Desert People: A Study of the Walbiri Aborigines of Central Australia.

One of the few complete ethnographies of an Aboriginal tribe. This study of the Walbiri of Central Australia describes at first hand a way of life that was still, in the 1950s, largely autonomous. It deals with the tribe’s history, contact with European settlers, relationships with neighbouring tribes, internal groupings and their economic, political and religious significance, family and kinship system, and sexual and educational practices. First Edition (NO dustjacket) pp. xix, 348 illusts maps (Prev ownership on prelim.) #0120

Ethnography of the Walbiri (Waljbiri); physical environment, includes table of Walbiri flora, with language and Latin names, uses; history from 1862, contacts with Australian explorers, pastoral settlement, violent conflict, establishment of Aboriginal settlements; contemporary distribution, numbers, relations with neighbouring groups, ethnocentrism; local organisation, sections, subsections, personal mobility in relation to religious significance of country; kinship system, residential family unit, marital relations, discord, elopements, adultery; socialisation, relations between parents and children, other kinfolk; moieties, descent; progressions through agegrades; law, social control; betrothal, marriage, childbirth; initiation, circumcision, subincision; death, funerary practices, child vs adult, man vs woman, causes of death, mourning.