Kinship - Essay

Kinship Organizations
Judy
4-11-2011

Aboriginals migrated from somewhere in Asia; they coexisted in harmony and lived in a balanced society with the land, animals, and everything living. The aboriginals were very primitive people. It's very clear why they are this primitive. They believe that their ancestors made the earth. Their Kinship originates from the Dreaming, ‘The Dreaming’ referred to the Aboriginal people’s Ancestral Beings, past times and everything associated with them. The Dreaming strengthened all Aboriginal society especially the Kinship system.   The relationship between kinship systems and the Dreamtime was such that the Aboriginal people developed their kinship systems from their Ancestral Beings who came from the Dreaming onto the land and formed everything and left them specific traditions and rules to be followed. It helped the Aboriginal people to know where they stood in regards to social relationships and their behavior towards every other person. The aboriginals were hunters and nomads.
For example per The Columbia Encyclopedia:
        The aborigines have an intricate classification system that defines kinship relations and regulates marriages. The Karameros, for example, are divided into hordes, or local groups of about 30 people, which are divided into four classes, or sections. Membership in a section determines ritual and territorial claims. In half of the hordes the men are divided among the Karameros and Burung sections; in the other half they are divided among the Palyeri and Banaka sections. These sections are exogamous, and rules of marriage, descent, and residence determine how these sections interact: Karimera men must marry Palyeri women, and their children are Burung, and so on. Sons live in the same hordes as their fathers, so the composition of hordes alternates every generation. The complex system, by requiring each man to marry a woman from only one of the three possible sections, fosters a broad network of social...