Indigenising Anthropology With Guattari and Deleuze PDF

Indigenising Anthropology
with Guattari and Deleuze

Plateaus – New Directions in Deleuze Studies
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rather of relating each concept to variables that explain its mutations.’
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations
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Titles available in the series

Christian Kerslake, Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to Deleuze
Jean-Clet Martin, Variations: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, translated by
Constantin V. Boundas and Susan Dyrkton
Simone Bignall, Postcolonial Agency: Critique and Constructivism
Miguel de Beistegui, Immanence – Deleuze and Philosophy
Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature
Ronald Bogue, Deleuzian Fabulation and the Scars of History
Sean Bowden, The Priority of Events: Deleuze’s Logic of Sense
Craig Lundy, History and Becoming: Deleuze’s Philosophy of Creativity
Aidan Tynan, Deleuze’s Literary Clinic: Criticism and the Politics of Symptoms
Thomas Nail, Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo
François Zourabichvili, Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event with The Vocabulary of
Deleuze edited by Gregg Lambert and Daniel W. Smith, translated by Kieran Aarons
Frida Beckman, Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality
Nadine Boljkovac, Untimely Affects: Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema
Daniela Voss, Conditions of Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas
Daniel Barber, Deleuze and the Naming of God: Post-Secularism and the Future of
Immanence
F. LeRon Shults, Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism
Janae Sholtz, The Invention of a People: Heidegger and Deleuze on Art and the Political
Marco Altamirano, Time, Technology and Environment: An Essay on the Philosophy
of Nature
Sean McQueen, Deleuze and Baudrillard: From Cyberpunk to Biopunk
Ridvan Askin, Narrative and Becoming
Marc Rölli, Gilles Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism: From Tradition to Difference
translated by Peter Hertz-Ohmes
Guillaume Collett, The Psychoanalysis of Sense: Deleuze and the Lacanian School
Ryan J. Johnson, The Deleuze-Lucretius Encounter
Allan James Thomas, Deleuze, Cinema and the Thought of the World
Cheri Lynne Carr, Deleuze’s Kantian Ethos: Critique as a Way of Life
Alex Tissandier, Affirming Divergence: Deleuze’s Reading of Leibniz
Barbara Glowczewski, Indigenising Anthropology with Guattari and Deleuze
Forthcoming volumes
Justin Litaker, Deleuze and Guattari’s Political Economy
Nir Kedem, A Deleuzian Critique of Queer Thought: Overcoming Sexuality
Felice Cimatti, Becoming-animal: Philosophy of Animality After Deleuze, translated by
Fabio Gironi
Ryan J. Johnson, Deleuze, A Stoic
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INDIGENISING ANTHROPOLOGY
WITH GUATTARI AND DELEUZE
Barbara Glowczewski
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© Barbara Glowczewski, 2020
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The right of Barbara Glowczewski to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright
and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Prelude: The Wooden Egg Made Me Sick

by Nakakut Barbara Gibson Nakamarra 1
1 Becoming Land 5
Part I: The Indigenous Australian Experience of the Rhizome

2 Warlpiri Dreaming Spaces: 1983 and 1985 Seminars with
Félix Guattari 81
3 Guattari and Anthropology: Existential Territories among
Indigenous Australians 114
Part II: Totem, Taboo and the Women’s Law

4 Doing and Becoming: Warlpiri Rituals and Myths 131
5 Forbidding and Enjoying: Warlpiri Taboos 171
6 A Topological Approach to Australian Cosmology and
Social Organisation 202
Part III: The Aboriginal Practice of Transversality and Dissensus

7 In Australia, it’s ‘Aboriginal’ with a Capital ‘A’:
Aboriginality, Politics and Identity 225
8 Culture Cult: Ritual Circulation of Inalienable Knowledge
and Appropriation of Cultural Knowledge (Central and
NW Australia) 257
9 Lines and Criss-Crossings: Hyperlinks in Australian
Indigenous Narratives 281
Part IV: Micropolitics of Hope and De-Essentialisation

10 Myths of ‘Superiority’ and How to De-Essentialise Social
and Historical Conflicts 299
indigenising anthropology
11 Resisting the Disaster: Between Exhaustion and Creation 321

12 Standing with the Earth: From Cosmopolitical Exhaustion
to Indigenous Solidarities 340
Part V: Dancing with the Spirits of the Land

13 Cosmocolours: A Filmed Performance of Incorporation
and a Conversation with the Preta Velha Vó Cirina 359
14 The ngangkari Healing Power: Conversation with Lance
Sullivan, Yalarrnga Healer 377
Bibliography 410
Index 439
vi
Acknowledgements
All my gratitude to the Indigenous Australian multitude who taught

me over the years: first the Warlpiri Law women and men from
Lajamanu, especially Nakakut Barbara Gibson Nakamarra, Janjiya
Herbert Nakamarra, Jimmy Robertson Jampijinpa and Wanta
Steve Patrick Jampijinpa for sharing their challenging knowledge of
Jukurrpa; the Yolngu Burrarwanga family for their filmic collabora-
tion in Bawaka and Joe Neparrnga Gumbula for his vision of trans-
Pacific flows; Lex Wotton, his mother, Agnes, sister Fleur and wife
Cecilia in Palm Island for their exemplary struggle to defend social
justice; David Mowaljarlai, Ngarrinyin visionary, for his testimo-
nies; Lance Sullivan, Yalarrnga Law man from Boulia, for his trust
in sharing with me in Townsville and in France his ngangkari healing
gift that allowed the last chapter of this book. I would not have
been able to keep battling against eurocentrism without the support
of my daughters, Milari and Nidala, and their Djugun family, their
father Jowandi Wayne Barker, auntie Pat Torres Mamanyjun, grand-
mother Theresa Barker, grand-uncle Brian Bin Saaban and others
in Broome. My commitment to Indigenous cosmopolitics is con-
tinuously nurtured by many Aboriginal activists and scholars: great
thanks to Shorty O’Neil and Djon Mundine for their early seminars
in Paris; Ralf Rigby for editing the Palm film; Marcia Langton, Chair
of Indigenous Australians Studies in Melbourne, for our collabora-
tions, Brook Andrew for his artistic reclaim of colonial history; Max
Lenoy, professor at JCU, and all the Guarani, Kaingang and Laklano
students of the Indigenous licentiatura who welcomed him at UFSC in
Brazil; Bouaza Benachir for his pioneer philosophy of Berber knowl-
edge; Hawad for the impact of his Touareg furigraphic poems and
paintings; Chantal Spitz for the intransigence of her writing and fight
for Ma’ohi justice in Polynesia, Tokai Devatine and his mother Flora
Devatine for their welcome in Tahiti, Viri Taimana, Vaite Devatine,
and Hinanui Simon from Papeete, for sharing their healing skills at
the French festival of Genac; Alex Tiouka, Maurice Tiouka, Jean
Apollinaire, Christophe Yanuwana Pierre and Ludovic Pierre for
vii
sharing their Kali’na heritage and struggles in France, Felix Tiouka

for his invitation to the Awala-Yalimapo Games, Linia Opoya and
Tasikele Alupki for their hospitality in the Wayana village of Taluen,
Aïma Opoya, Alain Mindjouk, Fabio Léon-Akati, for their political
lesson in French Guiana.
This book would not exist without the rhizomatic world-wide
connections generated by Guattari and Deleuze studies. I am very
grateful to Félix Guattari for his enthusiasm and to his 1980s seminar
accomplices, Eric Alliez, Jean-Claude Pollack, Anne Querrien; to
Mayette Viltard for 35 years of topological and ecosophical sup-
portive exchanges; Erin Manning and Brian Massumi for their
micropolitical analysis of Aboriginal art; Maurizio Lazzarato and
Angela Melitopoulos for their Assemblages film installation; Claude
Mercier for inspiring transversalities between Lacan and Deleuze;
Abrahao Oliveira de Santos for translating my Guattari seminars in
Portugese to use in his collective dream workshop at the University
of Fluminense and Peter Pal Pelbart for publishing them with n-1 in
Brazil; Anne Sauvagnargues for stimulating schizoanalysis at ENS in
Lyon, Paris, and at Cerisy; Emine Gorgul for her warm hospitality
conveying a Deleuze conference in Istambul; George Varghese and
Manoj N.Y. for their formidable Deleuze and Guattari in India col-
lective, allowing passionate debates with Patricia Pisters, Paul Patton
and many others. I owe to Ian Buchanan the invitation to join this
network after two enriching Guattari workshops at the University of
Wollongong, and to imagine a book for his collection at EUP. Special
thanks to Geraldine Lyons for editing the typescript, and all EUP
staff for their caring assistance. My sincere appreciation to Andrew
Burk for translating the first chapter; John Angell for chapter 2, Itsuki
Kurihara and Shinichi Nakazawa for the Japanese version in Gendai-
Shiso; Andrew Goffey for chapter 3 and Continuum for authorising
its republication; Pat Lowe for working with me in Broome on the
translation of extracts from Du Rêve à la Loi published here as
chapters 4 et 5; Kenneth Maddock for editing my paper for Mankind,
here chapter 6; Nora Scott for translating chap 7 and 8, one edited by
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon and Serge Tcherkezoff for ANU, the
other by Monique Jeudy-Ballini and Bernard Juillerat for Carolina
University Press; Christiane Senn for translating German archives;
Hart Cohen for editing chapter 9 for MIA journal; Mariquian Kpédetin
Ahouansou for her doctoral research on French Black people that
inspired my keynote at the Cairns Institute, published here as chapter
10. My profound recognition to Tiécoura Traoré for showing me the
viii
Acknowledgements
disastrous effect of globalisation in Mali and Sénégal, Henri Courau

for his pioneer work on the ‘camp-form’ in Sangatte, Peter Stuart
for his update on the NT Intervention, Alexandre Soucaille for our
seminar and conference on disaster, who all inspired chapter 10,
the team of editors who translated it for the Spheres online journal,
and Gary Genosko for his published comments. I thank Christophe
Bonneuil and Frédéric Neyrat for challenging me to speak and think
“with” the earth at their workshop, Toni Pape and Adam Szymanski
for translating for Inflexions this paper republished here as chapter
12; Pai Abilio Noé da Silveira for his welcome at the Tenda Spirita
Vo Cirina in Florianopolis, Kabila Aruanda for the rehearsal at his
terreiro, Clarissa Alcantara for cowriting in Portugese about our per-
formance experience in Geneva, and Paula Morgado for editing the
paper for the GIS Brazilian journal that authorised its republication
as chapter 13. Special thanks to the Warnayaka Art Centre for their
welcome, particularly Kitty Simon Napanangka for her Mina Mina
painting on the cover, and Bertrand Estrangin in Bruxelles for provid-
ing the photo.
I am much obliged to many colleagues and institutions for their
support: the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and the CNRS
for funding my fieldwork over thirty years and the translation of
the first and second chapter of this book; Annette Hamilton from
Macquarie University who encouraged me to finish my PhD; Charles-
Henry Pradelles de Latour and Bertrand Gérard for initiating me
to topology, John Stanton and the Berndt museum in WA for our
collaboration with Unesco; Laurent Dousset from the CREDO for
setting up my Warlpiri and Djugun audiovisual archives on odsas.
net; Mary Laughren, linguist in Warlpiri, for our joint regular field-
work; Rosita Henry and the James Cook University for the estab-
lishment of our TransOceanik international Laboratory, and all its
Australian, French and Brazilian members, for the joy and creativity
we shared over the years, especially Miriam Grossi for organising
a six months invitation at UFSC where she hosted a great sympo-
sium. I am very thankful to Irène Bellier for our indigenous seminars
at EHESS, Florence Brunois-Pasina for enlightening our students,
Jean-Christophe Goddard and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro for the
decolonial meetings at the University of Toulouse; Radek Przedpelski
and Steve Wilmer for the Deleuze art and multiplicity stimulating
conference in Dublin; Nadia Wadori-Gauthier for sharing her One
minute dance; Elisabeth Povinelli for our laughs and debates during
events at Khiasma and the Paris Columbia Global Centre.
ix
Sincere indebtedness to all my other friends for their intellectual

nurturing, especially Michel Potage for Le rire dans le désert, a
magnificent artistic homage to Aboriginal Land-Rights; Laurence
Vale for her constant care since our 1970’s films; Beriou for the
cataphile network; Elisabeth D. Inandiak for the serenity of her
engagement in Indonesia; Estelle Castro-Koshy for her commitment
to Aboriginal and Polynesian writers; Jessica De Largy Healy for her
Yolngu research and our intense collaborations, Lise Garond for her
sound ethnography dedicated to Palm Island, Géraldine Le Roux for
her innovative projects in art and ecology, Arnaud Morvan for his
Kija research and Indigenous art curatorial work, Martin Préaud for
his engaged analysis of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture
Centre. I am deeply grateful to Yoann Moreau for thinking the
multiversal, Elie Kong, Natura and the inhabitants of the Plateau de
Millevaches for their écoles de la terre, Dénétem Touam Bona for
his marooning lessons, Josep Rafanell i Orra for his creative dedica-
tion to mutual aid, Christophe Laurens for his entropic critique and
supportive commitment towards Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Warmest
gratitude to the inhabitants of this ZAD, Jojo, Uma, Nico, Agate,
Christian, Marion, John, Isa, Mél, Maia, Jean-Marie, and many
others whose struggle opens new hope for the future.
x
Prelude: The Wooden Egg Made Me Sick
By Nakakut Barbara Gibson Nakamarra
The other night, after Yakiriya told you the Emu Dreaming, I dreamt I
was sitting with her and some ancestral women. We were getting ready
for a ceremony and a crowd of white people were taking a photo of us!
My mother-in-law called me, very angry, and said she did not want to be
photographed by all these white people. But I answered, ‘Don’t worry,
they are going to give us a truck!’
The next day I had to go to Yuendumu for a royalty meeting where I
was intending to claim compensation from the mining company for my
traditional land-rights over the Granites area!
My dream continued by revealing to me two new Dreaming songs, one
for Emu and one for Rain. They were given to me by the female egg. Poor
fellow, he is alone now that Yakiriya gave you the male one. I made them
both years ago for her that is why the egg sang for me, making me sick
even before my dream. I was cold and I did not know why. When I took
the plane, I was feeling worse.
When I came back from the meeting, I told Yakiriya, ‘It is Yankirri,
emu, the cracking foot, who made me feel so sick in my stomach! I was
carrying his two songs in the plane!’
Yakiriya was in the dream with two other Nangala who were singing
the new Emu song: ‘Karnanganja nangu nangu mangurrularna
mangurrungurru.’
Karnanganja means the parents of the egg, nangu nangu is the water-
hole they saw, and the rest means that they had a rest there. All the
singing women of my dream, me included, were painted with the Rain
Dreaming.
Two Napanangka, Betty and Nyilirpina, erected the mangaya stick,
right in the spot where Emu and his wife brooded their eggs. I was
dancing with the other women and we were singing the new Rain song:
‘Muraninginti kutakuta jurrdungku jurrdungku luwarninya.’
Muraninginti means the other side, that is, west from the Emu trail;
kutakuta is the storm; and jurrdujurrdu, the sand whirlwind. Finally,
luwarni, throwing, refers to the bolt of lightning.
Suddenly, a cloud of sand rushed upon us. A very strong wind lifted the
sand. We were covered with dust. And it started to rain. Because we were
1
singing the Rain Dreaming, he was sending us the sand storm and the
lightning.
All the women ran to the bush shelters which formed a circle around
the dancing ground. ‘Come here, there is too much dust!’ I shouted to the
two Napanangka. But they continued to dance to get the sacred stick they
had previously erected. And they joined us to hide it.
This is when I woke up, in the middle of the night. I thought about our
old Rain and Emu yawulyu. I thought about two Nangala now deceased.
They used to be the bosses of these rituals, being custodians of the Rain
Dreaming from Kulpulunu and the Emu Dreaming in that region where
the couple discovered the miyaka nuts. These two women taught me, like
in school. All the Kulpulunu mob was my family because my father-clan
would visit them every dry season. Thinking about these two elders, I felt
very sad.
Falling asleep again, I went back into the same dream. The sand storm was
over. There was only a small group of women now, two Nakamarra, my
sister Beryl and myself, Yakiriya and another Nangala, one Nampijinpa
and Betty Napanangka who was leading. We danced up to the Kuraja
swamp, near Katherine. All around there, black stones called ‘black
clouds’ are the trace of the Rain Dreaming. They also refer to the salt
water, the sea further north (Darwin).
The Rain Dreaming paintings we had on our chests turned into Emu
paintings. ‘Now you are going to track the Emu Dreaming up to the salt
water’, Napanangka said. She took a big wooden dish that she painted
with the Emu Dreaming. We danced far away to Jikaya, a place with
many small waterholes. Each of us was dancing and dipping her foot into
the holes, pulling it out as soon as the water was coming up. It was fun
we tasted the water of all the holes with our feet!
We danced all night. At dawn, just before the day rose, we saw the sea,
the huge black salt water. ‘This is where you have to finish because the
Emu brother and sister disappeared here’, Napanangka said. So each of
us tasted the sea with a foot like we had done in Jikaya. Gigantic waves
lifted up and I got scared. Suddenly we found ourselves back in the ‘black
clouds’ waterhole near Katherine (200 km south of the sea). I saw a ring
place there and a crowd of ancestral women whose faces I could not
recognise.
I woke up. The sun was rising. The Dreaming women had shown me the
whole Ancestral Dreaming for Rain and Emu right up to where the two
trails finish far away from the Warlpiri country. We dance and sing all this
trail during the man-making Law (initiation). We dance all day and night.
Before dark we sing Kulpulunu, a site crossed by Rain and Emu. Around
midnight the songs bring us to Jikaya. And at dawn we sing and dance the
arrival to the sea where the two Emu children bodies are resting for ever.
2
Prelude, with Nakakut Nakamarra
We paint all this journey on the ritual parraja dish. We dance with the
dish and in the ground we erect the mangaya stick painted with black and
white lines, representing, as on the dish, the sea and the clouds.1
Nakakut Barbara Nakamarra Gibson, who told me that dream in
1984, was born just before the Second World War on the land of her
Warlpiri father in the Tanami Desert. Her mother was from a neigh-
bouring tribe, the Mudpura. Nakakut grew up living a semi-nomadic
life of hunting and gathering. A severe drought forced her family to
seek refuge near the sacred site of the Granites which was occupied
by goldminers. There, the government had situated a ration depot for
all the Warlpiri people who were chased away from their land and
shot while trying to get rid of the settlers’ cattle that were spoiling
their waterholes. Nakakut’s father was the ritual custodian of that
region, but the family was forcibly moved to Yuendumu, a reserve
built in the late 1940s. Hundreds of Warlpiri were forced to live there
and the pressure of such miserable cohabition with so many people
led to the eruption of regular conflicts. In the 1950s the government
built another reserve on the northern edge of the Tanami Desert
where some families, including Nakakut’s, were forced to move.
The early conditions were horrific. In the 1960s the Warlpiri people
and other Aboriginal people across the continent saw their struggles
recognised by a series of new laws. The reserve became the Lajamanu
self-managed community. The Warlpiri won a huge land claim in
1978 which allowed them to negotiate with mining companies and
receive royalties for explorations that they authorised. If any elders
expressed concern about the destruction of their land, including the
risk of spoiling the underground network of water, other Warlpiri
signed and continue to sign various agreements, which generated
constant conflicts.
Ten years after that dream, Nakakut came for the birth of my
second daughter, Nidala, when I was living in Broome, on the Indian
Ocean. I took her to Gantheaume Point, which the local Aboriginal
custodians, the Djugun ancestors of my daughters’ father, associ-
ate with the Giant Emeu Dreaming, Karnanganja, whose trail is
shared with the desert tribes. On the bottom part of the big red cliff,
there are many little pools that are filled with water after the tide goes
1
Recorded in Lajamanu, NT, Australia in 1984 in Warlpiri, translated by Nakakut
Barbara Nakamarra Gibson and edited in 1995 for the CD-ROM Dream Trackers
(Glowczewski 2000). A French version was published with a commentary
(Glowczewski and Nakamarra Gibson 2002).
3
out. When we ‘tasted’ that salt water with our bare feet, I suddenly
felt transported to the desert, while Nakakut who was carrying my
baby backed away a few steps from what she called the power of the
place. I felt a sense of déjà vu in relation to her dream where she trav-
elled on the tracks of the ancestral Emu and ‘tasted’ a Rain Dreaming
sacred waterhole with her feet. Feeling the water and the earth with
my feet and accessing a different experience of time-space was one of
the many ways in which I have been invited by her people and other
Indigenous people that I met over the past forty years to share with
them a becoming land, to decolonise my mind, and through their
lessons to indigenise anthropology.
Figure I.1 Nakakut Barbara Nakamarra Gibson leads her Nakamarra sisters
(Perilpa, Jenny, Beryl) and Melody Napurrurla during the ritual dance for her Black
Plum Dreaming. Lajamanu © B. G. (1984)
4
1
Becoming Land
I was eighteen, when, during a stimulating course on the history of

philosophy ranging from Heraclitus to Foucault, our young profes-
sor invited us to read Anti-Oedipus.1 I devoured it with a passion. In
those post-1968 days, an education scheme had been established in
high schools to fund creative activities. So seven other classmates and
I wrote a script and acted in a film which we called Angoisse (1974:
Anguish). Our professor agreed to play the role of the king fool in
this strange film which questioned both religion and power:
Our faces covered with psychedelic designs, disguised in a neo-ancient
Greek style, we took turns placing an object at the bottom of a hill of
sand in a huge quarry (in the forest). Every offering throughout the
procession was interspliced with a scene of the person making the offer-
ing that depicted, within their daily life, some sort of anguish or anxiety
that was crystallised into the object he or she provided as offering. As for
me, I offered an empty (painting) frame since during my filmed sequence
I tried to draw the contours of my reflection, starting with my left hand
placed on the mirror, going all the way to my right hand which held the
marker and which couldn’t draw its own contour: the impossibility of
representing this movement was an allusion to Escher’s famous piece
where a hand emerges from off the page of a drawing in order to draw
another hand, creating the optical illusion of a Moebius strip. The film
ended with a banquet in the quarry where one of us, covered in white
sheets, was carried onto a table to be be painted using the food from the
feast.2
The following year, enrolled at the University of Jussieu-Paris 7
(now known as Université Paris Diderot) to study economic and
social administration, I drafted a short commentary around Anti-
Oedipus that consisted of systematically pointing out every time the
1
Special thanks to Drew Burk for translating and commenting this introductory
chapter, and to the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS/EHESS/Collège de
France) for the translation grant.
2
Glowczewski (2012); see film on: https://vimeo.com/315628049
5
authors mentioned Marx. It was my way of validating a course criti-

cising capitalist development throughout the countries of the Third
World. At first rather sceptical upon receiving the text, the professor
ended up thanking me the following week for having prompted him
to read Deleuze and Guattari since his Marxist circle of economists
viewed Anti-Oedipus with suspicion. It was quite a different story
for all the fans who packed themselves into the lecture hall at the
University of Vincennes Paris 8 where Deleuze presented his lectures
in constant dialogue with Guattari. I ended up enrolling there in
1977 for a masters in cinema with a minor in philosophy. This was
long before Deleuze’s publication on The Movement-Image ([1983]
2003). But he had just released the essay ‘Rhizome’ with Guattari
and its proposition for an anti-hierarchical conception of things was
very exciting to me. I was not one of those students or attendees who
arrived way before the course began in order to grab a seat within
the crammed lecture hall. I preferred the margins, in every sense of
the term.
There were so many creative things happening inside this experi-
mental university located at the edge of the woods of Vincennes. In
particular, the meetings organised by the MLF (Movement for the
Liberation of Women), the seminars held by the group Psyche & Po
organised by Antoinette Fouque and, not to be forgotten, the courses
held by Hélène Cixous (1976) who, in 1974, founded the first Centre
for Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe in the university’s new
Department of Texts and Societies. I happened to film and document
a truly remarkable feast reserved specifically for women only and
which gathered together hundreds of women dancing on the espla-
nade around a fire of joy.3 It was under the direction and supervision
of Claudine Eizykman, author of experimental films and creator of
the Paris film co-op, that I completed my masters presenting one
of the experimental films I had made with a tiny spring-loaded,
hand-cranked webo camera. For this experimental film, Picturelure,
I ended up creating all sorts of visual effects based on little drawings
and animation techniques, using no sound and working frame by
frame. All my other experimental films focused on the exploration of
the female body. Many women in those days discovered their bodies
through a variety of experiences, both private and public, through
love, writing, political action and artistic performances. I was
3
1977: http://www.cinedoc.org/film-1958-fete-de-femmes-a-l-universite-de-vincen
nes-html
6
Becoming Land
fortunate to have benefited from a summer workshop in women’s

studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974, followed
by a course taught by the American feminist anthropologist Judith
Brown at the University of Jussieu-Paris 7. She provided us with
a synthesis of the male bias found in all anthropological literature
that was being thoroughly criticised at that time, mostly notably
by certain female anthropologists who systematically reinterpreted
anthropological history, especially in the United States.4 One could
also see this feminist movement in anthropology begin to take place
in France under prominent figures such as the anthropologist Nicole-
Claude Mathieu (1985) at the EHESS who co-founded the journal
Questions féministes in 1977.
While Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are both brimming
with anthropological references, they contain hardly any critique of
masculine domination and debates concerning gender. Certainly, the
‘becoming-woman’ is posited as of one of the rhizomatic virtualities
traversing both sexes, which to a certain extent calls into question
the duality of gender, but the exacting work and findings questioning
male bias found within the interpretations of the social and human
sciences, including within psychoanalysis, are in no way mobilised
within either of the two volumes on Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Guattari, nevertheless, supported a number of minoritarian struggles,
including the movement of the FHAR (Front homosexuel d’action
révolutionnaire) created in 1971 by the writer Guy Hocquenghem
along with Françoise d’Eaubonne, co-founder of MLF. The FHAR
would later split into a number of homosexual liberation groups in
particular in response to the rise and spread of AIDS. D’Eaubonne
would eventually create the Ecology-Feminism association in 1978
and propose the concepts of ecofeminism and phallocracy.5
Guattari was a friend to several anthropologists, most notably
Pierre Clastres, who had become rather well known for his Society
Against The State inspired by Amerindians from Paraguay and
Brazil, along with Robert Jaulin, author of La mort Sara and La Paix
Blanche, two books criticising colonisation, one focusing on Africa
and the other on the Amazon Rainforest. Jaulin denounced the eth-
nocide taking place among Indigenous people, a concept created
4
Rosaldo and Lamphere (1974); Rubin (1975); Ortner and Whitehead (1981);
Moore (1988).
5
See documentary: Alessandro Avellis, La Révolution du désir (2006); Albistur and
Armogathe (1977: 458).
7
by the anthropologist and Vietnam specialist Georges Condominas

([1957]1977). In the aftermath of May 1968, Jaulin was also respon-
sible for creating the Department of Ethnology at Jussieu-Paris 7.
Michel de Certeau who also taught there, would end up becom-
ing the supervisor of my masters thesis, ‘Anthropologie des 5 sens’
(Anthropology of the Five Senses) whose final page, like the preced-
ing sixty-three, was typed on a tiny typewriter and punctuated with
a myriad of elipses:
If I had to undertake this work again starting from the very beginning,
I would not take myths as my starting point so as to attempt discern-
ing the sensorial apprehension of different cultures, but rather, I would
create and take as my mode of research what has become known as
ethnographic documentary films. And this doesn’t mean that I consider
information to be more objective: there is just as much subjectivity in
the visual transcription of human behavior as can be found in writings
and the interpretation of a myth. But in finally arriving at a hypothesis –
having initially endeavored to accumulate the necessary ‘matter’, the
required ‘material’ from other cultures’ philosophies for demonstrating
the relativisation of our confined Western perception – I realised that the
act of ‘demonstration’ is metaphysical whereas my goal was precisely
an attempt to escape this metaphysics . . . throughout this long process
and journey, it’s as if everything that could suggest itself as being matter
ended up systematically evaporating, thereby satisfying the principle of
permanent metaphorphosis that I had evoked throughout the entirety of
my work: I had become ensnared in the logic of my own reasoning . . .
what’s important to retain from this text is the sensation of a voyage
that is no more physical than metaphysical but rather alchimical . . . it’s
a feeling of jouissance, of joy that I in no way regret, even if it already
has fallen into the schema of an old dream (which doesn’t take away the
initial premonition!): the past of others can be our future . . .
My desire for images of (felt) presence today corresponds to a new
need perhaps awakened by this bath of intemporal images, of so many
myths . . . It’s certainly with new eyes that I view an Aboriginal person
carefully preparing flour or a Fulani shepherd watching over and
minding his cattle, or an Indian who paints himself in traditional guise
or a Polynesian who traditionally burns portions of the land . . . the
rhythm of these gestures, their complexity within space. What seems
to be suggested by these acts besides a certain automatism, besides an
extreme sense of contemplation, is the living presence of a specific kind
of sensuality that escapes our grasp. These rhythms and rituals have
taught me, in a much more immediate and indelible way, about a sensu-
ality that is always personal and cultural, and complicit with a certain
relation of love with specific objects, plants, animals or more generally a
8
Becoming Land
relation with regions above or below the earth, a relation similar to that
which we have sadly reduced to only being accessible by humankind and
unfortunately oftentimes not considered accessible to all of humankind
or everything else that exists . . .
I have often had the impression that magic is a way of being surprised
in allowing ourselves to see something new that we had not allowed our-
selves to encounter in what we were already looking at, to hear something
within what we are listening to that we didn’t know was there, to detect
and smell an odor which we were sure wasn’t really present, to allow
ourselves to be swept up in the throes of ectasy upon eating a sliver of
chocolate where we no longer recognise the limit point between one’s
skin and what we touch . . . We could all therefore be sorcerer apprentices
and the magic wand would be nothing more than our thousand and one
senses . . . (Glowczewski 1978)
This excerpt represented a myriad of diffuse ideas which, during that
time period, directly nourished themselves off writings and images
derived from other cultures but also from personal experimentation
of the senses, such as my practice of experimental films that had
strived to elicit feelings, a kind of optical music, to affect perception
without attempting to represent some sort of symbolic intention. I
was also imbued with the struggles of women that, throughout every
corner of the world, began to seriously question masculine domina-
tion, and with the creative responses of various peoples oppressed
by colonisation, most notably the Indigenous populations who were
organising themselves so as to affirm their own sovereignty. Bringing
along my tiny 16 mm camera to Australia, I tried to continue the
experimental technic by filming the rituals of Warlpiri women frame
by frame6 but, after reviewing the special effects of acceleration and
superimposition of their movements that I used in the first developed
rolls of film, the Warlpiri women dissuaded me from continuing to
film in this experimental way. They simply asked for me to stick to
the rhythms of their dances and to not show the films to the men of
my country as their rituals were restricted to women only. This trip
would completely change my life and every layer of my existence
specifically regarding questions of gender.
6
In a 16 mm film as I used it there were twenty-four frames per second but the
mechanism of the camera allowed one to imprint each frame separately or as short
sequences of two to twelve frames in a row and then to wind back the film strip to
film again frame by frame, creating superimpositions.
9
The Indigenous Australian Experience of the Rhizome

For the Indigenous people of Australia, a manner of wandering, of move-
ment, situated along earthbound pathways (called Dreamings) of mythic
heroes, defines a specific space-time. The ‘Dreaming’ voyages of mythic
ancestors (whether as anthromorphic incarnations, as plants or animals,
or incarnated in the forces of nature themselves) have all left their marks
on the earth which shows itself today as proof of what has also been
called the Dreamtime. The land with its mountains, caves, creeks, and
water sources, its freshwater springs, its minerals, and vegetation and
its animals is therefore the space of the Dreaming and can be read as a
network of signs in intimate correspondence: the earth, by ‘incarnating’
the Dreaming, materialises the human’s memory and, as such, guarantees
in a certain way their connection to the land as well as with the Dreaming.
The Dreaming is not a space-time of creation but of the transformations
of pre-exising conditions that are never completely explained within the
myths. The Dreaming rids itself of the question of the origin of things. It is
an active principle of various metamorphoses and, as we shall see, meta-
morphosis is the image of social dynamics particular to the Aborigional
people. It’s through the Dreaming that everything takes on a life and a
meaning, but throughout all that exists, it’s the earth itself, the land, that
is the source of power or the force that makes of the Dreaming this force
which passes throughout all the inherent ‘energies’ found within matter,
the so-called vital forces of the species that constitute the Dreaming and life.
The term ‘Dreaming’ – ‘to be in the middle of dreaming’, ‘the activity
of dreaming’, – has been the translation used by ethnologists to encom-
pass the Aboriginal terms that the 500 different Indigenous Australian
ethnic groups (language groups) use in order to speak about both their
mythic histories, of the time referring to these stories and histories, and
to the earthly pathways corresponding to the voyages of the heroes of
these stories, linked with the natural species with which the Indigenous
Australians identify themselves. For the Aboriginal people, ‘Dreaming’
is the Law. The present continuous grammatical form in English, ‘being
in the middle of’, doesn’t have an equivalent in French, but this English
way of translating the term clearly indicates the notion of becoming that
is unique to the Aboriginal people, that of the ‘Dreaming’. We thus posit
the problem of exactly knowing just what is supposed to be in becoming
within this formulation since, a priori, nothing allows us to postulate that
there is a subject ‘in the process of dreaming’. Out of convenience and
utility, we will use the term Dreaming to speak of stories, of time and the
mythic pathways that make up what the Aboriginal people call their Law.7
7
In French, the progressive form of ‘dream’, dreaming, literally ‘rêvant’, is not used
as a noun which is why the author has translated ‘Dreaming’ to Rêve (Dream with
10
Becoming Land
The Dreaming, as Law, is the principle of adaptation par excellence

at both the symbolic and social level. We will see how fluctuating can
be for each Aboriginal man or woman his or her identification with the
mythic heroes defined as his/her ancestors, for whom he or she inherits
the responsibility as spiritual custodian of the specific terrestrial pathways
corresponding to their mythic voyages. We will see that the spiritual
control of the earth and land, to a certain degree, corresponds to a specific
Aboriginal identity and, on the other hand, to a specific political function-
ing where women play a very active role. (Glowczewski 1981a)
So began my PhD dissertation in anthropology, ‘Le Rêve et la Terre –
Rapports au temps et à l’espace des Aborigènes d’Australie’ (The
Dreaming and the Land – Relations to time and space of Aboriginal
Australians) that Félix Guattari had just finished reading when he
called me up one day to invite me to come speak at his apartment
Rue de Condé. On that day, 18 January 1983, after a number of
hours of questions, he asked me to stay in order to continue our dis-
cussion in public since it was time for his weekly seminar (there were
no students, mostly scholars and people working in mental health,
activists, etc. . . .). The seminar was recorded and four years later it
was published in the first issue of Chimères, the journal that Félix
Guattari would create with Gilles Deleuze in 1987. A second seminar
that we did together in 1985 was also recorded, still at his same
apartment on Rue de Condé. The transcription of these two seminars
‘Warlpiri Dreaming Spaces’ constitutes the opening of Part I of this
present book, entitled ‘The Indigenous Australian Experience of the
Rhizome’.
Guattari met twelve Warlpiri men from Lajamanu (the commu-
nity I spoke about in my dissertation) when they were invited by the
organisers of the festival d’Automne [The Autumn Festival] in 1983
to paint a ground painting made on a ton of sand covering an entire
room of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. They were also invited
to dance a ritual dreamed by a Warlpiri woman, Janjiya Nakamarra
(see Figure 4.1), at Peter Brook’s theatre, Théâtre des Bouffes du
Nord (see Figure 4.2). We then attempted to organise – within the
framework of the transcultural foundation that he had initiated with
Jean-Pierre Faye – an encounter with healers coming from what we
then called the Fifth World – to differentiate it from the First World
(Western capitalist countries, including Japan and South Korea), the
a capital). But in the reverse translation here, all ‘Rêves’ are retranslated using the
Aboriginal English term, Dreaming.
11
Second World (the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc), the Third
World (‘undevelopped’ countries from the Southern Hemisphere) or
the Fourth World (designating people suffering from poverty in rich
countries). The Fifth World for Guattari brought together Indigenous
peoples who had been colonised by different states but who resisted
within their affirmation of an existential sovereignty alongside other
groups proclaiming their autonomy in such regions as Corsica, the
Basque Country or Palestine. For Guattari ([1985] 1986), these sorts
of movements were ‘nationalitary’ (nationalitaires) and not ‘nation-
alistic’. We were unable to secure the proper funding to organise the
event that Félix wanted to call the Rainbow Gathering. The colours
of the Rainbow ended up later becoming a flag of recognition used
both by Indigenous peoples along with the Gay Pride and equal
marriage rights’ movements. Rainbow colours became a sign of rec-
ognition for a collective call against homophobia but also against the
homogenisation of the world so as to affirm the multiplicities emerg-
ing throughout the globe within transnational cultural gatherings,
shamanic or other neo-pagan festivals.
My thesis in anthropology was supervised by Maurice Godelier,
a specialist of Papua New Guinea, who analysed the purported uni-
versal domination of women through a Marxist lens. I did not agree
with him, as both my own personal experience and my enlightening
time on the ground in Australia in 1979 convinced me that recognis-
ing feminine singularity does not necessarily induce a domination
of women by men. As I explain in Chapter 2, ‘Warlpiri Dreaming
Spaces’, the women custodians of the rituals – who call themselves
‘businesswomen’, business being the Aboriginal English translation
of their ritual activities – helped me to live my very own feminine
subjectivity from the inside out. Along with the Warlpiri women, I
experienced a troubling and overwhelming experience of a complete
dissolution into a collective body that couldn’t be captured by any
essentialisation of the feminine but rather affirmed a cosmological
singularity of a becoming feminine traversing all forms of life. The
Warlpiri people who during the 1950s had forcefully and unwillingly
been made to adapt to a sedentary lifestyle had just reacquired their
rights to a vast territory (600 km N/S × 300 km E/W) and had begun
to invent new forms for self-managing the old reservation and reoc-
cupation of their sacred ancestral sites. The opportunity to partake
in the community life of these Warlpiri families, who had to learn to
re-nomadise themselves in automobiles, gave me reason to believe
and imagine a future world where Aboriginal peoples would perhaps
12
Becoming Land
be capable of helping us respond to numerous questions regarding

gender as well as the impasses we were experiencing in relation to
consumption caught within destructive forms of development and
living environments of the current social fabric and mentalities.
In the 1970s, some alternative or ‘underground’ media, like the French
magazine Actuel, were promoting a postmodern collusion between
Indigenous tribes and hightech science fiction. Arriving in Lajamanu in
1979, I was struck with an apocalyptic vision: the entrance of the old
Hooker Creek reserve, established on the edge of the Tanami Desert
hundreds of kilometres from the first petrol station, had piles of old cars,
fridges, and other Western waste, spread in the bush as a parody of our
consumption society but also like a spare parts shop for the Warlpiri
people who would pick up what they needed from there to build shanty
camps or repair their cars. I was attracted to this oneiric end of the world
landscape, which would later resonate with the ‘Zone’ of Stalker (1979)
by Tarkovski. The minimalist mental and physical resistance of the ‘Zone’
was a forbidden, ‘dangerous’ place to cross. In a way, during the many
months I spent each time in Lajamanu – as well as in other Aboriginal
places – I also learned how to manoeuvre through forbidden spaces of
knowledge, embodied in the landscape: zones of information and ritual
camps were restricted either to men or women and to different levels/
classes/groups of initiates, camping spots and pathways to be avoided
because of a death, sacred sites that could not be attended or that needed
a ritual protocol of introduction to the spirits. The landscape was full of
spirits crossing time in a perpendicular way but leaving traces and symp-
toms of disease. The language was constantly fragmented with taboo
words to be replaced by whispers and gestures evoking the deceased,
synonyms, or simply left as holes ‘without name’, a punctuation of memo-
rial vacuums, the space also for virtual re-emergence through new dream
revelations after the lifting of the mourning period. (Glowczewski 2014)
Upon returning from my initial fieldwork in Australia, I dreamed of
places of refuge that would allow for drifting into the imaginary of
futurist disaster and survival like the Warlpiri attempted in the desert,
having themselves already experienced colonisation and its violent
impact starting at the beginning of the twentieth century through to
the 1960s. A collective research group that I led in urban anthropol-
ogy introduced me to various clandestine groups, amateurs of a
network of some 300 km of tunnels cut in old Parisian underground
stone quarries whose access was forbidden to the public. With them,
I explored their nocturnal practices of walking through the subter-
ranean world beneath Paris as well as their different motivations
for investing their time in doing so (Glowczewski et al. 1983). Félix
13
agreed to write a preface for our book La cité des Cataphiles (The
city of Cataphiles) which was subtitled ‘Anthropological mission in
the Paris underground’:
What’s the purpose of these vertigenous implosions within the lower

beyond [endeça] of the day and night? To reinitiate the battle between
Eros and Thanatos one more time, both of them exhausted by decades
of psychoanalytic abuse? It’s certainly not into this area of research that
our authors guide us! Their viewpoint of the underbelly of the city is
not some sounding of a death knell. Quite the opposite: the rhizome of
catacomb-intensities they lead us to discover constitutes a mega-machine
of desire, a bearer of incadescant life or, at the very least, the most mad-
dening ‘revivals’, as the suprising and ‘addictive’ character of the book
bears witness to. (Guattari [1983] 1986: 242)
Chapter 3, ‘Guattari and Anthropology: Existential Territories among

Indigenous Australians’ was first published in the collective book The
Guattari Effect (Alliez and Goffey 2011) derived from the conference
hosted by the Department of Philosophy at Middlesex University in
2007. In this chapter, I discuss the various debates around the notion
of a rhizome of intensities proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. For those
peoples who sustain themselves through gathering yams that grow as
underground rhizomes, this term is not a mere poetic metaphor, but
a daily reality, a figure of thought that in turn becomes simultane-
ously a model of social, environmental and mental organisation. This
encounter between the form of a plant, a way of behaving collectively
and thinking, is one among many other ways of interweaving what
Guattari called the three ecologies at the core of his ecosophy: an
ecology of the environmental (the natural and cultural environment,
including any additional machinic overlays), a social ecology (of both
the local and the global) and a mental ecology (of processes of subjec-
tivation concerning the individual as much as the collective).
Many Indigenous Australians define the space-time of their
Dreamings – Yam Dreaming, Kangaroo Dreaming or Rain
Dreaming – as their Law, where the life of human beings is intimately
linked with all forms of living beings be they animals, plants, the rain
or the stars, but also with a multitude of sites that they are connected
to and consider to be sacred. This simultaneous oneiric and geologic
geography made a lasting impression on Félix and would end up
leading him to orient his common work with Deleuze a bit differ-
ently. In his Schizoanalytic Cartographies, Guattari ([1989] 2013)
will develop a way of thinking his concept of existential territories
14
Becoming Land
and the refrain [la ritournelle]8 that is simultaneously more multi-

situational and oneiric. For the Warlpiri and their desert neighbours,
each named thing has its specific Dreaming, its dream as image-force,
a becoming of a model of thought and a way of acting that concerns
human as much as some other living beings, including places in
the land which are also imbued with life. Consequently, the Yam
Dreaming is the Dreaming of a network opened up to an infinite
number of unpredictable lines that etch the earth from above and
below, that crack the earth open when the tubers grow large and the
liana cling onto the trees they encounter that cross their paths. The
Yam Dreaming is also a series of relations between generations and
local groups, the simultaneous singular and common experience of
a spirit that becomes incarnated within certain people at the same
time as it places them in resonance, throughout waking-life and the
space-time of the Dreaming, with an infinite multiverse.
Puurda (Yam) came from the East, from Yawulawulu and he travelled
to Talala. The vines were coming up and the roots were shooting under-
ground, many of them, going towards Lajamanu. Small yams came out.
These yams, the Japanangka, Napanangka, Japangardi and Napangardi9
saw all the Wirntiki Stone Curlew, and they went down in the ground. As
they were going, the ground became soft.
They went to Munju. The food was spreading everywhere. The Yam
people looked back at their country. My Dreaming, my Jukurrpa had
grown everywhere, the Yam from Yawulawulu that belongs to the
Japanangka, Napanangka, Japangardi and Napangardi.
My Jukurrpa also went to Yumurrpa. Not really the yam, but the
yuparli leaves that gave birth to new yams. The root grew underground
and went to Jukakarinya. Yam looked at the other one from far. He
went on. The people from Yawulawulu continued their way, crossing
Talala. Then they stopped for ever. They were tired from trying to go
8
The refrain (ritournelle) first appears in one of Guattari’s clinical summaries titled,
‘Monographie sur R. A.’ which was written in 1956 – when he was only twenty-
six years old – then, ten years later in ‘Réflexions pour des philosophes à propos
de la psychothérapie institutionnelle’ (Cahiers de philosophie de la Sorbonne 1,
1966). These are referenced by Guattari (1972: 18–22, 86–97), as indicated by
Guesdon (2016: 18–19).
9
Classificatory names called ‘skin-names’ by Aboriginal people or ‘subsections’
in anthropology. Warlpiri have eight skin-names, each having a female version
(starting with N) and a male version (starting with J). The eight (× 2) names form
a system of relations that has the mathematical properties of a diedric group that
can be diagrammatised by two interconnected circles (see Figure 1.4) and also a
cube (see Figure 6.1).
15
all over, everywhere. Our fathers Japanangka and Japangardi stopped.

That is why Yumurrpa is not owned by us but by Jupurrurla, Jakamarra,
Napurrurla and Nakamarra. (Nelly Morrison Napanangka)10
Such is one of the mythic narratives of the ancestors of the Yam
Dreaming common to the yams of today and the men and women
who bear the Dreaming’s name and its totemic becoming, i.e., the
obligation to take care of the yams so they may continue to grow. If
the ancient, semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples didn’t farm any-
thing, they sang, danced and made paintings to ensure the reproduc-
tion of the species, that is, by way of these ritual activities (that for
us are also artistic), they re-actualised the memory of the relations
of interdependence that allow for the proper continuation of the
species. For example, one had to transmit, by way of songs, tales, car-
tographic paintings and the dances that perform them, the so-called
sites of the multiplication of the species. For the Yams, it has to do
with a particular sacred cave where the very ancient roots must not be
disturbed at the risk of placing the entire network in danger. For the
Warlpiri and their desert neighbours, it’s with the help of the stars in
the night sky that they know when it’s ok to begin digging into the soil
in order to dig up the yams. The season is indicated when the so-called
‘pointer’ stars of the Southern Cross constellation touch the horizon,
it’s ‘feeding time’ for the yams that are exchanged for beef. The women
are the ones who provide the yams to the men in exchange for the
kangaroos they hunt, and this exchange is more about the exchange
between genders: the men must give the game to their mothers-in-law,
who, following ritual obligation, must in turn give them the yams.
This ritual of exchange, reminding everyone of the alliance between
the sexes, is at the heart of the Fire ceremonies and conflict resolution,
Jardiwanpa, that must specifically be performed at the moment when
the two stars of the Southern Cross shine on the horizon.11
The sung versions of the myths are encrypted or coded into some
sort of minimalist code in order to memorise important and vital
landmarks, as beacons or markers in the terrestrial and celestial
landscape integrated into the songlines that become interconnected
on the continent into a multitude of superimposed networks punctu-
ated by sacred sites.
10
Recorded in Lajamanu, 1984, translated from Warlpiri with B. Nakamarra
Gibson (Glowczewski 2000).
11
See Lajamanu (60’), documentary by B. Glowczewski, 2018: https://vimeo.com/
289440509; see also Laughren et al. (2014).
16
Becoming Land
Miyikampi kampi yarlaangka warlawuru

The Yam Dreaming from Miyikampi takes different roads between Mt
Theo and Yawulawulu.
ngamarna nguluna marimari pijarra ngulu
Root one walks around and small one come along.
warlawurulu Talalapungu wirlimpangulu Talalapungu
Warlawuru the leafy vine go up the tree and that is the mother one (yam)
wirlimpangu big one making young ones in Talala.
mardi mardila jutajutarla
When the yam makes the soil crack because mardi is a big yam and
jutajuta mean they dig it out.
mardinya laparparnka ngamarna lapirpunga
Mardi big mob they get from the root everywhere.
yarla pari pari ngamarna pirlpiwangkanya
Yarla is everywhere outside when they get it and leave it.
papirdaji taja wararujuruju
Papirda is yarla, the sweet potato.12
If the verses of the songs are coded it’s because their performativity
resides elsewhere than within the narrative contents of the verses.
It’s about singing the attachments to the land as engrams that simul-
taneously become inscribed into the earthen soil, body and mind.
Moreover, each child is supposed to be an incarnation of one of the
verses of the song, sowed into the ground by one of the ancestors
of a Dreaming whose name and site of insemination is revealed
in a dream to the father, to the mother or to a relative or a close
friend of the family in the camp. As Betty Jamanawita Nungarrayi
explains:
Jukurrpa (Dreaming) took Ngarlajiyi (Yam) from Yarduralinyi. He took
the name of my father. My father’s spirit went with the Dreaming to
Yamakangu. The yam flower talked to the Yam Dreaming. She said
Ngarlajiyi and the yam grew, the spirit of my father.
Jukurrpa went. He went to a kumanjayi place. The leaves grew. A new
yam was born. The roots spread very far. They took the Dreaming to
Ngarrnka. They went in parallel lines. The yam flower talked.
12
Yarla song cycle by Nampiya Judy Jigili Napangardi and Lajamanu women,
1995, translated from Warlpiri by B. Nakamarra Gibson. Recorded and edited
by B. Glowczewski (2000).
17
In Yalingparunyu a new yam was born. The Dreaming made a yam in

the wet ground. The leaves lay down. They were shining bright green, fed
by the water of the ground. My father’s Dreaming took his name. Yam
spread his roots. New roots, long, very long, travelled to Yinikimpi. All
along they gave tubers which shoot to the top or the bottom.
My father felt the ground, he hit it. The land was hard where the
tubers had grown. The roots spread to Lapurrkurra. Tubers were born.
My father dug the ground. He found many of them. He dug and dug
and followed the roots to Ngarranji. The Dreaming made the roots fall
very close, in Yarunkanyi, the place of Napaljarri, Nungarrayi, Japaljarri
and Jungarryi skins. This is where my father’s name was left. He left
him with other Kurruwalpa spirit-children. My father’s name fell in the
Pankulmanu waterhole. My father’s conception Dreaming continued to
Waputarli, but there the story does not belong to me.
I am from Yarunkanyi. This is where I was conceived. My parents were
collecting seeds they made into a damper and they ate. This is how my
mother caught me inside her. My father found my spirit-child in the seeds
of his country. This spirit was coming from the Ngarrka (Initiated Man)
Dreaming who lies there. My father and his brother were the custodians
of this Dreaming. He organised the dances and the Law ceremonies
for this land. I was born and learnt how to dance, sing and paint my
Dreaming. (Jamanawita Betty Nungarrayi)13
After my fourth long period of fieldwork in Australia in 1984 I
found myself without any permanent lodging in Paris. Félix Guattari
offered me an empty room in his flat in which to stay for a couple
of months, where I began to write down my notes for what would
become Desert Dreamers. The book garnered some success upon
publication in 1989 primarily from the fact that I wrote candidly
about my experiences conducting fieldwork with a very critical
point of view by expressing my doubts and my disappointments
as much as my passions and enthusiasms for the feminine world
that I had discovered there. I state in ‘Guattari and Anthropology’
(Chapter 3) that each morning we would discuss my fieldwork and
what I attempted to write. Félix would take notes on some of the
passages that I would read to him and played around a bit with the
translation of my words from the Warlpiri language. I tried to gain
an understanding of where he positioned himself in relation to a non-
Freudian reading of the myths and dreams that I had just recorded.
He was very excited by the fact that the Warlpiri claimed to travel
13
Translated by B. Nakamarra Gibson in 1995 from original 1984 recording in
Warlpiri by Glowczewski (2000).
18
Becoming Land
within the mythic time-space of the Dreaming and at the same time
bring back from these voyages oneiric revelations directly connected
to what they were living in their daily lives.
Nakakut Barbara Gibson Nakamarra’s testimony above bears
witness to this (Prelude). Her narrative shows the way in which
ancestral women from the Emu and Rain totems – the Warlpiri
say Jukurrpa, Dreamings – revealed two songs to her, whereas the
women of her entourage who she also saw in her dream will take her
to task because she will end up having meetings with the Whites in
order to negotiate the land rights for an area that a mining company
wishes to explore: she could indeed become the beneficiary of roy-
alties that are distributed among the Aboriginal people identified
as traditional owners of a specific region. In her dream, this com-
pensation takes the form of a ‘truck’ since most of the Indigenous
Australians who receive royalty compensation often end up buying
4 × 4s (four-wheel-drive vehicles) in order to have a more expedient
way to journey through their territories.
In addition to the right for some sort of compensation regarding
the minerals mined, the Aboriginal tribes concerned also receive veto
power so as to refuse any mining explorations or operations on their
lands. These rights have been recognised in the Land Rights Act from
1976 applied to the Northern Territory, and allowed for Indigenous
Australians to make land claims on territories where male and female
members of each local group had the functions of spiritual and ritual
custodians by way of their spiritual connections with sacred sites:
sites of their Dreamings. The Warlpiri had won their land claims in
1978, and when I arrived at that time into their territory they had just
begun experimenting with this new freedom to agree or to decline any
new forms of development proposed by the state or private compa-
nies. The debates at that time would include hundreds of people who
would discuss whether or not they should accept mining exploration
for minerals and, if so, what the conditions would be. Many of the
elders were reluctant to accept exploratory mining expeditions that
could potentially disturb the already fragile networks of the water
table in the desert. Others pushed for the economic autonomy from
the state that this mining godsend seemed to offer. Enormous sums of
money were injected into Indigenous organisations by way of mining
companies which for thirty years drilled holes throughout every part
of the continent’s desert landscape. Meetings concerning the mining
of the lands continued to increase throughout the decades to the
point that for some Indigenous members of the community it became
19
almost a full-time job travelling to diverse regions from one meeting

to the next in order to listen to traditional landowners make claims to
monetary compensation as a result of their Dreamings and songlines
that criss-crossed the territories. But with each new permit for mining
exploration, the Australian laws force the Aboriginal people once
again to establish their sacred ancestral ties to specific sections of the
land, through a demonstration of their proprietary totemic regimes
as they have been described by the anthropologists of old and those
anthropologists who are still recruited today either by the mining
company, the state or by the myriad of organisations and lawyers
that represent the various members of different Aboriginal families,
who can either form alliances or create conflicts between themselves
concerning shared interests.
The Aboriginal people in Australia have been able to develop
impressive social and ritual strategies in the face of colonisation.
While they were initially rather inclusive with their relatives and
allies in distributing compensation, so as to prevent any inequalities
with regard to resources and the emergence of dominant groups,
the rights-holders eventually became more and more exclusive and
the resulting conflicts have led to divisions within the community.
During each new meeting, the debates become more and more heated,
all the more so since today the Warlpiri must not only deal with
negotiations regarding oil and gold, but also uranium and fracking.
The immediate response to this, by a number of Indigenous groups
from the Northern Territory and the rest of the Australian continent,
is to come together in solidarity and in opposition to this continu-
ing extraction of fossil fuel energies. The anti-extractivist movement
is gaining in popularity particularly with the younger generation
which – via social media – has witnessed the struggles of other
Indigenous populations around the world who have also experienced
first-hand the significant amount of damage that can be done to the
environment by certain multinational companies and such extraction
processes. Confronted by daily reminders of the mounting evidence
and warnings regarding climate change, this younger generation is
proud to identify as Aboriginal even if today most of them now have
a mixed Indigenous and European-Australian ancestry and no longer
live in the countryside but attend schools in the city. The Aboriginal
Dreamings and the history of traditional practices and land steward-
ship (such as bushfire management through controlled burns at the
right season) have today become a precious resource that allows for
a renewed chance at teaching and maintaining traditions, as well as
20
Becoming Land
for providing important opportunities for geologists, astrophysicists

and other scientists to learn vital information for the future from the
knowledge maintained and passed on through these ancient practices
(Glowczewski and Laurens [2015] 2018). As Noam Chomsky (2016)
also recently noted:
I think there have been quite hopeful developments in the last 10 or 15

years, Chomsky said. ‘Indigenous communities have begun to find a
voice for the first time in countries with large indigenous populations like
Bolivia . . . Ecuador there are plenty of conflicts between the indigenous
people and the governments they initially supported. That’s a tremendous
step forward for the entire world. It’s a kind of incredible irony that all
over the world the leading forces in trying to prevent a race to disaster are
the indigenous communities (. . .) Anyone who’s not living under a rock
knows that we’re facing potential environmental catastrophe and not in
the distant future. All over the world, it’s the indigenous communities
trying to hold us back: first nations in Canada, indigenous people in
Bolivia, aborigines in Australia, tribal people in India. It’s phenomenal all
over the world that those who we call ‘primitive’ are trying to save those
of us who we call ‘enlightened’ from total disaster.
Totem, Taboo and the Women’s Law

Why have the Aboriginal concepts which were translated very early
on in Australia as ‘Dreaming’ been discussed throughout the history
of anthropology under the name of ‘totem’? The term totem is a
word inspired by one of the concepts originating from the Algonquin
Native Americans but which became generalised to define a form
of spirituality common to a variety of peoples the world over in
which humans claim to be connected by both the ‘body and soul’ to
animals and other forms of non-human life. Specialists immediately
multiplied and presented conflicting arguments striving to come to
a unified agreement on the common criteria required to define this
form of spirituality or social organisation that would be lived and
experienced in the same manner by a multiplicity of societies and
cultures that are supposedly ‘totemic’.
Durkheim and Mauss (1901–1902), his nephew, combined a
myriad of complex variations so as to fit better with the theory they
strived to posit as the foundational universal classification system.
The totemic debates regarding the existence (or non-existence)
of a religion among non-monotheistic people would then inspire
Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life ([1913] 2008)
21
whose arguments rest essentially on his interpretation of the Arrernte

(Aranda or Arunta) Central Australian monographs by Spencer and
Gillen (1899). I have shown elsewhere (Glowczewski 2014b) that
because Durkheim was focusing on the ritual of one clan, he missed
in his analysis the importance of men’s and women’s spiritual attach-
ment to the extensive tracks of land as well as the network intercon-
necting the different clans and language groups beyond their local
lands which extended across the continent. During this same time
period, Freud was writing Totem and Taboo where, based on prac-
tices drawn from similar ethnographic observations of Aboriginal
peoples as Durkheim, he projected the supposed universality of the
incest taboo on the dawn of humanity and the early childhood of each
human being. After Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski
dismissed his theory on the basis of his extensive fieldwork with
Trobriand Islanders in the Pacific, Freud sent Geza Roheim to verify
the Oedipus complex in Australia. Roheim, Freud’s disciple and a
talented linguist who worked with desert people in the 1930s, devel-
oped his own interpretation of the primal scene and a complex of the
fusion with the mother. I have shown elsewhere why I do not agree
with Roheim’s interpretations, nor with Freudian ones (Glowczewski
[1991] 2017). Whereas Roheim had a very biased vision of women, I
looked at these issues from the perspective of desert women. Neither
Roheim nor Freud took into consideration elements present in some
ethnographies that would allow them to understand that the major
taboo in Australia was not reducible to the Oedipus complex, but
was of a much more complex nature that I had strived to posit in
my research undertaken in the early 1980s. This of course delighted
Guattari.
The well-known taboo common to all Indigenous Australians
forbids any man from engaging not only with his mother-in-law,
but with any women who are classified as potential mothers-in-law
(who could even be the same age as him). It is not, as Freud claims, a
metaphor for the mother/son incest taboo but, as I have indicated in
my research, a prevention against incest between the father/daughter.
The rule against men having any sort of close relations with women
(even if only at the level of conversation) whose daughter he might
potentially marry has to do with averting the risk that he ends up
marrying his own daughter. But the taboo also has another effect:
it is so shameful to be approached by one’s mother-in-law in public
that when two men get into a fight, all it takes is for a real or poten-
tial mother-in-law of one of the fighters to step forward for him to
22
Becoming Land
flee the scene in shame. I saw this first-hand on several occasions in

1979 and in the early 1980s. Moreover, this taboo grants to any
woman the power to intervene with regard to certain men deemed
to be classified as their potential son-in-law in order to prevent any
spousal abuse or the abuse of other women or young girls. This dis-
positive had been in place for a long time and was still in use during
my fieldwork; it has, however, eventually degraded over time in part
because of the forced sedentarisation of Indigenous Australians and
in part due to a promiscuity drenched in alcohol that has led to a rise
in domestic violence and the disrespect of taboos.
At the time I wrote my first academic article, ‘Affaire de femmes
ou femmes d’affaires. Les Warlpiri du désert central australien’
(Women’s business or business women), I put forth the hypothesis
that certain masculine rituals consisting of making the penis bleed
highlighted the fact that the castration complex in Australia wasn’t
a question of ‘lack’ (in the psychoanalytical sense) on the part of
women but instead indicated a man’s desire to bleed like women. The
reviewer for the Journal de la Société des Océanistes (Glowczewski
1981b), Bernard Juillerat, recommended that I include the essay,
‘Les Blessures Symboliques’ by Bruno Bettleheim (1962) to my bib-
liography, which I did after taking the time to borrow it from the
library and read it. Bettleheim’s work with suffering adolescents in
France who intentionally harmed themselves and made themselves
bleed proposed the hypothesis that they did this in a similar fashion
as some Aboriginal practices whereby men experience the flow of
female menstrual blood that they lack. I felt uneasy asserting a psy-
choanalytical diagnosis on ritual practices such as this. We spoke a
lot about these sorts of issues with Guattari, expecially during the
time period in which I did research for the Prevention Committee
at the Ministry of Health during the outbreak of AIDS in France in
the early 1980s (Glowczewski 1994). From that research I published
a book in French, Adolescence et Sexualité – L’entre-deux (1995),
in which I compared ritual practices and discourses about the rela-
tion between love and death, the different cultural ways in which
adults transform young people into becoming men and women, the
individual, collective and environmental risks in breaking taboos,
and the varying and variable recognition of the status of adult-
hood across the planet. Following that study, it seemed to me that
Aboriginal people, rather than pointing to a man’s ‘lack’ in relation
to a woman’s power of bleeding (or vice versa as is common in the
Freudian approach of penis castration), were instead valuing a form
23
of Dreaming androgyny which is encountered among many of the

totemic heroes and re-enacted through ritual dance where men and
women are separated. Each group enacts in their own way their
man-woman or woman-man becomings where is not just about male
and female bodies but also about other, different totemic bodies:
animal, plant, wind or objects like a digging stick. A Digging Stick,
as a Snake-man or a Snake-woman. Similarly a Digging Stick woman
is not the same as a Digging Stick man. The Kana (Digging Stick)
Dreaming says that these women pierced the penis of a rapist who
was detaching his long penis from himself to send it like a snake to
penetrate them when they were urinating in the bush, as told by a
Warlpiri story-teller in this chapter. When men re-enact this they
become Digging Stick men-women but when women re-enact it they
become women-men Digging Sticks: each gender here experiments
with its transgender Dreaming power in a different way.
In the second part of this book, ‘Totem, Taboo and the Women’s
Law’, I propose three essays that deal with the relation between
totems, taboos and social organisation compared with the topo-
logical modelisation of the hypercube that I developed in my post-
doctoral thesis (1988) that was published in 1991 as Du Rêve à la Loi
chez les Aborigènes (From Dreaming to the Law among Aboriginal
Australians). Two chapters are direct excerpts from this book which
haven’t been translated into English, ‘Doing and Becoming: Warlpiri
Rituals and Myths’ (Chapter 4) and ‘Forbidding and Enjoying:
Warlpiri Taboos’ (Chapter 5). ‘A topological Approach to Australian
Cosmology and Social Organisation’ (Chapter 6) is a synthesis of
my ideas as published in the Australian journal Mankind (1989)
summarising the topological method that I have adopted, in this case
in order to compare the Warlpiri society where I worked with the
available data about other Indigenous Australian groups.
The hypercube served as an inspiration due to the way that
the cube derivation summarises the eight algebraic subsections or
skin-names – the non-hierarchised classification system interpreted
by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his book, The Elementary Structures of
Kinship ([1947] 1970), but which is also used by a number of other
mathematicians and anthropologists. My use of the hypercube at
the level of kinship structures helped me to visually show how the
Aboriginal desert people’s system of exchange cannot be reduced
or summarised as a restrained exchange (as Lévi-Strauss maintains),
the so-called ‘Dravidian’ model encountered in other regions of the
world such as in India or in the Americas where men exchange their
24
Becoming Land
sisters as wives. Instead, I focused specifically on the actions of the

Warlpiri who claim that they do not exchange their sisters but that
two men exchange their nieces as wives: in order for this to happen,
logic requires that not simply must two exogamous groups be impli-
cated but at the very mininum four. Starting from here, the exchange
is not restrained and reciprocal (A gives to B who in turns gives
to A) but ‘generalised’ and ‘asymetrical’, as can be said with regard
to kinship studies which I prefer to call unilateral: A gives to B who
gives to C who gives to D who gives to A in order for a new cycle
that continues following the same order but that can’t start again in
the reverse order. To sum it up: a minimal equation in order to ally
oneself with the multiple.
A hypercube or cube with eight different perspectives was also
very useful in that it presents itself as a topological figure where
there is no one single point or core perspective but rather, at the
very least, eight perspectives with a multitude of others above or
below according to the space of reference or depending on how we
situate ourselves. In this way, the hypercube, as a pair of eyeglasses,
allowed me to see space more clearly as a multiplicity and thus posit
an anthropological proposition that also called into question Lévi-
Strauss’s position that he takes up in his book on Totemism ([1962]
1963) where he defines the totemic systems of Australia as a pure
form of classificatory nominalism. It’s certainly true that naming
plays an essential role in Indigenous Australian cosmologies, but as
I emphasised in the title of the first part of Du Rêve à la Loi (1991),
‘Naming and Situating’ (Nommer et localiser), the stakes of naming
are derived from a toponymical dynamics. In other words, the names
set about in movement (on voyages and according to the songlines)
but they are also anchored in places and linguistic territories. As
such, the languages and visions of things change according to the
site and the line of the Dreaming according to which we look at the
rest of the network. In The Savage Mind ([1962] 1966), Lévi-Strauss
actually pays homage to Aboriginal sacred objects by recognising
that their totemic status is also territorial (something I discuss at
length in Chapter 4 of this book). In The Jealous Potter ([1985]
1988), Lévi-Strauss uses the topological figure of the Klein Bottle in
order to speak about Amerindian myths. In this light, Lévi-Strauss
was quite pleased to see that I also used topological figures to place
into resonnance the structures of myths, rites, kinship and Aboriginal
taboos. But in contrast to what a number of my colleagues in France
or elsewhere take as an understanding of my work, my method was
25
neither structuralist in the Lévi-Straussian sense of the term, nor

Lacanian.
I was seeking out paradoxical structures which don’t posit them-
selves against opposites, but rather articulate them in complex
ways, such as can be found in Stéphane Lupasco’s work on the non
Aristotelian logic he called ‘du contradictoire’14 – a dynamic non-
exclusive logic valuing heterogeneity and complexity that Dominique
Temple, who taught at Paris 7, applied to the Amerindians and which
Jean-François Matteudi and myself also applied to the cataphiles’
practices of the Parisian underground (Glowczewski et al. [1983]
2008). I attempted to deploy an anthropology that was dynamic
and not situated outside of history nor even outside the historical
continuity of the human. To be perfectly honest, at the time, I was
more inspired by the Aboriginal peoples themselves and a number of
anthropologists accused me of ‘going native’. I think this criticism of
my work was based on unsound reasoning that didn’t understand to
what extent we still needed to decolonise our Western ways of think-
ing or how our sciences themselves had become too Westernised due
to a certain privileging of a history of science, and even sometimes
sexually biased in an unconscious manner. I worked from the model
of the hypercube by considering it as an Aboriginal ‘Dreaming’, that
is, as an image-force that reorganised my real: I tested it in order to
organise the data I gathered in Australia and in comparison with all
the other data I could find on the Indigenous peoples of Australia.
I was also inspired by science fiction, such as the short story that
told the tale of the construction of a hypercube house in which we
never knew what outside we would head out into nor through what
doorway we would return (Heinlein 1941).
The most important part of my research method at that time was
to insist on the fact that, according to the Aboriginal peoples I lived
with, men and women were said not to do or see things in the same
way and that it was this difference, as with any of the differences
among the local languages or customs, that was for them ‘same but
different’. In other words, they were able to think of heterogeneity
14
Stephane Lupasco (1900–1988) was a Romanian philosopher who lived and
worked in France: In Trois matières ([1960] 2003), he used ‘actual’ and ‘poten-
tial’ categories as a process of resolving contradictory elements at a higher level
of reality or complexity. The three matters referred to in the title are defined as
physical with a logic of homogeneity, biological with a logic of heterogeneity and
psychic with a logic of the contradictory and the notion of tiers-inclus.
26
Becoming Land
as simultaneously a recognition of irreducible singularities and the

condition for a commons that in no way homogenised the whole:
this was how the Indigenous Australians had achieved this ingenious
way of practising exchange, throughout millenia, from one end of
the continent to the other, without for all that becoming a lone
people, but rather providing a way for the flourishing of multiple
languages,ways of living and unique ways for explaining their world.
When I defended my post-doctoral thesis in 1988, Guattari criti-
cised my topological approach, which he found several reasons to be
suspicious of: on the one hand, its seeming rapport with structuralism
which he and Deleuze had criticised, and, on the other hand, what
appeared to be my use of topology in the same way as Lacan and
certain other Lacanians who made use of topological figures such
as the Moebius strip, the torus, or knots, to think the unconcious.
Three years later, with the publication of my book (Glowczewski
1991), and after having made Deleuze read it, Guattari changed his
mind. Having just gotten over a long depression, he now saw the
world in a new light. Schizoanalytic Cartographies ([1989] 2013)
and The Three Ecologies ([1989] 2008), as well as a variety of
other articles on Guattarian ecosophy, had been published in the
interim. But it was after his death in 1992 that Stéphane Nadeau
would edit these texts together into one single volume, the 586-page,
Qu’est-ce que l’écosophie? (2013) which still remains unpublished
in an English translation:
I have baptized one such concatenation of environmental, scientific, eco-
nomic, urban and social and mental ecologies: ecosophy. Not in order to
incorporate all of these heterogeneous ecological approaches in the same
totalizing or totalitarian ideology, but, to indicate, on the contrary, the
prospect of an ethico-political choice of diversity, creative dissensus, of
responsibility concerning difference and alterity. Each segment of life,
while continuing to be inserted into the transindividual phylums which
exceed it, is fundamentally understood in its uniqueness. Birth, death,
desire, love, the relationship to time, to bodies, to both animate and
inanimate forms, require a fresh and attentive re-evaluation that is unsul-
lied and receptive. It is incumbent upon us to reproduce continuously this
subjectivity that the psychoanalyst and ethologist of childhood, Daniel
Stern [1985], calls the ‘emergent self.’ Recapturing childhood glances and
poetry instead, and in the place of, the hard and blind perspective on the
meaning of life according to the expert and technocrat [. . .] We [must]
shake free from a false nomadism that in reality leaves us back to where
we started from, in the emptiness of a bloodless modernity, in order to
access lines of flight where machinic, communicational, and aesthetic
27
deterritorializations engage us [. . .] creating the conditions of emergence,

on the occasion of a reappropriation of the forces of our world, of an
existential nomadism that is as intense as the pre-Columbian American
Indians or Australian Aboriginals! (Guattari [1993] 2015: 99)15
The Aboriginal Practice of Transversality and Dissensus

In 1985, Claire Parnet (who would later interview Gilles Deleuze
in a rare, long-form interview/documentary film about the philoso-
pher, L’Abécédaire16) created L’Autre Journal with Michel Butel,
Antoine Dulaure and Nadia Tazi. It was a magazine on recycled
paper teeming with enchanted inherited worlds as well as those in
the midst of invention. I ended up publishing several articles in the
journal including an interview in Polish with the science fiction writer
and author of Solaris, Stanislaw Lem:
The theory of evolution that we teach in schools is still too impoverished:
we speak of chance mutations due to natural selection, this not enough.
Prigogine creates the foundations for a theory that has a place for both
order and chaos. (Lem 1984)
Guattari was excited by the propositions published in Order Out of
Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature ([1979] 1984), a book by
Ilya Prigogine co-written with Isabelle Stengers who often participated
in Guattari’s seminars at Rue de Condé. During that time, she gave
me her copy of Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition ([1968] 1995),
brimming with higlighted passages and her notes in the margins. I
digested the work very slowly. It was only later on that I understood
15
In Guattari’s compilation edited in French by Nadaud (2013: 31–4), two differ-
ent notes indicate that le Nouvel Observateur published a short version of the
‘subjective city’ on 14 November 1981 without this paragraph and others like
this one (p. 55): ‘The wild nomadism of contemporary deterritorialisation calls
for a ‘transversalist’ apprehension of the subjectivity in the midst of emergence,
a manner of grasping striving to articulate points of singularity (for example,
a particular configuration of the environment or landscape), specific existential
dimensions (for example, the way a space is viewed by children or those who
physically handicapped or who are dealing with mental illness), functional virtual
transformations (for example pedagogical innovations), all while affirming a
style and an inspiration that help to recognise, at a first glance, the individual or
collective signature of a creator.’
16
1988–1989; with English sub-titles, Gilles Deleuze from A to Z, Pierre André-
Boutang, Claire Parnet, Gilles Deleuze, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) (Deleuze et al.
2011).
28
Becoming Land
to what extent how much of what I wrote could be derived from the
articulation of both these notions.
After giving birth to my first daughter, Milari, in Australia, I
returned with her to Paris so we could be with my mother in her
final weeks as she was dying of cancer. During this same time period,
Guattari gave me a copy of his last book, Chaosmosis ([1992] 1995).
He would die four months later. I continued to live in Broome on
the west coast of Australia until 1998 when I finally moved back to
Paris with my family which had grown to include another daughter,
Nidala, and their father, a film-maker and musician dedicated to
the promotion of his Aboriginal culture, Wayne Jowandi Barker
(2011, 2016). Those years in the Kimberley led me to discover a
new Aboriginal universe that I examine in Part III of this present
work, ‘The Aboriginal Practice of Transversality and Dissensus’, two
concepts that were at the heart of Guattari’s input during his col-
laborations with Deleuze.
‘In Australia, it’s ‘Aboriginal’ with a Capital ‘A’: Aboriginality,
Politics and Identity’ (Chapter 7) was published in a collective book
entitled The Changing South Pacific (Douaire-Marsaudon and
Tcherkezoff [1997] 2005). It discusses the issue of pan-Aboriginality
and strategic essentialism in tribal territorial identification. Indeed
Aboriginal people had hundreds of names to designate themselves
in different regions of Australia. Some names were used to designate
neighbours in a different way than the name used by members of this
neighbouring group to refer to themselves. Among many Indigenous
peoples in the world, the word used to identify as a group means
‘human’, but it is not systematic. Warlpiri people for instance iden-
tify as the Warlpiri tribe with language variations such as Warnayaka
in the north-east, the majority of the people living in Lajamanu, and
Ngalia in the South where people mostly live in Yuendumu which
was the first Warlpiri reserve that was created in the 1940s. It became
so overcrowded in the 1950s that a group of families were forcibly
deported to a new settlement called Hooker Creek, which became
Lajamanu. All the Warlpiri use the word Yapa (the Warlpiri term
for ‘human’) to identify themselves with other language groups with
whom they practise exchanges across a network that extends for
thousand of kilometres to the west on the coast of the Indian Ocean
and hundreds of kilometres to the north and south. Other Aboriginal
people outside of this network used to be called yapakarri ‘other
(than) human’, but today they are recognised as Yapa. Similarly, any
Indigenous people or people of colour from other countries can be
29
called Yapa but only if they are seen as sharing a similar situation
of colonial history or discrimination. This social identification can
also be extended beyond colour: for instance in a film about a US
basketball team where the hero was Italian and who, in the film,
endured a number of hardships as a migrant, was identified by all the
Warlpiri audience with a lot of sympathy as Yapa. Similarly a White
person is said to be ‘like’ a Yapa when she shares experiences with
Yapa that are seen as specific to them, like rituals, camping or sharing
food and other things.
The word ‘Europeans’ was commonly used in Australia by non
Aboriginal people to identify themselves even if they were descend-
ants of the first generation of settlers. They are called Kardiya by
the Warlpiri and many other desert groups. Similarly in the North
of Australia, among the Yolngu people who also have traditional
exchanges with the Warlpiri, the Europeans were called Balanda, a
Kriol pronunciation of ‘Hollanders’, who were the colonisers of the
Macassar islands. Long before the British colonisation, Macassan
fishermen used to sail to the northern coast of Australia to collect
trepang and they developed exchange relations with the Aboriginal
peoples of the North until the beginning of the twentieth century
when the Australian government forbid this trade.17 Throughout the
period of colonisation, hundreds of different Aboriginal language
groups had already established ancient networks of ritual exchange
across the continent. But it was only in the 1960s that they decided
to unite in their struggles for their common recognition.
In 1972, four activists set up a camp which they called the
Aboriginal Tent Embassy in front of the Canberra Parliament, a
political performance affirming the position of exclusion of the First
Nations of Australia treated as foreigners in their own country. The
Land Rights Movement then decided to adopt a common flag for the
hundreds of different language groups, and this has become a sign
of self-determination and Indigenous sovereignty all over Australia
in protests as well as at official events. When the famous track and
field star, sprinter Cathy Freeman, first raised the Aboriginal flag in
celebration of her victory during the 1994 Commonwealth Games,
she caused a scandal. However, during the 2000 Olympic Games in
Sydney, upon winning the gold medal in the 400 metres, Freeman’s
decision to take her celebratory lap carrying both the Aboriginal
17
See Glowczewski (2004) and film by Wayne Barker and B. Glowczewski, Spirit of
Anchor (2002), CNRS Images: http://videotheque.cnrs.fr/doc=980?langue=EN
30
Becoming Land
flag and the Australian flag had by that time become recognised and
accepted as a standard practice at sporting events and elsewhere. The
word Aboriginality became the signifier of a common identity to help
create strategies of pressure for the recognition of Aboriginal peoples
as prior occupants of the continent. Chapter 6 discusses two under-
standings of identity. The chapter begins by exploring an identity of
resistance focused primarily around the revision of contact history.
The valorisation of a national aboriginal identity – symbolised by a
flag, land rights and the denunciation of poor living conditions – is
analysed in terms of exclusion and exploitation. The chapter then
focuses on an identity of continuity, based on language, religious
beliefs and practices. An Aboriginal conception of a pre-contact
worldview and lifestyle is shown to be essential in the struggle to
affirm the recognition of traditional rights to the land.
Since the beginning of the colonisation of the continent in 1788,
Aboriginal peoples have attempted to defend their lands by oppos-
ing what the colonial law called Terra nullius: a land supposedly
‘without inhabitants’. And yet, the inhabitants had lived in Australia
for at least the past 60,000 years. The struggle for land rights led
to the Northern Territory (NT) Land Rights Act in 1976 which
allowed the Aboriginal people of this region – like the Warlpiri – to
reclaim their ancestral rights established by way of the distribution
of ritual responsibilities along the totemic paths that connect the
sites created by their Dreaming ancestors. It was only in 1992, after
twelve years of judiciary process against the state for Eddie Mabo,
a Torres Strait Islander, that the concept of Terra nullius was invali-
dated at the federal level for the entire continent. Today, alongside
some land claims which have been won by way of restitution to local
groups for the right to collectively use their ancestral lands, several
hundred claims are still at different levels in the judiciary process
of the tribunal set up to prove what the Mabo Native Title Law
(1993) means by ‘native title’: the recognition of a native principle of
pre-colonial title-holders that must be demonstrated by proving ‘the
continuity of the occupation of the lands and traditional practices’.
This clause is obviously biased by way of a governmental system
itself that favours the groups that have survived massacres by staying
on the reserves built on their land where they could continue some
land usage. The continuity of traditional practice is more difficult
to prove for other groups who have been born elsewhere due to the
fact that their parents or ancestors had been deported or placed into
a position of having to flee. Since the 1990s, the native title process
31
has provoked terrible conflicts that have torn families apart, but this
process has also pushed many Aboriginal people to explore their past
and revive some aspects of their culture.
The full extent of the ethnocide, which was a veritable genocide,
still remains to be properly calculated due to the vast numbers of
victims, by way of illnesses contracted through infected clothes, the
arsenic injected into their watering holes to poison them, and the
large number of massacres, some of which date back to the 1930s,
and whose hidden mass graves we still continue to uncover. Forced
into a sedentary lifestyle by missionaries, the Indigenous Australians
were converted by all the Christian churches – Catholic, Anglican,
Baptist or Evangelical – that continue to compete for them, after
having prohibited the teaching of Islam to the Aboriginal children
of mixed descent whose fathers were Muslims, either camel drivers
brought from Pakistan in the 1920s to help with the exloration of
the continent, or the pearl divers indentured in their thousands from
Malaysia, or other islands, such as Timor, to develop the world’s
biggest pearling extraction in Broome. In the early days Aboriginal
people on the west coast were ‘blackbirded’ and forced to dive for
pearls, but many refused despite risking a paddle to the head if they
did not succeed in collecting pearls.
The Indigenous Australians also had to suffer through what
became known as a politics of ‘whitening’. Starting from the genetic
principle that the black colour of skin seemed to disappear within
several generations of Aboriginal peoples mixing with Whites, Arabs
or the Asian populations, the government had the fantasy – which
was also shared in Europe and North America – that it could control
Aboriginal reproduction in order to favour the White race as supe-
rior to others. Thus, the government decided to segregate the most
light-skinned people so as to make sure that their children would be
even more ‘whitened’, first in terms of their psychological mindset
(esprit), then by way of their genetic descendence. The government
thus created a ‘protectorate’ whose funciton was to send in its special
police (including priests) in order to gather up all the ‘light-skinned’
children and take them away from their families. Between 1905 and
the 1970s, one child out of five – from young babies to adolescents –
was kidnapped under the pretext that their biological familes were
too ‘tribal’ and ‘savage’ and couldn’t raise them properly. Even
though the children – resulting either from rapes or genuine love
affairs with the early European pioneers – lived with their Aboriginal
or non-Aboriginal families, it was actually illegal for both to raise
32
Becoming Land
their mixed children even if they had the necessary material means
to do so. There are hundreds of poignant letters written to the pro-
tectorates of different Australian states which bear witness to this.
Other Aboriginal children were also taken away if their parents were
killed or jailed due to resistance.
The ‘Protectors’ of the state refused to give the children back to
their parents since their mission was to ‘civilise’ them (in spite of
themselves), within boarding schools that functioned like orphanages,
where the young children – as with the schoolchildren in the French
colonies or Brittany – were punished for speaking their birth language
or that of their lost family. The youngest children and babies were told
that their parents had abandoned them and the older ones were told
that they should never visit their ‘tribes’ under penalty of prison time
or lack of access to the right to work. A sucessful ‘whitening’ led to
educating the children to serve Whites as maids or farmhands, and
then marry other young, light-skinned individuals so as to eventually,
over time, erase all trace of black skin. In these institutions, as well as
others throughout the world, a great number of both girls and boys
were raped, and often mistreated again and again by the families of
their employers. Some of the children ended up being adopted and
properly loved and cared for, but as the recent documentary film,
Servant and Slave, directed by Hettie Perkins (daughter of the famous
boxer and activist, Charlie Perkins), shows through interivews with
five Aboriginal women, the status of servant or maid often masked a
form of slavery. These children who were forcefully taken away from
their Aboriginal families have been called ‘The Stolen Generations’ – a
name given to them by the Royal Commission that carried out its own
investigation in the 1990s concerning the historical situation, and
produced, as a result of the hundreds of interviews with the victims
or their families, what it called the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report
which recommended a variety of programmes. Since then, a number
of initiatives for collective care have attempted to palliate past and
present traumas, notably those traumas that are passed down through
several generations, and the current discriminations that continue
to provoke a variety of violent reactions, the improper treatment of
young people, and even suicide. Work performed by stolen children,
adolescents as well as adults, often was not paid, as was also the case
with non-mixed Aboriginal peoples.18 The servants and sheep herders
18
Between 1963 and 1982, the French state established a similar method of taking
very young children away from poor families on the French island of Reunion
33
only received flour, tea or tobacco, along with a small ration of meat,
until they ended up revolting in the different regions of Australia by
movements that ended up unsettling the government in place.
‘Culture Cult: Ritual Circulation of Inalienable Knowledge and
Appropriation of Cultural Knowledge (Central and NW Australia)’
(Chapter 8) was published in the collective book People and Things.
Social Mediations in Oceania (Jeudy-Ballini and Juillerat 2002). It
discusses the international context of the contemporary claims to
cultural property, and the concept of inalienability which, in Central
and North Western Australia, surrounds the ritual circulation of
sacred objects and the ceremonial cycles of which they are a part. The
expression ‘culture cult’ in the title refers to an appropriation of the
word ‘culture’ by Aboriginal people from the north and the desert that
was not initially used when I first began my fieldwork in Australia.
It is as if the popularity of the Western concept in governmental
policies and laws relating to land had almost sacralised into ‘culture’
what before was only referred to by different practices, be they ritual
or not. Inalienibility has been conceptualised by the anthropologist
Annette Weiner who extended her fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands
to other Oceanic societies. In Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox
of Keeping-While-Giving (1992), she also discusses some Aboriginal
cases from Australia, especially my analysis of Warlpiri data. I must
say that she was an inspiration to me when in 1980 she came to talk
about her theory in a seminar of Maurice Godelier at the School of
Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris). Her talk inspired me to extend her
notion of inalienable objects produced by women – woven mats in the
Trobriand islands – to hairstrings made of women’s hair cut during
death rituals in Central Australia; one of the chapters of the 1981
thesis that Guattari was struck by. I was advised at that time not
to publish it as a book but to translate the specific chapter from my
thesis as a paper for the US journal Ethnology (Glowczewski 1983a).
Inalienability is also the key to understanding the circulation of
rituals, ceremonial objects and other knowledge from tribe to tribe
(Indian Ocean) in order to send them to be raised by and work for farmers in the
then dying region of central France, the Creuse. Many were mistreated and never
returned to their island. The survivors have started a similar movement as the
Aboriginal people to ask for reparations. In French Guiana, Wayana and Teko
from the Amazonia have been asking for many years to have bilingual secondary
schools in their own villages instead of having to send their children to town
where, cut off from the practice of their own people’s cultural teachings, they face
mistreatment and suicide.
34
Becoming Land
across the whole continent. My aim in referencing the Kimberley

