[Anthropgrad] Friday Seminar (6 June 08)

[sinwen.lau at anu.edu.au]

Anthropology Student Seminar Series, Semester 1, 2008
Milgate Room, AD Hope
Friday 6 June, 3 pm

“Making young men”: an analysis of the core themes in a Warlpiri initiation ceremony”
Midterm review presented to the ANU Anthropology student seminar series by Georgia Curran

In Central Australia, songs are powerful instruments used to shape and recreate the world. Long song cycles are performed as part of ceremonies which have particular purposes such as altering weather conditions, attracting lovers, increasing food resources, resolving conflicts or, as with the ceremony I will discuss in this paper, making boys into young men. Since Warlpiri people settled in Yuendumu in 1946, instances of ceremonial performance are declining. The initiation ceremony, however, is expanding in many ways and is performed several times each summer. It is of central importance in the lives of all Warlpiri people despite the core song cycle only being known by a small group of older men. In my thesis I will explore why it is that this ceremony continues to have contemporary importance when many others do not. In this paper I will present one part of my thesis in which I show that there are several central themes coming through in Warlpiri initiation which are reinforced in the song texts, accompanying actions and other events surrounding this initiation ceremony.