← All traditions

Australia

Aboriginal Australian Traditions

community-specific terms; 'clever man' is a contact-era English gloss

Hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations

History

Aboriginal traditions are governed by law, country and restricted knowledge. Much of what colonial writers published should not have been published. This atlas presents context, history and rights rather than ceremonial content.

Ritual specialists

  • Roles defined by the law of a specific country and community

Cosmology

  • Ancestral beings and country as an active legal and moral order

Ritual practice

  • Restricted; not documented here

History and pressure

  • Dispossession
  • Mission control of ceremony
  • Native title and heritage-protection law

Continue