example is to demonstrate how the circulation of ceremonial objects
after colonisation (and continuing up into the 1990s) through
the transmission of initiation-related ceremonial cycles was a real
machine for producing culture(s), first by regenerating local spe-
cificities and second by asserting a common procedure that, beyond
language differences, enabled exchange to take place over thousands
of kilometres. Each local group’s identity is strengthened by this
ritual nomadism, which is enriched by new religious forms wherein
local variants of what Aboriginal people call their respective Laws
nurture those of their neighbours. This is true of men’s rituals as
well as women’s rituals, for both types of rituals help create these
exchanges that reinforce the bond between each group and its sacred
places, and the inalienable possession of its sacred objects. Similar
identity-building can also be seen in the interregional gatherings for
traditional mixed dancing, commonly called ‘corroborees’. In fact,
since the 1980s and up to the present we have been able to detect a
similar logic of transmission which has expanded into cultural inter-
tribal regional festivals such as those created by the Kimberley Law
and Culture Council that regularly bring people from over thirty-
three communities together to dance, sing and share their ideas and
common strategies concerning all areas of life, be it culture, health,
education, justice, economy and the environment.
In Chapter 8 I also examine the elaboration of a project for a
cultural centre in the 1990s involving the representatives of a dozen
Aboriginal languages and organisations based in the coastal town of
Broome, because of a regional diaspora from the desert, the North
and the South. This initiative reflected an attempt to control the rep-
resentation given for these cultures and to reappropriate their objects
and knowledge. To date, as of June 2019, the cultural centre has
still not been built, but many other positive things have occurred
in Broome, such as the winning of the Yawuru Native Title and the
establishment of a big Yawuru language centre that has helped to
revive the language. But there are also current conflicts around the
issue of the status of Djugun people, who were recognised as a
separate tribe in the 1930s but were incorporated in the Yawuru
Native Title.19 Today, Djugun descendants claim their singularity
and exclusive relation to the land in order to oppose fracking and
19
Pat Mamanyjun Torres speech during the UN special rapporteur visit, March
2017, film clip by B. Glowczewski: https://vimeo.com/222221650
35
other gas development in the region. Similarly, other groups which

spread across the whole of the Kimberley and further to the North
and the South use their ancient tribal affiliation and responsibilities
to the land for the same kind of struggle against multinational com-
panies that try to bribe them with a lot of money. Of course, there
are always some families who accept the money and sign but the
movement of resistance to fossil energies is strong.
‘Lines and Criss-Crossings: Hyperlinks in Australian Indigenous
Narratives’ (Chapter 9) was published with a DVD in the Media
International Australia journal dedicated in August 2005 to ‘Digital
Anthropology’. The chapter deals with the issue of ethics, whereby
pleasure (and desire) does not imply a religious or moral order but
a constant re-evaluation of how each image or representation of
any contemporary culture (Indigenous, musical, professional, digital,
etc.) impacts on social justice, equity, tolerance and freedom. The
chapter narrates two forms of anthropological restitution developed
with Aboriginal peoples for a mixed audience. The first project was
the CD-ROM, Dream Trackers: Yapa Art and Knowledge of the
Australian Desert, which I developed with fifty Warlpiri artists and
ritual custodians from Lajamanu in the Northern Territory and
which was awarded by the 1997 Moebius Awards and eventually
published by UNESCO in 2000. The second project was an interac-
tive DVD (Quest in Aboriginal Land) based on films by Indigenous
film-maker Wayne Jowandi Barker, documenting four regions of
Australia (Arnhem Land, Central and Western Deserts, Kimberley,
and the Grampians in Victoria). Both projects aimed to explore and
enhance the cultural foundations of the reticular way in which many
Indigenous people in Australia map their knowledge and experience
of the world in a geographical virtual web of narratives, images and
performances. The relevance of games for anthropological insights
is also discussed in this chapter. Non-linear or reticular thinking
mostly stresses the fact that there is no centrality to the whole rather
there is a multipolar view from each recomposed network within
each singularity – be it a person, a place (or a Dreaming in the case
of Aboriginal cultures) – allowing for the emergence of meanings and
performances, encounters, creations as well as new original autono-
mous flows.
The wide array of my multimedia experiments, from the middle of
the 1990s to the explosion of the Internet and beyond, have directly
transformed my way of writing, making it more reticular and leading
me to develop – during my time teaching at Broome (University
36
Becoming Land
of Notre Dame, 1995–2000) and then in Paris (Advanced School

of Social Sciences, EHESS, 2000–2004)— what I have called an
‘Anthropology of Networks’ or ‘reticular thinking’. As explained
in the chapter, this method has allowed me to value the way in
which Aboriginal peoples have already been experts in ‘hyperlinks’
projected into the space and time of their environments and their
dream worlds – well before the emergence of these various Internet
technologies. I have written extensively about the fact that Aboriginal
perception of the Dreaming is not that of a golden age dreamtime but
a multifolded dynamic memory that I defined a virtual space-time. I
proposed then a conception of time which is neither linear (like the
arrow of calendar historical time) nor circular (like the notion of
cyclical eternal return).
The fact that computers and the Internet have familiarised us with
network connections and the rapid access to ideas and knowledge in
a non-linear mode has made it easier to understand the complexity
of Aboriginal systems of knowledge that project memory, stories
and rituals into entangled pathways activated to become both in
geography and the embodiment of living things, as well as mythical
and oneirical narratives and performances. The experience anyone
can make in his/her dreams of going beyond boundaries of space
and time gives an insight into the relativity and synchronicity of
Aboriginal cosmological space-time. Aboriginal artists who at an
already advanced age began in the 1970s and 1980s to paint on
canvas with acrylics went through the traumatic rupture of their
nomadic life and various types of violence, dispossession and pres-
sures imposed by the state. But they responded to this ecosophical
disaster with an extreme creativity anchored on their reticular per-
ception of land.20 I think that the originality of what they produced
then as well as the success their paintings – and those of the younger
generation – encountered among the audience of contemporary art is
due to a paradigmatic shift corresponding to the global transversality
of technology and economy affecting all aspects of our world includ-
ing affective and intellectual perception (Glowczewski 2015). From
survivors of the Stone Age they have become guardians of a New Age
where more and more people aspire to experience, beyond universal
rationality, the multiplicity of different parallel logics. Space-time
20
See Le Roux (2016) on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artistic use of ghost
nets found in the ocean to fight against this waste that kills fish, dolpins and
turtles.
37
relativity and current use of the notions of ‘pluriverse’ or ‘multi-

verse’ by astrophysicists seem to resonate with the experience of
shamans from different cultures, and complex cosmologics like the
Warlpiri concept of Jukurrpa.
To overcome the impasse of the alleged irrationality of the practices

and beliefs of traditional people, the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss has
apprehended them as symbolic manifestations of a savage mind hiding
structural logics. The reaction to structuralism was two-fold: on one
side a call for history, on the other a call to emotion. Today the tension
seems to oppose a certain relativism claiming the pluralism of cultural
dynamics, and a socio-biology aiming at reducing the symbolic language
to a material determination. Philippe Descola has inaugurated the chair
of anthropology of nature at the Collège de France by proposing to
overcome this opposition with ‘relative universalism’. Personally, in every
situation I strive to track and locate the singular and the ‘affect’ at work,
while also tirelessly pursuing a comparative interrogation of societies. I
look for ‘invariants’, common but dynamic principles, where the spirit
carries the body as much as the body carries the esprit. I believe it is
because we have acquired the universal ‘habit’ of circulating on the Web
of the Internet that we can better understand today the very ancient and
singular construction of reticular thinking among Aboriginal people. If
biodiversity reveals to us everyday the striking capacities of the multipli-
cation of a common language, the DNA, similarly, cultural diversity is
a source of access to a common knowledge which articulates the funda-
ments of life.
History has shown time and time again that systems of knowledge can
change their meanings according to their applications. But they can also
disappear for lack of transmission. In a long-term time perspective, the
content of what transmits itself is partly not under (our) control, but the
responsibility falls on all of humanity to prevent places and modes of
transmission which were maintained for so long to be swept away by
the illusion of modernity of the Western World which believes to have
the mission of supplanting everything. Globalisation is understood as a
levelling of consumption practices and discourses. Now, parallel to this
process of standardisation, we are also bearing witness to a differentiation
of the local that flourishes everywhere: in creole tongues, school yards,
neighbourhood associations or forums online. From deep in the urban
landscape to the most remote places of the outback, calls for identity,
symbolic territoriality and spirituality can be heard loudly expressing
themselves. Television and primarily the Internet have led to an inflation
of discourses and practices in search of a territorial, historical, cultural
or religious rooting. With this flow of images and speeches, humans are
increasingly confronted with a paradox: the more the world globalises
38
Becoming Land
itself, with its markets and means of which seem to bring us together and
make us similar, the more differences emerge and the need for a local
specificity affirms itself in many different ways. It is not by isolating and
forbidding exchange(s) that one preserves differences, it is on the contrary
by instituting modes of circulation of peoples and ideas. Even though very
few anthropologists have established a link between linguistic diversity
and the extent of networks of solidarity and of symbolic equivalences
that exist between different Aboriginal groups, I am convinced that their
current strength stands in this equation. (Glowczewski 2004)
This text is extracted from the introduction to my French book Rêves

en colère, literally ‘Dreams in anger’, not yet translated in English. I
wrote it as an experimental form of rhizome connecting fifteen lines
of Aboriginal voices from four regions of Australia. It is constructed
as a series of sixteen lessons (in history, totemism, psychoanalysis,
ecology, etc.) intermingling observations and conversations with
Aboriginal men and women from different parts of North Western
and Central Australia to show both their local singularities and the
commonalities identified by Indigenous people themselves as con-
necting them across the continent. I argue that reticular or network
thinking is a very ancient Indigenous practice – enhancing the way
memory and dreams function for all humans – but it gained a strik-
ing actuality at the turn of the twenty-first century thanks to the
fact that our so-called scientific perception of cognition, Euclidian
space and linear time had changed through the use of new tech-
nologies. I must admit that I would be less enthusiastic nowadays
when the Internet and its algorithms demonstrate everyday their
ability to consume all aspects of our life. Nevertheless, I think that
there is an ancient art of connection that Aboriginal people have
nurtured which resonates with the vision that Deleuze and Guattari
were promoting even though some of their readers misunderstood
the dangerous impact of some of the logic they described so well.
Horizontal reticularity is not just ‘good’ in itself, as opposed to
tree-like vertical bad power: they are poles in tension that need to be
analysed and confronted in an ecosophical manner, that takes into
account the milieu as around and across our subjectivities. ‘Prendre
les choses par le milieu’ . . . ‘To understand things from the middle
or the milieu’. The milieu invites us to turn things inside out, to be
affected and traversed by the land, the city, people and things. It is
not about being lost in nature, as Guattari explains in a text entitled
‘The Environment and Humans, Emerging and Returning Values or
the Ethics at Stake in Ecology’:
39
Social and mental ecology, which rightfully function as complements to

scientific and political ecology, should therefore not be founded upon
some sort of feeling of a timeless fusion with nature, but upon the rec-
ognition and assumption of finitude, of the individual life as much as
collective life, the life of various species as much as that of the planets and
the Sun [. . .] so in order to confront the gigantic stakes of our current era,
it is vitally important to radically re-orient its end goals, so as to move
on from an backward-looking ecology focused on the defense of already
acquired [acquis] knowledge toward an ecology that is completely mobi-
lized toward creation. (Guattari [1989–1990] 2013: 523)
This feeling of existential finitude is also what Guattari became accus-
tomed to calling ‘existential territories’, defined not from inside as
eternity but on the contrary according to external determinations,
which he defined as articulated together: a constellation of values or
incorporeal universes, a dimension of flows (fluxes), and a machinic
phylum or alterity that works as an ontological (autopoïetic) self-
affirmation. For Guattari, this ecosophical object was like a meta-
model to take into account all kinds of modelisation, whether Marxist
or animist. This is why Guattari, when defining ‘What is ecosophy?’,
spoke of ethics in his aesthetical paradigm as being in tension between
molecular micropolitics and the molar world of integrated capital.
For him:
an ontology could only be cartographic, a metamodelisation of transitory
figures of intensive conjunctions. The event resides within this conjunc-
tion of an ennunciative cartography and this capturing of the precarious,
qualitative, and intensive [. . .] starting from points of singularity, and
allowing for lines of the possible to set off in movement once again.
(Guattari [1991] 2013)
Micropolitics of Hope and De-Essentialisation

On 27 November 2008, Brian Massumi and Erin Manning paid me
a visit at my office at the Collège de France to conduct an interview
that would eventually be published online in their journal, Inflexions.
Both had spent some time in Australia and wrote stimulating texts
about Aboriginal art.21 To conclude the interview, Erin asked me the
following question:
21
Massumi (2002), Manning (2009). See discussion of Massumi’s paper in
Glowczewski (2016b).
40
Becoming Land
I want to propose three different ways to think about the micropolitical in

the context of what you’ve told us. You might want to comment on one
or more. One of them, it seems to me, is an interesting singularity that
has to do with the complexity of the collective body that includes ‘other
bodies,’ including your body. It seems to me that in a politics to come
that would radically take seriously the kind of political initiatives brought
forward by the Aboriginal people, there would also have to be some way
of taking the temperature of these new singularities (bodies in process)
rather than lumping all Aboriginal people in one box. That would be
one singularity. The other singularity would be [would have] to do with
the issue of memory. It seems to me that the Aboriginal cultures that I
have looked into have a very important way of thinking spacetime where
memory is not conceived as a simple linear passageway to a discrete past
and a proposed future but is thought instead as a complex nonlinear
topological field with transversal linkages. And the third singularity you
might comment on would be a gesturing toward the global politics to
come through the election of Obama with respect to the fear that I think
a lot of left-leaning political groups have that people might perceive that
with Obama’s election the important work has been done: We have now
elected a black president. We have done our work. So there isn’t more
work to come in any of those registers.’
My reply:
I agree absolutely with what you say and those three levels. Just on
Obama, I think the same thing happened in Australia when the new gov-
ernment was elected, last November, from Liberal to Labor. And Kevin
Rudd, for the first time after many years of public pressure, accepted
to give an official apology to the Aboriginal people. This was done last
February. It was like you say, like in USA: a black man is elected and it
is done. And here the apology was done, which means the Aboriginal
issue is sorted out. Well today, we know it is not the case. (Glowczewski,
Manning and Massumi 2009)
‘Myths of ‘Superiority’ and How to De-Essentialise Social and

Historical Conflicts’ (Chapter 10) was a conference paper I presented
at an international conference on racism convened by the James Cook
University in Cairns in 2012. It shows that accusations of racism can
mask an ontology of superiority in which the victims of racism are
themselves accused of being racist. I analyse the example of a famous
writer from French Polynesia, Chantal Spitz, who was accused of being
racist by a couple of reactionary academics because she promotes her
Ma’ohi language and culture. She produces her literature in French
(also translated into English) but infuses it with Ma’ohi expressions
41
and social and political local context, including autonomist posi-

tions: it is a perfect example of what Deleuze and Guattari called a
minor literature that is not simply literature written by someone who
belongs to a minority group but rather is a particular form of liter-
ary and linguistic resistance. Deleuze and Guattari use the example
of Franz Kakfa (whose first language was Czech but who chose to
write in German) to show how a writer from a dominated people
transforms the dominant language in which he writes.22 Anti-colonial
writers are accused of racism by those who identify with the colonial
power. Indigenous people or migrants are accused of racism for laying
claim to their history and culture. UNESCO may have proclaimed
cultural diversity as a value, but in many social interactions it is not
valued. Difference is either reduced to hierarchical models – such as
dominant/dominated and primitive/civilised – or denied recognition
in the name of universalism as opposed to cultural relativism.
My aim here was to show that a third option is possible. I chose
to speak about the French situation between 2005 and 2012, because
when in 2005 a historical outburst of anger followed the death of two
young French men of colour (aged fifteen and seventeen years old), it
made me think about how anthropologically and as a French citizen
my duty is to try to compare situations. In 2005, I had just returned
to live in Paris after spending two years in Australia where I had
followed the process of the inquest after a violent Aboriginal death in
custody on Palm Island. In 2008 I published a book in France with
Lex Wotton, an Aboriginal man who was accused of a riot that broke
out a week after this death in custody. The book was written in agree-
ment with his lawyers, but I never found a publisher in Australia;
thus, I uploaded the updated translation Warriors for Peace that I
paid for on the online library of James Cook University (Glowczewski
and Wotton [2008] 2010). In 2017, after serving four years in jail and
being released before his time, Wotton, with his sister, mother and
wife, won a class action claim against the state of Queensland, which
had to pay compensation of AUS$220,000 for ‘the acts of unlawful
racial discrimination by the police’23 and which led to a new way for
22
Deleuze and Guattari ([1975] 1986, [1987] 1997); Deleuze ([1989] 2010). See
also: http://stl.recherche.univlille3.fr/seminaires/philosophie/macherey/Macherey
20022003/Sibertin.html
23
Federal Court of Australia (2018), class action settlement notice. Palm Island
Residents – Queensland Police Class action: http://www.fedcourt.gov.au/__data/
assets/pdf_file/0005/49523/24-Apr-2018-Settlment-Notice.pdf
42
Becoming Land
Aboriginal people to question government decisions in Australia. In

2018 Wotton, with 447 Palm inhabitants, won a new class action
suit that questioned the intervention on Palm Island by the special
emergency police section to arrest the ‘rioters’, and that led to the
payment of AUS$30 million by the Queensland government and an
official apology acknowledging the trauma and suffering of the Palm
Islanders, with a special mention to Wotton’s family.
Today, as we see the global resonance with the Black Lives Matter
movement in the United States and the way in which Black people
and Indigenous people across the world recognise themselves in each
other’s struggles, I can only reaffirm, as I did six years ago in that
conference paper, that too many countries seem to deny their citizens
the right to adopt alternative ways of living; this is true for differ-
ent historical, constitutional and geopolitical reasons in France and
Australia. Indeed, Australia has massive public debates and local
confrontations between different Aboriginal leaders in relation to
government policies such as the Northern Territory Intervention that
had to overrule the Racial Discrimination Act to forcibly intervene
in seventy-three communities in 2007 or the dismantling of ATSIC,
the Aboriginal-elected national commission and its regional councils.
Debates also rage around the change to the Constitution to suppress
its racist connotations and to recognise the prior sovereignty over the
land of the continent to its Indigenous people, among whom some
continue to ask for a treaty to be signed so that they can be empow-
ered with the right to protect their country from environmentally
and socially destructive projects as well as to have their own form
of governance. A huge body of work has been published on these
matters and on what has been called the History Wars, but I would
rather not enter into a discussion that would advertise the names of
scholars who negate the violence of Australian colonial history or,
like some in France, claim that we should not awaken the memories
of that conflicted past.
My priority is to value and disseminate information about alterna-
tive and experimental solutions that have been attempted in Australia,
France or in other countries that face similar problems in the global
destiny of our planet. The dissemination of these creative attempts
also plays a role in how I understand my own position as a researcher
in circulating official criticisms that are made of the Indigenous situ-
ation or migrant crisis in Australia or France. For instance, the 2017
report of the UN Special Rapporteur, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, on the
rights of Indigenous peoples, after her visit to Australia, states:
43
In the report, the Special Rapporteur observes that the policies of the
Government do not duly respect the rights to self-determination and
effective participation; contribute to the failure to deliver on the targets
in the areas of health, education and employment; and fuel the escalat-
ing and critical incarceration and child removal rates of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders. A comprehensive revision of those policies needs
to be a national priority, and the consequences and prevalence of inter-
generational trauma and racism must be acknowledged and addressed.24
Similarly, the report prepared by the France Libertés foundation
in France denounces the industrial goldmining megaproject by La
Montagne d’Or (Gold Mountain, Canadian and Russian multina-
tional consortium) that is opposed by more than 100 collectives in
French Guiana: with the assistance of the foundation it was denounced
by a young Kali’na Indigenous man, Yanuwana Christophe Pierre, at
the Tribunal of the Rights of Earth that took place in Bonn at the
COP23 gathering in November 2017. He is now the vice-president of
the Big Customary Council created last year to deal with Indigenous
land and other issues. The mega-goldmining not only threatens to
destroy part of the Amazonian Rainforest and its biodiversity, but
also to pollute the water table with cyanide leaching that is planned
to replace the old mercury technique. Mercury used by the clan-
destine goldminers expanding from Brazil and Surinam has already
poisoned the forest rivers, with very high levels detected in fish and
people – who are asked not eat fish from it. And while this gold
industry promises a few jobs, it threatens the very existence of dozens
of Indigenous villages that already struggle against drugs and prosti-
tution from the clandestine mafia. The French government has been
summoned by the UN to consult with the Indigenous peoples, and
it announced early in 2019 that the project so far was not meeting
proper environmental conditions.25
In the United States the recent change in governments presents
similar racist and ecological threats to the future. President Donald
Trump (a figure Guattari had already warned against in his Threes
Ecologies) is ignoring the Black Lives Matter movement and is now
24
Link to the UN report, September 2017: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1303
201/files/A_HRC_36_46_Add-2-EN.pdf
25
See: https://www.france-libertes.org/fr/victoire-projet-de-mega-montagne-dor-co
ndamne-tribunal-droits-de-nature/; see in English: https://www.theguardian.com/
environment/2018/apr/27/paris-to-decide-fate-of-mega-gold-mine-in-forests-of-
french-guiana
44
Becoming Land
cancelling rights over Native American land in favour of big extrac-

tion companies. In Brazil, which has its own colonial and post-
colonial geopolitics, Michel Temer, now followed by Jair Bolsonaro,
opened up the Amazonian rainforest to massive destruction through
logging and a variety of extractions while threatening the process
of land demarcation for Indigenous people and the Quilombolas
(descendants of escaped slaves who in agreement with Indian groups
established communities in which to hide; here, their descendants
still live today and saw legal recognition by the previous govern-
ment). Temer also cut the FUNAI funding which aimed at protecting
some Indigenous groups in the forest from invasion; these groups
are now attacked and sometimes savagely murdered by mercenaries
working for private interests. The lives of leaders of other groups are
also regularly threatened. Despite this discouraging turn, initiatives
emanating from local civil society across the world – and also from
transnational alliances of solidarity – continue inventing innovative
ways of envisioning a multidimensional society in which the recogni-
tion of differences and specific rights is held in the same regard as
universal human rights that are respected as well as expanded to
better include the realities of our current world. Despite the deci-
sion by Temer’s government to stop the mega dam projects in the
Amazon, Bolsonaro’s administration again plans megaprojects in
what he calls ‘umproductive, desertlike’ forest.26
In June 2017 the parliament of Victoria, a state in Australia,
invited an Aboriginal delegation from the Wurundjeri people whose
representative, Alice Kolasa, proposed a bill in front of the assembly
(which was eventually confirmed) which granted a river on their
lands status as a living entity.27 According to Alice Kolasa, the fact
that this was the first time in Australian history that an official
judicial text was written both in English and in one of the hundreds
of Aboriginal languages – the Woi Wurrung spoken by one of the
26
See: https://truthout.org/articles/bolsonaro-government-reveals-plan-to-develop-
the-unproductive-amazon/; and see also: https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/bolso
naro-plan-to-develop-amazon-rainforest-2019-1
27
See: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/22/the-dream-of-
our-ancestors-victorian-bill-gives-indigenous-owners-custodianship-of-yarra; the
Fitzroy River declaration in the north of Australia is also aiming at the First
Law of the River to ‘Secure sustainable and Equitable Futures for the West
Kimberley’, see Lim et al. (2017), Anne Poelina’s call here: https://croakey.org/
climate-justice-a-call-to-broaden-science-with-indigenous-knowledge/. See also
McDuffie (2016).
45
clans of the Wurundjeri who go by the same name – provided in law

a place for her people as First Nations: the state of Victoria, by way
of this parliamentary process, had recognised the Woi Wurrung as
the First Nation of the Birrarung River. The name of the legislation,
‘Keep Birrarung Alive’, can’t simply be summed up as an ecological
response to prevent any continuing pollution of the river and a call
to be good stewards for the ecosystem, the fish, the vegetation, and
the humans who live within this environment and live from it. Nor
can the legislation be summed up by the new field of ‘environmental
justice’ being taught in Anglo-Saxon universities and which has been
put into action by Indigenous peoples (and which can most notably
be seen in the inter-American tribunal on human rights and the right
to life through the vantage point of the interdependence of humans,
society and the environment).28 The legislation in Victoria resonates
in a much larger and important way by redefining the notion itself of
life: it affirms the existence of the river as a living entity, in the same
spirit as the judicial precedence in New Zealand which in 2017 rec-
ognised the official status of the Whanganui River as a living being.
In both cases, it was the Indigenous people, First Nation peoples of
colonised countries – the Maori in New Zealand and the Wurundjeri
in Australia – who led the campaign for granting the river a juridical
personality. This status, which the Te Urewera Park in northern
New Zealand had already benefited from, allows for ‘the interest
of the flow of water’ to be protected by two actors: a lawyer for the
tribe recognised as the owner of the river and another lawyer for the
government. According to certain people, the status of the river ends
up being closer to that of a corporation than an individual. However,
what’s important to retain from this is that the legislation recognises
a collective voice that is inseparable from a specific site and its envi-
ronment. The Indigenous peoples of two different countries didn’t
need the confirmation of old anthropological debates which relativise
the old Western opposition between nature and culture in order to
defend their struggle. These debates, which are purported as being
very recent (as part of the ontological turn), merely reformulate,
albeit in a rather delayed fashion, the multiple forms of transversality
practised and thought by Indigenous peoples that we, as anthro-
pologists, are supposed to be studying: they affirm that rivers, like
all water sources, are living in the same way as all forms of matter of
which humans – alongside animals, plants or minerals – are merely
28
See, for example, Thériault (2015).
46
Becoming Land
particular aspects. At the time I write this piece, New Zealand has
also just recognised a mountain as a living being.29
‘Resisting the Disaster: Between Exhaustion and Creation’
(Chapter 11) was translated from French (2011) for a special issue
on Ecologies of Change for the online journal Spheres.30 In the same
issue, I was lucky to have a discussion paper by a specialist of Félix
Guattari, Gary Genosko (2002b), who defined me as an ‘anthro-
pologist of micropolitical hope’. In the essay, I begin by quoting
Chakrabarty about the anthropocene and emphasise the fact that
Indigenous people all around the world have always considered
themselves as being responsible for any kind of catastrophe that
has befallen them. They seek out the blame as tied to some sort of
disprespect regarding any of the myriad of taboos that they impose
on themselves in the name of ancestral laws. As Genosko (2017)
maintains, I deploy Guattari’s three registers of ecosophy ‘to under-
stand the foliatedness of disaster in the anthropocene’ with a range
of examples,
from artists’ responses to crises and neoliberal betrayals, collective intel-
ligence marshalled against the violence of privatisation, experimentations
leading to micro-social innovations challenging the criminalisation of
asylum seekers, and political actions against the endo-colonialist policies
of settler states. Eschewing victimal discourses traded like stocks by big
media, she eviscerates the dehumanising logic of humanitarian care in
the form of ‘assistancialism’ and as some Aboriginals know it, ‘sit down
money’.
My priority since the 1980s has been to side-step the ‘victimisation
trap’ in order to look at creative forms of resistance.
These are also at the heart of Guattari’s ecosophy which articu-
lates four dimensions: (1) existential territories (real but virtual) that
can be material or immaterial; (2) fluxes (real but actual) related with
the body and the land as well as money and trade; (3) constellations
of values (virtual and possible) which are incorporeal universes like
the ritournelles; and (4) machinic phylums or machines (actual and
possible) referring to cybernetic retroaction, or autopoïesis: ‘for it is
29
See http://www.newsweek.com/human-rights-mountain-maori-people-mount-tar
anaki-757237. For river rights see O’Donnell (2018). In Australia see the
Birrarung (Yarra River) case in Victoria and the environmental justice struggle
for Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) in Western Australia.
30
Spheres – Journal for Digital Cultures 2: http://spheres-journal.org/2-ecologies-
of-change/
47
precisely about linking the machines of the ecosystems of material

fluxes to those of the ecosystems of semiotic fluxes. Therefore, I try
to widen the notion of autopoïesis, without limiting it, like Varela
does, solely to the living system, and I consider that there are proto-
autopoïeses in all other systems: ethnological, social, etc.’ (Guattari
([1991] 2013). Francisco Varela proposed the concept of autopoïesis
(from the Greek ‘autoproduction’) in a seminar at the university
of Santiago in 1972 to define how a living system can reproduce
its organisation even when its composition or structure changes
(Maturana and Varela 1980, 1987). Guattari extended the notion of
autopoïesis to the analysis of human societies and the reproduction
of social organisation, ethnic, cultural, religious, political and other
factors in the face of structural transformations imposed by colo-
nisation, and the Integrated World Capitalism. Widely used since,
‘the idea of autopoïesis, when applied as an instrument of social
analysis, confirms the conclusion already established by other means
of investigation – that our societies are self-mutilating, pathologic
systems’ (Mariotti 1999). But for Guattari, as for me, against this
destructive trend there still is a hope for machines of war and new
assemblages of creative resistance.
In Chapter 11, I mention that when in 2005, at the court of
Townsville, Australia, I attended the investigation of a group of
twenty-three Palm Islanders accused of inciting a riot after the death
of an Aboriginal man while he was held in custody, one hour after he
was arrested for public drunkenness, I was impressed by the inhabit-
ants’ capacity to withstand adversity. They had been either deported
to the island or were the descendants of the 3,000 Aboriginal people
deported there between 1918 and the 1970s, from the respective
lands of about forty different language groups spread throughout
the state of Queensland. Indigenous Australians call their displaced
populations ‘historical people’. Their colonial anchoring to the
deportation sites is thereby distinguished from the ancestral heritage
of the ‘traditional owners’; even if both groups argue in opposition
for land claims based on the priority of the principle of Native titles,
they nevertheless share in part a common history, as it is built on the
same place of social belonging and life.
Palm Island has become well known for the workers’ strike that
took place there in 1957 led by various unions and the Labor Party.
The first strike took place in Pilbara in Western Australia, 1 May
1946: 800 Aboriginal farmworkers and cowboys (stockmen) all
abandoned their jobs on the same day at hundreds of ranches thanks
48
Becoming Land
to an initiative launched four years previously by Dooley Bin Bin and

Clancy McKenna in alliance with the White communist activist Don
McLeod. The strike paralysed the sheep industry until 1949. Most of
the Aboriginal workers never returned to their jobs. They would go
on to create their own business for panning for gold in the desert and
purchase several cattle farms. It was only much later, in the afermath
of the 1966 ‘Walk off’ initiated by the Kurintji, who left the ranch
at Wave Hill in the Northern Territory and squatted on their land,
that the state, in 1969, finally forced employers to pay Aboriginal
workers the same salaries as non-Aboriginal workers. As a result of
this ruling, many Aboriginal workers simply lost their jobs.
Beginning in the 1960s, a campaign called ‘Stolen Wages’ was
initiated by an Aboriginal woman, Yvonne Butler from Palm Island,
who received the support of pro bono work from a group of lawyers
convinced that she would win her case since the state had held onto
the archives of the salaries received from employers that it never
passed on to the workers: a sum estimated at AUS$500 million. The
government proposed a minimal solution: AUS$3,000 of individual
compensation granted to the survivors but not to their descendents.
Most of the survivors refused. In 2004, the workers’ union printed
and passed out tiny cards that callled for the civil population to
support this campaign and to recognise that, for Australia to have
become what it is today, it was in large part thanks to the work
of Aboriginal people. Very few Australians are aware of this fact,
presupposing that all Aboriginal peoples resemble the small number
of the Aboriginal people they see in the streets – homeless and unem-
ployed, drinking. And yet, even those people on the streets, includ-
ing in France and elswhere, should be able to have a working life,
without even mentioning all the youths who are invited to engage
in internships without ever receiving a diploma. As such, despite the
myriad of competencies these people acquire in a variety of areas
(as auto-mechanics, gardeners, construction workers, electricians,
radio broadcasters), administrations prefer to employ supposedly
more qualified non-Aboriginal workers who are in fact rarely more
efficient at their work out in the field. An official investigation in
2006 concerning ‘Stolen Wages’ has led to bringing the term ‘slavery’
back into the current discourse in order to speak about this exploita-
tion of Aboriginal peoples linked to the past institutationalisation of
children. But despite the enormous cost of the investigation, only a
very small number of Aboriginal people have been compensated and
the acceptance of demands for restitution was supposed to expire
49
in September 2017. In 2016, three hundred Aboriginal people from

Queensland brought forth a class action suit to continue their claim.
The history of justice is not achieved simply through an investiga-
tion and official commision nor through the governmental appeal
for certain so-called policies of reconciliation. If things change it’s
because people fight. And in Australia, as in other countries, the
people who have suffered through injustices have had to fight before
the state began to respond by way of judicially recognised processes.
The recent evolution of Australian politics towards Aboriginal
people has aggravated this catastrophic logic throughout various
regions of the continent, most notably in the Northern Territory,
whose seventy-three Aboriginal communities were placed under
the federal ‘intervention’ (Northern Territory National Emergency
Response Act 2007) and a new centralised administrative system
of city shires that suppressed Aboriginal councils. The elected
Community Councils have been replaced by regional administrators
who decide on municipal and individual expenses. The Aboriginal
people have received debit cards to access their wages and subsidies,
but they can only use them to buy food in some shops and they have
to request authorisation for any other expense, such as buying a bus
ticket or a plane ticket. This system has been wonderfully criticised
in a fiction movie, Charlie’s Country inspired by the life of the main
actor, David Gulpilil.
Chapter 11 also refers to the United Nations’ Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted on 13 September 2007 by the
United Nations General Assembly. Whether among the Maori or other
peoples from Oceania who have not gained independence, among
Indians from North and South America, Moroccan Berbers, Touareg
and Peuls in sub-Saharan states, nomadic peoples from Central Asia,
everywhere Indigenous leaders currently analyse their situations by
proposing to ‘subalternise Indigenous politics’ and ‘indigenise sub-
altern politics’. At the time I initially wrote the paper reproduced in
Chapter 11 I claimed that the rejection of Indigenous singularities by
states like Australia echoed the situation of the Roma and Gipsies,
including the 900 settlements that were dismantled in France in the
summer of 2010 despite there having been a tradition of travelling
and camping in French villages for centuries. I also posed the question
regarding asylum and refugee rights for people running away from
countries or places affected by natural disasters, such as Hurricane
Katrina that devastated New Orleans. Today the issue is even worse
as we know very well that we should continue to expect a massive
50
Becoming Land
displacement of refugees because of climate change disasters and the

mass flooding of entire countries in the Pacific or Indian Oceans. In
Europe, we are already confronted with the massive influx of refugees
for a variety of reasons, including people fleeing from their countries
because of the wars or misery provoked by Western powers who sell
weapons or corrupt other governments to capture resources. Recently,
laws concerning asylum seekers have been changed nationally and
supranationally at the European level so as to close boundaries to the
influx of refugees. Meantime, the life of displaced people remains a
nightmare despite the presence of those who try to help them but who
now, in France, as in Australia, risk jail.
‘Standing with the Earth: From Cosmopolitical Exhaustion to
Indigenous Solidarities’ (Chapter 12) was translated and expanded
for Inflexions following a paper I presented in June 2016 and which
was published in the journal Multitudes (Glowczewski 2016b). It is
inspired directly by Guattari’s ecosophical project which he restated
a few weeks before his death on 29 August 1992, as a call for
‘Remaking Social Practices’. The translator’s choice has been to use
the verb ‘Remaking’ instead of the literal translation of ‘Pour une
refondation’: ‘For a refoundation’. In the latter sense I would propose
using ‘regrounding’ instead because a ‘remake’ can be understood
as a ‘reinvented copy’ which is different I think from what Félix
Guattari was calling us to do.
The ‘ecosophic cartographies’ that must be instituted will have, as their
own particularity, that they will not only assume the dimensions of the
present, but also those of the future. They will be as preoccupied by what
human life on Earth will be thirty years from now, as by what public
transit will be three years from now. They imply an assumption of respon-
sibility for future generations, what philosopher Hans Jonas /1984/ calls
‘an ethic of responsibility.’ It is inevitable that choices for the long term
will conflict with the choices of short-term interests. The social groups
affected by such problems must be brought to reflect on them, to modify
their habits and mental coordinates, to adopt new values and to postulate
a human meaning for future technological transformations. In a word, to
negotiate the present in the name of the future.
It is not, for all that, a question of falling back into totalitarian and
authoritarian visions of history, messianisms that, in the name of ‘para-
dise’ or of ecological equilibrium, would claim to rule over the life of each
and everyone. Each ‘cartography’ represents a particular vision of the
world that, even when adopted by a large number of individuals, would
always harbor an element of uncertainty at its heart. That is, in truth,
its most precious capital; on its basis, an authentic hearing of the other
51
could be established. A hearing of disparity, singularity, marginality,

even of madness, does not arise only from the imperatives of tolerance
and fraternity. It constitutes an essential preparation, a permanent return
to the order of uncertainty, a stripping-bare of the forces of chaos that
always haunt structures that are dominant, self-sufficient, and imbued
with belief in their own superiority. Such a hearing could overturn or
restore direction to these structures, by recharging them with potentiality,
by deploying, through them, new lines of creative flow. (Guattari 1992:
26–7)31
Chapter 12 concerns the question of the creativity of new ontologies

as responses to the worldwide disaster that hovers all around us and
that is already affecting the planet. I begin the chapter by referring to
a science fiction novel that makes a reference to the four ontologies
of the French anthropologist, Philippe Descola, as an archive found
in space during a future time when humans no longer live on earth.
The nostalgia for terrestrial life aroused by Descola’s interpretations
of what he named respectively (by pitting each term against the
other) the four ontologies of naturalism, animism, totemism and
analogicism will provoke within intergalactic space a multiplication
of sects that will reinvent practices so as to re-facilitate one of these
ontologies. In its own way, the novel shows the limits of the model.
The future humans were not capable of imagining how terrestrial
societies were able to live since by taking back up certain character-
istics examined by Descola, we are still very far from understanding
how a given society truly functioned and, more importantly, how it
could continue to exist after colonisation.
Invited by Descola to respond to his book Beyond Nature and
Culture ([2005] 2013) at the Collège de France, I expressed my
unease with his totemist ontology that relied on information about
Aboriginal cultures that was sort of picked up haphazardly, most
notably from my own work, and which in no way demonstrated the
complexity of Australian totemism that, according to the context,
can also contain characteristics mentioned in Descola’s other ontol-
ogies: for example animism, which can be seen in the practice of
Australian shamanism (which can be viewed in the same way as
31
Translated by Sophie Thomas, revised by Brian Holmes on the basis of the
French original, ‘Pour une refondation des pratiques sociales’, in Le Monde
Diplomatique (October 1992): http://palimpsestes.fr/ecologie/textes_ecolo/
Pour_une_refondation_des_pratiques_sociales.pdf
52
Becoming Land
the shamanism practised in South America or Siberia).32 One can

also detect a pure analogism through the way in which the various
totemic entities are placed into relation by way of their form (for
example, the ray and the anchor for the Yolngu) and some other
contexts can even be considered as naturalist. This last ontology
is defined by Descola as the ontology of our Western universe of
scientific rationality which has separated the mind (as interiority)
from the body (as physicality): the man as a biological entity distinct
from his mind which relies on culture being separate from nature.
His book was very influential at showing that this separation is not
universal since there are a great number of peoples who have not
made this rupture between the body and the mind, be that in the
ancient past or more recently as with Guattari and his ecosophy.
However, there is still one of the aspects of this Western scientific
approach that rests on these oppositions that can be seen in certain
cognitive operations of totemic hunter-gatherers, for example when
they are in the midst of tracking wild game, plants or geological
layers. But, as is the case with astrophysics and quantum mechanics,
these hunter-gatherers’ operations of deduction and perception are
much more complex than the mere dualism that guided Western
science until our current times. Viveiros de Castro proposed the
concept of multinature, I prefer the term multiverse, but the words
taken as they are can’t truly take into account the complexity hidden
within the terms of the Indigenous languages and the mysteries that
we are unable to explain.
The way in which Brazilian anthropologist, Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro, critiques the Western narcissism present in the history of
the sciences by articulating Deleuze and Lévi-Strauss together made
me feel as if I was navigating in a boat out in the middle of the
ocean where the waves continued to crash against each other. There
was something familiar in both Deleuze and Lévi-Strauss that I was
capable of digesting in spite of myself, but it was also clear that
Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics ([2009] 2014) was deeply
anchored within the history of South America, so much so that I lost
my footing a bit in trying to find ‘my’ desert and other Australian
landscapes. His call for a decolonisation of thought would end up
32
‘The Paradigm of Indigenous Australians: Anthropological Phantasms, Artistic
Creations and Political Resistance’, in Art catalogue The Revenge of Genre, 2007
revised translation (phantasies instead of phantasms), in Glowczewski (2015b:
131–55).
53
bringing us together in 2012 during a conference organised by phi-

losopher Jean-Christophe Goddard at the University of Toulouse.33
When Viveiros de Castro was invited to São Paulo to present my
Brazilian book, Totemic Becomings: Cosmopolitics of the Dreaming
(2015), he acknowledged a lack of familiarity with the Australian
data but pointed to the fact that we shared a similar allergy for the
ontological reductions.
Maurizio Lazaratto and Angela Melitopoulos had taken note of
what brings both of our anthropological projects closer together by
publishing in the catalogue of the exhibition, Animism, our respective
interviews partly contained in their film installation, Assemblages:
Félix Guattari and machinic animism. I said the following, which
was filmed in my kitchen in Paris:
That which appear[s] natural to us – springs, rocks – are loaded with
history for the aboriginal peoples, who practice forms of totemism, and
are thus cultural and non-natural . . . There are those here among us who
function this way even more today than in the past, because we have less
and less an apprehension regarding what is natural, while the category
that philosophy contributed to setting up opposes humans to untouched
nature. And the greater the desire was to leave it untouched, the more it
was developed. This sort of opposition no longer really makes any sense.
The nature/culture opposition nevertheless constricts our thinking a great
deal.
It is still our paradigm, since we continue to fantasize about natural
peoples, natural environments, about the fact that we must preserve
nature. And as much as we think this way, I think we are wrong when
it comes to the solutions to be found for the different problems. For
example, the question of the environment is not really about protecting
nature by stopping pollution. On the contrary, it is necessary to invest it
with new forms of assemblages and cultural mechanisms. (Melitopoulos
and Lazzarato 2010)
Descola was criticised by a number of South American colleagues
and, since the translation of his book into English, Beyond Nature
and Culture, he has also been criticised by Bessire and Bond (2014):
As Elizabeth Povinelli (2002) suggests, the figure of radical alterity
may organize new regimes of inequality or create the conditions for the
hypermarginality of supposedly insufficient or ‘deculturated’ Indigenous
33
Décolonisations de la pensée: Anthropologie, philosophie et politique (2). Leçons
Deleuzo-guattariennes, 2012, filmed conference, 12 July 2012, University of
Toulouse: http://choplair.com.free.fr/Europhilosophie/FIPS_videos/index.php
54
Becoming Land
populations (Bessire 2014b). Ontological anthropology seems neither

able to reflect on this slippage nor able to address the question it begs:
Why is the ontological status of radical exteriority still so necessary for
politics as well as for our aspirations as a discipline, and how might these
projects coincide? (Bessire and Bond 2014: 445)
While I tend to agree with some of the aspects of Bessire and Bond’s
criticisms regarding the ideal typologies that distance us from a poli-
tics of the common or the reification of past forms postulated outside
of time, I’m not convinced that a recognition of alterities prevents
us from fighting against inequalities and marginalisation. In order
to engage in this fight, there are better things worth undertaking
than simply continuing to criticise the so-called ontological turn that
was sparked much like a marketing campaign that led to a revital-
ised interest in the discipline of anthropology after focusing only on
promoting the work of four men: Bruno Latour, Philippe Descola,
Eduardo de Castro and Tim Ingold. All of them having been friends
for a great many years, united by way of the success of their ideas,
they are however less in agreement with each other than it might
seem – to such an extent that a recent criticism made by Tim Ingold
(2016) with regard to the work of Philippe Descola led to strong
criticism in return (Descola 2016). But these debates hold little inter-
est for me.
Nevertheless, the ontological scene has revealed a more essential
problem. It took some time for commentators on the work of this
rowdy bunch to recognise that a myriad of complex ontological
speculations have already been proposed – long before this sudden
resurgence of current interest – by such thinkers as Marilyn Strathern,
an anthropologist of complex theories inspired by her interpretation
of the Papuan cosmologies in Papua New Guinea. A number of
other women thinkers have been writing about the critical subject
of the shattering of ontologies and thought regarding immanence,
confronting themselves with issues of power and violence in a much
more political manner than the masculine figures of the ontological
turn. Such has been the case with Elizabeth Povinelli from her early
Labor’s Lot (1993), dealing with the history of an Aboriginal com-
munity from Northern Australia, to her most recent geontological
project.34 More recently, the writings of Rosi Braidotti regarding
34
In a workshop at my laboratory in Paris in February 2016 I was lucky enough to
discuss with Elizabeth Povinelli her manuscript, Geontology (2016). I must admit
that I don’t agree with her figure of the desert which, from my point of view,
55
affirmation have also offered new grounds for social critique in a

Deleuzian framework. And Anna Tsing has provided a very rhizo-
matic work of hope taking into account many complexities in The
Mushroom at the End of the World: On The Possibility of Life in
Capitalist Ruins (2015), even though ruins might be the only space
left for living despite the struggle against extractivism to promote
another world. We all owe a great deal to Isabelle Stengers’s con-
tinuous and steadfast elaboration of cosmopolitics, her quest for
new enchantments, and the promotion in France of the work of
Starhawk, the WICCA activist, as well as Donna Haraway whose
string figures inspire speculative gestures (Stengers and Debaise
2015). And then there are the myriad of other women and men
emerging everyday, such as the ecofeminists and decolonial thinkers.
Many writers and speakers are in the shadows producing works that
are reappropriated, certainly as much by men as well as women from
various groups across the world who are engaged with current issues
with regard to migrants, domestic or racial violence, or climate
justice. The environmental activism physicist Vandana Shiva is a
clear inspiration, while many Indigenous scholars raise their voices
through the planet. For instance Zoe Todd calls for ‘Indigenizing the
Anthropocene’ (2015): when she was a student in anthropology this
young Indigenous Canadian criticised Latour and his ontological
turn with an online statement ‘Ontology is another word for colo-
nialism’, based on her surprise of him never referring to Indigenous
knowledge and Indigenous lawyers who deconstruct the law system
by fighting for new environmental justice laws.35 Katerina Teaiwa
who defines herself as an African-American Pacific Islander (from
Banaba Island, part of the Republic of Kiribati) pays homage to the
relational archipelic notion of Pacific identity expressed by Epeli
Hau’ofa’s concept of a ‘sea of islands’ and analyses the pan-Pacific
activism in the following terms:
cannot be an empty and lifeless place – as the desert is depicted in fantasies of

Western development – but I admire her political and cinematic engagement with
the Aboriginal community very much, a community that she has accompanied
and followed since 1989.
35
Todd (2016), published since its 2015 online buzz (see comment by Glowczewki
2015b); on decolonial sensibilities and Indigenous research see Ribeiro and
Escobar (2002), Prober et al. (2011), Rose et al. (2012), Gaad (2014), Ribeiro
(2014), Whitehouse et al. (2014, 2017), Fraser and Todd (2016), Harrison and
Sellwood (2016), Hunt and Stevenson (2016).
56
Becoming Land
Both Oceania Rising and the Climate Warriors represent post-colonial,

antihegemonic movements that are grounded in contemporary customs,
realities, and cultural identities, while simultaneously championing
broader regional identities and unifying concerns (26) (. . .) the ‘rising’ in
‘rising sea of islands’ references not just the impacts of global warming
and Hau‘ofa’s expansive vision of mobile but grounded islanders but
the rising and increased visibility of critical and engaged Oceanians who
are thinking, writing, performing, and speaking regionally and globally
about a range of important issues including climate change (Steiner 2015).
(Teaiwa 2018: 29)
More than anything else, we must be open to listening and truly
hearing the words, whether written, filmed or spoken during political
protests by populations that have been forgotten for far too long and
that have been considered as objects of study whether in an exotic
manner or near at hand and that have been othered [alterisé] by their
colonial origins or due to their social exploitation.36
To respond to the twofold question proposed by Povinelli and
to Bessire and Bond who cite her: ‘Why is the ontological status of
radical exteriority still so necessary for politics as well as for our
aspirations as a discipline, and how might these projects coincide?’
First, I would like to simply state that I see two things at stake here.
First, in our present time when culture is devouring nature, in the
sense that urbanisation and its extractivist and digital technologies
are eroding every territory, and when a number of thinkers claim that
there is no longer such a thing as an outside – an exteriority – now
more than ever, us humans and non-humans truly need the radical
outside of peoples in struggle who affirm that other worlds are pos-
sible: whether they are Indigenous or arise from out of what Deleuze
and Guattari called ‘a people that is missing’37 by reinvesting in ter-
ritories worth occupying counter to a hegemonic world that not only
doesn’t accept the heterogeneity of the multitudes but above all no
longer thinks about anything else than benefiting a small minority of
transhumanised people. The second stake is that of alliances between
all these struggles. And this is where the philosophy of Deleuze and
Guattari, and more specifically Guattari’s project of ecosophy, con-
tinues to inspire younger generations (Querrien and Goffey 2017).
36
See for instance Amilia Telford ‘Why I Took a Stand – Climate Justice and
the Future of the First Australians’, May 2017: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=45S_v6iaKLA; in Canada, Asselin and Basile (2018).
37
See also Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image ([1989] 2010: p. 216): ‘the people
no longer exist, or not yet . . . the people are missing’. Notice the plural here.
57
During the 2004 Pacific Arts Festival which gathered in the inde-
pendent Micronesian state of Palau, with delegations from thirty-
three Pacific countries, I attended a workshop that was organised by
an association of ethnomusicologists, ICTM. A Japanese Osagawaran
islander group demonstrated a dance that in 2000 became the ‘intan-
gible cultural treasure’ of their island. The dance – inspired by a
Micronesian tradition of Palau – was appropriated by Osagawaran
settlers when occupied by Japan. The fact that the historical context
of the dance’s origin was acknowledged by the Japanese dancers
seemed to satisfy the Palauans who had invited them to the festival.
A young Palauan composer explained with a step demonstration
that, since those days of Japanese occupation, the dancers of Palau
had changed their own steps to adapt them to the ‘groove’ of the
American soldiers who occupied the island during the Second World
War. An Aboriginal Yolngu elder from Arnhem Land, Joe Neparrnga
Gumbula, then commented:
Looking at South Pacific, coconut brought by West wind just float to our
land, we pick it up on the beach from the Ocean. Never mind that we are
not faring from the sea; there is a chain from Papua New Guinea, and in
Cape York Peninsula. That’s when we dance the coconut movement [. . .]
We play the part of the Ocean; move underneath the current . . .
Gumbula stood to demonstrate his Yolngu dance and explained
further:
[. . .] this is how the songline works. And actually what we are talking
about here is traditional: the song series, the dance and all that. But only
the copyright is problematic: somebody talks about ‘you don’t take my
song’. And that’s only what I am thinking looking at how I look at the
Pacific Ocean here, the current movement.
Katerina Teaiwa, defining herself as an African-American and a
Banaban Islander, who was then the Convener of Pacific Studies at
the Australian National University, responded with passion:
[. . .] So it’s not that you stole or borrowed something because it flows
to your shores. That’s a very important point and it’s important to talk
about it in that way and not just lump things as identity; or culture or
tradition. Like you said, it’s a process and there are lines and currents that
connect.38
38
This exchange between Gumbula and Teaiwa is extracted from Glowczewski and
Henry ([2007] 2011); see also De Largy Healy ([2007] 2011, 2009, 2017).
58
Becoming Land
The Aboriginal peoples or Pacific Islanders do not need to be

Deleuzo-Guattarians to think through the middle (milieu), that is the
space they live in, which is made of currents and flows of people and
things, songs, or dances, be it the Ocean, the desert, the forest or the
city. When people defend values of sharing together but each in their
own ways, they can hold on to singularities always in becoming and
whose affirmation requires new ways of existing. The Aboriginal
peoples in struggle, such as Native Americans in the United States or
Canada, or Amerindians of Brazil or French Guiana, impress by way
of their creativity that relies simultaneously on an ancestral heritage as
well as the specificity of the contemporary globalised world, without
forgetting to mention their deserts and forests. For me, they create a
hope for the future that parallels the youth in France who stand up
to protect another possible world at Notre-Dame-des-Landes,39 or
those youths who want to be recognised as both Black and French.
The same can be said for Indigenous peoples, or the Quilombola
descendants of slaves and the Black population and majoritarian
mixed-race population in Brazil forced into misery and who never-
theless attempt to resist against a state machine that wants to destroy
them. As expressed by Brazilian philosopher, Peter Pál Pelbart, a
friend of Guattari, coordinator of the Ueinzz Theater Company,
a schizoscenic project, and also co-publisher of n-1 Publications:
Maybe we have to consider exhaustion at the heart of this existential
intersection, micro- and macropolitical, biopolitical. Does exhaustion
signify the end of the world, or the end of a certain world we have to leave
behind? Is exhaustion the sign of the end of the subject, or of a certain
subjectivation? Of a desubjectivation, or a certain desubjectivation? Is it
mortifying or vital? Black hole or opening? (Pál Pelbart 2017)
Dancing with the Spirits of the Land

The final part of the book proposes two texts that attempt to focus
on some of the other voices of the multiverse that I strive to explore,
first in Brazil and then in Australia.
39
Documentary film subtitled in English, Notre-Dame-des-Luttes: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=_Z0mfkeGp34; the project of building an airport there
was cancelled by the government in January 2017 and the activists who had been
occupying the land in protest since 2012 now stand for continuing their social
experiment of the ZAD ‘Zone to defend’ as an alternative mode of collective land
use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rh_6j6vIrc
59
Guattari visited Brazil on a number of occasions before and after

1985, when it was freed from dictatorship thanks to the Workers’
Party (PT) of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his friend. His stimulating
Brazilian encounters are documented in the Molecular Revolution in
Brazil, first published in Portugese:
Yes, I believe that a multiple people exists, a people of mutants, a people
of potentialities that appear and disappear, that becomes embodied in
social events, literary events, in musical events. It is quite well known that
many accuse me of being rather stupidly or almost foolishly optimistic, of
not seeing the misery of various peoples. I can see it, but . . . I don’t know,
perhaps I’m delirious, but I also think that we are living in a period of
productivity, or proliferation, of creation, of absolutely fabulous revolu-
tions from the viewpoint of the emergence of a people. That’s the molecu-
lar revolution: it’s not some sort of fancy phrase, some sort of program,
it’s something I feel deep down, that I live within the encounters I make,
inside the institutions, in the affects as well as through reflections. (In
Guattari and Rolnik ([1986] 2008: 9/preface to the 7th Brazilian edition)
Guattari left an impressive imprint in Brazil on philosophers, psy-
chologists, anthropologists and artists. Several departments of psy-
chology have been training students as ‘schizoanalysts’ for over ten
promotions. Many young therapists of Indigenous or Afro-Brazilian
background refer to his writings and practice. ‘Cosmocolours: A
Filmed Performance of Incorporation and a Conversation with the
Preta Velha Vó Cirina’ (Chapter 13) was first written in Portuguese
with the help of Brazilian performer and schizoanalyst, Clarissa
Alcantara, and translated into English for publication in the bilingual
Brazilian journal of visual anthropology GIS (Gest(ure), Image and
Sound) 2017. The chapter begins with the presentation of an art
performance experience I proposed to Clarissa Alcantara, at ‘The
Beast and Adversity’ (BAC) exhibition in Geneva (August 2015),
consisting of projecting on her rituals I filmed in an Umbanda ter-
reiro in Florianopolis. Chapter 13 then continues with an interview
that I conducted with the spirit of a Black woman, Vó Cirina (August
2016), incorporated in the Umbanda ritual leader, Abilio Noé da
Silveira, of that cult. In a way this conversation with a spirit reso-
nates with what was at the heart of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s call for
heterogeneous becomings. In that performance I propose to compare
these Brazilian cults with the way Aboriginal people experiment a
form of incorporation in their totemic becomings. In my conversa-
tion with the spirit of the old African woman, she proposes her own
way to recognise ‘Indians’ in Australia and those of North or South
60
Becoming Land
America as being ‘same but different’, like the Orixá entities of the
African diaspora.40
It’s an enormous challenge for anthropologists or historians of
religion to explain what exactly it is within rituals that actualises and
virtualises the heterogeneities within the rites, the persons, objects,
places, rocks, etc., that can’t be reduced to symbolic ‘representa-
tions’, to the extent that the question of ‘presence’ is not considered
as a support image, but, rather, its lines of flight in becoming. Deleuze
and Guattari are a source of inspiration here so as to ‘imagine an
anthropology that escapes representation’ (Goldman 2015), which
is what I have attempted to create in my writings since my very first
visit to Australia. The text proposed here mixes together genres:
the narrative of performance, a film and interview with the Spirit
of the Tent (Tenda Espirita) Vó Cirina disturb boundaries, and
the languages produce parallel spaces that nevertheless come into
contact with each other. This is my proposition for an ‘undisciplined’
anthropology which allows one to see and feel a multiplicity of lines
in becoming; the Warlpiri Dreamings, the Orixás and the spirits
of the dead, anthropology, philosophy, sacred art and many other
things are composed in the possibility of a singular dance that would
superimpose bodies and spirits in Cosmocolour-becoming.
This type of intervention – which mixes together writings, film,
performance and ritual – in some ways echoes what Félix Guattari
was exploring when trying to make a science fiction film that he
called A Love of UIQ (the Infra-Quark Universe).41 This quantum
and multipolar brain will become externalised in the form of a face
that will constantly be in flux, without a fixed identity and without
a body, a potential that is somewhat childish and that learns very
rapidly by way of interacting with a variety of characters that are
more or less delirious, and that ends up becoming madly jealous in
falling in love; the emergence of this ‘infra-quark’ universe, whether
it’s crazy or not, constitutes the tension of the story, along with the
risk of a contamination of the entire universe tuning the film into a
thriller of a global conspiracy. The seven years it took Guattari to
write the script (1980–1987), and the different versions of it, were for
40
See also Glowczewski (2016c, 2019). Special thanks to Claude Mercier
(2019) for his inspiring conversations and writings on Deleuze and
Guattari.
41
Guattari ([2012] 2016) (1980s’ scripts, translated and edited by Silvia Maglioni
and Graeme Thomson).
61
him, like so many existential territories and incorporeal universes, a

testing machine for transforming, by way of fiction and the staging of
the different characters, what he strived to diagrammatise elsewhere
in his cartographies. If he wasn’t able to make his film, it’s perhaps not
just because he couldn’t find the financial backing from the National
Centre of Cinematography (CNC) and the required production, but,
as his letters with the American producer Robert Kramer suggest, it
was in part due to the fact that the initial ‘drive’ towards the end of
the early 1980s was no longer the same. Félix wanted for his film to
connect with the mainstream public following the success of Blade
Runner. He couldn’t have imagined or anticipated to what degree the
image – art, installation or cinema – and the critique of its ethnocen-
tric representation would become the object of a reappropriation by
the colonised peoples themselves, by those subalternised, and all the
other peoples in resistance to an Integrated World Capitalism, but
he had the intuition and the hope for this potential creativity at the
beginning of the ‘winter’ years. His hope returned on the eve of his
death when, in his own words – and his own eyes – he would claim
to have finally gotten over a long depression.42
For Guattari, to create cartographies was a very complex prac-
tice which evoked a form of diagrammatisation of movements
and tensions of space and time, in order to simultaneously grasp and
ungrasp subjectivity. His cartographic metamodel constructed from
four functors (flux/flow, machinic phylums, universes of values, and
existential territories), polarised between a folding of the virtual/
actual and real/possible into four layers, was not much used until
his Schizoanalytic Cartographies was translated. Even though I
witnessed the development of this thought tool during Guattari’s
seminars in the early 1980s, it gained a new applicability for me
after I saw Anne Querrien ([2008] 2011) redraw the cartography in
a conference and after I read an article by Brian Holmes (2009) that
showed how to articulate the functors with situations of our current
times. It encouraged me to start drawing different applications of
the functors in tension.
I have demonstrated elsewhere that the way in which Guattari
articulates his four functors with chaosmosis can be unpacked by the
42
‘Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?’ Filmed interview in Greece in 1991 after the
publication of What is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari ([1992] 1996): https://
novom.ru/en/watch/NAahyYZkrAo; about Leros see also Guattari ([1989] 2012).
62
Becoming Land
way in which Wanta Steve Patrick Jampjinpa drew in the sand his
five pillars for the Warlpiri system of knowledge:
I used Felix’s cartography to rethink not only Aboriginal totemic cos-
mology but also its recent translation by an Aboriginal man, Wanta
Jampijinpa, who had made a drawing lesson of his cosmo-vision for
YouTube. This Warlpiri teacher, who later became an honored researcher
at ANU, had selected five Aboriginal concepts that he drew as circles of a
web in the shape of the Southern Cross that would collapse if any of these
five ‘pillars’ and their links were broken. It is an Indigenous cosmopoliti-
cal model responding to global digital society.
Home (ngurra, literally ‘land’, ‘place’ and ‘camp’) is the first Warlpiri
concept drawn as a circle in the sand by Wanta, Law (Kuruwarri) is
the second circle, Ceremony (Jardiwanpa for settling dispute, kurdiji,
the ‘man-making’ initiation, and other rituals) is the third, followed by
Language (yimi) and Family (warlalja ‘my people’ as extended kin and
classificatory relations between people, Dreamings and places). Law is
a common expression used by Aboriginal people to translate concepts
of different languages that relate to the Dreaming as the foundation of
their cosmopolitics. The Warlpiri word Kuruwarri translates literally as
‘image’, ‘mark’, ‘track’ or ‘trace’. To suggest its cosmological meaning,
I have proposed translating it as the ‘image-forces’ and ‘vital forces’ of
Dreamings (Jukurrpa).
[. . .] What makes Indigenous Australians resist and insist on claiming
a spiritual relationship with the land despite changes in their of mode
of existence from semi-nomadic to forced sedentarization with all the
current economical and social pressures? How can deterritorialization be
the source of their reanchoring in existential territories? Or, on the con-
trary, threaten their lives with despair, violence, and even death. Wanta,
the Warlpiri man, answers in his own way when he says that if one of the
five pillars –home, language, law, ceremony or family – is not strong and
connected to the others, everything collapses, and there is no Warlpiri
anymore. For him the pillars are mirrored as stars in the Southern Cross,
with the vertical axis being the Digging stick Dreaming that announces
in September the season for Puurda yams, a time of the year also called
the waking Emu, seen as the black hole in the Milky Way, two other
Dreamings which like all things in nature and culture have their songline
and pathway on the earth. (Glowczewski 2015)43
43
The original Ngurra-kurlu, Wanta’s filmed sand lesson in Warlpiri (2008) has
been integrated into the website Indigenous Governance Toolkit: http://toolkit.
aigi.com.au/resource/video-ngurra-kurlu-the-way-yapa-life-is-governed (accessed
in October 2018). See Holmes and Jampijinpa (2013); drawings in filmed confer-
ence by Glowczewski (2011).
63
According to my analysis, four of Wanta’s five ‘pillars’ echo

Guattari’s functors. Kuruwarri ‘Image-force/Law’ operates like
an Existential Territory; yimi ‘Language’ refers to an ‘Incorporeal
Universe/Constellation’ especially through the concept of spirit-
children Kuruwalpa who as song verses wait to be born, that is to
be embodied in a new baby; all the Ceremonies are Fluxes, because
it is through them that traditional economy operated, a system of
exchange between different people (generations, sexes, clans and
tribes), with a circulation of goods that does not treat what is traded
as objects but as living things including the ceremonial media, that
is songs, dances, paintings that travel from place to place; the fourth
pillar warlalja ‘my people’, that is Family as a system of extended
kinship with complex classificatory relations, corresponding to
the mathematical properties of a diedric group (the cube) and the
topological properties of an hypercube, are an example of Guattari’s
Phylums or Abstract Machines. As for the fifth pillar that Wanta
drew first in the ‘middle’, ngurra ‘place’ or ‘camp’ as home, multiple
and different for each person through their life, I understand it as
the empty centre that articulates deterritorialisation and reterrito-
rialisation in Guattari’s chaosmatic cartography. For the Warlpiri
and their desert neighbours, places and their Dreaming connections
are at the heart of anchoring in space – and time – their travels as
semi-nomads before colonisation. Place is also at the heart of today’s
resistance against the destruction of land and the affirmation of their
cosmovision.
Both Guattari’s and Wanta’s modes of thought unfold as dia-
grammatic practice and speculative gestures to approach the col-
lective unconscious as intersubjectivation and as an active force to
move the world. During a filmed interview in 2017, Wanta Steve
Patrick Jampijinpa explained to me what I understand as the cos-
mopolitics of an Indigenous philosopher-mediator: from one year
to the next, he transliterates his understanding of some Western
concepts into Warlpiri values re-adapted to the contemporary world
of interactions that pile on top of each other and endlessly create
interference.
‘You can see this one ? (Wanta opens and closes his hand in a pulsating
manner)
you learn that one in the Eagle one. It’s flying high. The High-flyer.
He is the high Thunder. And he can come down
(Gesture pointing from sky to the earth)
64
Figure 1.1 Guattari’s cartography and Ngurrakurlu system of knowledge by Wanta Jampijinpa © B. G. from Totemic Becomings (2015)
He can make the connection with the clouds or star. That’s the
High-flyer.
That’s, sorry to say (laugh), penetration I call it
(Fingers to the ground)
This one penetration, always try to engage.
(Hand to the sky and back to the ground)
That’s what we call malkarri:
malkarri teaches you how to look at the sky and the earth.
When you do that you already, how I can I say . . .
you marry the two and you become a High-flyer
because you got knowledge from here
(Hand down the ground)
and you can read the stars, you read country. That’s the intercourse, yes.
(Wanta traces a vertical line runnning from his head down his body)
It’s to marry the two, and you come to existence.’
(Wanta’s line continues up his chest)
I showed Wanta a photo of an acrylic painting on canvas by Paddy
Gibson Japaljarri that I had bought in 1988 in his community,
Lajamanu. The Warlpiri artist called it Kurlungalinpa, the name
of his sacred place connected with Stars and Ngarrka, the Initiated
Figure 1.2 The photo shows the hand of Wanta (the speaker in the book)
commenting on the same painting printed in the book that I published in 2007. ©
B.G. 2017.
66
Becoming Land
Men who grew trees at their feet when they came out of the earth
while a comet was falling, turning into the sacred hill. The painting
is separated by a double helix, the Milky Way. Wanta traced with
his finger the double helix that cuts across the middle of the painting,
commenting:
‘You can see this one? that’s always marrying,
always being productive, yuwayi (yes), put it that way.
Wanta followed one of the two meandering lines drawn along each
side of the double helix:
And this line makes it flow, talks about flow
– But that middle one, I asked, can also be ngalypi (Vines) for the Witi
(Leafy poles) dance?
– Yep, that one talks about the positive and negative consequences.
– My ‘father’ (Japaljarri, the artist who I call ‘father’ because I was given
the skin-name Nungarrayi) was saying this is the Milky Way . . .
– Yeah, the Milky, all that Wantarri, Gift road, that’s the Gift road
where people trade . . .
(Wanta lifts his head up pointing to the sky)
But that story (pointing again to the sky)
reflects that story (pointing to the ground)
that why the two ‘moities’ . . .
(Wanta rolls his hands forward then backward)
This one . . .
(Wanta lifts with his hand his right breast)
This ‘moiety’ for me, for us (matriline of skin-names:
Jampijinpa (his skin-name), Japanangka, Jakamarra, Jungarrayi,
Nungarrayi (my skin-name), Nampijinpa, Napanangka, Nakamarra)
This side of breast milk
(Wanta shows his left breast)
Other line sky mob
(matriline of Napangardi, Nangala, Napaljarri, Napurrurla;
Jupurrurla, Japangardi, Jangala, Japaljarri matriline)44
But you know because we’re facing that way,
(Wanta turns his back to the camera to fix the wall of the art centre to
the South)
we got to try to become that star, Southern Cross,
so we can face that way, the North.
(Wanta opens his arms like the Cross turning back towards the camera)
44
See Figure 1.3; see also Chapter 6.
67
Figure 1.3 Two matriline circles for the Warlpiri 8 subsections or skin-names
system © B. G. from Yapa, Art From Balgo and Lajamanu (1991b)
That’s saying you are your home when you know your history and
knowledge.
Identity really’45
Wanta is referring here to many complex things, especially the fact
that classificatory kinship (the skin-name matrilines) is reproduced
through exchange between people and the whole totemic cosmos,
‘like’ a double helix which figures the Milky Way. Interestingly for
geneticians the double helix emerged as a structure when DNA was
discovered in the 1950s and more recently it has been modelised
45
See Lajamanu (60’), film by B. Glowczewski: https://vimeo.com/289440509
68
Becoming Land
as a structure for the Milky Way galaxy. In Wanta’s sand model,

four of his pillars – (1) extended kin, (2) rituals of exchange, (3)
cosmological Law of totemic lines, (4) language of spirit-children/
songs emerging from the Dreaming space-time places on earth – are
connected by the Southern Cross, with the 5th pillar ngurra ‘land,
place, camp, home’ at the crossing, that is embodied as a human – or
any earthling– living being standing on, underneath or above the
land, that is becoming land.
Wanta’s views on totemism are also expressed through the
example of one of the personifications of the Emu Dreaming, that
is the Giant Emu – whose tracks have been identified by scientists
as those of a feather dinosaur species – that travelled East and West
of the continent and is said by Aboriginal groups from different
parts of Australia to have become the black hole of the Milky Way.
Interestingly, among emus it is the male who incubates the eggs and
looks after the babies when they hatch while the female hunts to
feed them all. In that sense, Emu is one of the ‘Dreaming’ images
for male and female complementarity. For the coastal people, baby
emus help healers. For the Warlpiri people, it is Emu who gave
them the Jardiwanpa ceremony to settle conflicts. Wanta explains the
dependent totemic relationship between humans and non-humans,
the earth and the sky, the different Aboriginal groups dispersed
around the four corners of Australia, and the founding rituals which
are anchored around feminine heroines thought of as pairs of two
mothers, matrilines which are reproduced in the form of a double
helix within a multitude of totemic forms. Wanta’s task is trying to
explain a dynamic system of life production in accordance with the
mysteries of the cosmos where the multiverse becomes entangled
with space-times akin to the craziest questions posed by astrophysics.
Such an entanglement is at the heart of the Aboriginal Indigenous
practice of healing.
Chapter 14 proposes a conversation with another Aboriginal
man, a Yalarrnga healer. Lance Sullivan was born in the southern
corner of Queensland, in Boulia, a settlement proclaimed in 1879
as a reserve for his people, the Yalarrnga, who were living a hunting
and gathering lifestyle and were hunted down by settlers. One of
his great-grandfathers was a Pakistani cameler. Many camel owners
brought to Australia by the British to help with the colonisation of
the desertic continent had children with Aboriginal women, even
though it was forbidden by the government administration and the
children of such unions were sought out and taken away from their
69
parents.46 But Lance Sullivan’s mixed-blood ancestry was hidden by

his Aboriginal family, and he grew up learning his Yalarrnga lan-
guage and became initiated in the rituals of the desert people. After
working as a cultural adviser to protect sacred sites from mining, he
was offered a grant to study archaeology and anthropology at James
Cook University in Townsville where we met at the end of 2004. He
had just finished a book on his language (Sullivan 2005).
A few years later, Lance Sullivan was invited to France for an
Indigenous workshop in Lyon at which he and Wanta, who was also
invited, were asked by the director of the new Musée des Confluences
under construction to make a smoking ceremony in the foundations.
It was filmed by an Indigenous Peruvian film-maker.47 In Townsville,
where he lived as a student and a young father, Lance was regularly
asked to help people with his healing powers, including for love
magic or to cure prisoners caught by panic in jail. He explains here
(Chapter 14) how he can see with his mungan power (ngangkari or
ngangkayi in Warlpiri) which allows healers, Cleverman, like him
to see inside the body, through the skin – not just like an x-ray that
would show the bones and organs – but beyond the materiality of
the body into a vision of many coloured wires where a specific colour
indicates the place of pain; he then acts on that ‘line’ by ‘pulling’ the
pain and the ‘wire’ inside the body changes colour. This shamanistic
gesture of ‘pulling’ – which can involve the distant imposition of a
hand, touching or even going inside the body, is explained by what he
calls the parallel glass walls that give access to parallel universes that
are all present in the same material place: like a spot of grass, a stone
or a wall in my flat in Paris where we talked. To me, his description
suggests precisely something of what astrophysicists call multiverse
or pluriverse, that is the possibility of heterogeneous assemblage, like
the different logics of nanoworlds, molecular worlds, or the galactic
macro-worlds, that cannot be reduced to a universal unity. In a
book called Pluriverse: Essay on the End of the World, Deleuzian
philosopher Jean-Clet Martin (2010) describes various divergent
worlds that cannot be reduced to a homogenous universe: ‘what
is first is the place, the strength of the place, this embryonment
46
Rajkowski (1995).
47
La Terre est notre vie, 30’ documentary, 2009, Musée des Confluences, by Cesar
Galindo; filmed during Paroles autochtones (Indigenous words), an event organ-
ised by the Musée des Confluences in Lyon in collaboration with the UN Human
Rights High Commission and Survival International France.
70
Becoming Land
of a space, a topos that is going to concatenate them’. It’s all about

the emerging of a chaosmosis, just as Guattari was saying.48
Guattari would have enjoyed a discussion with Lance about his
practice of healing and his cosmovision of parrallel glass walls as
invisible folds in places. In my understanding, Guattari’s method can
be distinguished from those of Gregory Bateson by way of at least two
essential points: in relation to memory and the unconscious – which
for Guattari were at work in the concepts he created and shared with
Deleuze regarding the virtual and the actual as well as the refrain;
and, on the other hand, in the ambiguous notion of the subject.
Bateson criticises psychoanalysis for its entropic energetic paradigm
and proposes to replace it with the systemic and the possibility of
negentropy as the creative attitude of the patient in his or her interac-
tion with the analyst. For Bateson, healing is posited as a question of
‘communication’, most notably in relation to the schizophrenics that
he assists. In 1980, in an exposé, ‘Men are Grass’, Bateson (1991)
will state the following about his theory of communication: ‘A theory
of organisation would perhaps be a better way to put it, or perhaps
an even better way would be a theory or resonance.’ However, for
Guattari, communication is not the primary concern with regard to
the cure and any other form of apprehension of relations. It is expres-
sion not representation, but self-referential emergence, the possibility
of enaction.
From a Deleuze-Guattarian perspective, it would be better to say that
the actual content of expression – what effectively comes to be signified,
manifested, designated; its ‘object’ – emerges from expressive potential
through a process of the capture of that potential, and that this emergence
into being-determinate necessarily crosses a zone of systemic indetermi-
nacy by virtue of which the whole affair is tinged with a passing element
of chance. (Massumi 2002b: 12)
Guattari indeed was attracted to the practical and conceptual method
of Fernand Deligny, whose work with autistic children who did not
speak at all called into question the notion of the subject and focused
its attention more on the concept of the network and the ‘us’ (nous)
of the common created by neither one or the other, but rather a
multitude of the ‘slightest of gestures’, hence Deligny’s maps, by
avoiding speech and any direct communication with the children. As
48
Translated by the author: http://strassdelaphilosophie.blogspot.com/2012/09/
plurivers-et-modalites-dexistence.html#!
71
the film, Ce gamin, là shows, this practice allowed for the children
to transform themselves so as to grasp the world and its traces
somewhat, allowing for what appears to be a certain joy for life. The
year after Guattari’s death in 1992, Deleuze published a volume of
essays, Essays Critical and Clinical ([1993] 1997). Chapter 9 of this
volume was entitled ‘What Children Say’ and discussed the autistic
children who lived in the Cévennes region of France under the care
of non-specialised volunteer adults who Deligny called ‘close pres-
ences’ (présences proches) and who were the ones responsible for
making the maps of the children’s trajectories. Deleuze reflects on
these maps which Deligny called ‘wander lines’ (lignes d’erres) and
relates them to the Australian totemic cartographies by citing one of
my books:
The libido does not undergo metamorphoses, but follows world historical
trajectories. From this point of view, it does not seem that the real and
the imaginary form a pertinent distinction. A real voyage, by itself, lacks
the force necessary to be reflected in the imagination; the imaginary
voyage, by itself, does not have the force, as Proust says, to be verified in
the real. This is why the imaginary and the real must be, rather, like two
juxtaposable or superimposable parts of a single trajectory, two faces
that ceaselessly interchange with one another, a mobile mirror. Thus the
Australian Aborigines link nomadic itineraries to dream voyages, which
together compose ‘an interstitching of routes,’ ‘in an immense cut-out
[découpe] of space and time that must be read like a map’.49
At the limit, the imaginary is a virtual image that is interfused with the
real object, and vice versa, thereby constituting a crystal of the uncon-
scious. It is not enough for the real object or the real landscape to evoke
similar or related images; it must disengage its own virtual image at the
same time that the latter, as an imaginary landscape, makes its entry
into the real, following a circuit where each of the two terms pursues
the other, is interchanged with the other. ‘Vision’ is the product of this
doubling or splitting in two, this coalescence. It is in such crystals of the
unconscious that the trajectories of the libido are made visible.
A cartographic conception is very distinct from the archaeological con-
ception of psychoanalysis (. . .) from one map to the next, it is not a matter
of searching for an origin, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is
a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and enclo-
sures, which necessarily go from bottom to top. There is not only a rever-
sal of directions, but also a difference in nature: the unconscious no longer
49
Deleuze ([1993] 1997: 61–7); his note 7 (p. 63) refers the quotes to Barbara
Glowczewski, Du Rêve à la Loi chez les Aborigènes (1991: chapter 1).
72
Becoming Land
deals with persons and objects, but with trajectories and becomings; it is
no longer an unconscious of commemoration but one of mobilization, an
unconscious whose objects take flight rather than remaining buried in the
ground. In this regard, Felix Guattari has defined a schizoanalysis that
opposes itself to psychoanalysis. (Deleuze [1993]1997: 62–3)
As much in his common works with Deleuze as in his own writings
and practice as an analyst, Guattari distanced himself from Bateson’s
systemic approach of ecology which he felt to be too closed off, too
structuralist, but also too culturalist and behaviouralist. Guattari
shared a complicity – animated with heated discussions – with Mony
Elkaïm, a Belgian neuropsychiatrist, who, in his family therapy ses-
sions, provoked situations that would propel the actors outside of
their enclosure of the double bind of the familial system denounced
by Bateson (1972): his method, summarised in Si tu m’aimes, ne
m’aimes pas (If you like me, don’t like me) (1989), renewed interest
in systemic therapy by inspiring systems outside of Prigogine’s equi-
librium, the second wave cybernetics of H. von Foerster or Varela’s
concept of enaction.
Guattari thought of feedback or self-reference not as a metaphor
but, on the contrary, as an action of conscious and unconscious effects
and affects of a subjectivation which dissolves within the process, the
actualisation of an existential territory, and the deterritorialisation by
revirtualisation of a new possible, what he called incorporeal universes
of values or refrains. The Warlpiri attracted his interest specifically
for the non-metaphorical ‘traces’ of the Dreamings – materialised by
way of the singular sites found throughout the landscape. As we have
seen, the rhizome of the Australian Dreaming paths is not a metaphor
but a real image of the becoming-yam, which, for the Indigenous
Australians, is one form of totemic becoming among others, directly
linked to their painting-maps, their repeated gestures and their songs.
In the same way as Deleuze and Guattari took their inspiration from
birds in order to describe the concept of the refrain as ‘any aggre-
gate of matters of expression that draws a territory and develops
into territorial motifs and landscapes’,50 the Warlpiri also rely on a
multitude of visual and sonic rhythms that turn into painted, sung
and danced ritual matters of expression that mark the territories that
connect them with the sacred site that they are attempting to define
in the name of the well-being of the land and everything that lives
50
Deleuze and Guattari ([1987] 1997: 323); see also Genosko (2002a, 2002b).
73
there. Interestingly, ethnoastronomy has recently helped to confirm

the striking correlations between a series of birds, the dingo, a thorny
lizard, a spider and the stars that some Aboriginal groups used to
connect with each of them at the beginning of the twentieth century:
they have shown that more or less over a period of six weeks the
movement of a specific star corresponds to the time when the related
bird lays eggs or other animals breed. Signs in the sky were thus used
as a calendar for the earth. Today, seasonal indications that connect
some birds to stars and some animals to specific plants are being dis-
turbed by the ongoing transformation of the climate. Now more than
ever it is wise to listen to Guattari’s ‘Ecosophical Practices and the
Restoration of the ‘Subjective City’’ for what I call becoming land: ‘In
this situation, new transcultural, transnational, and transversal earths
and universes of value may be formed, unencumbered by the fascina-
tion of territorialized power, that can be separated from the outcomes
of the current planetary impasse’ (Guattari [1993] 2015: 98).
Indeed, since the climate change alert has shaken the planet, espe-
cially after the COP21 Paris agreement to reduce emissions, ‘new
transcultural, transnational and transversal earths and universes of
value’ have been spreading in various forms. Some, like the struggles
against extractivism, advocate to completely change our way of life by
stopping the extraction of fossil energies (minerals, petrol, coal, gas by
fracking, etc). Ecoactivists, especially women, also struggle against the
destruction of the land by so-called renewable energies such as dams,
wind farms or underocean gas fields. The struggles of Indigenous
people whose food resources and way of life are destroyed by all
this industrial predation meet with the claims of other actors of the
civil society. As expressed in France by the occupation of 1650 ha of
agricultural land and hedgerow (bocage) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes,
the expelled peasants and new squatters opposed the construction
of an airport to fight ‘against the airport and its world’, that is the
acceleration of a worldwide neoliberal economic model that destroys
the planet. The airport project was abandoned in February 2018 but,
in April 2018, 2,500 policemen were sent to Notre-Dame-des-Landes
to evacuate the 200 squatters who since 2012 have been building an
alternative life there with annual gatherings for discussions of up to
50,000 people (Mauvaise Troupe Collective 2018). The inhabitants
were strongly impacted by the violence of the weapons used by the
military police to destroy thirty wooden houses. Despite this destruc-
tion they resisted, and some 150 people continue to occupy and work
the land, in squatted farms, self-constructed cabins and caravans,
74
Becoming Land
looking after cows and sheeps, growing medicinal plants, with two
bakeries, a carpentry, various crafts and a library. They hosted two
large forums of discussions during the Intergalactic Week in August
2018 and the Common Lands weekend in September 2018, and
continue to negotiate innovative land agreements with the support
of many people across France and overseas.51 This ZAD (zone to
defend) has spread across France into many other ZAD.
Some authors in settler studies are very cautious of:
the ways in which Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) work has, in many instances,
reproduced notions of the frontier or ‘rhizomatic West’ that erases
Indigenous presence and reifies mythic tropes of the so-called ‘Great
American West’. As Alex Young [2013] writes: Deleuze and Guattari’s
conception of the rhizomatic West risks reproducing a discourse whereby
an account of liberation is imagined at the expense of the indigenous
peoples or whom settler colonial deterritorializations constitute a coercive
expression of sovereign power rather than an escape from it. (123) [. . .]
While we find Deleuze’s articulation useful in its diagnosis of the way the
digital may operate today, we are less influenced by his articulations of
radical alternatives. (Hunt and Stevenson 2016)
Such critiques could be addressed at the way some people in current
colonial situations pretend to use Deleuze and Guattari, for instance
the Israeli Army against Palestinians.52 But Deleuze, like Guattari,
was supportive of Palestinians or other dispossessed people.53 Many
Deleuzian thinkers continue to follow suit, including a recent call by
Deleuze Studies to boycott a Deleuze conference in Israel. Such posi-
tions feed other debates about reversed racism, with Deleuze accused
of antisemitism (Gleyzon 2015). On the other hand, there have been
discussions in France about the environmental social movements
and ecoactivism involving mostly White people and not addressing
directly issues of racial discrimination. Such a vision forgets the strug-
gle of people colonised by France, from Africa or Asia, Polynesians
who fought against nuclear testing,54 Kanaks in New Caledonia who
51
For comments on both events and also updates as to what happened next,
see: https://zadforever.blog/. See also: https://zad.nadir.org/?lang=en (accessed in
October 2018); and also see the monthly magazine zadibao.org: https://zadibao.
net
52
See http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-guattari-debord-
and-israeli-defence-force
53
Deleuze et al. (1998).
54
On 2 October 2018, Oscar Temaru, French Polynesian Ma’ohi autonomist
and candidate for the presidency, deposited a complaint to the International
75
Figure 1.4 Three stages of the Yam rhizome Dreaming. Perilpa Nakamarra,
Rosy Napurrurla and Lady Nakamarra © B. G. (1984)
try to oppose mining and Native Americans in French Guiana who

fight to protect the Amazonian against industrial as well as mafia
goldmining. Not all Indigenous people in any country threatened by
destruction are militantly against mining. Neverthlesss, the various
‘missing people’ of today, everywhere in the world, are trying to
converge their heterogeneous struggles. New local and transnational
alliances emerge between many Indigenous peoples, migrants and
African-Americans or Afropeans, descendants of colonisation in
Africa or the slavery traffic diaspora and others.
Against the fatality of a homogenous universe which would be
predetermined by the global effect of capitalism, many Indigenous
people and other collectives of people displaced or excluded who try
to build alternatives seem to propose what Argentinian anthropolo-
gist Arturo Escobar calls a political pluriversality, the possibility for
different worlds and cosmovisions to co-exist on the planet. The title
of his 2014 book Sentipensar con la terra (Feeling-thinking with the
Earth) puts forward an Indigenous Latin American concept55 that has
been guiding activists over decades to struggle against extractivism
Criminal Court (ICC/CPI in French) to accuse France of a crime against humanity

because of its nuclear testings. See also: https://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing/
the-effects-of-nuclear-testing/general-overview-of-theeffects-of-nuclear-testing/
55
The concept sentipensar was introduced in academia in 1986 by Colombian
researcher Orlando Fals Borda (2009) who promoted action-research practice in
the 1970s. See also Cepeda (2017).
76
Becoming Land
and other predations that destroy the land that they share with other
non-human inhabitants. Referring to William James’s plural universe
and the astrophysicist’s notion of pluriverse, Escobar calls for a
political ontology inspired by an Indigenous concept and practice, an
epistemological transformation where pluriversal studies will ‘maybe
have to walk along with these humans and non humans – with the
Dreams of the Land, of peoples and social movements – who in
a profound relationality, persist against all odds in imagining and
weaving other worlds’ (Escobar 2018: 36). In other words, radical
alterity is not about exotism and exclusion but about imagination in
terms of how to weave different worlds in respect of their singulari-
ties always in becoming, how to recreate outsidness in our minds.
This is what I call indigenising anthropology.
77
PART I
The Indigenous Australian Experience

of the Rhizome
2
Warlpiri Dreaming Spaces:

