What Aboriginal tradition says about kinship and sharing

Aboriginal kinship is a system rather than a sentiment. It assigns everyone a position, and from that position the rules follow: whom you may marry, whom you must avoid, whom you must feed, whom you must bury. The nine concepts below show how the collective is organised in practice — in naming, in food, in raising children, in settling disputes and in grief. Each is recorded in the library as oral tradition.

The Kinship System

Kinship reaches well past blood to take in everyone in the community and much of the natural world. It tells each person how to behave towards each other person, which leaves very little social space that is purely private.

Oral Tradition

Skin Names

A skin name places you in a kinship category, which in turn sets marriage rules and ceremonial duties. The name is inherited, so your obligations arrive before you do.

Oral Tradition

Totemism

Each person carries a totemic tie to a particular animal, plant or natural phenomenon, treated as a relative rather than a symbol. Harming your totem is placed in the same category as harming family.

Oral Tradition

Reciprocity - Sharing

Food is shared and favours are returned, and accumulating at the expense of others is ruled out. The stated purpose is survival rather than virtue.

Oral Tradition

Child Rearing

Children are raised by the whole community, with different relatives holding specific duties for teaching, discipline and care. A child therefore learns from several adults with different styles rather than from two.

Oral Tradition

Hospitality and Visitors

A guest is fed, protected and brought under local Law, and in return follows local protocol. Networks of such obligations made long journeys across the continent possible.

Oral Tradition

Collective Decision Making

Important matters are talked through until agreement emerges, with elders guiding rather than deciding. The process is slow on purpose, because the decision has to belong to everyone who must live with it.

Oral Tradition

Punishment and Restoration

Punishment aims at restoring balance, and once it is complete the matter is closed and the person fully back in. Carrying a grudge after proper resolution is itself treated as an offence.

Oral Tradition

Sorry Business - Mourning

Death sets off a long set of protocols covering naming, camps and ceremony, held by the community rather than the immediate family. Grief is given time and is not expected to be finished quickly.

Oral Tradition

What stands out is how little of this is left to good will. Sharing, welcome, discipline and mourning are all assigned in advance to particular relatives, so the group does not have to rediscover its obligations each time something happens. The cost is obvious — very little room to be a private individual — and the tradition appears to have considered that a price worth paying.