Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia

by Burbank,Victoria; Glaskin,Katie

• ISBN13: 9780754674498
• ISBN10: 0754674495
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Drawing on ethnography of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia, Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia focuses on the current ways in which indigenous people confront and manage various aspects of death. The contributors employ their contemporary and long-term anthropological fieldwork with indigenous Australians to construct rich accounts of indigenous practices and beliefs and to engage with questions relating to the frequent experience of death within the context of unprecedented change and premature mortality.The volume makes use of extensive empirical material to address questions of inequality with specific reference to mortality, thus contributing to the anthropology of indigenous Australia whilst attending to its theoretical, methodological and political concerns. As such, it will appeal not only to anthropologists but also to those interested in social inequality, the social and psychosocial consequences of death, and the conceptualization and manipulation of the relationships between the living and the dead.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Preface: The transformative processes of life and death, Andrew Strathern

Introduction: indigenous ways of death in Australia

'Sorry business is Yapa way': Warlpiri mortuary rituals as embodied practice

Solidarity in shared loss: death-related observances among the Martu of the Western desert

Death and health: the resilience of 'sorry business' in the Kutjungka region of Western Australia

Time wounds: death, grieving and grievance in the Northern Kimberley

A personal reflection on a Saltwater man and the cumulative effects of loss

Social death and disenfranchised grief: an Alyawarr case study

'Promise me you'll come to my funeral': putting a value on Wiradjuri life through death

Death, family and disrespect in a Northern Queensland town

A place to rest: dying, residence, and community stability in remote Arnhem Land

A life in words: history and society in Saibai Island (Torres Strait) tombstones

'We don't want to chase' em away': hauntology in central Cape York peninsula

Afterword: demography and destiny

Glossary

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Based on ethnography in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia, Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia focuses on the current ways in which Indigenous people confront and manage various aspects of death. The contributors to this book employ their contemporary and long-term anthropological fieldwork with Indigenous Australians to construct a rich account of Indigenous practices and beliefs, and to engage with questions relating to the frequent experience of death within the context of unprecedented change and premature mortality.