1983 and 1985 Seminars with Félix Guattari
Warlpiri Dreaming Spaces (1983)

Félix Guattari1 — Barbara is an anthropologist specialising in
Australian Aboriginal peoples who has written a fascinating piece of
work about the dreaming process.2 I’d like her to tell us a bit about
the collective technology of dreams among the Australian Aboriginal
people she has studied. In this context, not only do dreams not
depend on individual keys, but they are also part of an a posteriori
elaboration of the dream that anthropologists have characterised
as mythical. But Barbara comes close to refuting that definition.
And dreaming is identified with the law, and with the possibility of
mapping the itineraries of these people, who circulate all the time
since they cover hundreds of kilometers. Barbara, I would like to ask
you to try to tell us how the dreaming method functions. My first
question is to ask you to explain the relationship between dream,
territory, and itinerary.
Barbara Glowczewski – I’ll start from a language and translation
problem. There are five hundred ethnic groups with different lan-
guages in Australia, each with a term that describes something that
has been translated into English as Dreaming.3 This word (Jukurrpa,
1
Seminar discussion between F. Guattari and B. Glowczewski, ‘Les Warlpiri.
Espaces de Rêves. Exposé et discussion (18 January 1983)’, in Chimères, no. 1,
Paris: 1987, pp. 1–14. Translation by John Angell first published in Glowczewski
(2015), Totemic Becoming: Cosmopolitics of the Dreaming, São Paulo: n-1
edições .
2
Glowczewski (1981) ‘Le Rêve et la terre. Rapports à l’espace et au temps chez les
Wa(r)lpiri’, PhD dissertation, University of Paris 7, 1982.
3
The original French text contains the word ‘dream’ in English because the tran-
scriber of the audio recording did not hear the ‘-ing’ ending. French has no
equivalent to the English progressive form – the -ing – that translates literally as
‘dreaming’. The author uses a capital letter to distinguish dreams (rêves) from the
Aboriginal cosmological concept of the Dreaming(s) (Rêve/s), which is also often
written with a capital D.
81
in Warlpiri) corresponds to a mixture of things, referring simultane-

ously to a mythical time, to a series of itineraries on the ground that
criss-cross Australia in a vast web, and also to the heroes (described
by anthropologists as totemic) who are thought to have followed
these itineraries in their travels. And it also corresponds to what
anthrop gists call a totem, i.e., a power of identity stemming from
these heroes, who may have taken various forms – human, animal,
or plant – to travel throughout Australia and who have transmitted
their totemic identity to the clans. So, that’s what dreaming is about.
F. G. — When we were chatting a while ago, you said you were
not describing an archaic conception of the relationship with dream,
but that the notion remains totally contemporary and has even been
adapted and transformed via a range of acculturation phenomena.
When you were there with them, the people would ask you what you
had dreamed in the morning, and it was really conceived as a labori-
ous form of work. Can you try to explain that a little bit?
B. G. — Well actually, today, Aboriginal people refuse the English
term myth (for their Dreaming stories). They do not accept the classi-
cal separation (and I would like to say Anglo-Saxon, because I think
the French word mythe has a different connotation) between reality
and something that would belong to the realm of appearances. Still,
markers of difference do exist. A whole series of limits are at work,
but the way the boundaries are drawn does not seem the same as our
distinction between reality and dreams. But still, it depends on who
is speaking.
Whites arrived in Australia two hundred years ago. In the area
where I worked, contact took place around forty or fifty years ago,
depending on the group, and Aboriginal peoples were forcibly seden-
tarised. We don’t know very much about what happened at that time
in Australia. The question of massacres did not come up like it did
with Native Americans because of a fairly curious phenomenon – a
lot of people just let themselves die. There was a more or less general
consensus that they were lost anyway. They weren’t traditional war-
riors, so the confrontations were not particularly violent, although
there was fighting in certain areas. The entire period just slid invisibly
into history.
The odd thing is that, in the 1960s, people said that Aboriginal
people were going to completely disappear, and instead, since 1970
their numbers have grown. People wondered about this increase and
how the culture stayed vibrant even though they were forced to lead
a sedentary existence, whereas they were nomadic. One answer can
82
Warlpiri Dreaming Spaces with Guattari
be found in their specific vision of space and dreaming, which allows

them to keep travelling even when they are sedentarised. Even though
they have to stay in one place, they can continue to re-enact their cel-
ebrated travels thanks to their ceremonies, songs, and night dreams.
F. G. — And to literally manage the territories of the dream!
B. G. — Yes, and re-experience passages of their itineraries.
F. G. — We need to be specific: They manage territories that are at
least two dimensional. Dancing, et cetera, ‘mythical’ territories, but
also real territories in the sense that it is through their dreams that
they re-actualise the fact that a given territory – a particular tree or
object, or a particular configuration of the landscape – has its own
particular function in the dream. And this is even more true because
it crosses a series of segments of territory, and men and women do
not have the same way of managing the territory.
Anne Querrien — I want to address a question about the notion
of ‘tracing’ (frayage), a term often used in discussions about dreams.
I am aware of two kinds of frayage. The first, in fact, is the dream.
You encounter a space that is hostile in the real, you’re frozen in fear,
and the last thing you want to do is stay there. That said, this hostile
space actually has a number of advantages: There are mirrors, cars,
good things to eat, wealth, and so there is a dimension that is literally
tempting. And in the dream you can enter this space, and little by
little, by dint of years of dreaming, create a bridge using this modern
space to which they have been forced to adapt. Then of course, there
is dancing.
I had a crazy experience in Brittany one winter with children
between twelve and eighteen the night of the Saint Sylvester’s Day.
The church had a nightclub that played reggae and punk and so on
for the tourists between ten o’clock to midnight. After that, they
played totally cool recordings of old French songs. As ‘emigrants,’4
we adore the old French songs! All the kids do a line dance to the
recording. Then the tourists leave, except me, since I’m not a tourist.
The recording is very well made because it gives the illusion that it
is all coming to an end. And then, right when everybody thinks it’s
about to stop, the music stops, but the party keeps going and we
play cassettes. It’s very strange – the music is French, like Renaud.
4
According to Anne Querrien, it is an insiders’ joke for some Bretons to call them-
selves ‘emigrants from Brittany’, a region of France treated like a colony by the
government, where children were punished in schools for using local languages,
such as Breton.
83
At that time in my life, I was a good dancer of punk, Afro, et cetera,

but the amazing thing is that they were doing a Breton folk dance!
That’s what was going on! We spent an absolutely crazy evening
doing Breton folk dancing to punk music! It’s a pairing that matches
dance and music from two spaces that at first glance have nothing
to do with each other. And up to that point, these kids had done
Breton dancing only as folklore or for tourists in the summer. So it
became a modern dance, perfectly dance-able to ‘Renaud.’ It kept
going, and then at three in the morning, I used totally crazy thinking
based on Einstein, Zen, and things like that to reinvent the oldest
Breton dance-step, which involves hopping from one foot to the
other non-stop, like a bouncing ball, for several hours. Because the
actual principle of Breton dancing is that you don’t stop for thirty-six
hours (except for pauses to drink cider and eat crêpes) in order to
compact the soil floor of a house . . . So that was the night we rein-
vented Breton dancing. For me, dreaming and dancing both provide
spaces for technology transfer. And it is these spaces that can allow
a so-called ‘archaic’ culture to communicate with ours. These are
‘tracing’ or frayage spaces.
B. G. — When I was with the Warlpiri in 1979, I was lucky enough
to attend an initiation cycle that was performed in a parallel way by
men on one side and women on the other.5 It had been going on for
a month when I arrived and continued for another four months.
The principle of this kind of cycle is that for two hours almost every
day, and sometimes all night, the itineraries of the totemic ancestors
who are being celebrated are performed. What I am saying is that
we re-travelled hundreds of kilometers in small sequences, a straight
itinerary over a five-month period, but gradually; as you advance, it
unfolds as a series of sites that intersect with other itineraries that in
turn involve other clans that are connected to the guardian-clan of
the itinerary being celebrated, and every time, a new scene is played.
F. G. — And that’s the moment in the series when they come in?
B. G. — At the time, a certain phase of the itinerary is scheduled
for a particular evening. The dance area is essentially like this room,
and each step you take is the equivalent of a giant step in the actual
itinerary.
F. G. — That kind of tends to confirm what Jean-Claude was
saying – recounting the dream using a scenario – because it’s ulti-
mately a staging technique.
5
In camps separated by gender.
84
B. G. — I was also thinking of something else related to this ques-

tion of hostility in the city that attracts. Maybe it’s also the ambigu-
ity of what they call the secret, sacred sites that explains something
about the fact that they could not return to their sites for two
generations because they were locked up on reservations and not
permitted to travel. Ultimately, even prior to contact with Whites,
access to their part of the earth was not completely unrestricted;
there were places you didn’t go, or where you would only go as
an exception. So this exceptional, emotional ambiance could be
re-enacted in a sedentary space, particularly because those specific
sites have become dream places. Regular, physical contact is very
important, and that was the first thing the Aboriginal Australians
did at different periods. In 1967, a referendum recognising them as
citizens6 was passed that gave them back the right to travel around
like everyone else.
x1 — And what was their status up to that time?
B. G. — They had no status before then. And in 1967 the Warlpiri
settled down in their country again, and the first thing they did was
to touch the ground, the stones, and the trees in the places that corre-
sponded to their ancestors’ sites. There are thousands of similar sites
in Australia. You have to picture it as resembling a web of networks
with all these little nodes on it. So the contact is important and, as I
was saying a little while ago, if it’s an effort when we dream at night
and we wake up tired, a strong dream is in fact also experienced like
a real voyage during which you have touched the time and space of
the dream-land (of the Dreamings).
Jean-Claude Polack — Do the Aboriginal people all live a long
way from the ocean?
B. G. — There are places in the North and West where they live
near the coast. But an extremely confused controversy developed
about that, as always in anthropology. In fact, there is a tendency
to argue that Europeans were able to colonise the south-east coast
because there were no Aboriginal people in the area. And other
people have reacted by saying that it was obvious that when they
(the Aboriginal people) saw Europeans arriving, they ran away and
didn’t want to have anything to do with them. In fact, though, there
6
In fact, the referendum entailed counting all Aboriginal people as Australians in
the census; some Aboriginal people already possessed citizenship at the time, but
many others had no rights.
85
were massacres.7 There were numerous attempted exchanges. Which

is also fairly interesting, because it continues to be relevant. It’s an
idea of a symbolic exchange, in a way. In fact, they feel their culture
so strongly today that they can assimilate things from Western tech-
nology, and they consider that it’s their due, because the fact that
they exist means giving something to the Whites, while also keeping
secret what has to stay secret. As the Aboriginal people see it, it’s an
exchange: ‘If you agree that an entire part of our knowledge remains
secret.’ There are two irreducible zones, and that’s how the exchange
is possible.
So, to go back to the question of the ocean, some anthropologists
have said they ran away. And after that, a third anthropological
wave, rather than justifying the absence of Aboriginal people as a
reaction to colonisation, said that there was a life choice to make,
they had to walk, and water couldn’t be there, next to them.
A number of relatively recent anthropological studies have shown
that even in desert areas, hunter-gatherer societies that do not prac-
tice agriculture spend less time working to feed themselves than
sedentary societies. That’s also one of the theories that allow certain
researchers to argue that living by the sea was perhaps ultimately an
exception. But why were you thinking about that?
J.-C. P. — I just wanted to know if there was an idea of a limit,
an external limit, for example, in the cartographies of dreaming or
dancing.
B. G. — I think it’s not all on just one level. There’s overlap
between ‘it’s a long way away’ and ‘it’s here,’ and between past and
present. An endless back-and-forth between time and space that is
explicitly referred to; the sites are caves, and when they plant sticks
into the ground in a dancing area (I’m referring to the women here,
because the men use different objects), it is said that the two sticks
connect two points underground, forming a circle beneath. So I don’t
think it is perceived as a flat space.
J.-C. P. — But is there a limit somewhere?
7
The new history movement in the 1980s and 1990s revealed violence, massacres
and Aboriginal resistance that had been buried for decades. In the 2000s, a revi-
sionist movement began to deny this history, but an excellent documentary series
called First Australians (2008), produced for Australian Television, provided
massive evidence of this hidden Aboriginal history (see Perkins et al. (2009)).
The seven episodes of the series are accessible online at: http://www.sbs.com.au/
firstaustralians/
86
B. G. — It is full of limits! But they’re not in close proximity.

They discuss a separation endlessly. It starts with initiation, when an
individual is separated from his or her mother . . .
F. G. — There is something I want to remind you about on this
subject that I thought seemed extraordinary – the fact that there is no
numbering system beyond the number two. That must totally recon-
figure the idea of limits from top to bottom, and of the difference
between time and space. In effect, once you don’t have a numerical
system for recording information (which seems to me a theorem in
need of examples) . . . if I understood correctly, it is numbered 1, 2,
and then several. So that’s a technique for totally altering how we
keep track of coordinates. I mean it already simplifies things a lot for
Oedipus! [Laughter]
B. G. — On the other hand, there is a difference between the ‘us’ of
two people and the several people’s ‘us.’ And in fact, where the third
party comes in, without being expressed explicitly, is in the difference,
when I talk to somebody, between enunciating an ‘us’ that includes
‘you’ (the person I am speaking with) and another ‘us’ with others (that
excludes ‘you,’ the person I am talking to). That’s pretty important.
And about this question of borders, I just wanted to give an example
of a territory that’s about 600 kilometers from North to South and
200 from East to West that has a population of 3,000 people. There
are about twenty or so territories defined by circles (see Figure 2.1),
but in a completely simplified way in order to facilitate land claims. In
truth, each bubble represented here is not a territory in its own right –
it’s always the same – it’s part of a web, and you find ramifications
of the bubble in a discontinuous way inside a different bubble. So the
same group will have territorial rights over a web within a bubble
and also a bit elsewhere, but most importantly it will have a site that
establishes the link while also explaining the discontinuity. And the
hero, for example, will have travelled underground at that moment.
x2 — How does time work in dreams?
B. G. — Dreaming is the present, and it’s also ‘a long time ago.’
For me, this present that is also a long time ago is not historical time
but a time of metamorphosis. It is a dynamic time, but a time of
transformation. So it’s a time of the dynamics of transformation, but
all of the roles and all of the forms of metamorphoses also exist in
the present, except that everything changes form by changing places
in this ultimate time of the present. And it’s extremely dynamic – in
fact, transformation is the main aspect related to the dreamings that
is talked about.
87
Figure 2.1 Map of Warlpiri land claim, 1978 © CLC, Alice Springs
J.-C. P. — But it’s hard to express problems in terms of time, when

we are actually dealing with the interplay of territorialities, which is
highly spatialising compared to dancing.
B. G. — An Aboriginal person does not say that a territory belongs
to him, but that he belongs to the territory.8 So it isn’t so much that
a territory is occupied, since the land isn’t there to be conquered. It
gives meaning to people. It is dynamic and ever changing. It is not
8
Land claims have officialised the legal status of claimants as ‘traditional owners’;
The Native Title Act 1993 (Cwlth) recognised ‘Native Title’ and invalidated
the notion of ‘Terra nullius’, which defined the colonisation of Australia as the
occupation of a land that belonged to nobody: www.nntt.gov.au/Information-
about-native-title/Pages/The-Native-Title-Act.aspx
88
Figure 2.2 Map of some Warlpiri Dreaming lines © B. G. (1991b)
89
by chance that most of the sites are mineral outcroppings, and there
is a connection between all these itineraries and the underground.
And also, for example, the itinerary of the kangaroo corresponds to
a zone where kangaroos were located, and the itinerary of the wild
potato refers to a zone where there were wild potatoes growing. The
ecology of this landscape thus determines its general outlines. Then,
small events become part of the record from one generation to the
next – a hunter goes a little further and finds a place where nobody
has been; he comes back and talks about it, and people go there and
it gets dreamt about, and somebody in the next generation decides
that some child’s life force came from that place; and the dream
made by one of the child’s relatives will determine that that space
corresponds to a particular plant or animal species. In this way, there
is a multiplication of plants and animals, and small deeds become
grafted onto other itineraries and gradually, across generations, it
has shifted; you even see the same phenomenon today, meaning
that contacts with Whites (and life is riddled with contacts) that are
dreamt, interpreted by the groups, and reintegrated into an existing
itinerary. And that is how things change. Now what I do not know
is what makes it so that something that happens to someone in one
generation is retransmitted to the next generation and passes into the
dream memory of subsequent generations.
J.-C. P. — Tell me, this really is dream-work they’re doing –
they’re not just storytellers?
B. G. — Everyone is also the storyteller of his/her clan’s traditional
dreamings and mythical stories. And there are healers, but they have
a particular zone.
And the rest . . .
F. G. — They are initiates? Non-initiates can . . .?
B. G. — Yes, that’s it, after a certain age. But what happens is that
children become familiar with all of that when they are small. And
since every morning people tell each other things, they see it. People
tell each other their night dreams using words and their hands, a
manual sign language, and by tracing signs in the sand. The word is
given meaning like that in the air and . . .
F. G. — You need to be specific about a very important point for
us, if I may. It relates to the fact that there is a language of the hands
that is as elaborate as a real language.
B. G. — So dreams are related using words, the hands, and trac-
ings in the sand. It goes really fast. And children see that from a very
young age. Ultimately, it seems like they understand what is traced
90
in the sand more quickly than the words. So they learn this code
quickly. It always resembles cartography, and all of the stories are
travel narratives, so it’s always – walk, stop, and sit there . . .
F. G. — You said that time is conceived of only as the present.
Does that mean that from the linguistic point of view, there is no
future, no imperfect, no simple past? Does that have a bearing [on
life in general – transl. note]?
B. G. — No, that’s not it – people do say tomorrow, and they say
yesterday . . .
F. G. — And verbs? Are they all in the infinitive? How do they
work?
B. G. — The forms are totally different . . .
A. Q. — Like in Breton. To be doesn’t exist, only becoming exists.
x1 — Is there a notion of time?
B. G. — No, in most [Aboriginal Australian] languages. I have the
impression that they refer to time-space in a single word. It doesn’t
mean privileging space, but that the two are inseparable. That does
not mean it’s static.
J.-C. P. — It’s a way of referencing time that is possible only if
using spatial coordinates.
B. G. — I was thinking that the time I spent there was in the middle
of a ritual period, but up to 70 percent of every day was related to the
Dreamings (dancing, singing . . .). And there is something that may
be a far more generalised phenomenon, a detachment, that sets in once
basic tasks such as finding something to eat and that kind of thing have
been taken care of. Going hunting is not the main thing anymore. Of
course, they also dream about daily life. I had the impression when
I was in the camp that even when there weren’t any ceremonies, there
was a way of walking, of moving in the zones (to prepare food or a
place to sleep . . .) as if the people were spaced out, like they had taken
acid. Now, it’s difficult to know where that effect comes from. Is it
sedentarisation? Has it always been this way? I don’t know. I was
there in 1979. But there’s a blend of serenity and total apathy and
then, all of a sudden, there’s this absolutely extraordinary burst of
energy during the ceremonies. In fact, you really have the impression
of being in another place and time. I mean, maybe it’s subjective . . .
J.-C. P. — The work of the dream is to endlessly re-nomadise,
to endlessly smooth something out that had a tendency to become
striated.
F. G. — Well, if I have understood correctly, it is a re-actualisation,
in the sense that Barbara explains in her thesis; there are drought zones
91
that mean that nobody can go to certain places, or else, because of

the fact that several tribes find themselves together, or ethnic groups,
in the same places. In that case, they have to redefine what the dream
territory is. Or, as you were saying a while ago, the definition, a
child’s essence, will be one of these territories that he is attributed to.
B. G. — There’s something I haven’t described in detail yet, which
is that a child is not truly considered the product of his parents.
A woman does not become pregnant because of sexual relations,
but because she is penetrated by a spirit-child. There was a whole
controversy about that in anthropology and about whether the
Aboriginal people knew or did not know how children are made!
And now more people say they know. But that’s part of the secret.
It’s something men talk about among themselves, and women among
themselves, but it’s not something that circulates. Meaning children
never hear about it, since it is only spoken of in ceremonial spaces
where children are not present. And then it is said that the father, the
mother’s husband, provides the child with his vital force, but only
after the child has been conceived. And, although it is no longer done
now but was still practiced fifty years ago, a woman had to have
sexual relations with other men so the baby could have more life
force, because the father’s was not enough.
But what’s really significant is that beyond the level of the dis-
course surrounding the ceremonies, these things are unimportant.
In fact, it made them laugh when Whites living in the region said
that Aboriginal people didn’t know how babies were made. Which
is fairly interesting, because like on numerous other subjects, the
Aboriginal people do not seem to feel they need to prove anything.
I observed scenes in the city where people who are perfectly lucid
when they were in the camps passed themselves off as stupid even
though privately they were laughing, maybe as a way of keeping
their relationship with Whites simple; if you have money, you give
me some, you buy me a drink. It’s ‘I don’t know anything.’ They
don’t need to prove who or what they are to Whites, except for
land claims, because since 1970 they definitely have to prove that a
particular piece of land has been rightfully theirs for generations.
When you think about what is sacred and about religion, at least
for me, there is a traditional stereotype, a visual cliché, of something
very serious, silent, and somber. But what is really extraordinary is
that there is something very powerful during sacred activities, an
emotion at the limit of pathos or tragedy. The people are often crying
due to particular emotions or contact with an ancestor, but there
92
are also children shouting, dogs barking, people preparing food,

laughing, voicing obscenities, all completely blended together. There
is a playful quality, but it is play to the bitter end, like in a movie . . .
F. G. — In fact, everything is so obvious, there is such widespread
sacredness, that there is no need to lay it on too thick, or wear a
chasuble, or create some obscure practice. In Africa, I attended a
N’Döp ceremony,9 and it was a little like that at the moment of the
sacrifice.
J.-C. P. — I want to know whether what you’re saying is totally
true, I mean, whether there isn’t an increase in things that makes it so
that at any given moment, all this agitation is interpreted as a kind of
momentary wrinkle in the process. It’s like Indian ceremonies, with
this music.
B. G. — Well, following up on what you’re saying, I was thinking
of . . . this continuous/discontinuous question. Something has an effect
on a small scale, and the same thing on a large scale exerts precisely
the opposite effect. Somewhere, there’s a discontinuity, but we don’t
know where it is. On this subject, I’m going to tell you a typical
awkward ethnographer’s anecdote. Early in my stay, I heard a woman
singing one day, and I approached her and said, ‘That is so beautiful!’
She didn’t answer. Some time later, I heard the same song – it wasn’t
really a song, but something more like a modulated voice – coming
from different places in the camp; after that, it went higher and
higher, increasing in volume, and it became extremely disquieting.
In fact, this song is what people do when they’re in mourning, and
when the entire camp started doing it, it was totally unbearable . . .
9
According to his son, Bruno, in a personal communication with Anne Querrien,
Guattari went to Senegal in 1967. He may have attended a N’Döp ceremony as
part of his therapeutic experiences at the Fann Psychiatric Hospital in Dakar.
The ceremony is described as follows: ‘More specifically focused on managing
psychiatric disorders, the N’Döp ceremony conducted by Michel Meignant and
András Zempleni was intended to show practioners that traditional trance-based
rituals should be considered authentic therapeutic approaches that mobilise the
social group, making it possible simultaneously to treat the patient and to rein-
sert them, restoring their place in the community. This second film had even
more impact on the profession, because it was focused on the late, much-missed
Professor Henri Collomb, Chief of the Neuropsychiatry Department at the Fann
Hospital in Dakar. Financed and produced by Sandoz Laboratories, the film
was screened in psychiatric services, where it never failed to generate the same
questions concerning the singular effectiveness of the treatment, its amazing
complexity, and its esoteric character.’ Available at: www.ethnopsychiatrie.net/
Pratiquer_l%27ethnopsychiatri.htm
93
But what’s crazy is that the first time I heard it sung by a woman by
herself, it seemed quite joyous to me, and in fact, if you break it down,
it is a call to the dead and a kind of communication that connects an
individual with a particular dead person, a space where people meet
and find themselves. It’s also a little sad, but above all, it is a success-
ful communication event. So when the whole community turns into
this whirl of sound, it is extraordinary. It’s an example. What I mean
is that these episodes of noise and agitation, with all of it happening
at the same time, is perhaps also what sacredness feels like. And it’s
not like, you stop, you get serious – now it’s sacred. But there comes a
moment when the accumulation of the same element makes it so that
you find yourself absolutely at the opposite extreme. It’s as if a line
stretched between two opposing poles is crossed . . .
F. G. — Asymptote!
x3 — How do the Aboriginal peoples go about naming each
other?
B. G. — Kinship terminology also reflects this history of children
with respect to their parents. As in most of these societies, a kinship
system implies that you say ‘mother’ or ‘father’ to different people,
even when you know who is supposed to be your real mother and her
husband, and therefore your real father, since in theory he’s the one
who determines your heritage on a mythical itinerary. But it is so not
because the father conceived the child, but because, in crossing the
father’s territory, the mother became penetrated by the life force of
this territory, which is how the child received the life force that made
his conception possible.
This type of itinerary, which anthropologists have called a con-
ception totem, can be a plant or animal species . . . It’s something the
child will keep throughout his life, but it’s just about the conception,
nothing more, and it doesn’t necessarily mean he has any rights over
a territory. Although in fact it was usually arranged to coincide
with a vaster territory that was the father’s or the mother’s and
that, consequently, provided a new totem, which wasn’t the same
species but was associated with it. If the mother conceived her child
on another territory, he will have that conception totem, but if the
father absolutely wants his child to enter his clan, he can transfer
the rights to a territory to him at the time of his initiation. In this
case, you have two totems. In fact, there are even more, because the
child can have a totem from his mother and in addition be adopted
by another group.
What is also interesting is that it’s not the mother or the husband
94
who determines the conception site – a relative dreams it. So that’s

the strategy, and you enter into tribal and kinship systems that mean
that someone from outside the couple determines where the child
was conceived (the location at which the spirit entered the mother
and the identity of the spirit), and therefore whom within his genera-
tion the child will share rights with. Since they are sedentarised, the
conception totem is the one associated with the place where they
are settled. But in earlier generations, somebody in the community
would wake up one morning and say, ‘I know where she conceived
her future child . . .’ It can be linked to the fact that she ate something
found only in a particular region, or for example, coming home from
the day when she ate that thing, and she was sick the next day. Then
everything works backwards from that.
The name of the clan totem coincides with a system of classifica-
tory kinship that defines eight subsections or skin-names. Everybody
has one of these eight names, and that’s what establishes that particu-
lar kinship. But it is not given freely to the child; it’s a deduction that
means that someone from a subsection can only marry someone from
one of the seven other subsections. So the child bears a third subsec-
tional name that is the result of the conjunction of the two. That is
always determined. So what happens when a couple gets married
and aren’t in the right subsections? Traditionally, it was only the
mother’s subsection that counted, meaning that all acted as if she had
married a man from the appropriate subsection, and the child bore
the correct name. Today, it’s the opposite, because in recent years it
has been considered urgent to keep the clan territorialised because
of land claims, and also because there are more and more marriages
that don’t respect the subsections. So it’s the father’s subsection
that determines the child’s. The term ‘no name’ (kumanjayi) is used
when somebody dies and everything associated with the deceased
first name is banned from being pronounced for a minimum of a
year. You can refer to the name with gestures, but nothing related
to it can be uttered. That is how the language became richer. In fact,
these names always correspond to plants or animals or other things,
and that eliminates a whole cluster of words. So these are replaced
by the expression ‘no name’ or another term, but the taboo word can
come back with the next generation.
x3 — That’s how it is with Inuit people.
B. G. — When I arrived there, someone named Francis had just
died, so I couldn’t say ‘France’ because it sounded the same. The
fact that it’s not the same questions that are asked by different
95
generations of ethnographers, even though basically the materials

are the same (even more four generations ago), it’s because maybe
you’re not aware here that you see those things, but I think that if
you can see them somewhere else, that means in fact that you felt you
saw them here. If you see those things in other societies, it means we
have the possibility of seeing them here, which functions a little like
a reflection.
x1 — And these interlocking territories, do they sometimes have a
city in the middle?
B. G. — The itineraries used to go all over Australia, but now
there are cities . . .
F. G. — Sometimes there are trash piles, Coca-Cola bottles . . . but
the itinerary goes over them without any problem.
B. G. — In any case, these itineraries are invisible to us.
x1 — An important place now is I don’t know where . . .
B. G. — An important place, that’s exactly what is so terrible, that
becomes more and more difficult in fact, and I wonder how things are
going to be in the future, since there are mineral deposits on sacred
sites and real struggles. The curious thing is that a legalistic obsession
in Australia allows a zone for the recognition of rights. Since 1976,
when Aboriginal peoples were allowed to legally show that their
painted boards are like identity cards and geographical maps, they
have been recognised by the courts as representing legitimate claims to
particular sites. That happened in 1976 at the federal level, and now
the authorities do everything they can to reverse directions. Which
is fairly easy to do, because the states’ legal systems [Australia is a
federation of seven states] do not recognise this Act [which applied
to the Northern Territory].10 Which does not prevent the federal gov-
ernment from having the right to question legislation passed by the
states. Which has produced interminable trials. That is how it went
with uranium mining in Australia. They took ten years to discuss it
before beginning to do it, although they might just as well have begun
ten years earlier because of this kind of legalistic blockage. In the long
run, the Aboriginal people are not at all happy with the results, and
they believe they have lost. But after all, they did gain ten years!
And that’s the way everything goes. It even becomes absurd,
because most mining companies are multinational corporations.
And some people get discouraged and are ready to abandon the
10
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, available at: www.austlii.
edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ alrta1976444
96
project, and it’s the government that tries to move forward quickly
and pushes them. When I came back in 1980, there was a nation-
wide protest movement on the front pages for about a month.
Aboriginal peoples from every region were protesting in support
of a small community of five hundred inhabitants at Noonkanbah,
and even Whites participated in marches in every city. Priests got
arrested, and there seemed to be a broad consensus, but the problem
was oil and a company named Amax. And Amax was leaving, ready
to leave, and the government of Western Australia and the miners’
and transporters’ unions boycotted transportation of the equipment.
The government wanted to show its power, so it hired people as
a special brigade of a kind of mercenaries to escort convoys of
enormous trucks. People were posted along the road everywhere in
the desert to try to stop them. They cruised along in huge convoys
of about twenty trucks like a sort of freight train. Once they arrived,
the Aboriginal people painted themselves and blocked the entrance
to the community. And they didn’t dare push them out of the way.
As a result, after a while things became increasingly tense, and the
government passed some laws and arrested a lot of people and
started drilling. But the most recent reports say that they had totally
overestimated the deposit and that it was not close to worth it!
[Laughter]
A. Q. — The Aboriginal people tolerate people exploiting certain
sites?
B. G. — In general, they share a certain philosophical intran-
sigence that proscribes touching the earth. But some communities
accept it on condition that they receive financial compensation for
mining activities.
Warlpiri Dreaming Spaces (1985)

Barbara Glowczewski11 — I have given examples of animal, bird,
and plant Dreamings (Jukurrpa), along with mythical Dreaming
stories of phenomena like water, fire, and the stars, of objects like
digging sticks and initiation poles as well as Dreaming roles, like
Initiated men, Single women, and Invincible, the incestuous patriarch.
11
Second seminar discussion between F. Guattari and B. Glowczewski, ‘Les Warlpiri.
Espaces de Rêves. Exposé et discussion (26 February 1985)’, in Chimères, no. 1, op.
cit., pp. 15–28. Translated by John Angell for Totemic Becomings (Glowczewski
2015). Thanks to a grant from the Laboratory of Social Anthropology.
97
In fact, everything in nature and culture has its Dreaming, but not
every Dreaming element is actualised in the same way. Only about
a hundred elements are used to identify the approximately forty
Warlpiri clans. They correspond to very long invisible trails or itin-
eraries that can extend for several hundred kilometers, crossing the
territory of the clans that carry the corresponding name. The other
elements of a Dreaming form a kind of reservoir, which is the point
at which sleeping dreams become relevant. They can draw on this
reservoir to provide a new child who is going to be born with an indi-
vidual identity. This transpires as follows: The conception of every
child is announced by a dream experienced by the mother, the father,
or another relative. The dream indicates the site where the mother
was penetrated by a spirit-child, the pre-condition for making a
child. The dream also indicates which specific element of the site
provides the spirit-child’s identity. It is possible to dream that the
child was conceived on the father’s land, in which case the child
is the incarnation of his clan’s Dreaming. But they usually dream
that the child is the incarnation of a different Dreaming. This other
dreaming, i.e., the element that identifies it, can sometimes be the one
that gives another clan its identity, in which case, as the child grows
up he or she will have individual rights to the territory and rituals
corresponding to that clan, which is not his birth clan. But it is also
possible to dream that the child’s dream-element doesn’t correspond
to any particular clan but comes instead from the reservoir of plants,
animals, and objects not already celebrated by the clans.
A child who receives this kind of Dreaming has options: If his
or her clan is too big, in the past, instead of staying in the father’s
territory as is customary, he or she establishes his/her own clan based
on this new Dreaming. In a sense, this could be perceived as a new
creation, but the Warlpiri just perceive it as the reactivation of the
Dreaming memory, because the dream-element that the new clan is
based on was always part of the dream reservoir and thus present in
the environment. The only thing human beings did was to remember
the dream-element and bring it into being by connecting it to exist-
ing, well-known itineraries.
This is why it’s important to emphasise that the notions of
Dreaming and of a Dreaming’s ancestors – of Dreamtime – do
not just refer to the distant, original past. Instead, it is a time-
space that simultaneously encompasses the present, the past, and
the future, and in which every possible combination of the elements
of existence is stored. There is no notion of new elements, because
98
every element already exists even before it has taken shape, as each
element is itself a composite of other elements. In other words, the
dreaming includes everything that is possible; it has no specifiable
beginning point or ending point. It is the condition of life and of
every transformation.
Any element can be a dreaming, but that element is also connected
to other elements, and together they form what I call a constellation.
For example, the Sand Dreaming is connected to the Dreamings of
honey, bees, green parrots, and owls. Why? Because the myth – what
we call the myth, but the Warlpiri call a Dreaming – recounts that
the sand dunes were formed at the Dreaming sites when honey was
flowing in the trees and under the ground and the bees carried it
to another land, and the owls, birds of the night, and the green
parrots, and the daytime birds, were the witnesses. The story is far
too long and complicated to relate in detail here.12
So every Dreaming constellation is said to have sown the earth
with first names. And these names are the spirit-children – the dream
children – who are reincarnated from one human generation to
the next. But an individual is not just the result of the incarnation of
a spirit-child. If he remains alive, it is because he is the recipient of the
life force of his clan’s Dreaming, in other words, of a force transmit-
ted from mother to daughter. The same Dreaming constellation – the
clan’s Dreamings – is always transmitted from father to son; they are
therefore always the same names. Because of the obligation to marry
outside of one’s clan, the wife’s dreaming constellation is always dif-
ferent. What is handed down from mother to daughter results from
the fusion of the mother and father’s Dreamings; they are therefore
combinations of different dreamings from generation to generation.
Which is why this force has no name.
But even all of this is not sufficient to make a full human being
because the spirit-energy is still missing. Spirit-energy, which is a
specific property of an individual, resembles our concept of the soul,
and it resides in the individual’s belly. It is this spirit that leaves the
body to travel at night in the Dreaming. It is possible for it not ever
to return to the body, in which case the individual will be sickly and
extremely weak and therefore run-down like an electrical battery
that he can die from it. If the spirit-energy returns, it can return to
inhabit a different part of the body than the belly where it normally
12
Du Rêve à la Loi, op. cit., pp. 329–32. Story by May Yiripanta Napaljarri;
Warlpiri audio accessible at: www.odsas.net
99
resides. In this case, the individual is always in poor health, although

a shaman can help.
When a person dies, these various vital elements become redistrib-
uted. The child-spirit returns to the site where it emerged to await
reincarnation. The father’s and the clan’s life force are dissipated
throughout the length of the itinerary of the clan’s Dreaming, or
rather the constellation of clan Dreamings. The nameless life force
transmitted from mother to daughter must be conjured for funeral
rites, and it circulates among the clans in the form of the dead per-
son’s hair and, after several years, returns to the mother’s clan. The
dead person’s spirit-energy is carried away into the cosmos, beyond
the Milky Way and the two galaxies, the Big and Small Magellanic
Clouds, but only if the man or woman died of old age and not of
illness or accident. If the cause of death was illness or accident, the
spirit-energy behaves as if it was short-circuited and disappears; no
one knows where it goes. Once these forces have departed, there is
still not an empty void in the place of the dead person, however. An
image rises from him or her – a shadow, a double, or a ghost – that
is the image of the body emptied of every other element, and it arises
from the dead person. It wanders and haunts people, appearing par-
ticularly in the dreams of the dead person’s relatives while they are
sleeping. This is the downside of memory. People go to great lengths
to avoid invoking this image or even remembering it. No one in the
tribe is allowed to pronounce dead people’s names, and no one can
sing their Dreaming-songs for two years; no one can return to their
territory. But nothing can really be done to totally prevent the image
from returning to haunt them.
This is a very important point, because it is in fact the only thing
that humans create. Everything else comes from and goes back to
the Dreamings. Once all of the elements of the Dreaming that com-
bined to form the individual have decomposed, however, the dead
person’s image becomes an indivisible residue. The only difference
between the Dreaming and life is that living people produce images
of the dead that they reinsert into the Dreaming. Once the images
are reinserted into the Dreaming, they become part of the limitless
possible re-combinations. In summary, it is possible to assert that
the Dreaming is responsible for making the possible, while humans
are responsible for making the past. There is an essential point of
discontinuity between the Dreaming and humans, however, based
on the discontinuity implied by the transformations proper to the
dream itself. This raises the problem of defining the concept of
100
Dreaming. If you imagine Dreaming as a space (a dreamscape) in

which everything combines with everything else, it can be envisioned
in a sense as a continuum. The Dreaming is also the myth, though,
or rather the myths, meaning it is the sum of all of the stories
that arrange the elements among themselves and that create order
from the disorder of every possible combination. Such narrative
sequences produce permanent discontinuities, because mankind
is capable of making dreams that reveal narrative sequences that
people had forgotten. These new sequences can be integrated into
the corpus of myths, but only on condition that they are accepted by
the group, which is by no means a given and which triggers all kinds
of ‘payback’ as the Warlpiri and their neighbours call it. In a way,
then, myths create order among the different elements. The question
then is whether there is order or disorder among the myths. If one is
looking for order, I think the structural process of isolating the poles
and articulating the constellations among themselves is stimulating
but ultimately is a highly sterile mental undertaking. It cannot be
argued, though, that disorder reigns among the myths. The Warlpiri
express very specific connections, either when several Dreaming
myths cross paths at a single site, or when two Dreamings are con-
nected via a third Dreaming. It would be pointless to inventory all of
the connections, though – that isn’t what preoccupies the Warlpiri.
They do not try to attribute meaning to these connections, but on
the contrary to experience them by making them non-signifying.
This is the power of the rituals. Compositions between Dreamings
are executed through dance, and what connects the Dreamings must
not be said but lived by every individual and by the entire group.
A man or woman, after years of ritual activity, can be unable to
explain why a particular Dreaming is connected to another. It is not
his or her concern, because it has become a part of the secret that is
negotiated with age. The important thing in this process is not that
the secret conceals a missing meaning but that, on the contrary, it
is indispensible to have experienced the connections. A Warlpiri
would say that what is important is to have lived the land in a
different way but also in a way that can be aligned with others and
within the body. Only then does the meaning find a receptacle, only
on condition that the body exists can the meaning of the connection
take shape, and only then can it become a revelation. And the body
only exists through dancing and singing, and through being painted
with the elements that transcend the senses.
Based on these observations, I thought it was necessary to build
101
a model in which the organisation of the myths and the rituals was
un-dissociated and that would be articulated around what I will call
cores, a kind of black hole that represents the absence of meaning,
the condition of existence and of meaning. This model would be used
to analyse not only myths between themselves but also the elements
that compose every myth. Because beyond signifying interpretations
of why a particular element is part of a constellation of Dreamings,
there is the same phenomenon of gravitation around a core, where
in order for the magic of the story to work, you have to not look for
meaning.
We had a discussion with Félix to prepare this presentation, so I’m
going to read what Félix said in relation to what I was just explain-
ing, unless he would rather tell you himself!
Félix Guattari — What is this core that you see as traversing all
of these ritual modifications, body tracings, and so on? Is it another
structuralist key?
B. G. — First, there is not just one core – there are several – and
I was also talking about axes or lines. I perceive them to resemble
black holes, as though all of mythology were a sky, a cosmos that
is beyond our galaxy, and the myths form inter-connected galaxies
among themselves. Every core or axis forms a black hole because it’s
something that exists, and there are forms around but it cannot be
named. In order to continue to exist without being named, it would
have to remain unchanged and not be able to metamorphose; it has
no shape. Concretely, inside the group this corresponds to a secret
that must always be transmitted in the same way. What is impor-
tant, the only meaning of this thing, is that it remains unchanged,
even though everything else shifts.
F. G. — In your earlier talk you clearly stated that the thing had
to exist as it is, as an existential repetition, as I was translating, then,
that it couldn’t only subsist in a paradigmatic field of significations.
In my current preoccupations, not only is it not a matter of a struc-
tural key for the interpretation of different mythic components, it is
a matter of a certain use of the semantic material put into play which
has to be actively rendered non-signifying. It is not only the fact that
there is, in a contingent fashion, a fact of non-sense or a rupture of
signification, but that it has to be actively rendered non-signifying so
as to function as a means for what I call existential territorialisation.
And it is precisely these non-signifying elements which will constitute
what I call the transversality of assemblages: They are what will
traverse heterogeneous modes of expression from the point of view
102
of their means of expression, or from the point of view of their

content, mythical content, for example. Because what will function
from one register to another is not axiomatic, a structure articulating
signifying poles, but what I will call an ontological logic, a fashion of
constructing existence in different registers, what, with Eric (Alliez),
I call ordology, in opposition to a cardology.
B. G. — When you say transversality, that’s the way I use the
word to connect, things connect themselves among themselves, but
you can’t do an analysis of how they connect in a general sense, or
designate particular meanings that connect things. That’s not how it
works. It is not, for example, a structural opposition that makes it so
that things are connected; it’s a whole dynamic process that causes
the mythology and the society to exist and that makes it so they’re
inter-connected.
We have seen the constitution of existential territories through
dreams, and also as mythical stories and rituals. Let’s look more
closely at what happens with body painting. In the Warlpiri sense,
painting involves identifying the body with the life force of the
dreaming that is being represented, or else as an element in general,
or a particular site, or in a constellation of elements. We have seen
how every design corresponds to one or several names that refer to
a dreaming or a site. But that does not mean there is an equivalency
between a particular design and the name assigned to it. It happens
that the same design can be used for different dreamings. What
matters is what the group has decided to do in a particular situation.
If a certain woman is painted and certain songs are sung, the design
is called a particular dreaming, and not some other dreaming. Félix
would say that the pragmatic dimension takes precedence over the
semiotic dimension. So when the women no longer recalled under
what conditions a particular photograph was taken, they were refus-
ing to give the name of the design. For that reason, I systematically
made sketches along with their identification, while the women were
painting themselves, which I later matched with the photographs.
There are designs that always come back for the same dreaming; or
rather, a type of design, because the variations are infinite, within
the principle of white outlines or the number of tiny little features.
The important thing is the freedom of the women who paint to
improvise once they know the subject. When the painting is finished,
it is possible to decompose the elements, or some of the elements, to
attribute meaning to them. An animal footprint, a woman seated, a
camp, a cloud. This is what I did with certain photographs. Most
103
of the time the women do not like doing this kind of interpreta-
tive ‘pulling apart’ (décortiquage). Sometimes they offer different
interpretations. It is not a problem as long as the elements are part
of the dreaming.
What happens at the moment of painting is highly ambiguous. It
seems as though the laying out of the basic elements to be outlined
is not done with a meaning attached to each element. But sometimes
a woman painter intervenes, or even the one who is being painted
says what isn’t right and that they have to start over, that they’re not
going to do, for example, vines, but instead the river. The vines and
the river refer to the same dreaming. And so they erase everything
and start over.
It’s fairly complicated. There is not a particular vine design or
river design. But there are certain designs that cannot be either vines
or rivers. This may need to be thought of in terms of its relationship
to Aboriginal people’s memory. Nothing is invented since every-
thing is already part of the dreaming. It suffices to remember it. On
the one hand, there is no copying, but you always start at zero, you
crystallise your own dream memory. I have heard women say that
they copied a motif drawn, for example, by a man on a card board
and then do something completely different with it – for them it was
the ‘same’ thing. All these Warlpiri notions about same and different
seem to me more crucial than trying to identify iconographic codes.
In fact, since there is basically an alphabet of four elements – a
straight or a curved line (like an arc), a circle or a meandering
line – all possible meanings are necessarily distributed among these
four elements. What counts is not how these elements are combined,
but what is the context attached to the combination. This is how
recognition functions. It’s interesting that some Whites – teachers or
missionaries – have tried to use these four iconographic elements to
get their messages across. Unlike Whites, though, the Warlpiri only
understand the messages if they remember what the individual who
drew them told them.
Although they often use small arcs to represent seated people in
both body painting and sand-drawing on sand to tell stories to chil-
dren, it would never occur to anybody to systematically interpret the
small arcs in a missionary’s drawing representing the community of
the Church as people, because the arcs could just as easily represent
animal footprints, or – why not – animals in the church? I’m going to
read what Félix said about these questions of iconography:
104
So there is this signified landscape that corresponds to a particular signify-

ing tracing (picture), a variation between these two elements – signified/
signifier, based on an array, that we could call discrete, of asignifying
expressive figures. But what seems equally important to me to consider
is the following movement: First, the fact that there is a composition of
an array of asignifying expressive figures and of signifying landscapes, in
the passage from a motivated landscape to a non-motivated expression,
what I will call an arbitrarisation. Second is the fact that these arbitrarised
elements are formed among themselves so that they in turn form a certain
type of asignifying landscape. What is the benefit, and I would say,
the sense of pleasure or fulfillment (jouissance) to be gained from this
operation? It’s the fact that in the first situation, you are under a system
of constraints, which is that you take the landscape as it presents itself,
you have to adapt yourself to it in one way or another, you have to take
responsibility for one mythical sequence or another, for a particular rela-
tionship between people, groups, or elements. By passing along a chain
of asignifying expression, you acquire considerable degrees of freedom.
You still have denotation or signified landscapes, and you compose
an asignifying landscape about which you yourself say that it offers a
quasi-infinite variety of compositions of elements. So in principle, there
are two ways to view the result. A general semiological way that would
consist of saying that you have developed a code, a means of expression
that is involved in a relationship of dependency with its contents. This is
not what seems to me the most interesting path to take. If I am talking
specifically about the asignifying landscape, it is because – independently
of or in parallel with the promotion of this code – there is a phenomenon
of pragmatic fulfillment, of pleasure via the constitution of existential
territories. It’s more than the recognition of something that resembles
content, it’s a simultaneous self-appropriation of this content, which
is therefore determined, and a self-appropriation of the coefficients of
freedom introduced by these signifying chains. It is the fact that, now
that I have fabricated an asignifying existential territory for myself, I am
mastering something in terms of content but I am enjoying my own
freedom, managing my own space (mon aménagement). I am in my ter-
ritory and I can play with it, just as I can play with a range of discursive
elements.
I have often asked myself questions about individual freedom rela-

tive to the group among the Warlpiri. Félix says, and I quote, that
‘individuated enunciation can be perfectly homogeneous with collec-
tive enunciation. Conversely, a group enunciation can be perfectly
personological, capitalistic.’
I objected with the example of Warlpiri dreamers who dream
new body designs or songs and, unlike what might be expected, it’s
105
actually fairly common, the group does not take up these designs and
songs at all. To that, Félix replied:
What the individuated enunciator does is maybe a kind of prospective
work that could be taken up by the group. Like a researcher or a mystic,
he is working based on the idea that somebody else might take up his
idea. And this repetition translates the fact that he is participating as a
collective enunciator.
So I objected, citing the case of a mother who dreams her child was
not conceived on his clan’s land. Before he was even born, she gives
the specific identity of the other land she dreamt of to the child. The
group will have to accept this as a fact. The child will be initiated into
his clan’s Dreaming-totem, but he will always have the protection of
this individual dreaming that his mother, or another relative, gave
him through his own Dreaming-totem. You might say this is how
the dreamer expresses his/her freedom relative to the group. Félix
answered that you can see it as an individual choice that is opposed
to the group consensus. But for the subjective economy of groups, it
is more helpful to say that the most enriching aspect is specifically the
existence of singularisation processes, whether or not they are taken
up by the group.
Instead of saying that ‘the creative process is generated by the
cut of the individual in the group,’ the proposition is ‘the creative
process emerges with the entrance of a singularity that can come
from an individual but also from a sub-group, or from something
else that has nothing to do with the group but that comes from an
esthetic conjunction, an external intrusion, a cosmic assemblage that
begins to speak, a voice from elsewhere.’ I agree with this, on the
condition that in our societies we also think about the alignment of
the individual in a collective enunciation. But what was bothering me
is that Félix is talking about individuated subjectivity in the context
of capitalistic subjectivity. I quote:
It is no longer existential territories constituted through collective enuncia-
tors that produce subjectivity. It is collective equipment – machines – that
produce subjective individuation. In other words, subjectivity is normed
to function in the context of abstract equivalent – money, work, and all
the systems that are involved in machinic production. This production
needs to deny the existential logics which are operating in territorialised
subjectivity; but in order not to produce robots, the machinic produc-
tion must produce its antidote, territorial subjective equivalents, i.e., new
nationalities, new family types, of new kinds of ego.
106
I witnessed a phenomenon among the Warlpiri that is both specific

to their culture and perfectly reflects this definition of capitalistic
subjectivity. The problem is to find out whether the elaboration of this
phenomenon corresponds to anticipation of the threat of the Whites’
arrival or to the independent evolution of an aspect of Aboriginal
culture. The phenomenon in question began a hundred years ago,
well before White people arrived in the region, and also before rumors
of their arrival began to circulate. The Warlpiri and the other tribes
of Central Australia experienced a kind of intellectual epidemic. One
after the other, they began adopting a new kinship system that gave
them brothers and cousins and uncles in all of the clans and every
tribe. At the same time, marriage choices for all of them opened up
enormously. Still, they followed a kinship model, but not using a
genealogy based on blood kinship – the genealogy was expanded into
a classifying system. For instance, the Warlpiri previously could only
marry second-degree cross cousins, but under the new system a six-
teenth of the tribe, and of all the tribes that had adopted the system,
became marriageable ‘cousins.’ Around two hundred different kinship
relationships, each designated by a different word, were distributed
within a system of equivalence. This system was so successful that
more isolated tribes are currently in the process of adopting it.
I was lucky enough to observe this adoption process, because
a tribe that did not use this system had invited the Warlpiri to
visit them to bring them a ceremony. The Warlpiri themselves had
adopted the ceremony a hundred years ago; at the same time they
adopted the kinship system. The new system gives everyone names
that Aboriginal peoples call skin-names and that anthropologists call
‘subsections.’ The Warlpiri not only distributed these names to every
man and woman, but also to all of their ancestors – the heroes of
their dreamings, their myths.
And so the two ancestral heroines, celebrated in the new ceremony
that the Warlpiri were adopting at the time of the new kinship
system, were assigned the skin-name that corresponds to ‘mothers’
of the paternal clan; in other words, the name of a woman from
outside the clan, because the Warlpiri are exogamous (i.e., they
marry outside of their clan). In this ancestral story, the two women
were sisters, and under the new system, sisters share the same skin-
name. So they received the same skin-name in addition to their two
ancestral first names. This was a new ceremony because it came from
a northern tribe, but it became ‘Warlpirised,’ with a new dream-
myth-itinerary (Dreaming) called Kajirri that the Warlpiri elaborated
107
for the occasion. The ceremony was originally linked with a specific
dream-myth. But here is a good example of how, in a space of fifty
years, the Warlpiri conceived other ceremonies also called Kajirri.
They expanded the initial Kajirri model: two sisters, mothers from
the clan and from outside, from other dream-myths. This process
of equivalency could be seen as parallel to that of the new kinship
system. Nevertheless, it is hard to say that these equivalency models
become implanted against the existential territories, as Félix says
about the capitalistic subjectivity of equivalency. On the contrary, it
seems like the existential territories are reaffirmed and clan identities
are maintained via these assemblages of models. Even if people don’t
return to their lands, they continue to celebrate them. But how can
you distinguish between what an Aboriginal person experiences now
and what his or her ancestors experienced?
What I was saying to Félix is that even in the 1940s some isolated
groups had never seen or heard of Whites. There were bomb tests in
the south-western deserts in the 1950s and 1960s, and un-sedentarised
groups would see an explosion and not know where it came from.
And when the Whites came looking for them, they had never heard
of them before . . . And groups that had never seen Whites didn’t
even bother with describing them, but they did organise a camel and
horn ceremony, because another group had seen camels. The word
that went around wasn’t ‘we saw some camels,’ it was dancing, and
that’s very important because, as I said earlier, the important thing
is not that there are rituals, or knowing what they mean, it’s that the
rituals take place.
So they danced the camel, but they didn’t call them camels . . .
Maybe the Whites were camels with horns!13
F. G. — What seems to come out of all this is a series of activi-
ties with multiple entry points, through body paintings, dancing,
singing, dreaming, and so on, but approached with a certain prag-
matism that says well, if we don’t get there one way, we’ll get there
by a different one, which explains the relativity of the entry points
and the impossibility of an analytical coding system. What seems
to be the objective is an abstract, machinic fulfillment (jouissance),
13
The horns imitated bulls and other cattle that had been introduced by settlers.
When Europeans started to cross Australia on camels (with Pakistani guides),
Aboriginal peoples first viewed them as new creatures, half-man, half-animal. The
dance was circulated as both news and entertainment (see Rosy Napangardi’s
first contact story at: www.odsas.net).
108
and gaining a certain possibility of playing with the coefficients of

freedom such that one has an array of asignifying expressive figures,
which are in fact supported by all kinds of correspondences. For that
reason, the various territorialised semiologicial economies have that
finality on every level, including in terms of kinship ties, preferential
marriages, and so on. And as a matter of fact, it makes me think of
the finality of the child, who also has this objective of being able to
create increasingly abstract games. We could demonstrate that the
goal of children’s games is to master articulations at an abstract
level via a similar entry point. Moreover, the difference between this
and capitalistic abstraction is that the abstract quantities involved
are in fact regulated, and they don’t factor into the coefficients of
freedom because the economy of abstraction is literally colonised,
literally articulated, and because there’s this notion of a coefficient
of libertarian fulfillment (jouissance) of abstraction that is a goal,
whereas the activities of abstraction in capitalistic subjectivity are
highly regulated.
Jean-Claude Polack — The ways the people you are talking about
express themselves are very close to the discourse of one of my
patients who tells me similar things, where I get especially lost . . .
There are dreams, and there are stories, objects, phenomena, sub-
stances, and materials, all of which enters into extremely complex
articulations with body parts and with moments in the story. What
strikes me, too, is that she tells stories to me today that are not so
different from those she was telling me twenty years ago. It’s at
the same time somewhat enriching and yet impoverishing in certain
ways, but something has remained constant – it can’t be said that
she constantly invents new things, there’s a transmission. What her
case shares with this one is this kind of enormous effort that she
continues to make, even though we are working in an Assistance
Centre through work14 and she lives in specially-provided housing;
and she continues doing her cartographic work, which at the same
time takes elements of her story, events she refers to, and that I am
sometimes involved in (‘In Egypt, three hundred years ago, when we
met outside the mosque . . .’). It’s very complicated, but when she
said that three or four times in a row in ten years, it compels me to
think she’s not simply dazzling me on purpose so that I get confused,
there’s something more important going on. It always consists of
creating a kind of continuum between these stories and the system
14
Regarding this organisation, see Polack and Sivadon (2013).
109
of involvement of her body, which is in a state of dispersal and is

unbelievably complex, in which I am trying to gradually . . . It is
astonishingly difficult, and I have realised a certain number of things:
Her syntax is so bizarrely put together that if I don’t understand what
she’s telling me, I am incapable of remembering how she said things
after she leaves, to the point that I asked her if she would allow me
to record our sessions . . . What I find striking was when you said ‘It’s
not the same thing,’ which introduces a shade of meaning, starting
from when we short-circuit the phenomena of signification between
semblance or identity and analogy; I mean there’s something that
only goes into formal levels of presentation, drawings, etc., and you
have the impression of a transposition of multiple effects in a trajec-
tory onto the field and in traits to, on the skin, and even still there is
this continuity – but there is this permanent flow consisting of always
deciphering the maps and identifying the tracings, in fact there is an
inscription. There might not be signification, but there are tracings,
there is an ongoing cartographic effort, and it may be that pragmatic
process . . . what is very interesting in the case of my patient is what
you say about the benefits of fulfillment (jouissance), she talks about
them: She has things with her urethra, for example, or her asshole,
when there is a certain kind of event happens that can interact with
what she calls, in her words, the little skin there on the groin, there
are special moments when one has the impression that she has a real
orgasm, a partial organ-pleasure, and so there is something that can
be referenced on the map. That way we know that it works. When
she noticed connections like that, you get the impression they are
ongoing, and that’s what I find so striking: Ten years later, it’s always
the same story, I mean the meeting with Ho Chi Minh at the Château
de Langeais who made her a child up her ass . . . So there are in any
case things that hold up amid all that, it’s precisely these localisable
fragmented productions of fulfillment (jouissance) that are not very
numerous – perhaps five or six – that are very precise on her body,
and they are the only points around which one has the impression
that one can try to get something stable to stay in place. And in addi-
tion, it is articulated in a very complex manner, that I have not been
able to understand, with her medications. And her prescriptions.
Because medicine is one thing, but prescriptions are totally different!
They have to be written in a particular way . . .
x1 — I have the impression that these people travel so they can
make history. Ultimately it’s through travelling that this history is
made; it doesn’t need to be made by seizing power.
110
B. G. — In New Caledonia, too, stories of land distribution

are complicated, not because there are Dreaming stories like for
Aboriginal peoples, but there is a historical memory about the itin-
eraries, the pathways that people from previous generations moved
along/walked through . . .
J.-C. P. — There’s also something else . . . Potocki’s novel, Le
manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (The Manuscript Found at Saragossa),
where numerous trajectories are also told by different personalities,
because each of them discovers his buddy, who tells a story, and after
a certain number of pages you no longer know who is saying what.
What’s extraordinary is that, no matter how varied the adventures
of the different participants are, there are matrices and constants
that regularly return, like the hero of every story who always ends
up meeting two women who are sisters, very beautiful; he wants to
sleep with them, he falls asleep in their arms and wakes up under
a gallows with two hanged men. There are many variations on the
appearance of the two sisters, and on the hanged men, too, but what
is never missing, I mean, what is in every variation of the story,
is always there, even though the variations are multiple, there are
the two sisters, the hanged men too – they vary, but they’re never
missing. Which means that the multivariate nature of the story is still
connected through a kind of structure . . .
F. G. — Oh yeah! That’s where we reconnect with our debate
with Eric (Alliez)! Is it a structure? It seems to me very interesting
in Barbara’s description that you can’t talk in terms of structure.
Because she presents series of variations that are in fact infinite vari-
ations; she says there are four fundamental semiotic elements – the
circle, the half-circle, the straight line, and the meandering line – but
that the system is ultimately open. In fact, how can you reconcile the
fact that there are these open variations with the fact that there is this
rigorous individual or collective apperception: That, what you did
there, it’s OK! But that isn’t OK! It is unacceptable!
So there are imperative judgments. It’s this knowledge of a
composition of intensive traits that, unlike the cohesion that might
occur between discursive elements, have no referent, or in any event,
whose references are, shall we say, self-referential in nature and
that only refer to their own environment within a specific context,
but they aren’t translatable in the way that you might be able to
situate various local referents that belonged to a whole to create a
general structural map. I am trying to distinguish between two kinds
of logic – a logic of discursive wholes from an ordological logic,
111
Figure 2.3 Abe Jangala, one of the Warlpiri artists from Lajamanu who was in
Paris in 1983 © B. G. (1984).
112
meaning that its procedures and purposes are totally different from
the cardological logic, which is the logic of articulated wholes, even
though these two logics are not entirely unrelated. In a certain way,
ordology expresses itself through languages constituted via cardol-
ogy, the logic of wholes, in which there are relationships between the
signifier and the signified, but in fact, it puts them to a different use,
because it is a use that targets an existential effect, with thresholds,
meaning that this effect is more or less traversed, it is crossed, it is not
crossed, but it is incontestably either crossed or not crossed.
I have the impression that what Australian Aboriginal peoples
contribute to us is a high degree of ease that worries us a lot, not so
much as participants in a capitalistic kind of subjectivity, but because
this subjectivity relies on vast disorganisation, an immense crushing
of every other mode of existentialisation – in dream, in desire, in
daily life, in every way.
113
3
Guattari and Anthropology:

Existential Territories among
Indigenous Australians
Palestinians, Armenians, Basques, Irish, Corsicans, Lithuanians, Uyghur,

Gypsies, Native Americans, Australian Aborigines . . . all in their own way
and in very different contexts, appear as so many leftovers of history . . . In
fact this nebula with fuzzy contours is called on to play a growing role at
the heart of the international relations that it is already ‘parasiting’ consid-
erably. And for our part we consider that, in the future, the nationalitarian
fifth world will no longer be simply passive and defensive, but will bring
a decisive renewal to the cultural values, social practices and models of
society of our times. (Guattari ([1985] 1986), Les Années d’Hiver)1
In the early 1980s, the decade Guattari called Les Années d’Hiver
(The Winter Years), when he was testing the concepts, graphs and
machines of his Schizoanalytic Cartographies, in his seminar it was
sometimes difficult to understand what was happening in his intel-
lectual garage, full of spare parts and oil.2 But a very tangible flux
regularly emerged, like an illumination that sketched out a route,
onto which everyone would graft certain of their own questions.
We had the impression that the brain, the heart, the body with
or without organs, disconnected us from our individual identity
through diverse crystallisations of subjectivity, while reinforcing our
existential bedding in a flux of collective desire. It was a passion-
ate subjectification, shared with Guattari through a multitude of
singularities: a vocalisation of ideas, as Deleuze put it. I would like
1
This is taken from the text of a lecture that Guattari gave in Bilbao on 26 March
1985 to the International Congress ‘Los derechos colectivos de las nacionesmi-
norizadas en Europa’. It was repubished in Guattari (2013). It is worth noting
that Guattari’s neologism ‘nationalitarian’ does not mean the same thing as
‘nationalist’[TN]. Some French references were suppressed in the 2011 translation.
2
This essay first appeared in French in the journal Multitudes 34 under the title
‘Guattari et l’anthropologie: Aborigènes et territoires existentiels’, in 2008. It
was translated by Andrew Goffey for the collective work, The Guattari Effect,
E. Alliez and A. Goffey (eds), London and New York: Continuum, 2011.
114
Guattari and Anthropology
to emphasise here my debt with regard to Guattari’s thinking by

tracking some steps in the exchanges that we had about my fieldwork
with Warlpiri people in Central Australia, notably on the occasion
of two seminars published in the first issue of Chimères.3 Guattari is
often quoted – with Deleuze – by Anglophone anthropologists (par-
ticularly in Oceania) and ignored – even rejected – by a generation of
French anthropologists.
It seems that most of them have missed the anthropological poten-
tial of his writings, whether by ignorance or incomprehension of the
evolution of his concepts. That of ‘collective assemblages of enuncia-
tion’, for example, in the debates on the subject, agency and modes
of subjectification. Or the linking together of the three ecologies
(environmental, social and mental) in relation to the systemism of
Gregory Bateson’s ecology of the mind:
in my own modelling system, I try to advance the notion of an ecosophi-
cal object which would go further than the ecosystemic object. I concep-
tualize the ecosophical object as articulated across four dimensions: those
of flux, machine, value and existential territory [. . .] it is really a matter
of producing the junction between the machines of ecosystems of mate-
rial fluxes and those of ecosystems of semiotic fluxes. I am trying, then,
to enlarge the notion of autopoïesis, without restricting it to the living
system, as Varela does, and I consider that there are proto-autopoïeses in
all other systems: ethnological, social, etc. (Guattari [1991] 2013)
The articulation of existential territories with different systems of
valorisation and ontological self-affirmation is, in my opinion, an
essential key for the anthropological analysis of any process of resin-
gularisation of the relation to place in the contemporary universe of
globalised interactions.
Anthropology, Kinship and Politics

When Robert Jaulin tried to mobilise public opinion against the
ethnocide of Amazonian Indians, George Balandier replied (in a
discussion filmed in 1967)4 that such societies were condemned to
disappear, because their cultures did not have any ‘images’, which –
as in the case of Japan – would allow them to adapt to the changes
of modernity. The last fifty years have shown, on the contrary, that
3
1987, see Chapters 1 and 2, this volume.
4
In an interview with Max Pol Fouchet in the film by Julien Papée (dir.) (1967),
Mort et Métamorphoses des Civilisations, Paris: INA.
115
despite the killings, the dispossessions and the destruction of their

environment, the Indigenous peoples of the Amazonian rain forest –
like others in Australia or in the Pacific – had, precisely, trusted in
‘images’, whether in their shamanic visions, or their political use of
art and media (Glowczewski and Soucaille 2007). Guattari was con-
vinced by Jaulin’s arguments and by the alternative model presented
by the Amazon Indians, such as it was described by another of his
anthropologist friends, Pierre Clastres. The latter’s essays Society
Against the State ([1974] 1987) had provoked a sort of scandal in
the arena of French anthropology, by calling into question, among
other things, Lévi-Strauss’s postulation about war as the effect of
failed exchanges. The conflict worsened to the point that Clastres
and Jaulin quit the Laboratory of Social Anthropology founded by
Lévi-Strauss.
In the Department of Ethnology that Jaulin ran at the University
of Paris 7 (Jussieu) in the 1970s, we were told to turn our backs on
structuralism: rather, it was a matter of urgency to analyse the cri-
tique of past orders carried out by feminism, countries in the process
of decolonising, and Indigenous peoples. Alongside Jean Monad,
we had the opportunity of listening to Native Americans explain
their resistance. I was a witness to the impressive creativity of the
Aboriginal Australians who, in the name of their ancestral value
systems had – after decades of struggle – succeeded in getting a law
passed (Northern Territory Land Rights Act 1976) that allowed them
to make legal claims for the partial restitution of their traditional
lands. They had been dispossessed of these lands by their forced
settlement on reserves in the 1950s, when they had had to abandon
their lives as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers.
In the 1980s, the Aboriginal people of the desert reappropriated
their lands by car, establishing ‘outstations’, solar-powered camps,
with windmills for water. Both men and women were involved in
sacred rituals, painting their bodies with designs that symbolised the
geographic journeys of their totemic ancestors, called, in the lan-
guages of Central Australia, Jukurrpa, Dreamings. Night after night,
they celebrated these Dreaming pathways so as to initiate the younger
generations by dancing and singing their links to sacred sites marked
with traces of the Rain, Lizard or Yam Beings. In some communities,
the men and women began to paint their totemic maps on canvas, in
order to get their territorial rights – founded on their spiritual links
with places – legally recognised. Their success was stunning, and
painting became a tool for political claims and an economic resource.
116
Within twenty years, the profusion of artists, of their works, and

their growing popularity among collectors from all four corners of
the world would challenge the categories of art history, getting this
Aboriginal art out of primitivism and into the global contemporary
art market.5 The message that I brought back from Australia after
my first field trips in 1979 and 1980 related to the ancestral con-
nections with the land, which Aboriginal people experienced as a
moving network: a real ontology in which humans, animals, plants,
water and the whole of social life are thought of as the actualisation
of virtualities that are constantly in feedback with the space-time
of Jukurrpa, the itineraries of ancestral travellers called Kangaroo,
Plum or Digging Stick Dreaming. These beings and the tracks of their
voyages are effectively defined as being in becoming: sleeping in hun-
dreds of places, springs, rocks, and interacting with humans in their
own dreams and rituals, which aim to reinforce the links between all
living things. Dreaming was practised as a means of regenerating life.
My 1981 thesis, ‘Le Rêve et la Terre – Rapports au temps et à
l’espace des Aborigènes d’Australie’ (The Dreaming and the Land –
Relations to time and space of Aboriginal Australians) (1981a), aimed
to demonstrate that this dynamic process – mistakenly described by
most anthropologists as ‘out of time’ – was intrinsic to the traditional
vision of the world. I also demonstrated the active role of women –
whose power had been denied (and continues to be denied) – in these
societies. I utilised Guattari’s conception of the flux of desires to
account for the mythic networks and to analyse numerous rituals:
including the circulation among allies of hairstrings as women’s non-
alienable possessions, or a secret cult which, dreamed following the
wrecking in 1912 of a ship (Koombana) deporting Aboriginal people,
had journeyed among different language groups as a symbolic form
of economic transformation producing a double law, including that
of the White men.6
Two years after I defended my thesis, I received a surprise phone
call from Guattari, whom I hadn’t yet met. He invited me to his
5
Glowczewski, B., ‘The Paradigm of Indigenous Australians: Anthropological
Phantasms, Artistic Creations and Political Resistance’ [2007] (retranslated in
Glowczewski 2015), discusses, among other things, the matrix of four ontologies
proposed by Philipe Descola in Descola ([2005] 2013).
6
I was inspired by Annette Weiner who, in Maurice Godelier’s seminar in 1980,
described the circulation of mats among Trobriand Islanders as an inalienable
possession of women that thus affirmed their power. She went on to develop this
notion of inalienability in Weiner (1992).
117
seminar to discuss my thesis, a copy of which he had received from

his friend, the video-maker François Pain, and which he had just
read in one sitting.7 Guattari’s enthusiasm for the totemic paths and
the use of dreams by the Warlpiri was stimulated, by, among other
things, the fact that the kinship system – which extends to all the
totems (Dreamings) and their associated places – seems to favour
social strategies that prevent centralised structures of domination,
a situation that echoes Clastres’s ‘society against the state’. For the
latter, it was the recourse to war among the Amazonians that seemed
to maintain the autonomy and dispersion of each group, preventing
the centralising of power and its seizure by some, over others. Many
specialists of the Amazon region have criticised Clastres’s extreme
position, but they recognised the non-hierarchical structure, based on
kinship, of the social reproduction of these groups.
A certain resistance of the Warlpiri (and other Aboriginal peoples
living in the desert or in the North) to the accumulation of goods
and to Western-style management speaks in favour of the fact that in
diverse ways they refuse the logic of the state imposed by colonisation
and by current bureaucracy. The refusal of a central power seems to
me to be founded not on war, but on a particular way of extending
kinship (in the form of symbolic filiations and alliances) to the man-
agement of land, of its resources and associated systems of knowl-
edge. Men and women use the English terms ‘boss’ and ‘worker’ to
translate the ritual roles and duties according to which everyone is the
‘boss’ (kirda in Warlpiri) of the land of his/her father and the ‘worker’
(kurdungurlu – also ‘manager’,‘lawyer’) of the land of his/her mother
and of his/her spouse. This description of meta-kinship so fascinated
Guattari that he invited me to talk about it to the patients at La Borde.
It was an extraordinary experience, because the residents seemed to
have a surprisingly intuitive understanding of the Aboriginal aims
and workings of these social games and rituals. The rules for the
ritual management of the land and of the knowledge of stories, songs,
dances and paintings invert the roles of men and women according to
the place in which each action takes place: the land of the father, the
mother or the spouse. It is not just a matter of biological parents or of
true marriage alliances, but of classificatory parents.
Everyone in the group as well as every stranger who works with
the group is automatically classified as the skin brother or sister of
7
Glowczewski (1981a), see Chapter 1 of this book. See also Ales (2006: 129, 131,
134), and Viveiros de Castro (1998), Alliez (2005), Sibertin-Blanc (2005).
118
certain group members. Thus, all social relations are expressed with
kinship terms as one big family. This system has inspired numer-
ous anthropologists and mathematicians, but the literature on this
subject – including the sections Lévi-Strauss devoted to Australians
in his The Elementary Structures of Kinship ([1947] 1970) – is a little
lacking in flesh and in soul. This posed a real problem for anthropol-
ogy which, at the time, had difficulty in transposing into the same
books both theoretical speculations and the performativity of life.
In my experience, the skin-names kinship system is a brilliant
type of role-playing (which in its simplest form corresponds to
what is called in mathematics a dihedral group, combining revers-
ible and irreversible cycles of relations between eight poles). At the
time though, most anthropologists rejected the analogy with games
to explain ritual or political activities. The patients at La Borde,
however, immediately said that the ‘family game’ was essential for
mental and social survival and for that of the environment. In other
words, they saw in the Australian kinship game an entwined dynamic
similar to the three ecologies Guattari was later to theorise.
Totemism, Structuralism, Onirism and Deterritorialisation

Since everything that is named in nature and culture is associated, in
the desert and in the North, with series of toponyms whose links are
deployed in stories (Dreamings) that act as ‘totems’, I have empha-
sised that there was no opposition between nature and culture in
totemism (an opposition which is the basis of Lévi-Strauss’s nomi-
nalist interpretation of totemism) from the moment that concepts
from more than 200 different languages, like Jukurrpa, translate
individual or collective totemic identity (animal, plant, fire or digging
stick) and geographic tracks, which – nourished by mythic stories
and rites – can be renewed in dreams in the form of new episodes,
recounted, sung, danced and painted. The guardians of the Warlpiri
law say that they invent nothing, but rather uncover and reveal what
is virtually already there in memory, the matrix of the Dreaming,
anchored in places associated with totemic beings. This dynamic
use of the notion of the Dreaming space-time, which identifies each
being with places inhabited by multiple totemic becomings, offers an
alternative to Freud’s Totem and Taboo and to the nominalism of
Lévi-Strauss’s Totemism.
The creative survival and linguistic diversity of Aboriginal
people, who have been present in Australia for at least 60,000 years,
119
challenge all forms of evolutionism, whether Darwinian, Marxist or

Deleuzo-Guattarian, such as the primitive/barbarian/capitalist model
in Anti-Oedipus. Deterritorialisation is certainly a very handy notion
for talking about the mental, social and ecological disaster provoked
by the colonial violence of the displacement of Aboriginal people
into reserves, and the physical and ontological dispossession that the
forced settling of these former semi-nomadic hunters constituted.
Contrary to the use that some make of it, deterritorialisation here is
not a metaphor but the expression of the becoming of the contem-
porary unconscious as machinic deterritorialisation of living fluxes.
As Anne Querrien says, the latter ‘is coiled around colonial deter-
ritorialization’ and enables the social, economic and environmental
disaster that colonisation has engendered to be survived.
Because deterritorialising, in the sense of Anti-Oedipus, is the
human capacity to make up imaginary, symbolic and real terri-
tory (the three aspects of desire in Lacan), it doesn’t coincide with
everyday territory, the territory of animal reproduction, but refers to
the capacity to dream territory, to modify it, and not simply to submit
to it, to pass beyond the death drive, the drive of maximal reterrito-
rialisation. What struck Félix in my work with the Warlpiri was to
discover that this capacity for deterritorialisation is not restricted
to Westerners. Even if their enforced entry into modernity, with the
welfare state and integration, has destroyed some Aboriginal people
even more, others resisted, not ably with the tour de force of their
artistic production, which metabolises the territories of their totemic
Dreamings.
For Guattari, the creation which reassembles (réagence) through
the desiring machine without Lacan’s imaginary/symbolic/real tri-
angle is a revolutionary position provided that one moves away
from the psychiatric position, in which the object a is a pathology
to be resorbed. The apparent absence of any taking into account
of the strength of the assemblage and of the agency (agencéité) of
desire in the structuralism of Lacan or that of Lévi-Strauss perhaps
explains the fixed aspect of a certain analysis of myths and of kinship,
which justified the pursuit of the deterritorialisation of anthropology
without taking into account the possible deterritorialisation of the
peoples concerned.
It remains the case that for many readers of Anti-Oedipus the
category of the nomad as landless is problematic. Aboriginal people
in the desert and elsewhere in Australia have an extremely strong
attachment to diverse places, while nevertheless being nomadic. The
120
particularity of Australia is that land is perceived not as a juxtaposi-

tion of limited parcels but as an open network of places linked
together by narratives and songs in the form of virtual tracks forming
a network that is both unlimited and ‘boundless’.
It is open in all the cardinal directions but also according to the
principle of an infinite interior. One can always add a narrative place,
with its geographical basis, between two others, and a subterranean
historical level as a series of superposed strata or layers of events into
which one ‘digs’ (via rituals and dreams). These additions are pro-
duced by the interpretation of dreams, which seems to follow certain
cultural patterns, to legitimate such and such a vision as authentic.
One requires the approval of other groups for a dream vision to be
certified as ‘real’, it has to be linked to pictorial and narrative forms
transmitted for hundreds of generations, the Warlpiri man Maurice
Luther Jupurrurla explained when invited to Paris with eleven other
law men from Lajamanu to recreate a ritual sand painting at the
ARC8 and to dance in Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
(see Figure 4.2). The demonstration of authenticity here is an exercise
in tracking, just as with a hunter who has to recognise a print on
the ground. A dream must reveal a sign of the ancestral principle
that is said to sleep actively in different sacred places of a territory.
These places – rocks, springs, creeks, trees – which seem natural to
us, are cultural places, in the sense that events are attached to them:
mythical episodes, oniric interpretations and re-enacted historical
and everyday experiences. All these events are constantly re-stratified
by rituals and the everyday experience of the people who journey
in these places, by physically camping in them or by visiting them
mentally in dance performances or dreams.
In his intellectual fight against the reductionism of certain applica-
tions of psychoanalysis and structuralism (in Lévi-Strauss or Lacan),
Guattari was very touched by this Australian practice of dreams and
above all by their integration into much more complex Indigenous
concepts accounting for the links between the productions of the
unconscious (songs, narratives, dances) and the reterritorialisation of
their referents in extended networks of exchange:
Archaic societies, in particular [those of] Australian Aboriginals, are cus-
tomary in that each oneiric performance refers not only to a diachronic
8
See Glowczewski ([1989] 2016). Created in 1967, ARC is a department of the
Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris.
121
series of individual dreams but, furthermore, to dreams with a collective

reference, playing a fundamental role in the establishment of filiative
relations, ritual itineraries and the fixation of transactions of all kinds.9
Aboriginal people presented Félix with an example of his ‘logic of
archaic intensities’,10 which made evident the role of dreams as a car-
tographic assemblage, ‘the mythic Aboriginal cartographies, which
“endeavour to localize the transformative potentials of their real and/
or incorporeal Universes”’.11 He referred again to the Indigenous
Australians in Chaosmosis, writing ‘in archaic societies, it is through
rhythms, songs, dances, masks, marks on the body, ground and
totems, on ritual occasions and with mythical references that other
kinds of collective existential Territories are circumscribed’.12
Colonisation underestimated the Indigenous Australians’ rela-
tion to place. On the pretext that they didn’t practise agriculture
or construct houses (with the exception of the groups established
along the Murray River in the south-east), Australia was supposed
to be a Terra nullius, an ‘uninhabited land’. It was only in 1992
that this Western colonial notion was challenged by the successful
land claim of Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander, which led to a
change of Australian law (the Native Title Act of 1993). Hitherto
it had been commonly claimed that Aboriginal people could not be
‘owners’ of the land, since they said they ‘belonged to it’, a reasoning
that in the colonial era even legitimated their relegation by some to
‘non-humans’ with the status of animals. However, by claiming a
totemic continuity between humans, animals, plants, rain and the
land, Aboriginal people (made up by more than 200 different lan-
guages and fifteen linguistic families) also insist on the fact that they
have always acted on the land: singing, dancing, painting are literally
their means of ‘looking after the country’, in the same way as burning
the scrub to ‘clean’ the land of spinifex grass or even to practise a
semi-nomadism to manage the seasonal irregularity of the sourcing
of waterholes. Without ritual activities and seasonal practices, the
elders say, no species of flora or fauna would be able to reproduce,
and the climatic balance would be disturbed. Droughts and cyclones
can thus be a human responsibility and threaten the reproduction
9
Guattari ([1989] 2013), Schizoanalytic Cartographies, p. 240 in French version
(pagination in English version not known).
10
Ibid., p. 92 in French version.
11
Ibid., p. 92 in French version.
12
Guattari ([1992] 1995), Chaosmosis, p. 15.
122
of humans, because everything is linked on the earth, in the sea and

the sky. From the Aboriginal point of view, every human action is
responsible for the balance between the forces of nature and the
health of people and all other living beings. This is not a holism but
a singular responsibility for each gesture accomplished individually
or collectively, in everyday life, during specific events and also in
dreams. It is properly a matter of collective assemblages of enuncia-
tion as defined by Guattari: ‘collective must not just be understood in
the sense of a social group: it also implies the entry of diverse collec-
tions of technical objects, material and energetic fluxes, incorporeal
entities, mathematical and aesthetic idealities, etc’.13
Ontologies and Topologies

