Vodanovich 1

Samantha Vodanovich
ANTH 150B
Section A
29 April 2016
Rites of Passage

Many cultures have a variety of celebrations. Whether a society is celebrating

a birthday, the passing of a loved one, someone becoming an adult, or even a feast,

they each do it in their own unique way. In this case, I would like to focus on tribal

societies, especially since we have already learned a great amount about them in

class. The group I would like to focus on and compare to others is the Aborigines

from Australia. The Aborigines are a very spiritual society. They still have many

rituals and ceremonies for several purposes. An example of a sort of milestone that

is celebrated in the Aborigine culture would be the initiations of boys and girls into

adulthood. These ceremonies can often times last for weeks and consist of singing,

dancing, storytelling, etc. My question is, how do other tribal societies choose to

celebrate certain milestones and what exactly are those milestones? The structure of

my paper consists of defining rites of passage and introducing the Aborigine culture,

a boys rite of passage, circumcision, marriage, the sexual aspect of marriage, death,

reincarnation and a gap year.

Milestones or an individuals change of status are referred to as rites of

passage in tribal societies. They could consist of births and beginnings, initiations,

partnerings, and endings or death. In this case, I will be focusing on the Aborigines of

Australia. The Aborigines of Australia have been around for decades now. I chose this

topic because we have focused on them greatly so far this year and they truly are
 Vodanovich 2

interesting compared to the rites of passage we experience in America. It is

important for us to study past societies to know how to handle with future ones. This

way we learn habits and patterns of the people in this world. Their culture consists of

one main belief and that is the Dreamtime.

Some background information on the Aborigine culture is very crucial to

understanding all of their rites of passage. Their tribal society is not poor because

they only make enough to live off of. The society is very sustainable in the sense that

all of their works comes from their bare hands. When they make decisions they make

decisions as a group and exclude no one. To this day only about 25% of Aborigines

live in the old way (Malinowski 132).

Transitioning

Before the passage of a young boy to a man, there is something called the

walkabout that is crucial to the final phase. The walkabout is a journey, typically

traveled through ages 10-16, where the young male lives in the wilderness for about

6 months in order to gain a spiritual transition onto manhood. This then leads to the

physical ceremony of circumcision, which I will explain later on.

A very important ceremony, or rite of passage, is a young boy turning into a

man. This celebration is called a Bora (Malinowski 100). This initiation of becoming

a man is not easy. The boys are required to memorize and learn past songs, stories,

traditions, etc. leading up to the ceremony. The reason the boys get such a large

celebration for becoming a man is because boys and men hold the power in the tribal

society. Although they all decide on things as a whole, men are far more sacred than

the women.
 Vodanovich 3

Although I am focusing on the aborigine culture it is important to see how

some other cultures celebrate their rites of passage and be able to compare and

contrast the differences.

The Okiek tribe from Kenya, Africa has an initiation or rite of passage for boys

and girls around the ages of 14-16. During this initiation process they are usually

circumcised or excised. After this process they are secluded to only live with the

same sex for about 4-24 weeks (Malinowski 89). They paint themselves with clay to

look like wild creatures. Initiation is finished when the youth has seen and held the

instrument that produces a roar, and can produce a roar of their own.

The meaning of these practices is to prove that they are becoming a man and

now just growing up. Many other tribes have similar but also different rites of

passage for young teens transforming into young adults. It is important for us to see

how they function because once we all came from a tribal society and here we are

today.

Circumcision is fairly common among tribal societies throughout the world.

Although it sounds disturbing and abusive to our societys eyes, to them it is a very

important part of their culture. Boys for example, must be circumcised before they

marry a woman, which is usually done during their specific ceremony of

transitioning into a young man. Circumcision is where the foreskin of the males

penis is cut off. There is also another important part of a boy becoming a man that is

called subincision, which is bit more gruesome, but has the same idea.
 Vodanovich 4

Marriage

In the American culture, marriage is seen as a happy celebration; big

weddings and lots of smiles. Bronislaw Malinowski described marriage as, It may be

said that marriage in either of its forms makes the woman the property of her

husband. Decades of years ago at this time it was also not very uncommon for a man

to have multiple wives. As well as the men practicing polygamy, they were also

known to be much older age-wise than the wives. This is important to understand

about their culture because it shows how different societies see certain rites of

passages and how certain people stand in society. In this case the men are superior

and the women dont have much of a say, which is known as patriarchy.

The rite of passage of a young girl getting married and turning into a woman

is quite different than the boys rite of passage into a young man. Girls in the

aboriginal culture are deflowered at their initiation into a young woman and on a

side note they are usually deflowered by a much older man. In other words they

remain abstinent until they are ready to marry and transition. These female

ceremonies tend to correlate with the male ceremonies. Both ceremonies are

performed at the arrival of puberty. A very important feature that Malinowski refers

too is that fact that regarding the ceremonial license in general, the sexual

intercourse is not subject to class rules. This means that during this time the class

rules are literally broken. The only thing that is strictly forbidden during this rite of

passage is incest, which is having sexual intercourse with a blood-related relative.

