Murngin people

Murnginis a term formerly used to denote a number of tribes of Arnhem Land. It has now been substituted by the word Yolngu.

Name

The collective ethnonym Murngin first came into use when it was adopted by the American anthropologist W. L. Warner in reports from the early 1930s, based on fieldwork between 1926-1929,[1] which he then reformulated in 1937 in a classic book-length study of Arnhem Land societies entitled A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. Properly speaking, it was an exonym, signifying 'shovelnose-spear folk' (with a slightly pejorative undertone implying aggressive people) in use among western tribes in this area to designate other tribes beyond their domains who dwelt in northeastern Arnhem Land.[2]

Warner deployed the term to denote a group of peoples who shared, in his analysis, a distinctive form of kinship organization. His description of their marriage rules, subsection system and kinship terminology. Other researchers in the field quickly contested his early findings. T. Theodor Webb argued that Warner's Murngin actually referred to one moiety, and could only denote a Yiritcha mala, and dismissed Warner's terminology as misleading.[3] A. P. Elkin, comparing the work of Warner and Webb, endorsed the latter's analysis as more congruent with the known facts. [4]

Notes

    Citations

    1. ↑ Maddock 1970, p. 78.
    2. ↑ Tindale 1974, p. 232.
    3. ↑ Webb 1933, p. 410.
    4. ↑ Elkin 1933, pp. 415-416.

    Sources

    • Barnes, J. A. (1967). Inquest on the Murngin (Occasional Paper). Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
    • Elkin, A. P. (June 1933). "Marriage and Descent in East Arnhem Land". Oceania. Volume 3 (4): 412–416. JSTOR 40327431.
    • Maddock, Kenneth (December 1970). "Rethinking the Murngin Problem: A Review Article". Oceania. Volume 41 (2): 77–89. JSTOR 40329917.
    • Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Murngin (NT)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University.
    • Warner, William Lloyd (April 1930). "Morphology and Functions of the Australian Murngin Type of Kinship". American Anthropologist. 32 (2): 207–256. doi:10.1525/aa.1930.32.2.02a00010. JSTOR 661305.
    • Warner, William Lloyd (April–June 1931). "Morphology and Functions of the Australian Murngin Type of Kinship (Part II)". American Anthropologist. 33 (2): 172–198. doi:10.1525/aa.1931.33.2.02a00030. JSTOR 660835.
    • Warner, William Lloyd (1937). A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. Harper. ISBN 978-0-598-80225-5.
    • Webb, T. Theodor (June 1933). "Tribal Organization in Eastern Arnhem Land". Oceania. Volume 3 (4): 406–411. JSTOR 40327430.
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