When I went back to the desert in 1984, I sent Guattari carbon copies
of the transcriptions of translations of the narratives in Warlpiri that
I was recording and typing out on a little typewriter. On my return,
I lived in his flat, which gave me a wonderful opportunity to discuss
the first outlines of my book Les rêveurs du désert (Desert Dreamers)
with him on a daily basis. Sometimes he copied out phrases of mine
that pleased him in a notebook, such as: ‘what is a word? In Warlpiri
it is yirdi, which also serves to designate a proper name and a songline.
The etymology refers to yirdiyi, which condenses the indissociable
connections between words, itineraries, the flesh and the dream.’
‘The status of the word is to be a place or an itinerary. As names of
places and heroes correspond to things, it is essential to understand
that these are neither poetic analogies nor metaphors.’ ‘In other
words, there is no relation between signifier and signified, between a
hero and his name. The hero is nothing other than the power of his
name.’ ‘To say the name of a place, to dance a place or paint a place,
is not necessarily an identification with this place, but a manner
of being, simultaneously in the places of this Dreaming.’ Another
remark that caught Félix’s attention comes from my Warlpiri friend,
Barbara Gibson: ‘Just as the Voice of the Nights [mungamunga] can
make us ill because it shows us too many things in dreams, so we are
hit by “stones” when we are too weak in our heads.’14 These phrases
have everything to do with the materiality of thought: the Warlpiri
13
Guattari (1986), Les Années d’hiver, p. 289.
14
Glowczewski and Nakamarra Gibson (2002) is a joint analysis of the dream
which opens this book.
123
enunciation of apparently abstract procedures that are conceived

in the form of tangible traces seems to escape from structural and
linguistic oppositions. Our conversations were continued in public
in his seminar on 15 February 1985, published in the first issue of
Chimères, with our discussion of 1983.
Being in the grip of my year-long immersion in an experience in
the field which had me journeying with the Warlpiri to their sacred
sites, I was finding it difficult to translate the complexity of their
concepts. I spoke of black holes and of energy to try to depict these
knots of recognition of secret connections localised in sacred sites
that are unchanging, while everything around them can change. Félix
told me to replace the notion of energy with those of ‘singularity’ and
of the ‘a-signifying’:
[I]n my current preoccupations, I would translate what you say in the
following fashion: not only is it not a matter of a structural key for
the interpretation of different mythic components, but it is a matter
of a certain use of the semantic material put into play which has to be
actively rendered non-signifying. It is not only the fact that there is, in a
contingent fashion, a fact of non-sense or a rupture of signification, but
that it has to be actively rendered non-signifying so as to function as a
means for what I call existential territorialisation. And it is precisely these
non-signifying elements which will constitute what I call the transversal-
ity of assemblages: they are what will traverse heterogeneous modes of
expression from the point of view of their means of expression, or from
the point of view of their content, mythical content, for example. Because
what will function from one register to another, is not axiomatic, a
structure articulating signifying poles, but what I will call an ontological
logic, a fashion of constructing existence in different registers, what, with
Eric Alliez, I call ordology, in opposition to a cardology.15
In 1988, Guattari became angry when he read my Thèse d’État ,

‘Le Rêve et la Loi. Approche topologique de l’organisation sociale
et des cosmologies aborigènes’ (Dreaming and the Law. A topologi-
cal approach to Aboriginal social organisation and cosmologies),
which was subsequently published.16 It was an attempt to compare
different kinship systems, myths and ritual taboos (of the Warlpiri
15
Guattari and Glowczewski, see Chapter 2 of this book. On the opposition of
ordinal/cardinal, Viveiros de Castro (2004: 13) wrote: ‘When prices describe
cardinal relations of value in transactions between things, the kinship terms
describe the ordinal rank between the exchange partners’ (author’s translation).
16
Glowczewski (1991): see extracts in Chapters 3 and 4 of this book.
124
and other Aboriginal groups) by deploying them differently on a

hypercube, according to several levels of relational complexity. Why
use topology? he asked. Was this a return to the structuralism of
Lévi-Strauss and Lacan? Lévi-Strauss had indeed been very pleased
with this work, which articulated on the Australian continent what
he had proposed for Native American myths with the Klein Bottle
in The Jealous Potter (Lévi-Strauss [1985] 1988). But my inspira-
tion came above all from science fiction that speculated about the
fourth dimension. My true judges were the Warlpiri: when I showed
them the hypercube as a tool to account for the kinship logic of
their Dreamings, the elders, custodians of the culture thought it
was a ‘good game’! The famous acrylic canvases that the desert
Aboriginals had begun to paint in the 1970s in Papunya (in 1985
in Lajamanu)17 show structural tendencies in the network composi-
tions of the Dreamings, as too the kinetic effects of the continuities
between the above and below characteristic of their cosmological
concepts and ritual procedures. According to the Warlpiri, these
consist in transforming the kanunju (below/virtual/totemic beings
and spirit-children of the Dreamings) in kankarlu (above/manifest/
human and all those who give them their totemic names), and vice
versa: this is the topology which had encouraged me to propose the
hypothesis according to which there is a ‘topologic’ (illustrated by
the properties of the hypercube) common to kinship, ritual taboos
and myths.
Discussing recently the question that Deleuze and Guattari pose in
Rhizome – ‘Does not the East, Oceania in particular, offer something
like a rhizomatic model, opposed in every respect to the Western
model of the tree?’ – the Australian anthropologist Alan Rumsey
(2001) refers to the drawing ‘The Body of Australia’ published in
the book Yorro-Yorro by David Mowaljarlai. This visionary initiate,
with a Ngarrinyin father and Wororra mother, came to Paris in 1996
to call on the scientific community to protect the rock paintings
of his people, threatened as they were by diamond mining.18 His
drawing showed a map of Australia and its surrounding waters,
entirely covered by a network of intersecting lines connecting places
distributed at their intersections in a regular manner like a net.
Rumsey, who worked for years with the Ngarrinyin, recognises the
17
Myers (1986, 2002), Glowczewski (1991b), Glowczewski and De Largy Healy
(2005).
18
See conversations with Mowaljarlai in Glowczewski (2004).
125
‘rhizomatic’ nature of the cartographies of Aboriginal Dreamings,

but he opposes to them more ambiguous examples from Oceania, in
which the rhizome model cohabits with arborescent models, notably
in Papua New Guinea and on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu (studied
by the geographer Joël Bonnemaison). Thomas Reuter (2006: 25) has
underlined the fact that numerous researchers have shown that in
Oceania botanical metaphors are most common for expressing social
relations in the Austronesian world; they ‘generally suggest a segmen-
tary process of spatial expansion due to organic growth from within,
but can and are applied also within local societies featuring a popula-
tion with multiple origins’. Corporeal metaphors are also present for
imagining social space, but the most important of all the metaphors
in the Austronesian world to ‘conceptualize socio-territorial unities
is the path or the journey, a trajectory of human movement through
space and time’.19 Like others, Rumsey (2001) contests the absence
of arborescent systems in Oceania but admits that the rhizome is
‘good for thinking with’ on condition that it is experienced by the
people of Oceania as ‘emplaced’ and not ‘nomadic’.
In the 1980s, particularly after contact with my Aboriginal
data, Guattari reformulated his understanding of the rhizome in
the ethnographic context of the production of existential territories
anchored in places, the space-time of myth and dream, the body and
kinship, extended to all becomings, human and non-human. The
Yam Dreaming, whose rhizomes weave through the desert and other
regions of Australia, is explicitly used by the Aboriginal people of
these regions not as a simple metaphor but as a model for thought:
the vines where the yams grow extended in a subterranean manner,
coming to the surface (notably when they are stimulated by a little
adder), and creep to the surface of the ground, coiling around trees
in multiple branches that are sometimes broken. Vines at the surface
lead to hidden tubers and they supply the Aboriginal people with
a rhizomatic machine for thinking alliances and the circulation of
tangible or intangible goods for exchange, goods for which the own-
ership is inalienable.
19
‘In Palau the metaphor of the turmeric rhizome is used to explicate relations
between kin and between villages. Traditionally people of Palau, the western-
most and largest of the Caroline Islands, made sense of kin relations through
matrilineal decent. To explain these relations they used what has been termed the
“turmeric metaphor”.’ See Rainbird (2001: 112).
126
Elsewhere I have compared this paradox of ‘keeping-while-giving’20

to the copyleft advocated by the creators of software for which the
author’s ownership would be better recognised by circulation than
by forms of copyright that transform knowledges into monopolised
commodities. This thought encounter, between local traditions of
the putting into circulation of non-alienable goods across Australia
and between groups in the Pacific, and the community of Internauts
who advocate Creative Commons licensing, is one of many examples
of a transversal – and, here, transhistorical – attractor. It sides with
the knotting together of the three ecologies – mental, social and
environmental – of Guattari’s ecosophical project.
20
Title of Weiner (1992) – see footnote 9 above. See Chapter 8.
127
PART II
Totem, Taboo and the Women’s Law

Figure 4.1 Janjiya Liddy Nakamarra Herbert, painted with her Dreaming Pirlala
Bush Bean on the breast and the Yumurrpa cave on the belly. Lajamanu.
© B. G. 1984
4
Doing and Becoming:

Warlpiri Rituals and Myths
It is by dancing, singing and painting that Warlpiri men and women

(learn how to) memorise the complex network of their Jukurrpa
trails. They discover progressively the epics of the relevant eternal
beings. For their own Jukurrpa and the ones owned by their relatives
or allies, they have to remember, without knowing at first their full
meaning, dozens of designs to be painted on the body or on ritual
objects and songlines accompanied by dancing steps. Through regular
ritual activity, a man or a woman in their forties should be able to
decipher, by inference or with the elders’ help, various symbolic con-
nections: how to interpret a verse related to a given narrative episode
and Dreaming site, or how to recognise a gesture in a dance that
mimes that ancestral action. The content and the scope of this type of
knowledge give prestige, so everybody is cautious about exchanging
his or her ritual and mythical information. Some excel more than
others in making wide networks of alliances that give them access to a
larger body of knowledge related to the sacred geography. However,
no one person holds the whole of the tribal heritage.
During totemic rites, visits to the ancestral sites, ceremonies for
initiations, mournings or settling dispute, all ritual life is marked by
the circulation of goods (kunari or palwa) between people of differ-
ent clans, between men and women, and always according to specific
kinship. Today, wheatflour dampers, or even commercial bread
wrapped in plastic, replace the acacia seedcakes made by women
in the old days. Similarly, hairstrings, ritual goods exchanged intra-
and extra-tribally become rarer and are replaced by cloth, blankets,
clothes and even money. Some male ritual objects are made with
these hairstrings as are the female ritual ropes used, among other
things, for therapeutic operations performed by women for people
of both genders. Traditionally, headbands, belts and tassels, the only
clothes of the desert people, were made with human or possum hair.
By replacing ritual gifts of hairstring with cloth, blankets and clothes,
Aborigines retain a dress function in the objects exchanged. The
economic importance of this ritual circulation of goods and services
131
has led the Warlpiri and their neighbours to call everything that is
connected with the ritual activities business, and those in charge busi-
nessmen and businesswomen. In the absence of specialised priests,
the majority of people in their late forties have this status.
Yawulyu: Female Rituals

In 1979, then in 1984, at the Warlpiri settlement of Lajamanu and a
few bush sites, I witnessed some 200 yawulyu rituals performed by
women.1 The performers identified their songs, dances and paintings
on bodies and objects, with totemic heroes, their paths of travel and
special sites. These were often the identical sites recorded among
the men thirty years earlier by Mervyn Meggitt (1962). Men recog-
nise that women are kirda, owner-custodians of their fathers’ land,
rituals and Kuruwarri (image-forces), and that they are kurdungurlu,
manager-custodians responsible for the organisation of rituals asso-
ciated with the land and Kuruwarri of their mothers or spouses. This
recognition contradicts Mervyn Meggitt, and Nancy Munn (1973),
according to whom kirda (girda) and kurdungurlu (gudungulu) land
responsibilities and the concept Kuruwarri (guruwari) are an exclu-
sive prerogative of the men. For Munn, who worked in Yuendumu
in the late 1950s, female ritual activities were centred on private
business, love magic and healing; women had no territorial and
cosmological impact at a community level, with the exception of
their participation, also noted by Meggitt, in some stages of the
circumcision ceremonies.
My own observations of the role of women, parallel to that of the
men, as custodians of lands and totemic rituals, confirmed what had
already been recorded in the 1970s, during surveys for the Warlpiri
land claims (Peterson et al. 1978; Maddock 1981). Should we con-
clude that the (Warlpiri) ideology concerning women has changed
during this decade, or that the first observers were biased by the
assumption that women are excluded from any symbolic sphere
1
And many more since, everytime I came back (1988, 1991–1997, 2000, 2004). In
2010, my two daughters were painted on the chest by the Lajamanu ladies, who
by then had replaced their ochres with acrylic paint. Since the women’s business
camp has been replaced by housing, very few such rituals take place except during
initiations and the Milpirri Festival I was lucky to witness on 3 November 2018.
But women also paint their bodies and dance for art events, as they did in Paris for
the Feast of Music on 21 June 2012 and at the Brave Festival in Poland just after
that. Chapter translated from Glowczewski 1991.
132
Doing and Becoming
involving social control, and that consequently they neglected the

political impact of the female ritual activities?
Warlpiri people themselves say that women’s rituals related to the
paths of travel and Kuruwarri of their diferent local groups were per-
formed well before the time of the fieldwork of both Meggitt and Munn.
Nevertheless, the dream activity of the women, noticed by Munn to
be prolific in Yuendumu, seems to have considerably increased its
repertoire of songs, dances, graphic designs since the women came to
lead a sedentary life. Local yawulyu were extended to women of other
clans and sometimes modified, while other yawulyu were dropped in
favour of new ones acquired through dreams. It is possible that the
development of female rituals as an effect of sedentarisation, far from
being something new, simply reactivated and accelerated a traditional
process that used to be restricted to every clan and its affines, and not
generalised to the whole of the tribe as it is today.
Whatever Jukurrpa trail is celebrated, a female yawulyu always
unfolds according to the same series of actions. First, the women
who today wear tee-shirts or dresses uncover their chests. They coat
their breasts and shoulders with cooking oil or butter – in the olden
days they used animal fat – mixed with a little red ochre. The ochres
are ground on a flat stone which is then used as a palette. They are
reduced to a powder, which a few drops of oil give the consistancy
of a thick paint. Agreement about the choice of the Jukurrpa to paint
is reached tacitly: by the group taking up the songs started by some
women, by others coming close to them if they want to be painted,
or by the initiative of one woman who draws the basic symbols on
the chest of another woman with her finger coated in red paint. Once
these signs are traced – circles, arcs, horizontal, vertical or meander
lines – the design is identified as belonging to a particular Dreaming,
still allowing several painters to add variations of their choice so
as to cover the whole chest and shoulders; one holds an arm while
she draws small arcs behind the first one centred on the shoulder;
another does the same with the other arm; a third woman paints dots
around a big circle drawn on the solar plexus.
Symbols in red are only the first step. The real freedom of the
painters comes when they outline these with white paint, obtained
from rocks such as kaolin. Flat sticks, narrower than a finger, at
the end of which a string is wound tightly, are used as brushes. The
more imposing a woman’s breast, the better it is appreciated because
more white lines can be drawn in the space left between the red ones.
Outlined in white, the red symbols seem to come closer. Shiny black
133
skin progressively disappears under white lines, and what is left in

between is now painted with even narrower red lines. Once the paint-
ing is finished, the underlying symbols are difficult to see: they seem
to melt into their outlines. The effect is kinetic, a many-coloured
substance, a transfigured body.
For some Dreamings, such as Lizard (liwirrinki, lerista or lygo-
soma sp.) or Yam (purrda or yarla), the colours are reversed: the
basic symbols are traced in white and outlined with red. For others,
such as Tree Honey (ngarlu) or Stone Curlew (wirntiki), yellow ochre
replaces or is added to the red, and for Black Plum (yawakiyi) black
charcoal is used. In addition to the chest, women paint designs around
the navel during the growing up or healing rituals, and on the back
when treating a persistent disease. All these painting sessions, which
generally take place in the late afternoon, last for a minimum of two
to three hours. Several women are painted at the same time, and they
then take their turn decorating others also wanting to be painted.
Sitting apart from the group of women painting, another group
prepares ritual objects, especially the wooden boards, ten to fifteen
centimetres wide, twenty to sixty centimetres long, called yukur-
rukurru. Munn translates this word as ‘ancestral women’ without
mentioning the existence of the boards.2 The boards are painted
reverently on one side with designs of the Dreaming to be celebrated.
This is said to awake the living image that inhabits them; in this sense
the totemic female or male heroes are materialised in the boards.
Some carry engraved designs, which are painted afresh at every ritual.
The yukurrukurru boards are made by the men, often the husbands
of the depositary women. Every woman should have her own board,
but sometimes sisters or co-wives share one.
Men also give women smooth flat stones, elongated or oval in
shape, called by various names, or simply called Jukurrpa or Kuru-
warri, because they are believed to contain through their shape and
their substance the living force of the relevant Dreaming: these stones
are eminently sacred and always manipulated with great reverence
and emotion. They come from totemic sites, and the power of those
places is concentrated in them.
In some rituals, such as Acacia Seed (ngurlu) or Emu (yankirri),
women also paint one or two wooden dishes of the same shape
and name, parraja, as the ones used to carry babies on the hip or
2
She does not mention the female boards but she uses the same word (julguruguru)
for the male boards (Munn 1970: 154).
134
Doing and Becoming
food collected in the bush. In Yuendumu, they also paint smaller

and deeper dishes, ngami. All these vessels are made by men but
when they are designated for yawulyu, they may not be used for
any other purpose. Some women have little boomerangs they use to
stage a fight between the Yams (yarla and wapirti), a ritual that was
dreamed by a Lajamanu woman in the 1960s:
Long time ago I received a yawulyu for the Yam Jukurrpa that belongs
to the Nakamarra and Napurrurla skins. Mungamunga, my mother gave
me in dream four designs to paint on the body. Since then in Lajamanu
and Yuendumu, women always dance decorated with these paintings to
celebrate the land of Yumurrpa. The first design is the jijardu yam flower
we call ‘father’. From there run the wapirti roots we call ‘mothers’. On
these mother roots, young roots ngamarna develop, the ‘children’ who
give the yams. The last design is mardi, the ‘old man’, the edible yam
which terminates the young roots that spread everywhere.
I saw these paintings for the first time when we performed, here in
Lajamanu, the Rain Dreaming ceremony. The Nangala and Nampijinpa
were dancing their land from Kulpulunu. And us, Nakamarra and
Napurrurla, we danced with them for Wingki. It was formed by a cloud
that came underground from Kulpulunu, was caught by a bushfire and
choked, leaving a salty waterhole.
We were dancing for weeks when I got this dream for Yam. In the
morning I called the kirda women, ‘Hey you, Nakamarra and Napurrurla!
Mungamunga gave me a yawulyu. But it’s not for my country Yiningarra.
It is for your country Yumurrpa. It comes from your Yam Dreaming, so I
give it to you, I can’t keep it.’
‘No’, they said, ‘you must make the paintings and look after this yawulyu,
until we learn it properly. Then only you can give it to us.’
Mungamunga had told me in my dream, ‘Look at these yam leaves. Look
well! Don’t give them too fast, you must learn first!’
All night the spirit of my mother helped me to learn. So in the morning
I was able to teach and paint on the chest the four designs, ‘father’,
‘mothers’, ‘children’ and ‘old man’. I also painted a yukurrukurru board
with the pilkardi design, the adder that blocks the way to the roots and
forces them to go up the surface. In my dream I saw the adder and heard
her singing for the yams. She was going west. I dreamt I was painting a
board with her design. The adder was rolling in the grass and calling the
‘old man’ to make many ‘children’.
After the adder, I saw two Yam men leave Yumurrpa to attack two other
Yam men from Waputarli. The Yumurrpa men were big Yarla yams and
135
the Waputarli men were small Wapirti yams. The men fought, the big
Yams killed the little ones. Going back to Yumurrpa, the victors put their
roots in the ground and I saw new young roots and yams fall from the
mother root.
This story is told in one of the songs I dreamt, ‘In Yumurrpa, the young
roots fell . . . In Waputarli, the little Yams were evicted for ever.’
In the Dreaming the two miyi food were fighting, but since the groups
custodians of the two Yams live in ritual company and cannot fight.
After the fight, the roots spread everywhere in the plain. The ‘father’
went underground in a spring. His roots still come across the Yumurrpa
cave.
When our elders lived in this site, they never touched these roots nor the
yams from the cave. They would always go further away in the plain to
find their food. When I was young, I camped with my family at Yumurrpa
and used to go down in the cave to get water. I could feel the roots in the
dark, and we took the water without hurting them. I had to push them
gently to fill my water carrier, just like the Kajirri sisters.
In my sleep, mungamunga showed me Yurnkunjurru, the place where
the ‘old man’ multiply himself so much that the ground cracked on the
surface. I could see the grass becoming green with the growth of new
yams. Two women were cooking and digging out yams. They were the
Kajirri sisters. Seeing the cave, they bent over to see and shouted, ‘Oh, but
there’s lots of women here!’
They continued to cook the yams. Then they erected two kuturu sticks
in the ground. Then all the women came out of the cave and danced
towards the two sticks. There was a lot of women. After the dance, they
sat and the two sisters gave them yams to eat. They took out young men
from the cave where they kept them in seclusion. It was midday.
‘Where are we going to find some water?’, asked one.
‘We’ll have to go down in the cave’, said the other one.
So they lit little yirriwurrunyu firesticks. They needed light to see the
roots, so not to hurt them. Very carefully they pushed the roots and they
filled their ngami dishes in the spring. The other women of my dream
were waiting outside to pick up the dishes the two sisters were filling, one
after the other. (Janjiya Liddy Nakamarra Herbert, 1979)3
3
This revelation recorded in 1979 was in the appendix of Glowczewski (1991),
with an oral version in the CD-ROM (Glowczewski 2000). Janjiya Nakamarra
also dreamt the Jurntu purlapa danced by the twelve men in Paris. See her portrait
in Figure 4.1.
136
Doing and Becoming
For the Dreamings of the Initiated Man (ngarrka), the Digging

Stick (kana) or the Honey Eater Bird (manirtirrpitirrpi) which sees
the souls of the dead, women sometimes cut thin branches (wurparri)
a metre or more long that represent spears. In everyday life, boomer-
angs and spears are restricted to men and should not be touched by
women.
Of all the objects commonly used by women, the only one they
make themselves is the hunting stick, kana or karlangu, about one
metre long, sharp at both ends, which they used traditionally to dig
out wild tubers, lizards or small marsupials, and for fighting. Today,
although crowbars have replaced them for hunting, wooden sticks
are still essential ritual objects, commonly called kuturru, fighting
stick, and ceremonially mangaya, a term designating a female secret
power. We will discuss this power more fully later. For dancing,
women traditionally made headbands from hairstrings tinted in
white or ochre and embellished with bandicoot tails that hung over
on their forehead. Nowadays they wear a cloth ribbon to which they
sometimes sew white feathers to form a peak.
A yawulyu can entail only painting up and singing, but usually
when women dance a kuturru stick, coated with red ochre and deco-
rated at one end with the design of the Dreaming being celebrated, is
driven into the ground. It is said that the participants in the ritual are
thus brought into contact with the Jukurrpa space-time and beings.
Sometimes the stick is erected in the morning, with or without a
dance performed by only one woman, and this gives the signal that a
ritual will take place in the evening. For the Honey Ant (yunkuranyi),
a circle is sometimes drawn around the stick on the ground and filled
in with the appropriate designs.
At Lajamanu, ritual objects are always painted by the kurdun-
gurlu women, the managers, that is members of clans allied to the
one called kirda, owner of the Dreaming which is being celebrated.
The distinction kirda/kurdungurlu is also operational among the
women of Yuendumu, but it does not apply in the painting of
objects4 (Dussart 1988–1989). Every woman is owner of some
Dreamings – hers and those of her ‘brother’ clans – and she is
manager of other Dreamings, especially those of her mother’s and
her husband’s clans.
Several Dreamings may be celebrated at the same time, especially if
their paths of travel have crossed at the same site. Different sequences
4
Dussart (1988–1989), this PhD thesis has since been published (Dussart 2000).
137
of dancing succeed one to another, in which the custodial functions

are reversed. In principle, women dance a Dreaming as owners, and
they play the role of choreographers as managers. They then sur-
round the dancers, reminding them with many gestures and shouted
orders the path they have to follow on the dancing ground. They are
the ones who place the painted boards or other ritual objects there
and give them to the dancers at the right moment. When the dance is
accompanied by songs, some kurdungurlu stay sitting, and sing with
the owners who do not dance.
On the ground, the trace of the naked feet of the dancers, who
usually move along in Indian file, jumping with their legs straight
and slightly apart, form meanders superimposed on one another. So
they imprint in the sand, in a cloud of red dust, the geography of one
or several ancestral Dreaming track. A good yawulyu ritual should
raise a lot of sand. For some Dreamings, such as that of the Acacia
Seed, a dancer picks up a handful of sand which she puts in a ritual
dish carried under her arm and, as she jumps, she scatters this sand
along her way. The same dish may be held with both hands, lifted to
the sky, passed from one dancer to another and put on the ground,
the unpainted concave side facing down. Sometimes women move
forwards on their knees, close up against one other, and form a circle
around a dish, a kuturru stick or the boards, on which the design is
always turned towards the sky. They are then believed to catch the
Kuruwarri concentrated in their painted bodies and these objects.
With their palms open towards the sky, and shaken in a staccato
manner, they lift the Kuruwarri to spread them on the earth. Then,
their palms turned towards the earth, singing and beating the same
beat, they send them back underground.
Sometimes two women make a more figurative pantomime of a
specific ancestral event; often the managers perform this rather than
the owners of this Dreaming. It usually happens during the night
yawulyu.5 All dancing terminates when the boards are deposited in
front of the spectators or the erect stick, and a handful of sand is
thrown to close the ritual by interrupting the link with the Jukurrpa
space-time.
When another yawulyu is not planned for the next day, one or
two women dance and take away the stick. The dances rarely last
more than half an hour, except in the nocturnal vigils or initiation
cycles. As soon as the dancing is finished, the managers hide the
5
Or in the bush, that is when men cannot see what is going on.
138
Doing and Becoming
objects in suitcases, or slide them between the leaves of the roof

of the boughshade in the women’s ceremonial camp. Before every
ritual, the designs painted on the objects during the previous ritual
are erased then the objects are painted again, with the same or dif-
ferent designs. The painted women get dressed and usually sleep still
painted. If during a new ritual traces of the old designs persist they
wash them away before they are repainted.
Male Rituals
Male elders meet every day on the ceremonial ground, but they com-
plain that young people do not join them and that, for this reason,
they are unable to perform their rituals as often as women. To
summarise Meggitt: like women, men paint their bodies and ritual
objects, they perform dances or pantomimes which stage ancestral
epics, and they share the ritual functions between kirda and kurdun-
gurlu. The musicologist Wild (1977) has noted that both men and
women are painted on their chest, belly, thighs and face, but only
managers are painted on the back. Preparation for male rituals takes
longer and is more elaborate than for female rituals, especially when
men use bid down or wilf cotton to cover their bodies and faces.
They dye it white or red and glue it to their skin. In the most secret
rituals, blood is drawn from their arms and used as a fixative.
Among the ritual objects, juju, are wooden boards with different
names that are often connected to particular Dreamings, beings or
trails. They may be engraved, painted or both. Some are pierced at
one end, to which a string is attached, which allows the board to
be whirled round to produce the humming sound typical of a bull-
roarer. Women, who are supposed not to know of the bullroarer’s
existence,6 attribute the sound to a Dreaming bird kuyupardukuyu-
pardu, which protects the initiates; its name, which incorporates the
word kuyu, flesh or game, alludes to the bird always calling out for
meat, its hunger like that of the young initiate who is prohibited from
eating meat during his retreat.7 In their rituals, men decorate their
6
Most women do know, but they pretend not to for the sake of the young girls and
boys (see Glowczewki [1989] 2016).
7
When the bullroarer (like other boards) is materialising a female being, it also
alludes to the hunger of the novice’s future mother-in-law who is waiting for him
to be initiated, to get the game he will hunt for her (see the ritual at the end of the
initiation).
139
Figure 4.2 Warlpiri men performing Jurntu purlapa, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord,
Paris © B. G. 1983
shields, which are similar in shape to the women’s dishes, and they
build emblems, headdresses or poles – structures made with hair-
strings covered with down and painted – characterising a particular
Dreaming.
For Dreamings such as Python (pirntina) or Emu (yankirri) men
sometimes paint large ground paintings, always with the same tech-
nique, using glued bird down to fill the space between designs traced
in red. Women may not see the making of these frescos, except in
some rain-making rituals that do not take place nowadays, in which
men and women used to sing together for hours. Invited to Paris for
the Festival d’Automne 1983, twelve Warlpiri men from Lajamanu
agreed to produce such a fresco associated with the Jurntu site for
the Python Dreaming on condition that it would be destroyed after-
wards. At the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord they also performed a
dance associated with the same site that was revealed in a dream to
Janjiya Nakamarra, a prolific woman dreamer.
The dance depicted the spirits of three deceased male custodians
of the Rain Dreaming, who had gone to join their Jukurrpa to give
this dream to their descendants through the medium of the woman,
who belonged to another clan.
140
Doing and Becoming
All started with the bough shade where I kept my business things in
a case. Especially the yukurrukurru painted with the Yam Dreaming
I dreamt earlier on. My bough shade was very close to the one of the
Nampijinpa and Nangala.
One day, as I was coming back from work at the mission kitchen, a
Napanangka called out
‘All your things are burnt!’
When I was away some flames came out from my bough shade. She tried
to stop the fire with two other women, but the fire stopped only after
burning my case. I started to wonder
‘Is it a Fire spirit that lit a fire in my case? But why?’
I was very sad and went to sleep. That night, I dreamt about two
Nangala each coming to me with a yukurrukurru board. They were
dancing and shaking them and put them in front of me when they sat.
Then a crowd of Dreamtime women came to dance. I did not recognise
their faces. But the Nangala had the face of Yakiriya and Miyangula. I
was in the dream too, and I was feeling sick every time I saw the boards
in their hands. They were painted with new designs, and to see them
made me weak.
When I woke up in the morning, I was so weak that I had to go to the
clinic. The sister said she might have to send me to the Darwin hospital.
I knew I was not really sick, it was only the dream that had hit me too
strong. My mother’s spirit and all these Dreaming women had caught my
spirit, making me warungka (mad). I slept at the clinic and had the same
dream again.
The next day some women came to visit me. I recognised Yakiriya et
Miyangula and shouted
‘I always see you two dancing!’
I was delirious but the two Nangala in my dream had their faces. The
nurse kept me at the clinic for a month. Night after night, I was dreaming
the same dream or new things connected with it.
Finally I was better and I asked all the women and men to gather. They
came to the camp where my things had burnt near Kuwinyi. I told them,
‘I’ll give a new yawulyu to the Nampijinpa and Nangala women for the
Fire Dreaming. And to the Jampijinpa and Jangala men, I’ll give a new
purlapa dance for Jurntu.’
Women and men listened to me. They had recognised in my long sickness
the message of mungamunga, the Voice of the Night who had brought me
a new yawulyu to dance, to sing and to paint. The Fire spirit had burnt
my things to give me these dreams.
141
I know now that I dreamt of Yakiriya and Miyangula because it was

the spirit of their deceased fathers who was using them to teach me the
new way to celebrate their Dreaming. I saw the two men, Yunkugarna,
Miyangula’s father, and Munkurturru, Yakiriya’s father. It was his spirit
who lit the fire, my mother’s spirit told me so.
The two men were custodians of the Rain Dreaming at Lungkardajarra.
I saw them with a third Jampijinpa, Werrilwerrilpa, custodian of the Fire
Dreaming at Jurntu, who was killed by his uncles when I was little.
These three spirits brought me the purlapa for the men. The dance and
the songs tell about the chasing and the killing of Werrilwerrilpa. The
purlapa celebrates Jurntu with the Fire and pirntina Python Dreaming.
I saw the spirits of the three men making a big fire as they were travelling.
It happened in Kartarlda, a Ngatijirri budgerigar place. The three men
continued to travel, flying to the North until they got to Lajamanu.
I could hear the music from the boomerangs. I came close to the big
hollow log at Kuwinyi and said
‘They sing a purlapa!’
So, in my dream, all the Warlpiri men from Lajamanu came to sit near a
ceremonial ground that was not cleared there yet. The three spirits came
out of the hollow log. They were carrying kutari headdresses, very high
with feathers on the top. Their whole body was covered with white fluff.
And the Fire and Python Dreaming was drawn in red on their chests,
thighs and faces.
Same time, I saw big white clouds carrying rain. A fourth spirit was trav-
elling with them, but he did not stop at Lajamanu. He continued his flight
further north to the sea. I saw him jumping in the ocean, and coming out
with lots of splashes. He looked at the open space, the sky and said
‘I went too far!’
So he landed back in Lajamanu on the plane ground! He carried a spear
and danced with it towards the other three Jampijinpa. Munkurturru,
who had brunt my things, shouted then
‘Look! Mangurlpa!’
It was the spirit’s name and also the name of that spear. The four spirits
went then to Palwa, a Wampana Wallaby place. Women can’t go to
this place, but in my dream, this is where I saw the spirits show the new
purlapa to the Lajamanu men.
‘You have to train for the purlapa just as I heard it and saw it in my
dream’, I said to the men and asked my niece’s husband to cut leaves to
make a bough shade just like in my dream.
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Doing and Becoming
‘Where should I put the shade?’

‘Just there. It must be opened to the South because the spirits came from
there to sit.’
The message was passed from camp to camp, and when the shade was
built, all the women came to sit there and sang the new purlapa songs
with me. Then the men repeated verse after verse what mungamunga had
taught me. All night we sang.
The next day, the women learnt the new yawulyu. They were happy to
receive a new way to celebrate Jurntu. They painted their bodies with the
new designs and sang with me the new songs that I had dreamt.
I painted them with the jingi jingi ‘across’ design that shows the plucking
of the fire. I also painted the yinti ‘sparks’ design. These were the designs
I had seen on the yukurrukurru boards, red for the fire and white for
the smoke. The women copied the designs and I also showed them the
new dancing steps and how to mime the sparks with their hands and the
fire being plucked. It is how mungamunga showed me the wind taking
the sparks. The women danced. And we’ve been dancing this yawulyu
everywhere ever since.
Meantime in another place men were decorating themselves. When they
finished they came to us. Other men sat down to sing the new purlapa
with the boomerang percussion.
Women join them legs straight in front of them, beating the rhythm, two
hands on top of each other, palms hitting the thighs. The men started to
dance, the same dance they took to your country (Paris). Mungamunga
took us even further than the salt water where the spirit dove in!
Our men are proud of the purlapa I gave them. Every time they dance it,
they have to pay me kunari, a ritual gift. But when I gave them the purlapa
for the first time, I had to pay the kunari. The Nangala and Nampijinpa
women helped me to pay. We made two big dampers. One for the kirda,
Jangala and Jampijinpa, the other for the kurdungurlu of the Fire Dreaming,
Japaljarri and Japanangka. Each group also received a pile of cloth.
After this ritual, the kirda men made new yukurrukurru boards for me.
I painted on them the Fire designs I had seen in my dream. At every
yawulyu, these designs are swept away and painted again. The boards are
used only for the Fire Dreaming and the Rain Dreaming. (Janjiya Liddy
Nakamarra Herbert, 1979)8
8
See Figure 4.1. This story by Janjiya was not in the original book (1991) but it was
published in the Dream Trackers CD-ROM (with audio extracts, Glowczewski
2000) and is commented upon in Glowczewski (1989).
143
Figure 4.3 Men and boys during marlulu initiation © B. G. 1984
The type of male dances that women can attend is called purlapa,
a name also given to the mixed-gender singing sessions. After the
trip to Paris, the Jurntu purlapa became a sort of emblem. The men
made all the little boys dance it at the end of school in 1984, and
they performed it in Katherine in July when they marched there with
other Aboriginal people for the celebration of National Aboriginal
Day.9 The purlapa dancers are always accompanied by a group of
seated singers who give the beat by striking together two boomerangs
or small sticks, or sometimes one stick against a shield lying on the
ground. These percussion instruments are the only musical instru-
ments of the desert tribes, who do not have the didgeridoo (horns) or
the drums hollowed from logs of the Arnhem land tribes.
Wild (1977–1978) distinguishes two dancing styles among the
Warlpiri, mimetic (walaparini) and non-mimetic (mirli-mirli or
wintimi). The men mostly practise the first style, which includes four
categories. Wapantja-kura, the walking dance, consists of raising the
9
Corresponding to the anniversary of the death, in 1876, of Trucanini, called the
‘last’ survivor of the massacre of the Tasmanians; since the 1980s, thousands
of descendants of the original inhabitants have been claiming their ancestry in
Tasmania. NAD became NAIDOC.
144
Doing and Becoming
knees high and stamping the feet hard on the ground. It is the style
used in purlapa. But in the rituals restricted to men they can dance
running, pangkatja-kura, crawling on on all fours, kiripikanji, or
sitting down, nyinantja-kura. Only the sitting or kneeling dances
are accompanied by songs, directly translating words into gestures.
These dances, which identify the performers with ancestral heroes,
often imitate the associated totemic animals. The ‘non-mimetic’
dances consist in jumping with legs slightly apart in the women’s
style; they may also be miming female behaviour.
Although at present it is rare for the men to decide (as women
do) to celebrate a particular Jukurrpa, they are extremely active as
soon as an initiation cycle is to begin. The initiation process means
that young males from twelve to twenty, sometimes up to thirty,
according to the age group concerned, have to be caught and put into
seclusion far from women during the whole length of the ceremonial
period, which may take from a week to several months. This is the
occasion nowadays when men display their various territorial rituals
for the younger men.
Kurdiji: The Boys’ First Initiation

At least once a year, and sometimes more often, a ceremony called
kurdiji, shield, takes place to prepare one, two or, unusually, three
boys for circumcision. Meggitt (1962) gives a detailed account and I
have described part of the ceremony elsewhere (Glowczewski 1989b).
Some ritual innovations have been introduced since the 1950s, but
until recently the issue was still the same: to ally the young initiate to
his future father-in-law, his circumciser and his future mother-in-law.
This mother-in-law is usually a girl of his own age, whose daughter,
already born or yet to be born, is to become his wife.
On the day of his capture by the elders, the novice is called marlulu
(from marlu, kangaroo), and for the first time he attends a ritual male
dance. Then he is brought back to the middle of the group which
is waiting on ground specially prepared for a nocturnal gathering,
marnakurrawarnu (from marna, grass), during which men sing and
women dance (see Figure 4.3). The novice is separated from the men
by the women and the children. He sits at the back and is made to
stand up at regular intervals by two guardians, his brothers-in-law,
who make him look at the sky where the morning star will appear.
The most active role in the singing and dancing is taken by men
and women called yulpuwanulurlu (from yulpu, red), the novice’s
145
‘fathers’ (father’s clanic brothers), the maternal uncles, the ‘mothers’

(mother’s sisters and co-wifes) and the paternal aunts. These women
have their chests painted, wear a minyeri headband and dance
handing a firestick from one to the other. The novice’s clanic sisters
and brothers, who in this context are called jarrawarnulu (from jarra,
fat), also participate: the former to dance and the latter to sing until
daybreak. At dawn, the novice passes through the assembly with his
guardians, who take him to the seclusion camp where he receives the
firestick that passed between the women dancers, and with which he
lights his first fire, becoming thus warluwarnu (from warlu, fire).
The firestick is given back to the women, who light it a week later,
on the day before circumcision, during a second nocturnal mixed
gathering on new ceremonial ground, kirrirdikirrawarnu (from kir-
rirdi, big camp). This time, the ground is formed into two big circles
linked by a wide path and surrounded by two bough windbreaks,
yunta,10 located to the East and the West. Women dance using the
stick from the previous gathering, until the mother of the novice
hands it to the mother of the girl who has been chosen as the boy’s
future mother-in-law. This is how the alliance made by the women
of the boy’s matriline with another matriline is unveiled, a decision
that has been secret until now, and should not be commented on or
even mentioned until the boy comes out from seclusion. At the end
of the night, the brother-in-law guardians of the boy erect a spear
next to him on which they fix ropes made of hairstring and many
pieces of cloth, presents for the clanic mothers and aunts of the boy.
At daybreak, the novice’s mothers and aunts, accompanied by his
sisters and one or two women of his promised wife’s matriline, take
him into the bush for a long smoking ritual, jurnku (see Figure 4.4).
When they bring the boy back to the ceremonial ground, his mothers
receive from their sons-in-law the ropes and cloths that have been
taken off the spear: they give some back to their brothers and some
to their husbands before disappearing with the rest.
At sunset, women and children come back to the night ground to
attend the witi dance. Witi are leafy poles which male dancers fasten
to their ankles in remembrance of the Initiated Man people who saw
such poles grow from their feet. The dancers perform, one after the
other, a curious motion, shaking all their body and rustling the leaves
on the poles, which extend almost two metres above them. Men
encourage the dancers with shouts while women extend their arms
10
The same name as for windbreaks used in camp.
146
Doing and Becoming
Figure 4.4 Women carrying boys for a smoking ritual before handing them to men
© B. G. 1984
or pinch each other in excitement. At the end of the dance, at a signal

from the elders, most women have to put their heads down. The very
old women, or those who have already participated as yulpuwar-
nurlu in several kurdiji, see then the arrival of the circumciser, whose
identity has to stay secret. He dances to the rhythm of songs broken
with very sudden silences, then he lies on top of the boy. Straight
away, at a new signal from the elders, the women run away, except
for a few who may see the presentation of some emblems before also
disappearing to let the men proceed with the circumcision.
Before he is to be circumcised, the boy is covered with a large
cross the branches of which are stretched with hairstrings painted
with Dreaming designs. This sacred object is shaped like a kite and
is called the Southern Cross, waniki. It may not be seen by women.
It animates the boy’s pirlirrpa, soul, by making the Kuruwarri forces
of his clan enter him. In the esoteric knowledge, when at death the
soul is drawn up towards the Magellanic Clouds, the smaller galaxy
refers to the circumciser. The circumciser chosen by the men of the
boy’s matriline is expected to give one or more of his daughters to
the future circumcised when the latter reaches a marriageable age. If
the operator is not the husband of the mother-in-law chosen by the
women, the circumcised can then claim simultaneously a daughter
147
from his mother-in-law and another from his circumciser, on condi-

tion that he satisfies his in-laws by regularly providing them with a
share of the products of his hunt. Although all men and women have
their ‘promised’ husband or wife, actual marriages may cancel ritual
promises, especially if the chosen mother-in-law does not produce a
daughter.
Traditionally, the period between the first gathering and the second
extended from one to several months, during which time the novice,
guided by his brothers-in-law, travelled a long initiation circuit to
visit different clans, who would perform their respective territorial
rituals for him. On this journey, all the boy’s potential fathers-in-law
gave him hairstrings to present to his father. Nowadays, such a trip
is sometimes done by car, and the boy may be initiated in another
settlement, even in another tribe. Thus, in 1979, a boy was brought
to Lajamanu from Noonkanbah, located more than 1,000 km to
the West in the Kimberley, to be initiated at the same time as two
Warlpiri boys.11
After circumcision, the newly initiated youth must remain in
seclusion for at least another week for his convalescence. Unlike the
period between the two nocturnal gatherings, a week during which
the men staged for him a series of territorial rituals, now he stays
alone, and is only visited by his brothers-in-law and uninitiated boys,
to whom he must not tell anything about what has happened to him.
In Meggitt’s (1962) time, the post-convalescence ritual, marking the
return of the boy to society with the status of a man, was as follows:
he ate a vegetable dish prepared by his future mother-in-law, the wife
of the circumciser. The latter sat back to back with the boy and ate a
portion of the big offering of game that was given to him in the boy’s
name. As a sign of exchange, the circumciser also ate some of the
vegetable dish, and he rubbed the lips of his future son-in-law with a
piece of meat before they separated. This gesture allowed the initiate
to eat meat, and at the same time to speak, two activities controlled
during his seclusion. The game offered to the circumciser and future
father-in-law had been caught and cooked by members of the boy’s
patriline and matriline, with the help of his direct brothers-in-law.
This gift, to which were eventually added red ochre, hairstrings,
boomerangs, spears, shields and even Western clothes represented
payment for the ritual service of the circumciser, and the bride price.
11
In 1992/1993 a Lajamanu boy was taken even further to Bidyadanga on the
north-west coast.
148
Doing and Becoming
Today, payment in game is replaced by a present of clothes and

blankets, and it is not the male relatives of the circumcised youth
who provide it but the female: the mother, helped by her sisters,
co-wives and sisters-in-law (paternal aunts of the boy). The day
after the circumcision, these women, their faces painted white as
if in mourning, deposit on the ground a big pile of clothes for the
circumciser. These are women’s clothes: the gift to the circumciser is
for his wife, the future mother-in-law; similarly, the return gift made
by her is intended for the circumcised youth’s mother. This ritual is
called palkajarri, ‘become body’ that is to be born. The paint on the
women’s faces symbolises the death of the boy, who will be born
again as an initiate of his clan, which has contracted an alliance with
the respective clans of his future father-in-law and mother-in-law.
Women’s Secret: Mangaya

For girls, the initiation process is less formal because natural trans-
formations (growing of breasts and pubic hair, menarche, pregnancy)
accompany the practices that ritualise them. The assignment of a girl
as a novice’s mother-in-law is a type of initiation, as it foreshadows
her separation from the daughter she is to bear. In the old days, at the
time when the boy was being circumcised, in another camp his sisters
and female paternal cousins were enduring ritual scarifications: two
arcs between the breasts, or on the belly if they were pregnant or
breastfeeding a child, so that the milk would not be contaminated by
blood. This was a way to mark, on the body, the separation between
brothers and sisters totemically united but destined to marry outside
of the clan. The taking of a girl’s virginity was also ritualised: it was
done with two fingers bound by a hairstring, or by an introcision of
the entry to a girl’s vagina ‘to help a girl to give birth’. We will come
back to this later (Chapter 5: p. 174).
The purpose of the female initiation process is to change the girl
into a woman, that is to allow her, as she grows older, to gain the
mangaya power that will give her a privileged relationship with
the space-time of the Dreaming. She will then be able to commu-
nicate with the ancestral beings and to receive revelations in her
dreams. When a woman dreams a new yawulyu ritual, it is said
that she receives the dream through the intermediary of yiniwurru
or mungamunga, terms that designate generically all the ancestral
women associated with totems and sites. But it is also that which
resides underground, and talks in dreams to women, and sometimes
149
to children to help them to find their way if they get lost in the bush.
Finally, it reveals to the older women new designs to paint on their
bodies, new verses to sing, and gestures for dances associated with
totemic sites and heroes. A woman usually starts to have such dreams
only after she has participated as a ‘mother’ in a male initiation, that
is, once she has experienced the ritual separation of a son she grew
up with – her own, her co-wife’s or her sister’s.12
According to Meggitt (1966), the term mungamunga used by the
northern tribes, such as the Mudbura and Warumungu, was not
used at Lajamanu in the 1950s. Ten years later at Yuendumu, Munn
found the word yiniwurru restricted to women and meaning ‘spirit-
child’. Today, the Lajamanu women identify mungamunga with
yiniwurru; they also sometimes speak of tiyatiya. Dussart (1988)
noted, in Yuendumu, that tiyatiya denotes ancestral beings of any
gender. At Lajamanu, tiyatiya denotes pubic depilation, a ritual inau-
gurated by ancestral women, which entails the women being rubbed
before and after the depilation with yellow ochre, karntawarra (from
karnta, woman), which is believed to prevent burns. By this secret
ritual, performed during initiations, dispute settling ceremonies or
mourning, women reinforce their mangaya power. But men also
practise ritual depilation. According to the elders, this practice used
to characterise the eastern Warlpiri in the eyes of their neighbours,
who sometimes called them tiyatiya. Many concepts are polyvalent
in Aboriginal languages.
Munn noticed that women dreamers, after giving the location
of (the protagonists) of their dreams, refer to spirit-children or to
ancestral beings in the first person. This apparent amalgam between
the dreamer and what she dreams about – spirit-children and ances-
tral beings – implies not a confusion of the three, but a conceptual
identity as expressed in the word yiniwurru. Therefore, yiniwurru
defines the Dreaming generative process, which allows dreamers to
see the spirit-children they embody or the ones that will be embod-
ied in children to be born, and to communicate with the ancestral
principles from which these spirit-children come. Some women call
yiniwurru ‘ngati’, mother, which suggests the idea of a generative
matrix. Symbolised in relation to the female body, yiniwurru cannot
12
Actual separation from a daughter when she gets married also marks a formal
access to dreams: officially confirmed as a mother-in-law, a woman often dreams
about her son-in-law’s Dreamings. We will see that the mother-in-law/son-in-law
relationship is central to many Dreaming stories.
150
Doing and Becoming
be reduced to a womb image. Like the infinite night, this matrix

takes the form of each thing it generates: images of nocturnal dreams,
spirit-children and totemic figures. Inseparable from yiniwurru is
its intrinsic power, mangaya, which is defined as masculine. In this
sense, the generative matrix is two-gendered.
In contemporary settlements, female rituals are generally cele-
brated near a jilimi, a camp reserved to women, some divorced, some
widows and some married women who wish to be away temporarily
from their husband’s camp. During the day other married women
come to join the others to discuss, to rest, to pick lice from one
another’s hair, to play cards or to participate in the eventual yawulyu
on the ceremonial ground. Men must not trespass across the limit of
a jilimi nor watch what is happening there; nevertheless, as the camp
is often surrounded by the family camps, its feminine activities are
not hidden. When women camp in the bush, a jilimi is any sleeping
space for women, old or young, who want to stay away from the
men. Jilimi is also the name given to places at sacred sites which are
reserved to women: rocks, springs, rockholes, or even hills, whose
shapes sometimes explicitly evoke a female organ. These markers are
associated with episodes from female versions of the mythical trails
or songlines and women can perform their ritual dances there.
Men’s Secret: Maralypi

To explain their dreams, men do not refer to yiniwurru or mangaya.
On the other hand, they, like the women, say that they split in two:
their pirlirrpa soul sees and hears the spirit-child they embody and
that leads them on the track of the ancestral heroes in Jukurrpa.
According to Meggitt (1962), they have in their shoulder a little
lizard that guides their spirit. Thus, the dream experience is different
for each gender.
While women have special places in the sacred sites, men have
others which are absolutely forbidden to women. This is where,
traditionally, the sacred rites were performed to perpetuate clans and
related species; at the Rain Dreaming sites, rain-making rituals took
place. Men used to go into some desert caves to paint designs on
the walls or to repaint them. Cave paintings are not only associated
with specific ancestral heroes but are also considered to be their trace
which, generation after generation, the initiates renovate. In this
context, Kuruwarri as a human drawing is, like the images seen in
dreams, a pure copy of an ancestral imprint. If women come close to
151
the cave, say the Warlpiri, they would put in great peril themselves,
the men and the future of the clan. This demarcation implies that
‘men’s business is not women’s business’ and vice versa but ‘without
one or the other there is no business . . .’.
Each clan, among all the sites on its path of travel, has just one
which corresponds to the place in which are concentrated all the
Kuruwarri scattered inside the other sites, the members of the clan
and all the things bearing the same name. This singularity, which
condenses all the living images, is called maralypi, the power of gen-
eration of the clan and the species associated with its path of travel.
Reported by the linguist Hale (1974), maralypi is not mentioned by
Meggitt, who only speaks of the ‘concentrated expression’ of the
Kuruwarri, present in a clanic site, and at the same time in all the
men under the form of the patriclanic and matriclanic spirit, bilirba
(Meggitt 1962: 207, 192). According to my data, rather than a
patriclanic or matriclanic spirit and a ‘concentrated expression’ of
the Kuruwarri, pirlirrpa (bilirba) is the individual spirit, a person’s
soul which is animated by the Kuruwarri of the father’s clan and the
mother’s clan, and which is also the medium for men and women to
attain maralypi, the singularity which concentrates the Kuruwarri.13
Maralypi, even more than the concentrated expression of the
Kuruwarri is the driving principle of all the forms the Kuruwarri can
take (totems, people, places). In this sense, maralypi is the secret of
life, a business restricted to men. That is why women only whisper
the word, and so refer to what is unmentionable because ineffable.
There are many clanic sites designated by the term maralypi, as many
as there are different clans or local groups. In other words, there is
no one maralypi centre for everybody. Nor is there any hierarchy
between the diverse totems characterised by maralypi places: they
13
Swain (1993) finding a ‘contradiction’ in Warlpiri spirit beleifs, assumes the theory
of pirlirrpa going in the sky as inspired by Christianity versus the traditional
belief of the Kuruwarri going into the ground of the sites. From the Warlpiri
point of view I do not see any contradiction between the fact that the Kuruwarri
(the forces one shares with one’s group, places and totemic species) and the
Kurruwalpa (spirit-child) go into the land while the pirlirrpa (individual soul)
is taken away by the Magellanic Clouds. In fact I do not agree with Swain’s
systematic interpretation of any sky belief as being of Christian influence: to me
the presence of multi-components in a person and their separate destiny after
death (earth and interstellar space) is in accordance with the Warlpiri complex
cosmology expressed in the opposition kanunju/kankarlu (below/above) (see end
of Chapter 3; for a review of Swain, see Glowczewski 1996).
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Doing and Becoming
participate together in the mystery of life. Hale (1974) remarked

that men use the word tarnnga, always, as an antonym to maralypi;
thus, maralypi is opposed to eternity as process (coming into being).
Jukurrpa is at the same time eternity and process, but these two
attributes are distinguished one from the other as the two inseparable
faces of permanence.
In a generic way, as a secret and spatial reference, the term mara-
lypi designates male territorial rituals. On the other hand, when the
death of an important ritual custodian, man or woman, is not just
followed by the usual taboos on using the name and the songline
associated with the deceased but by a general prohibition extending
to the celebration of his or her whole Dreaming path of travel and
the approach to its maralypi place, this word is used to designate the
ceremony that marks the end of mourning. It is said that maralypi
‘opens’ the Jukurrpa that was ‘closed’ during mourning.14 In the
context of sedentary life, the Warlpiri can perform this ceremony
without going to the maralypi site; they simply retrace the songline
through their ritual acting. The men dance in order to put back into
circulation the maralypi source of life, and occasionally some older
women witness it so that they can catch what is liberated from the
ground and the Kuruwarri living forces can propagate again on
the earth. But women say that they can also harness this generative
power at a distance, on their ground where they perform, parallel
to the men, the yawulyu ritual associated with the same Dreaming.
Once open, it allows them to lift all the taboos and to name again
people and things who were referrred to as kumanjayi, ‘no name’.
In 1984 at Lajamanu, I witnessed the female ritual activities
accompanying the male maralypi ceremony opening the Digging Stick
Dreaming, which is connected to a site called Janyingki. Women,
after having erected the sacred stick for this Jukurrpa, which has not
been used during the two years of mourning, put a pile of cloth at
its foot and a bag containing hairstring ropes and sacred stones. One
after the other, widows, mothers and mothers-in-law of the deceased
touched the stick, then sat among the other women. Then, contrary
to the normal rule, men, nephews and cousins of the deceased were
invited into the women’s camp to touch in their turn the stick, the
stones and the ropes. At a woman’s signal, they took the cloths away
with them, then one man was called back to pull out the stick and
to put it on the bag with the stones and the ropes. Soon afterwards
14
A Jukurrpa that is ‘closed’ has ‘no room’ for singing, dancing and painting it.
153
the women hid everything. Through touching these objects every-

body is impregnated with the Kuruwarri contained in them, and
transfers into the objects part of his or her own living image that will
strengthen the people who will touch the objects later. All become
relays of a circuit through which the Jukurrpa power will actual-
ise the maralypi singularity. The intervention of the men on the
women’s ground works in two ways: through the medium of the
objects the men receive the Kuruwarri of the women, to whom they
give the Kuruwarri they actualise in their secret activities. The first
stage of the opening of the Dreaming is completed by entering it.
Two weeks later, around midday, ten young women joined the
elders on a new ceremonial ground prepared in the bush, to be
painted and to dance. At the foot of the two erected sticks connected
by a hairstring rope was a pile of blankets. The managers, members
of clans allied to the Digging Stick (kana) clan, opened the dance.
The elders gave them each a long wurparri branch that represented
the spears the Digging Stick women gave to the Initiated Men. The
dancers criss-crossed each other as they brandished the spears and
danced around the two sticks. Then they piled the branches on the
ground, and the Digging Stick owners took over from them. They
advanced on their knees, one close behind the other, looking around
everywhere like animals looking for prey or being tracked by preda-
tors. When they got up, they were given the wurparri branches in
their turn, and also boards painted like their chests, with designs
from their Dreaming. They danced forward to meet two new dancers
painted with the Goanna (pilja) Dreaming and carrying under their
arms dishes adorned with the same design. The to-ing and fro-ing
that followed staged the meeting of these two Dreamings, at the end
of which Goanna tricked the Digging Stick women by making them
minyeri headbands and makarra, matrix, ropes with the hair of the
heroes of the Initiated Man Dreaming; he seduced them into giving
up their knowledge to the men.
Having left their spear-branches on the ground, the Digging
Stick dancers took their boards in two hands. They directed one
end towards the ground, moving the boards up and down, as if
drawing up and being drawn down by an invisible force. The women
I talked to said that even though the myth says that the female ances-
tors revealed to the men the pleasures of the flesh, this to and fro
motion does not refer to human sexuality but to the palpitation of
the underground forces, the breathing of the earth as a metamorpho-
sis of the bodies of the ancestral heroes. Putting down their boards,
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Doing and Becoming
the dancers then performed above them, with their hands spread
apart, the same up-and-down movement that generally concludes all
yawulyu; the image-forces of the Digging Stick Dreaming, liberated
by the symbolic opening of this Dreaming and of its maralypi site,
had just been put back into circulation on the earth and were now
returning underground.
The two piles of blankets which, all through the ritual, had stayed
at the foot of the two kuturru sticks, were taken to the edge of the
ceremonial ground, and after finishing their own celebration of the
Digging Stick Dreaming on the male ground the men took them away.
The maralypi ceremony was over. It has been staged simultaneously,
in two different places, by the men and the women. The separation in
space symbolised this polarity of gender as necessary for actualising
maralypi. Some Warlpiri use the metaphor of an electric current.
Intermythical Dialogues
How to understand the differentiation of male and female roles in
rituals? Some myths offer a first answer. The female version of the
Goanna Dreaming tells of mother Goanna, who laid the eggs from
which the Goanna people were born. She came back to brood the
eggs where she had left them but, later on, her children were afraid
of her and ran away because she was less ‘human’ than they were.
Since that time, female goannas abandon their eggs straight after
laying them in their burrows: the babies hatch on their own, thanks,
say the Warlpiri, to maralypi, which the Goanna Dreaming left once
and for all in the Goanna totemic site, Yinapalku.15 The pilja goanna
species, descending from the Dreaming bearing this name, thus offers
a model in which women are excluded from the places of gestation
of the Kuruwarri forces, while women who are entered by the spirit-
children are recognised as producers of children, like the females who
lay eggs. This animal model and its mythical interpretation is used
to justify the prohibition imposed on women from coming close to
places with the secret of life, maralypi.
According to the female version of the Digging Stick Dreaming, it
is women and not men who used to go down in the caves and perform
initiations, until the Goanna Dreaming came and intervened. By
using male hair from the Initiated Man Dreaming, Goanna made the
objects for which the ancestral women exchanged their ritual, sexual
15
See CD-ROM Glowczewski (2000) and www.odsas.net
155
and hunting knowledge. The meeting of these three Dreamings insti-

tutes the social model that allows women to hunt with digging sticks
and not with long spears, that reserves to men access to the special
caves, and initiations, during which women have to wear the minyeri
handbands, like the ones introduced by Goanna; like the ancestral
women they receive hairstrings in exchange for the sons they give up
to the men.16
The male version of the Digging Stick Dreaming given by Meggitt
(1966: 131–8) presents itself differently. Here is a summary.
Travelling on their own, the women met some north-westerners
who invited them to join the group. They camped together at
Kanakurlangu (Ganagulangu) ‘belonging to the Digging Stick’ where
the men went hunting wallabies leaving the boys under the women’s
care. Furious at being excluded from the hunting, the women took
revenge by hitting the boys with their digging sticks, but the men,
alerted by one man, came back and beat the women. Entrusting the
boys to a male elder, they sent the women to a place with ngalyipi
vines, which they had to twist into ropes. The women came back to
the camp and used wallaby hair to make armlets and headbands, on
which they drew love magic designs. Adorned with the handbands,
they danced for the men, who forgot their anger, and sang and ate
with them. Then, when the women went to urinate in the bush
before sleep, the youngest men took their digging sticks and stuck
them in the ground with the headbands hanging from them, a sign
of their desire to make love with the women. The women accepted,
unbeknownst to the elders.
The next day they all took off, and when the women saw a group
of wallabies they could not stop themselves from throwing their
sticks at them, the way they used to hunt when they were on their
own. But, tired from their nocturnal activities, they missed them all
and made them run away, provoking again the anger of the men,
who attacked them with their throwing sticks (they had no boomer-
angs or spears). They killed a few women and gave up on the others,
saying that hunting was not their domain. The Digging Stick women,
happy to get rid of those unpleasant companions, continued their
travels singing, dancing and miming the events they had just been
through. Some went underground in Warlpiri country, others con-
tinued to Yanmadgeri, Aranda and Yalyuwari country. One woman
16
A female version of the Digging Stick myth (kana) was published in the art
catalogue Glowczewski (1991b) and also in the CD-ROM Glowczewski (2000).
156
Doing and Becoming
was caught on the way by a perentie coming from Aranda country,

who tied her to a tree with hairstring and wanted to seduce her.
When she refused, he made a headband adorned with Dreaming
designs and sang love magic, yilpinji, that turned out to be effective:
when he showed himself wearing this headband, the woman gave
up; engaging in passionate love, they disappeared underground at
Nganingiri, the Dreaming place of Perentie and Tree Honey.
In spite of their differences, the male and female versions of the
Digging Stick Dreaming combine the same elements. In both cases,
the ancestral women, who had the power to hunt, lose it when they
come into contact with men, and the action takes place in a site with
ngalyipi vines: in Meggitt’s version women must prepare these vines,
which are used to fix the poles of the Initiated Man Dreaming witi
ceremony; in the version I collected the place where the Digging Stick
women give their initiation knowledge to the heroes of the Initiated
Man Dreaming is called Ngalyipimalu, after the vines. The male
myth shows the women’s failure to look after the boys, just as in the
female myth the boys’ custody is passed from women to men. Finally,
in the male version, the women seduce the men with the headbands
they make, and Perentie makes a headband to seduce a woman; in
the female version the heroines are seduced by the headbands that
Goanna made for them, and they give in to the men.
These three themes, hunting, seduction and initiation, recur in
another sequence of the male Digging Stick myth, with the Transgressor,
Wingkingarrka (from wingki, transgression, and ngarrka, man,
orthographed Winggingarga by Meggitt (1966), and Wadaingula by
Peterson (1967), who gives a slightly different version17).
Transgressor was coming from the Pintupi tribe’s territory, with
the appearance of a man but with such a long penis that he had to
coil it around his neck or waist when he walked. This penis ended
with a fork like the tongue of a snake, danced ahead of him when
he stopped and had an insatiable sexual appetite; the man travelled
on the surface of the ground and sometimes underneath (Meggitt,
Peterson).
At Djundi, he saw the track of a wakulyari wallaby from
Kunajarrayi (Gunadjari); he attempted to catch it by lighting a bush-
fire but failed (Peterson). At Badjanbanda, he met a female wallaby
and tried to rape her; she shouted for help and the Digging Stick
women who were camping nearby came to help her, hitting the rapist
17
For analysis of the version of Peterson (1967), cf. Glowczewski ([1984] 2009).
157
and cutting off his penis; he died, but his penis escaped and was
transformed into another Trangressor (Meggitt).
At Rearringbunga, Transgressor copulated with a pregnant
woman, who died as a result (Peterson). At Ngalbiriwanu, he forced
a woman who had just given birth and was, through her Dreaming,
in a mother-in-law relationship to him, a taboo relationship in which
any sexual intercourse is forbidden. For this transgression, the woman
killed him by cutting off his penis with her own clitoris, which was
also very long; in doing so she lost a piece of it which turned into the
Willy Wagtail (jintirrjintirrpa) and flew away. The penis again grew
into a man, still called Transgressor (Meggitt).
According to Meggitt, when Transgressor arrived at Kunajarrayi
he saw a group of Digging Stick women who were camping there.
Identifying him as a son-in-law, out of respect for the taboo they
covered their eyes and chased him away. But he managed to take
them by surprise at Wiranggulubanda and raped one of them, who
conceived immediately. The others killed him and castrated him but,
for the third time, his penis became a man. At Wakulpu, he surprised
a urinating woman. She managed to kill him by cutting off his penis
with a stick.18 Transgressor and his penis then finally disappeared
underground.
According to Peterson, when Transgressor arrived at Kunajarrayi,
he found women dancing, he threw himself on them to copulate
with them and killed them with his penis, which came out from their
mouths. The survivors ran away to Wakulpu, where he caught up
with them. Seeing a woman urinating with her legs apart, he sent his
penis underground intending to make it come out inside her. But she
noticed the soil was being cracked by his advancing, and she called
the other women, who hit the soil with their digging sticks until it felt
soft, indicating that the intruder was dead.
The figure of Transgessor, which is missing in the female myth
of the Digging Stick Dreaming (as told to me by the women),19
emphasises the ambiguity of what is being played out – hunting,
seduction and initiation – between the genders, and is at the core of
other female and male versions of episodes of this Dreaming. As an
18
In 2017, Wanta Steven Patrick Jampijinpa told this story: see Chapter 1 this volume,
and Lajamanu (60’), a film by Glowczewski: https://vimeo.com/289440509
19
Another public female episode for Kunajarrayi tells of ngarlkirdi (witchetty
grubs) transforming into a Warnayarra (Rainbow Snake) that swallowed a group
of women (Glowczewski 1991b).
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Doing and Becoming
insatiable man with an uncontrolled desire, made monstrous by the

rapacity of his excessively long penis, he is the reverse of seduction,
which supposes love magic and mutual consent. As a predator of
women, he is beaten by them. He becomes the prey, failing both as a
man and as a hunter, a failure shown in the beginning of Peterson’s
version when he misses the wallaby.
His forked penis represents, according to Peterson, penile sub-
incision, a ritual operation practised by some Australian tribes
which takes place after circumcision; his coming from a foreign
tribe indicates that this practice was imported into Warlpiri territory.
According to Meggitt, other heroes are also considered to be import-
ers of this practice, whose adoption by the Warlpiri cannot be dated.
The subincision wound is reopened in some rituals to make the men
bleed, in the image of menstruation, a female secret. In the female
myth, the knowledge transferred from women to men is suggestive of
the mystery of this bleeding, which becomes a secret practice among
the men.
The symbols of initiation, sexuality and hunting in the Transgressor
are, finally, condensed into a single episode, the one that gives him
his name: when he copulates with a forbidden woman, his potential
mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, chosen during the boy’s initia-
tion, symbolises by definition an alliance implying both sexuality in
marriage and hunting, with the obligation on the future son-in-law
to provide his mother-in-law regularly with game. Transgressor, by
raping his mother-in-law, symbolises the reverse of the social order;
he fails to be a man, but neither is he a woman. There is also some
ambivalence in the female version of the Digging Stick Dreaming,
whose heroines are called jintikirliwati, ‘men with vaginas’: by
hunting with spears and initiating boys, they act in a manner that
today is reserved for men.20
The idea of an androgyne gender is also present in the male myth
in which the mother-in-law is raped by Transgressor: her clitoris,
being very long, was accidentally cut off and transformed into Willy
Wagtail. This bird gives its name to a Dreaming that women associate
with Kunajarrayi, the place where – in both Meggitt’s and Peterson’s
male versions – the Digging Stick women were camping. In the female
myth, Willy Wagtail secretly kept an adult son in her womb until
two sisters discovered her trick in a dream and freed the son from
20
In some other desert groups, for example among the Walmajarri people, women
do hunt with spears (Pat Lowe, personal communication).
159
the mother. Furious, she killed the girls’ mother, and the son had
to kill her to avenge his mother-in-law. In other words, the woman
who, in the male myth, was forced to have sexual intercourse with a
son-in-law, and lost her clitoris which turned into a Willy Wagtail,
becomes, in the (public) female myth, a mother-bird who refuses
to ally her son with a wife, and to give him a mother-in-law. The
Willy Wagtail Dreaming is part of the totemic constellation: Acacia
Seeds (ngurlu), Sowing Man (Wankilpa), Wallaby (wampana), Giant
Snake (Yarripiri) and Gecko (yumarimari); Gecko (yumarimari) also
slept with his mother-in-law and left his companions’ trail through
shame; the Yarripiri (Jarapiri) Snake’s songline comes from South
Australia (Mountford 1968) where yumari, Gecko, is also the word
for mother-in-law (Elkin 1939).
The female version of the Digging Stick Dreaming says that at
the moment the heroines were going to initiate the men into love-
making, they had a dispute about the way the men should be distrib-
uted. Some thought the men should be shared, others wanted to have
one each, the solution that was finally adopted. Since in the Warlpiri
polygynous family a man acquires wives progressively rather than
simultaneously, the episode of the formation of couples looks like
the institution of marriage. On the other hand, choosing to live as
a couple can also be seen as an ideal, a dream of exclusivity not
institutionalised by the society, but quite often achieved through de
facto monogamy, when a wife refuses to have co-wives. Conversely,
the desire manifested by some heroines to access freely any man
represents another dream, often fulfilled by those who, married or
single, practise love magic.
The Goanna Dreaming is synonymous, for the men as well as
for the women, with seductive and flighty behaviour. In the female
myth specific to this Dreaming, Goanna is described as constantly
roving around looking for females to seduce but, when he wants to
reproduce, he settles for a while with two companions, as goannas do
today. In this sense, the Dreaming legitimates polygynous marriage,
and goannas, who have a double penis, offer a symbolic model of it.
Nevertheless, as a seducer, Goanna also represents the batchelor’s
dream.
A female episode of the Kangaroo Dreaming tells of heroes and
heroines of this trail who had an argument because they all copu-
lated promiscuously. Kangaroo intervened by imposing some rules
of alliance, such as the promise of a mother-in-law and a wife at the
time of a boy’s initiation. He told them: ‘You, the women, will give
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Doing and Becoming
your sons to your husbands and your daughters to your sons-in-law,

and in exchange, they will hunt my kangaroo flesh for you . . .’. The
Kangaroo Dreaming is thus simultaneously a dream of promiscuity
and the institution of alliance.
Examples could be multiplied: although every Warlpiri Dreaming
myth has a specific message that gives it a conceptual singularity, most
of them, in both their male and female versions, describe a dream of
autonomy opposed to a necessity for alliance, the desire to be inde-
pendent as opposed to the desire of and for the other. Digging Stick
women who are happy without men, Goanna the flighty, Kangaroo
people who advocate free sex, heroes of the Initiated Man Dreaming
who wander around looking for boys to initiate, that is, for women
who can give them boys, in all cases the same drama is constantly
replayed. Male, female or of indeterminate gender, ancestral heroes
go their way, often separately, are seducers or are seduced in turn,
and confront each other in a conflict that fixes them in a gender (and
a ‘genre’) in the proper and figurate sense.
Kanunju/kankarlu, Below/Above: Ritual Transformations

To carry out a totemic and territorial ritual is not primarily to rep-
resent an ancestral epic. The purpose is rather to identify men and
women with what they sing, paint and dance, that is, to give a body
to words, drawings and gestures, to fuse Jukurrpa names and places
into symbols supported and mediated by the participants and the
ritual objects, and to transfigure bodies or objects into Jukurrpa
places and beings. The Warlpiri say that by painting, singing and
dancing, men and women become the Jukurrpa ancestral principles
and the sites they travelled through and where they sit or sleep for
ever. The ritual metamorphoses the actors from agents into those
acted upon. While in the initial state the actors paint, are painted,
sing and dance, in the final stage it is the dances, the songs and the
paintings that make the actors come into being. Does this mean that
the actions of painting, singing or dancing transform subjects into
objects?
Nancy Munn (1970) has analysed the transformation of subject
into object which characterises the Warlpiri and Pitjantjatjara
myths: through identification with the sites or the sacred objects
– achieved by metamorphosis, imprint or ‘externalisation’ of their
bodies, organs or substances (urine, blood, milk, saliva, tears, faeces,
sweat) – the heroes affirm themselves as eternal beings. From a
161
linguistic point of view, in both languages the final state is expressed

by the addition of a suffix (respectively -jarri and -(a)rri-) translating
as ‘in the process of becoming’. Douglas (Capell 1979) concluded
that in the Pitjantjatjara language there is no structural contrast
between the metamorphosis and the process. He gives the example of
Aborigines who say that they are ‘caught’ by a game when they catch
it. The inversion of subject and object does not signify that the hunter
is confused with his game. Regarding the mythical beings’ relation
to the sites, Nancy Munn writes of a ‘bi-directional transformation’
because of a tension between the process of separating the subject
from the object it creates, and the atemporal identification of the
subject with the object. The ‘objectification’ would then be perceived
as a movement linking the subjectivity of a person to the exterior
world. But, while the ancestral beings as subjects exist before the
objects into which they metamorphose, for humans it is the other
way around: in the ritual identification with these beings, movement
goes from the object to the subject.
At this point, the notion of identification raises a problem: when
Aboriginal people say in English that they ‘belong’ to this or this
country – it has them – to signify that it belongs to them – they have
it – it is not that they confuse themselves with the land. In Warlpiri,
just as in Pintupi (Myers 1986), they say that they hold the land in
the sense that this verb, kanyi, is used to talk about adults looking
after children. On the other hand, they define themselves as the
children of the earth that feeds them. It is not a confusion between
subject and object, between being and having, but it is an enunciation
that shows two points of view corresponding to different stages of
the same process: they are the country as its children (coming into
being), they have it as hunters and ritual custodians (action); they are
the land not in order to have it, but, in the process of coming into
being through the country, they can act to master it.
Surely, as Munn says, landscape offers to the individual images or
fragments of himself (or herself) which are simultaneously exterior
to himself (or herself) and intrinsically connected with him (or her).
But when a Warlpiri becomes the land and the ancestral beings he
is singing, dancing or painting, his human identity is not strictly
confused with the identity of the ancestral beings. Contrary to what
Munn says, (the construction of) the subject is not predetermined by
the objective order represented by the sites, because this order is not
a fait accompli, fixed once and for all. Just as dream interpretation
allows the mythic and totemic configuration of the topography to be
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Doing and Becoming
modified, so humans are carried by a movement by which they can in

their turn become singular entities as subjects objectifying themselves
in the landscape.
I prefer to talk of self-reference rather than identification. Through
their myths, rituals and their everyday use of language, the Warlpiri
people and their neighbours seem to say that the subject is decon-
structed in time through actions and comings into being which look
like temporary metamorphoses. To understand these processes of
transformation, one must follow a three-stage argument. Instead of
the ‘initial’ and ‘final’ states of a transformation, I would say there is
a before without a beginning (the desiring subject), a meantime (the
subject ‘imprinting’ with the object of his/her desire) and an after
without an ending (the subject becoming another subject). The objec-
tivation of the subject in the myth or in the ritual is only a temporary
final state, a step necessary for the process to be constantly repeated
that constructs ancestral heroes as well as men as evolving subjects,
becoming another subject.
The inversion of subject into object (and vice versa) in the myth,
the ritual or the everyday statement, is not a mirror effect but a
self-referential movement that involves a third term. The ancestral
being becomes not only a hill or a waterhole but the eternal Jukurrpa
principle living in this place; the ritual actor becomes not just a paint-
ing but the Jukurrpa of which, like the site, this painting is a ‘trace’;
the hunter becomes not a kangaroo but the Jukurrpa of which this
animal is a manifestation; similarly the Warlpiri person becomes not
his land but the Jukurrpa that gives him his name. The relationship to
different Jukurrpa can only be understood in a feedback process: men
are fed by the land because they come from Jukurrpa but they feed
it in their turn when in their rituals they become different Jukurrpa.
Every Warlpiri person is an aspect of the coming into being or rather
becoming of the many Jukurrpa, an active form of a living memory,
Jukurrpa, the Dreaming space-time, which transcends that person
and which he or she has to actualise in rituals.
‘Men have an inside story for this Jukurrpa, secret one, I can
only tell you the outside story . . .’. This statement is a reminder
of all that can be divulged in public, but also of what women may
or may not say. I have heard it many times, but it took me a while
before I could understand the Warlpiri dialectics related to the con-
cepts kanunju (inside-below) and kankarlu (outside-above). First,
though (the) above is not secret, neither is it profane and opposed
to (the) below as the only sacred realm; on the contrary, they are
163
both ways of refering to ritual life and to the sacred links with the
Jukurrpa totemic beings and the land. Furthermore, if (the) above is
public, what it designates is not necessarily open to everybody; thus
kankarlu is the name given to both the men’s ceremonial camp and
to the women’s ritual responsibility, but it is forbidden for women
to come close to the male camp and it is not conceivable for men to
participate in women’s rituals. The fact that there are things that
men and women exclude each other from does not signify that there
is a male secret or a female secret; there is only a secret that they
approach differently, men from ‘below’ and women from ‘above’.
Nancy Munn (1964), in an elegant structural analysis, identi-
fies the below with the ancestral past, the above with the present.
According to her diagram, the land and the Kuruwarri forces are the
media that ensure the passage from the past, Jukurrpa, to the present,
yijardu. However, the word yijardu also signifes ‘true’, an attribute
the Warlpiri use to define Jukurrpa as opposed to warlka, false,
lie, meaningless, without ancestral references. Under the apparent
ambiguity of these Warlpiri concepts lies an intentional complexity;
it is thus reductive to restrict Jukurrpa to the past and to relate it to
the present, as Munn does, as a ‘discontinuity of repeated contrasts’,
mediated by the Kuruwarri.21
In comparing Jukurrpa to a living memory (in becoming), I have
attempted to show a way of thinking that integrates the past, the
present and the future in one movement, not as a progressive or
a circular continuity, but as a process of feedback that engenders
matter and is engendered by it. I agree there is mediation with the
production of Kuruwarri forces (as ritual designs, myths or dreams),
but for me the Warlpiri categories below/above, rather than being
two realms of time, past and present, are two aspects of the living
21
Cf. Munn (1964: 98), quote: ‘The temporal model summarized in the diagram
formulates the time process in a pattern Leach has characterized as a “disconti-
nuity of repeated contrasts”. Distinguishing this kind of temporal model from
“circular” and “progressive” models, he suggests that “in some primitive socie-
ties (. . .) time is experienced as something discontinuous, a repetition of repeated
reversal, a sequence of oscillations between polar opposites: night and day, winter
and summer, drought and flood, age and youth, life and death. In such a scheme
the past has no depth to it, all past is equally past; it is simply the opposite of
now” (Leach 1961: p. 126).’ Contrary to Munn’s interpretation, I do not think
Leach’s model does justice to the concept of time implied by the concepts of
Jukurrpa and Dreaming of the Warlpiri and other Aboriginal groups. Munn
subsequently discussed my criticism (Munn 1992).
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Doing and Becoming
memory – the virtual and the actual – described in the previous

chapter.
What is at play in Warlpiri rituals is always a double move-
ment: an actualisation (above) when the ancestral forces emerge,
and a virtualisation (below) when they are sent back underground
and into the cosmic elsewhere of the Dreaming, where different
potentialities are emerging waiting to materialise. Women, when
they set up their ritual sticks and dance, harness the Kuruwarri
forces, exteriorise them on the surface of the ground, then send them
back underground. Men, on the other hand, when they paint the
ground paintings and dance on them say they ‘go into’ the ground
and the Dreaming, then ‘come out’ depicting the mythical heroes
who emerged from the underground to travel along the earth before
they reentered it (Munn 1973b). One can say that if men ‘go into’
and ‘come out of’ from Jukurrpa, women on the contrary ‘draw it’ to
themselves and ‘propagate it’. In fact, men and women participate in
both movements but in different contexts.
Sexual intercourse offers the model according to which men,
as penetrating, are identified with ‘below-inside’ and women with
‘above-outside’. Women in childbirth also embody the movement
of externalisation-actualisation (kankarlu) relegating men to the
opposed movement of interiorisation-virtualisation (kanunju). Apart
from the physical interaction, the situation is reversed: man’s genitals
are outside and woman’s inside. Nevertheless, the woman also has an
external organ, the clitoris. This double aspect of the female gender is
related to the myth of the knowledge taken from women and the male
ritual of subincision: men symbolically give themselves a ‘hole’ they
are missing to mark their body with a symbolic ambivalence similar
to women’s (Bettelheim [1962] 1971). As such, they also mimic
the act of externalisation peculiar to women, in ritually making the
initiates ‘born again’, or in re-enacting the mythical beings sowing
image-forces and spirit-children (which explains the name kankarlu
‘above’ given to their ceremonial ground.)
In other terms, when men and women define themselves in an
autonomous way, it is with a bisexual body, related to the ‘below’ as
well as the ‘above’. But marriage alliance determines men and women
in a gender, opposing them as ‘below’ and ‘above’, and conversely
enacting the double motion that defines Jukurrpa: the externalis-
ing of the ‘below’ (in the image of the sex-hole being an envelope)
and the interiorising of the ‘above’ (in the image of penetration).
Separated by their respective rituals, men and women replay this
165
reversibility: men coming into and out from Jukurrpa re-enact the
above-below-above process while the below-above-below process
is played by the women who draw up Jukurrpa then send it back
underground. The collective destiny of each gender thus concentrates
in the body of each individual the autonomous but at the same time
dependent destiny that is materialised by every Jukurrpa; abolishing
for the ritual period the contradiction between gender autonomy and
alliance with the other.
The mythical relations between ancestral men and women, and
their transposition in the ritual and economic life ruling the genders,
symbolises the tension between the differentiation and interdepend-
ence of all aspects of the natural and cultural environment. All the
Jukurrpa are autonomous in their respective paths of travel but they
are interdependent through their meetings, which transform both
their stories and travels. The clans which identify with these routes
are diverse in their identities but interdependent because, being
exogamous, they can only marry, and reproduce, in alliance with
other clans. Besides, every clan crosses the lands of others and uses
their resources; on its own land the clan sustains itself on different
species whose totems are owned by other clans who ensure their
increase. The aim of rituals is to maintain all that is designated by a
clan’s totems, but they also benefit other clans, since increased rituals
for a plant or an animal concern both the clanic land connected with
these totems and the reproduction of the same species on the whole
of the tribal land. In exchange, the rituals of the Rain Dreaming clans
ensure the annual renewal of all the water reserves. This interde-
pendence always affirms the autonomy of each Dreaming-totem and
associated clan.
Since for the Warlpiri everything that reproduces – humans, other
species, atmospheric and cultural phenomena – participates in the
same generative principles, women as procreators are the symbols
of everything that is actualised; it is in this sense that they are finally
identified with the ‘above’, and that the ancestral heroines are the
keepers of a knowledge that reproduces both nature and culture.
Thus, the mythic theme of a transfer of female knowledge to the men,
rather then supporting the hypothesis of a lost matriarchy or nostal-
gia for the foetal fusion (Roheim 1945, 1974), illustrates above all
a situation that is always present. The Digging Stick myth seems to
insist that even today it is through women that sexuality is revealed
to men, children given to them, and alliances made between clans
and tribes. This presents the sexual act as a way for men to return to
166
Doing and Becoming
the world of ‘below’ without returning to the maternal womb, thus

legitimising the postulate that the men are the virtuality that women
actualise.
One can see that the ‘gendering’ of the concepts the Warlpiri use
to describe the generation and metamorphosis of all existing things
is very ambivalent. The Kurruwalpa spirit-children take the gender
of the newborn they embody, and when they show themselves in
dreams their voice and their shapes are gendered to represent a
specific person, living or deceased. As a virtual life without a body,
the spirit-children remind one of the question of the gender of angels:
the first names that identify the spirit-children (cf. Chapter 1) usually
belong to children of one gender; on the other hand, according to
Meggitt (1962), for some Warlpiri men, every spirit-child is believed
to change gender at each of its reincarnations.
The Jukurrpa, understood as ancestral principles and clanic
names, are called ‘fathers’ by their kirda (the clans that bear their
names and the ‘brother’ clans); in this sense, they are male even if the
heroes are female. But the same Jukurrpa become female when they
are called ‘mothers’ by the kurdungurlu clans, allies of the kirda.
The Kuruwarri, as living images and forces which animate humans,
animals, plants and all other totemic things, are not gendered; they
symbolise both genders, therefore they are bisexual or asexual.
Finally, maralypi, the singularity that concentrates in one site the
Kuruwarri of each Jukurrpa path of travel, is virtually double-
gendered but one could just as well say non-gendered. We have seen
that maralypi designates the men’s secret, and yiniwurru or munga-
munga and mangaya refer to the women’s secret. This does not mean
that there are two secrets, but two ways to approach the secret of
life: men, approaching it from ‘below’, define it as double-gendered
or non-gendered, maralypi, while women, approaching it from
‘above’, suppose a combined action of the female matrix, yiniwurru
(generating dream images, mythical Jukurrpa and spirit-children),
and its intrinsic male power, mangaya, the double-gendered aspect
of women.
So, for men as for women, masculine and feminine are not con-
ceived as separate but rather as two sides of the same surface, what-
ever the medium involved: a human, animal or vegetable form which
may be male or female, a mythical path of travel which is ‘father’ for
one side of the tribe and ‘mother’ for the other, or a sacred object
which takes the totemic and sexual identity of the ancestral being
it embodies in each new ritual context. From this perspective, the
167
Table 4.1 Sexual ambivalence of ‘above/below’ concepts (translated by

