Yuwaaliyaay people and their neighbours of the Darling/Barwon River

Yuwaaliyaay and their neighbours lived (and many of their descendants remain) by the Darling/Barwon River in northern New South Wales. This is a semi-arid region of grassland and woodland, with perennial and intermittent rivers. Rainfall is low and very variable rainfall, and the region is susceptible to severe droughts and floods. People probably lived at a medium-low - low population density of about 1 person per 30-60 km2.

            The resources were those of the eastern end of the "Aboriginal grain belt”, including those of grass and other seeds, with a rich flora and fauna of woodlands, floodplains, rivers and swamps. Technological adaptations included canoes; seed-collecting, storage and grinding technology; a wide variety of nets; complex stone fish-traps; skin cloaks. Men did not use spear-throwers.

            Movement was only partly seasonal. Drought concentrated people on permanent waters, while rains drew people to the back-country in more mobile groups to exploit aquatic resources. River-flushes drew people back to the rivers for fish. But people tended to aggregate on riverbanks in large numbers in summer, for fishing and the grass-seed harvest. Some moved away from rivers in winter, leaving smaller groups, returning for the spring fisheries.

            People identified by isoglossic language identity broadly related to tracts of country, matri-moiety, totemic matri-group, section and personal totem. They identified in relation to named “country” on the basis of birth and other connections.

            The cosmology of this region had an emphasis on the sky similar to Kûnai cosmology. It was complemented by the totemic significance of places, but most totemic places had links with the sky beings (Baiame and his family) as well as local totemic identities, linking peoples across a broad region. In this region the wirreenun sorcerer/magician/healer and rainmakers was a dominant figure, and people did not perform increase sites and rites.

            Modes of governance bore similarities to the previous regions; neighbouring groups cooperated in performing Bora initiation rites associated with Baiame, but participants identified by matri-group totems as well as locality. Section identity formed a basis for the organisation of the ceremonies, and enabled people of a wide region to interact. Resources of male power included the wirreenun roles as well as the role of matri-group elder. My impression is that gender relations were relatively equal.

            The kin terminology was distinct from those of Kûnai and Pitjantjatjara people in having a Kariera-like structure which distinguished cross-cousins from siblings/parallel cousins. Marriage to a distant cross-cousin was prescribed, linked to infant bestowal and sister exchange. Marriage was regulated by exogamous matri-moieties and matri-groups, and notionally the section system. Each exogamous matri-group exchanged spouses with several others.  Polygyny was low as might be expected with matri-group organisation. The resulting social network included overlapping reciprocal ties between matri-groups, potentially repeated in alternating generations, but subject to the demographic flux of matri-groups.

            Named “countries” included sites associated with Baiame as well as local totems. The ethnography of the region suggests that individuals had use-rights in their country of birth, as well as father’s, mother’s and spouse’s countries. Matri-group totemic connections may have given and individual access to more distant communities.

            Both men and women were involved in seed-grinding, and may have cooperated in winnowing so modifying the marked gender division of labour. Women seem to have been under some restrictions over cooking animals and fish. Ritual status governed young men’s participation in the hunting of large game. I infer from the rather thin evidence a similar mix of work teams as in the other regions, from working alone to large teams of one or both sexes. Seed collection, winnowing, grinding and storage were labour extensive, and required complex cooperation, as did net-hunting. The size of residence groups ranged between less than ten and up to about one hundred people, depending on season and activity; the largest groups aggregated for male initiation. There are no records of the range of kin relations within camps or of residents to country.

            Patterns of distribution go unrecorded, except that men divided game according to customary obligations. Consumption restrictions applied to one’s personal totem but not matrilineal totem. A variety of consumption restrictions applied to uninitiated boys, gradually lifted at successive Bora rites, and to a young woman for some months after reaching that status and being able to marry.

            Yuwaaliyaay speakers participated in a regional network of “trade” and exchange, and held local meetings for gift exchange. People imported stone axes, Grass Tree gum and light shields from outside the region in exchange for boomerangs. Marriage and male initiation also involved exchange relations, the latter between initiators and initiands, men and women.

            Like Western Desert people, Yuwaaliyaay and their immediate neighbours formed part of a regional network of rather similar cultures. They were on the northern end of “no-having” people of the western slopes and plains, and tributaries of the Murray and Darling, and within the broader regions associated with matri-groups and section systems, and with a sky-centred cosmology. Yuwaaliyaay ecology differed somewhat from groups living further away from the rivers.

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