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This article proposes that the more complex and highly differentiated Australian Aboriginal kin terminologies such as those belonging to the Arrernte, Ngarinyin, and Yolngu languages evolved from simpler, less differentiated terminologies similar in form to those classified by Radcliffe-Brown as the Kariera type. The article offers models of that evolution and discusses when these developments may have occurred, as well as some of the implications for the diversity of Aboriginal societies. Along the way, it reconsiders the classification of Australian kin terminologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a contemporary politics of recognition as it relates to Ngarinyin Aboriginal people of the Northern Kimberley region of Western Australia. I focus on the reflections and experiences of a Ngarinyin man, 'the Alchemist', who was involved in a native title claim across the region during the 2000s. Through ethnographic examples drawn from along the Gibb River Road, I show that time on country is animated by unexpected encounters imbued with interpersonal recognition and indeterminacy. These encounters involve non‐Aboriginal people (including tourists) and non‐human animals: allies who are co‐opted at a time when people's intimate knowledge of country is becoming further attenuated. This article contributes to a growing literature on Aboriginal people's perceptions of and experiences in country in post‐native title contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Aboriginal language Ungarinyin (Worrorran) has one single complex-clause construction for expressing reported speech (‘say’), that can also signal reported thought (‘think’) and attribute intentions (‘want’). By demonstrating which formal and functional distinctions are essential to the interpretation of this Ungarinyin construction, the present paper aims to contribute to understanding the exact nature of the syntactic relation involved in reported speech constructions. Following the account of McGregor (1994, 1997, 2008) , I analyse the clausal syntax of reported speech constructions as a dedicated syntactic relation, separate from more familiar clausal relations such as coordination and subordination. I call this relation the ‘frame-in’ construction. Subsequently, I compare the conventionalised reported speech construction in Ungarinyin to a variety of more loosely integrated non-conventionalised or semi-conventionalised strategies for expressing speech and thought attribution in the language. Collectively I refer to these strategies as examples of ‘defenestration’, constructions without the typical marking of the syntactic frame-in relation, while expressing the meaning associated with a regular frame-in construction. Instances of defenestration differ from syntactic frame-in in that they express the meaning of a frame-in construction through transparent compositional means. I argue that types of defenestration show remarkable regularities in Ungarinyin, and, tentatively, cross-linguistically, which has consequences for the analysis of indexicality and iconicity in syntax and presents a new context for analysing the syntax of reported speech constructions in relation to multimodal features, particularly for the category of free (in)direct speech and ‘zero quotatives’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses reported speech, thought and epistemic modality in the North Western Australian Aboriginal language Ungarinyin. It demonstrates how these grammatical domains interact in the language to encode multiple perspective meanings. The paper concludes by discussing some implications of the Ungarinyin patterns for expressions of complex perspective elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We take a fresh look at the practice of repainting, or retouching, rock-art, with particular reference to the Kimberley region of Western Australia. We discuss the practice of repainting [...]

The article presents dialogues between a Ngarinyin/Nyigina Indigenous cultural heritage owner and a non-indigenous ethnomusicologist about the difference and discomfort in intercultural ethnomusicological research collaboration in the Kimberley region in Western Australia. It outlines the ethnomusicological activities and project that is the subject of the dialogue and discusses results of an investigation into junba repertories known to Ngarinyin Aboriginal elders.

Barwick (1990) finds that, in Central Australian performance, whilst text and melody in isolation are relatively fixed, 'there is immense variability in their combination, which is accomplished by what may be crudely characterised as a process of expansion and contraction of the melody to accommodate texts of different lengths' (Barwick 1990:61). Following musicological examinations by both Barwick (Barwick 1989, 1990 and 1995) and Keogh (Keogh 1995) which focus on identifying principles that underlie this process of expansion and contraction, the paper presented here looks at songs of the junba genre, composed and performed by Ngarinyin elder, Scotty Martin, in the North central Kimberley. In addition, it is suggested in this paper that the style of musicological analysis developed by Barwick and Keogh has relevance beyond the discipline of musical analysis, as its results allow the analyst and reader to begin to trace relationships between creative processes active in the moment of performance with 'patterns and roles' evident in other aspects of the music-makers' ways of being in the world., INTRODUCTION Barwick (1990) finds that, in Central Australian performance, whilst text and melody in isolation are relatively fixed, 'there is immense variability in their combination, which is accomplished by what [...]

This article briefly analyses a collaborative effort which took place in October 2010, as families from the Mowanjum Aboriginal community in the Kimberley reconnected with their traditional lands with non-Indigenous support. For the non-Indigenous participants the journey included the challenge of crossing thresholds from the familiar into the Other, of following protocols, and of being invited to be a part of a wider relationship of people, land and spirituality. Thus issues of place and hospitality profoundly affected the collaborative relationship. Being with Aboriginal people on their land and on their terms challenges a Western understanding of collaboration, which is often time and work-centred. Furthermore, the Aboriginal people became hosts in their land, which affirms among collaborators the importance of protocols, of right actions and following rather than leading in the relationship. As a small group of non-Indigenous participants discovered, such relationship with Mowanjum families as they returned to land brought new opportunities for learning and being together with an understanding of what it meant to be a guest on Aboriginal lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the concept of 'animism' has gained considerable popularity among archaeologists in exploring non-Western expressions of material culture. This development has also influenced recent academic approaches towards the study of 'rock-art' of people living as hunter and gatherers or in a hunting and gathering tradition. We argue here that attempts in this direction so far are generally compromised, because they fail to take Indigenous philosophies and intellectual contributions seriously. Any concern with Indigenous material expressions, including so-called rock-art, has to involve a critical re-assessment of academic discourse itself and a challenge to the primacy of Western scientific and literary, academic methodologies. With reference to the 'rock-art' and the world-view of the Ngarinyin (Kimberley, Northwest Australia), we present some preliminary thoughts for the development of an alternative interpretative framework, while offering a (much needed) legitimacy to another more balanced epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freud argued that what is common to all comic techniques is 'the fact that in each of them something familiar is rediscovered, where we might instead have expected something new. This rediscovery of what is familiar is pleasurable' (1960 [1923], 120). In the analysis offered in his 1905 work, Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious (1963a), the further apart the two conceptual entities that are brought together in an innovative use of words or gestures, the greater is the pleasure in the short-circuit created between them. The joke, then, can be understood as instance of the more general category of the innovative metaphor, that is to say, the transfer of meaning across domains, which, while holding onto the original referent of a symbol, simultaneously creates a new relation that extends the original meaning. The strength of this innovative spark across conceptual poles is correlative to the tension that marks their difference. This short-circuit may produce a revelatory and/or comic effect. In this paper I explore an Australian Aboriginal corroboree of the Ngarinyin people from north-western Australia, in which this kind of innovatory spark is used to make new sense of racial power and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two seemingly disparate areas of English language structure—the grammar of reported speech and of textual cohesion—are functionally related in that both entail a distinction between ‘wording’ and ‘meaning.’ This is consistent with the Western ideological disjunction between language and reality, talk and action. Neither these language structures nor this linguistic ideology are found among the Ngarinyin people of northwestern Australia, suggesting a Whorfian hypothesis about their possible interrelationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]