Mary Laughren for review article, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1993/2:
74–80)
Kanunju Kankarlu
‘below’, interiorised, virtual ‘above’, exteriorised, actual
underground and cosmos earth’s surface
ancestral past and the future immediate past and present
space-time of eternal beings signs of eternal beings in the
landscape
virtuals totems: not individualised actual totems: named and localised
dreaming expriences of men and experiences when awake
women
before birth (spirit-children) pregnancy and childbirth
(incarnate spirit-children)
Secret Public
male social prerogative female social prerogative
secret male rituals female rituals inaccessible to men
secret power of women (mangaya) men’s ceremonial ground inaccessible
to women
secret sites (maralypi) reserved for sacred sites reserved for the
men guardians of both sexes
totems reserved for men mixed totems or those reserved for
women
esoteric male versions of myths public versions of myths or those
reserved for women
secret paintings: male or female public paintings: female or male
binary opposition of the Warlpiri ‘above/below’ categories is only

apparent: they are two points of view of the same things which men
and women ritualise between birth and death in a constant exchange
(see Table 4.1).
While the existence of all things can be explained by processes
of reversal between ‘below’ and ‘above’, the fact of death on the
contrary marks the irreversible passage of time. Reversibility and
irreversibility are like two modes of the Jukurrpa space-time. For the
‘above’ world, a deceased person is lost for ever, and his/her corpse
must disappear. But for the ‘below’ world, the deceased becomes
eternal through his/her depersonalised name, that is his/her par-
ticular identity is lost. The deceased’s Kuruwarri image-forces and
Kurruwalpa spirit-child return to and dissolve into the places they
168
Doing and Becoming
came from, while the destiny of pirlirrpa soul is to accompany the

image-forces on the clanic path of travel to fuse with the maralypi
singularity at the main site: by penetrating the earth, the soul is
taken beyond the Milky Way, to be absorbed into the cosmos by the
two Magellanic Cloud galaxies, like the ancestral heroes when they
finished their travels. We have seen that this destiny only belongs to
the very old; the souls of children fuse with the spirit-children they
embodied, who will wait in specific places to be embodied again, and
the souls of all others are condemned to wander like ghosts, with
the risk of becoming vampires if they do not find their way into the
cosmic path.22
One can note that at a cosmological level ‘above’ and ‘below’ are
not simply opposites like above and below ground. ‘Above’ is the
land, the world of people as well as ghosts, vampires and various
spirits who show themselves to people who are awake, but it is also
the visible sky. ‘Below’ is underground, by definition hidden, and
the infinite cosmos whose true shapes are visible to people only in
dreams or on shamanic journeys; it is the domain of the ancestral and
eternal beings, the deceased, spirit-children and all the virtualities.
Some Warlpiri are not surprised that Europeans (kardiya) say that
the earth is round and surrounded by the sky; they knew it already.
But passage from ‘above’ to ‘below’ is of a different order from trav-
elling on the surface of the earth: the dead, like the ancestral heroes,
do not travel on the surface of the earth to reach down under, but
by penetrating the terrestrial surface they pass to another dimension
that projects them in the stars.23
For the Warlpiri, the coming-and-going between the ‘below-
virtual’ (kanunju) to the ‘above-actual’ (kankarlu) is a process of
transformations which are mediated by the production of dreams
and ritual activities. In other terms, there is not infinite and revers-
ible continuity but irreversible changes (events) which generate a
certain reversibility. Virtual and actual are neither continuous nor
discontinuous but both: for the virtual to actualise or for the actual
to virtualise the two levels have to self-penetrate and produce a third
one: the level of dreams and rituals.
22
Kurdaija soul stealers. See last chapter.
23
Modern mythology, represented by science fiction, makes us talk of space-time
travels, black holes and a fifth dimension; it is ethnocentric to think that tradi-
tional thought, imagination and dream experience had no potential to imagine
the transcendance of space and time limitations. See last chapter.
169
To try to visualise such a space-time journey is disconcerting,

because it does not obey to the classical laws of Euclidian geometry.
Topology, on the other hand, allows one to conceive such paradoxic
journeys, and to formalise properties such as self-penetration and
reversal of the inside and outside, which seem to characterise cosmo-
logical concepts that lie at the heart of Warlpiri ritual life.
170
5
Forbidding and Enjoying: Warlpiri Taboos
In the previous chapters, two contexts subject to taboos were men-

tioned: mourning and the mother-in-law/son-in-law (WM/DH) actual
or classificatory relationship. Interestingly, the prohibitions imposed
by death and by this relationship, which arise from marriage, divide
into the same four domains: space, language, sexuality and goods,
especially food.
First, a man has to stay away from women in the ‘mother-in-law’
category for him, and when they see him, they will cover their face
or move out of his way. If he crosses their footprints in the bush, he
hastens to erase them. Similarly, the camp of a deceased person has
to be abandoned, and this place, and even the totemic site of the
deceased, must be avoided. Then, women and men in a mother-in-
law/son-in-law relationship may not talk to each other; in the same
way, it is forbidden to pronounce the names of the dead or to sing
verses evoking them. Mothers-in-law and sons-in-law also have to
use a special language, yikirrinji, to talk to a third person about topics
related to their relationship. For their part, widows are subject to a vow
of silence during the mourning period, of up to two years, and they use
a sign language, rdaka-rdaka ‘hand-hand’, of which Adam Kendon
(1988) collected 1,500 signs. The other members of the tribe have a
choice about how they communicate with widows but other women
often use this ‘deaf-and-dumb’ language. Everybody has to replace the
words that become taboo with the expression kumanjayi, ‘no name’.
Sexual intercourse is forbidden for widows until the end of mourn-
ing. Between mother-in-law and son-in-law it represents incest par
excellence. In both cases there is deprivation of goods, a corollary of the
gift obligation. During funerals, the deceased’s property is destroyed
and his hair is cut and passed around: the deceased’s mothers, actual
or classificatory, have to punctuate the mourning rituals with gifts
of impressive quantities of cloth and food – flour, tea, sugar, acacia
seedcakes in the old days – for their ‘brothers’, the dead person’s
maternal uncles, actual or classificatory. Widows are not allowed
to eat meat or to cook; they have to be nurtured by other women.
171
Similarly, the son-in-law may not keep the products of his hunt for
himself; throughout his life he has to give a part of it to the mother of
his wife, who in exchange prepares vegetable dishes for him.
Prohibitions related to space, language, sexuality, food or other
goods are compensated for by behaviours – sign language, exchanges–
specific to the context (death or mother-in-law/son-in-law relation-
ship). In relation to the dead, taboos are confined to the period of
mourning, while in the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship they
are permanent. Two other contexts, one temporary – socialisation
rituals – the other permanent – totemic relationships – also demon-
strate the four domains of prohibition.
Male and Female Socialisation

A male initiate is spatially isolated from the women during his ritual
seclusion, which can last for several months. He may not marry, nor
have sexual relations until circumcision and subincision have taken
place. In the past, this latter operation was performed only at around
the age of thirty, but nowadays it is carried out shortly after the first,
i.e., around adolescence. During the kurdiji or other initiation cycles,
such as Kajirri, young men may not eat some kinds of food and,
until they become mature men, they must hunt for the elders who are
training them. Finally, Meggitt (1954) reports that novices have to
keep silent and use the same sign language as widows.
During the final phase of their initiation young men use a secret
language, which, according to Hale (1971), consists in formulating
everything ‘upside-down’ (ngudalj-kitji-rni). All the nouns, pronouns
and verbs must be replaced by words that either have the opposite
meaning, or are considered antonyms in this context, such as one
kin term instead of another. The use of the conventions of this
reversed language supposes a gradual apprenticeship and a skill in
the manipulation of Warlpiri language. The young novice hears his
guardians talk to him back to front, and at around the age of thirty,
when he becomes a guardian of those younger than himself, he uses
this language, which is part of the repertoire of the ‘clown’, jiliwirri.
Wild (1977–1978) sees this ritual role as a re-enactment of sexual
ambiguity, in which these youth play the role of women before they
become accomplished men.1
1
Chapter translated from Glowczewski 1991. Jiliwirri is also an important part of
the women’s ritual activities.
172
Forbidding and Enjoying
The expression ‘upside-down’ applied to the language of young ini-

tiates evokes the cosmological and sexual opposition between ‘below’
(virtual and male) and ‘above’ (actual and female) (cf. Chapter 3). If
the novices’ language taboo can be interpreted as the marking of the
passage from a double sexual identity to a single social gender, so too
can the other taboos. The novice is restricted to a diet of vegetable
food as opposed to meat, which symbolises the status of man and
hunter that he will reach later and that will oblige him to feed not
only the male elders but also his mother-in-law.2 In terms of space,
separation from women also marks this change of status, which will
place him in the ‘below’, the symbol of the men, and exclude him
from the ‘above’, which from now on women will represent for him
as an opposite social universe. The female behaviour that he will
have to mimic in some rituals, and the name of the male ceremonial
ground (kankarlu ‘above’), are features of this transformation, which
also unveil the symbolic reversibility between ‘below’ and ‘above’.
Finally, in sexual terms, the two initiation operations consist in
engraving in the novice’s body the two sides of his metamorphosis:
circumcision takes away what is ‘above’, the foreskin, but subincision
opens him ‘below’, to make him bleed like a woman. Periodically
reopened during some rituals, this wound is, according to Wild,
compared to menses by the initiates themselves. Ashley-Montagu
(1937) saw in the boys’ subincision an analogy with the kangaroo
whose penis looks naturally incised. The fact that for the Warlpiri the
Kangaroo Dreaming is the most sacred secret associated with the cir-
cumcision and subincision rituals could support this view. Publicly,
women associate with this Dreaming the liwirringki lizard which
has a double penis. Some Aboriginal people claim that a subincised
organ, apart from any ritual implications, is supposed to give more
pleasure to women. It can be added that if non-subincised men are
admonished not to make love, women participate in this discourse
and laugh at such men who dare to approach them. European men
who live with Aboriginal women are sometimes required to submit
to this operation.
For girls, puberty was traditionally accompanied by a series of
rituals marking progress from the status of child to that of woman.
At regular intervals, girls were painted and massaged with fat tinted
2
In some cases the diet is bullock meat, and vegetables are forbidden, as if the
boy had to wait for the end of his initiation to be allowed to enjoy the value of
exchange and the gift from the mother-in-law.
173
with red ochre so that the Kuruwarri images-forces of their respective

clans penetrate them and favour their growing up, particularly the
development of breasts and the growth of pubic hair. Such painting
rituals sometimes take place during the female yawulyu, but since the
1980s teachers have been inviting women to paint the girls and make
them dance at school.
Other practices of marking the body have definitely disappeared:
scarifications (Bjerre 1956), ritual defloration with one or two fingers
bound with kangaroo hairstring, performed by an old man assisted
by an old woman (Abbie 1969) and introcision. According to Spencer
and Gillen ([1899] 1968), the man who incised the vulva with a stone
knife was a kurduna (kulkuna) ‘son’ of the girl, that is, a man from
the subsection of her father-in-law. While for the circumcision and
subincision a boy lies down on three men, his brothers-in-law, who
are lying down next to each other on the ground, the girl used to lie
accross the body of her promised husband and two other men of the
same subsection.
Warlpiri people do not admit to having practised introcision.3
However, the abduction by a man of a young girl who is promised
to him is occasionally staged as a violent act witnessed by everybody.
Generally, the young girl refuses to follow the older man who claims
her. As long as her family judges that she is too young, the mother
protects her and stops the impatient future son-in-law from exercis-
ing his rights. Once the family group considers it is time for the girl to
get married and recognises that the pretender is a legitimate spouse,
the mother does not interfere if the girl resists and even adopts an
attitude of apparent indifference, manifesting neither indignation nor
affliction. When the young girl escapes, nobody will hide her, and she
ends up being caught by her future husband.4
Young girls nowadays tend to have early intercourse with young
men, so the promised husbands try to get access to them as soon as
possible in order to be the ones who deflower them. Once the mar-
riage has been consummated, if the wife does not want to stay with
3
A paragraph was suppressed here by the author from her 1991 French book
because the description by Spencer and Gillen of girls’ collective ritual ‘inter-
course’ is considered as a misinterpretation of what the initiation was about. It is
possible that Spencer and Gillen who did their fieldwork at the turn of the century
were describing not actual intercourse but symbolic re-enactments.
4
In the 1990s, mothers became more protective when promised marriages were
broken by girls who left the community for bigger towns, where some started
drinking.
174
her husband, he sometimes gives her back to her parents. The impor-
tant thing is not for the promised girl to stay with her husband but
for her to be deflowered by him, so that he is the man who officially
separates her from her mother, and through whom she sets off on her
woman’s destiny. The first child of the young woman belongs to the
promised husband, even if he does not keep the mother as his wife:
but it also happens that he leaves the responsibility with the family
of the girl who refused him and who will eventually marry somebody
of her own choosing.
Defloration by the promised husband plays the role of lifting the
sexual taboo imposed on the young girl until she is married. If she
does not live with the man who deflowered her, she is considered his
‘divorced’ wife. The man whom she marries later has to accept that
she has been through the hands of her promised husband.5
Sexual intercourse with a husband’s ‘brother’ could be re-enacted
during the couple’s life, in the context of the temporary exchange
of spouses in which the women’s consent was implied. Also, if the
husband died, a common occurrence because of the big age difference
between the spouses, the widow usually remarried with an actual or
classificatory ‘brother’ of the deceased.
While the operation on genitals marks, for both the girl and the
boy, a separation from the mother, the (symbolic) implication is
different for each. The boy leaves the mother’s world to become
identified with the men and to become a father in his turn, while
the girl is torn away from her mother by the men, to be identified
not with them but with the women, as she is expected to become a
mother in her turn.
Women look after young wives and teach them how to sing, dance
and paint. It is only when the son of a young woman, her co-wife or
her sister, is initiated, that she will really gain the status of a woman.
This status will be reinforced through her repeated participation in
the initiations of her brothers’ sons. Recognised as a mother and a
paternal aunt, it is from her early thirties that a woman will start
ritually to affirm herself through her roles as kirda, depositary of the
patriclanic yawulyu rituals and lands, and as kurdungurlu, custodian
of the knowledge, managing the rituals of the patriclan of her mother,
her husband’s sisters or others. In other terms, her relationship to her
mother will be changed by the fact that the ritual role she will gain
5
Another paragraph was suppressed here by the author from her 1991 French
book.
175
towards her mother’s Dreaming will be extended to the Dreamings

of her husband and his ‘brother’ clans.
A man too only finishes his initiation around the age of thirty.
It is then that he starts to become an initiator and is ready really to
intervene as kirda of his own patriclan and kurdungurlu of others,
particularly those of his mother and maternal uncles, or of his wife
and brothers-in-law.
While the boy goes from the ‘above’ (actual, female) to the ‘below’
(virtual, male) through circumcision, with subincision he finds a new
symbolic ‘above’ – the blood periodically shed from his scar. The
girl goes from the ‘above’ to the ‘below’ through defloration and
actualises her own ‘above’ as a woman through menstrual flow and
pregnancy. The male social body identified with the ‘below’ thus
gains an ‘above’ and a symbolic androgyny, while the female social
body, identified with the ‘above’, is a priori androgynous, having the
potential to give birth to men as well as women.
The symbol of this androgyny is the clitoris, which, among other
terms, is called waninja, a word meaning both throat and love (Reece
1975). The clitoris, which is left intact, is thus regarded as the locus
of pleasure but also as the external sign of an internal organ, the
throat, through which food goes one way and speech the other. This
symbol combines sexuality, food, language and inside/outside space.6
Another symbol of such a conjunction is makara, which means both
the uterus that welcomes the life of a future talking being, and the
placenta that feeds him. The word also designates the ritual ropes
that connect the women’s sacred sticks to place them in contact with
the ‘below’, the virtual space-time of the Dreaming.
Traditionally, when a girl had her first period she was secluded in
a special camp, and ate only a small amount of vegetable food. Later
on, at each menstruation she shifted to the women’s camp, where
she could take her children. Meggitt (1962) specifies that when a
man had two or three wives, he alternated his sexual relations to
the rhythm of their periods. Nevertheless, Aboriginal women’s men-
strual cycle is rather irregular and such a ‘calendar’ could not be very
precise.7 Menstruating women are no longer segregated from men.
Neither are men strictly excluded from the delivery of a baby: women
6
In Warlpiri myths eating is a common metaphor for sexual intercourse.
7
Many older women who used to live a semi-nomadic life insist that they could stay
months without menstruating; an observation that correlates with the fact that
children were not numerous and newborns were precious.
176
are often sent to give birth at the hospital, where they are attended by
male European doctors and even Aboriginal health workers.
In contrast, the food taboos accompanying pregnancy persist, and
are explained as preventing harm to the mother and the child.8 A
pregnant woman cannot eat yinjirri lizards nor yinarlingi echidnas,
because the pointed tail of the first and the prickles of the second
have the power to make the baby get stuck in the womb in the
wrong position, making delivery impossible. A species of wallaby,
jika, a small marsupial like a rabbit, is forbidden because it is said to
provoke a miscarriage. Wild turkeys are also prohibited because their
rapid breathing might make the baby consumptive. Snakes should
not be eaten either because they can make the foetus sick, and the
baby stillborn or weak. The last two prohibitions on the mother
remain until the child can walk; the others are lifted at the baby’s
birth.
The prohibition of some foods during pregnancy and during the
first menstruation seems to be the counterpart of the food interdic-
tions imposed upon boys and young men during initiation. Similarly,
the segregation of menstruating and delivering women can be seen as
the equivalent of the seclusion of initiates.
Finally, equivalent to the speech taboo that imposes silence on
young initiates is the learning and the use by women of the ‘hand
sign’ language. Indeed, women master it and use it more often than
men, who even call the women’s ceremonial shelter the same name
as this language, rdaka-rdaka, hand-hand (hands). Apart from its
use during mourning, the sign language allows women to talk of
secret things connected with either the ritual life or sexual matters,
or simply to gossip. They often use it when, during an argument, the
tone rises and shouts threaten to degenerate into blows from sticks,
as sometimes happense. The recourse to hand signs instead of hand
fights has a curious effect: the coded movements are very violent,
because the women double with the left hand the signs which are
usually done only with the right, and they shake their body, grimac-
ing, repeating insulting coded gestures several times; but, slowly, all
these outbursts end up by exhausting the anger, and provoking lots
of laughter.
For women, the resort to compulsory silence is a means of bring-
ing back the social peace compromised by verbal confrontation; for
young initiates it is a means of reminding them that the elders hold
8
Respected in the mid-1980s, such rules have weakened since.
177
the power of speech and of social order. The sexual rules which
forbid sexuality to girls as well as to boys until their genitals are ritu-
ally ‘opened’, are reinstated for each couple at events that are based
on a similar symbolism. A man must abstain from sexual intercourse
with a menstruating woman, and also during the few months after
she gives birth, but not during pregnancy.
Applied to the transformation of boys into men, girls into women
and the relations between members of each gender, the taboos on
space, speech, sexuality or goods summarise the symbolic acts that
socialise each individual. In this context of socialisation, they are
by definition temporary, punctuating each rite of passage or test of
sociality.
Taboos Relating to Totemic Relations

As far as totemic relations are concerned, prohibitions concerning
the four domains – space, language, sexuality, goods – are in some
cases permanent. Men of one clan (which is) united by the same
totems have no right to marry nor to have sexual relations, except in
the case of ritual transgressions, with the women of their clan who
bear the same totemic names. Holders of the same totems, women
share with men the same Kuruwarri living images, and celebrate
them in their territorial rituals (yawulyu).
As to language, secrecy is compulsory in relation to male ritual
activities and mythical stories which may not be revealed to women
or the uninitiated, the young or strangers. To a lesser extent, the
same applies to the ritual activities and stories restricted to women.
As to space, the totemic sites which are defined as secret for men may
not be approached by women, who must also keep away from the
men’s ceremonial ground; neither may men walk into the women’s
ceremonial ground, although nothing prevents them from going on
totemic sites connected with female myths.
Men are subject to restrictions concerning the most sacred clanic
sites. There is at least one site – that associated with the maralypi
singularity that concentrates the image-forces of the clan – which
men may not frequent or approach alone. It is men from outside the
clan, the kurdungurlu – uterine nephews or brothers-in-law of the
men of the clan – who have the responsibility of going to these places
to do the necessary rituals or those preliminary to the approach of
the men of the clan. Often these are not allowed to help themselves
to the water that comes from their sites; they may drink it if it is
178
brought to them by kurdungurlu. Similarly, only the kurdungurlu,

managers, may cut the wood in the vicinity of the site. The men of
the clan, as kirda, owners of the sites and the totemic forces, must
always be asked for the right to use their land, and they may refuse
access to outsiders. However, they depend on their relations both
uterine and by marriage, who act as mediators, to be able to enjoy
the land’s resources. As everybody is sumultaneously kurdungurlu
of sites other than his/her own, in this way everyone benefits from a
greater freedom of land usage.
The logic that dictates the regulation of what one possesses
and the enjoyment of what one does not possess can be found in
the prohibition on eating clanic totems, against having freely at
one’s disposal what they represent if they are non-edible things
or essential things such as water. Women are not subject to this
totemic taboo but initiated men, unless they are very old, must
deprive themselves of that whose name they carry: thus men of the
Honey Dreaming never eat honey; men of the Kangaroo Dreaming
eat this game only if they do not hunt it themselves; those of the
Rain Dreaming should not take water on their own, even from
sources other than their own totemic sites; and the men of the
Initiated Man Dreaming may not cut the wood of the eucalyptus
from which the mythical people of that name made the witi poles
used today in initiations.
In the old days, Warlpiri men also showed a certain reserve
towards their mother’s totem, that is the totem naming her clan
(Spencer and Gillen 1904). Parallel with this restriction on the
maternal totem, it was forbidden to marry a woman from one’s
mother’s clan who was of her classificatory generation (kuyu-kari
for ego); women of the other generation (kuyu-rna for ego) are
tolerated as spouses although these marriages are called warrura
‘wrong’. The taboo on the use of food or other goods related to
paternal or maternal totems may be seen as a metaphor for sexual
prohibition against sexual activity with women of the corresponding
clans. But it must also be related to the limits on space (taboos on
places) that make everyone dependent upon individuals outside the
clan. Just as the relation of an individual to his/her clanic land is that
of host – who enjoys it on the condition s/he invites others home –
the relation towards the animals, plants and other totemic referents
is one of ritual ‘producer’ of these things, who offers them to others
and deprives himself of them. This is a logic of symbolic exchange.
The taboo on clanic totems is the ritualisation of a gift: everybody
179
makes the symbolic sacrifice, partial or total, of what he puts at

the disposal of others and he receives in exchange everything that
others ‘produce’ and do not enjoy. The prohibition against marrying
women of one’s own or one’s mother’s clan also follows from (a) rit-
ualising (of) exchange: the circulation of women (or men9) requires
that clanic relatives give them to outsiders rather than maintaining
exclusivity.
The language taboo, as in the secrecy surrounding the activities
and knowledge related to the clanic totems, determines the basis of
all exchanges, in marriage, food and terrirory. If rituals and myths
were public, it would not be possible for everyone to have a role as a
totemic ‘producer’ or the power to control the relevant sites. Finally,
it is the mutual recognition of a specific role for each clan and of
a power symbolised by the Dreamings of their respective sites that
guarantees respect for people’s territorial identification in accord-
ance with a strategy of interdependence and of dissuasion (from
transgressing each other’s territory).
It is for the benefit of all the tribe that an individual is expected to
control the image-forces of the Dreamings that characterise the terri-
tory of which he is the owner, kirda. Such control, shared by all the
adults, men and women, is backed up by the ancestors with whom
they share their totemic name and flesh (kuyu).10 Without this sharing
of the image-forces between people, the power of the Dreamings
would be disorganised and non-productive, indeed malefic: there
would be no more Law.
In each context of non-ritual transgression, the forces of the
Dreaming do indeed become harmful: they induce sickness, followed
by madness or death. That explains the danger of approaching
restricted sites or even of inadvertently hearing knowledge consid-
ered secret. Warlpiri say that the Law of the Dreaming unleashes
its fury against the transgressor. Men, who perform rituals to direct
the generative power of the Dreamings, or to inflict magic punish-
ment, consider themselves to be merely the mediators whose actions
confirm the fate set incurred by the transgressor. The one who talks
too much about what he has learnt in male ceremonies, or who has
9
Especially as sons-in-law.
10
Kuyu is the current word for ‘meat’ but it is used in kinship classification collec-
tive terms like kuyu-wapirra, those who belong to the same Dreaming/totem, or
kuyu-kirda, those who belong to the Dreaming/totem of the spouse or potential
spouses: see next chapter.
180
seen what she should not have seen, are bewitched, ‘sung’ to death
or ‘pointed’ with a bone by the elders. The condemnation made
public excludes the transgressor from the tribe, sometimes provok-
ing general indifference towards him/her. Rejected in such a way,
the individual withdraws into himself, sometimes refuses to eat and
drink, wastes away and lets himself/herself die. To the Warlpiri, as
for other Aboriginal people, this is not suicide or murder, but the
effect of Jukurrpa, the Law of the Dreaming.
For breaches of prohibitions on food or sexuality, the threat is
less severe. Food prohibitions are disappearing, but in the old days
somebody who had eaten his totem might become sick and slow
down the increase of that species; if a shortage followed, he would
be held responsible and ‘sung’ to death. The man who sleeps with a
woman of his own clan might also mysteriously fade away.
Failure to respect taboos implies imbalance, indeed inequality: a
surplus of advantages for some to the detriment of others who lose
their own goods of exchange. To prevent such a situation, everybody
has an interest in respecting the Law and pressing others to do the
same. In the same way, everybody has an interest in giving what he/
she has so that others will reciprocate. Such an attitude, which is
shared by many Aboriginal people, even those who are urbanised,
explains many aspects of their relation to the objects of consumption:
the refusal to accumulate and the systematic circulation of all their
possessions, cars, clothes, etc.
Ritual Resolution of Transgressions Related to Sexuality

and Space
Failure to respect the rules of alliance, acts of adultery, as well as the
refusal of a matrimonial promise are at the heart of many conflicts.
If a married woman is caught out with another man she can be
punished by a collective rape and her lover may be killed, unless
the husband is satisfied with a token punishment consisting in the
spearing of the lover’s thigh. In at least one case a husband who
had been deceived died from shame. Traditionally, a non-legitimate
couple who managed to run away and survive in isolation for a year
was eventually reintegrated with the community and recognised as
married on their return. But a punishment expedition could also end
in the killing of both lovers. Nowadays, sexual transgressions often
provoke public dramas and generalised fights between the kin of the
respective parties, but there are no killings. Rather, social pressure
181
induces the lovers who are in the wrong classificatory relationship to

separate. In this way the threat associated with the transgression of
taboos plays a dissuasive role.
It is not individual freedom that is at stake: for instance, there is a
camp in Alice Springs where the Warlpiri who come to town do not
hesitate to have affairs not in accordance with classificatory kinship.
Dissuasion is based on the fact that all individuals have a place in the
social order which, in compensation for the respect of taboos, assures
status and some rights to everybody. These rights are different for
each man or woman but they offer similar advantages: incorporation
with a clan and the assistance of uterine kin or allies, both of which
give access to lands, resources and ritual knowledge.
To occupy land without having the right to do so, that is without
being invited by the kirda, owners of the place, is another transgres-
sion that can generate conflicts: violation of territorial rights calls
for a dispute or even fighting with weapons. Such confrontations
took place within the memory of the previous generation, and they
are also illustrated in some myths. For the Warlpiri, this kind of
situation necessarily calls for a ritual settlement, after which the
distribution of territorial rights may change and a new order may be
instituted: either one group assimilates another, or one site becomes
their common property, on the basis of different totemic references
that are justified by the relevant mythical episodes.11
In relation to the ethic that underlies such negotiations, I have
several times heard Warlpiri say ‘the ones who fought yesterday
become brothers or allies today’, a formula that also applies to their
relations with Whites. Violation followed by a re-evalution of territo-
rial rights is thus a traditional way of readjusting the distribution of
lands according to population flux, as long as the kinship network
is maintained by redefining for everybody the code of behaviour
expected towards others.
To resolve conflicts, traditionally the Warlpiri used reconciliation
ceremonies associated with specific clan totems. The first ceremony
is called puluwanti, Owl. Everywhere the Owl people went, they
performed a ritual which entailed burning each other with fire and
burning the pubic hair of some men and women (Peterson 1970). The
puluwanti inaugurated this ritual at Lake Surprise (sites Yinapaka
11
Such a process has adapted to the new territorial changes such as sedentary life in
reserves, mining and the reoccupation of land with outstations. See the introduc-
tion to this book.
182
and Ngarnaja), in the east of Warlpiri territory, but to do this they

invited the kurakuraja Bird people, to whom they were related as
mothers-in-law and sons-in-law. In the name of this meeting that
took place in the Dreamtime, the puluwanti clan has the responsi-
bility of organising this ceremony with all the clans who are skin
brothers of the kurakuraja people.12
According to the testimony of a female custodian of Yinapaka,13
and other women, when they were young girls the depilation of the
pubis was compulsory for all the participating women and took place
in a little hut built for the occasion at one edge of the ceremonial
ground; at the other end, the men were getting ready for their own
activities. To conclude the ceremony, which could last several days,
sometimes weeks, the following ritual took place: puluwanti men
stood in front of their kurakuraja mothers-in-law, actual or classifi-
catory, for the women to tear off their hairstring headbands; the kur-
akuraja men then did the same for their puluwanti mothers-in-law.
These hairstrings were used by women to make pubic tassels, which
they later gave to their daughters who were promised to the men
from whom they had received the hairstring. At the beginning of
the ceremony, another ritual required the puluwanti men to throw
little pieces of bark against the kurakuraja women; similarly, the
kurakuraja men threw pieces of bark at the puluwanti women.
The festivities culminated in a ritual fight during which puluwanti
and kurakuraja joined together to throw big burning poles at the
members of clans belonging to the opposite moiety.
The other three dispute settling ceremonies also simulate a fire fight
which involves totems in a kuyu-wururu (mother-in-law/son-in-law)
relationship. The Ngajukula is associated with the mala Hare-Wallaby
Dreaming: it is linked to the previous one in that the mala hero is said
to have spung from beneath the centre of the ceremonial ground of
the puluwanti people when they were dancing with the other birds.
12
Cf. May Napaljarri 1984, the birds were from the Warumungu tribe. In
Glowczewski (1991), I identified them wrongly as kuruwa, Brolga instead of kur-
akuraja (or taparung), a black bird like a goose (cf. Teddy Morrison Jupurrurla,
main kurdungurlu in charge of the ceremony for his mother, 1995). All these
birds belong to Japanangka/Napanangka-Japangardi/Napangardi subsections
(1–5 patricycle), which are in a ‘wife’s mother/daughter’s husband’ relationship
with puluwanti of subsections Jungarrayi/Nungarrayi- Japaljarri/Napaljarri (3–7
patricycle).
13
See Chapter 2, note 12, p. 99.
183
The latter asked who he was and he sang ‘I am Warlpiri’.14 The mala
Dreaming belongs to a clan brother of the puluwanti (3–7 patricycle;
Jungarrayi-Japaljarri) but also to another clan brother of the kura-
kuraja (1–5 patricycle: Japanangka-Japangardi). The same totem
here links two patriclans who exchange mothers-in-law.15 The last
two reconciliation ceremonies are called Jardiwanpa; one relates to
the Emu (yankirri) Dreaming (4–6; Jangala-Jampijinpa), the other to
the Wallaby (wampana), the Giant Snake (Yarripiri) and the Gecko
(yumarimari) who slept with his mother-in-law.16 Warlpiri people
add that the Emu and Wallaby clans often used to perform their
ceremonies together: in fact, their trails follow a parallel direction,
from the south to the north of the tribal territory, over hundreds of
kilometres.
Other classificatory relations are involved in the ritual organisation
of peace-making ceremonies, but their linking element is the mother-
in-law/son-in-law relationship, which symbolises par excellence the
alliance between groups: ritual confirms at this collective level the
importance of the mother-in-law exchange at the kinship level. These
ceremonies being associated with totems, the resolution of conflict
juxtaposes the two contexts subject to taboos: totemic relations and
the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship.
Depilation and the circulation of hairstrings, practised in the
above-mentioned ceremonies that stage the WM/DH relation, are
also found in mourning ceremonies. Widows cut their hair and depil-
ate their pubis; the dead person’s hair is cut and taken by his maternal
uncles, who weave it into a string they wear in turn around the neck
or the wrist until it desintegrates.
In the old days, at a person’s death the corpse was exhibited on
a platform erected on four poles, and a divination method was used
to determine the person responsible for the death. The maternal
uncles of the deceased then had the responsibility of taking revenge,
either through sorcery or by organising a punishment expedition.
14
Ngajukula is now the name given to both ceremonies; it was performed for the
groups living in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia in 1995.
15
This is an unusual situation for groups in a kuyu-wurruru (mother-in-law/son-in-
law) relation; usually groups of the same totem are kuyu-wapirra (brothers). See
next chapter in this book.
16
yankirri is owned by Jangala/Nangala-Jampijinpa/Nampijinpa (4–6 patricycle)
while the constellation wampana, Yarripiri, yumarimari is owned by Jupurrurla/
Napurrurla-Jakamarra/Nakamarra (2–8 patricycle which exchanges mothers-in-
law with 4–6).
184
For this occasion, they wore shoes called kurdaija, also the name
of the ‘vampire’ spirits of the deceased who cannot find their way
to the sky. According to Meggitt (1962), after one year of the body
being exposed the maternal uncles of a man or a woman went back
to this site to crush the bones and hide the powder so obtained in a
termite mound. They kept the bones of the arm to pass around all
their tribal brothers. Every time these remains of the dead and the
string made with his hair were handed over, funeral gifts, particularly
hairstrings and acacia seedcakes, were provided by the new recipients
to the previous ones. Though these exchanges took place between
men, women played an essential role, providing their hair and the
seedcakes (Glowczewski 1983a).
Today, activities related to the treatment of the dead are a subject
avoided by the Warlpiri. Bodies are buried and bones are no longer
passed around. Funeral gifts are still given, but directly by the women
of the ‘mothers’ of the dead to their ‘brothers’, actual or classificatory
maternal uncles of the dead. They cut their hair like widows and
they give food. Gifts of hairstring and gifts of food have a similar
value: they are at the same time goods of exchange and symbols of
reconciliation, since they mark the process of conflict resolution, the
conflict arising from the loss, which occasionally requires revenge.
Hair is also cut during the stages of socialisation of boys and girls.
A boy’s hair is cut during initiation, and a girl’s hair used to be cut at
her menarche. Nowadays, girls and women like to let their hair grow
and only cut it at the death of a son, a husband or sometimes a broth-
er.17 They still give the hair to a maternal uncle who in exchange is
obliged to defend his nieces in case of a conflict with their husband.
On the other hand, a woman’s fathers and brothers take the side
of her husband. The obligation to support uterine nieces (and not
daughters or sisters) is reflected in the way reconciliation ceremonies
are organised: conflict staged in bark fights sets the men in opposition
to their mothers-in-law, while in another ritual they confront the
maternal uncles of their wives (that is, the brothers of their mothers-
in-law); but the resolution of this conflict is symbolised in the fire
fight, which unites the clans who are the ‘mother-in-law/son-in-law’
(kuyu-wurruru) relationship against the clans of the other patrimoi-
ety to which their spouses (and brothers-in-law) belong, a situation
the reverse of the norm in which brothers-in-law are expected to give
each other assistance in everyday life.
17
Also a son-in-law.
185
In totemic relations, hairstrings are also used to pay for the ser-
vices rendered by the kurdungurlu (actual and classificatory uterines
and brothers-in-law). In other words, in all four contexts subject
to taboo – concerning totems, socialisation, mourning and the
mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship – the exchange of hairstring is
the most important symbol of the alliance, which is protected by the
taboos of space and sexuality.
Ritual Inversion of the Prohibitions of Speech, Body or Goods

A secret should not be revealed, but to be maintained it must be
transmitted. Elders transmit their most secret knowledge to the next
generation when they judge that they are ready to take their place as
kirda, and when they believe their own lives are coming to an end.
These same secrets are revealed to outsiders (affines, uterines) when
they are worthy of assuming the role of kurdungurlu. The revelation
of a secret proceeds out of a necessity determined by death and
bringing about alliance. Secrecy is an object of endless negotiations,
not because of a clan’s protectionism but because each member of the
clan in turn has to choose new allies.
In its way, the myth of the transfer of knowledge from the Digging
Stick women to the heroes of the Initiated Man Dreaming illustrates
this necessary revelation of the secret to the allies. It institutes order
in society through exchange. Transfer between genders or between
clans is also mediated by the interpretation of dreams, which are
transmitted from one person to another by means outside their
control. An individual may receive in a dream a revelation concern-
ing the totems and lands of clans other than his/her own: s/he must
then submit this revelation to the clans concerned who decide if they
will validate this information by integrating it with their mytho-ritual
heritage. Similarly, women may access some male secrets through
their dream visions which result either in female ritual innovations
or in a gift to the men of new ritual elements (designs, songs, dances).
Men too may dream designs destined for women, who, as I have
witnessed, modify them for their own use while saying they are the
‘same’ as were given to them by the male dreamers. This uninten-
tional transgression in sleep plays a creative role, or rather, in the
Warlpiri sense, a role of ‘(re)memorisation’ (remembrance?) in a
space-time where the difference between genders is erased.
At the ritual level, there are other trangressions with a generative
power: some rituals for the increase of species require that the people
186
who bear the name of a given totem eat some of it. This ritual trans-
gression is intended to reverse the death that transgression implies
in everyday life. The ritual assures the increase of the species and of
the living Kuruwarri that animate it, and which give life force to the
bearers of that name. The ritual reproduces a situation common to
many of the mythic beings, who used to eat that which gave them
their name. The men and women of the Wild Bean (wanarri) which
grows on the Acacia coriacea (pangkuna, kunarnturru or wakilpirri),
whose ashes people mix with the leaves of chewing tobacco, ate
beans they grilled on a fire, and they deduced from the way the
smoke blew which way they should travel; thus, they literally walked
in the tracks of the Dreaming that was simultaneously feeding and
guiding them. I did not find any Warlpiri myth whose heroes with
the names of animals were said to have eaten those animals; on the
other hand, they often kill each other, which could be a metaphor
for this.18
Mythic beings – with names of flora, fauna or other objects and
phenomena – are often shown as marrying within their own group:
this model of the endogamous (actual) reproduction of species is
opposed to the totemic exogamy of men. Some heroes had sexual
intercourse with other species, but these acts led to the interaction
between the different Dreaming paths of travel and the logic of alli-
ance which operates today.
To consume one’s own flesh (kuyu) – be it totems, or women
of the clan – is to be in a Dreaming state that men cannot realise
because the Law of the Dreaming supposes the reverse: interclanic
exchange. In a ritual context, to eat one’s totem, which is taboo, re-
actualises the self-reproductive aspect of the totems in the Dreaming
space-time; this self-reproduction is also manifest in the fact that
species are endogamous for reproduction (while people of different
totems are not). Women, having no alimentary taboo on their clan
totem, or on those of their father or their mother, permanently
symbolise self-reproduction, especially as they give birth from their
own body.
It has to be remembered that sexual intercourse is forbidden
to a man not only with women of his own clan – whom he calls
‘sisters’, ‘daughters’ or ‘paternal aunts’ – but also with women of
any clan of his patrimoiety (kirda) that he calls ‘brothers or fathers’
18
See Desert Dreamers (Glowczewski [1989] 2016) for a story of a Cannibal
Dreaming.
187
clans (kuyu-wapirra) or ‘mothers-in-law/sons-in-law’ clans (kuyu-

wurruru); in the other moiety (kurdungurlu), which encompasses the
clans who provide ‘wives’ (kuyu-kirda) or ‘mothers’ (kuyu-yarriki),
he has no right of access to the women of the generation that alter-
nates with his (kuyu-kari). However, it was from among these non-
prescribed relations that the actors of the collective defloration of the
girl he would marry were chosen.
According to Spencer and Gillen, some totemic ceremonies or
male initiations also required that men have sexual intercourse
with one or two women of the forbidden categories: these women,
widowed or married, were volunteers and followed the men to their
secret ground. Thus, the sexual transgression was accompanied by a
spatial transgression, both believed to favour the rituals, that is the
actualisation and the increase of the living forces which were being
manipulated. This sacred prostitution seems to have disappeared
except in the case of punishment: a widow accused of easy virtue
or an adulterous woman may be brought to the men’s camp in a
ceremonial context to submit to the Law, and to be taken in turn
by men normally forbidden to her. Women are scared of this ordeal
and show solidarity in preventing it, but the few women who have
been through it all seem proud of it and are recognised by the others
as possessing a certain power through having taken part in the male
ceremonies.
Although ritual sexual transgressions take place with women clas-
sified as kin, actual blood relations are excluded. Thus, even though,
in particular instances, there is a ritual ‘consumption’ of ‘sisters’
or ‘daughters/paternal aunts’ (ego’s clan and kuyu-wapirra clans),
incest between actual siblings (and parallal cousins) or between
agnatic relatives of different generations (father/daughter, paternal
uncle/niece, paternal aunt/nephew) is not conceivable. Similarly, a
man cannot sleep with his mother, his mother’s sister, or even a
blood related cross-cousin; only classificatory ‘mothers’ or ‘cousins’
(‘daughters’ of the father’s sister or of the mother’s brother) are
accessible in some ritual cases. The latter are even tolerated as wives
(kuyu-yarriki clans).
Actual and classificatory mothers-in-law seem to be absolutely
forbidden. The same applies to the maternal grandmother and
her sisters, or grand-nieces who are from the generation alternat-
ing with the generation of the mother-in-law in the kuyu-wurruru
clans. Women who are classified but not actual members of these
categories are possible partners in the ritual transgressions. Finally,
188
in the kuyu-kirda clans, which provide the wives, some women are
prohibited because they are potential wives of the man’s grandfathers
or grandsons; relations of the alternate generation are also prohib-
ited, whether they are classified or blood relations (kuyu-kirda and
kuyu-kari).
In other terms, the two kinship categories that escape ritual trans-
gression altogether – uterine nieces (ego’s matrimoiety and opposite
patrimoiety) and potential mothers-in-law (ego’s patrimoiety and
opposite matrimoiety) – are the ones that characterise the exchange
of nieces as the model of alliance. It seems that these ultimate pro-
hibited relationships are identified with social incest in order to
prevent the rupture of the model of alliance rather than to avoid
inbreeding.
By her subsection, a mother-in-law is the ‘cross-cousin’ of the
mother of her son-in-law, her mother is a ‘sister’ of the mater-
nal grandfather of the son-in-law (DHMFZ), and her father is a
‘brother’ of the maternal grandmother of the son-in-law (DHMMB).
The Dreamings which are fathers of a man’s mother are therefore
mothers of his mother-in-law (and vice versa: the mothers of a
man’s mother are fathers of his mother-in-law) (see Figure 1.3,
p. 000). Thus, through the Kuruwarri that inhabit a person and
are inherited from both parents, a mother-in-law is a symbolic
double of the mother. As such, the mother-in-law taboo symbol-
ises mother-son incest. To sleep with a ‘daughter’, a ‘mother’ or a
‘mother-in-law’ is similar: it is to replay the self-reference embodied
by the Dreaming Beings who engendered themselves. One can see in
the mother-in-law taboo (which prevails over all other sexual pro-
hibitions) the symbol of this timeless self-generation, the nostalgia
of a ‘dream’ where all kinship, and the temporality that goes with
it, are negated.
Prescribed wives, through their subsection, are ‘mothers’ of the
husband’s father; a man is then in a position of ‘father’ of his own
father, father of the paternal totemic Flesh, who thus engenders his
own totemic Flesh. From the point of view of society, men, therefore,
self-engender their Dreaming-totem, on condition that they marry
specific women from other Dreaming-totems. If men had access,
outside of the ritualised transgressions, to prohibited women, there
would be no differentiation between the various Dreamings and all
the kinship categories would be confused. Some myths illustrate the
danger of such social disintegration.
189
Examples of Mythical Sexual Transgression

The Invincible Dreaming myth (Wawulja) is in its way a dream of
non-differentiation and of incest, a nostalgia that is partially staged
by ritual sexual transgressions.
Invincible was polygamous. He wanted all his sons to be killed
so that he could marry all his daughters. His wives and daughters
managed to save two newborn boys who grew up in secret. In time
they took revenge on their father, by sending against him a stranger
who killed him. Invincible burst into pieces and reconstituted himself
straight away, but his genitals were changed. With the help of his
wives and daughters, he dragged himself from place to place until
one day his testes liberated secretions that accumulated into a hill
since called Kurra, pus.
Invincible then disappeared underground. His wives looked for
him by digging the ground with their sticks, but he came out on
top of the hill and snatched their tools, which he took with him to
the subterranean depths. The gigantic Warnayarra, Rainbow Snake,
then came out from the earth and swallowed all the women. After
a long, underground journey he spat them out in a place located
some thousand kilometres away on the Western Australian border.
Invincible followed them underground, and to the sky where all were
transformed into celestial phenomena: the Snake into the rainbow,
Invincible into Orion and his daughters into the Pleiades.
Nowadays, every night, Orion, subsection Jungarrayi (3), inter-
feres between the Pleiades, his daughters, subsection Napaljarri
(7), and the planet Mars, a Jakamarra (2) Crow man (Jarntimarra)
who tries to reach them. Crow belongs to the right subsection to
be the husband of Invincible’s daughters. The Warnayarra Snake,
like the Rain Dreaming he belongs to, is a member of two sub-
sections, Jampijinpa-Jangala (4–6): Nangala (6) is the right subsec-
tion of women (from this Dreaming or any ‘brother’ Dreaming)
that Invincible should have married instead of his own daughters
(Glowczewski and Pradelles de Latour 1987).19
The myth tells of an incestuous aberration which turns into a
tragedy of revenge. Wawulja cannot remain invincible like his name:
19
The Rainbow Snake represents the anger of a broken alliance; as a male he
embodies the allies Invincible refused to have: brothers-in-law Jangala (brothers
of the Nangala potential wifes) and fathers-in-law Jampijinpa (fathers of the
Nangala).
190
two of his sons escape his herodian law and succeed in taking revenge.
Killed by a stranger, he revives but his reproductive functions are
damaged. Neither sons nor father know that the boys were conceived
not by Invincible but by the Wind, mayawunpa, a secret lover of
his wives. This latter Dreaming is ‘brother’ of Invincible because he
belongs to the same patricycle: Jungarrayi-Japaljarri (3–7). As they
were growing up the two boys became cannibals who transformed
themselves into whirlwinds in order to swallow the women they slept
with; they also introduced shamanistic cures, and are sacred refer-
ences for the medicine men not only among the Warlpiri, but also the
Pintupi and Walmajarri to the west.20
Like all the Dreaming heroes, Invincible disappears underground
and his Kuruwarri forces are present for ever in the sites he created on
his way, but he is also a visible phenomenon in the form of Orion. The
celestial trajectories of Invincible-Orion, his daughters, the Pleiades,
and their pretender, Mars, are guiding people during the kurdiji
initiation which is associated with the Initiated Man Dreaming (3–7
patricycle, like Invincible). The Initiated Man, Invincible and Wind
Dreamings are owned by specific clans, but they are ritual references
for the whole tribe. Everybody knows the story of the jealous father
who chases the Pleiades; nevertheless, only initiated men and women
know that Orion is Invincible and that he is associated with the
brothers who turned into whirlwinds. Publicly, ‘above’ and ‘below’
are separated. Invincible is below as the ancestral principle of the
patriclan that claims his name, Wawulja. As a constellation, he is
above, a ritual and temporal mark for all the Warlpiri, only identified
by the subsection Jungarrayi (3) as a possessive character, not openly
incestuous, who refuses to leave his daughters, the Pleiades, with
Mars, their legitimate suitor. The myth is to this discourse on the
celestial phenomena, the same as a hidden, ‘below’ meaning is to a
manifest, ‘above’ one.
The Invincible Dreaming is not only ‘daughter and sister’ of
himself (kuyu-wapirra), which is the norm (for all Dreamings), but
also, by engendering himself through his daughters, Wawulja turns
his Dreaming into his own ‘wife and uterine niece’ (kuyu-kirda),
20
Longer versions of the myths of Invincible and his sons were published in
Glowczewski (1991b); the latter are known all across the Western Desert and
the Kimberley as the ‘Two-Men’ who also brought different Laws to the coastal
tribes; for an analysis of this transcontinental Dreaming, see Glowczewski ([1998]
2009 and 2004).
191
‘mother and daughter’s daughter’ (kuyu-yarriki) and ‘mother-in-

law, uterine grand-niece or maternal grandmother’ (kuyu-wurruru).
The four types of Flesh (clans or patricycles) and the eight kinship
categories (subsections) are thus confused. This Dreaming Father
takes himself for the Absolute One, despising the alternation of the
generations and exogamy, at the price of the murder of his sons.
Insensitive to the interplay of differences, hostile to other Dreamings,
he is the negation of alterity and of alliance, and so the obverse of
the social order. The Dreaming he embodies, and society, are like the
photo-negative of each other: Invincible transforms his wives into
mothers-in-law because he marries his daughters. Similarly, a man
who transgressed the mother-in-law taboo by sleeping with his wife’s
mother (before she gives birth to a daughter) would risk becoming
the father of his own future wife.
I indicated previously that the marriage of Dreaming Beings with
females from their own Dreaming was quite common. Incest, as
embodied by Invincible, corresponds in other myths with a collective
endogamy where the four types of Flesh (own Dreaming, mother’s
Dreaming, wife’s Dreaming, mother-in-law’s Dreaming) are also con-
fused, although it does not prevent the members of each Dreaming
from differentiating each other by kin terms. To my knowledge, this
collective behaviour is not explicitly identified with incest: mythic
partners of the same totemic name or of different totems are said to
transgress sexually only if their kinship categories are defined as pro-
hibited for one another. For instance, two lovers of the same totem
are not said to be in an incestuous relationship if their subsections
define them as ‘spouses’, such as with the mythic Emu couple.
One myth talks about a transgression between a youth and a
woman who were permitted to marry according to their subsections.
The taboo broken was not one of incest but that which forbids
a young initiate from getting married or even seeing a woman.
A young Jungarrayi (3) from the Initiated Dreaming was kidnapped by a

Nangala (6) woman of the Rain Dreaming, who carried him through the
air on her back before he had finished his ritual seclusion. This episode is
mimed by the women during the kurdiji ceremony. She took him to live
with her clan and looked after him as if he were her husband, but for
years he refused to marry her. Finally, he gave in to love and they had a
little girl. They returned to his clan whose members accepted them back.
This episode is repeated in two different sites of the Initiated Man

Dreaming, whose people came out of the ground after a gigantic
192
windbreak (yunta) fell from the sky and was transformed into a long
hill at Kurlungalinpa. This happened when a light in the sky (kiiki
or parayipilpa), not a falling star but probably a comet, travelling at
high speed, brought the night, before breaking up into small stars.
After their terrestrial and subterreanean wanderings, and the fall of
a new windbreak and of the night at another site, the Initiated Man
people returned to the cosmos as little stars (yanjilypirri or wanji-
lypiri). This is secret knowledge, like the transformation of Invincible
into Orion. On the other hand, the story of the woman in love who
stole the initiate is a public episode told to children. So is the Willy
Wagtail Dreaming which deals with another type of transgression,
related to both initiation and sexuality. This is the story of a posses-
sive mother who kept her adult son in her belly instead of giving him
to the men to be initiated and to enter a marriage alliance through the
promise of a mother-in-law.
Apart from the previous examples, all other episodes of sexual
transgression that were told to me concern the mother-in-law/son-in-
law relationship. The recurrence of this theme confirms the importance
of this alliance, even when it is only virtual. It is the only relationship
that is simultaneously subject to the four domains of taboo: space, lan-
guage, sexuality and goods. We have seen that the Dreaming Digging
Stick women were raped by their ‘son-in-law’, Transgressor, wingki-
ngarrka: he is Jungarrayi-Japaljarri (3–7) and they are Napanangka-
Napangardi (1–5). Peterson (1967) notes that before Transgressor
arrived in Warlpiri country, where he met these women, he belonged
to the same subsections as they: Japanangka-Japangardi (1–5).
There is also the story of the Gecko yumarimari who, out of
shame for sleeping with a ‘mother-in-law’, left the path of travel
of his companions from the Dreaming constellation (formed by)
Wallaby (wampana), Giant Snake (Yarripiri) and Seeds (ngurlu)
to hide himself (cf. Chapter 3). Also called transgressor, wingki,
his story and the simple mention of the site of his transgression,
Yumarimari (like his name), always provoke obscene jokes and the
formula: ‘This Jakamarra (2) who slept with a Nangala! (6)’. In fact,
according to the myths, transgressors have various reactions.
Two heroines of the Rain Dreaming, Nangala (6) and Nampijinpa (4),
when they were crossing the country of the Plum (marrkirdi) and Berries
(ngardanykinyi) Dreaming, stopped at the waterhole Kinkimularnu,
where they seduced a group of men from this Dreaming: Jakamarra
(2), ‘son-in-law’ of the Nangala and Jupurrurla (8) ‘son-in-law’ of the
Nampijinpa.
193
According to Warlpiri women, the heroines did not regret this shame-
ful (kuntangka) act. On the other hand, a section of the Goanna
Dreaming says that a Japangardi (5) hero called himself waji-waji,
transgressor, after he deliberately slept with a Nungarrayi (3), a
potential mother-in-law. Worried about his action, he then went
about inspecting his body to see whether some terrible transforma-
tion was going to afflict him. The scene is re-enacted by women in a
yawulyu ritual (cf. annexe and Chapter 3).
A mythical episode, told by a man, shows a transgressor who, not
aware of being one, was nevertheless stricken by the Dreaming Law:
A Jangala (6) of the Rain Dreaming slept with a Nakamarra (2) without
knowing her subsection nor her Dreaming. Later on, he was magically hit
in the back and the killing stick went right into him. Neither he nor the
men who were with him, least of all the young initiates he was leading
on an initiation journey, understood why he was attacked in such a way.
They carried him to his country Kalipinpa where he asked to be laid with
his belly against the ground to die.
The following episode illustrates the punishment of an aggressor.
A Jungarrayi (3) of the Initiated Man Dreaming raped a ‘mother-in-law’
Napangardi (5) of the Ground Honey (nankalinji) Dreaming, then he hit
her on the neck and killed her fearing she might denounce him. Thanks
to the footprints he left on the ground, he was found by the woman’s
people and killed in his turn. This happened at Kurlungalinpa, the site of
the Initiated Man Dreaming where one of the first kurdiji initiations took
place. The Honey people went there to participate in the promise ritual
that designates a future mother-in-law for the initiate.
Relations between the two peoples would have been broken if the
death of the transgressor had not been followed by a reconciliation
ceremony. Kurlungalinpa had been visited previously by the Bee
Honey (ngarlu) and Owl (puluwanti) people who originated such a
ceremony which stages the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship:21
thus, the site doubly symbolises the association between this relation-
ship and the rituals for settling disputes.
Sacred Objects: Temporality and Non-Temporality

At the end of this presentation of the Warlpiri taboos, it is clear that
the four contexts they apply to relate to the same domains, both in
21
See audio version in Glowczewski (2000).
194
the prohibitions and in their mythic or ritual inversions, through

transgression or compensation. Table 5.1 summarises this: in each
box, which combines a context and a domain, the first line shows
the relevant prohibition or restriction and the second line shows the
‘other side’, the complementary practice associated with it.
The matrix, constructed with the contexts and the domains of
taboos, organises the variables so that none determinates the others,
although, locally, each variable may be connected to any other. The
eight variables may be represented by the vertices of a cube (see
Figure 5.1) which, by definition, lacks a unique polarisation: the
three edges and the diagonal (not shown in the diagram) that con-
nects each vertex to its opposite vertex (through the cube) represent
the relationships that connect each context with four domains or
each domain with four contexts. The relationships between the con-
texts are illustrated by diagonals (not shown) that run across the six
faces of the cubes; and the relationships between the domains are
illustrated by the opposite diagonals that also run along the six faces,
but cross the previous diagonals: this is another way of visualising
the interaction between the two levels of taboo.
The four contexts listed for the Warlpiri taboos correspond to
their four types of collective ceremonies: funeral, initiation, totemic
rituals and reconciliation through settling dispute. Other rituals
exist, but they are more individual, such as magic to seduce or
to keep somebody faithful, therapies to cure a pain or a state of
mind, and sorcery to punish or avenge. These practices are exten-
sions, case by case, of social and cosmological preoccupations
that are addressed in the ceremonies for mourning, initiation, ter-
ritorial totemism and conflict resolution. In these ceremonies, the
ritualised transgression of taboos plays a very important role in the
collective production of the mythical space-time and of the social
temporality.
First, transgression in space is the most common catalyst in reor-
ganising the way in which territorial rights are distributed: Dreamings
are used as a mythical and ritual warranty to ensure that any reor-
ganisation obeys a mode of land attribution acceptable to the Law.
It is a way of reproducing the Law of the Dreaming. Transgression
in space accompanies various ceremonial situations: women coming
to the men’s ground during some male totemic rituals or at the
end of initiation; men coming to the women’s ground at the end of
mourning; mothers-in-law and sons-in-law dancing together in the
ceremonies for conflict resolution. All these ritual situations oppose
195
Table 5.1 Contexts and domains of Warlpiri taboos
CONTEXTS: MOURNING SOCIALISATION TOTEMISM MOTHER-IN-LAW/
SON-IN-LAW
Domains: (temporary) (permanent)
Space places avoided seclusion secret sites proximity avoided
‘opening’ rites initiation territorial rites dispute settlement
Language names forbidden silence of initiates secret names, myths forbidden conversation
sign language reversed language esoteric language restricted language
Sexuality abstinence abstinence endogamy forbidden incest prohibition
pubic depilation body marking body marking pubic depilation
Goods destruction forbidden meat regulations on totems ‘protected’ hunt
gifts gifts gifts gifts
SOCIALISATION
Goods
Sexuality
MOURNING
Language
MOTHER-IN-LAW/SON-IN-LAW
TOTEMISM Space
Figure 5.1 A cube for Warlpiri taboos
the two genders in a way that re-enacts the cosmological reversal

(turning inside out) of ‘below’ and ‘above’.
As a necessary revelation of secrets, transgression in language also
participates in reaffirming the coming into being of any Dreaming.
It is the condition for renewing the generations, marriage alliances
and totemic relations. Ritual transmission changes sons into fathers,
sons-in-law and husbands, daughters into mothers, mothers-in-law
and wives; all agnates into affines allies, living people into dead
[spirits that will join with the Dreaming and not haunt the living].
But through distinctions of access to knowledge, which are marked
by the various languages of substitution (hand signs, reversed
speech, esoteric language during initiation or the one restricted to
mother-in-law/son-in-law), rituals are reminders that affiliation and
alliance are maintained as the Law of the Dreaming beyond the
interested people who actualise these links.
Similarly, ritualised sexual transgression is a reminder that kinship
categories may be confounded in the Dreamtime, without cancelling
the potential for social organisation that the Dreaming carries. The
sexual relationship with a ‘wife’s mother’, which is always forbidden,
is mimed in ritual re-enactments of transgressing totemic heroes.
This ubiquitous mythic theme – implicitly condemning both father/
daughter and mother/son incest – here plays the role of an inacces-
sible magnet, which would fuse (and confuse) generations normally
separated by rules of alliance and affiliation.
197
Finally, ritual gifts of goods – food, objects, hairstring, cloth,

nowadays even money – which accompany the four types of collective
ceremonies (which are associated with the four contexts for taboo),
are a form of symbolic compensation for the deprivations and prohi-
bitions that men impose on themselves at these different levels. The
son-in-law may not consume all the products of his hunt, because
he must provide his mother-in-law with meat throughout his life in
exchange for the wife he enjoys, a debt of which he is reminded by
the vegetable dishes his mother-in-law gives him. Similarly, young
initiates may not eat meat during their seclusion because they have
to learn to hunt for the elders, as repayment for the knowledge the
elders reveal to them. Widows, who may not cook nor eat meat during
mourning, ritualise a loss, so standing on the side of the mothers of the
deceased, who provide ritual payments to their brothers for organising
the funerals and the rituals that follow. Finally, restrictions on totems
take symbolic value from allowing complementarity in ritual ‘work’,
for the increase of natural phenomena for the benefit of the tribe,
when the custodians, by ritually consuming their totems, re-enact the
self-reproduction of the Dreamings and the conditions of fertility.
In all these contexts, ritual inversion of the various taboos relates
to a mystery: how time is produced from its negation. This non-
temporal time is shown in the universes of the multiple Jukurrpa
which re-engender themselves self-referentially in the permanence
of their name, outside any exchange, a situation illustrated by the
endogamy of the ancestral people and of the species that descend from
them. Another aspect of this self-reference is embodied in the sacred
objects.
I have kept to the end the taboo on sacred objects because it seems
to condense the four contexts and four domains mentioned so far.
Traditionally, a stranger or a young man who was not fully initiated
and who saw sacred objects without the permission of the elders was
punished by death. Two Warlpiri men who disappeared in suspi-
cious circumstances in the 1970s, were, according to some, killed
because they did not respect this prohibition. Similarly, in 1984, a
woman from Lajamanu who, inadvertently, found forbidden objects
hidden in the bush became mad and died: her madness and death,
unexplained by Western medicine, were understood by everyone to
be the result of her involuntary transgression.
Women’s ritual objects, handled with great care, are kept hidden
by women even though most of the boards and Jukurrpa stones were
originally given to them by men. Sometimes a ritual requires men to
198
have contact with these women’s objects, for instance during a curing
ritual or at the end of a period of mourning. But apart from these
ritualised transgressions, the man who thinks of stealing women’s
objects takes a mortal risk. Some Warlpiri men and women tell of
having ‘sung’ to death a man who had transgressed this rule. When
one day a jealous husband threw himself in anger on the women’s
ground pretending to grab the sacred stick erected there, immediately
the women dancers hid the stick away and treated the intruder as a
madman. The elders did not ‘sing’ him, but the ritual journey that
had been planned to give another tribe the initiation cycle Kajirri,
which was being performed, was almost cancelled. After many dis-
cussions, no novice from Lajamanu was taken to be initiated on that
occasion (Glowczewski [1989] 2016).
Prohibitions are modulated nowadays by interactions with non-
Aboriginal people. Children still must not touch nor see objects
restricted to women’s rituals, but some women have sold them to
art shops. Men show a very strong resistance to the idea of selling
their sacred objects, and the fact that some of these, collected by
Europeans, are exhibited openly scandalises them. However, when
twelve Warlpiri men invited to Paris recognised some boards at
the Musée national des arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie (The National
Museum of Arts of Africa and Oceania [MNAAO, 1960–2002]), and
it was suggested to them that they take them back home, the Warlpiri
men refused, saying it was too late. Because these objects had been
exhibited, they were no longer secret, and to bring them back would
have provoked conflicts about rightful ownership and the identifica-
tion of those guilty of having let them go in the first place. On the
other hand, elders accepted some of the sacred boards that were to be
returned by the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.
The secrecy surrounding the handling of sacred objects relates to
totemism, because they are connected with a specific Dreaming or are
used as a medium for the actualisation of different Dreamings. But
the other three contexts for taboos are also implicated: socialisation,
mourning, and the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship. It is during
his initiation that a boy sees the sacred objects for the first time, and
it is when a woman takes part in the initiation of her son – or the son
of a co-wife or of a sister – that she is allowed to handle the women’s
ritual objects; as paternal aunt of a novice, she also gains the right to
look at some of the men’s objects while the other women have to lower
their heads. While all other possessions of a dead man or woman are
burnt, their sacred objects are not: these must be handed over to other
199
members of the clan. Finally, in the context of the mother-in-law/

son-in-law relationship, during reconciliation ceremonies, ritual poles
and masts are made to be burnt, and wooden vessels are painted to be
given to the ‘sons-in-law’ as part of a special dance. These vessels are
of the same shape as those used for carrying babies or food, and the
dance can symbolise giving daughters as wives to sons-in-law.
Through their identification with this or that totemic name, the
male and female sacred objects are the transubstantiation – believed
to be an effective presence – of the totemic beings. The prohibition
on eating or using a clanic totem seems to be a particular case of
the sacrality and secrecy that surrounds the Kuruwarri (as image-
forces and totems-objects) that the Warlpiri say nourishes them.
Nevertheless, while the eating prohibition applies principally to the
father’s totem (one’s own), and sometimes to the mother’s, the inter-
diction on sacred objects applies to all tribal totems: a man may not
see the objects of other clans without being invited to do so in a ritual
context.22 The value attached to the objects belonging to this or that
clan is strengthened by the secrecy that surrounds them. Some pass
from clan to clan, but always according to a ritual and secretly coded
manipulation. The exchange of such objects, or their return to their
first owner after a series of transfers, symbolises confidence, frater-
nity or alliance which cement individual, interclanic or intertribal
relationships.
Sacred objects, as living images of the totemic names and their inac-
cessible referents – the eternal beings – cannot be dissociated from the
mythic paths of travel and the sites connected with the Dreamings.
Because they symbolise totemic names, they are also taboo in lan-
guage; they are to speech what the sign language is to the tongue: a
way to ‘say’ without speaking. Finally, sacred objects are the expres-
sion par excellence of whatever is taboo in sexuality: the connection
between coitus and reproduction. The mystery of life derives from
the power of the Dreamings, and not from the contingency of sexual
intercourse, which function is publicly disregarded in favour of the
discourse about spirit-children. It is this power of the Dreaming that
the (sacred) objects crystallise, as they are external to human sexual-
ity and symbols of the cosmological androgyny: the conjunction of
female and male in totemic principles.
The taboo on sacred objects condenses in itself the four con-
texts subject to taboo – mourning, socialisation, totemism and the
22
It is the same for women’s secret objects.
200
Figure 5.2 Women’s ritual to lift the mourning taboos for the Kana Digging
Stick Dreaming. The blankets are gifts for men. Lajamanu. From left to right:
Liddy Nelson Nakamarra, Yulyurlu Lorna Fencer Napurrurla, Emma Morrison
Napanangka, Kajingarra Maisy Napangardi, Kungariya Gladys Napangardi,
Biddy Hooker Napanangka © B. G. (1984)
mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship – and the four domains to

which they apply – space, language, sexuality and goods. But this
taboo also implies a prohibition that transcends all that, because it
is not limited to a relationship, temporary (mourning and socialisa-
tion) or permanent (totemism and WM/DH). Sacred objects reflect
all possible relationships and stay taboo independent of the context
or the person who handles them, and the succession of generations.
Because sacred objects are substitutes for the contingencies of
space, language, sexuality and goods which make up human life,
they are the warranty of the Jukurrpa as a space-time which is
external to, but a condition of, this temporality. By extension, these
taboos become a way to create human temporality, both as a vertical
transmission – in the succession of generations re-enacted through
socialisation and mourning rituals – and as a horizontal differentia-
tion perpetually redefining these modalities of alliance and of ritual
interdependance between the totemic groups. We will see that a
similar warranty concerning the making of time is symbolised by
sacred objects elsewhere in Australia.
201
6
A Topological Approach to Australian Cosmology

and Social Organisation
I propose here to use a particular branch of mathematics, the topol-

ogy of surfaces, as a means of comparing cosmology and social
organisation among the Central Australian Warlpiri. After defining
a topological figure for Warlpiri society, I shall try to show that
topology also offers a methodology for cross-cultural comparison.
In highlighting a similarity of structure between Australian social
organisation and cosmology, my hypothesis will be that Aboriginal
kinship neither determines nor is determined by cosmology but that
the two are applied forms of a specific logic that can be accounted
for by topology.
From the Land to the Dreaming
Mythical places and ritual roles among the warlpiri

In 1978, after many hearings before the Aboriginal Land
Commissioner, the Warlpiri became one of the first Australian tribes
to recover most of their traditional territory.1 This restitution was
obtained by demonstrating that groups are symbolically affiliated to
the geographical itineraries of journeys made by mythical heroes who
bore totemic names. Each local group has rights to sites and to tracts
of land connected by the itineraries of particular Ancestral Beings
whom it regards metaphorically as ‘fathers’ to its members. During
my fieldwork (1979–1984) I was able to observe a close relation-
ship between the fluidity with which these local patrician groups
are constituted and a process through which mythical stories and
associated totems are ritualised. Women play an active part in this
1
This text was translated from the French by Barbara Glowczewski and Kenneth
Maddock and first published in 1989 in Mankind, 19 (3): 227–40 (following
a Hunter and Gatherer conference in Darwin in 1988). Figures 6.1 to 6.4 were
published in Glowczewski and Pradelles de Latour (1987) and Figures 6.5 to 6.10
in Glowczewski (1988).
202
Australian Cosmology and Social Organisation
interaction between cosmology and social organisation. Contrary

to the assertions of Meggitt (1962) and Munn (1973), women do
participate in ritual activities aimed at actualising totemic and mythi-
cal links between itineraries and sites (as has also been shown by Bell
1983). Admittedly women perform these rituals on their own, but
they organise themselves in the same manner as the men. According
to the totem and itinerary being celebrated, some performers act as
kirda or owners of the rituals and sites, in which capacity they have
the duty to dance; the others act as kurdungurlu, or managers of the
rituals and sites, directing the dances and preparing the ceremonial
objects and ground.
This division of ritual roles which also governs land rights is to
be found in other central and northern tribes (Maddock 1981). At
the first level, everyone is ‘owner’ of his or her father’s land and
‘manager’ of his or her mother’s land and also the land of his or
her spouse (Glowczewski 1981b). In practice, the range of deter-
mination is wider than just patri- or matri-filiation. During ritual
performances, the owner/manager duality of function among keepers
of the land is often extended and systematised in accordance with
the division of all members of the tribe into the eight subsections of
the Aranda system. This system, which the anthropological literature
identifies as a matrimonial classification, is above all a device for use
in ritual life and in the cosmological allocation of land rights.
When analysing the spatial embodiment of myth and ritual on the
one hand, and the symbolic complementarity of men and women
on the other. I was led into looking for a model that would account
for the inseparable articulation of territoriality with cosmology
and classificatory kinship. The Warlpiri, like their neighbours, use
the word Jukurrpa (‘dream’ or Dreaming) to denote the Ancestral
totemic Beings, the myths that tell of their journeys and the associ-
ated itineraries. The Dreaming is not a simple mythical Golden Age
annihilating time, through which Aboriginal people would be fixed
in a repetitive cycle: rather it is a space-time, a kind of permanency in
movement, allowing innovations to be legitimated through integra-
tion via a preexistent logic.
Such innovations, which take the form of new rituals, new geo-
graphical landmarks and new systems of alliance, are part and parcel
of the reproduction of society. Consequently, the Dreaming is indu-
cive of a dynamic social logic allowing both the maintenance of
irreducible specifications and the incessant renewal of articulation
between mythical and ritual elements and society. It is from this
203
perspective that the Aborigines themselves consider the Dreaming

to be their Law. It is a matter not of a set of rules but of an active
process of forging social identity. The Dreaming is a programme
– not a stock of remembered models for organising society, but a
matrix of combinatorial possibilities.
Ritual innovation and transmission in central australia

In 1984, two events allowed me to examine more closely the dynamic
relation between cosmology and social organisation. First, I followed
the process of integration of a ritual which a Warlpiri woman had
dreamt two years earlier. I was thus able to measure the exceptional
importance of onirical elaboration in the renewal of symbolic links
between men and totemic heroes. Both the context in which she
received her revelation and that in which her vision obtained tribal
recognition had implicit political and territorial significance. She
dreamt the new ritual at a time of negotiations with a mining company
wishing to prospect in the vicinity of a Warlpiri sacred site; her dream
acquired the value of a collective ritual when the Warlpiri signed a
financial agreement with the company (Glowczewski [1989] 2016).
The fundamental preoccupation of Aboriginal societies seems to
be to redefine the territorial eligibility of every individual and group.
To this end, it is necessary to link people to the space-time reference
of the Dreaming, that is, to totems and consequently to ritual and
the corresponding sites. In connecting sides, with totemic itinerary
and stories, Aborigines affirm distinct tribal identities expressed in
different tongues while at the same time relating their linguistic and
cultural differences to a common symbolic language, the Dreaming,
which enables intertribal alliances to be made.
The second event through which I was able to observe the sociali-
sation of Dreaming Law was a visit I made with sixty Warlpiri to
Docker River, a settlement 1500 km from Lajamanu, the community
where I was based. The purpose was to give the Pitjantjatjara (‘sell’
as Aborigines say in English) the Kajirri ceremony which the Warlpiri
themselves had received from their northern neighbours a century
earlier (Meggitt 1966). In addition to the ceremony a transfer was
made of the famous eight subsections system which the Pitjantjatjara
had not previously used (Glowczewski 1988: 398–418).
Many contributions to Aboriginal studies assume that kinship clas-
sification provides the organising model for everything else (Scheffler
1978, 1986). My example of intertribal transmission of a kinship
204
system by means of a ceremony seems to invalidate this proposition.

