Australian Aboriginal
Initiation and Mourning
Rites of Passage
What are there significances?
Why are they
performed?
Alkira-Kiuma Ceremony or the Tossing Ceremony of the Aranda Tribe
(1904). At age twelve, the boy's first initiation ceremony, tossed and caught
by various male relatives..
Having already gone through the Ceremony of Circumcision some six weeks
earlier, the Parra Ceremony of Subincision follows. Here are images of
the subincision ceremony of the Warramunga Tribe near Alice Springs (1904;
right). Newly subincised men rubbing their blood on the backs of others, of the
Aranda Tribe (1944).
The Kuntamara Ceremony or re-opening of the subincision. The urethra is
being cut deeper by an elder with a sharp flake of stone to further strengthen
the bonds of kinship. The Warramunga Tribe.
Nathagura
or Fire Ceremony of the Warramunga Tribe. Some of the initiates are seated
under the brush shelter, as others dance with the "great torches." The torch
bearers are daubed with pipe-clay mud. At the culmination of the ceremony, the
torches is lit afire, as the hot embers crash down upon the initiates. In the
Aranda version of this ceremony, initiates lay upon burning logs, separated only
be a layer of green brush, for four to five minutes. The heat and smoke are
said to be stifling. The Fire Ceremony is one of the last ceremonies
associated with adult male initiation.
Tooth Knocking-Out Ceremony, as an additional, optional initiation into the Rain
Totem of the Aranda Tribe. The right upper incisor would be knocked out with a
stone. The tooth is thrown toward the initiate's mother's Alcheringa birth
place.
Man with gashed his thigh, during the Kulungara Ceremony, a mourning
ceremony. Women embracing and wailing after cutting their heads during a
mourning ceremony. Warramunga Tribe.
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