubiquitous for inherited personal names were not supposed to be uttered, for knowledge of a person’s name gave power to a potential sorcerer, according to Kûnai beliefs.

            The cosmology of the region emphasised the sky: myths described creator ancestors going up to the sky, and the clouds were the home of ghosts of the dead from whom birraark shamans gained their powers. These ritual specialists invoked the spirits of the dead in séances. The many magical specialists including mûlla-mûllûng magicians, singers of love-magic and seers.

           The chapter on governance analyses this aspect of institutions in terms of regional orders of ancestral law, “self-help” on the part of autonomous kin groups, and resources of power. Residents of the various countries cooperated in regional networks to perform Jerra-eil male initiation, a reenactment of a ceremony instituted by the ancestors and whose sacred objects represented one of those ancestors, uniting participating groups. It was a context within which basic precepts of conduct were invoked. During disputes people drew on kindreds that cross-cut local and regional identities. Personal magical powers as well as the institution of shaman provided resources of male power. Gender relations were relatively equal compared with other regions.

            Kin relations were coterminous with an individual’s social universe, outside of which people were dangerous strangers (brajerak). The “generational” kin terminology classified all in Ego’s generation as younger or older brothers or sisters.  Exogamous localities and patrifilial totemic identities constrained marriage choices, proscribing marriage between close kin. Institutionalised elopement was combined with sister and daughter bestowal, and men practised sister exchange. The ethnography does not record infant bestowal. Men married at a low level of polygyny, with up to three wives concurrently. The resulting social network had the character of a “shifting web” in which a group’s marriage ties to other groups changed at each generation, modified by reciprocal ties between localities as a result of sister exchange.

            Turning to the control of the means of production: individuals had use rights in their country of birth, father’s , spouses’, mother’s and perhaps conception country. While places had totemic significance, related to myths about ancestors, no obvious links between land-holding and patrifilial guardian totems have emerged.

            What evidence there is shows an expected gender division of labour in the organisation of production, and a mix of working solo, and in small and larger teams, for example in the use of nets and kangaroo drives. Modes of cooperation probably included both simple cooperation in which individuals worked in parallel, exchanging information, and extended cooperation with a division of tasks. The kin relations of cooperation are not recorded, except that brothers and other helpers assisted hunters. The scanty data on the size of residence groups suggests a range of up to 200, each group consisting of family camps and bachelor camps. There are some clues as to their composition: a mixture of cognates and affines perhaps with some patrilocal bias. Residence groups provided a pool of labour on which people drew to form work teams.

            As for distribution, the evidence indicates strong obligations on the part of a (young) married man to his wife’s father and mother, and to his parents. Women’s product had a narrow distribution mainly in a woman’s camp, while meat had wide distribution in a camp through those obligatory relationships as nodes of further division. Consumption restrictions applied to uninitiated boys, initiates during seclusion,  and unmarried girls. It is likely that others applied during pregnancy and reproductive phases.

            Kûnai people were cut off from the extensive “trade” networks to the west, and perhaps from regional cooperation in bogong moth consumption in the highlands to the north. Exchanges between coastal and hinterland groups are reflected in archaeological evidence of the provenance of stone axe-heads, and it is likely that the exchange of goods followed social networks to the east and northeast. It may be that powerful local bosses could extend hospitality when local resources were plentiful, and draw on the productive powers of co-residents.

            Thus Kûnai were rather isolated from their neighbours, with distinct ruptures in the social fabric to the west and north, as well as key differences in social institutions. Closest relations and similarities lay with Bidawal and Yuin people to the east and northeast along the coast. Kûnai dialects, institutions and practices were somewhat heterogeneous, although the extent of heterogeneity is not known.

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