The eight subsections appear to be much more the formal applica-
tion of an ideology conveyed through ritual activities than a model
governing the exchange. I put forward the postulate that a subsection
system could not have a hold on society if there were not already in
operation a logic governing the construction of local identities and
intertribal alliances.
To convey a ceremony (a ‘business’ as they say) by travelling to
another tribe is to concretise, step by step, the mythical itinerary to
which the ceremony refers. It is implicit in the act of transmission
that the recipients take over the itinerary and extend it through their
own tribal land by elaborating new mythical episodes which they add
to the initial story. Thus myth, itinerary and ritual become instru-
ments of alliance-making. In effect, the itinerary connects the two
groups through places in the landscape; the myth gives their alliance
an ancestral and totemic guarantee; and, finally, the ritual is both
pretext and context for actualising the encounter and the exchange.
When the Warlpiri received the Kajirri (cycle) a hundred years
ago, they elaborated an itinerary-story connecting them with the
Kurintji (from whom they received the ceremony) and other northern
tribes. The Kajirri is in fact derived from the Kunapipi fertility cults
of the Roper River and Arnhem Land, which celebrate the journey of
two Ancestral Beings, the Wawilak sisters (Berndt l95l). This is one
example among others of the fact that over distances of hundreds of
kilometres mythical itineraries can connect tribes of different lan-
guages while stimulating each of them to produce stories and rites
having a local colour and conducive to a specific tribal identity.
The transmission of kinship systems reveals the same phenomenon
of local differentiation. Although the Warlpiri in Central Australia,
like the northern tribes of the Roper River and Arnhem Land (such
as the Murngin-Yolngu), use eight subsections, they do not expand
them into the same system everywhere. Now that they have adopted
subsections, the Pitjantjatjara could elaborate yet another system. We
shall see, however, that behind the different systems, there is always
a common logic of the same order as that through which itineraries,
myth and rites are intertribally communicated and particular tribal
elaborations produced.
My opinion is that the diversity of Australian kinship systems can
only be understood in the light of these itinerant mythico-ritual com-
plexes, these Dreamings that trace paths between people, pathways
that exist eternally yet are actualised only ephemerally.
205
From the Dreaming to the Hypercube
Generalised exchange and homeomorphism between

warlpiri kinship and cosmology
Introduced into ethnology by Pradelles de Latour (1984, 1986)
topology offers a means of defining the type of logic at work in a
given society. With him I published an initial topological analysis of
my Warlpiri data (Glowczewski and Pradelles de Latour 1987).
We started from the classificatory category of ‘mother-in-law’. The
mother-in-law is deemed taboo in all Australian tribes, her son-in-
law being forbidden to talk to her or even approach her. In addition,
among the Warlpiri, everybody is in a classificatory ‘mother-in-law/
son-in-law’ relationship with a range of clans that he or she calls kuy-
uwurruru and into which he or she may not marry (Laughren 1982).
We demonstrated that niece (ZD) exchange, which the Warlpiri call
kaminingi, corresponds to mother-in-law exchange between clans
related as kuyuwurruru. By formalising these exchanges, we proved
that they cannot be reduced to the system of restricted exchange
involving four patricycles (1–5, 2–8, 3–7, 4–6) that is shown in the
classical subsection diagram (see Figure 6.1).
This diagram, being based on the assumption of sister exchange,
implies that the classificatory second cross-cousins prescribed as
wives are both matrilateral (MMBDD) and patrilateral (FFZSD). But
sister exchange is incompatible with the niece (and mother-in-law)
exchange valued by Warlpiri. To explain niece exchange, it is neces-
sary to double the number of patricycles from four to eight. Instead
of a restricted exchange system, we then obtain a minimal circuit
of generalised exchange in which matrilateral second cross-cousins
(MMBDD) are distinct from patrilateral (FFZSD), and brothers and
sisters may not marry into the same patricycle (see Figure 6.2).
It should be added that among the Warlpiri (as for many Aboriginal
people) one may not marry one’s true second crosscousin, but only
more distant women of the same subsection. As they bear the same
skin-name as the true cousin, they are regarded as skin, but not
blood, sisters to her.
In the early 1960s, the mathematician Guilbaud succeeded in
mapping the eight subsections onto a torus (a shape like a dough-
nut), a figure which Lévi-Strauss adopted in La pensée sauvage
(1962: 109). Both White (1963) and Courrège (1965) identified this
system with a dihedral group and represented it by a cube that has
206
1 = 8 = 1 3 = 6 = 3
5 = 4 = 5 7 = 2 = 7
1 = 8 = 1 3 = 6 = 3
Ego
3 8 1 6
4 7 5 2 5 2 4 7
= = = =
1 8 1 8 1 8 1 8
Male Ego = MMBDD ⬅ FMBSD ⬅ FFZSD ⬅ MFZDD

Female Ego = MFZDS ⬅ FFZSS ⬅ FMBSS ⬅ MMBDS
Figure 6.1 Eight subsections: restricted exchange
1 6 3’ 8’ 1
2 7 4’ 5’ 2
3 8 1’ 6’ 3
4 5 2’ 7’ 4
H
1 6 3’ 8 1
Ego
2 7 4’ 5’ 2
3 8 1’ 6’ 3
W
4 5 2’ 7’ 4
Male Ego = MMBDD ⬅ FMBSD ⫽ FFZSD ⬅ MFZDD

Female Ego = MFZDS ⬅ FFZSS ⫽ FMBSS ⬅ MMBDS
Figure 6.2 Eight subsections: generalised exchange
207
1 2
4 3
5 8
6 7
Two matricycles : 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
Four patricycles : 1–5 3–7

2–8 4–6
Four marriages : 1 = 8, 2 = 7, 3 = 6, 4 = 5
Figure 6.3 The eight subsections cube: restricted exchange
since become a standard way of representing subsections (Laughren

1982). In fact, the lines of Guilbaud’s torus correspond to the edges
of the cube, and the eight points joining them to the vertices of the
cube: edges represent the relationship of agnatic or uterine filiation
(real or classificatory) by which each vertex (that is, each subsection)
is linked to others (see Figure 6.3).
On the cube, matrimonial relationships are represented by the four
diagonals on the faces; the alternate uterine relations (to the MM or
MMB) by the diagonals on the top and the bottom faces; a ‘mother-
in-law/son-in-law’ relationships by the four interior diagonals.
If, at the classificatory level, the eight subsections are a dihedral
group, the cube, on the other hand, gives the illusion of restricted
exchange. By doubling the subsections and connecting them accord-
ing to classificatory filiation and alliance relationships in generalised
exchange, we obtained the curious figure of two cubes with interpen-
etrating external and internal faces (see Figure 6.4).
When investigating Warlpiri cosmology, it appears that the major
postulate of their worldview is the interpenetration of external and
internal, which characterises this figure. In effect, the Warlpiri define
a continuous feedback relation between what they call kanunju
‘inside’, beneath, that is what is virtual, and kankarlu ‘outside’,
above, what is manifest. It is precisely the interaction between these
two registers which produces the space-time of the Dreaming. Thus,
Warlpiri ritual life may be concisely defined as an activity consisting
208
1’ 2’
1 2
4 3
4’
3’
5’
8 8’
5
6 7
6’ 7’
Four matricycles : 1 2 3 4
1’ 2’ 3’ 4’
5 6 7 8
5’ 6’ 7’ 8’
Eight patricycles : 1–5 1’–5’

3–7 3’–7’
2–8’ 2’–8
4–6’ 4’–6
Sixteen marriages :
= = = =
1 = 8 8 = 1’ 1’ = 8’ 8’ = 1
2 = 7’ 7’ = 2’ 2’ = 7 7 = 2
3 = 6 6 = 3’ 3’ = 6’ 6’ = 3
4 = 5’ 5’ = 4’ 4’ = 5 5 = 4
Figure 6.4 The 8 =2 subsections cube: generalised exchange
in the transformation of ‘beneath’ into ‘above’ and vice versa,

an activity that is different for each sex. It is a matter of making
manifest what is virtual (for example, actualising totemic forces
in people) and inversely of making virtual what is manifest (for
example, sending the dead back to the anonymity of Dreaming
Beings).
Funeral and mourning rites, which put into play the passage from
‘above’ (life on earth) to ‘beneath’ (parallel Dreaming space-time),
imply the same prohibitions as are found in the mother-in-law rela-
tionship: just as space and speech avoidances exist between women
and their sons-in-law, there are prohibitions on naming the dead or
approaching places evocative of them. From this similarity of taboos
a topological homeomorphism may be deduced between Warlpiri
kinship and cosmology: ‘Warlpiri kin and cosmic orders are there-
fore reducible to homeomorphic topological surfaces: the infinite and
“open” sphere of the Dreaming where beneath rejoins above, and
the cube with doubled subsections the properties of which require
209
mapping on a hypersphere, not on a closed sphere’ (Glowczewski

and Pradelles de Latour 1987: 47).
A Common Logic for Different Kinship Systems

In seeking further to clarify the Warlpiri subsection system, I real-
ised that it could also be mapped on a hypercube. A hypercube is
a standard topological figure composed of eight interwoven cubes
and having sixteen vertices, the same number as the doubled sub-
sections (Glowczewski 1988: 220–3). Unlike the hypersphere, a
four-dimensional sphere is hard to represent in two or even three
dimensions, a hypercube, though also four-dimensional, can be sug-
gested by multiple projections (see Figure 6.5).
On analysing other subsection systems, such as the Murinbata
and the Murngin/Yolngu (see Table 6.1), I discovered that they,
too, could be mapped on a hypercube, though not in the same way
(Glowczewski 1988). In both cases each subsection is coupled for
marriage purposes with two others, and not only with one as in the
Warlpiri system (the Warlpiri do, in fact tolerate an alternative mar-
riage into the subsection of the MBD, but this second choice has not
been integrated into the formal system).
According to Stanner’s data on the Murinbata (1963), matricy-
cles follow the Warlpiri order, but each patricycle comprises four
subsections, not two. In other words, the ‘mother-in-law’ diagonals
of the Warlpiri cube (see Figure 6.3) here become segments of the
patricycles (1 7 3 5 and 2 6 4 8). A Murinbata man’s mother-in-law
accordingly belongs to the same subsection as his father’s sister
(FZ).
Stanner states that the Murinbata distinguish the category of
father’s sister (FZ, pipi nginar) from that of mother-in-law which is
matrilaterally defined (MBDD or MMBD, wakail nginar). As in the
Warlpiri case, this distinction takes us from restricted to generalised
exchange, making it necessary once again to double the subsections.
The four matricycles and four patricycles so obtained can be perfectly
superimposed on a hypercube (see Figure 6.6).
Let us now consider the famous case of the Murngin, a grouping
of Arnhem Land tribes, today known as Yolngu. According to the
analysis of Warner’s data ([1937] 1958) by Lévi-Strauss ([1947]
1970) and Dumont (1966), Murngin matricycles are similar to those
of the Warlpiri, but their patricycles are defined through two paral-
lel systems: in each system, there are four patricycles comprising
210
5’ 8’
6’
7’
1 2
4 3
2’
1’
4’ 3’
8
5
6 7
1’ 2’ 3’ 4’
5 6 7 8
5’ 6’ 7’ 8’
Eight patricycles : 1–5 1’–5’

3–7 3’–7’
2–8’ 2’–8
4–6’ 4’–6
Sixteen marriages :
= = = =
1 = 8 8 = 1’ 1’ = 8’ 8’ = 1
2 = 7’ 7’ = 2’ 2’ = 7 7 = 2
3 = 6 6 = 3’ 3’ = 6’ 6’ = 3
4 = 5’ 5’ = 4’ 4’ = 5 5 = 4
Figure 6.5 The Warlpiri hypercube: generalised exchange
pairs of subsections, but only two of them coincide with Warlpiri

patricycles:
System I: 1–5, 2–6, 3–5, 4–8
System II: 1–7, 2–8, 3–5, 4–6
Here again the new patricycles (2–6, 4–8 or 1–7, 3–5) correspond
to the ‘mother-in-law/son-in-law’ diagonals of the Warlpiri (see
Figure 6.3). Marriage is with a classificatory MBD of the same sub-
section as the MMBDD: these two types of cousin are of a different
subsection among the Warlpiri.
211
Table 6.1 Equivalences between Warlpiri, Murinbata and Murngin/

Yolngu subsections’ names (after McConvell 1985: 26–9)2
Subsections or Warlpiri Murinbata Yolngu (Murngin)

skin-names male/female male/female male/female
1 Japanangka/ Tjanama/ Burralang/
Napanangka Nanagu Galitjan
2 Jakamarra/ Tjamira/ Gadjak/
Nakamarra Namira Gutjan
3 Jungarrayi/ Tjimil/ Balang/
Nungarrayi Namij Bilinytjan
4 Jampijinpa/ Djabidjin/ Bangardi/
Nampijinpa Nabidjin Bangarditjan
5 Japangardi/ Djangari/ Gamarrang/
Napangardi Nangari Gamanytjan
6 Jangala/ Djangala/ Burlany/
Nangala Nangala Burlanytjan
7 Japaljarri/ Tjalyeri/ Wamut/
Napaljarri Nalyeri Wamutjan
8 Jupurrurla/ Tulama/ Ngarritj/
Napurrurla Naola Ngarritjan
If the two Murngin systems were drawn on a cube, we would have

semi-generalised exchange (brothers and sisters marrying in differ-
ent patricycles) with reciprocal exchange of mother-in-law between
particular clans. But Morphy (1984) has shown that such reciprocity
does not exist because the Murngin-Yolngu2distinguish clans that are
mother-in-law givers (called mari) and clans that are mother-in-law
receivers (called gutharra). That is to say, one must distinguish their
respective patricycles and double the subsections, thus obtaining in
each system two matricycles of four doubled and eight patricycles
of two doubled subsections. All these cycles fit perfectly on a new
hypercube (see Figures 6.7 and 6.8).
On the Murinbata and Murngin/Yolngu hypercubes the edges
represent, as for the Warlpiri, classificatory filiation between subsec-
tions. The difference is that subsections are differently distibuted
among the vertices, and uterine and agnatic cycles are differently
oriented. It is precisely because different circuits can be mapped on
2
For a presentation by the Yolngu of the organisation and use of their skin-names
malk system, see: https://yidakistory.com/yolngu-malk-or-skin-names/
212
7’ 6’
8’
5’
1 2
4 3
4’
3’
2’ 1’
8
5
6 7
1’ 2’ 3’ 4’
5 6 7 8
5’ 6’ 7’ 8’
Four patricycles : 1 7’ 3’ 5
1’ 7 3 5’
2 6’ 4’ 8
2’ 6 4 8’
= = = =
1 = 6’ 6’ = 3’ 3’ = 8 8 = 1
1’ = 6 6 = 3 3 = 8’ 8’ = 1’
2 = 5’ 5’ = 4’ 4’ = 7 7 = 2
2’ = 5 5 = 4 4 = 7’ 7’ = 2’
Figure 6.6 The Murinbata hypercube: generalised exchange
the same topological figure that the various systems can be seen as
reducible to the same logic, expressed by the hypercube.
I have shown elsewhere that the hypercube can also be used for
an Australian system that lacks subsections: the so-called Aluridja
system practised by the Pitjantjatjara (Glowczewski 1988). White
(1981) has demonstrated that, unlike the previous cases where
marriage is with a classificatory MMBDD or MBD, Aluridja mar-
riage is with a MMBSD who is not equivalent to MBD. In con-
structing the Aluridja hypercube, I put kin terms on the vertices:
edges represent filiation cycles differentiated as male or female (see
Figure 6.9).
213
Two matricycles : Two matricycles :
Eight patricycles : 1 2 3 4 1’ 2’ 3’ 4’ Eight patricycles : 1 2 3 4 1’ 2’ 3’ 4’

5 6 7 8 5’ 6’ 7’ 8’ 7 8 5 6 7’ 8’ 5’ 6’
2 3 4 1
3’ 1’
2’ 4’
1 4 3 2
4’ 1’ 2’ 3’
7 7
6 6
7’ 6’ 7’ 6’
8 8
5 5
6 5’ 8’ 5’
= = = = = = = =
1 = 8’ 8’ = 3’ 3’ = 6’ 6’ = 1’ 1 = 6’ 6’ = 3’ 3’ = 8’ 8’ = 1’
1’ = 8 8 = 3 3 = 6 6 = 1 1’ = 6 6 = 3 3 = 8 8 = 1
2 = 5 5 = 4’ 4’ = 7’ 7’ = 2’ 2 = 7 7 = 4’ 4’ = 5’ 5’ = 2’
2’ = 5’ 5’ = 4 4 = 7 7 = 2 2’ = 7’ 7’ = 4 4 = 5 5 = 4
Figure 6.7 and 6.8 Two Murngin/Yolngu hypercubes: generalised exchange.
Analysis of various Australian kinship systems by resorting to

the hypercube shows that their differences can be brought back to a
common topological logic. From this I deduce that the transforma-
tions and innovations in these systems are inherent in Aboriginal
societies, so long as they unfold according to the same logic or, as
one might say, ‘topologic’.
From the Hypercube to Enunciation
Topology and ‘topologic’

Murngin/Yolngu social organisation has challenged generations
of scholars; even on a topological approach it keeps a distinctive
place. Warner’s data and Morphy’s rule of non-reciprocity allowed
me to obtain two coherent hypercube systems. But when I applied
Morphy’s rule to the data reported by Webb (1933), who postulates
patricycles of four subsections, I obtained two new systems with
doubled subsections. These systems require a cube conceived as exist-
ing in fivedimensional space (Glowczewski 1988). The sculptor Gerd
Fisher devised for it the three-dimensional representation that I show
214
M MM/SD/ZDD
MF/MMB
MB/MMBS
DS WF
Ego
S
D W
ZD
Z SW
ZS
DH WB/ZH
MBS/MMBSS
F FZS
FF
SS
DD/FFZ/FM WM/FFZD/FZ
Two matricycles : M, Z, ZD/SW, SD(MM)

WM(FFZD/FZ), W(MMBSD/MBD/FZD), D, DD(FFZ/FM)
Two patricycles : F, Ego, S, SS(FF)

WF(MMBS/MB), WB/ZH(MMBSS/MBS), ZS/DH, DS(MMB/MF)
Figure 6.9 The Aluridja hypercube
here. With such a figure we reach the limits of what can be presented:
it is a question that invites future research (see Figure 6.10).
Cubes in five and four dimensions, or in three (which can be used
to represent generalised exchange in a simple four section system like
the Kariera), may be different topological figures but they belong
to the same logical set: the 3D cube is an element of the 4D cube
which in turn is an element of the 5D cube. To talk about a logic that
underlies the different kinship systems is to investigate the problem
of structural transformations.3 If such different systems as Kariera,
3
In terms of kinship analysis, my topological approach and that of Lucich (1987)
work in the same direction (Glowczewski 1989b). By showing that different
kinship systems display different structures of the mathematical theory of groups,
Lucich demonstrates that they are comprehensible as transformations within a
logical syntax. By mapping different systems on the same topological figure, I have
tried to show that they obey the same structural dynamic. In fact, cube, hypercube
and five-dimensional cube are non-planar transcription of the groups drawn by
Lucich (personal communication). The cube illustrates: the group c2 × c2 or D4
(eight subsections of Aranda/Warlpiri type) and the group c4 × c2 (four doubled
215
Four matricycles
1 2 3’ 4’ 1” 2” 3”’ 4”’
5 6 7’ 8’ 5” 6” 7”’ 8”’
Eight patricycles :
3 4 1’ 2’ 3” 4” 1”’ 2”’
7 8 5’ 6’ 7” 8” 5”’ 6”’
= = = = = = = =
1 = 8”’ = 1”’ = 8” = 1” = 8’ = 1’ = 8 = 1
5 = 2”’ = 5”’ = 2” = 5” = 2’ = 5’ = 2 = 5
3 = 6”’ = 3”’ = 6” = 3” = 6’ = 3’ = 6 = 3
7 = 4”’ = 7”’ = 4” = 7” = 4’ = 7’ = 4 = 7
Four matricycles
1 2 3’ 4’ 1” 2” 3”’ 4”’
7 8 5’ 6’ 7” 8” 5”’ 6”’
Eight patricycles :
3 4 1’ 2’ 3” 4” 1”’ 2”’
5 6 7’ 8’ 5” 6” 7”’ 8”’
= = = = = = = =
1 = 6”’ = 1”’ = 6” = 1” = 6’ = 1’ = 6 = 1
7 = 2”’ = 7”’ = 2” = 7” = 2’ = 7’ = 2 = 7
3 = 8”’ = 3”’ = 8” = 3” = 8’ = 3’ = 8 = 3
5 = 4”’ = 5”’ = 4” = 5” = 4’ = 5’ = 4 = 5
8” 5’”
6’
7”
6’”
7
8 5’
2” 3’”
1’”
4”
4’
1” 3” 2’
4’” 2’”
1 3
3’
2 4 1’
7’”
6”
8’
5”
5 8’”
6 7’
Figure 6.10 The Murngin/Yolngu 5D cube
216
Warlpiri (Aranda), Murinbata, Murngin/Yolngu and Aluridja are

related by transformation, the fact that they obey the same logic
suggests that they are capable of absorbing only those changes which
are compatible with it.
My postulate is that this logical constraint is expressed not only
by different kinship systems but also by particular modes of enuncia-
tion of mythical stories and ritual practices. In both cases the possi-
bilities of transformation are limitless, as is shown by the Aboriginal
creative symbolic activity. But the constraint of logic prevents kin or
cosmological (mythological and ritual) systems having a structure
incompatible with the topological properties of the hypercube. The
question may then be posed whether the presence of different logics
in the one society means that the society is ‘schizoid’ or whether it
indicates instead that a drastic social change is taking place in the
direction of a new logic, thus of a new and different society.
Pradelles de Latour (1984, 1986) has shown that the alliance
systems of the Trobriand Islands can be depicted on a torus whereas
the Bamileke from Cameroun follow the logic of the so-called ‘pro-
jective plane’. Both figures have topological properties incompatible
with those of the hypercube. Gérard (1986) has isolated yet another
topological figure. Boy’s surface for the Moose and Kurumba of
Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta). With a torus, the internal
and external faces are distinct, unlike a hypercube where they inter-
penetrate. With a projective plane, or a Boy’s surface too, the faces
intrepenetrate but they possess a polarity (crossing of two constitu-
tive elements in the former, and of three in the latter figure) lacking
in the hypercube. For both African societies, this polarity coincides
with the pyramidal social institution of royal chieftainship, which is
absent among the Aboriginal people.
The number of topological figures is limited because any object
will retain the same properties even though bent, stretched, com-
pressed or twisted. This characteristic of the ‘geometry of rubber’
permits an infinity of so-called ‘continuous’ transformations. But to
tear or glue a figure is to make a transformation which changes its
properties and hence the figure itself (Gérard 1989).
sections of Kariera type). The hypercube illustrates: the group 16T2 c1 (eight dou-
bled subsections, Aranda/Warlpiri), the group l6T2 c2 (eight doubled subsections,
Murinbata), and the group c8 × c2 (eight doubled subsections, Murngin-Yolngu).
The 5D cube illustrates the Abelien group c4 × c8 (eight subsections twice doubled:
Murngin-Yolngu).
217
The point I want to stress is that the use of a topological structure

to diverse domains of a given society (kinship, power, ritual, mythol-
ogy, etc.) does not mean that it is static but only that transformations
of it will tend to obey a topological constraint. Consequently, when
transformations are imposed from outside through contact with soci-
eties following another logic, they will be assimilated by ‘translation’,
or else will threaten to destroy the Indigenous logic, with a new
society as the ultimate result.
Towards a formalisation of australian taboos

I have tried to show that the homeomorphism of Warlpiri social
organisation and cosmology can be generalised to other Aboriginal
societies. For this purpose, I have drawn up an inventory of the formal
and contextual characteristics of Aboriginal taboos; it appears from
documentation on some 80 tribes that, in spite of their diversity,
all the taboos can be reduced to combinations of eight variables
(Glowczewski 1988).
In all these societies, there seem to be only four contexts of taboo.
As among the Warlpiri there is the context of the mother-in-law/
son-in-law relationship and the context of mourning, to which can
be added the context of the socialisation of men and women and the
context of totemic relationships. Each context can give rise to taboos
in four domains: language (prohibition of speech); space (prohibi-
tion on approaching a person or place); sexuality (prohibition on
marriage or sexual congress); and material goods, particularly food
(prohibition on consumption).
Any prohibition can occur in two apparently different modalities:
it can be temporary or permanent. In the mother-in-law/son-in-law
relationship and in totemic relationships, Ego is forbidden ever to
speak, to approach, to have sexual congress or to consume. But these
prohibitions endure only as long as necessary in the case of socialisa-
tion rites and mourning rites.
Whether permanent or temporary, the taboos give rise to similar
practices of inversion by transgression, substitution and compensa-
tion: for example, both mourners and persons speaking about totemic
secrets use sign language; both a funeral rite and a totemic ceremony
provide the opportunity of formally resolving a latent conflict among
individuals; both an initiation and an alliance ceremony (implying
the mother-in-law) can include a ritual act of sexual transgression.
Many other examples could be given.
218
Mother-in-law/son-in-law LANGUAGE
SPACE
Socialisation
GOODS Mourning
Totemism SEXUALITY
SEXUALITY
Totemism
Mourning GOODS
Socialisation SPACE
LANGUAGE Mother-in-law/son-in-law
Figure 6.11 A hypercube for Australian taboos and their ritual inversion
Aboriginal people seem to strain to mark, on one hand, the differ-

ence between what is temporary and what is permanent and, on the
other, to reconcile diachrony with synchrony. This quasi-metaphys-
ical concern is also to be found in the fact that the temporal human
world, the ‘above’, mirrors the synchronic world of the Dreaming
Beings, the ‘beneath’. As a characteristic of the hypercube is that an
edge connects each vertex with four others, it is possible to display
the connection of each context of taboo with the four domains and of
each domain with the four contexts; the duplication of the eight vari-
ables shows the mirror relationship of ‘beneath’ and ‘above’ between
the taboos and their ritual inversions (see Figure 6.11).
Although the Warlpiri categories of below/above (inside/outside)
may not occur in all Australian societies – though they do among the
Murngin [Yolngu],4 the logic of interpretation of two universes that
mirror each other is everywhere present. Dreaming Beings are always
located simultaneously in a beyond (subterranean or celestial) and
here on earth, in a prior time and now. The articulation of all taboos
belongs to this more general logic that puts the human world in a
state of feedback with a mythical world.
The identification of this cosmological vision with the topological
properties of the hypercube is of a metaphorical order, but it refers
4
Howard Morphy generously gave me to read the typecript of his Ancestral
Connections that was published two years later (Morphy 1991).
219
back to the hypercube as a framework for modelling kinship. In

other words, hypercube properties provide a way of formalising the
logic that underlies the apparent homeomorphism between social
organisation and cosmology. Methodologically, the interesting point
is that a figure isolated for kinship can be used as an analytical device
for comparing fields which to us are heterogeneous but which the
Aborigines themselves do not separate.
Correspondences between australian taboos and myths

In an attempt to carry the formalisation of behaviour still further, I
examined the form and content of Australian myths. Relying on the
fact that these tales constitute the Law for the Aborigines, I sought to
isolate eight mythical variables that would echo the taboo variables
(Glowczewski 1988) (see Table 6.2). The four contexts of Australian
taboos can be found in the myths. Mourning is transposed into the
journeys of Mythical Beings because these are the journeys that the
dead are thought to make. The mother-in-law/son-in-law relation-
ship crystallises the most common transgression in mythical encoun-
ters (whenever these imply conflicts or alliances between the Beings
concerned). Totemism is born when Ancestral Beings attribute a
specific identity to places and species. Finally, socialisation is prefig-
ured in metamorphoses undergone by the Beings.
As to domains to which taboos are applied – space, language,
sexuality, goods – they define four minimal mythical activities:
Ancestral Beings form the landscape; they name places and things;
Table 6.2 Correspondences between Australian taboos and myths
Domains of taboo Mythical domains

Space Formation of landscape (earth and cosmos)
Language Nomination (places and totems)
Sexuality Differentiation (gender and kin)
Goods (food, etc.) Institution of ceremonies
Contexts of taboo Mythical contexts
Mother-in-law/son-in-law Transgression (alliances, conflicts)
Mourning Travelling (wandering, nostalgia)
Totemism Attribution (places, names, rituals)
Socialisation Metamorphosis of heroes (topographic
features, species, spirits, sacred objects)
220
they differentiate by gender and alliance; and they institute ceremo-

nies involving the circulation of goods. Accordingly, it is possible to
superimpose eight mythical variables on the eight taboo variables of
the hypercube.
It may be objected that the eight variables are not necessarily
present in all Australian myths. I would respond that if a variable is
lacking it is because the myth is in some way ‘incomplete’; that is to
say, the story implies another story that exists or could exist. In fact,
I would go so far as to argue that this incompleteness, this ‘reference
back’ to the Other and to that which is elsewhere, is characteristic
of interpersonal and intergroup relations among Aboriginal people.
The inscription of stories in space constitutes the indigenous mode
of ‘theorisation’ of these relations – just as it is possible to make a
new narrative path between two places, so a new link may be created
between the people affiliated to those places.
Conclusion
In this chapter, which draws on my PhD thesis (Glowczewski 1988),
I have used topology in three ways. The first, which is strictly graphic,
allows different classificatory kinship systems to be transposed onto
the same topological figure, in this case a hypercube, with the edges
representing filiation relations and the diagonals relations of alliance.
The second use is more intuitive and, I believe, richer: it investi-
gates the topological properties of the figure in order to find possible
applications to the cosmology and social organisation of the society
concerned. It appears that the absence of a univocal differentiation
between the internal and external faces of the hypercube coincides
with the specific interaction between ‘beneath or inside’ and ‘above
or outside’. In many Aboriginal societies these cosmic categories
are perceived as simultaneously discontinuous and continuous in
rituals and in the space-time of the Dreaming. They are also related
to gender differentiation: the relation between the categories may
be seen as expressing the interplay of male and female social roles.
At another level, the absence of a single polarity on the hypercube
coincides with the absence, in traditional social organisation, of a
unique reference point, such as chieftainship, God or the state.
The third use proposed here for topology is metaphorical and
more arbitrary: it is the attempt to articulate Aboriginal taboos with
one another and to compare them with an enunciation matrix of
Australian myths. Of course, it is possible to criticise my choice of
221
variables. My defence would be that this form of ordering, far from

being a final model is simply an analytical tool, with which it is pos-
sible to organise ethnographic data and to display the logic which
seems to govern relationships between most aspects of Aboriginal
societies.
In conclusion, Aboriginal cosmology may be regarded as homeo-
morphic to social organisation, not because men repeat the actions
of Ancestral Beings but because, generation after generation, they
interpret, according to the same logic, the virtual signs left by these
Beings. Men are thus the reverse, incessantly moving and being
renewed of the evanescent yet eternal images of the Dreaming, their
Law, in which they see their reflections.
222
PART III
The Aboriginal Practice of Transversality

and Dissensus
Figure 7.1 Painted Warlpiri men and women march for National Aboriginal Day
carrying the Aboriginal flag (adopted by the hundreds of Indigenous language
groups as an affirmation claim of their land sovereignty), Katherine, NT
© B. G. 1984
7
In Australia, it’s ‘Aboriginal’ with a Capital ‘A’:

Aboriginality, Politics and Identity
Sometime in the 1960s, for both ethical and political reasons, the
term ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Aborigine’ began to be written with a capital
‘A’, thus becoming an ethnonym; it applied to the descendants of the
first inhabitants of the Australian continent, some 500 groups speak-
ing different languages and designated — even now — by different
names.1 Today, Aboriginal groups have not only different languages
and cultural backgrounds but different histories as well — reserves,
separation of children from parents, mixed descent — all of which
has put more or less distance between them and their heritage. And
yet many still claim that there is such a thing as an ‘Aboriginality’
which unites everyone under the same identity, even if not everyone
can agree on its definition.
Sociologists and anthropologists generally concur that this is an
ongoing process in which they themselves have a part (Beckett 1988;
Thiele 1991). Nevertheless official and private discourses offer con-
tradictory versions of this identity (Keefe 1988): on the one hand, an
identity of continuity, based on language, religious beliefs and prac-
tices, and pre-contact world-vision and lifestyle; on the other hand,
an identity of resistance, aimed at the revision of contact history,
valorisation of national identity symbolised by a flag, land rights,
denunciation of bad living conditions, analyses in terms of exclusion
and exploitation. While some calls to resistance have gone out from
the cities to tribal communities countrywide, the emergence of pan-
Aboriginality is also accompanied by new affirmations of singular
1
Adapted from translation by Nora Scott from Glowczewski 2005 in A Changing
South Pacific (ed. Douaire-Marsaudon and Tcherkezoff [1997] 2005). A shorter
version of this text was published in 1998 under the title ‘All one but different’ –
Aboriginality: national identity versus local diversification in Australia’, Chapter
14 in Jürg Wassman (ed.) (1998), Pacific Answers to Western Hegemony – Cultural
Practices of Identity Construction, Oxford: Berg International, pp. 335–54 (from
a panel of the ESFO symposium held in Basel, 1994). It was only in the mid-1990s
that the French edition of the Hachette encyclopedia recognised the Australian use
of the term as a proper noun.
225
identities partly defined by tradition. In other words: all Aboriginal

people insist on their Aboriginality, but rather than advancing this
claim by opposition to non-Aboriginal people as a political entity,
Aboriginal people affirm themselves as different from their other
Aboriginal neighbours. It is as if pan-Aboriginality itself were prompt-
ing the emergence of these identity singularities, as if the process of
anthropological and social heterogenisation were part and parcel of
political uniformisation. The various federal, state and regional gov-
ernments regularly create royal commissions, make recommendations
and pass laws and budget priorities in an attempt to find solutions for
all Aboriginal descendants. It is the government which says who is
legally an Aboriginal person, how he can claim his rights and what is
supposed to promote Aboriginality; and it continues to enlist more and
more public servants and consultants to do this – including Aboriginal
people. Yet, despite this élite participation in the constant elaboration
of Indigenous policy and programs, the population concerned insists
on the differences of interests and opinions within the Aboriginal
community, and on the need for negotiations with the ‘rank and
file’, and not only with appointed or elected representatives. Over
the course of their long struggle for the right to exist and to manage
their own affairs, recognition of an initial sovereignty, which would
confirm once and for all the Aboriginal people’s original ownership of
the land, has become a question of principle. In the 1970s and 1980s,
a committee of non-Aboriginal people and the National Aboriginal
Conference (NAC), an ex-body of nationally elected Aboriginal rep-
resentatives, militated for a treaty with the federal government. But
many Aboriginal people proved to be reticent about the idea, arguing
primarily that no one body was qualified to sign on behalf of all
groups concerned. Nevertheless, the idea of a treaty became a popular
symbol, in particular due to a song by the Aboriginal rock band,
Yothu Yindi. The 1988 bicentennial celebrations held out hope for
a solution. At the Aboriginal Festival in Barunga, the Prime Minister
confirmed the relevance of the issue and the necessity of negotiating a
treaty or a compact aimed at ‘reconciliation’.
After the bicentennial, the idea of reconciliation supplanted that
of a treaty, which had been rejected by all opposition parties, who
saw the two-nation distinction as a threat to Australian unity. A
council for reconciliation was created in September 1991, with both
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members. A year later, its task turned
out to be highly topical. For the first time in Australian history, a
native community won a Supreme Court decision, recognising their
226
In Australia, it’s ‘Aboriginal’ with a Capital ‘A’
native title on lands: this was the ‘Mabo case’, and it concerned a
group of Torres Strait Islanders. The situation was tossed about in
the local and national media and aroused bad feelings and incom-
prehension among non-Aboriginal people, who took increasingly
hostile and open positions: racist declarations, alarmist appeals and
even the constitution of defence committees to counter what was felt
to be a threat. Yet these first Australians now constitute less than
two per cent of the population; just what kind of threat could they
pose? The Mabo verdict should enable other Torres Strait Islanders
and Australian Aboriginal people to command recognition of their
native title; but the concrete application of such titles remains to be
determined: according to some politicians, 80 per cent of Australia
could be subject to such claims. What power do the Aboriginal
people stand to gain by winning recognition as native land-owners?
No one really knows. Except that they would become inevitable
partners in most decisions involving development. In this context,
Aboriginality is synonymous with a destiny rooted in the land, in the
name of ancestral ties, and engaged in an alliance with the nation’s
future. This would be the philosophical rewards of a bond with the
land traditionally defined as eternally present.
Aboriginality: Body Versus Spirit

Aboriginality as a pan-Australian identity is a post-contact construc-
tion with respect to non-Aboriginal people, whereas ‘nativeness’, as
an ethnic identity, has always been the very basis of the cohesion of
every Aboriginal group, through theories of conception and kinship,
the organisation of society and marriage, the domain of economic
survival and the religious system. It is politically correct, in today’s
social sciences as well as in political movements against racism and
for universal equality of civil rights, to criticise all essentialist argu-
ments attempting to justify ethnic differences or to make distinctions
between peoples on the basis of racial characteristics: i.e., biological
and genetic transmission, and references to blood or to skin colour.
In other words, anything having to do with the body or with innate
features is now taboo. It is preferable to explain differences by non-
corporeal and acquired criteria, such as culture, or the length of time
a group has occupied a territory conferring native or assimilated
migrant status.
For Indigenous peoples, however, the notions of innate and
acquired, like those of body and spirit, are inseparable insofar as the
227
definition of what is innate and of the place of the body is cultural.

Without this discourse, their culture loses a major mode of transmis-
sion. In everyday life, popular discourses on the transmission of
physical features and on body marks have become more important
than ever and increasingly sought after, whether as expressions of
ethnic tensions or in the paramedical domain. Popular essentialism,
like various Indigenous theories, is not based on innate transmission
alone, however, but also on the notion of contagion or pollution
from outside substances, where an individual’s body is thought of as
reflecting the health of the society as a whole. The same logic operates
in everyday racism, which abusively amalgamates a people’s identity
with the ills afflicting certain of its members. In this context, criticism
of essentialism should include two aspects that are often neglected:
first, the ideological effects of the West’s depreciation of innate fea-
tures as opposed to acquired ones; and, second, the specificity and
the place in discourses on identity of Indigenous essentialistic theo-
ries. In Australia – as in many other Oceanic societies – essentialism
has proved to be inseparable from a certain relationship with the
environment, which differentiates people according to the natural
species with which they identify.2
Conception and Transmission: How Totemic and Linguistic

Identities are Distributed
For nearly a century, anthropologists have been fascinated by
Aboriginal theories of conception. The theme is well known: tradi-
tionally, Aboriginal people did not attribute conception to copula-
tion but to a spirit-child’s entry into the uterus; this conception was
announced in a dream to the father, mother or a close kinsman. (I
will not go into the question of whether or not Aboriginal people
were aware of the connection between copulation and conception.)
For decades, whenever the question has been put to them, they have
replied time and again that there is no child without a spirit-child. In
other words, the human being is something other than the result of
what we call biological transmission. We could also say that there is
2
In one work devoted to identity in the South Pacific (Linnekin and Poyer 1990),
the authors raised the question of the relevance in these societies of the Western
opposition between Mendel’s genetic theory and Lamark’s transmission of
acquired characteristics: Watson (1990: 39) notes that culturally inherited ethnic
differences persist only when a people identifies with its land.
228
no body without a spirit, and that this spirit comes from somewhere
else than the body of the father or the mother.
What we are interested in here is the status of this ‘somewhere
else’ and how it links a human being ‘from the inside’ with his
ancestors. For this contains a paradox: the spirit transmits certain
‘essences’ that are going to identify the child in its spirit and its
flesh with certain kinsmen, but also with certain natural species or
phenomena, and with a land. Anthropologists customarily call this
spiritual and physical link a ‘totem’; in Australia it is known as a
‘Dreaming’. Here again the many debates on whether or not totemism
is a manufactured concept tend to obscure the fundamental reality:
while there is no general definition of totemism, the term ‘totem’, and
even more specifically ‘Dreaming’, tend to translate highly complex
Indigenous concepts which differ from group to group. Although we
lack a standard definition or even an adequate translation of singular
concepts, we must nevertheless attempt to understand what they say
about the body and the spirit that is different from Western concep-
tions. In the present case, they say that the identity of each person is
founded on an exterior agency which internally links the person to
ancestors, animals, plants and so forth, and to places.
In the case of physical transmission, the development of the foetus,
which is animated by a spirit-child that comes from the land – it
can be a tree, a rock, a waterhole – reacts to all outside substances
that enter the mother’s body. Therefore, all Aboriginal groups tra-
ditionally imposed dietary taboos on a woman during pregnancy,
forbidding her to eat various foods believed to be dangerous to the
child. Some taboos lasted as long as the mother breastfed the child,
as her milk was also thought to be capable of transmitting harmful
substances. The following example was recorded in the Kimberley
in the 1930s: the mother could not eat honey received in exchange
for pearl-shells, for pearl-shells being associated with Kaleru, the
Rainbow Serpent, giver of spirit-children, might harm the child or
make the mother sick.3
There are many Indigenous theories about contagion through
contact with substances, but I will not go into them here. I will
3
Kaberry (1939: 169). These pearl-shells circulated as wealth transmitted by both
women and men, although they were used as ritual objects exclusively by men,
when they would go into the desert to perform rain-making ceremonies. Among
coastal groups, they were hung on the pubic tassels by both the boys, as a sign of
their initiation stage, and by girls as a sign of virginity.
229
simply add that, in addition to food, the semen transmitted to a

pregnant woman during sexual intercourse was also believed by
some groups to contribute to the child’s development. Whatever
physical likeness the child bore to the father or mother, however,
was attributed to the Dreaming, to the totemic essence; people who
had the same Dreaming were also supposed to share certain physical
traits stemming from their spiritual affinity with a particular species.
These characteristics may be different for men and women. For
instance, among the Warlpiri, I found that Possum clan men have
a particular foot shape which recall this animal, while the women’s
lips become black when black plums are in season: the ‘Plum’ is
a female totem associated with the Possum (Glowczewski [1989]
2016). Commonly, too, a child may have a birthmark, explained
by the circumstances in which its spirit entered the mother’s body.
For instance, an infant may have a mark where his father shot the
kangaroo that was the child’s spirit before it was born. Over and
above the complex symbolic elaborations each Aboriginal culture
has developed in its own language, all theories about the process of
conception and gestation stress one fact. The body and its substances,
blood in particular, carry essences that go beyond the purely human
dimension, although they are also what gives each person his human
nature, his singularity, and identifies him with a place that will enrol
this individual in the collective identity of the group that is tied to the
same land as well as in the broader identity of all those who speak
the same language.
The shared language itself is believed to come from the ancestors,
for the spoken word comes from the Dreaming. For the Warlpiri, in
particular, it is the spirit-child that transmits the power of speech. It
has been pointed out that, for the original groups from the Western
Desert that migrated northwards (south of the Kimberley) – now
the majority of the Aboriginal populations, known as Wolmeri
(Walmadgeri, Walmajarri), Julbaridja (Yulparija) or Wonggadjunga
(Wangkajunga) – the notion of human being covered first of all those
who recognised each other as djandu, nearby groups speaking the
same language, and extended outwards to the ngai, distant neigh-
bours having different languages and customs but with whom there
were direct or indirect exchanges of objects or rituals (Kolig 1977).
Beyond this horizon, even if objects and rituals circulated, the more-
or-less ‘human’ status of people was debatable. The notion of djandu
is found in different desert languages. The same study shows that
the terms Walmadgeri and Yulparija were both used by the northern
230
river peoples to designate those in the south, but when they became
local culture markers, they were also adopted by new migrants from
the desert (Kolig 1977).
There is a general tendency throughout Australia to use different
terms, depending on whether one is designating a group from the
inside or the outside. For example, north-western peoples usually
call the desert peoples to the east (Central Australia) Waringari,
Warmalla or Woneiga. These same groups, however, differentiate
each other by the language they speak (Warlpiri, Aranda, etc.): in
reality, Warlpiri use the terms Warmalla and Woneiga (Warnayaka)
to designate dialectal variations that characterise Warlpiri associated
with the lands on the far western edge of the tribal territory. With
colonisation, certain terms came to circumscribe expanding local
identities, such as Walmajarri in the Kimberley, or Warlpiri, Pintupi
or Pitjantjatjarra in Central Australia. What should be remembered
from all this is that traditional ethnic designation was based on
local proximity and the ability, if not to speak the same language,
then at least to understand each other in spite of differences. The
borders between ‘tribal’ identities were fluid and were redefined
with each new alliance that brought the various intra- or extra-
tribal groups into contact for the purpose of exchanging goods and
rituals. Marriages tended to be contracted within the linguistic unit,
although from time to time union with outside groups would renew
or inaugurate alliances between the contracting parties.
Kinship and Ritual: How Mythic Filiations and Alliances

are Reproduced
I have shown elsewhere that the Warlpiri and their neighbours apply
the term ‘human being’, Yapa, to all those, whatever their language,
who identify each other using the same classificatory kinship system
or certain equivalences (Glowczewski 1991). Of course, identification
assumes encounters and alliances. But the particularity of this system
of communication is that the alliances are based primarily on shared
rituals before being grounded in marriage; they are founded on the
sharing of certain non-human ancestors, often designated by totemic
names. More specifically, it is the route travelled by these ancestors,
known as a ‘Dreaming’, that connects one group’s places to those
of another, that endows them with this common, shared identity
designated by the Dreaming which goes with it: Kangaroo Dreaming,
Goanna Dreaming, Emu Dreaming, Yam Dreaming, Rain Dreaming,
231
and so on. Some of these routes are more than a thousand kilometres
long and run through the territories of different language groups: the
ritual cycles and objects associated with the different places are also
transmitted, eventually returning to their starting point enriched with
new mythic episodes and rituals. Celebration of these connections
by the local groups constantly renews the ties of classificatory and
totemic kinship. This is not to say that the groups at either end of the
chain necessarily know each other or even recognise their kinship,
but that, in each place, identities are thus recomposed.
But classificatory ‘kin’ is by no means synonymous with consan-
guinity: various anthropologists have stressed this point, all too often
forgotten by theoreticians. Traditional Aboriginal people speak of
these relations as their skin, as opposed to our notion of blood, but
others also speak of ‘flesh’ or ‘body’; so to say someone is of the same
‘flesh’ explicitly designates an essence of the Dreaming that is shared
by all members of a group, an essence that is both external and
internal, corporeal and spiritual, and which is usually also a totem.
The notion of being one ‘body’ or one skin, on the other hand, refers
I think to the surface marked or penetrated by this essence which
inhabits the body on a continuous basis (in the case of a small group)
or temporarily (in the case of a bigger group) when it is painted on
the body with ritual designs.
This is not the place to explore the complex connections between
inside and outside that can be found at every level of ritual life, as
well as in gender relations (Glowczewski 1991). Nor am I going
to attempt an explanation of the classificatory kinship systems: the
complexity of the Australian models is a constant source of wonder
for mathematicians. But there is one fundamental rule that should be
retained: traditional Aboriginal societies had a kinship system that,
in many cases, divided the group into two, four or eight categories.
The members of the same category regarded each other as ‘brothers’
and called those in another category by another kin term. This system
does not use ranked classes but alternative roles: during any ritual,
everyone in the same category automatically receives the same role;
this role changes for the whole category when the context changes, in
another ritual, for example. This applies to initiations, funerals and
totemic rituals. In each case, it is the position of ‘brother’, ‘father’,
‘mother’, ‘spouse’, ‘mother- or father-in-law’, and so on, with respect
to the initiate, the deceased or the ancestor celebrated, that deter-
mines the role the person plays. Thus, both kinsmen and direct allies
are placed in a category of classificatory kinship. There is no room
232
here for outsiders, unless they are identified with a classificatory

category and thus become ‘kin’ in their own right.
The articulation of this form of kinship, which is still used in
those communities and towns where Aboriginal groups have kept
ritual alive, brings us back to the initial question of essences. A child
is identified by its spirit-child with one or more Dreamings, as well
as with a place. But it is the rituals that enable close kin to situate
a child in a filiation which, according to the group, will give it the
essence it will share with its father’s line, its mother’s line or with
another group. Through these rituals, the child will acquire, in addi-
tion to its – let us say ‘biological’ or ‘adoptive’ – parents, yet other
‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’, together with as many potential classificatory
kinsmen and allies as there are people present in a given context.
This kind of generalised kinship does not encompass everyone as
sharing the same essence, however. Instead, it defines a conjunction
of Dreamings for each person, with the associated stories, rituals
and places, for which the child will be responsible, together with a
group of brothers within a broader category of skin brothers. Rituals
constantly reaffirm these singular filiations shared between a group
of people, non-human ancestors and specific places by consolidating
the alliances that maintain these singular ties between all the allies.
Aboriginal people call this in English ‘the Law’. ‘Following the Law’
means first of all being initiated: passing certain tests, receiving the
secrets revealed to one sex or the other, and being at the same time
affiliated to one group and allied with another. Both a man and a
woman are duty bound to follow and celebrate certain Laws: the
term Law designates the ritual cycles that distinguish the various
groups, but these can also be transmitted from one group to another.
The circulation of Laws strengthens kinship and alliance links
while affirming the differences of identity. Since the 1970s, however,
the southern Kimberley has been experiencing a ‘Walmadgerisation’,
owing to the fact that the Walmadjeri (Walmajarri) desert groups
have brought their Laws to the decimated groups of Fitzroy.4 How
have the Laws of one linguistic group come to supplant those of
another? This can be explained by three partially linked factors:
some decimated groups have been prevented from celebrating their
4
Akerman (1979). Recent fieldwork by the author in the region (Glowczewski
1999, 2001) demonstrates more complex phenomena, for instance the spread of
the didjeridu, a NE musical instrument, or the cultural revival of some groups of
mixed descent, and the reappropriation of Indigenous data recorded in the past.
233
respective Laws; they have also totally or partially lost their lan-
guage; and there has been increasing intermarriage between different
groups. In regions with more than a century of colonial contact
behind them, many people are now of mixed ancestry, not only
mixed Aboriginal and European descent, but also mixed with Asian
indentured labour working in the pearl-shell industry. Aboriginal
people of the Kimberley have developed numerous strategies to cope
with this situation. Despite the reserves and the near century-long ban
on free travel, increasing numbers of rituals have circulated between
coastal groups, and the western and the central deserts. Motorised
vehicles have enabled tribes to extend their links with other far-away
groups; some have changed kinship systems and the organisation
of their rituals; new funeral rites have developed to include people
of mixed descent and adapt the various changes brought in by the
European settlers (Kolig 1977).
The result of the accelerated circulation of the rituals and their
accompanying myths was not a uniformity of beliefs, but the inclu-
sion of various local versions in a new mythico-historical continu-
ity that sometimes gave rise to messianic-type cults (Glowczewski
1983b; Koepping 1988). The exchange roads travelled by the objects
and the rituals, which covered North Western Australia and spanned
the entire desert in pre-contact times, as well as the routes followed
by the stories that linked the groups into a long chain, took on a
different dimension. Increasingly, Aboriginal people on the move had
the opportunity to compare local versions. In the 1950s, Petri had
noticed that the coastal and the desert groups held certain pre-human
ancestors known by different names to be equivalent: for instance, the
Wanji peoples, who moved from the coast to the desert, are supposed
to have brought with them the first Laws on the continent, while for
all the desert groups, the Dingari are the first to have performed ini-
tiations.5 Another myth runs in the opposite direction, crossing part
of Central Australia and the whole Kimberley; this is the Two-Men
Dreaming, also known as Watikutjarra Dreaming (Glowczewski
[1998] 2009). Stories about Rainbow Serpent, Kangaroo or Dingo
link other groups. Through this recognition of common Ancestral
Beings, the desert groups, who have maintained their Laws, are seen
by certain groups in the north, who have lost their own Laws, as
custodians of the ancestrality and the authenticity of a Dreaming
order in the regions where, for various reasons, these Laws have been
5
Editor’s annotations to the writings of Worms and Petri ([1968] 1972).
234
abandoned; on the other hand, ancestral heroes from the northern

coastal regions continue to attest the power of these lands in certain
desert cults.
People have always adopted ceremonies from neighbouring
groups, but replacing one’s own ceremonies by new ones means a
partial change of identity, which introduces different levels. In the
Kimberley, coastal or river groups – who identify with their locality
and their original language – insist at the same time on their differ-
ences and on the fact that, by virtue of a given Law, they are all the
same or the same as the desert peoples. There are also families who
do not participate in any ceremony but believe that Aboriginal iden-
tity should be marked on the body of their boys through some aspect
of the ritual initiation common to most northern and desert groups.
Some therefore send their sons to be initiated in a group speak-
ing a different language, while others have them circumcised in the
hospital. In this case, interestingly enough, circumcision is no longer
the sign of affiliation to a local group and of alliance with others, it
has become a physical indication of pan-Aboriginality. Others still,
faithful to the Christian injunction, do not practice circumcision, but
found their Aboriginal identity on a different base.
Mixed Descent and Separation: How the Ban on Mixing the

Colours Provided a Pretext for Taking the Children Away
At the time of the first European contacts, many Aboriginal people
regarded white skin as the sign of a ghost. Europeans were therefore
often thought to be spirits of dead persons. Nevertheless, the first
children of mixed descent born with light skin were not identified
with a European father. Their skin colour was explained by the
Indigenous theory of contamination by substances: for instance, the
mother must have eaten too much flour. This remark can be under-
stood in another way, though: as meaning that the ingestion of food
imported by White settlers marked the onset of a disorder in the
transmission of substances or essences, in other words, identities. In
the same vein, among the Worora of the north-west, the men were
reported to complain that their dreams had become too ‘heavy’ since
they had been working on the cattle stations: they dreamed of too
many things from the White people’s world and there was no room
left to dream of spirit-children; this was the explanation they offered
for the near sterility of their group (Lommel 1950). In Arnhem Land,
in the 1970s, on the other hand, many women found themselves
235
with more than four children; the unusual numbers were blamed on
the fact that White people had sunk too many wells, which attracted
spirit-children. These examples indicate that Aboriginal people do not
view conception as a matter of biological transmission, but instead
always as a relationship with the environment: the confrontation of
the Aboriginal people’ world with that of White people had altered
the circulation of essences.
The way Aboriginal people look on people of mixed descent has
varied with the region and in reaction to colonial policy, which
was obsessed with preventing the mixing of colours. Until recently,
administrators and settlers spoke of ‘full-blood’, ‘half-caste’, ‘quad-
roons’, and so forth. Based on the idea that Aboriginal people do
not have recessive genes in the colour of their skin, the notion of a
racial ‘whitening’ was developed. ‘Half-caste’ girls were separated
from their families to be married to ‘quadroon’ boys, so that their
daughters might be married to even lighter boys, until every trace of
Aboriginal ancestry had vanished. In this process, the men were not
to be married to a lighter girl. The theory, put into practice by the
welfare services, is not without its similarities with Nazi racial rules
stipulating that an Aryan woman would be permanently defiled by
a single sexual relation with a Jewish man. This idea was based on
the theory of impregnation that all of a woman’s children would
be marked by her first sexual relation. At the turn of the century,
Bischofs (1908), a German Pallotine Father in charge of the Aboriginal
mission at Beagle Bay in the Kimberley, expounded on this theory in
a text devoted to the Aboriginal people of the north-west coast. He
devoted over a page to the idea that if an Aboriginal woman had
intercourse only once with an Asian, all children born thereafter
would be of mixed blood. As Chief Protector of the Aboriginal
people of the north-west, he therefore urged that Aboriginal people
be kept away from both Europeans and Asians: mixed unions were
regarded as a crime, and Aboriginal women surprised with Asians
were charged with prostitution and either jailed or sent to a mission.
Children born of unions with Asians or Europeans were taken away
from their parents.
Many life-stories tell of the strategies used to shield mixed-descent
children from the segregationist policy: they were hidden from pass-
ing patrols, or even rubbed with charcoal to hide their light skin.
Today many Aboriginal people are looking for their lost families. For
years they were refused access to the colonial archives, but now an
Aboriginal organisation has been created to assist them in their search.
236
Numerous reports indicate that Aboriginal men and women in the

north did not necessarily see these short-lived unions with Europeans
or Asians as a bad thing. In the Broome region, affairs between
Aboriginal women and fishermen from Malaysia or the Philippines
are often presented as love stories. Maddock (1977) reports that,
in Arnhem Land, Aboriginal people did not reject half-castes, but
they did make fun of them and called them ‘dogs’ if they refused to
take part in ceremonies. Unlike European settlers, Asians were not
generally feared because they did no harm; instead, they brought
‘good things’, like curry and opium. On the northern coast, ‘yellow-
fella’ designated people of mixed Aboriginal and European or Asian
descent and their descendants. On the west coast, the expression ‘col-
oured’ was employed more explicitly for people of mixed Aboriginal
and Asian descent who had developed their own community after two
or three generations. Following the Second World War, many Asians
were sent back to their own countries in accordance with the ‘White
Australia’ policy; their descendants, raised by their families or in the
centres reserved for people of mixed descent, were assimilated by the
administration to the other Aboriginal people, unless the ‘whitening’
policy gave them ‘European’ status.
Like the administration, Aboriginal people on the reserves con-
tinued for a long time to use the expressions ‘full-blood’ and ‘half-
caste’. But these terms indicated a difference of status having less
to do with skin colour than with a way of life: half-caste tended to
refer to Aboriginal people, whether or not of mixed descent, who
lived in town or in the White people’s world. Urban militants have
denounced the use of both terms and for a time used the expression
‘part-Aboriginal’ for people of mixed descent. Later it was decided
that all persons of Aboriginal descent, whatever the shade of their
skin, could identify as ‘Aboriginal’ and be given this status.
Jordan writes that this insistence on an Aboriginal identity stems
in part from the fact that, after having been depreciated by Europeans
for decades, it once again took on a positive value after the ref-
erendum granting Australian citizenship to all Aboriginal people
and giving them various social advantages, such as scholarships or,
more recently, the possibility of obtaining a lease to live on a land
(Jordan 1988). With the new laws, many families that had main-
tained their ‘coloured’ status (as descendants of Asian settlers) to
protect themselves from the discrimination against Aboriginal people
began to claim their Aboriginality, and the term ‘coloured’ has fallen
into disuse. Some people were even unaware of their Aboriginal
237
background, kept from them by their adoptive families. The latest

census figures, however, show that the majority of Aboriginal people
are now proud of their roots. Although all descendants of Aboriginal
people are now officially recognised as Aboriginal in all govern-
ment reports and brochures concerning them, it is still not unusual
for the opposition ‘full-blood/half-caste’ to resurface at the first
sign of discord within Aboriginal organisations or even in families.
Nevertheless, with the valorisation of Aboriginality, the opposition
does not have the same meaning. The mention of blood does not
refer to some purported racial purity but to a way of thinking:
anyone who seems to betray the Aboriginal cause will be accused of
being ‘half-caste’; but ‘full-blood’ can also be used as an insult, sug-
gesting the incapacity to understand the new issues of Aboriginality.
The desert and northern Aboriginal peoples who have survived
European contact have tended, for the past twenty years, to define
their way of living as following two Laws, generally opposing every-
thing that came from the ‘blackfella’ to the rules imposed by the
‘whitefella’. The Warlpiri thus use the term Yapa (humans) for all
Aboriginal people – even the coloured people they now see on televi-
sion. This is contrasted to Kardiya, which is used for ‘Europeans’,
as non-Aboriginal Australians usually call themselves. Although the
opposition between the two Laws is expressed in terms of colour –
black versus white – as well as in terms of relations of power, I
believe it also reflects acknowledgement of the impossibility of any
traditional alliance, as this would require that the partners’ idea of
self has a common foundation. This is a directly cognitive issue:
it is not so much a question of same skin colour as of sharing a
certain way of thinking, which for traditional Aboriginal people
is directly linked to the environment and to the reinterpretation of
myths and rituals. Defining identity in terms of locality, language,
totemic essence (Dreamings), classificatory kinship or ritual life (the
Law) raises the question of the relationship between these identities
as Aboriginal points of view and our Western categories, which, to
put it schematically, oppose the identity of the self (in psychology or
psychoanalysis) and cultural identity (in anthropology and classical
sociology). I believe that this dichotomy does not exist in traditional
Aboriginal societies. Not, as some suggest, because the notion of
self is purely social, the individual being identified with society as a
whole, but because society is entirely grounded in a notion of the self
that defines each individual as involved in a network of identifications
and self-references. These vary according to the context, but remain
238
based on socialised internalisations of something external that is

found in all manifestations of the cosmos (people, places, animals,
plants, wind, rain, etc.): the notion of Dreaming, which permeates
these cultures, partakes of this kind of internalisation. In a context
of relative social disintegration, particularly in urban communities,
Aboriginal identity, at the family or even the purely individual levels,
is often based on certain characteristics that reveal a link with the tra-
ditional notion of self (Keen 1988): attachment to places and devel-
opment of local Kriols, importance of extended kinship networks
and duties of assistance, search for direct links between transgres-
sions of some Law by Aboriginal people and natural catastrophes or
accidents, confirmation of paranormal powers to kill or cure, visions
or dreams containing messages or stimulating creativity, and above
all interpretation of signs attributing a totemic and localised spirit-
child to a newborn infant.
Aboriginality: Culture Versus Policy

Aboriginal spirituality is the core part of being Aboriginal. There is a
need to push for Aboriginal Spirituality (capital S) being recognised as
an established philosophy by educational authorities, religious groups
(. . .) Aboriginal Spirituality gives everyone, from infancy to old age, a
sense of ‘who I am’. It is Aboriginal Identity (capital I). It is respect for
Elders, caring and sharing for each other and a strong connection and
love of the land. Aboriginal Spirituality should be nationally registered
as an Aboriginal Religion, and as such, given the recognition and status
to which other recognised religions have privilege. Resources should be
made available to teach Dreamtime stories to non-Aboriginal people and
those Aboriginal people who were removed from their cultural heritage
in infancy or as children. Aboriginal children should be given Aboriginal
names at birth to reinforce their Aboriginality.
The above passage sums up the recommendations made by a del-
egation of Aboriginal women to a conference on the theme of ‘Safe
keeping: women’s business’.6 After decades of anthropological dis-
cussions on the religious or non-religious status of Aboriginal spir-
ituality and at a time when deconstructionist tendencies are blaming
traditional cultural references for freezing Aboriginality in an ideal
and nostalgic image of a mythical Dreamtime, it is interesting that
6
‘Australian Indigenous Women and Museums’, National Conference, 6–8 March
1993, Adelaide.
239
the same elements are asserted by Aboriginal people, women in this

instance, as the basis of a religion that should be made official like
any other and as the very foundation of Aboriginal identity. Yet it
is clear from various analyses that many young – or not so young –
Aboriginal people, who insist on their Aboriginal identity, do not
rely on religious beliefs or may even reject them. On the other hand,
the call for ‘caring and sharing’, here used to define their religion,
also frequently serves as a secular statement of Aboriginal identity.
Aboriginal health organisations, among others, advance the formula
to oppose risk-taking and deviant behaviours (alcohol abuse, domes-
tic violence, etc.).
Aboriginal spirituality, it must be remembered, is part and parcel
of a relation to the land. And it so happens that land claims top the
list of political demands. Justification of Aboriginal people’s claims
as the original occupants of the land are based on people’s spiritual
association with places and their responsibilities as custodians. Even
when these responsibilities are no longer exercised, it is with refer-
ence to the past culture as heritage that Australian law recognises the
protection of Aboriginal sites. In other words, ‘religion’ has become
synonymous with ‘culture’, not necessarily in the way it was tradi-
tionally practised, but in a way it can be acceptable to national, and
now international, norms, such as the status of recognised religions,
schooling, the art market or legislation designed to confirm the
ancestral link between Aboriginal people and the land.
Between the Land and God: How Christian Churches

Negotiate with the Principles of Aboriginal Spirituality
The debate over the connection between religion and ethnic identity
is reminiscent of the question of Jewish identity: to what extent
can a person be considered Jewish if he or she does not practise or
even believe?7 The answer depends on the branch of Judaism. Since
a person is Jewish by ancestry, and more specifically through the
maternal line, all that is needed for some is to acknowledge one’s
Jewishness and to be acknowledged by the others (which brings us
7
The South Australian Jewish community officially backs the Aboriginal peoples
by lending their support to an oral history project. Other ethnic minorities have
also spoken out for recognition of Aboriginal rights in the name of their own reli-
gious denominations, for instance the Armenian Apostolic Church or the Greek
Orthodox Church.
240
back to the ethnic questions raised in the first part of this chapter).
For others, being Jewish is inseparable from living a Jewish lifestyle,
which implies religious practice and the physical inscription it com-
mands for boys (circumcision); this idea is also found in certain
Aboriginal groups, as I mentioned earlier. In either case, Aboriginal
or Jewish, the religious arguments – unlike Christianity, Islam or
Buddhism – have one point in common: it is inconceivable that
adopting the Jewish religion or Aboriginal spirituality is enough to
make a person a Jew or an Aboriginal. Knowledge, or even practices
like circumcision, cannot confer this identity. The reason for this
inconceivability differs in the two cases at one level at least. Judaism
is a collective and historical destiny, and a sign of a people’s speci-
ficity; it is transmitted through both essence and culture. It is this
memory, passed from one generation to the next in what tends to be
an endogamous community, that founds the group’s ‘authenticity’,
whereas the majority of the Jewish people lives in exile (even though
for some the return to the land of Israel is a necessity). Aboriginal
religion lies both in the individual and in a network of connections
between individuals and their respective lands and myths. But each
network does not include all Aboriginal people nor does it cover the
entire territory of Australia, neither historically nor geographically.
Each individual exists only because he or she embodies ancestral
spirits of the land, those celebrated in ritual life; in other words,
spirituality is inseparable from the notion of person and place. From
a traditionalist point of view, Aboriginal people who deny the link
between the individual, the spirit and the land have ‘lost’ the knowl-
edge of their link. But it is still present, not only through their ances-
tors, but in their very being, because there is no person without a
territorialised spirit.
Does this mean that non-autochthonous people are without a
spirit? A text by Stanner (1979) carries the title, ‘White Man Got
No Dreaming’, according to the expression used by many Aboriginal
people, for whom ‘lacking Dreaming’ is the sign of not being
Aboriginal. In various parts of Australia, it has been reported that,
when non-Aboriginal people live for a long time with Aboriginal
people, their children born in that place are given a Dreaming, the
sign of their implantation. Some Aboriginal people also consider
that Christianity – or rather the story of the Bible and of Christ –
are the White people’s Dreaming. Nevertheless, most of them note
a fundamental difference: Australian Dreamings are rooted in the
land, whereas this European Dreaming claims to be everywhere and
241
nowhere. In reaction, some groups in the Kimberley suggest that

Noah’s ark has its secret place in the Australian desert and will
save them from a new flood (Kolig 1988). Similarly, Jesus (Jinimin)
showed himself to some Woneiga (Warlpiri) in Central Australia: he
had a black and white skin, and announced that Aboriginal people
will have a white skin once they win their fight against the Europeans;
he promised to protect their culture, which he took with him into
the sky in the form of two cults – Wanadjarra and Worgaia – that
have since spread through the Australian West (Petri and Odermann
[1964] 1988). The differences in the way Dreamtime Beings and the
Christian God are linked to the land invite us to rethink the whole
question of ‘monotheism’.
Aboriginal people who have not abandoned the beliefs of their ances-
tors often take a theological approach to Christianity (Mowaljarlai
and Malnic 1993). The aim of their reflection is not strictly religious,
however. Just as the ancestral religion was inseparable from the social
and political organisation, especially the distribution of land rights
enabling the people to live, so today’s spiritual reflection is concerned
to define the ‘place’ of Aboriginal people in Australian society through
the respect of their land rights in an economic environment of devel-
opment (urbanisation, mining, cattle stations, etc.). In other words,
while Aboriginal spirituality defines Aboriginal identity, it is also a
political statement. Tony Swain (1988) has defined the Warlpiri’s idea
of the Christian God as the ‘ghost of space’: he opposes the Aboriginal
notion of place to that of space, an encompassing notion alien to the
Aboriginal mind, which thinks in terms of relations between places
but not of a spatial continuum encompassing them (Glowczewski
1996). He shows that this notion was more or less included in, or
rather seen as assimilable to, an alliance between Dreamtime Beings
and space, between the Warlpiri and God. The aim of this alliance
was for God to ‘learn the Warlpiri’s language’ (from the translation
of the Bible into Warlpiri) so that he would understand and recognise
their relation to place, thus enabling his representatives on earth –
especially the governments – to do likewise and give Aboriginal
people back their ancestral lands. Translations of the Bible, encour-
aged by several Christian groups, help preserve local languages, but
not without the risk of transposing Indigenous spiritual concepts.
Adaptation of traditional elements to celebrate the Christian message
(song rhythms, boomerang percussion, body painting or the painting
of objects, use of dreams) has also given rise to Indigenous churches
with their own cults.
242
On the initiative of Christian groups, an exhibition was held in 1990,

entitled ‘Aboriginal Art and Spirituality’ (Crumlin 1991). Religious
paintings from various Aboriginal communities were displayed; the
few Biblical themes represented were surrounded by a majority of
works featuring itineraries and places from ancestral Dreamings.
Mainstream churches, contrary to most of the new evangelical sects,
tend to promote the spiritual importance of attachment to the land. A
manifesto on land rights was published by the Catholic Commission
for Justice and Peace of the Australian Council of Churches,8 and the
World Council of Churches also came out in favour of land rights.9
In January 1988, the Australian Heads of Churches, in a declara-
tion entitled ‘Towards Reconciliation in Australian Society’, called
on Parliament to formally recognise Aboriginal prehistory and the
continuing importance of its heritage; the counsellor for Aboriginal
affairs to the Catholic bishops submitted a project to all political
parties for negotiation of the terms of a ‘compact’. After discussion
with all the parties, the term ‘reconciliation’ was adopted.
The Australian churches have taken sides in the debate, but this
does not mean they are leading the Aboriginal movement, or, as
in other parts of Oceania, that Christians have provided activists
with political training or even raised their indigenist consciousness.
Although Pat Dodson, of Yawuru-Djugun descent and ex-Chairman
of the Council for ‘reconciliation’ set up by the government in 1991,
trained for the priesthood, his kinsmen had him initiated immediately
after his ordination, and when he took up the political struggle after
law school he left his religious functions. In fact, Aboriginal activism
has often developed in reaction to mission schooling.
The Impossible Alliance: How Conversion and Allowances

Contribute to Neutralising Attempts at Self-Determination
Christian conversion, with its various syncretisms, allows some groups
to maintain their tribal identity, but the churches can also have the
opposite effect, channelling former local and linguistic singularities
8
‘Land Rights – A Christian Perspective’, prepared for the Churches Task Force on
Aboriginal Land Rights, set up by the Australian Council of Churches (Catholic
Commission for Justice and Peace), Derek Carne, 1980.
9
Justice for Aboriginal Australians’ report of the World Council of Churches,
‘Team visit to the Aboriginal people, June 15 to July 3, 1981’, for the Program to
Combat Racism, Geneva.
243
into a uniform Christian evolution (Swain and Rose 1988). Conversion

to Christianity was often violently imposed in the missions, which
took children away from their parents to raise and teach them in
mission schools. Native languages were frequently undermined. The
marriages organised by missionaries were purposely conceived to
oppose polygamy and the large age difference between the spouses
inherent in traditional marriage by bestowal. By opposing the mar-
riage prescriptions, the missions destroyed the social cohesion of the
traditional alliances. And by forbidding the performance of certain
rituals that once marked the life-cycle, they weakened the models for
becoming an adult and threw traditional sexual roles into question.
Finally, by refusing to recognise European or Asian paternity, they
prevented the emergence of new family structures.10 The paternalism
practised by the missions into the 1960s has been strongly criticised.
In a way, the inability of many communities to manage their own
affairs under the new structures of authority is directly related to
decades of infantilisation. Destitution of the father’s authority in
particular led to a rise in the number of matrifocal homes, leaving
the men without authority and drowning in grog (Hunter 1993).
For lack of family models, many young people, boys and girls alike,
succumbed to alcohol. Christians found an ideal source of converts
among the young or older drinkers, who had resisted conversion
until then. For many Aboriginal people, being a Christian became
synonymous with ‘no grog and no gambling’, in other words with
fighting the financially irresponsible attitude entailed in playing cards
and drinking and thus ignoring the family’s needs.11
The very notion of an evil inherent in humanity is fundamentally
alien to the Aboriginal way of thinking; nevertheless, for Christian
Aboriginal people the concept becomes a means of exploring the evil
introduced by the European settlers (Rose 1988). In this new distri-
bution of powers, many Aboriginal people see Christianity as the
10
Some people of mixed Aboriginal and Malay or Indonesian descent were in
contact with the Muslim religion, which, like the Aboriginal religion, was rapidly
opposed by the Christian churches: the children were taken away from their
parents and forced to convert.
11
Goodale (1987) suggested, following an unpublished paper by McKnight, that,
for some Aboriginal groups, card-playing was a way of redistributing resources,
something like the traditional hunting ethic. But this redistribution was (is) dis-
turbed when the winners spent all their money on grog or on paying the fines of
those jailed for drunkenness, upsetting the social and physical health of the entire
community (Hunter 1993).
244
only way to protect themselves from the harmful effects of contact –

alcohol, violence, disintegration of society or new sexually transmis-
sible diseases. Some charismatic movements hold up ‘healing’ as
proof of the power of Christianity. In April 1993, a gathering was
organised at Halls Creek to show the Aboriginal people invited from
far and wide the lame being made to walk and the blind recovering
their sight. Such a display of Christian ‘power’ does not necessarily
invalidate the powers of the Dreaming, though. Instead, it becomes
one of the recognised magical principles that legitimises Europe as a
conqueror against whom all Indigenous powers must be mobilised.
For instance, today most funerals are celebrated by the Christian
Church with a religious service and burial in the cemetery. But they
are also the occasion for huge community gatherings at which kin
and allies, who have often travelled hundreds of kilometres, perform
the traditional rituals to find the culprit.12 It is the power of the
Dreaming that is believed to bring about the punishment. In the same
vein, the northern Aboriginal people tell a story, in demonstration
of their Law, of some workers drowned during the construction of a
dam: the site should not have been disturbed because it was the home
of a dangerous serpent ancestor-spirit that lived in the sacred rock.
Is the alliance of Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality com-
patible with the existence of two separate laws, the Dreaming and
the Australian government seen as being connected with the Bible?
This is by no means clear if we consider the exclusive character
of Christianity as well as that of Western economics and politics
represented by the Australian government. The same question arises
when traditional elements receive their only official recognition
from Western institutions like art, schools and the justice system. By
showing certain images of Aboriginal people yesterday and today,
Indigenous writers, artists, musicians or film-makers participate in
the promotion of Aboriginality and in defining this concept according
to international cultural norms. The introduction of an Aboriginal
school curriculum and bilingual programmes has perverse effects as
well, however. The dynamism and creativity of oral literature is thus
threatened by the purported ‘authenticity’ of the written versions of
myths, which are often desacralised in the process and even made
into stories for children instead of remaining knowledge acquired
in the course of initiation into adulthood. A young Aboriginal boy,
12
For example, a hairstring rope is passed around and, when it shakes, it is believed
to indicate the person(s) responsible for the death.
245
who was a brilliant student at the Broome school and had been initi-
ated according to tradition by the Bard people, maintained that the
teachings of the bush did not belong in school. The concern to keep
the two laws separate can also be seen in the way the elders insist on
keeping their secrets, even if it means withdrawing some books from
the shops. Some even refuse to transmit their knowledge to the fol-
lowing generations, perhaps to prevent it from being dissolved in the
generalised mediatisation. This might explain why some elders have
abandoned their traditional functions and have taken to drinking out
of solidarity with the younger men.
A series of so-called ‘Captain Cook’ myths, from North Australia,
tells the story of European contact. Comparing versions, Maddock
(1988) has found some recurring themes such as that of White men
offering gifts that are rejected by the Aboriginal people or that of
White men stealing from the Aboriginal people. In the stories about
the Macassans, who travelled to the north coast every season before
the arrival of the European settlers, the interaction is more ambigu-
ous: when the Aboriginal people try to accept the gifts, the exchange
doesn’t work.
In no case was there an attempt on either side at a balanced
alliance. The elders in Broome tell of a treasure buried in a particu-
lar spot in the present-day town: they say it is a ‘will and legacy’
left to the Djugun, the traditional custodians of the region, by
the first European navigators. According to the official history of
Australia, the first to land on this shore, in 1699, were the Dutch
captain, William Dampier, and his crew. However the linguist Von
Brandenstein has recently suggested that, in the sixteenth century,
the Portuguese established a secret colony slightly further north and
cut a road as far as the present-day town of Broome; in contrast to
the violence that followed the arrival of the English settlers, relations
between the Aboriginal people and the Portuguese were quite peace-
ful. One sequence of Walungarri, an important ritual performed in
the Kimberley, shows a dance evoking the gift of wine and tobacco to
the Aboriginal people by the Europeans (were they the Portuguese?)
as well as a grand celebration held by the latter upon arriving.
Dampier, on the other hand, was unable to communicate with the
natives of what is now Broome, and ultimately fired on them. So, is
alliance with the order imposed by the settlers possible or not? Since
Aboriginal people began receiving money, in the form of wages,
allowances, pensions or mining royalties – which only dates from
the late 1960s – they have often been accused of ‘throwing it away’
246
on cards or alcohol, or of running down the cars or the houses given

to them by development programmes. The latest militant slogans
urge rejecting the image of Aboriginal people as victims in favour of
a successful image. But many families of Aboriginal men or women
who have broken into politics or achieved renown as international
artists (painters, film-makers, rock musicians) find it hard, in spite
of their success and newfound resources, to escape the pressure of
their surroundings and being sucked into ‘Fourth World’ living con-
ditions. In these circumstances, Aboriginal culture is perceived as
more profitable to the non-Aboriginal dealers than to the artists
themselves. Could this be a replay (or demonstration) of the ‘Captain
Cook’ myth, where White men have their gifts systematically rejected
by the Aboriginal people and at the same time go on stealing from
them? Is it possible to think in terms of reconciliation when there
has never been an alliance? Alliance by definition supposes that each
partner retains his differences, not only culturally but also and above
all socially, which means keeping power of decision to manage one’s
own affairs. But all non-Aboriginal gifts (money, food and other con-
sumer goods or equipment), and even the Australian laws, continue
to have a perverse effect. They either destroy or assimilate, or, more
subtly, do not leave room for self-determination.
Some non-Aboriginal people complain of racism in reverse, which
might be explained in the following way: day in, day out, Aboriginal
people are confronted with a bureaucratic machine that constantly
frustrates their attempts at self-determination. They can therefore
only regard with suspicion any non-Aboriginal they identify with this
dominant order which excludes them by stigmatising them and at the
same time alienates them while purportedly trying to seduce them.
But this climate of suspicion and rejection is not restricted to relations
between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people; it can often be
observed between Aboriginal family groups living in close proximity.
In such conflicts, one group or individual typically accuses the other
of making ‘bad’ alliances with non-Aboriginal people, or of being
like ‘coconuts’, black on the outside but white inside. When someone
is highly successful, the accusation is that they are too different to
have a legitimate place with the others (the insinuation being that the
accused are not genuine Aboriginal people and should not be there).
Such accusations burden everyday life with tensions and conflicts
and highlight the breakdown of the traditional approaches to conflict
resolution that used to enable different groups of people to cohabit
seasonally on the same spot. But they also show that the massive
247
cohabitation imposed in communities and towns is now a permanent

phenomenon. Because new self-management structures are lacking,
the Indigenous population has grown increasingly dependent on a
bureaucratic welfare system that spawns its own contradictions. But
it is also possible to see these conflicts in a positive light, insofar
as they call for new forms of reconciliation and oblige all parties
to constantly define themselves, thus reinforcing local singularities.
In the process, the conflicts become a site for the construction of
a multifaceted Aboriginality, one to which each party, through its
involvement with a community, is required to contribute.
Reconciliation and Decentralisation: How Policy Makers and

Bureaucrats Fight Over Aboriginal Status
The policy of assimilation means that all Aboriginal people and descend-
ants of Aboriginal people are expected to attain the same manner of
living as other Australians, and to live as members of a single Australian
community enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same
customs and influenced by the same beliefs, hopes and loyalty as other
Australians. (Tonkinson 1990)13
Aboriginal legislation can be divided into roughly four phases.
Between 1829 and 1936, in reaction to the violence commit-
ted on Aboriginal people by the settlers – sexual abuse, killings,
enslavement14 – the government set in place legislation based on a
policy of ‘protection’. Its purpose was to segregate Aboriginal people
from the European Australian society by providing them with ration
depots when they were driven off their lands by settlers. Gradually,
control of the population movements legitimised the arrangements
with the settlers, allotting them free Aboriginal labour on the cattle
stations or sending the Aboriginal people away to work at missions
or on reserves.
The Native Administration Act of 1936 marked the beginning of
the ‘assimilation policy’, based on the idea of racial ‘whitening’ and
13
M. E. Tonkinson (1990: 213) emphasises in italics ‘all Aboriginal people and
part-Aboriginal people are expected’ and adds: ‘The 1965 Native Welfare
Conference modified the wording: “the policy of assimilation seeks that all per-
sons of Aboriginal descent will choose to attain a similar manner of living to that
of other Australians” (Reynolds 1972: 175, emphasis added)’.
14
For example, the organised enslavement (blackbirding) in the northwest of men,
women and children by pearl-masters, who made them dive for pearl-shells.
248
imposing specific regulations on ‘quadroons’ (see above). Until the

1960s, census figures divided Aboriginal people of mixed descent
into different categories: they were not considered ‘Aboriginal
people’ if they exhibited ‘positive’ characteristics, in the light of their
character and the standard of their intelligence, according to a law
passed in South Australia (1939 Act). People of mixed descent could
gain citizenship rights by applying for a certificate of exemption if
they could show proof of good conduct and had severed relations
with their tribe; this was the only way of gaining access to paid
employment and sending their children to school without separating
them from the family. By forbidding Aboriginal people from differ-
ent categories to mix, the policy of assimilation merely justified a
form of apartheid that was already operating in public places. Until
the 1960s, the Broome movie theatre had separate seating for each
category as defined by the colour of their skin: white, Asian, half-
caste and full-blood. The Native Welfare Act of 1963 systematised
segregation by denying Aboriginal status to whoever had a quarter
or less Aboriginal ancestry.15
The 1967 referendum giving all Aboriginal people the same rights
as other Australian citizens marked the start of the policy of ‘integra-
tion’, bitterly summed up by many Aboriginal people as the right to
get drunk. The obligation of equal pay resulted in the dismissal of
the Aboriginal workforce from the cattle stations rather than their
integration. A population without work or a place to live was sud-
denly forced to take refuge in reserves or on the outskirts of towns. It
was then that the government threw its ‘White Australia’ policy into
question by admitting migrants first from the Mediterranean coun-
tries and then from Asia. The notion of a multicultural Australia,
with its cocktail of ethnic immigrants, placed Aboriginal peoples
in the context of the specificity of their own culture, as a minor-
ity sharing a common identity. Aboriginal status was extended to
all people descending from an Aboriginal ancestor, whatever their
other ancestry. While this new attitude helped promote the idea of
15
M. E. Tonkinson (1990). The policy of assimilation founded Australian citi-
zenship on an Anglo-Saxon model which excluded all immigrants supposed to
be non-assimilable: Asians, Mediterranean peoples and Jews. After the Second
World War, the immigration service received confidential instructions indicating
the physical characteristics – especially skin colour – to be taken into considera-
tion for refusing applications. When Australia agreed to accept war orphans, it
was stipulated in writing that they were not to be of Jewish descent.
249
Aboriginality, it exacerbated the opposition between those living

in reserves and those living in towns. New problems were created
that were further complicated by contradictions between federal
legislation and the state laws which gave Aboriginal people different
rights according to their region. A federal law, for example, allowed
Aboriginal people to apply for native title providing their lands were
on ‘vacant Crown land’; but this law was valid only for the Northern
Territory (Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976), the other states having
rejected it. Western Australia has the Western Australian Aboriginal
Heritage Act 1972, which protects registered sacred sites; but the
state only gives a 99-year lease on reserve lands. A complementary
law, the Community Services Act of 1972, was passed with a view
to community development on the reserves or in towns of this state.
Since the 1970s, official Australian policy has shifted from ‘inte-
gration’ to ‘self-determination’ and ‘self-management’.16 Although
these promises reflect Aboriginal people’s desire to manage their
own affairs, the bureaucratic complications created by the measures
actually set in place have led many activists and anthropologists to
conclude that they were a failure (Tonkinson and Howard 1990;
Hunter 1993). In 1985, the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC),
an independent group of Aboriginal advisors to the Federal Minister
of Aboriginal Affairs, a consultative body without any real power
but having a radical impact, was dissolved and replaced by the
Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC), a body of Aboriginal
public servants disposing of a budget to promote community devel-
opment and to buy land for Aboriginal people. In 1990, the federal
government overhauled its Aboriginal services and replaced both the
ADC and the old Department of Aboriginal Affairs with what was
intended to be a decentralised administration, the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC), formed of a federal
hierarchy with appointed members and regional councils with elected
members. Its mandate was economic development. Interestingly, the
name juxtaposes the term ‘Aboriginal’ with the expression ‘Torres
Strait Islanders’. The latter are distinguished from Aboriginal people
because they have occupied a territory – the islands off the northeast
coast of Australia – for a shorter time and because they are related
to the Melanesian peoples. But the indigenist policy includes them
16
‘Our Future Our Selves’, Report of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Community Council, Management and Resources, House of Representatives
Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, August 1990.
250
as native peoples.17 The ATSIC allocates federal budget resources

for the Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders to the different
services concerned with them (development, health, housing, etc.),
but it is constantly accused of being too centralised and not giving
enough power to its regional councils, or of not taking local needs
into account.
It was in this context of bureaucratic weight that the High Court
verdict was handed down in 1992 in favour of a group of Torres
Strait Islanders claiming native title on Murray Island. This was the
famous ‘Mabo case’, after the name of one of the plaintiffs. ‘Mabo’
was a landmark because it invalidated for the first time the formerly
legal notion of Australia as Terra nullius and recognised the general
principle of ‘native title’ predating colonisation. The question now
is how to recognise other claims to such titles, and what rights do
they confer? The Prime Minister suggested creating a special court
to decide the claims of different groups. But at a conference held in
1993 with the Premiers of the six states, the proposal was almost
unanimously rejected, especially by the Premier of Western Australia,
who felt not that the decision should lie with each state government
but that recognition of native title would threaten the economy,
in particular that it would frighten away foreign investors. Prime
Minister Keating replied that recognition of native title applied only
to land presently occupied by Aboriginal groups and that this could
only facilitate negotiations with investors, especially the mining com-
panies. A year later, a heated debate still divided much of Australia,
and in 1997 the situation was at a standstill. The Native Title Act of
1993 was passed at the federal level, creating, among other things, a
Tribunal system. But some states passed their own legislation allow-
ing them to review or even overturn this process. Aboriginal people
were caught in the middle. Nevertheless, alongside certain radicals
who challenged the system by demanding native title to the entire
town of Canberra, there are also communities that have already
negotiated agreements with mining companies or tour operators.
The real solution, it seems to me, is not to oppose the interests
of Aboriginal people to those of the nation as a whole, but to see
how, as the traditional owners of the land, Aboriginal people can
participate in the decisions relative to development so as to benefit
17
Similarly the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies in Canberra was renamed
the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. ATSIC
was abolished in 2004.
251
not only on an individual basis, but also to give their community

something more to look forward to than soon joining the so-called
‘Fourth World’. After decades of control and welfare, it is clear than
money and services are not enough. For many Aboriginal people,
who call pensions (for children, the aged and unemployed) ‘sitting
down money’, what they need is to be able to ‘stand up’ with dignity,
and that is only possible through a complete social restructuration,
implying recognition of their links with the land and development
decided by themselves.
Some Aboriginal people hold long-term leases on the land, espe-
cially in the Kimberley, where by the mid-1990s 51 per cent of the
land used for cattle stations was in Aboriginal hands. This recent
evolution was possible because the stations were abandonned by the
settlers when the cattle industry went into decline. From the viewpoint
of Aboriginal people, running these stations enables them to survive,
an example of a two-speed economy which provides enough for
them though seeming unprofitable to non-Aboriginal people. Many
Australians feel that separate development for Aboriginal people is
synonymous with apartheid (Kolig 1973) and that Aboriginal special
services and rights give them an advantage over other Australians
(M. E. Tonkinson 1990), an attitude echoed by the rejection of the
idea of ‘native title’. Yet, in view of the failure of the ‘assimilation’
or ‘integration’ policies, it is clear that both pre-colonial and colonial
history have given Aboriginal people needs that are different from
those of other Australians or immigrants, but that also differ accord-
ing to whether or not an Aboriginal group has been alienated from
its land.
A Challenge to Anthropology: Legitimising Indigenous Status

to Obtain Land Rights
Native Title to particular land . . . its incidents, and the persons enti-
tled thereto are ascertained to the laws and customs of the indigenous
people who, by those laws and customs, have a connection with the
land. It is immaterial that the laws and customs have undergone some
change since the Crown acquired sovereignty provided the general
nature of the connection between the indigenous people and the land
remains.
Membership of the indigenous people depends on biological descent
from the indigenous people and on mutual recognition of a particular
person’s membership by that person and by the elders or other persons
enjoying traditional authority among those people. Native title to an area
252
of land which a clan or group is entitled to enjoy under the laws and
customs of an indigenous people is extinguished if the clan or group, by
ceasing to acknowledge those laws, and (so far as practicable) observe
those customs, loses its connection with the land or on the death of the
last of the members of the group or clan.
This is the definition of native title given by Justice Brennan, one of
the judges in the Mabo case. But another judge, Toohey, founded
native title not on observation of custom, but on the plaintiff ’s
argument of ‘occupation of the land since 1788’, not necessarily with
constant presence but regular visits proving ‘possession’. According
to the lawyers who have commented on these judgments,18 if this
criterion is accepted for attribution of Aboriginal titles, it becomes
possible to claim a land without having to prove current practise
of customs but merely by justifying occupation of the land at the
time of colonisation. The Supreme Court also ruled that a title is
extinguished when the land is used for permanent public establish-
ments such as roads. But contrary to the legislation in the Northern
Territory, which restricts claims to ‘vacant’ lands, native title can be
claimed on national or maritime park lands. The status has not been
defined for land sold to private parties or under lease – most cattle or
fishing enterprises – or when development activities such as mining,
tourism and so forth have been started on them. The different ques-
tions of compensation also remain to be settled. In the Northern
Territory, the land handed back under the 1976 Land Rights Act
gave the Aboriginal owners a right of veto over future development
as well as a right to royalties (4 per cent maximum) on profits from
mining. Most of the mining companies, however, backed by some
local governments, refuse to generalise this system to pending native
title claims.
Given the knotty legal situation, many lawyers and anthropolo-
gists have been recruited to define the local content of eventual native
titles. Aboriginal people themselves disagree over the question of
traditional inheritance rights. With the transmission of land, for
instance, what should be the rule: traditional descent reckoning,
patrilineal, matrilineal, or some other? Or should the colonial history
be taken into account and right to land given to all descendants?
In the 1970s, at the time of the first land claims in the Northern
Territory, some anthropologists criticised the systematisation of
18
Declaration by Brown and O’Donnel (1992), consulted in unpublished papers
giving no further reference.
253
unilineal transmission and the notion of patrilocality. In the Western

Desert, for example, links with the land are determined primarily
by the individual’s conception Dreaming (totem, see above), which
often differs from the father’s Dreaming. Even in the Central Desert
groups, who follow a patrilineal pattern of transmission, land owner-
ship is inseparable from other ritual land rights held by the matrikin
or other allies. As for the groups on the northwestern coast of the
Kimberley, I am currently working with the oral history and analysis
of the ritual system of custodianship of the Dreamings (partially
maintained) to show that the traditional land-holding system was
highly complex and in fact incompatible with generalised patrilocal-
ity (Glowczewski 1998b).
The current interest in providing an anthropological definition of
the content of native titles highlights the importance of this moment
of Australian history when Indigenous people are consolidating their
Aboriginality, not as a shared political ideology, but as a force of
local cohesion, locality by locality. Some Aboriginal activists have
suggested adopting a local term, ‘Koori’, to refer not only to the
Aboriginal peoples of the south-east, but also for all Aboriginal
peoples of Australia and their descendants of mixed ancestry. The
use of ‘Koori’ has been well accepted in the south-east, but not in
other regions, where local groups prefer to use their own names,
for example, Nyoongar, in the south-west includes the people of the
region of the town of Perth. More important than the similarities
visible in these approaches, though, is the fact that localisation carries
with it a singularisation of identities which implies both continuity
with local ancestral heritage and creation of new social structures.
This continuity is affirmed, as can be seen in the many Aboriginal
initiatives, through the maintenance or renewal of ceremonies, the
creation of cultural festivals or the reconstitution of local history.
The new structures are evident in the many new Aboriginal associa-
tions: tribal or family corporations for the purpose of resettling lands
or negotiating their participation in the development of towns or
national parks, women’s groups, resource centres, and so on. As
Myrna Tonkinson writes:
While Aboriginality is developing as a political force, local and regional
Aboriginal identities continue to have salience and provide, though not
exclusively, some of the content of Aboriginality. And there are recipro-
cal influences on local attitudes. The two forms of identity help sustain
each other and are therefore likely to coexist well into the future. (M. E.
Tonkinson 1990: 215)
254
This polarisation between local identities and a pan-Aboriginal iden-

tity is, in my view, a particularly dynamic element in the creation of
new alliances with local powers (ruling structures like the shire) or
non-Aboriginal interested parties (like developers). These alliances
bring both autonomy and support, owing to the political alliances
contracted at the national level, which involve not only Australian
interests but also a form of international solidarity with Indigenous
groups from other parts of the world. This solidarity with minority
groups goes hand in hand, especially among young people, with iden-
tification with a ‘Black’ culture, often carried by popular music from
Australia or overseas. In its 1993 public report on the Mabo deci-
sion, the Commission for Reconciliation underscored, for example,
treaties concluded by other governments: New Zealand with the
Maori and Canada with some Indigenous groups.
In the past decade, militant groups themselves have developed
exchanges with other Indigenous peoples, both political – at the
United Nations – and political-cultural – the Festival of the Pacific,
held in Townsville in 1990 and in the Cook Islands in 1992. Local
delegations travelled to these manifestations taking with them both
the specificity of their regional heritage – dancing and traditional art
forms – and new forms of individual creativity – plastic arts, litera-
ture, theatre, cinema or music. National recognition of these artists
and the recent fame of some Aboriginal sport champions no doubt
helps to promote a respect for Aboriginal culture that makes them
symbols of a new political force. Not only Aboriginal people who
have remained close to their land, their language and their customs
but those, too, who have been dispossessed of these are increasingly
coming to identify with this many-sided Aboriginality.
255
Figure 8.1 Napaljarri and Nungarrayi women kneel around their sacred slabs
yukurrukurru painted with the Witi (Initiated Man poles) Dreaming to send the
image-forces back to the virtual, inside the land of Kurlungalinpa © B. G. 1984
8
Culture Cult: Ritual Circulation of Inalienable