To compare and contrast, I researched what African marriages are seen as

and how they compare to the Indigenous Australian tribe. Marriage is known to be
 Vodanovich 5

very sacred in African tribes. What is unique about the African tribes is how they

treat their brides. The brides are treated with a great amount of respect, which is

almost the opposite in the Australian Aborigine culture. They are similar to the

Indigenous Australian in the sense that they get married at a very young age.

Marriage is a rite of passage for woman that is experienced very early in life. The

Massai people, whom I learned about earlier in the year, who are from Kenya

normally form relationships such as marriage with the people they have grown up

around (DeVet 2016). The people of Africa center the wedding on the brides beauty,

which is very different from the Aborigines.

The sexual aspect of marriage is very important in the Aborigine culture.

When young girls are initiated in Central Australia they are, at mercy of all who may

get ahold of them (Malinowski 97). This statement alone from Malinowski shows

how powerful the men were over the women. There is an exception during some

ceremonies where men are allowed to cede their wives to some of their tribesmen.

These ceremonies tend to correspond with male initiation ceremonies. A lot of the

rites of passage consisted of not so joyous things, but more tasks that portrayed a

sense of power. In the tribal societies women are not allowed to stand up for

themselves. They have jobs and duties that they stick to and nothing else.

Death

Death on the other hand was more of a complex ritual, but was still

recognized as a rite of passage due to going from one phase of life to another. Death

was an important rite of passage because it was a member of your tribe passing away

and that is always heartbreaking on the whole tribe. In some cases a wife would have
 Vodanovich 6

to separate herself from the rest of the tribe after a husband passing away. The place

that she would stay while being secluded from the community is called a widows

camp. The wife would normally stay there for around one to two years, which is

quite a long time to mourn. If a woman were to not follow specific guidelines it was

said that her husbands ghost would come back to haunt her and death would soon

fall upon her.

Reincarnation

Many tribal societies have a belief that something happens to you after death.

Your body gets buried into the ground, but your soul does not stay in the ground with

your body. A common term throughout tribal history is reincarnation.

Reincarnation defines as the rebirth of a soul in a new body. This is very important in

tribal societies because not only did they have a physical aspect of their culture, but a

spiritual one. The aboriginal idea of reincarnation states, that the given totemic

ancestor himself continuously undergoes rebirth (Malinowski 214). What this

means is that a newborn child is obviously a reincarnation of a given ancestor.

According to Malinowski there is a spiritual tie between the newborn and the

passed ancestor of the tribe. There is still much controversy over this rite of passage

due to it being a spiritual idea rather than a scientific fact. Just like many beliefs in

these tribal societies there is not always proof, it is just a common belief that has

been passed down for hundreds of years.

When most people think of reincarnation they think of an older ancestor

dying and returning as a newborn. There is another belief that this rite of passage

can be experienced by infants who died too soon or were killed. Some believe that
 Vodanovich 7

this serves as a use for infanticide. (Montague 2016). Infanticide is the crime of

killing a child within one year of birth. This is common in many countries due to

overpopulation. After much research Malinowski concludes that, The knowledge of

these concrete and detailed beliefs enables us to affirm without hesitation that the

general idea of reincarnation of human beings exists among the Central Australian

Tribes.

Today

Lately it is becoming greatly popular for the Aborigines in Australia to explore

a gap year. A gap year is basically an opportunity to explore outside of their tribal

society. This program began so the young people of Australia could explore their

opportunities and expand their horizons. Young People Without Borders is a new rite

of passage that will enable more young Australians than ever before to embark on a

transformational gap year. This new opportunity is available to 17 to 19 year olds

who want to experience studying abroad. The FYSA is a non-profit organization

dedicated to the young people of Australia. The people of Australia are very fond of

this idea because you get to explore new educational and life changing experiences.

This is also crucial to their culture because it is something out of the ordinary. They

either get to travel to a different country or go out on sea (Youth Studies Australia

2011).

After examining different cultures and tribes and then comparing them to the

Australian Aborigines you can see a lot of diversity between the tribes. In a sense you

can also see a lot of similarities in the way they cherish certain rites of passage. It is

import for anthropologists to study the way these people lived and celebrated
 Vodanovich 8

because our society today originally came from the indigenous tribes, such as the

Aborigines. People today hear and see the things these tribes did hundreds of years

ago and thought they were animal-like and disturbing, but really they were just

trying to make a living for themselves, which is why these tribal societies are seen as

such sustainable ones. These rites of passage are what make the tribes so unique and

studying them as anthropologists makes history that more interesting. It helps us

understand how they saw life and how their environment played into that.
 Vodanovich 9

Works Cited

Bodley, John H. Cultural Anthropology. 5th ed. N.p.: AltaMira, 2011. Print.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. The Family among the Australian Aborigines, a Sociological

Study. New York: Schocken, 1963. Print.

Montague, Anne. "Rites Of Passage In Adolescence - Culture and Youth Studies."

Culture and Youth Studies. Culture and Youth Studies, 26 Jan. 2014. Web. 12

Apr. 2016.

"New rite of passage for young Australians." Youth Studies Australia Sept. 2011: 3.

Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Rankin, Rebecca. Australia's Rites of Passage. Vol. 26. N.p.: n.p., 2011. Print.