Knowledge and Appropriation of Cultural
Knowledge (Central and NW Australia)
Indigenous People are entitled to the recognition of the full ownership,

control and protection of their cultural and intellectual property. They
have the right to special measures to control, develop and protect their
sciences, technologies and cultural manifestations, including human and
other genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties
of fauna and flora, oral tradition, literatures, designs and visual and
performing arts. (Article 29 of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, United Nations, 1993)1
Many Aboriginal cult objects collected in unclear or even unlaw-
ful circumstances have found their way into private collections or
museums in Australia and other parts of the world.2 The South
Australian Museum in Adelaide has set up a pilot program to identify
sacred and secret objects in view of returning them to communi-
ties wanting to recover a portion of their heritage. Other museums
have followed this initiative of collaborating with Aboriginal peo-
ples.3 Some groups accept restitution but draw up agreements with
museums that the objects be placed in their reserves for safe-keeping.
Others prefer to take back the objects but then worry about their
protection. Since the 1980s, ‘safe-keeping places’ have sprung up
throughout Australia, some in corrugated huts, others in sophisti-
cated buildings. The Aboriginal communities regard them as ‘living
museums’ since the traditional cult objects kept there are used in
1
See: http://www.un-documents.net/dundrip.htm; see The UN Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2017: https://www.un.org/development/desa/
indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html
2
This chapter was translated by Nora Scott for Carolina Academic Press, first
published in People and Things (Jeudy-Ballini and Juillerat 2002).
3
Anderson (1990) on exchange-relations between Australian museums and
Indigenous people; see contributions to Part 2: ‘Bringing people back into the col-
lections’, in Craig et al. (1999). See also Anderson (1995), Stanton (1999). More
recently, see De Largy Healy (2009).
257
men’s and women’s rituals. The process of repatriating objects is

part of a broader movement to reappropriate Indigenous culture and
revitalise traditional practices, especially religious ceremonies.
‘Safe-keeping places’ are increasingly conceived as part of
larger structures or of regional culture centres which require more
costly technical means for the safe-keeping of objects whose access
is restricted to their ‘ritual custodians’. These structures serve as
depositories for written, audio and visual archives accessible only
to those groups considered to be the owners of this knowledge.
Other, everyday objects accompanied by public audio-visual docu-
ments are carefully selected for exhibition so as to transmit an image
of the culture to the younger generations and to further knowledge
of the culture among non-Aboriginal people. Some of these centres
also seek to keep tradition alive through the production of crafts,
art and all expressions of local culture: audio-visual recording of
oral history, dance workshops, bush-food collecting with children of
the community, performances and guided visits of the centre and its
area for schools and tourists, but also the organisation of traditional
gatherings of Aboriginal groups in places which may or may not be
open to the public.
After recalling the international context of the contemporary
claims to cultural property, I will explain the concept of inalien-
ability which, in Central and North Western Australia, surrounds
the ritual circulation of sacred objects and the cults of which they
are a part. Afterwards I will examine the elaboration of a culture
centre involving the representatives of a dozen Aboriginal languages
and organisations based in the coastal town of Broome; this initia-
tive reflects an attempt to control the representation given of these
cultures and to reappropriate their objects and knowledge. Finally, I
will end with some thoughts on the notion of ‘keeping-while-giving’
(Weiner 1992).
Cultural Property, Inalienable Objects and Knowledge

Objects are repatriated to Australia on behalf of communities led
by Aboriginal people who, as citizens, should enjoy moral property
rights as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to the protection of moral and material interests
resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is
the author. (Tsosie 1997: 9)
258
Culture Cult
This moral right, conceived as applying to the individual and being

limited in time, covers only physically tangible ‘productions’ of an
author such as objects, patents or publications. Beyond the period
stipulated (usually fifty years), the content of the novel, discovery,
musical work or work of art falls into the public domain and is
no longer protected by law. This law is clearly not adapted to cul-
tural claims, for it does not recognise traditional property, which by
definition dates back more than fifty years, or collective property,
since it is shared by a group, often orally, and is therefore intan-
gible. Nevertheless, Indigenous people can use incorporated bodies
in order to benefit from the repatriation of objects. In the United
States, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation
Act enabled American museums to return more than 80,000 items,
including human remains. But such repatriations do not go without
conflict when it comes to defining entitled beneficiaries. Zuni, Hopi
and Navajo, for example, dispute the ownership of pre-Colombian
bones found on one site which all three groups claim as the dwelling-
place of their own ancestors.4 Bones held in museums and laboratories
all over the world have also been claimed by Australian Aboriginal
people, who are militating against the archaeological excavation of
sites containing human remains.
Tangible cultural resources include historic and prehistoric structures and
artefacts, as well as cultural objects of importance to contemporary tribes,
such as sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony . . . property may
not be alienable outside the group. (Tsosie 1997: 5, 7)
Like sacred objects, sites bearing material indications of the ances-
tral presence of a culture, but also natural sites (hills, rocks, water
holes) held to be sacred to the culture, were traditionally inalienable.
However, in order to register a land claim in view of restitution,
Australian law requires lists of owners, who must demonstrate to
the court, for each geographical site concerned, the way ownership
of these sites was transmitted – in these cultures without written lan-
guage. Aboriginal people have often shown judges, who were sworn
to secrecy, sacred objects they regarded as their ‘native title,’ equiva-
lent of the Western land title. They have also invited them to listen
to sacred myths and to visit the sites and attend rites – dances, songs,
4
2nd World Water Forum, Home of the Citizen and Water – Water Source of
Culture, Traditions and Peace, The Hague, March 2000, communication by a
Hopi/Zuni representative.
259
body painting, and so forth. Aboriginal people consider performance

of the rite as proof of their status of ‘ritual custodians’ (kirda in
Warlpiri) of this body of knowledge, practices and cult objects; they
translate this status in English as ‘owner,’ to satisfy the Western
notion of property and ownership. In the central desert, one is often
the ‘owner’ of his/her father’s land but he/she is also the ‘manager’
(kurdungurlu in Warlpiri) of the mother’s or spouse’s land, its rites
and its objects. In other words, men and women are owners only
insofar as they share a certain use and knowledge of their possession
with direct kin and affines.
For Aboriginal people, sacred sites and objects materialise
culture – which we regard as something non-material, intellectual
or intangible – in other words the body of knowledge transmitted
via oral or gestual practices, which are therefore also inalienable:
languages, stories, songs, dances, medicinal plants and so on. But
for Western law, once intangible knowledge is materialised in a
medium, it is alienable and comes under copyright law: a work of
art, a publication, a sound or a visual recording. The content then
becomes the property of the author of the production, the artist,
writer, photographer and, of course, anthropologist. Today anthro-
pologists are reproached – as are museums, journalists, collectors,
etc. – for appropriating inalienable bodies of knowledge or objects
and commercialising them to the detriment of their original cultural
owners. Aboriginal people, like other Indigenous groups, stress
their need to control the distribution of their culture by recording,
filming and publishing their own cultural resources. In addition to
the contribution of such an approach to the patrimony and to educa-
tion, the authors’ materialisation of their knowledge and practices in
their chosen media is supposed to protect them from dispossession
by others. In many Indigenous communities and gatherings, non-
Aboriginal people are not allowed to take pictures or make recordings
without a permit, which may be refused. Some anthropology stu-
dents even agree to sign a contract with the communities, promising
they will let them read and check their thesis before they publish it,
or even submit it to their university. Although many non-Aboriginal
consultants are hired by Aboriginal organisations, the material they
collect remains the property of their employers and they cannot use it
as they wish.
Aboriginal people also claim copyright in recognition of their
intellectual ownership of audio-visual productions or publications by
non-Aboriginals (Janke, 1998). This position, modeled on the mining
260
Culture Cult
royalties, which have been in force in Australia for twenty years, was
replaced only after numerous discussions with the elders, who were
reticent at the idea of drawing income from their lands. Such wari-
ness of commercial alienation has not been overcome among Native
Americans either, according to Rosemary Coombe, who objects that
‘copyright licenses’ and other legal solutions to the problem of intel-
lectual property alienate social relations. Indeed, Coombe appears to
advocate an ethic for respecting cultural integrity, rather than a legal
solution (Coombe 1997). She advocates the ‘central importance of
shared cultural symbols in defining us and the realities we recognise,’
which seems to militate in favour of overcoming the strictures imposed
by intellectual property law in favour of a free exchange of ideas and
expression (Coombe 1991: 74–96; quoted by Tsosie 1997: 10).
Several proposals have been made to avoid such alienation of
traditional knowledge, including the idea of taking inspiration from
‘computer software licensing agreements as a potentially fruitful
model for indigenous people to adopt as a means for legally protect-
ing their right to just compensation for the acquisition and use of
their intellectual products (Stephenson 1994: 182)’ (Tsosie 1997: 11,
note).
Much the same was said to me by young computer specialists
and Internet users at a conference at the Cité des Sciences in Paris,
where I explained the necessity of recognising the right of control
and distribution imposed by a Central Desert Aboriginal community
to whom I restored the written and audio-visual material I had
gathered between 1979 and 1998 in the form of an interactive
CD-ROM program. After two years of work and consultation with
fifty-one Warlpiri artists from the Lajamanu community and a year
of trials in their school, the Council and the artists agreed to make
it available to the public. At first, some felt that the knowledge
should not be commercialised inasmuch as it constituted the very
essence of their culture. But after long discussion among them-
selves, the Council members and the community Warnayaka Arts
Centre decided to accept the economic benefits, provided use of
the CD-ROM was confined to settings contextualised with respect
to the art and teachings of Aboriginal culture, in other words, to
museums and universities.
This resistance to open commercialisation of their culture was
already evident in the same Warlpiri community of Lajamanu imme-
diately following the emergence of the acrylic painting movement
among the Pintupi and the Warlpiri of Papunya, their neighbours
261
to the south, who share similar mythic and iconographic elements

associated with totemic sites and Eternal Beings (Jukurrpa). The
Lajamanu elders decided to take up commercialised painting on
canvas only several years after their neighbours’ success in art galler-
ies around the world (Myers 1994), and after a delegation of a dozen
Lajamanu men had been invited to make a ritual sand-painting at
the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.5 It may be that the success they
encountered as painters and dancers reassured them that the elitism
of museums and the international art world would protect them
against ‘copy cats.’ On one official visit to the Australia Room of the
Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie in Paris, the twelve
elders identified a carved wooden slab as being connected with a
secret cult and not supposed to be shown in public (Glowczewski
1996). The museum withdrew the slab and ensured that it was not
displaying any other objects regarded as sacred or secret. In France
as well as in the other former colonial countries, where through the
agency of national museums the state owns foreign collections, the
prospect of repatriation challenges the very principle of national
heritage, which has been largely built on the conquest of other
peoples. The political issue is far from being resolved, but moral
recognition of problems of intellectual property and cultural control
has opened the way for protocols, which are increasingly respected
by museums.
Travelling Cults, History and Secrecy

Sandra Pannell (1994) has very astutely shown the inalienability
of sacred slabs, tjurunga (also churinga), and their equivalents in
other desert groups. These are abundantly discussed in the literature
(Moisseeff 2002) and are still the subject of speculation among col-
lectors. For the Central Desert Arrernte (Aranda), tjurunga are like
a spiritual and geographical ID card. Traditionally each person had
his or her own slab, which was hidden and handled with the greatest
care; it was a sort of spiritual duplicate, linking the person with a
specific place and its totemic spirits. Slabs are said to be inhabited
by a spiritual force that is animated by the esoteric design carved on
5
Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord and ARC, Musée d’Art Moderne, as
a part of the manifestation ‘D’un autre continent – L’Australie, le rêve et le réel’,
organised for the 1983 Festival d’Automne. See Chapter 4: p. 140.
262
Culture Cult
the slab. This singular force of the slab is believed to be re-actualised

from one generation to the next into its new human duplicates. In
former times, when someone died, in accordance with the taboo
on pronouncing the name of the deceased found in all Aboriginal
groups, the name was not mentioned for the duration of the mourn-
ing period, which was two years. Similarly, the deceased’s slab, his
or her material double, was entrusted to a neighbouring group until
the mourning period was over (Pannell 1994: 26). In other groups,
the slabs are less individualised, but they are still associated with
specific places, of which they are the materialisation of the life force,
an ancestral and eternal singularity that is also embodied in the
group which shares the same totemic name: this singularity, which
is named, drawn, sung and danced, dwells in people, places, totemic
species and sacred objects; the Warlpiri and their neighbours in the
desert call it Jukurrpa: the Dreaming (Glowczewski 1991).
Other slabs are connected with initiation cults and travel from
group to group, often of different languages, when these cults are
transmitted over hundreds of kilometers as part of the chain of alli-
ances, which are also manifested by the circulation of everyday goods
and by marriage exchanges (Micha 1970; Ackerman 1979). After
years or even decades of circulating, the rituals acquired new forms
of expression and sacred objects which, having been handled by the
ritual custodians of each group through which they have passed, are
believed to transmit something of the power of the Dreaming. The
sacred and secret objects accompanying the initiation cults can by
definition be shown only to initiates. Their revelation at the time they
are handed over by the initiating group to the new initiates is part
and parcel of the symbolic dramatisation of the ritual.
The Central Desert Warlpiri immediately recognised the slab in the
Paris museum as coming from the Western Desert and as being part
of the secret cult that links them with different language groups. As
the secret name of the cult must not be pronounced, it is designated
by one of the public dances that is part of the cult, Kadranya (Moyle
1981), on the northwest coast of Broome, or by the expression ‘Balgo
Business’ (Myers n.d.), from the name of the desert community which
introduced the cult among the Warlpiri. It took the cult over fifty years
to cover the 1,000 kilometers separating the coast from the Central
Desert. In 1976, the Balgo elders, who speak Kukatja, Walmajarri
and Warlpiri, became the ‘custodians’ of the objects, songs and rites
that circulate with the cult and in turn passed them on to the east.
However, according to these desert groups, the objects remain the
263
spiritual property of those who, at various times, introduced them

into the cult, in particular the Yawuru and Djugun from Broome.
Unlike many traditional initiation cults, which in Australia assign
authority to the elders and separate the sexes in view of making the
young people into men and women, this cult specifically presents itself
as a new mixed Law which enables men and women of some forty
years of age to assume a leadership role. It seems to deal symbolically
with certain role changes imposed by colonisation, the violence of
contact, the traumas of imprisonment and forced sedentarisation,
the economic changes and intermarriage with Europeans and Asians.
The secrecy surrounding initiation into the cult excludes – on pain of
severe punishment – Aboriginal people who have not yet received the
cult, on the one hand, and, on the other, non-Aboriginals, who are
not invited to attend. In an earlier article, I defined it as a ‘cargo cult’:
Aboriginal Law resides in sacred objects (or places) inasmuch as they are
metamorphoses of the same ‘essence’ (life forces) which makes humans,
while White Law resides in ‘wealth,’ which does not share any essence
with human beings (wealth represents a power that people must appro-
priate). In the new cult, Aboriginal people do not seek to identify with
White wealth, or even to integrate it into their traditional system, as
they did with the circulation of the early objects from the West. Instead,
an absolutely new intention is brought into play: this new power would
allow people to affirm a separation from the commodities which mediate
matter in the West. (Glowczewski 1983b: 12)
As symbolic work on ‘cargo,’ that is the Western commodity system,

this historical cult is highly secret because it provided Aboriginal
peoples with their own way of resisting the harmful effects of the
colonial system. Many missionaries regarded it as ‘devil business’ on
the pretext that it opposed their influence. For Aboriginal people, the
accusation was inadmissible: syncretism between Christianity and
traditional spirituality is found in only some regions (Kolig 1979);
elsewhere it is above all a case of seeking to create the conditions for
a sort of spiritual retreat in which, as in a collective psychodrama or
theatrical catharsis, the ritual with its emotional charge enables new
initiates to re-enact the violence experienced by their mothers and
fathers, and to find ways of coping with it.
The Central Desert Warlpiri claim that part of the cult was
dreamed in the small town of Broome, on the northwest coast. When
I went there in 1980, I was told that the cult dated back to the
wreck of the Koombana, which disappeared in 1912 off the coast
264
Culture Cult
of Port Hedland, a town further to the south, in the Pilbaras, where

a dreamer is said to have received a message from the shipwrecked
men.6 A Broome elder told me about the cult as he had seen it in the
1920s at La Grange Bidyadanga (100 km south of Broome): he added
that he was a Nyikina, raised by the Karajarri, and that he had been
made the spiritual custodian of the region north of Broome which
belonged to the Jabirr Jabirr, who, he claimed, had died out without
descendants (see Figure 8.2). When I returned to Broome in 1991, I
found that this monopoly of the custody of the land and the ritual
was contested by some Jabirr Jabirr families and above all by the
groups speaking the traditional languages of Broome, Yawuru and
Djugun. Those local groups intermarried heavily with Europeans and
Asians, but had constituted a Yawuru Aboriginal Corporation and
had resumed initiation of their young men in the 1980s. The secret
cult, including a dance relating the Japanese bombing of Broome
during the Second World War, was probably added onto an older
Yawuru-Djugun initiation ritual. In the 1970s, a Yawuru elder, cus-
todian of the initiations in the region, transmitted a new version
of the secret cult to some groups living 500 kilometers to the east,
around the town of Fitzroy Crossing, who themselves adapted it
in the form seen by Kolig (1979) and later transmitted these rites,
together with the sacred objects they had received from the Yawuru
and Djugun, to the desert groups.
The Kimberley Aboriginal groups differ in geography, culture,
social organisation and language (McGregor 1988), but also in their
colonial history and its consequences on contemporary politics.7
However an exchange network, known as Wunan, already linked the
coastal groups with the river and desert groups before colonisation:
6
Swain (1993) reported a connection between this cult and the Aboriginal resist-
ance movement in the 1940s, in which a certain Coffin, from the Port Hedland
region, persuaded the Aborigines to walk off all the cattle stations in the Pilbara. I
have shown (Glowczewski 1983b) that it was also a certain Coffin from the same
region who, according to the Warlpiri, dreamed part of this cult. The strike move-
ment was extraordinarily well organised thanks to another Aboriginal man, who
made the rounds of the cattle stations distributing little pieces of paper divided
into squares and asking the Aborigines who did not know how to read or write to
cross out a square every morning until the day they were to leave their workplace.
The cult reported in three regions includes several points at which little papers are
exchanged: it is my hypothesis that this now-ritual act is related specifically to this
historical event which, by the Aboriginal people’s refusal to go on being treated as
slaves, threatened the whole cattle-station system in Western Australia.
7
See Chapter 7, this volume.
265
Figure 8.2 Map: some Aboriginal groups and migrations in Northwestern

Australia
266
Culture Cult
these exchanges involved everyday objects (shields, spears, tobacco,

food, red ochre and kaolin), cult objects (pearl-shells, sacred objects,
hairstrings, stone circumcision knives, objects used in love magic),
and rites and their attendant myths. Phyllis Kaberry (1939) demon-
strated that some of these circulations occurred in her time as chains
linking together homonyms of the same sex (narrugu). These gen-
dered exchange chains tied together individuals having the same first
name or having only the same classificatory skin-name. It was then
necessary for groups with different languages and social organisations
(with two, four or eight skins or subsections) to deduce equivalences
between the different skin-names: in this way, Aboriginal kinship
systems informed and ultimately transformed each other through
alliances between their respective owners. In all events, individual
members of the same chain, because they bore the same name, were
considered as exchange ‘brothers,’ or ‘sisters,’ which is remarkable
inasmuch as the notion of exchange usually suggests alliance rather
than siblingship or filiation.
There are other kinds of exchanges as well between same- or
opposite-sex affines or kin, ranging from restricted family or marriage
exchanges, notably with real or potential affines, to the large-scale
ceremonies marking the entry of young people into the adult world
or of the dead into the spirit world. Initiation, like death, entails ritual
gatherings which require the presence and therefore the travel of allies
from other linguistic groups: in both cases hairstrings circulate, often
between men through their sisters. Ackerman (1979) has mapped the
circulation of traditional objects from Western Australia, showing
that the circuit extended far into the Northern Territory – which
includes Central Desert groups such as the Warlpiri – and progres-
sively integrated spear heads cut in glass from bottles or telegraph-
pole insulators, fabric and money. I too witnessed the replacement of
traditional artifacts by introduced materials, notably hairstrings by
fabrics, clothing or blankets, not to mention the acacia-seed cakes,
replaced by impressive quantities of cans of flour, sugar, tea and
even cellophane-wrapped loaves of bread. The arrival of new, highly
prized goods, such as video machines and four-wheel drive vehicles
brought these, too, into the gift-exchange circuit. At the domestic
level, it should be noted that it is still unusual for Aboriginal people
who carry on ritual exchanges to hoard consumer goods for their
personal use.
With the advent of pioneer pastoralism in the nineteenth century,
many men and women were taken onto cattle stations as itinerant
267
stockmen who ranged over hundreds of kilometers in the Kimberley,

the Pilbaras, the Northern Territory and Queensland. Alliances
between tribes intensified and expanded owing to new encounters in
the course of these travels and to an apparently tacit resistance to the
ill treatment suffered by all (Micha 1970). Two hundred kilometers
to the north of Broome, the Beagle Bay mission, created in 1890, was
used as a receiving centre for Aboriginal children forcibly taken away
from their families throughout the Kimberley. Trained as domestic
help, they were placed with the white pearlers of Broome, and many
local women contracted unions with Asian workers, despite the pro-
hibition on interracial cohabitation. It was against this backdrop
of unlawful mixed unions and solidarity with the ‘chain gangs’ –
prisoners chained together by the neck – that certain secret cults
with their sacred objects (Worms and Petri [1968] 1972) spread
from group to group: symbolic attempts to mobilise ancestral powers
against the upheavals introduced by European domination.
After the 1967 referendum, which obliged cattle-station owners to
pay Aboriginal workers a wage, the latter were driven off the stations
and took refuge in the fringe camps around the towns. At this time,
the young people around Broome were initiated among their various
neighbours, who had managed to preserve their ritual life better than
had the Yawuru, who had been hard hit by the pearling industry
and the missions since the 1880s. Marriages bolstered the ritual alli-
ances and gave responsibilities to members of groups from outside
the region: thus, in the 1970s, it was a Karajarri man married to a
Yawuru woman who was custodian of the sacred objects in Broome,
which had been given back by eastern communities (like Looma) and
were kept at the Broome initiation ground. These objects were stolen
by a young part Aboriginal man, though some were later located in an
art circuit dealing in traditional objects. The case sparked numerous
disputes among local Aboriginal people, but after the culprit’s release
from prison, the affair was considered closed. In the 1990s, the
Bardi of One Arm Point and Djarindjin, the Karajarri of Bidyadanga,
the Nyikina, Mangala and Walmajarri of Looma, and other groups
that initiated young Yawuru men or had received the secret cult
from Broome, such as the Kukatja of Balgo, rallied to support the
Yawuru when they resumed their own initiations and rituals on their
traditional ground. These groups also formed a corporation which
is striving to protect the sacred and secret aspects of their culture,
in particular with the movement to repatriate cult objects as well as
anthropological and historical archives: the Kimberley Aboriginal
268
Culture Cult
Law and Culture Centre,8 initially based in Broome and then trans-
ferred to Fitzroy Crossing, home of the Nyikina and the Bunaba, but
also of many Walmajarri refugees from the Western Desert.
In 1980, when Noonkanbah, a community in this region, opposed
exploratory mining in order to protect a sacred place, it received
support not only from the Labor Party, the unions and the churches,
but also from distant Aboriginal groups who, like the Warlpiri,
had exchanged boys for initiation and marriage, and sacred objects
(Glowczewski 1996; Kolig 1981). These exchanges followed the
desert groups’ adoption of the secret cult from the coast, transmit-
ted via Fitzroy Crossing, and gathered strength in the 1990s, when
the Warlpiri gave the communities of this town a fire ceremony
for the resolution of conflicts between allies, a ceremony connected
with the Ngatijirri Budgerigar Dreaming and the Puluwanti Owl
Dreaming (Peterson 1970; Glowczewski 1991). Circulation of
Aboriginal rites and objects thus continues to be closely connected
with the political situation of a region.
The Kimberley example shows that the circulation of cult objects
through the transmission of initiation-related cults is a veritable
machine for producing culture(s), first by regenerating local specifici-
ties and second by asserting a common procedure which, beyond lan-
guage differences, enables exchange to take place over thousands of
kilometers. Each local group’s identity is strengthened by this ritual
nomadism, which is enriched by new religious forms wherein local
variants of what Aboriginal people call their respective Laws nurture
those of their neighbours. This is true of men’s rituals (Wedlock
1992) as well as women’s (Poirier 1992), for both help create these
exchanges which reinforce the bond between each group and its
sacred places, and the inalienable possession of its sacred objects.
Similar identity-building can also be seen in the interregional gather-
ings for traditional mixed dancing, commonly called ‘corroborees.’9
8
On the history and politics of KALACC, see Préaud (2009), see also Préaud
(2015).
9
Today Australian football culture provides a stage for this affirmation of identity
through travel: every Aboriginal community has its team which travels several
months of the year to compete in tournaments; the players’ families often follow
them in great numbers. This activity is particularly valorised in eastern Victoria,
where the Brambuk culture centre displays both the traditional history and the
sporting history of the region’s Aboriginal groups (De Largy Healy 2001).
269
The Bugarrigarra Nyurdany Culture Centre in Broome

When the government launched its watchwords, ‘self-determination’
and ‘self-management,’ most of the language groups of the Kimberley
formed Aboriginal corporations, several of which have their head-
quarters or an annex in Broome: the Yawuru and the Djugun, natives
of this land, the Nyul Nyul originally from around Beagle Bay, the
Bardi from the northern Dampier peninsula, and the Karajarri from
the south (see Figure 8.2). Some families also established themselves as
incorporated associations in order to be allowed to build outstations
on the land opened to them by the state, the region or the missions.
After passage of the 1993 Native Title Act, which established one
land claim procedure for the whole of Australia, a new organisation,
Rubibi, regrouped the families of the region to help them press their
Native Title applications in the face of Broome’s developing tourist
industry. The federation of Aboriginal groups sought to define strate-
gies using Western law to protect traditional law, notably in the area
of property rights on land and the cult objects associated with it. But
this institutional centralisation of the local groups also gave rise to
internal and external segmentation, against a backdrop of ‘retribali-
sation’10 and creolisation, which were not without their tensions and
disputes, especially concerning the growing influx of Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal migrants to the towns and of tourists to the outback
(Glowczewski 1998b).
Various development plans showed the local desire to create an
Aboriginal culture centre that would at the same time support tradi-
tional activities and promote creation, make jobs for the Aboriginal
people and protect the local communities and their natural envi-
ronment (RMIT 1995; Jackson 1996). The shire and the Broome
Media Aboriginal Corporation each hired an Aboriginal consult-
ant, who put together a working party made up of delegates from
Aboriginal organisations in the town as well as from two more distant
communities, Bidyadanga and Djarindjin (see Figure 8.2). Numerous
meetings were held to draw up a list of the activities people wanted
the centre to undertake and how it was to be managed. One expert of
10
Although the term ‘tribe’ has been rejected for some ten years by Australian
anthropologists and Aboriginal militants, who complain that it lends a false
connotation to the regional, linguistic and traditional political groups, it is still
often used by Aboriginal people, who distinguish themselves as ‘tribes’ or ‘clans’
to accentuate their cultural and social differences.
270
Culture Cult
Tamil origin, invited to speak on his experience with culture centres

in North America and Southern Australia, advised first creating the
centre as a network of cultural exchanges even before construct-
ing the building, putting the argument for ‘virtual museums’ which
would use the Internet or CD-ROMs to give back the culture and its
objects without the constraints of storage, preservation and security,
which are extremely costly, especially in a tropical climate.11
As an anthropologist married to a Yawuru man,12 I was asked
to coordinate a survey with three Aboriginal representatives. The
Working Party wanted to gain a general overview, with statements
from people and data that could be presented in a quantified way to the
people and to the funding bodies. The main issue was: what is culture
for people and what is a culture centre supposed to do in relation
to different statements about culture? We had to be careful to have
a representative sample of people. All the languages of the Broome
region had to be represented, and we interviewed some people in
their home communities away from town: one third of the 135 people
in the sample identified as (D)Jugun13 and/or Yawuru (42), another
third as Bardi (40), whose traditional land lies 200 kilometers to the
north, and the rest split between other coastal groups, Karajarri (23),
Nyul Nyul (24), Jabirr Jabirr (11) and inland groups: Nyangumarta
(7), Yulbarija (6), Mangala (4), Yamatji, Bunaba, Miriwong, Jaru,
Walmajarri, Nyigina (17); three people did not identify by a lan-
guage group. Some people identified to two or more languages, this
is why the sum of the figures is higher than the number of people
interviewed. The balance between genders was 73 women versus 62
men, and between ages: 54 over fifty, 59 between fifty and twenty, 22
under twenty. Each question listed several answers to choose from,
but when, as it often happens, people answered spontaneously, the
answer was written down and analyzed to fit into one or the other
of the categories so as to allow statistical calculations (Glowczewski
1996). Here are some of the questions discussed in the interviews.
11
Since then, virtual museums have multiplied: see De Largy Healy (2004) and De
Largy Healy and Glowczewski (2014).
12
Wayne Barker Jowandi, composer-musician and film-maker (Barker 1992, 2011,
2016). Also Djugun and Jabirr-Jabirr.
13
In the 2000s the spelling Djugun has been adopted by this group claiming spe-
cific traditional rights on Broome which seem to have been overidden by some
Yawuru people. The conflict is particularly strong in relation to fracking, which
the Djugun refuse on their land while some Yawuru have signed for it.
271
What is Aboriginal Culture for You?

Most people defined culture as language (92), ceremonies, song and
dance (91), land, attachment to place (85), old people and family
(80), hunting, fishing, living in the bush (79); for less then half it
was oral history (71), art and artifacts (69), and less then a third
chose the common Western sense of the term ‘culture’ as a cumula-
tive and creative process, expressing Aboriginality with new media
(39). All people felt a ‘loss’ of culture and were worried by the fact
that local languages are not spoken enough, even if there are some
lessons in the Broome primary schools and the community schools of
Bidyadanga, One Arm Point and Djarindjin.
Asked about what culture is, most old people referred to tradi-
tional practices and knowledge: stories about the relation to land,
bush medicine identification and use, techniques of hunting, fishing
and bush-food gathering, the body of ceremonial Law including
dancing and painting. Many stressed that culture is what you eat and
how you eat – by a campfire – your living style, your identity; others
insisted on kinship and pleasure: ‘Going to corroboree was like today
people get excited for a new movie; and all the competition between
the guys for dancing!’ One Yawuru Karajarri woman elder identi-
fied culture with Kunyurrung, a traditional ritual custom common
to all the Kimberley groups through the Wunan exchange system,
where men with the same name and women with the same name can
exchange goods in gendered chains (Glowczewski [1994] 2018; see
also Glowczewski 1998b). (When a Karajarri child is about to be
named, at around the age of four or five, an older person is chosen as
his or her namesake and exchange partner. During the naming ritual,
the families of the two namesakes share goods.) Other elders insisted
on the fact that culture creates unity because of sharing and respect-
ing different ceremonial Laws which connect people from different
language groups: ‘Law spread out and they don’t jealous each other
because they share. And they should share together.’
What Does an Aboriginal Culture Centre Mean to You?

The majority stressed: respect of men Law and women Law (78),
exchange between Aboriginal people (78), resources and exhibitions
(78). Less than half chose: place where generations meet (72), place
where culture is maintained and alive (72), training and development
of skills (71), people with cultural knowledge (68), shows, concerts and
festivals (63). In their comments, people insisted on the idea that a centre
was a place for activities (dance, song, crafts, teaching children) aimed
272
Culture Cult
at both Aboriginal children and a non-Aboriginal audience. Many

elders stressed the necessity of involving different language groups,
sharing culture with other regional Aboriginal groups, including
Torres Strait Islanders (who have come to work in pearling), making
the wider community understand about cultural differences. While the
elders of the remote communities agreed on the need for a big ‘sharing’
centre in Broome, they also wanted to decentralise by having ‘keeping-
places’ and ‘culture-teaching places’ in their local communities.
Men and women of different ages expressed concern that storage
of cultural items in town might represent a spiritual danger and
people would get sick. It should be noted that one culture centre in
Alice Springs, which has a storage place containing sacred objects, is
avoided by the local Aboriginal people, who do not want to go near
them for fear of transgressing the Law that forbids approaching such
objects outside the appropriate ritual context.14 Showing culture
and repatriation are all right so long as secret things are kept at a
distance: they have to be protected, but people have to be protected
from them as well. The same applies to sacred places.
What Should the Centre Do to Support Language and Culture in

the Community?
For half of the people, protecting places of cultural heritage (72)
was as important as recording, protecting, teaching knowledge and
language (74); other considerations were: give resources for crafts
and art (70), give cultural awareness to Aborigines and others (66),
provide shop and marketing for artists (61), create programs to
develop skills (58), organise exchange with other Indigenous people
(53); less then a third saw a priority in facilitating creation (art,
music, theatre, dance) (42). The need to market arts and create
language-teaching resources was presented as a double movement to
help communities develop resources themselves and to have a struc-
ture in town to host the culture custodians and organise relations
with outsiders (art buyers, tourists, schools, etc.).
The protection of culture through the protection of country was
expressed as the need to create a network of rangers who would be
organised through the centre: a model of decentralised cultural/natural
14
The Western Desert elders performed a smoking ritual at the South Australian
Museum from which sacred objects were removed to a new storage place so that
the room could be used with no danger to the public from spirits (Philip Clarke,
personal communication).
273
management. Protection of country is seen as a mix of prevention of

tourist vandalism or other abuses of the land: horses, boats, cars on
the beach which erode the banks of the creeks and make the salt-water
resources scarce. But the museum rangers also need to protect main
tribal areas, secret sites, burial grounds, carved stones, places of spirit
related to the reproduction of species: ‘gumbali gumbali (place of
spirit), Bugarrigarra (Dreaming). Sometimes they dig it [the ground]
and say special word, for snake, lizard, for yarangal (spirit) and there
is plenty of them then.’ Not doing this ritual ‘cleaning’ hampers or
even blocks the renewal of that species, animal, or seafood, as can
be already observed with the scarcity or even extinction of some
species in the reefs and the bush. Destroying spirit places, according
to a belief shared by many young people too, makes the local people,
especially the ones spiritually connected with these places, feel sick.
The term gumbali was traditionally used by the Karajarri to desig-
nate people who have the same name, that is people who can exchange
goods. In Broome Aboriginal English, gumbali means ‘soul brother,’
in the sense of pal, friend, people of the same generation that you
grew up with. The relation between name, place, and spiritual
brotherhood refers to an Aboriginal phenomenology which, in my
experience, could be generalised to most of the desert and northwest
groups: each person is the actualisation of virtual names (and often
related songs) connected with places. Among the younger genera-
tions, where identification with community towns of residence tends
to replace links with remote sacred places, specific sacred spots in
town are still recognised, and some people still dream spiritual con-
nections between these places and their children to be born.15
The existential threat to individual people from the destruction or
harming of spirit-name places also applies to the wrongful manipula-
tion of sacred objects which embody spiritual singularities: when
stolen or put in the wrong place, they can threaten the community
with sickness, conflict, or other disorders. If the wrong people see
or touch them, not can only they themselves go mad, or even die,
but their behavior also jeopardises the safety of members of the
community, who can be affected in their body, their spirit, and
through natural phenomena. This belief in the ancestral spiritual
power common to places and sacred objects is held by many people
in the community, who would rather not see the storage place be
located next to where people gather and work, and even prefer not
15
Glowczewski (1998b, 2004), and also last chapter.
274
Culture Cult
to talk about it, for fear of unknown consequences. It is constantly

stressed that the centre has to be controlled by people – elders and
ritual custodians – who can protect the others from the dangerous
powers involved in dealing with traditional culture.
Who Should be the Main People Involved with the Aboriginal

Culture Centre?
The survey consensus gave the first voice to traditional elders (80),
then people with language and other cultural skills (71); less then a
third of the people favoured representatives of Aboriginal organisa-
tions (38) or people with administrative and technical skills (36).
Some expressed the necessity to have representatives of each lan-
guage group and community (23) and that Yawuru or Djugun should
be ‘first,’ because they are the traditional owners of Broome (10).
The issue of who should be the main deciders is the key to the
whole process of cultural reappropriation: how to write a constitu-
tion for the future incorporated body that will manage the centre.
Is the centre to favour economic self-determination by becoming a
place for promotion and retail, giving employment and income to
Aboriginal people? Or is the centre to be a culture-sharing place
without risk of ‘loss’ and lack of traditional control leading to social
disorder and supernatural aggression, which can manifest themselves
in many ways, such as a cyclone? In that dilemma, many people
trusted their elders as the only ones able to protect the whole envi-
ronment by protecting a culture through the circulation of rituals
and sacred objects over hundreds of kilometers in the ways they had
learned from their forefathers.
A year after the survey was completed, the vision of the
Bugarrigarra Nyurdany Culture Centre was summarised in a confer-
ence on ‘Planning Cultural and Interpretive Centres in the Kimberley’
by the coordinator, granddaughter of the deceased Yawuru elder,
custodian of the Broome initiations and secret cult mentioned above
(Tarran 1997: 25):
– To facilitate the preservation, continuation and management of

Aboriginal Law and Culture under the direction of the Old People
with the strategic inclusion of Aboriginal Youth.
– To pursue sustainable economic independence through the devel-
opment of employment, training and business opportunities
within a supportive cultural and tourism industry environment.
– To provide appropriate cultural spaces and infrastructure support.
275
The notion of ‘appropriate’ is very sensitive in the Aboriginal context.

For instance, the fact that the possible repatriation of ancient objects
in a local Aboriginal culture centre and museum will give access, in
terms of storage and maintenance, to other people than the tradi-
tional elders is a constant worry. At this level, even the photographic
representation of such objects is considered to be inappropriate.
Images, like the secret words that designate them, are believed to
carry some of the power embodied in these objects. The image has
this power precisely because the traditional painting of specific signs
on the body, the ground, or sacred objects was aimed, like the songs,
at ‘nurturing’ the medium. In the end such objects, which physically
embody the power of the signs, are the culture because they are
identified with the people. The whole problem of reviving the culture
is to find a way of protecting these objects while allowing them to
travel in the proper way, that is to stay a live sharing medium.
The Virtual Circulation of Non-Alienable Objects:

Giving-Without-Losing
I used the example of northwest and Central Australia to show
that, in the case of a traditional model in which cultural differences
were produced by the circulation of inalienable objects and travel-
ling rites, the question of the cultural repatriation of these objects
and the accompanying knowledge to a sedentary space such as a
culture centre raises political, economic, spiritual and ethical ques-
tions which challenge Western models of property. The unsuitability
of the Western notion of property has also been noted in the case of
Native American culture:
The most important difference between cultural property and inal-
ienable possessions has to do with the distinction between property
and possessions . . . possessions are always implicated in systems of
exchange . . . [the] concept of inalienable possessions provides a more
inclusive and potentially more effective avenue for arriving at resolution
of cultural property disputes. (Welsh 1997: 17)
We have seen that it is in the discrepancy between cultural property

and inalienable possessions that the problem of restitution, not only
of Australian sacred objects but of Aboriginal intellectual knowledge
as well, resides. If the sacred objects which circulate between groups
through rituals are inalienable, then the knowledge that goes with
these rituals, in the form of stories, songs, paintings and dances,
276
Culture Cult
is also inalienable, as are the sacred places which, for Aboriginal

people, materialise this knowledge just as the sacred objects do: they
are more than a representation, they are the living manifestation of
this knowledge.
One Aboriginal myth from the northern coast, in Arnhem Land,
tells the story of the Djanggawul, two ancestral sisters who, after
the men stole their bags and certain sacred objects, said: ‘We know
everything. We have really lost nothing, for we remember it all,
and we can let them have that small part. For aren’t we still sacred,
even if we have lost the bags? Haven’t we still our uteri?’ (Berndt
[1952] 1983: 58). The reproductive organ mentioned here is also
symbolised by the mats produced by women in the north for use
as pubic tassels. In an earlier article, I showed that the circulation
of hairstrings which are used, among other things, to make pubic
tassels, position desert women as agents of social reproduction in
a way similar to that analysed by Annette Weiner (1976) for the
production and circulation of mats by women in Samoa and the
Trobriand Islands:
. . . hairstring transmission between men occurs through women as the
sisters. This transmission is reciprocal between brothers-in-law to sym-
bolize compensating or attaching sisters with the brother or the husband.
A woman shares with her brothers the ownership of the patriclan terri-
tory and at the same time she is a ritual manager of her husband’s sister’s
territorial ceremonies . . . Hairstring circulation thus symbolizes alliances
and economic exchanges (access to another person’s territorial resources),
affirms a certain dependence of men on women, and confirms women’s
responsibility not only as land owners or managers but also as producers
of the value (their string made from their hair) which incarnates the ritual
management relations. (Glowczewski 1983a: 238)
Ten years later, Annette Weiner, in her book Inalienable Possessions:
The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (1992), referred to my analy-
sis of Warlpiri hairstrings with respect to other work on Australian
desert groups (Bell 1983; Dussart 1988–1989; Myers 1986):
. . . these recent data on women’s controlling interests in the circulation of
hairstrings, rope, threads, and cloth show how essential such possessions
are to men as well as women and how these possessions constitute social
identities as well as rights to territorial associations. Clearly, Aboriginal
women had (and in some cases, still have) access to sacred objects that,
infused with potency, have significant exchange value. Whether or not
some of these possessions take on absolute value and become inalienable
cannot be discerned from the available data. (Weiner 1992: 112)
277
Since my 1983 article, I have gathered new material on hairstrings,

notably a myth telling how the Digging Stick women (Kana) wanted
to acquire headbands and makarra (‘womb’) rope made by an ances-
tor from the hair of men in order to seduce them, and so agreed
to give men their knowledge of initiations and hunting.16 Like the
women of Arnhem Land, the Warlpiri women said that they had
‘lost’ nothing by agreeing to this gift-exchange. In the Owl conflict-
resolution ceremony – the same one the Warlpiri gave the northwest
groups – men dance around with hairstrings and stop in front of the
mothers of potential wives, who take these strings: mothers used
them to make pubic tassels, which they wore before passing them
on to their daughters when they were old enough to marry the
giver of the hairstring (Glowczewski, 1991: 209). It is as though
the hairstrings constantly bound up descent with alliance through
a circulation of substances that were embodied and transmitted in
these exchanges. Made from the hair of men or women, by men or
women, hairstrings circulate between the genders, who transform
them in their own way.
The hairstring pubic belt of a boy who was to be circumcised
could be sent in his stead to invite distant groups – sometimes from
different language groups – to participate in his initiation. In former
times an initiand accompanied by his guardians could spend several
months travelling hundreds of kilometers to rally various allies to his
initiation. Today all kinds of vehicles, even aircraft, add many more
kilometers to these initiation circuits. Peterson (2000) reports that, in
1994, a boy from a Western Desert group travelled 2,250 kilometers
to the north, as far as the Lajamanu Warlpiri, before returning in
a ritual convoy totaling some 600 travellers upon arrival. Novice’s
travels are accompanied by transfers of ritual objects, slabs and
hairstrings, as well as marriage promises, the circumciser often being
obliged to promise the novice one of his daughters. Similar convoys
travel the east/west axis linking the Central and Western deserts to
the Kimberley groups, as far as Broome. Interestingly, on this coast,
boys and girls of marriageable age used to receive a hairstring belt
garnished with a large pearl-shell. Once this shell, inscribed with
Dreaming signs, was transmitted to the desert groups, it became a
sacred object reserved for initiated men, especially rain-makers.
Desert men use hairstrings to make string crosses; these highly
sacred objects are allowed to be seen by women only in exceptional
16
Glowczewski (1991, 1991b); see Chapter 3 this book.
278
Culture Cult
circumstances. In the northwest, wool has replaced string for the

manufacture of these crosses which, here, are presented to women
as ritual gifts. In desert groups, the ‘womb’ hairstring is extremely
sacred for women; it is strung between the two meter-high sacred
sticks they ‘plug into’ the ground; this ritual device is believed to
actualise the Dreaming space-time for the duration of the ritual.
Men and women alike use hairstrings and rope to wrap other sacred
objects, especially wood or stone slabs. Women also use them thera-
peutically and at times of mourning or initiation: they rub women or
men, girls or boys with them in order to infuse them with a power or
to extract something from them. The purpose of touching a person
with the strings seems to be the same as with the slabs. Something
of the power of the Dreaming and the singular identity of all those
who have ever touched these objects has become consubstantial with
them in the course of the different handlings which bind together all
differences: genders, kin, affines, exchangers from various language
groups.
Summing up I would say, in answer to Annette Weiner, that
hairstrings are alienable when they are given in payment for a ritual
service, for example, when the temporary custodians of a slab return
it to the original owners; but they become inalienable once they have
been used in a sacred ritual function by either sex: to make ritual
string crosses, to wrap up sacred objects or to rub a sick person,
novice or someone in mourning. Then they become sacred objects.
All circulations of men, women, objects and rites, which sometimes
circulate together, sometimes one instead of another, seem to operate
according to the same logic of giving-without-losing, consistent with
giving to make what one gives desirable. A logic of desire imbed-
ded in a relation of power, for it is when one succeeds in obliging
the other to accept a gift that one can claim to be the strongest
(Glowczewski 1991: 288). This explains the complex negotiations
which lead groups to mutually impose the – temporary – adoption of
each other’s inalienable riches: sacred objects, rites, young people for
initiation and marriage.
The idea of giving-without-losing, found in all Aboriginal ritual cir-
culations, is in its own way like the logic of certain software designers
who argue for the free circulation of their product as opposed to
the principle of intellectual copyright, which benefits only the big
monopolies. In what they humorously call ‘copyleft,’ which consists
in allowing copies to be made of a program while acknowledging the
creator’s origin, they see a better means of controlling their creations
279
than in the present application of the copyright laws, which transfer

the original author’s rights to whoever buys the product for the
purpose of commercialisation. As Stephenson suggests (1994), there
is certainly a parallel to be explored with Indigenous people’s claims
to their inalienable possessions. Such a parallel would also evoke
the similarity between the non-linear synchronous nature and the
hyperlinks of the Web and the Internet with the linked-up thinking
and the cognitive networks of a certain kind of mythic thought.
I would like to add here that myth does not seem to me to oppose
history in the way Kolig (2000) opposes the cognitive perception
of the desert groups – as mythic and synchronic – to that of the
Aboriginal peoples of the northwest – as historic, diachronic and post-
colonial. We have seen that, over and beyond their cultural, social
and geographical differences, Aboriginal groups of the two regions
exchange cults which they readapt to suit themselves while repro-
ducing local differences that go beyond simple dualism. Although
it is true that north-western Aboriginal groups felt the effects of
colonisation long before the desert groups did, it remains that the
circulation of objects and songs as well as kinship systems between
the two regions pre-dates colonisation. It is this ritualised circulation
of tangible and intangible artifacts back and forth on linear journeys
stretching across time which enables mythic thinking to be repro-
duced in the form of a living network: mythic thinking manufactures
transformations and connections which singularise and reposition
anchor points, sacred places, in a continually evolving structure of
narrative and performance. Compared with this logic, the merely
encompassing West is constantly threatening to disauthenticate those
who create these anchor points. Hence the urgent need for museums,
and anthropologists, not to go on ‘alienating these cultures’ by alien-
ating their objects, but instead to recognise their inalienability by
authenticating their creators rather than their acquirers.
280
9
Lines and Criss-Crossings:

Hyperlinks in Australian Indigenous Narratives
Since the 1980s, Indigenous peoples of Australia have extended their

local tools of expression to global networks: exhibitions, festivals,
press, radio, documentaries, short dramas, feature films and web-
sites.1 Many deplore the abuses of the art market which, despite
the stunning success of Aboriginal paintings, still seems to benefit
economically the distributors more than the artists, whose lifestyle is
often subject to the miserable conditions of the Fourth World. In the
era of information technology, one key to the survival of Indigenous
cultures is to find ways to control the circulation and the staging of
the products of Indigenous creativity in old and new media, as well
as these cultures’ history and current affairs.2 In relation to such
an Indigenous empowerment, the responsibility of anthropologists
and other researchers is critical. Restitution of our research involves
not just the return of data collected, but a ‘reinterpretation’ of this
data in such a way that it can be used for learning, transmission and
pleasure through aesthetics or entertainment, as well as for spiritual
fulfilment, in a critical and ethical process. The issue of an ethical
approach to pleasure does not imply a religious or moral order, but
rather a constant re-evaluation of how each image or representa-
tion of any contemporary culture (Indigenous, musical, professional,
1
This paper was first published in the journal Media Internatonal Australia (MIA)
116, August 2005, special issue on Digital Anthropology edited by Hart Cohen
and Juan F. Salazar; it results from presentations made in 2003 at the AAA
conference in Chicago and at the MIT in Boston. Special thanks to the editors
for checking the author’s translation and to Drew Burk for rereading the section
‘Thinking in networks’ which is extracted from the introduction of Rêves en colère
(Glowczewski 2004). All my gratitude to Rosita Henry for comments on this
paper and to the School of Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville
where this paper was written.
2
Langton (1993, 2001, 2018); Marcia Langton was the first Aboriginal Professor
of Anthropology and held the Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies
at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Medicine. She co-edited a book
and film series called First Australians (see Perkins et al. 2009).
281
digital, etc.) impacts on social justice, equity, tolerance and freedom

(Trend 2001). I present here two attempts of anthropological restitu-
tion developed with Aboriginal peoples for a mixed audience. The
first is a CD-ROM focused on one Central Australian community,
while the second is an interactive DVD film juxtaposing four regions
of Australia. I developed both projects to explore and enhance the
cultural foundations of the reticular way many Indigenous people
in Australia map their knowledge and experience of the world in a
geographical virtual web of narratives, images and performances.
I conclude by discussing a number of issues relating to multiplayer
online serious games.
Thinking in Networks
When I first lived among Desert Aboriginal people from Lajamanu,
I was struck by the strange confluence between their traditional way
of thinking and the development of artificial intelligence: this inter-
face of ideas made me title a 1983 article ‘Tribes of the Cybernetic
Dream’. The Aboriginal people’s perception of memory as a virtual
space-time, and the way they project knowledge on a geographical
network, both physical and imaginary, was in fact going to echo
with the network and hyperlink programs of the first computers still
stammering in those early days. The application of reticular thinking
has universally expanded through the development of the Internet. It
is probably not a coincidence that the contemporary art market has
seized upon the explosion of Aboriginal artistic forms that precisely
transpose trails weaved into networks. This phenomenon illustrates a
universal connection between forms and ideas, even though this con-
nection is not expressed by those who are seduced by such works of
art. The surrounding environment allows us, Westerners, to indeed
‘look at’ and ‘hear’ cultural differnces in a very different way than a
century ago. This is also one of the reasons for the current attraction
of world music, and especially the didjeridu, the ancestral instrument
invented by Aboriginal people, and which, for over a decade now,
has come to be played by thousands of worldwide fans who are
building their own sites on the Internet.
Aboriginal people also have their own websites. They use them to
promote their art, their music and dance tours, or the organisation
of festivals and bush trails for adventurous tourists. They also teach
in various languages and share files online about their political and
legal matters. Such a development was possible because Australia has
282
Lines and Criss-Crossings
equipped its schools with computers and is funding a certain number

of Indigenous organisations to install such technology and provide
training in its use. Nevertheless, a lot of Aboriginal people still live
in Fourth World conditions and have no access to these services. As
expressed by Indigenous people of the whole world, it is essential to
facilitate the usage of such means of communication which seem able
to facilitate, in their own way, the circulation of cultural knowledge
systems. In order to be transmitted, they have always relied on oral
and visual performances as well as the active practice of survival
in the environment. Such transmission is often threatened nowdays
by the imposing of new lifestyles dominated by writing, television
and passive consumption. It is not enough to record, stock and
put audio-visual data online or on digital media so that it becomes
indeed a source of information and learning about a given culture.
Databases and Internet sites presuppose to construct cognitive maps
which would respect the way the different learning media in these
societies relate with each other and also the various levels of knowl-
edge and expertise, some of which must remain secret. It is possible
to link everything a priori but, to understand the links that produce
a meaning in a given social and cultural logic, it is necessary to know
the rules of association that constitute the philosophy, the ethics and
the priorities of survival for suc or such a group.
During the past few decades of audio-visual expansion and quasi-
instantaneous circulations of information, we have seen a paradigm
shift in particular in relation to the functioning of memory, or the
relation between matter and spirit, actual and virtual. Such a shift
forces us to consider differently what the so-called ‘savage’ or ‘primi-
tive’ populations express about their relation to the world. Take,
for instance, the debate surrounding whether or not pre-contact
Australian peoples were ignorant of the consequences of sexual
intercourse, under the pretext that they insisted on the necessity of
the manifestation of a ‘spirit-child’ for the woman to be pregnant.
The academic a priori opposing sperm to spirit comes under the
‘dreads’ of the Christian immaculate conception which cannot rec-
oncile the body and the mind. The immaculate conception refers to
the mandatory Catholic dogma (1854) stating that Mary was born
free of ‘original sin’, and the belief that she was a virgin when Jesus
was born – that is, that there was no sexual intercourse necessary for
conception. The ‘Virgin Mary’ paradigm has informed, often uncon-
sciously, a Western anthropological bias which continues to oppose
the spirit realm and the physical one, while many Indigenous cultures
283
combine the two. Well, for the Aboriginal people, while it’s obvious
that something of the man and something of the woman is needed to
make a child, that alone is not enough: a virtuality of life must also
make itself manifest, a desire to live which often announces itself in
a dream, thus ‘catching’ the mother or the father. The Warlpiri of
the central desert still say today that to catch their future parents,
the spirits of the children wishing to be born live a virtual existence
in the land and use a dream propeller to actualise their birth. Spirit-
children are ngampurrpa, ‘desirous’ of life, agents in their becoming
or coming into being as humans. This Warlpiri statement is enlight-
ening and maybe appropriate for people who today fight with steril-
ity. Since psychoanalysis has made us grow accustomed to accepting
the power of the unconscious over the body, we have everything to
learn from the theories of dream and the relation between matter and
spirit among Aboriginal peoples. Aboriginal cosmologies can inform
psychoanalytic theory and medicine in showing, for instance, more
holistic ways to address sterility as well as other bodily or mental
disorders.3
Dreaming Knowledge: Rhythm, Links and Memory

I used to have a 16 mm Pathe Webo camera – an antique today –
with three turning lenses and a magazine for three-minute reels. It
was mechanical, so you could only shoot 30 seconds at a time and
then you had to rewind the tension spring with a handle to shoot
again. I did not have a problem with that because, before I came
to Australia, I made experimental films and was only interested in
recording very short sequences to produce flickering effects between
the information recorded on each still frame. Subsequently I brought
my films to Lajamanu in 1979. After seeing a film presenting a fast
flickering between different generations of my family photographed
in different places in Poland and France, some old people said: ‘Good
one, that’s your family, that’s your country . . .’. So, I filmed different
Warlpiri women’s rituals in a similar style and, after a month of
fieldwork, I sent the footage to Sydney, where Ian Dunlop generously
organised for it to be processed and sent back to me. I organised
a screening with the Baptist mission projector and it created an
uproar: ‘Why do you make us look silly!’, said the women. The film
showed women dancing at different rhythms, with superimpositions,
3
See Chapter 1 of this book.
284
multiple focal views of the landscape, sometimes upside down, an

attempt to ‘translate’ the condensation effect of dreaming. I promised
to film differently and then recorded the women’s rituals in a more
conventional way.
Image speed has considerably increased in film since the 1980s
and editing convention through the production of music clips has
radically changed the audience’s cognitive relationship to film every-
where in the world. Video clips, for instance, use flickering effects to
suggest different layers of subjectivity and to deconstruct space and
time at imaginary levels. Nevertheless, beyond the convention of the
tempo of film rhythm remains a question: what is the ‘rationale’ for
this rhythm and the legitimacy to connect two images?
For the Warlpiri, rhythm conveys as much valuable information
as speech or dance movement. It is culturally meaningful: one cannot
just ‘play’ with it. Similarly, connections produce meaning so you
cannot edit two images together randomly. This was my first lesson
of the complexity of an Indigenous system of knowledge which
conveys a whole field of meanings and codes that are not only cultur-
ally relevant but that teach us about the effect of rhythm (produced
by a linear repetition) and connections (organised in criss-crossing
trails). Such Indigenous tempo codes and cultural hermeneutics are
not just useful for interpreting dance or guiding well-being; they are
also keys to memory and survival.
For example, tracks give you both space and time information.
If the footprint of an animal is a day old, you will need to evaluate
whether it is worth tracking, but if the print is fresh you have the
choice of taking your time or moving on to get it fast before it hides.
Conception and experience of time and space in the desert are rela-
tive, almost in a non-Euclidian way. For example, a pathway linking
three waterholes spread over 100 kilometres is relatively longer than
another 100-kilometre pathway crossing a country with no water-
holes. This relativity comes from the speed at which you need to
travel at in order to survive. You need to go fast to reach the next
waterhole before being too thirsty, but you can slow down or stop if
there is water on the way.
So, when desert Aboriginal people sing a pathway known for its
lack of water, they can sing it ‘fast forward’ in a ritual setting, as
one way of learning how to survive in that land. People continued
to perform that kind of interpretation and knowledge transmis-
sion through ritual even when they were located in government-
run reserves. They continued to travel using rituals, reproducing an
285
audio, visual and mental representation of the landscape. Thanks to

these kinds of performances, embedded in a procedural and kinaes-
thetic memory, once the desert people moved back to their land to
settle outstations, they were able to find their way.
In that sense, survival knowledge is not encyclopaedic but reticu-
lar. Data that we record from people’s experiences are snapshots
seen through the eye of the person who describes those experiences.
It can never be a general description of a society, even if the society
is holistic, because the holistic approach – accessing the whole from
any part – is always related to singular places. It is like having
hundreds of different eyeglasses that you change according to where
you stand. Seeing the reality from this point of view is going to be
different from what would be seen from another one, but you need
these two, or three, or many ‘points of view’ to make alliances, to
perform a ritual, to regenerate the society. This reticular thinking,
which evokes the rhizome of Deleuze and Guattari, is also experi-
enced in navigation on the World Wide Web when users chat, meet,
create and link up their sites. Reticular thinking seems to articulate
the Aboriginal logic of myth, kinship and land ownership, even when
it is woven through other structures and topologies (Benterrack et al.
1984; Rose 1992; Rumsey 2001; Glowczewski 2004).4 Thousands of
stories and songlines stage separate entities (a Dreaming, an ances-
tor, a group, a person, an animal, a plant), but they criss-cross one
another and the meeting points produce singularities. They can be
sacred places, encounters with conflict, or alliance and the emergence
of new meanings. They can be new manifestations like a spirit-child
being born into a child, or a new song or painting being dreamt for
that place. Non-linear or reticular thinking mostly stresses the fact
that there is no centrality to the whole, but a multipolar view from
each recomposed network within each singularity – for example, a
person, a place, a Dreaming – allowing the emergence of meanings
and performances, encounters, creations as new, original, autono-
mous flows.
Returning Data: Storylines and Linking Sites

Back in Lajamanu in 1984, I opted for a still camera and an analogue
tape recorder. Out of this data, 500 slides and three hours of sound
in Warlpiri were selected for a digital project of ‘restitution’ that
4
See also Chapter 3, this volume (and note 1 of Chapter 3).
286
I developed ten years later. Restitution, for an anthropologist, is

not exactly the same as repatriation. When people practise their
ceremonies, their dances, their songs, they don’t need them ‘back’.
What they need is the knowledge attached to them, which many
see as ‘stolen’ by scientists because their expression is recorded on
a material medium (paper, tape, film). Anthropologists face that
everywhere in the world. What are they really taking away? They
are taking away the right to speak in the name of the people from
whom they received the knowledge. What should be returned? Not
the content as such but how it is expressed: ‘I’ve been there, I will tell
you how they live, what they do, who they are.’ People we ‘study’ ask
us: ‘What are you saying about us? Give it back, because we want to
know the impact it has.’ It is a legitimate claim for any group, any
individual, but in the case of Indigenous people this claim is a politi-
cal tool for empowerment.
To return my research to the Warlpiri, I decided in 1995 to design
a multimedia tool linking images of rituals and landscape, photos
of acrylic paintings, and sound recordings of myths and songs. The
original structure was developed in HTML, but later we converted
it to Macromedia. The idea was to constitute a sort of ‘mind-map’ –
what I call a cognitive map – that would give an insight into how ele-
ments of knowledge connect with each other in the learning process
of the Warlpiri themselves. My conviction was that to invite the users
to link images, dances and songs with places, storylines and trails in
the way the Warlpiri do should help anybody to understand how
these connections worked as a meaningful network: hyperlinks could
ideally suggest how to criss-cross storylines and layers of meaning.
I drew a schematic map with 50 toponyms and superimposed 14
ways of linking some of these sites according to Dreaming stories I
had recorded. Thus 14 Dreaming lines would show, but never at the
same time. This virtual map – made of 14 layers of connections –
became the interactive gateway to some 14 hours of audio-visual
data. The user can click on any of the sites or lines to enter into the
relevant constellation of Dreamings and explore them from the point
of view of hundreds of proposed hyperlinks, some opening as small
windows and others taking you on new pathways.
The map is an invisible web, as the criss-crossings between the
lines do not show simultaneously. The links are only discovered when
the narrative of a storyline which indicates links to other pathways is
unfolded. In other words, each line is autonomous and each crossing
or hyperlink requires the user’s interaction. The Dream Trackers
287
CD-ROM (Glowczewski 2000) includes a short morphing, a photo

of a sacred hill, Kurlungalinpa in the Tanami Desert, and turns
into a Dreaming painting of that place by Warlpiri artist Margaret
Nungarrayi Martin. The painting is showing the same place as a
network of lines connecting that sacred site to five other places of the
same songline, Ngarrka or ‘Initiated Men’. The Warlpiri artist and
other custodians of other Dreamings loved the idea that the anima-
tion conveyed the ‘same’ identity and power of transformation of one
image into another. They were pleased because it was the right paint-
ing for the right place. A morphing with a painting of another place
would not have worked. The multimedia reticular script writing has
allowed me first to test with the elders (who do not read and write)
whether the audio-visual links I had designed were appropriate and
then to invite the users themselves to link the elements gathered
through their exploration.
To respect the Warlpiri system of meaningful connections, every
Warlpiri word leads to other Warlpiri concepts, every painting links
to songs and stories, every artist links to other artists of the same
Dreaming, and certain places link to other places. When the user
travels on one storyline and arrives at a site where the heroes of
one Dreaming line meet heroes of another Dreaming line, they can
change the pathway by clicking on the name of the place. Multimedia
allows the experience of reticular travelling as a learning process.
Many things can be connected, but it should be done in such a way
that every time the cultural reason for that connection is learned.
Songs, dances, stories and paintings all relate to places, so the Yapa
or Dream Trackers CD-ROM became a Warlpiri mind-map inviting
us – as well as the young people in the Lajamanu school – to explore
some of these connections. We also had to develop a device to be able
to hide images showing the recently deceased and to make it adapt-
able over time. As pointed out by Warlpiri artist Jimmy Jampijinpa
Robertson: ‘The Yapa CD-ROM brings everybody to the mind.’5
Yapa, meaning Aboriginal, Indigenous people in Warlpiri (as
opposed to kardiya, ‘non-Indigenous’) was the working title of this
multimedia restitution process. UNESCO Publishing, after signing
a partnership of distribution and intellectual copyright with the
Lajamanu Art Centre, Warnayaka, asked for a more descriptive
5
See Glowczewski (2001), paper reproduced in Desert Dreamers (Glowczewski
[1989] 2016). Special thanks to all the Lajamanu artists and storytellers who
participated in the Dream Trackers CD-ROM (1995–2000).
288
title. I chose Dream Trackers because tracking is really the core

of most Aboriginal philosophy. A place marked by a track does
not mean that the track is just a metaphor: it is an access to the
whole, a key to investigate past, present and future actions. A track
is like the imprint for a prototype – from that track you can reconsti-
tute the performance. The track is not just a fixed moment in time, it
is the trace left by something that is moving, dancing or walking – an
essential dynamism in Aboriginal culture. Often the interpretation of
Aboriginal art is limited because it is reduced to the semiotic view of
the signs, the content and the form. It misses what is most important:
the trace as the proof of the passage of something else, somewhere
else. The virtual world of mythology and ritual is established in such
traces. The proof of that physical track relates to all the narratives
you can build out of it, which express the real relations of people to
the land.
Learning through Playing with an Interactive Fiction

To try to reach further into the narrative flavour of Aboriginal
storytelling and its multidimensional potential for multiple connec-
tions, I wanted to construct an interactive DVD, a film drama whose
full display would require the viewer to play a series of games con-
nected to different episodes. Each of these drama segments was to
invite the user to explore an Aboriginal community from a different
region of Australia in terms of landscape, art, culture and language,
colonial history and the current situation. I spent weeks drawing
various mind-maps to test the contents and links appropriate for the
narrative of the film. The first draft was very complex, designed like
a road movie criss-crossing all of Australia with built-in variations
taking the user of the DVD to different places and events in the
storyline. The story was constructed like a network of virtual con-
nections which would actualise themselves according to the way the
player would play a game. For instance, if the users scored well in
relation to the survival quest involving recognition of animals, plants,
seasons and mapping, they would be invited to explore the desert.
But if the score was better in relation to the museum quest, involving
identification of local art, cultural artefacts and history of urban art,
the user would be invited to explore another region. If you succeeded
in identifying different forms of dancing, singing and language, you
were invited to go to Arnhem Land, and so on. There were also dif-
ferent options offered according to the choice of gender as a player.
289
As these various options were taking into account the user perfor-
mance and learning process through games; they would require the
writing of a complex series of dramas in such a way that the different
localised episodes could be edited in a different order without losing
the continuity of the stories and their relevant meaning.
The Aboriginal Dreaming songlines can be experienced in any
given performance with similar adaptation to context. For example,
segments of stories are omitted when a person dies, sometimes the
same episode is repeated in two different places or more, and at
other times the order of action is reversed, like a loop, even though
there often is a chronology and an evolution in the characters who
are the heroes of the songline: Snake or Wallaby ancestors, Rain or
Plum people. The question was how to represent both human and
Dreaming agents? The use of animation can unfold stories based
on today’s reality, but also on some aspects of the Dreaming world.
Animation can integrate such elements in the learning process of a
game – for instance, the help of totemic animals or the dealing with
spiritual forces manifested through wind, fire and rain. But produc-
ing such a project was (and still is) incredibly expensive, especially
if a team of Aboriginal people comprising experts of the different
domains (art, music, dance, survival, kinship) was to be involved on
location.
I thought at the time that filming with actors might be a better
option than an animated film. We formed a small team contrib-
uting voluntarily to the project over three years. We selected five
regions – the Western Desert, Eastern Arnhem Land, Gariwerd Park
in Victoria, the city of Perth in Western Australia, and Laura in Cape
York – and five topics – art, festivals, culture centres, family history
and bush survival. My husband, Aboriginal film-maker and singer-
composer Wayne Jowandi Barker, wrote a one-hour drama script
in 2000 that intertwined the five regions and the topics. A young
woman from Perth searches for the family of her mother, who was
taken away as a victim of the stolen generation. She meets a Yolngu
dancer from Arnhem Land at the Gariwerd culture centre. The two
young people follow a different quest but they both travel through
Australia and meet again in other places: a museum in Perth, the
Garma festival in his home country and at the Balgo desert com-
munity, where the young woman finds her family.
The film was conceived as five episodes, each of ten minutes, which
required the viewer to achieve a task in order to be able to continue
to view the story. This option seemed the easiest for the user as it
290
allowed understanding of the complexities of Aboriginal history and

the cultural and personal dilemma by following one storyline. We
went to Arnhem Land with a small digital camera and brought back
statements from a Yolngu family from Bawaka that made us modify
the storyline so as to emphasise spiritual presence as an agency ani-
mating the characters (Barker and Glowczewski 2002). A further five
educational game proposals were written as interactive tools connect-
ing the film storyline. The involvement of the user in theses games
aimed at helping the main two actors of the drama to learn how to
identify art, dance, music and cultural issues, family history archives
and language groups, landscapes and their resources. The first game,
designed by Laurent Dousset (2000–2005),6 an anthropologist and
webmaster with a long experience of the Western Desert people and
kinship analysis, consisted of learning how to search family history
archives to identify a given language group and kinship system. The
second game, developed by John Stanton, Director of the Berndt
Museum of Anthropology in Perth, invited the player to organise an
Aboriginal exhibition, either by choosing from a series of topics or by
focusing on one of the five regions and their people. The third game,
created by Jessica De Largy Healy (2004), who was then a student in
anthropology working with the Aboriginal Brambuk Cultural Centre
of the Gariwerd National Park, explored the different functions of
a culture centre, from a simple safe-keeping place to a big heritage
and tourist precinct. The fourth game was proposed by Fred Viesner,
who did fieldwork with the Anangu people for his doctorate; its aim
was to introduce the user to some Indigenous systems of knowledge
in relation to bush survival: tracking for hunting, identifying edible
or medicine plants, facing drought but also dealing with the current
economy related to mining, protection of places, management of
outstations or art centres. Rosita Henry (2000), an anthropologist
who has studied the Laura dance festival process for over 20 years,
suggested a virtual tour of different types of cultural festivals for the
last game, introducing the viewer to ethical protocols to be respected
by performers and audiences.
I approached Australian and French funding agencies – in film,
multimedia, science and culture – in vain: that ‘interactive DVD
thing’ we wanted to collectively create was neither a film, nor a
6
Dousset developed a kinship data base (2000–2005), see also Dousset (2011a,
2011b), and the biography of Lizzie Marrkilyi Ellis (Ellis 2016) that he edited.
291
game nor a database, so there was no funding corresponding to its

requirements.
A small grant was eventually released by my institution in Paris,
the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) and the Musée
du quai Branly to do a one-hour demo to showcase an interactive
cultural film project. As we could not afford to shoot a new film,
we used footage previously recorded by Wayne Jowandi Barker for
other projects. Together we edited a 10-minute film organised in 16
sections, simulating long journeys across four regions of Australia:
the Dampier Peninsula, Kimberley Plateau, Tanami Desert and
Northeast Arnhem Land. There was an emphasis on the relation
between different landscapes, as well as the relevant art, dance and
singing. I designed a new interactive script allowing the viewer to
select at any time an interactive map from which other short films
could be screened with Aboriginal testimonies in relation to four
themes: art, storytelling, survival and dance. This 50-minute demo,
called Quest in Aboriginal Land, was awarded and presented in
many places, but a lack of further funding prevented the completion
of the original project.7
Curiously, even though the DVD medium has taken over the video
market, there are very few interactive documentaries available on
DVD. Only big production companies and TV channels can afford
to pay the costs of such digital productions, including the copyright
payments for distribution. This financial limitation is very damaging
to the future of visual anthropology and ethnographic films because
interactive DVD is the perfect format for documentation and analy-
sis. It allows one to include on the same medium different edited ver-
sions, of different lengths, with or without a soundtrack, a comment,
a subtitle in one or several languages, including thousands of pages of
7
Special thanks to Jowandi Wayne Barker, Jessica De Largy Healy, Laurent
Dousset, Rosita Henry, John Stanton and Fred Viesner, the Yolngu people from
Bawaka and the Garma Festival who contributed to the Quest in Aboriginal Land
DVD project (2000–2002) and to Julien Stiegler for designing the interactive
animation. It was awarded as ‘Best illustration of science for a wide audience’ at
the Festival of Researcher Film (Nancy, 2003), displayed in a loop on two huge
floating screens as part of the Aboriginal art exhibition Rêves Arc-en-Ciel at the
National Museum of Natural History (Lyon, 2004), and the International Union
of Anthropologists Conference in Florence, 2003. The film was included on the
DVD accompanying the issue of MIA where this paper was first published in
2005, and is also online but without the interactivity: https://archive.org/details/
QuestInAboriginalLand
292
written files, photo displays, and even Internet links for further infor-
mation or updates. Furthermore, it can offer cultural teaching based
on simulation games to construct small events and evolving contexts
based on archaeology, mythology, history or contemporary life.
Multiplayer Role Games

3D quest games on CD-ROM or DVD and multiplayer role games on
the Internet have evolved considerably, both in scope and in terms of
copyright. Apart from the software owners who sell licence rights or
subscriptions online, players who create their own tools as part and
parcel of playing such games are today recognised copyright owners
of their digital creations and can sell – sometimes for an incred-
ible amount of money – such virtual artefacts. Millions of fantasy
characters and guiding hybrid creatures occupy the Internet today,
with imaginary weapons and various magic tricks. Many inventors
take inspiration from legends and myths, mixing all periods and
regions. Some games – like Civilization – are based on several histori-
cal figures who provide some historical strategies as options in the
playing of the game aiming at ‘developing’ civilisation in such a way
that cities expand with enough food, money and entertainment. Such
a model is very much based on an evolutionary idea of this virtual
world which, in a reductive fashion, simply mixes different periods of
history but very little cultural diversity. So far, the Indigenous people
of Australia have not been used as an example of a digital ‘civilisa-
tion’. But the trend to develop so-called ‘serious’ games is growing.
In 2002, I received an email from an African-American student
who, as part of his degree with the MIT Comparative Media Studies
Department, wanted to develop an Internet multiplayer game based
on his perception of the Dreaming in an Aboriginal community from
Central Australia. He entitled his project Dream Trackers like my
CD-ROM (Glowczewski 2000), from which he had drawn ideas and
data along with data from another anthropologist (Meggitt 1962),
and from a linguist and a Warlpiri storyteller (Cataldi and Rockman
1994). The student’s main preoccupation was to develop a game that
would prove that you could learn about a culture through a gaming
approach. The players were to evolve into different stages of ‘initia-
tion’ to learn about Aboriginal culture. The framework of the game
was MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game)
like Dungeons and Dragons or other quest-type games where hun-
dreds to thousands of players can join online disguising their personas
293
as avatars facing different trials, trading information and virtual tools

among themselves. In his written presentation, the student acknowl-
edged the colonial history of Indigenous people, the importance of
ethics, the respect of secret knowledge, the balance of gender and the
specificity of Aboriginal ‘Dreaming culture’. But the script of the game
itself, constructed around stages of initiation, included secret rituals
that should not be talked about publicly. I wrote back with strong
criticism in relation to the use of the different data and insisted that no
game should be developed from this project without the negotiation
of a signed partnership with the relevant Aboriginal people who held
the intellectual copyright to the use of their cultural information and
practices applied to the game. This ethical principle was accepted
both by the student and his supervisor.8
It is possible that young Aboriginal people, as well as other users
searching the Internet might enjoy playing with avatars that have
to survive in the Central Australian cultural space of the Dreaming
rather than in the suburban contemporary environment. But the ques-
tion that needs to be asked relates to the image such a game would
circulate about Australian Indigenous peoples. A digital venture in
Central Australia has just started to develop an Internet game with
young Aboriginal teenagers who came to attention for their creativity
in retooling bikes from recycled waste. This sounds like a ‘real’ cul-
tural survival game – to learn how some Aboriginal youngsters today
survive and look for fun in their ancestral environment, completely
criss-crossed by the global world.
Epilogue
The main question to address in a multimedia product or a learning
game about a culture is what the users or players have to ‘learn’
about this culture. On the Dream Trackers CD-ROM, I proposed an
experience of Indigenous reticular thinking through navigation on
the Warlpiri web of criss-crossing Dreaming stories and songlines.
8
Special thanks to Zachary Nataf who granted his permission to present here his
MIT cultural game project (2002–2005). His scholarship was part of a funding
package for the Games-to-Teach Project that Microsoft i-campus was sponsoring
at MIT in exchange for prototypes to develop out of the proposed scripts of
15 students. The Dream Trackers of the Dream Time Community (2002–2004)
game proposal was the only one in the area of cultural anthropology: www.
educationarcade.org/ gtt/proto.html
294
Figure 9.1 Nampijinpa and Napanangka document Warlpiri art produced at the
Warnayaka Arts Centre, Lajamanu 2011 © B. G. 2011
Figure 9.2 Jungarrayi and Jupurrurla document the Warlpiri archive on www.
odsas.net, Lajamanu 2012 © B.G. 2012
295
In the interactive Quest in Aboriginal Land DVD drama project,

we tried to produce virtual conditions of drama, suspense, chal-
lenge and fun, for a motivated exploration of facts presented directly
on the DVD or through proposed links to existing websites with
Indigenous resources like the AIATSIS library, the Family History
Project in Adelaide, the Native Title Unit, the DOCIP Indigenous
Centre in Geneva, other NGOs and Aboriginal organisations. The
idea of both projects was to encourage exploration so the users could
understand how to negotiate existing knowledge using a reticular
method. Non-linear or reticular thinking mostly stresses the fact
that there is no centrality to the whole, but rather a multipolar view
from each recomposed network within each singularity – a person, a
place, a Dreaming – allowing the emergence of meanings and perfor-
mances, encounters and creations as new original autonomous flows.
Reticular or network thinking, I argue, is a very ancient Indigenous
practice, but it gains today a striking actuality thanks to the fact that
our so-called scientific perception of cognition, virtuality and social
performance has changed through the use of new technologies.
296
PART IV
Micropolitics of Hope and De-Essentialisation

10
Myths of ‘Superiority’ and How to De-Essentialise

Social and Historical Conflicts
Accusations of racism can mask an ontology of superiority in which

the victims of racism are themselves accused of being racist.1 This
kind of reversal is found in many domains: anti-colonialist writers are
accused of racism by people who identify with the colonial power,
Indigenous people or migrants are accused of racism for laying claim
to their history and culture. UNESCO may have proclaimed cultural
diversity as a value, but in most social interactions it is not valued.
Difference is either reduced to hierarchical models – such as dominant/
dominated and primitive/civilised – or denied recognition in the
name of universalism as opposed to cultural relativism. Lévi-Strauss,
in his second text on race and culture written for UNESCO in 1971,
was accused of racism for valuing cultural diversity. Accusations
of racism are often generated by the perception the speakers have
of their own origin as opposed to the perception they have of the
origin of the people they accuse of racism. Perception of somebody’s
‘origins’ is in this context a subjective response to various interac-
tions where the word ‘race’ encompasses social, cultural, religious
and historical relationships of power. On the 60th anniversary of
UNESCO (16 November 2005) Lévi-Strauss stressed his concerns
about some ‘recent publications produced by biologists who attempt
to give a new status to the notion of race’.2 My aim here is to show
that between universalism and cultural or genetic relativism, a third
option is possible. It takes into account the interactions between
the global molar economic and environmental logic of the planet
and the multiplicity of micropolitics or cosmopolitics redefined and
1
This unpublished paper was written for the international conference Racisms in
the New World Order: Realities of Culture, Colour and Identity, Cairns Institute,
James Cook University, Australia. Special thanks to Mariquian Ahouansou,
Estelle Castro-Koshy and Stephanie Anderson for their valuable comments.
2
For Stoczkowski (2006), the development of medicines produced as a result of
genetic diseases observed in some ethnic communities has led some scholars to
question the claim of science to be ‘anti-racist’ if it proceeds to address sickness
defined genetically.
299
assembled by molecular existential territories based on cultural,

social, genetic and gender subjectivations.
I will speak here mainly of the French situation but I will conclude
with two issues drawn from the Indigenous Australian context. Both
countries, in different ways, seem to deny their citizens the right to
be different. Despite this, initiatives emanating from civil society
promote innovative ways of envisioning a multidimensional society
in which the recognition of differences and specific rights have their
place at the same time as universal human rights are respected.
Racism Battles in France

In 2010 two French lecturers at the University of Hawaii boycotted
the lecture of a famous Tahitian writer, Chantal Spitz, because they
judged her to be ‘racist’. This accusation was a misinterpretation of
the author’s anti-colonial stance – voiced in her writing as well as in
public forums – and her critique of nuclear testing which had been
imposed on the French Polynesian population in the 1960s, and only
ended in 1996,3 leaving a legacy of pollution and illness for many
people, both in the local population and among French soldiers and
workers from the nuclear plant. Spitz’s novel The Island of Shattered
Dreams4 is the story of a French woman, an engineer, who comes
to Tahiti to work on the tests, but falls in love with an Autonomist
activist and is fully accepted into his Tahitian family. By labelling as
‘racist’ the author’s criticism of French colonial and interventionist
power, the French academics who boycotted her lecture were dem-
onstrating their own ‘reverse racism’ based on two false correlations:
first, they equated ‘anti-colonial’ with ‘anti-French’ and, second, they
equated the French state with French people defined as a race. Such
correlations are inappropriate since the French population is not
homogeneous, either in metropolitan France itself, or in the overseas
territories that remain part of France.
Confusion between racism and ‘anti-colonialism’ or the political
criticism of a state in the name of Indigenous or other cultural rights
is very common in France. But a growing number of people are
sensitive to the abuses of French colonial history and denounce as
3
See: http://www.francetnp2010.fr/spip.php?article57
4
See review by Sharrad (2009): ‘while its positive Tahitian aspect is at odds with
the disastrous French intervention, the human associations of the former make the
latter seem an unnatural travesty of civilized values’.
300
Myths of ‘Superiority’
racist the celebrations by the state of active promoters of colonisa-

tion. For example, Jules Ferry, Minister for Education at the end of
the nineteenth century, made laws establishing free education and
secondary schooling for girls, promoting the principle of secularism
in education, but he also stated, ‘I repeat that there is a right for
the superior races, because they have a duty. They have the duty to
civilise the inferior races.’5 This pronouncement on the supposed
racial ‘superiority’ of the people who colonised other people is cer-
tainly racist. But was the celebration of Jules Ferry by new French
president François Hollande after his election also racist? We need to
recognise that racism is encouraged by commemorations of national
heritage when the history of what is being commemorated is not
contextualised through discussion in school programmes, museums,
etc., that draws on the latest historical research. For instance, stu-
dents and the French population in general should be taught that
voices were raised in 1885 who opposed Jules Ferry’s discourse
on the ‘Rights and Duties of Superior Races’: Clemenceau for one,
stood up as an elected member of the parliament to say: ‘I do not
understand why we here were not unanimous in leaping to our feet
to protest vehemently against your words. No, there is no right of
so-called superior nations over the inferior nations.’6 Until recently
the silence in French schools and the media about this kind of criti-
cal approach has perpetuated a decontextualised vision of colonial
history over several generations. In 2004, the government passed
a partisan law recommending that the ‘benefits of colonisation’ be
taught in schools. However, a strong mobilisation of Black associa-
tions in France and a petition supported by historians succeeded in
having the law overturned.7
The myth of racial ‘superiority’ was revived in France in 2012
when the then Minister of the Interior, Claude Guéant, during a
conference convened by UNI, a right-wing student association,
declared at the National Assembly that ‘Contrary to what relativist
ideology of the left says, for us, all civilisations are not of equal
5
See: http://www.la1ere.fr/infos/elections-2012/polemique-sur-lhommage-a-jules-
ferry_95663.html
6
See also Le Cour Grandmaison 2009.
7
At the end of that year, 2004, the government created the HALDE (Haute Autorité
de Lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’Egalité), a High Authority to Fight
Against Discriminations and for Equality: http://halde.defenseurdesdroits.fr/
301
worth (. . .) we have to protect our civilisation.’8 There followed

much reaction in the media and on various blogs. A group of four
French anthropologists co-signed a text against the recuperation
of Lévi Strauss and misuse of ethnology by the right, such as the
claim of the philosopher, ex-Minister of Education, Luc Ferry, who
asserted that same year (2012) that only a ‘debilitating moral’ would
stop him from thinking that music of Mozart is ‘infinitely deeper’
then the ‘flute’ of people that Lévi-Strauss calls the ‘savage societies’.
The four anthropologists responded that Lévi-Strauss’s fight was
to ‘constantly oppose the preconceived idea that cultures differ-
ent from ours would be “inferior” or “primitive”, because less ‘
civilised’. Against Ferry’s ethnocentrism, they noted that one can
prefer a style but music itself does not progress, it just has different
complexities. They also quoted the then deputy of French Guiana,
Christiane Taubira (since nominated Minister of Justice of the new
2012 government) who explained on the television channel LCP
that ‘the ministerial words which suggested an inequality between
human cultures, come directly from the biological racism of XIXe
century, such as popularised by Gobineau (1853–1855, Essai sur
l’inégalité des races humaines, Belfond, Paris), and later applied in
eugenics and racist policies which culminated with Nazi abomina-
tions’.9 In saying ‘we have to protect our civilisation’, the Minister
of the Interior, Claude Guéant, was identifying himself – and French
or Western civilisation – as superior to what he defined as less
worthy civilisations (see this chapter, note 8). His statement revealed
his belief in an ethnocentric myth deriving from his own origin
as French. Emeritus Professor Françoise Héritier, who has been
involved as an anthropologist in actively denouncing all forms of
violence against women, commented in an interview that by claim-
ing an implicit hierarchy of civilisations against left-wing relativism,
the French minister revealed himself as a ‘relativist’ who judges
from the civilisation he culturally identifies with.10 Claiming that a
8
Regarding the French Minister’s ‘civilisation’ polemic, see: https://www.lemonde.
fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/02/05/claude-gueant-declenche-une-
nouvelle-polemique_1639076_1471069.html; Giraud (2012) revealed that the
Minister’s discourse was written by his neo-conservative adviser.
9
D. Casajus, S. D’Onofrio, C. Fortier and R. Meyran (2012): https://www.nou
velobs.com/rue89/rue89-nos-vies-connectees/20120210.RUE7799/mm-gueant-et-
ferry-attention-au-detournement-de-l-ethnologie.html (accessed October 2018).
10
See: http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2012/02/11/francoise-heritier-m-gue
ant-est-relativiste_1642156_823448.html (accessed October 2018).
302
civilisation or a culture is better than another denies the fact that

each culture and civilisation has explored the best and the worst of
human endeavour. Furthermore, no civilisation or culture is a closed
and fixed entity, each is also transformed through different interac-
tions: 1) between the members of a particular culture who live in the
country of origin, but also 2) between the members of that culture
who live outside of it – as in diasporas spread across the world or
the travelling representatives of the culture, artists, sports people,
etc., 3) through interactions with members of other cultures who are
citizens of the same nation and, finally, 4) through exchanges – or
conflicts – with people from other nations.
People of different origins who ask for a collective recognition of
their community’s shared values in heritage and cultural practices are
often accused in France of ‘communautarisme’, understood as sec-
tarianism, that is in a negative sense – different from the meaning and
context of British or American theoreticians of communitarianism.11
The French understanding of ‘communitarism’ reflects a fear of (and
moral panic about) ethnic or religious communities viewed as funda-
mentalists and the ghettoisation of certain communities in impover-
ished suburbs.12 This fear is based on a confusion between existing
forms of extremism involving terrorist threats and the African origin
of many French people who practise moderate Islam or some other
or no religion, many of whom – but not all – live in disadvantaged
conditions. This amalgamist perception pretends to ignore that many
Muslims from Arab or sub-Saharan countries who now live in France
were once considered French when their countries were colonised
by France: they had to learn French in their local schools, came to
France to do studies, gained many members in the parliament until
the decolonisation of the 1960s. Their children or grandchildren were
born French on the continent. The confusion between origin, colour
and religion was demonstrated in 2012 when Mohamed Merah, a
young French Muslim man of Algerian origin, ex-French colony –
first shot three French soldiers in the street while riding a motorbike
(Imad Ibn-Ziaten, 11 March in Toulouse, Abel Chennouf and
11
Although proposed in 1841 by John Goodwyn Barmby, a leader of the British
Chartist movement referring to utopian socialists, the term ‘communitarian’ was
only revived in the 1980s by certain American political philosophers putting for-
ward common good in opposition with individualistic liberalism: https://www.
britannica.com/topic/communitarianism
12
See Lévy (2005), Lapeyronnie (2008), Revel (2008).
303
Mohamed Legouade, 15 March in Montauban) and four days later

two children and the father of one in a Jewish school (Ozar Atorah,
Toulouse). The then President Sarkozy stated that these killings were
‘racist’ as the targeted school was Jewish and the soldiers Muslims or
rather, the President corrected himself, ‘one soldier was of Muslim
appearance BUT catholic . . .’. Whatever the appearance (name or
dark skin) and religion of the victims, the killer’s motivations were
probably beyond racism. He lived in a very pour district of Toulouse,
mostly inhabited by families of North African origin, and was filed
by the French police, since he regularly travelled to Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Israel. During the funeral of the Jewish victims, Muslim
representatives of Toulouse marched hand in hand with the Jewish
families. After the killer was tracked down, and killed by the police
in the attack, different newspapers and online sites reported the
anger of many young people of North African origin who blamed the
government for not intervening earlier (which could have prevented
the attack on the Jewish school) and the media for reinforcing racial
stigmatisation resulting from their identification – individually and
collectively – be they Muslim or not – with the unforgivable crimes of
a man who lost his mind.
The recognition of specific rights, including for French Polynesians
or Kanaks in the Pacific – which would recognise ‘cultural diversity’ –
is perceived by many, both on the right and the left, including scholars,
as incompatible with the notion of the ‘indivisibility’ of the Republic
based on the principle of ‘Freedom, Equality, Fraternity’, that is equal
rights for all. Article 1 of the French Constitution says that ‘France is
a Republic that is indivisible, laïc, democratic and social’; indivisible is
usually understood as no cultural, linguistic or religious collective can
have specific rights and be recognised a sovereignty like Indigenous
colonised people claim: only elected members or a referendum can
express all people’s decision in unity. A recent French book called The
Invention of Diversity (Sénac 2012) talks about ‘sacrificing equality as
a principle to value’ and asks if the claim for diversity is not ‘making
politically correct a larval form of sexism and benign racism?’ This
notion of ‘benign’ or ‘goodwill’ racism is returned against people
who emphasise their cultural difference. Similarly, men and women
who support the right to wear a veil claimed by many young and
older Muslim women in France – where the law forbids the veil in
schools although some schools do not exclude girls who do so – are
sometimes accused of being sexist and jeopardising the ‘principle of
equality’ as a condition to the human rights and freedom of women.
304
The fear of ‘communitarism’ (and Islamophobia) – added to

a growing poverty and high rates of unemployment – explains
the important score of the nationalist extreme right party (Front
National) at the last presidential elections. At the first tour of elec-
tions, the woman candidate of the extreme right Front National
reached 18.01%, with 28.63% for the socialist candidate and 27.18%
for the UMP outgoing president; the second tour saw 51.64% for
F. Holland and 48.36% for N. Sarkozy, reflecting a divided France
which had no socialist president since 1995. Assimilation or integra-
tion is the condition imposed by the Republican French state and
is equated with a myth of a uniform national identity in a relative
denial of the many different origins of French citizens.13 In response
to this denial both of colonisation and the current politics of migra-
tion, a French movement protesting against the non-recognition of
cultural diversity has registered itself as the The Indivisibles of the
Republic. Equality is too often referred to in France (and in many
other countries) presupposing that ‘equal’ is a social metaphor that
can only translate similarity, homogeneity (a narcissist perception
of the self), and cannot apply to a concept of society and humanity
where all humans are distinct singular beings caught in various forms
of intersubjectivity and constellations of multiple identities.
The denial of skin colour is currently a source of offensive discrim-
ination and racist jokes targeting those of different ethnic origins,
which are masked in cynicism, as when a colleague says to a Black
PhD candidate ‘you represent positive discrimination in our labora-
tory!’ ‘Positive discrimination’ is the expression used in French to
translate ‘affirmative action’ in favour of Black people as applied
in the US or Brazil but not in France.14 If many French people – in
the name of the state – claim that their rejection of the collection of
statistics relating to ethnicity is anti-racist, there are others who ask
that cultural diversity is given recognition through statistics relat-
ing to ethnicity precisely in order to demonstrate the many nega-
tive forms of discrimination that can be experienced by members of
ethnic groups, such as the denial of jobs or housing on the basis of
appearance and names – especially when those names are of Asian
13
See Meyran (2008) and debates on the creation of a Ministry of National Identity
by Sarkozy.
14
See: http://observatoire2.blogs.liberation.fr/diversite/2011/05/la-discrimination-
positive-kesako- (The spokesperson for the CRAN, Louis-Georges Tin interviews
Daniel Sabbagh).
305
or African origin, whether Arab, Kabyle or sub-Saharan African. A

week after the election last May (2012) of the socialist president,
François Hollande, who won against the former right-wing (UMP)
president, I heard a boy aged 6 say: ‘French people lost, Kabyle
people won.’ Kabyl – like Berber or Amagizh – is the name of the
Indigenous population of Algeria and other North African countries
that were occupied by Arabs. The French boy of Algerian origin
by seeing the expression of joy of many French residents of North
African origin – Muslims for many but not all – identified their joy
with a loss for ‘French people’ because many policies and statements
of the previous government expressed an anti-Islamic phobia, with a
suspicion of fundamentalism and terrorism against all people of Arab
or Kabyl origin, whether Muslim or not.15
Many Black French citizens are descendants of the population –
including victims of slavery traffic – who built the economy of French
island territories in the Caribbean or Indian Ocean, or were born in
France into African families who migrated from former French colo-
nies. More recent Black and Arab French citizens are children of new
waves of African migrants (from North Africa or sub-Sahara) who
continue to flee the violence and dire poverty of their countries that
were often colonised by France, many of which gave soldiers to the
French army, just like all the populations colonised by France in the
Pacific, including Kanaks from New Caledonia, other Melanesians
from Vanuatu (independence in 1984) and French Polynesians from
Tahiti and other islands. During the 14th of July 2011 national
celebration, for the first time, the French Pacific soldiers, and other
Pacific members of national bodies marched together as a group and
performed a haka in front of the president. The national military
website expressed the ‘pride of soldiers cultural diversity’ but a few
public comments on the website indicate how such an affirmation of
a cultural identity can shock some French people.
Many young Black people – as well as those of Arab or Berber
origin – are routinely harrassed by the police, under perpetual suspi-
cion of being criminals if not illegal refugees. Not carrying an ID card
can lead to a trip to the police station or mistreatment. Near my home
15
See the 2012 call to the presidential candidates, with sixteen propositions from
different members of the civil society compiled by the journal Respect.mag:
http://www.fdesouche.com/271982-terra-nova-16-propositions-pour-la-france-
metissee-video#. Rokhaya Diallo for instance quotes a CNRS survey and calls for
developing better relations with the police (see also Diallo 2011).
306
in the 20th district of Paris, a young Black man, Lamine Dieng, was
violently put into a police truck and died inside in 2007. Five years
later his family was marching to ask for justice.16 Some have argued
that such harrassment of young people with dark skin was the cause
of the tragic events in 2005 when three French teenagers ran away
from the police and two of them were electrocuted after jumping the
fence of a power station to hide. This incident triggered riots all over
France.17 But it also created a movement of reaction against racial dis-
crimination and the historical process which hade made it invisible,
producing its ‘invisibilisation’ (Ahouansou 2012a, 2012b). Many
civil groups were then strengthened, the Representative Council of
Black Associations (CRAN.org) was created and initiatives sprang
from both the grassroots and the state in remembrance of the victims
of slavery or other colonial situations by means of memorials, etc.18
US sociologist Crystal Fleming (2012: 488) has examined how two
Black French organisations have produced a ‘competing model for
challenging and reversing the stigma of slavery.’ The first organisa-
tion created by French Caribbeans, CM98, ‘rejects both a racial and
an African identity and seeks recognition for “French descendants
of slaves”, using the language of citizenship to criticize the French
government’, while the other, COFFAD (a collective of daughters
and sons of deported Africans) ‘by contrast, asserts an Afro-centric
black identity and stigmatises White Europeans’. The author argues
in her paper ‘that both destigmatisation strategies unwittingly rein-
force the stigma of historical enslavement’. Such a verdict of a North
American researcher on a French situation is disturbing because it
16
Despite annual marches of memorial and protests for justice, Lamine Dieng’s
and other cases have not been addressed properly and police violence continues
with more harrassement and deaths. A general campaign against violence has
grown accross France after protesters of all colours and age have been wounded
by weapons used by the police (loosing an eye, a hand, or other terrible wounds)
during the people’s social movement of Gilets Jaunes, who for months since
November 2018 have been marching every Saturday in many places of France to
protest against various issues of social injustice. In 2019 the European Union and
the UN addressed blame to the French government.
17
See Mucchielli and Le Goaziou (2007), Kokoreff (2008), Bertho (2010) and his
database Anthropology of the Present (Anthropologie du présent) updated every
day with news of riots from all over the world: https://berthoalain.com/
18
27 April 1848: decreee of abolition of slavery in French colonies signed by
the temporary government; 23 May in Martinique, 27 May in Guadeloupe, 10
August in French Guiana and only 20 November in the Island of Reunion.
307
seems to discard any possibility for the recognition of French Black

history in the building of French citizenship.
French sociologist Stéphane Dufoix (2011: 125), in an excellent
review essay on the usage of the word diaspora and the situation
of French Black in the light of US Black movements, insists on the
necessity to think about/understand identity in a non essentialist way:
for instance even in the concept of the diaspora if, for some, there is a
nostalgia of an ‘original’ place to go back to (or dream of), for others
cultural identification is not based on a notion of ‘origins’ but a series
of interconnected assemblage (agencements) projected in the future as
‘transversality’ in the sense of Félix Guattari. Such a de-essentialised
position does not exclude reconstructing colonial history.
Ironically the acquisition of French citizenship is called French
‘naturalisation’, as if acquiring French identity were a natural process,
the people ‘born again’ to the French state, that is receiving a new
physical identity to replace the old one and to erase any other cultural
traces of their foreign origins. When President Sarkozy was Minister
of the Interior before his election, he had put as a condition for apply-
ing for citizenship that migrants promise not to talk their original
language to their children: this was a special granting of papers to a
limited selection of people who already had jobs and payed taxes and
rents.19 French history shows that France was constructed as a nation
through a systematic process of eradication of local cultural identity,
in forbidding, for example, the use of languages like ‘Breton’, which
was spoken in Brittany, a Celtic region of North-West France, or
Occitan, which was spoken in the south, both of which have revived
thanks to the creation of special schools by regional activists. After the
Second World War, the integration of refugees or cheap labour from
Southern Europe (Italy, Spain or Portugal) or Eastern Europe (Poland,
Yougoslavia, etc.) was difficult for the first generation, similarly for
French Asian refugees after France lost Indochina.
The independence of Algeria in the 1960s is still a national wound
in France, and to speak of the many Algerians drowned in the rivers
in Paris during the war of independence is taboo, which is to deny
an important aspect of their history to the many people from Algeria
who live in France. Recently an exhibition on the subject was banned
despite the popular success a few years ago of the film Indigènes,
which portrayed the participation of African soldiers (from Sahara
and sub-Sahara) in the French army during the Second World War.
19
This was limited to 60,000 applications.
308
The film prompted a public debate, which pushed the government

into finally paying the pensions that were due to the African and
other Indigenous soldiers (from New Caledonia or French Polynesia)
in the French army.20
The perception of French civilisation as resulting from ethnic
mixing (brassages) is not shared by the majority of French people,
despite the popularity of some sportsmen, like Yannick Noah (a tennis
champion whose father is from Cameroon), the soccer players Zidane,
of Kabyle origin, and Christian Karembeu, who is Kanak. In forging
a new sense of national identity, France is still struggling to accept
its colonial history and the input made by the new waves of migra-
tion.21 Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, two famous French
Caribbean authors from Martinique, have written after the election of
Obama a little book addressed to him, L’intraitable beauté du monde.
Adresse à Barack Obama’ (The intractable beauty of the world, a
letter to Barack Obama) (2009);22 they invite the readers to create a
new world beyond the discriminations produced by many states. The
‘Tout-monde’ is a concept Glissant proposes to understand the world
as archipelic in a philosophy of relationality where creolisation is a
process different from ‘creolity’ as it expresses a desire to come out of
any form of exclusive essentialisation, Black or White.
Few French people know that Alexandre Dumas, the famous French
author of the Three Musketeeers (1844), had a Haitian grandmother
during the colonial time before Haiti gained its independence by
putting in practice the emerging ideas of the French Revolution.23 In a
film about his life, the role of Dumas was recently played by a famous
White actor, Gérard Depardieu, and it created a public debate. It is
worth considering whether French Black or Indigenous young people
who suffer discrimination on the mainland or in the overseas French
territories24 might feel better if they could identify with a French
20
Miracle in Santa Anna by Spike Lee was refused for broadcast in France by the
French/German channel ARTE. The film-maker won his case, receiving a massive
compensation higher than the sales from the film (Ahouansou 2012b).
21
Blanchard et al. ([2005] 2006).
22
See: https://www.criticalsecret.net/the-unassailable-beauty-of-the-world-excerpts-
translated-into-english-l-intraitable-beaute-du-monde,058.html
23
See: https://aaregistry.org/story/alexandre-dumas-writer-extraordinaire/
24
In the French hexagon and in French overseas departments (Ultraperipheral
Regions [RUP] which are members of the European Union), territories and coun-
tries ([PTOM] not members of the European Union, such as New Caledonia and
French Polynesia).
309
Black and Indigenous history and if non-Blacks might then also be

able to identify with a Black and Indigenous history as part and parcel
of French history. In French Polynesia, 75% of the population is of
Indigenous descent, many speaking Mao’hi, the language of Tahiti
and some islands, or marquisian. In New Caledonia, Kanaks represent
40% of the population with 28 languages, Whites are 23%, the others
being migrants from the Pacific or Asia (Wallis and Futuna, Vietnam,
etc.).25 In French Guiana, the survivors of the physical and mental
genocide that started 400 years ago are united under a common flag
as six Native American nations that now represent 3% of the popula-
tion and have developed a historical cohabitation with ‘Maroons’ or
Bushinengé descendants of deported Black slaves who ran away and
a creole population, descendants of various waves of people brought
there as convicts who were banished from France and forced to work
in prison camps (between 1854 and 1946),26 and the Hmong refugees
of Cambodgia and Laos who settled there in the 1970s.
Is promoting cultural and colonial heritage a solution? Only if all
people involved can reappropriate their history and emerge from a
state of collective denial. Part of this process involves the solidarity
that is created when people come together for specific projects, such
as the various activities – exhibitions, conferences, museum projects,
memorials, etc – of the French Committee for the Remembrance
and History of Slavery (CPMHE) created in 2009.27 If social media
spreads racist statements or jokes, it is also used to promote anti-
racist campaigns and efficient activism. For instance, when the
fragrance director of Guerlain used the ‘n’ word on television, an
immediate social media campaign across France and the Black dias-
pora provoked a boycott of his shops and led to his public apology,
25
After the repression of the Kanak independance movement in 1984, different
negotiations led to a referundum on independance taking place in November
2018.
26
52,000 ‘transported’ and 16,000 ‘relegated’ including Louise Michel and other
resistants of the Paris Commune; 20,000 other convicts were ‘transported’ and
10,000 ‘relegated’ to New Caledonia.
27
CPMHE was chaired until 2011 by Françoise Vergès (2013, 2017). See also the
Slavery Memorial of Nantes and the various campaigns of the group ACHAC.
The historian P. Blanchard, after curating ‘Exhibitions. L’invention du Sauvage’
at the Musée du quai Branly in 2010 (‘exhibition’ in French has a pejorative
meaning of objectifying exposure), co-directed the film Savages – The Human
Zoos (2018) with examples of colonial exhibitions in Paris of Indigenous people
from Australia, French Guiana and New Caledonia.
310
as shown by Mariquian Ahouansou (2012b, n.d.) who is working on

an anthropology of Black France.
Multiculturalism and Australian Structural Racism

The French sociologist Wievorka recently advocated Kymlicka’s
‘liberal multiculturalism’ as a way of ‘favouring expressions of
cultural specificities in public spaces, while guaranteeing respect
for universal values. That is, for instance, by giving specific cultural
rights not to groups, but to individuals in the name of multicul-
tural citizenship.’28 Reducing culture to individual practices is a
complete denial of culture as a dynamic process, a collective herit-
age and shared practices that are constantly reassembled to build
a becoming-in-common (devenir-en-commun) in interaction with
others. The individual of the liberal multiculturalism evokes the
impossible dialogue and love between Narcissus, who can’t see
anything else but himself, and the nymphea Echo, who is in love
with him but cannot say anything else than the repetition of what
she echoes, says Sabatier (2010), a French philosopher living in the
Island of the Reunion. For him the neoliberal administrative ration-
ality generates racial and other forms of the rejection of differences
and he calls for a new politic of hospitality in France, especially
towards the refugees coming from the independent Union of the
Comoros, to Mayotte, an island of the Comoros archipelago, a
department of France. In France the treatment of asylum seekers and
other migrants is very problematic.29 If the Greek myth illustrates
in a way the way in which multicultural liberalism through indi-
vidualisation of culture ‘invisibilises’ blackness in France and the
European diaspora extended to former European colonies all over
the world, this invisibilisation is now questionned by the movement
of Afropeanism developed by Black people of Europe.30
28
Respect Mag May–June 2012: Kymlicka’s book Multicultural Citizenship (1995)
was only translated in 2012.
29
Amnesty International et al. (2012), Halluin-Mabillot (2012); since this was writ-
ten, the situation has worsened to tragic proportions (Héran 2017). Even though
many people from civil society try to help refugees and risk jail for that help, the
French government has hardened its policies in accordance with the European
closure of frontiers. Thousand of people drown every year in the Mediterranean
Sea where saving people has become illegal. Various European organisations
militate for hospitality.
30
See Ahouansou (2012a, 2019, and her forthcoming PhD).
311
Underlining the global failure of liberal multiculturalism to recog-

nise ‘differential citizenship’, Babacan and Gopalkrishnan (2007: 5)
state: ‘there is considerable debate about the policies of multicultur-
alism as both a preventive measure against racism and also a cause
for racism by refying culture and replacing racism with “culture”’.
For the Libano-Australian Ghassan Hage, anthropological research
reveals the tension between a logic of domestication of ‘otherness-for-
us’, which charactarises our world of historical and contemporary
violences, and a logic of negotiation of ‘otherness-with-us’ which
inspired most people with ‘no state’. Hage (2009) criticises multi-
cultural policies because for him to multiply laws to defend rights
by forbidding ‘bad relations’ (like forms of racism, discrimination,
anti-tabacco, etc.) is actually preventing the possibility of any rela-
tion. Interestingly in Australia, very rarely are Indigenous cultures
understood under the umbrella of multiculturalism which seems
mainly to address recent and older migrants who are not assimilated
to the Anglo-Celtic colonial ancestry. Indigenous people are excluded
from these catgories because they seem to represent a bigger threat
of ‘otherness’ which is their potential as a collective: a declaration
by an Australian minister stated that after the ‘failure of collectivism
in the world’ there was no reason to ‘favour self-government of
Indigenous communities’ (Glowczewski 2008). Misunderstanding of
self-government, self-management and collective rights in Indigenous
Australia has been widely discussed by many scholars in Australia
who criticise the different waves of Indigenous policies (Sullivan
2011). The confusion between ‘community’ and ‘collectivism’ is
also at stake in the fear of the French government to recognise the
populations colonised by France in New Caledonia, Polynesia or
French Guiana as ‘Indigenous people’ with specific rights to land and
language.
By denying transculturality both in the nation and in the self,
liberal multiculturalism and indivisible republicanism look like the
two sides of the same coin in a process that essentialises differences
and fixes them in the past of imagined origins rather than recognising
their creative potential. It is our duty, as engaged academics, to try to
dismantle the essentialism underpinning historically fabricated con-
flicts and fixed cultural memories, to de-essentialise them, in order to
build national histories that permit the forging of a common future.
Such is the propostion of the historian and archive curator Ariella
Azoulay who works on different assemblages of historical photos
showing both Israelis and Palestinians in alternative interactions to
312
war. She tries to displace the violence of history to prevent both sides
from being hostages of the essentialisation of a historically fabricated
conflict by building dynamic archives for a potential history, which
de-essentialises conflicts.31
Even though promoting cultural diversity or multiculturalism
was – following the British model – seen as a positive policy in
Australia, in fact assimilation to the European White model has been
re-actualised, especially since the 9/11 2001 attack in New York that
provoked a panic of terrorism and suspicion towards foreigners,
across the world. In 2005 an Australian mother, Cornelia Rau, was
found in an Australian detention centre where she was held by mistake
for 9 months: after camping in the bush she got lost, and when found
by the police she could only remember the Austrian name, Rau,
that she had before becoming Australian 19 years ago. Her husband
had reported her missing but it is only thanks to refugees, who saw
her distress, that she was identified in the detention centre. This
Kafkaian scandal led to the discovery throughout Autralia of 230
other Australians detained by mistake, after a traumatic incident, and
often because of their foreign-looking appearance. In 2012 Amnesty
International released a report denouncing the Australian treat-
ment of asylum seekers as well as the Stronger Futures Bill designed
to extend for another ten years the very controversial Northern
Territory Emergency Intervention which was imposed in 2007 on
73 Indigenous communities for a 5-year period. Most of these com-
munities, many Indigenous leaders and a UN Special Rapporteur
have accused this policy not only being racially discriminatory and
therefore racist but also of failing to achieve improvements in the
living conditions of Aboriginal people – in terms of their economic
situation, health and general well-being. ABC news announced,
‘Launching the report, Amnesty’s national director Claire Mallinson
took the opportunity to criticise the Federal Government’s so-called
“Stronger Futures” legislation. The new bill, which is soon to be
debated in the Senate, is being widely condemned by Indigenous
groups as a continuation of the Northern Territory Intervention. Ms
Mallinson says the legislation echoes the policies of the assimilation
era.’32 But the legislation was passed, and the Bill became law in July
31
‘The artist as a citizen’, conference L’Artiste en ethnographe, 26–28 May 2012,
Paris, Musée du quai Branly.
32
May 2012: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-24/australia-criticised-in-latest-
amnesty-report/4029984/?site=indigenous&topic=latest
313
despite the ‘Stand up for Freedom’ campaign launched by the Yolngu

people from Arnhem Land.
A very moving declaration was then posted on YouTube by
Djiniyini Gondarra appealing to ‘all people to join the fight against
this paternalistic, disempowering and deceptive policy that is now
spreading to other parts of Australia’; he stated that ‘the govern-
ment has established a war against democracy’.33 The communi-
ties exempted from the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 with the
NT Intervention of July 2007, saw their land confiscated for five
years, and self-management and welfare programmes suspended by
the Federal Government. On 13 February 2008, the newly elected
labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a historic Apology to
Australia’s Stolen Generations in Parliament: ‘the injustices of the
past must never ever happen again’, promising ‘a future where all
Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with
equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next
chapter in the history of this great country, Australia’. Despite this
symbolic and moving ‘Apology’, a complaint was lodged by a collec-
tive of Aboriginal communities, and the UN wrote a letter in March
2009 to Kevin Rudd expressing its concern over the suspension
of the Racial Discrimination Act. Kevin Rudd signed the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in April
2009, and the Special Rapporteur of the UN to Australia stressed
in the report of his visit the need to reinstate the protection of the
Racial Discrimination Act and recommended that the government
work in partnership with Aboriginal organisations. The Act was
only reinstated a year later in June 2010.34
Other Northern Territory communities joined the fight, such as
the Warlpiri from Central Australia with whom I have been working
since 1979. The Intervention happened at the same as the shire
centralisation which disempowered Aborignal councils and the inter-
ruption of bilingual education in Warlpiri/English which had been
very successful since the mid-1980s.
The Northern Territory policies have dispossessed Warlpiri people
of many jobs – councellors, teaching assistants, health workers,
33
See http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/50391; http://indymedia.org.au/2012/03/
18/wgar-news-responses-to-senate-committee-report-on-stronger-futures-new-
nt-intervention-la
34
See Chapter 1 on the 2017 report of the UN Special Rapporteur which denounced
even more strongly the structural racism of Australia.
314
Figure 10.1 Warlpiri girls painted on the breast with their respective Dreamings at
the end of school term, Lajamanu © B. G. (1984)
etc. – that they had gained thanks to the self-determination policies of

the 1970s–1990s. At the same time, more and more non-Indigenous
people now come to work in theses communities, paid high wages to
supposedly take care of the local population and help them to ‘find
work’. The interruption of bilingual programmes saw for instance 25
Warlpiri men and women dismissed from the Lajamanu school when
the teaching of Warlpiri – which is the children’s first language – was
reduced to half an hour a week. Warlpiri communities have created –
and continue to fund with their own resources from mining – the
Warlpiri Triangle to promote bilingual education – including
through the Internet – as a stimulus for better school achievements.
Similarly, the 40 Warlpiri who worked on part-time shifts at the
shop – which they successfully managed with a profit having bought
their own plane – were replaced by full-time backpackers, the plane
sold, resulting in shocking private company fares that the popula-
tion could not afford. Many Aboriginal people in NT have mining
royalties which they invested – including in education and cultural
programmes and NTIC – but the new Intervention policy has dis-
empowered them of the control of their own resources. The building
they funded partly themselves for their library and elearning was
315
closed most of the time in 2011–2012 and they had no access to the
Internet.
I have also worked with families from Palm Island, after the
violent death in custody of Cameron Doomadgee sparked a riot
in November 2004. I followed the Committal hearing of the 23
Aboriginal men and women charged for the riot and the long cam-
paign for an inquest that led to the policeman held responsible being
brought to trial.35 The policeman was declared not guilty because
of a lack of witnesses but there was no lack of evidence about the
cause of death (Doomadgee’s liver was split in two), which took
place less than an hour after Doomadgee was taken to the police
station for singing drunkenly in the streets. The sentences of the
rioters ranged from prison terms of several months to 6 years. Lex
Wotton – with whom I wrote the book, Warriors for Peace ([2008]
2010), about these events on Palm Island – received this maximum
sentence. Wotton was released after two years in 2010, but a ban
of four years was imposed on him to prevent him from speaking
to the media and in public. His parole board made an exception to
this ban in allowing him to speak publicly at a press conference he
gave at Palm Island in July 2011 and again a few months later at
a human rights convention organised by James Cook University.
Former Queenslander of the Year Dr Chris Sarra drew cheers from
a crowd of 130 as he labelled Mr Wotton ‘his inspiration’ during
an opening speech at the First Nations Pathways Conference at JCU
yesterday. ‘It’s easy for people like me to challenge injustice from the
safe confines of higher education or a newspaper column’, Dr Sarra
said. ‘You and the people on Palm Island put your lives on the line to
stand up for what was right.’36 But this year the High Court refused
to lift the ban on his speaking in public or in the media. Lawyers
have labelled the ban as racist: is the state afraid of an Aboriginal
man who says: ‘we don’t want two laws, one White, one Black, we
want one law for all, we want to live in peace’? (Glowczewski and
Wotton [2008] 2010). Lex Wotton triggers ‘moral panic’ for finding
strong words and arguments to express the painful history of his
stigmatised island and to criticise the difference in justice applied
35
Having conducted fieldwork on Palm from 2006 till 2008, Lise Garond (2012,
2014) shows the many ambiguities in which the inhabitants – descendants of
forty Indigenous languages – talk about their past and the traumatic experiences
of displacement.
36
See: http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2011/11/29/287031_news.html
316
to Black and White in Australia, the criminalisation of Indigenous

peoples (Cunneen 2007) and the deafness of institutions which do
not listen to Indigenous propositions.
Asking for one ‘Law for all’ is not to deny diversity of culture
or any social differences of life choices. Law and justice should be
able to operate in our democracies in a way that respects the unique
situation (cultural, religious, professional, political, etc.) of every
citizen, without forcing all to be assimilated to the ‘same’ model, that
is reduced to what an ‘assimilated’ citizen is supposed to be in each
nation. In my view, positions that reject cultural or other diversity in
favour of a ‘neutral’ homogeneity in the name of social equality and
national assimilation often oppose reparation for past wrongs and
reflect a dangerous and cynical ideology. By denying the existence
of substantive differences in living conditions according to different
cultural origins this cynicism renders the reasons for some exist-
ing social and economical inequalities invisible. Such positions also
reflect a lack of imagination and inventive scholarship: we need new
paradigms to combat the many forms of oppression in the current
world but without destroying the uniqueness of people who are
oppressed precisely because their difference threatens a certain order
which reproduces the inequalities. It is the duty of social scientists
to highlight the signs of creativity which offer a way of shifting
the paralysing opposition between universality and cultural diversity
that masks the real source of inequalities, and gives the green light
to all those who prefer to deny differences and remain blind to the
inequities deriving from colour and ethnicity, rather than deal with
these historical and social injustices.
Academic Responsibility
One challenge for academics is to find ways to change widely held
perceptions, especially to act against a global revival of eugenics
and biological racism. Human safaris organised by tour operators
in the Andaman Islands have recently been denounced by a cam-
paign organised by Survival International, a London-based NGO
that has offices in many countries, including France, with engaged
anthropologists and members from civil society. Eugenic fantasies
are also present in some TV documentaries or in literature. One
recent example of this is a French novel which this year has been
hailed by the media and awarded a prestigious literary prize even
though it conveys a series of racist prejudices about Aboriginal
317
people and discredits the actual Indigenous group who, in 1858,

saved the life of a 14-year-old French sailor who went on to live with
them for 17 years before being taken back to France against his will.
An Australian researcher, Stephanie Anderson (2009), wrote an
excellent essay on the story of this French sailor, Narcisse Pelletier,
including a chapter by Athol Chase, the main anthropologist who
had worked with the descendants of the relevant group, the Pama
Malngkana or Sand Beach people, who now live in Lockhart River
(Qld). Anderson sent a sound critique of the racist French novel to
the French newspapers but they ignored it; only French academic
websites circulated her arguments.
Creating links of transnational solidarity, through academic work
and web campaigns, is one way to fight prejudice and to support the
struggles of the people who militate on the ground against various
forms of discrimination and injustice. Civil disobedience is another.
A few years ago many French parents and preschool deans, supported
by some shires, refused – at the risk of being arrested – to let foreign
children be picked up by police from schools to be sent back to the
countries their parents had to leave in order to survive.37 A French
law which in 2012 prevented foreign students from working even
though they had contracts, or staying in France after they finish their
studies, provoked a massive reaction from academics who stood as
guarantors for the students and from heads of schools who objected
to the law by writing letters case by case but also by a general peti-
tion ‘Universal university, our grey matter bears all colours’.38 The
newly elected socialist government in May changed this law for
better conditions. Another group of French academics made a call for
an ‘insurrection of consciousness’ (Gori et al. 2009) while inspired
by the ‘Indignados’ movement in Spain; the book Indignate yourself
by Second World War resistant, Stéphane Hessel (2010), reached
millions.39
37
Ogien and Laugier (2010): http://www.educationsansfrontieres.org/
38
See: https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/fabienne-servanschreiber/gueant-notre-mat-
ire-grise-est-de_b_1259351.html
39
Other more radical actions have followed since in France, some inspired by the
Invisible committee (2007/2009), others by the inhabitants of the ZAD against
the airport of Notre-Dame-des-Landes who call for alternative ways of living; see
also the crowds of the Nuit debout movement gathering night after night without
leadership to talk for months in 2016 in the Place of the Republic in Paris, and all
the people involved with Indigenous peoples in protests against extractivism or
other industrial megaprojects that accelarate climate change. See note 16.
318
Figure 10.2 Figures painted with Aboriginal designs on the walls of the school,
Lajamanu © B. G. 2017
New platforms are emerging globally where people come together

to promote differences, to react against the denial of various manifes-
tations of racism and to formulate new cultural, social and economic
policies that can change the face of local and national politics. The
film The Intouchables (2011) by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano
made more then 19 million entries in France – partly for TV popular-
ity of the comic show run for years by the French Black actor, Omar
Sy. But some US critics found the film racist, as they did the film
Australia with Nicole Kidman. When the audience has a different
national and cultural context, other contexts are hard to understand.
Probably the Australian bush with Aboriginal ‘cowboys’ did not
make sense for Black or White American audiences, just like the
humour shared by many Black French people has a different history
from the African-American one. According to Randall Kennedy:
‘what people reject is “pigmentocracy”, a system where people are
rejected because of the colour of their skin or their origin . . . A lot of
my students feel they are multiracial. They have parents of different
origins. They build themselves differently. Their sense of allegiance
319
is more complex . . . One should not fall on the trap by slogans like
“racial neutrality” that can lead to a terrifying society.’40 There is no
consensual idea on racial politics but a citizen’s debate. Such a ‘dis-
sensus’ is precisely what French thinkers like Guattari (1991, [1992]
1995) or Rancière (2010) have defined as a propeller [or driver] to
stimulate the creation of new societal forms, forms that can respond
to the poverty and injustice generated by exclusion, intolerance and
the denial alterity, which is to recognise existential heterogeneity at
the structural level of contemporary societies and nations.
40
Interview in Le Monde, 2011, translated by the author. See propositions to 15
ministers by the CRAN after the presidential elections in June 2012: http://lecran.
org/
320
11
Resisting the Disaster:

Between Exhaustion and Creation
Climate change poses the question of a human community, of a we; it

points to a figure of universality that escapes our capacity to experience
the world. This universality stems rather from the shared sense of a catas-
trophe. It calls for a global approach of politics, but without the myth
of global identity, for, unlike the Hegelian universe, it cannot comprise
particularities. We could temporarily refer to it as a ‘negative universal
history’. (Chakrabarty 2009: 199)
Thus ends a text of Dipesh Chakrabaty, responding to the thesis of
Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Paul Crutzen. The famous author
of Provincializing Europe here takes up the concept of negative
universal history proposed by Antonio Y. Vasquez-Arroyo (2008)
and specifies that: ‘As the crisis gathered momentum in the last few
years, I realized that all my readings in theories of globalization,
Marxist analysis of capital, subaltern studies, and post-colonial
criticism over the last twenty-five years, while enormously useful in
studying globalization, had not really prepared me for making sense
of this planetary conjuncture within which humanity finds itself
today.’ In 2000, Crutzen and Stoermer proposed to consider that
human-induced transformations of the planet and the climate since
the industrial revolution constitute a new era, which he calls the
‘anthropocene’, where humanity as a ‘species’ has become a geophysi-
cal force. The consequence for human sciences would imply revising
not only the separation between human and natural history but also
the notions related to the classical problem of freedom.1 Similarly,
the author of The Gaïa Hypothesis who, twenty years ago, called
for the consideration of the earth as a self-regulated living organism,
has now come to insist, in his latest book (Lovelock 2009), on the
1
Special thanks to Sébastien Longhurst for the translation of this paper first published
under the same title by Spheres, Journal for Digital Cultures, 2. Ecologies of Change
2017: 1–19: http://spheres-journal.org/2-ecologies-of-change. It was adapted
from the French version published in Glowczewski and Soucaille (2011: 23–40).
Guattari’s quotation p. 323 is slightly different from Goffey’s translation p. 115.
321
responsibility of mankind and its economic choices in the future of

the biosphere.2
These debates are stimulating all disciplines, but seem to forget
that the human power of action (agency), even regarding geophysical
phenomena, is not an invention of this century. Even though Western
history has thought mankind as a ‘prisoner of climate’ (Braudel
[1969] 1980: 31), anthropology shows throughout the planet that
the perceptions of the world according to which humans can act on
the forces of nature seem to have existed since the beginning of time.
A great number of traditional societies acknowledge, on the one
hand, a set of obligations – such as rituals to make the rain come or
ensure that volcanoes remain dormant – and, on the other hand, a set
of prohibitions: if these protocols are not respected, and if the social
rules that guarantee the supposed balance between everything that
exists are transgressed, then various catastrophes could occur, such
as droughts, floods, plagues or famine.
Now facing global alerts and calls for degrowth that invoke man’s
responsibility in natural, socio-economic and technical disasters,
some media and governmental or non-governmental institutions are
entangled in various political and financial processes that reduce
humans to a status of victims of natural forces and uncontrollable
fluxes (stock exchange, markets, conflicts, etc.) without conceding
them any means to intervene in those situations themselves as crea-
tors of social alternatives. However, those survival responses exist
everywhere, and the collective intelligence that leads to micro-social
experiments is a wave of hope for the world.
Answers to the Victimising Trap of the Humanitarian World

and its Mediatisation
Thinking today’s human as responsible for the global climate and envi-
ronmental disaster, and for the peril of extinction that threatens human-
ity, invites to reflect on technical, political and economic development
with a collaborative ‘good use of slowness’ (Nghiem 2010) looking
for ‘long circuits’ (Steigler [2010] 2013) in order to grasp all forms of
2
Having enhanced the value of the biosphere, Lovelock’s hypothesis was criticised
on the one hand for having served as an alibi for those considering that an active
environmental policy is useless, and on the other hand for its New Age panthe-
ism, abusively assimilated to different forms of holism or connectionism of some
Indigenous peoples.
322
Resisting the Disaster
interaction and collective enunciation assemblages that emerge in situ-

ations of emergency and globalised capitalist acceleration (Rosa 2010).
In The Machinic Unconscious the psychoanalyst and philosopher
Félix Guattari defined the notion of refrain (ritournelle) as a ‘sonorous
marker of an assemblage of local desire’.3 After his works with Gilles
Deleuze, he redeveloped in his last books the notion of existential
refrains as it can be found in different forms of art and other semiotic
and sensory mobilisations (rituals, tattoos, automatic behaviour, etc.),
as a means to create new value systems (Guattari [1989] 2013): ‘These
territories of the refrain make use of new individual and collective
productions that enable one to survive amid deterritorializing fluxes.’4
As an extension of Bateson’s Ecology of Mind, Guattari articulated
the refrains and the territories in a ‘schizoanalytic’ cartography, and
proposed linking Three Ecologies ([1989] 2000), environmental,
mental and social, under the name of ecosophy:
I conceive the ecosophical object as articulated in four dimensions: those
of flux, machine, value and existential territory [. . .] That of machine
is there to give a dimension of cybernetic retroaction, of autopoïesis,
meaning an ontological self-affirmation, without falling into animist or
vitalist myths, such as Lovelock and Margulis’s Gaïa hypothesis; for it is
precisely about linking the machines of the ecosystems of material fluxes
to those of the ecosystems of semiotic fluxes. Therefore, I try to widen
the notion of autopoïesis, without limiting it, like Varela does, solely to
the living system, and I consider that there are proto-autopoïeses in all
other systems: ethnological, social, etc.5
Guattari’s ecosophical project should be understood in relation to
the transforming individual and collective assemblages (agencements)
3
(Querrien [2008] 2011: 94). In Guattari ([1979] 2011), ritournelle has been
translated by refrain, which is not the best choice: some prefer using the Italian
ritornello (little return in Baroque music). In Guattari’s further work ritournelle is
also used in visual art and other fields of creativity.
4
Querrien ([2008] 2011: 94); Guattari started from the Vinteuil Sonata, which
awakens different perceptive and memory-based sensations in Proust’s In Search
of Lost Time. On Guattari’s relation to anthropology and the use of ritournelle for
Indigenous Australians, see Chapters 2 and 3 of this book.
5
Guattari ([1991] 2013). According to the Chilean biologist, neurologist and phi-
losopher Francisco Varela, autopoïesis is a model for the analysis of living systems
that he developed with Humberto Maturana in order to oppose the notion of a
black box in which the information enters and exits, with that of a system evolv-
ing in an autonomous way as it interacts with the environment: he sought to link
action and knowledge together in the notion of enaction. On Lovelock, see note 2.
323
matrix that he constructed in Schizoanalytic Cartographies ([1989]

2013), in which his concepts of dimension are distributed among four
transversally and temporally interrelated poles: the economy of fluxes
(libido, signifier, capital, labour) corresponds to the ‘actual real’, the
machinic phylums correspond to the ‘actual possible’, the incorporeal
value universes to the ‘virtual possible’, and the existential territories
to the ‘virtual real’. The relation between the first two poles gener-
ates objective deterritorialisation processes while, between the other
two, an enunciation (or subjective deterritorialisation) can emerge
and allow the (re)creation of the virtual possible with new contents,
a promise of new assemblages, against integrated global capital-
ism, among others. This model, commented by many thinkers since
Guattari’s death, is a very fruitful proposition in order to analyse the
creative answers to the disasters of our world: ecosophy is at once an
ethical, a political and an aesthetic paradigm (Holmes 2009).
Guattari’s discovery of Norwegian and German ecological writings, most
notably Hans Jonas’s The Imperative Responsibility [1985], moderated
his belief in a post-media era in which the miniaturisation and networking
of informatics devices would permit the development of a new creativity.
(Querrien [2008] 2011: 93)
The lesson that can be drawn from the people, who in the most
ancient traditions postulated the responsibility of human actions
towards the rest of life, is that their ontologies and ‘existential ter-
ritories’ (as Guattari would say) are not necessarily contained in
a system of divine dependency but rather in a transversal way of
thinking the interaction between things.6 Many societies, such as
Indigenous Australians, Polynesians, Native Americans or other
groups who have lived for centuries in constant negotiations with
the agency of the cosmic world – rain, wind, fire, tsunami, climate
excess, etc. – do consider that any human action has an impact
not only on the society but also on the forces of what the Western
work considers as ‘nature’ as opposed to ‘culture’: for instance the
breaking of a taboo – like colonisation destroying sacred sites for
mining – can provoke people’s sickness as well as a draught or a
cyclone. Similarly, any catastrophy is to be traced to human excess.
It is an immanent dynamism where the reticularity of interactions
(such as the connections between different aspect of living beings, the
6
See for example the words of Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa (Kopenawa and
Albert [2010] 2013), and analysis by Viveiros de Castro (2007).
324
knowledge transmitted and updated through rituals) is simultane-

ously a source of links and ruptures, of solidarities and conflicts, of
fusions and cleavages, of segmentations and alliances, of attractions
and avoidance among people and other agents, animal, mineral, etc.
As in the relation of the Zoques Indigenous group from the
Chiapas with the Chichonal volcano, on the foothills of which they
live (Garcia-Acosta 2002), the villagers of Bebekan in Java refused
the aid of large humanitarian agencies that urged them to abandon
their village. The latter had been completely destroyed by the seismic
activity of the Merapi volcano in May 2006, following the tsunami
that had struck their island two years before. The villagers called
on to their responsibility should another earthquake and volcanic
eruption occur, but thought it could be prevented if they kept on
making offerings to the volcano and living at its base. They com-
pletely rebuilt their village using the systems inherited from collective
solidarity (traditionally mobilised to irrigate the fields) as well as
by inventing new ways of working together. This collective work
initiative has renewed the interest of the younger ones for a ritual
movement of communication with spirits through ancestral trance
techniques. What is at stake here is the recreation of a force of life,
like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. The common experience of
constant cohabitation with destruction and death brings each one
back to its solitude as a survivor, but also to the possibility of a new
collective assemblage implemented through a memory construction
process that re-establishes a shared hope. The 2010 eruption of the
volcano, which destroyed another village, taking many lives and dis-
placing hundreds of people threatened by clouds of hot ash, recently
brought up this question again. The writer, Elisabeth Inandiak, who
had accompanied Bebekan’s experience since 2006 (Inandiak 2007),
notes in the journal in which she keeps track of the Merapi disaster
since October 2010 (Inandiak 2011) that the hundred walls erected
on the volcano acted as a springboard for the ash clouds, thus aggra-
vating the impact of the catastrophe: another illustration of the need
to think of technologies in time with the fluxes of the earth and of
men, who precisely seek the right way to behave towards the volcano.
Another type of economic and artistic answer to the catastrophe is
provided by the Brazilian city of Goiânia. In 1987, in a concrete cube
in a wasteland street, scrap metal dealers found a cylinder emitting a
blue glow. Even though they felt nauseous on the following day, they
sheared it, thus liberating the source of the blue glow, and sold some
of the pieces to other dealers. Many dwellers of the neighbourhood
325
touched the glowing powder and even covered themselves in it, while
children used it to mark the streets. A few days later, hundreds of
people flooded into the hospital, their hands and bodies burning,
for the powder was cesium 137, a highly radioactive substance,
that had been used in the radiological equipment of a clinic that
was abandoned two years before. But this diagnosis was not done
immediately, but only after four deaths, including one child. The
catastrophe, aggravated by this ignorance, triggered an extreme gov-
ernment response: the inhabitants were gathered in a stadium to sort
the irradiated ones. 110,000 people were examined. The city, which
was rapidly growing at the time, was temporarily removed from
the list of tourist destinations thus sparking off countrywide panic.
Eighty-five contaminated houses were destroyed, the population was
evacuated and the area was cleaned up through the withdrawal of
3,500 m3 of waste that had been stored thirty kilometres away. Years
later, the site was converted to a storage centre for radioactive waste.
It was buried under knolls of grass, and a small museum was built to
tell the story that traumatised a generation. In June 2006, the annual
symposium of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology gathered
some 4,000 Brazilian anthropologists in Goiânia, and organised a
visit to the waste storage site, and to the neighbourhood where
the disaster occurred, in which some survivors with huge deformed
goitres held a banner to protest against the absence of compensation
to the victims.7 During the South American Biennale, held in 2005
in Porto Alegre, the internationally renowned artist Cirone Di Franco
exposed an installation of hospital beds made of blue concrete, each
one bearing the imprint of a body or of an object signifying the
personality of the victims of radioactivity. In those individual traces,
he crystallised the collective memory of his city, which was reshaped
by that disastrous event.
In France, similarly, Ariane Mnouchkine collected hundreds of
stories from the refugees of Sangatte – Afghans, Chechens or Iraqis –
looking to reconstruct their route throughout the world, into exile or
often forced back home, in order to create a performance in 2004.
The Last Caravanserai gathered around 200 scenes performed in
various languages with subtitles projected on different elements of
7
Telma Camargo da Silva (2009, 2015), a Brazilian anthropologist, has been study-
ing the impact of that disaster including the non-recognised contamination of the
workers who cleaned the site and whose survivors, or their children, still suffer
from serious diseases.
326
the set, and whose order and duration could change in each show.8
The sequences on the bureaucratic and technical treatment of the
refugees were of remarkable acuteness and made that true mental
torture perceptible. The show staged re-enactments of the interroga-
tions performed on asylum seekers stranded in the north of Australia
by government employees of the south of the country via video-
conference. The fact that the group of actors included refugees, who
took part in the elaboration of various scenes and played more or
less their own characters, put immediately into practice the hypoth-
esis of redeeming creation in the face of disaster. The theatrical
process almost became a therapeutic transfer for some of them. The
humanitarian morality and its technical and bureaucratic machine
of emergency intervention tends to force the refugees into the con-
straining norms of aid, without a right to reciprocity or allowing the
introduction of new rules by the refugees themselves, regardless of
the fact that as a consequence of this, they may loose their humanity
altogether, as social beings and actors of new communities. For
some, humanitarian assistance has become a real ‘business’ with an
‘inhuman’ financial logic mostly directed to the media, who choose
to cover one emergency instead of another; in order to generate the
mobilisation of the public it needs passive victims and not humans
trying to get back on their feet. Of course, there are journalists who
defend field interventions and launch very useful alerts, but the risk
that the good intentions of those ready to help could be misused for
the benefit of a few, remains.
The anthropologist Jonathan Benthall has been criticising for
twenty years the deforming power of the media regarding the
priorities of humanitarian activities, and calls to the responsibil-
ity of anthropology to critically render disaster situations and the
inner workings and power of humanitarian aid among civil society
(Benthall [1993] 2010). Regarding the criticism formulated by
humanitarian actors themselves – victims, volunteers, employees or
agency consultants – towards the media and the institutions that
limit their range of action, anthropology, as a discipline looking to
understand how humans behave in society, is now challenged to
address various audiences (as a counterpoint to the media machine)
with comparative analyses and translocal arguments that value the
freedom or the agency of man when reduced, in diverse situations, to
a status of victim with no right to speak or act.
8
DVD, Le dernier Caravansérail, 2006. On Sangatte, Courau 2007a & b.
327
Nature and Culture of Disasters

Whether at first natural, social or technical, a disaster ends up involv-
ing all three levels, which continue interweaving historically. Slavery,
which can be seen as a social disaster for the deported popula-
tions, has become a natural and technical disaster for continental
Africans who have had to reinvent their economic survival while
mourning those who were taken away. While the places from where
these men and women left were deeply affected economically several
times since colonisation, which first forced the displacement of those
hunted by slave merchants and then provoked a series of conflicts,
the places through which the deported passed, and those where their
descendants eventually settled still carry the impression of the techni-
cal, natural and social transformations created by this new colonial
labour system (Diouf 1999, Diouf and Kiddoe Nwangko eds 2010).
Such is the case of Gorée island which, for more than a century, was
the embarking point to the Americas for more than 9 million future
plantation workers, once their physical resistance had been drained
in the narrow cells of the slave houses, often managed by the signare,
the traders’ African or Creole mistresses, whose brothers were in
charge of human transport. Many would die there, as the guides
of Gorée now explain to the African diasporas of the whole world
who spend the day (rarely the night) visiting the houses that are
now museums, in what is now a tourist destination. In some build-
ings, refurbished with international funding, specialised symposia
are organised – about war in Africa, for example. The guides and
the exhibitions show a history of colonisation that was rewritten by
Africans, with remarkable critical distance and in sharp contrast with
the hidden history of slave ancestors that surrounds the lives of some
islands of the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean.9 If Gorée, thanks to
its recent commercialisation of colonial history, has become a seem-
ingly prosperous island which hosts a competitive boarding school
for Senegalese schoolgirls and the home of the famous Senegalese
sculptor Ousmane Sow, it is also striking to see so many abandoned
houses that their owners cannot afford to maintain anymore. Gorée
also attracts women from Dakar who cross by boat every day to
welcome the tourists with armloads of jewellery for sale, next to
9
Vergès (2006a, 2006b); see also the texts by Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye (n.d.), in
‘The House of Slaves’, Virtual Visit of Gorée Island. Available at: http://web-
world.unesco.org/goree/en/screens/25.shtml (accessed December 2018).
328
the canvases exposed in the street by young artists from all over
the country who survive precariously, squatting in the bunkers con-
nected by a network of tunnels dug under the cliffs. Oil paintings of
repeated patterns, designs in coloured sands and sculptures made of
used batteries, old cell phones or bottle caps: the art of recycling the
waste that covers the beach has become a signature of the island.10
In Africa, novels, theatre and cinema have long been useful
tools to change people’s look on the world and propose acting on
it differently. In 2009, La Tempête theatre in Vincennes received
Serge Limbvani, trained in Brazzaville, who had rallied actors from
various diasporas to stage God’s Bits of Wood, a novel by Ousmane
Sembène, a former Senegalese Tirailleur turned actor and film direc-
tor. Through meticulous and dramatic ethnographic work, the book
and the play tell the story of the railway workers’ strike on the
Dakar-Niger line in 1947–1948, which for five month and ten days
bonded starving families together, awakened a spirit of emancipation
from colonisation and modified traditional gender relations. Since
1902, Dakar was the capital of the federation of French Western
Africa: on the 25th of November 1958, the Sudanese republic gained
autonomy within the French community. Created on 4 April 1959,
the Federation of Mali comprised Senegal and French Sudan, but
broke up on 20 August 1960 due to a disagreement between the
leaders and the parties. Shortly after, two independent states were
created, each one with its own capital: Dakar in the Republic of
Senegal (presided by Léopold Senghor) and Bamako in the Republic
of Mali (presided by Modibo Keïta). A text for the preparation of
the diplom Baccalauréat (inherited from the French colonial system)
explained that through their 70 km march from Thiès to Dakar, ‘the
wives of the railway workers of the working-class town of Thiès led
a very large mass-mobilisation to put pressure on the colonial admin-
istration and demand satisfaction of the worker’s claims’ (Africa.
web),11 such as raises, family subsidies, annual holidays, pensions
and the right to conform their own union. After the shooting of the
marching women, the strikers were granted part of their demands:
[T]heir fellowship with the machine was deep and strong; stronger than
the barriers which separated them from their employers, stronger even
10
Especially incarnated by Djibril Sagna, an artist from Casamance, who lives in
Gorée in an abandoned building that he uses as a workshop, and who sometimes
exhibits in European art galleries.
11
As at 2015, this website no longer exists and the domain name is for sale.
329
than the barriers which until now had been insurmountable – the colour
of their skin. (Sembène [1960] 1995: 77)
After Mali and Senegal gained independence, the Bamako-Dakar line
funded the tours of Malian and Senegalese musicians, thus becoming
a platform to launch future stars on the world stage. Salif Keita and
Mory Kanté first played in the mythical Rail Band in Bamako’s rail
station hotel and restaurant, which from 1970 blended the inspira-
tion of the Mandinka griots with electro-acoustic folk music. The
railway was also used to trade food crops and handicraft between
stations, and to access various services along the line, such as schools
or clinics (Lombard 2006). But at the beginning of the 2000s, the
railway was privatised and 24 stations of 36 were shut down, leaving
the railway workers unemployed, as well as many people who lived
in the villages that had been created along the line. From one day to
the other, the population was cut off from the world: with no decent
road along the railway, the villagers were paralysed. This situation is
evoked in Abderrahman Sissako’s film Bamako (2006), the story of
a popular tribunal held against the inefficiency and the abuses of the
World Bank, in which Tiécoura Traoré holds the part of the owner
of the family concession where the judges meet for the trial. Traoré,
who studied in the USSR like many Africans, was working as an
engineer at the railway when he was dismissed by his employer for
being a too active trade union representative. With others he initiated
in 2003 the Citizen Collective for the integrated rail development and
recovery, COCIDIRAIL, which started a protest march inspired by
the 1947 strike. Once again, women were in the frontline, touring
with a travelling theatre play that told the problems of the villages
and invited people to mobilise. Tiécoura Traoré documented the
tour on film and showed goods such as grain sieves piling up in the
villages, for lack of access to markets. Not only did this privatisa-
tion destroy their lifestyle, but it also turned out to be an economic
and technological disaster for Mali, Senegal and the multinational
company itself. Cutting stops on the line led to reduced railway
maintenance and decay, even causing a deadly derailment. An audit
by the Malian government confirmed the economic catastrophe, but
corruption is pushing it ever deeper.12 A historic lesson remains:
12
The Declaration of the Citizen Collective for Integrated Rail Development of 24
April 2009, criticised the management of the Transrail company: ‘COCIDIRAIL
also denounces the whole so-called “rescue plan” including the discontinuation
of the users’ traffic management, a gift of 14 billion to Transrail, 376 layoffs (180
330
the threat of destruction of a technological adaptation such as the

railway, a communication factor and a catalyst for social bonds,
triggers the emergence of other networks: villagers united in a col-
lective, but also associations and unions in Europe supported the
resistance, funded sustainable agriculture and popular education
projects, invited spokesman Tiécoura Traoré to address the European
Parliament and organised support protests throughout France.13 In
2010, COCIDIRAIL established a solidarity network with various
African and European trade unions.
All these examples show different creations in the midst of disas-
ter, understood as a reinvention of forms to redefine one’s position
in a place or a network of places, a route, both individually and col-
lectively, and generate connections with the outside world. Reviving
the past as a cultural feature is an option that can be supported by
the re-emergence of ancient sacred rituals generated by trance, like
in the village of Bebekan, or by generating tourism around a histori-
cal heritage site, although a painful one, as done in Gorée. What is
at stake here is to find the force of life that will spark a response to
the deadly force of destruction that threatened the group. Alongside
structured forms, conditions for reactivated or renewed potentialities
emerge, thus creating a framework for artistic work and pushing
the creativity of the younger generations, who will rebuild cultural
heritage based on their own common experience. This experience
can in turn become a new strong foundational myth for the group,
especially while it is based on shared emotions, on the redemption
of survival, or rather of revival, a rebirth that offers more than just
survival to the risk of dying, a very real risk as many actually died
during the events.
The warranty to live lies in the fact of not being the only one who
escaped death: survivors gather, forming a ‘together’ that will deploy
into one or several communities or break up into family groups and
individual units, depending on the group’s responses and interactions
with all the others involved in the emergency. The response of those
in Mali, 196 in Senegal), recapitalising the company up to 3.6 billion through

investments of both countries, and a new revision of the concession agreement in
order to force Mali and Senegal to start funding the heavy railway investments,
which have so far been a responsibility of the company.’ Ten years later, the
struggle continues.
13
Kubiakowska (2009); see also Traoré’s interview: http://survie.org/billets-d-
afrique/2007/160-juillet-aout-2007/article/interview-tiecoura-traore
331
collective assemblages can break away from inherited culture, even

more so considering the impossibility to keep on living the same
way if the environment has been destroyed. However, it is within a
reconstructed continuity that ‘culture’ is redrawn as a new founda-
tion of the survivors in a place, be it the place of the catastrophe
or that where the refugees were displaced. But when the collective
installation in the place of revival is hindered, the transmissions start
crumbling down, culture is lost and, most of all, the collective life
is threatened once again, notably in its ethical aspect. The power
of action does not have a collective field of expression any longer:
the existential territory erodes, there is no projection anymore, and
no creation is possible. However, precisely when this exhaustion
hits rock bottom, it becomes the source of a new hope. Weren’t
many beautiful French and Russian literary texts born in the midst
of late twentieth-century melancholy? Didn’t the suffering of the
colonised, the deported and of the soldiers of so many wars generate
countless novels and films in the Southern Hemisphere or among the
diasporas of the twentieth century? As for the abundance of science
fiction novels and films produced since Orwell’s 1984, they invite
young generations to think utopias for the future. If novelists and
film-makers can depict human resistance so well, they also make us
face the current responsibility of the anthropological project: finding
new ways of thinking those grounds where suffering and disasters
constantly question the memory and the possibilities that would
redeem human condition.
Disastrous Combinations: Racism and Exclusion

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, the media
and humanitarian treatments of the victims of the catastrophe were
defined differently, based on both social and racial criteria. The
poorest could not regain the city in a liveable way after its destruc-
tion and, for the most part, the Black population was excluded.
During the floods, a photo by the Agence France-Presse showed a
fair-skinned man and a young woman walking with water up to
their chests and carrying a bag of bread. The couple was described
as ‘finding bread and soda from a local grocery store’. Another
photo by Associated Press showed a young Black man in the same
situation and was described as ‘looting a grocery store’ (Ralli 2005).
Those two photos are circulating on the Internet and were posted
by an Aboriginal professor of the Department of Aboriginal Studies
332
of James Cook University in Australia: the sign of a new form of

solidarity against colour-based discrimination as it equally affects
the inhabitants of colonised countries of Africa or Asia and the
descendants of slaves and deported workers dispersed throughout
the three oceans, and even many Indigenous populations that became
minorities in the states that colonised them.14
During the year 2005, at the court of Townsville, Australia,
I attended the investigation of a group of twenty Palm Island
Aboriginal people accused of having encouraged a riot after the
death of an Aboriginal man while he was held in custody, one
hour after he was arrested for public drunkenness. I have to admit
that not even my twenty-five years of work on rituals, myths and
identity conflicts in other regions of Australia had prepared me
for the disenchantment of the Indigenous people involved in those
events. I was impressed by the capacity to withstand adversity
shown by the inhabitants, who were either deported on the island
or the descendants of the 3,000 Aboriginal people deported there
between 1918 and the 1970s, from the respective lands of about
forty different language groups who spread through the state of
Queensland (Garond 2012, 2014). Indigenous Australians call their
displaced populations ‘historical people’. Their colonial anchoring
in the deportation places is thereby distinguished from the ancestral
heritage of the ‘traditional owners’: even if both groups are opposed
in land claims based on the priority of the principle of Native titles,
part of their history is common nonetheless, as it is built on the same
place of social belonging and life. Treated as non-humans during
the colonisation of Australia by the British, Aboriginal people have
suffered both a form of ethnocide and a form of apartheid: mas-
sacres, poisoning of their water supplies, deportation far away from
their land, forced settlement in reservations, abduction of children
of mixed descent (between 1905 and the 1970s, one child out of
five was taken from its Aboriginal family, a phenomenon called
stolen generations), or even the state-run confiscation of the wages
that were paid by farmers or other employers (stolen wages). These
14
The solidarity of Indigenous activists to denounce situations happening in other
countries is not new: in 1938, William Cooper led a group of Aboriginal people
of Footscray to the German consulate to protest against the destruction of Jewish
homes and synagogues carried out on 9 November (the Progromnacht): his
Aboriginal descendants were invited to Israel for a ceremony to honour his
memory.
333
decades of traumatising history have contributed to shape a disas-

trous situation which – in spite of the enthusiasm of the Land Rights
Movement of the 1970s and the success of Aboriginal art since that
supported political and social justice claims (Cunneen 2010) – has
triggered despair in the face of discrimination, suicidal behaviours
and rising anger against the constant political misunderstanding
towards these societies that were organised without the existence
of a state before the British colonisation.15 However, the year 2010
ended with the creation of the first Aboriginal party (First Nations
Party).
The recent evolution of Australian politics towards Aboriginal
people has aggravated this catastrophic logic in various regions of the
continent, notably in the Northern Territory, whose 73 Aboriginal
communities were put under the federal government ‘Intervention’
(NT National Emergency Response Act 2007) and a new centralised
administrative system of city shires of the Northern Territory that
suppressed their elected Community Councils. In September 2010,
after a vendetta conflict opposing two groups in a desert commu-
nity, an Australian colleague wrote to me: ‘Yuendumu has now
established a disaster community managed by the Department of
Education of the Northern Territory. We now see the next step of the
Intervention: the unleashed “honesty” of the new relation of power
between the Australian State and remote communities. The “us and
them” dichotomy is now at work. So far, the State has been treating
the Indigenous people like children by managing their income and
destroying its tools of governance.’ Indeed, the elected Community
Councils have been replaced by regional administrators who decide
on municipal and individual expenses. The Aboriginal people have
received debit cards to access their wages and subsidies, but they
can only use them to buy food in some shops and have to request
an authorisation for any other expense, such as buying a bus or
plane ticket for example. This measure was trying to ban alcohol
consumption and card games. ‘Now the State wants to protect the
Whites from the Blacks. Not only do the communities become seg-
regated spaces, but also dangerous places for white people. We need
a disaster management plan to protect the Whites from the Blacks.’
This ironic testimony of Peter Stewart, who has experienced the
creative enthusiasm of the 1980s as an administrator employed by
15
Glowczewski and Wotton ([2008] 2010). See also Glowczewski and Abélès
(2010).
334
the council of another desert community (and not imposed to the

council), signals a dangerous turnaround in race relations. It is to
be noted that about a hundred Warlpiri, alarmed by the scale of
the local conflict and the security deployment, have chosen to leave
Yuendumu temporarily for their relatives’ place in Adelaide (over
a 1,000 kms south). But what shocked the media and the politi-
cians was that Aboriginal people would dare leave their community
to ‘invade’ the city, and not the state’s incapacity to control local
violence. This reaction illustrates the Australian malaise towards
the Indigenous people who, as I have described for a long time, are
perceived as ‘refugees from the inside’.16
The debates generated by the subaltern and post-colonial studies17
are increasingly positioning themselves on those Indigenous issues
(according to the definition of the Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, adopted on 13 September 2007, by the United
Nations General Assembly18). They inherit a violent colonial past that
has destroyed their natural, social and economic environment of sur-
vival, and which continues to stigmatise the victims by characterising
them as ‘others’. Those debates refer to the question of power and the
capacity to act – in order to exist as citizens with common rights and
specific rights, or in a process seeking autonomy or independence – of
these groups who became minorities within the state. Whether among
the Maori or other peoples from Oceania who have not gained inde-
pendence, among Indians from North and South America, Moroccan
16
Glowczewski (2007), see also Glowczewski with a contribution by Lex Wotton
[2008] 2010. When the Government of Western Australia and South Australia
announced their intention to close many remote communities, a protest of support
stormed across Australia and French scholars working in Australia supported it
with a collective letter (Préaud et al. 2015).
17
On the comments made then about those debates in France, see the online
archives of the review Multitudes (http://www.multitudes.net/) and those of La
Revue Internationale des Livres et des Idées (http://revuedeslivres.blogspot.fr/). In
2016 in France a network and journal of Decolonial Studies was created: http://
reseaudecolonial.org/
18
With 143 participating states, including eleven abstentions (Azerbaijan,
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Russia, Samoa and Ukraine)
and four rejections: Australia and New Zealand (which accepted the Declaration
one year later), the United States of America (accepted the Declaration with the
election of Obama in 2010) and Canada (promised to ratify it in 2010 but only
did so in 2017). The 46 articles of the Declaration affect more than 370 million
people worldwide: https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/de
claration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html
335
Berbers, Touareg and Peuls in sub-Saharan states, nomadic peoples

from Central Asia, everywhere indigenous leaders currently analyse
their situations by proposing to ‘subalternise indigenous politics’ and
‘indigenise subaltern politics’ (Cadena and Starn 2007). On their
land threatened by destruction through forestry and mining as well
as in their urban exodus, Indigenous people are often confronted by
social hierarchy structures that tend to dampen, and even strangle,
their voices within the Nation State that surrounds them. In the
1980s, that difficulty to make their voices heard at the national
level encouraged some of them to contact international bodies and
to widen their networks transnationally, often by recurring to their
privileged relation to nature.19
The rejection of Indigenous singularities and the mobilisation of
transnational networks echoed the situation of the Roma and Gipsies,
of which 900 settlements were dismantled in France in the summer of
2010. Can this also be considered a disaster? It can if it is included in
the history of persecution through which – as with the Pogroms and
the Shoah – Gipsies have been hunted down, from the concentration
camps where they were tortured and gassed, to the abuses that many
families experience today in Romania and elsewhere, both from non-
Roma populations and Gipsy mafias. However, they have no right to
asylum: as many are traditionally nomadic, their travels outside of
their countries of origin are suspect. Some political leaders, the media
and a portion of the public perceive them as parasites that should
be sent home, as a security risk they should get rid of, even if that
implies locking them up in dormitory towns and then in jail if they
commit another offence on the way home.
The Right of Asylum and Refugee Rights is no clearer for people
displaced from countries devastated by natural disasters. After the
earthquake which devastated Haiti on 12 January, a journalist from
Le Monde recalled that:
Considering the increasing numbers of disasters induced by climate
change, IOM has suggested the creation of an international status for the
victims of natural disasters, including earthquakes. In vain. The refugee
status is reserved for victims of conflicts and persecutions, even if the High
Commission for Refugees (HCR) acknowledges the need for an evolution
of the mechanism, and provided support to Haiti. “We provide equip-
ment and our expertise in camp management and protection of displaced
19
Bosa and Wittersheim (2009), Gagné et al. (2009), Glowczewski and Henry
([2007] 2011), Glowczewski et al. (2014).
336
populations”, explains its spokesperson, Melissa Fleming (. . .?) During

the violence caused by the exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the
HCR had urged the international community to grant asylum to feeling
Haitians. None of it has happened to this day. “The situation does not
require the HCR to adopt an official position, especially since Santo
Domingo has opened its border for humanitarian reasons”, considers
Mrs Fleming [. . .] The United States have decided to grant a temporary
protection status to Haitians present on their soil before January 12th, but
warned that they would not receive any boat people. In Europe, granting
a temporary protection status in order to receive refugees is a responsibil-
ity of the European Council. Granting it to the victims of the quake is
not on the agenda. “Each country should at least grant work permits to
Haitian immigrants so that they can send money home”, analyses Jemini
Pandya. According to the World Bank, the diaspora transfers each year
about 1.2 billion euros to Haiti. (Allix 2010)20
The key words of the humanitarian ‘care’ logic: manage and protect.
In both cases, these concepts have become the weapons of an ide-
ology of protectionist and interested assistance that is not new –
it was at work in the colonial system, notably in the reservations
imposed on Indigenous peoples in order to displace them from their
land – and consists of introducing donation as a non refundable debt.
The logic of ‘assistancialism’ which generates dependence through
imposed aid, known by Australian Aborigines as ‘sit down money’,
is dehumanising. All the victims of disasters as well as any population
increasingly perceived by states as fluxes of potential commodities are
transformed into resources to ‘care and protect’, and are no longer
considered as citizens and singular beings acting in their own name.
In return, populations become distrustful, and riots break out. An
example of that happened last autumn in Haiti when, as the cholera
epidemic affected the victims of the earthquake and the hurricane
in the midst of electoral tensions, rumours were spread about water
poisoning by a UN peacekeeper and its involuntary propagation
through the water system.21
20
[Translated by editors.] See also the testimonies after the earthquake archived by
Etonnants Voyageurs, the international literature and film festival of Saint-Malo,
see: http://www.etonnants- voyageurs.com/spip.php?rubrique318
21
Estimate on 24 November 2010: 2,000 dead, 70,000 contaminated, accord-
ing to the UN Coordinator in Haiti, Nigel Fisher. Réseau Alternatif Haïtien
d’Information, AlterPresse, 24 November 2010. Available at: http://www.alter-
presse.org/spip.php?article10290 (accessed 2 December 2015).
337
Possible Unfolding
Responding to the 2010 destruction of the Roma settlements in
France, Éric Fassin (2010) noticed in the Mediapart online newspaper:
The populations that represent a problem, in other words, that are con-
structed as ‘problematic’, are not so much foreigners any longer but
rather those whose situation puts in question the distribution between
‘us’ and ‘them’, supposedly just as simple as the name of the new French
Ministry that puts immigration and national identity in opposition [. . .]
The same goes for Black people: some, coming from French overseas ter-
ritory, have been French for many generations; others are children of the
more recent waves of sub-Saharan migrants. The stigmatisation of Black
people is based on this double position, both internal and external.22
As mentioned above, this observation can be applied to many coun-
tries in the Americas, Oceania or the Indian Ocean. Together with the
descendants of Melanesian or Asian populations used as indentured
labour in Australia or the Mascarene Islands, voluntary migrants
stigmatised due to the colour of their skin, the Indigenous popula-
tions (whether Black or not) who are native to colonised countries
(Indigenous Australians, Amerindians, Kanaks or Tahitians) are also
considered ‘external’ to the nation that pretends to assimilate them
while rejecting them.
The stigmatisation of the indigestible otherness rests on the fact
that they are seen by some powers as not ‘manageable’ by other
means than security measures, which replaces the notion of foreigner
in terms of national identity with that of ‘exterior’ in supposedly
racial terms. This shift towards a fantasied ‘nature’ (skin colour,
ethnic, religious or ideological history, etc.) of essentialised cultures
(totally denying the history of colonisation, of the persecution of
semi-nomadic peoples and Gipsies, but also of the biologising evolu-
tionism of our disciplines, etc.) sends us back to the darkest times of
the birth of criminology which, echoing the racial theses of the begin-
nings of anthropology, intended to define a typology of natural born
criminals. The current tendency to criminalise all potential victims of
racial or social segregation has been denounced by many researchers
22
Translated by the editors of Inflexions 10. See also Fassin and Fassin (2006),
Fassin et al. (2014). For an update on news and campaigns about discrimina-
tions/racial profiling/slavery and reparations, see the website of the CRAN, the
Representative Council of Black Associations in France: https://le-cran.fr/
338
in anthropology and criminology.23 This does not mean that crime is

not present in all segments of the population, but rather that the exer-
cise of justice is not the same for all, especially in liberal states, which
hide their discriminatory practices behind the Declaration of Human
Rights. Through the ever-faster substitution of the social state by the
penal state (Wacquant 2009), the state not only turns to humanitarian
emergency NGOs and charity organisations for the provision of social
care, but also strives to get rid of victims and excluded people by sin-
gling them out as potential criminals that should be jailed or sent away.
In France, when the Roma were sent back to Romania after their
camps were dismantled, European intellectuals, including the French
Étienne Balibar, Tzvetan Todorov, Michel Agier and Françoise
Vergès, launched A Manifesto for Another Europe:
Let us oppose, together, the culture of emergency management based on
obsessive surveillance, control and vilification of the strange and the dif-
ferent. Let us create, instead, a culture of solidarity and common purpose
beyond our differences. Let us declare our repulsion for the unfair and
unequal society that blames its own victims and casualties. (Amin et al. 2010)
In the current evolution of the world, it seems indispensable to
interrogate the meaning of our disciplines in the light of social
injustices and the global mechanisms that generate it, as well as
of the responses generated by populations that endure them and
by activists, intellectuals or not, who respond through manifestos.
The traditional academic recommendation regarding the need for
a scientific distance in order to remain ‘objective’ in social sciences
has opened curious filiation tracks in disciplines where the civic, and
even political, engagement, as well as the utopic spirit that prevailed
at their beginning (Graeber 2004), now seem to be frowned upon
by many colleagues in France and elsewhere. As I here try to show
that one cannot separate natural catastrophes from social disasters,
emergency policies from long-term ones, knowledge of the present
from historical memories, humanitarian responses from the agency
of victims, I believe that anthropology is particularly called to engage
in analyses that consider all those relations in a critical way in order
to trigger local and global reflection towards new social alternatives.
23
Garland (2001), Cunneen (2007, 2010), Blagg (2008). In France in 2019, like
in Australia, ecoactivists are criminalised and are all people who take action to
propose alternatives to the destruction of the planet and to help refugees.
339
12
Standing with the Earth:

From Cosmopolitical Exhaustion to
Indigenous Solidarities
The humans of the Earth, those in power in the 21st century, have often
been classified as naturalists . . . they believed that there was continuity
between all physiological processes from the most simple to the most
complex . . . You might say that in our historical moment, everybody
knows that that is not true. For example, between HI (human intelligence)
and AI (artificial intelligence), there is no continuity of physical processes,
even if we may feel that there is continuity to techniques of reasoning
or knowledge processing . . . Conversely, Earthlings often perceived the
various levels of self-experience to be discontinuous. (Bonnefoy 2010,
Polynesia: 454)
In the science fiction trilogy Polynesia, an archaeologist from the
future offers this analysis after exploring galactic space-time and
finding a text about Descola’s four ontologies (animism, analogism,
naturalism and totemism) in one of its folds (Descola [2005] 2013).
The conversation between him and a friend is punctuated by the
commentary of their two biocoms, or biological telephones, a kind of
external hard drive attached to humans which takes the form of a min-
iature animal that continuously changes its appearance, from lizard to
small bird, for instance. When the archaeologist muses about a time
when humans still lived on earth, ‘Certain groups of humans could
be seen as totemistic . . . for them, if they had the same physiological
mechanisms as their totems, which only seems rational, they may
have thought they also shared a sense of self-awareness with the totem
animal’, his Biocom replies by asking, ‘Am I your totem?’ (Bonnefoy
2010: 456). In this universe, in which polymorphous biomachines
reflect on their own subjectivity, the humans who discover the ontolo-
gies of days gone by begin to test – in cults – their understanding of
naturalism, totemism, analogism and animism’s past definitions.1
1
Special thanks to Toni Pape and Adam Szymanski for the translation of this
paper first published under the same title in Inflexions 10 (2017): 1–24
340
Standing with the Earth
In the following essay, we are going to see that the exhaustion of

the earth, of certain ontologies, and of our creative forces, are all
interconnected, just as the ethico-aesthetic responses to this exhaus-
tion are inseparable from cosmopolitics.
The Reinvention of Ontologies

Polynesia’s description of SF cults seems to be partly inspired by
current New Age movements which draw on various Amerindian
and Celtic rituals, as well as other pre-Christian practices, which
some of the practitioners then recreate as pantheistic or neo-pagan in
order to revalourise the Earth. The inventive reinterpretation of all
these rituals is often political, as is evidenced by the yearly May Day
Parade in Minneapolis which celebrates the old rural tradition of the
Maypole dance as much as the working-class struggle (see Linebaugh
2016; Sheehy 1999: 79–89).
In the 2016 parade which I observed, Black families dressed entirely
in purple and held placards paying tribute to Prince, a famous son of
the city and singer of ‘Purple Rain’. Other signs denounced racism
and police violence in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
These Black families walked side by side with Amerindian families
from the North and South Americas wearing dresses adorned with
feathers and sequins, and sporting placards denouncing the extrac-
tive industries that threaten their land. Other families marched with
their faces and clothes painted brown like the earth, green like the
forest, blue like the sea, pink like crustaceans or multi-coloured like
the many animal and plant species endangered by various kinds of
pollution. The parade’s placards and banners, some of which were
full of humour, also invited participants to make like an animal and
jump into the procession of witches with pointed hats and brooms,
slowly advancing on stilts, scooters, bikes, floats and foot. The crowd
was full of joy. The parade culminated with an immense concert on
the shore of a lake. The concert opened with a tribute to Mother
Earth led by ten participants who represented the cultural – and
spiritual – diversity of Minneapolis: a sacred fire was carried to a
site consecrated to the four winds before being thrown into the lake.
(http://www.inflexions.org/exhaustion/main.html#n2). It is the expanded version

of a conference paper, ‘Debout avec la terre’, presented at ‘Terre 2.0. Comment
ne pas manger la terre?’ (EHESS, Paris, June 2016) and published in Multitudes
65 (2016).
341
Then followed a dance of giant puppets among which was a Prince

figure in a purple toga and others representing the Mississippi river
and Mother Earth. The show, featuring classical, electronic and soul
music, was interspersed with lectures conveying the repentance of
civil society; admissions that it had heretofore failed to recognise the
presence of Indigenous peoples, that it had abused people of colour,
that it hadn’t been welcoming enough towards refugees and had not
taken care of the land, but that it would commit to changing things
from that moment on. Thousands of people with their children gath-
ered together to participate in these joyful festivities, bearing witness
to a form of serene conviviality that went beyond mere entertainment
to offer a beacon of hope.
In his dialogue with Pierre Charbonnier, Philippe Descola notes
that ‘one can easily sign up for a course in shamanism online or
participate in New Age rituals in St. Germain forest. But that doesn’t
mean that naturalism has perfectly integrated animism or analogism.
Because in these cases . . . we’re dealing with forms emptied of their
content and only the most superficial elements of these cosmological
dispositifs have been conserved. From this perspective, I’m not sure
that this will have a profound impact on the ongoing reorganisa-
tion of naturalism’ (Descola 2014a: 304). Of course, the practice
of rituals is not enough to shift ontologies and modes of existence
towards a transformed collective milieu. In recent years, however,
more and more activist movements fighting to denounce the destruc-
tion of living environments, especially due to extractive industries
that precipitate climate change and pollute the air and water, are
looking for alliances and sources of inspiration among peoples, such
as Amerindians, who have a vision of the Earth different from one
which denies nature under the pretext that it has surrendered to
human technologies. Looked at in this way, I believe that certain
hybrid movements are currently reinventing at least one new form
of ontology.
The accelerationist tendency of geo-engineering, so well critiqued
by Frédéric Neyrat (2014, [2016] 2018), shows that Western history,
by way of its colonising development of both peoples and lands rich in
resources, has come to assert that nature does not exist any longer for
it has been ‘consumed’ by the technological productions of culture.
The Earth is drained, exhausted, but is perhaps not done surprising
us through the descendants of those who, colonised and classified
at different moments in history as animists, totemists, pantheists or
pagans, today attempt to resist the technological cannibalisation of
342
nature by inviting us to see her, nature, as living in constant spiritual

interaction with human beings. Even the proposition of rewilding
or renaturalising parks, which includes photo safaris of ‘protected’
animals, only imagines an artificialised nature. Similarly, safaris of
human populations enclosed and exploited on reserves are offered in
all parts of the world and illustrate the arrogance behind a conception
of nature as something to be mastered or conquered (Glowczewski
2015). This sort of arrogance was further confirmed during the con-
versation between Bruno Latour (presented as a sociologist rather
than an anthropologist) and architect Rem Koolhaas at the ‘Nuit des
Idées au quai d’Orsay’ (Night of Ideas at Quai d’Orsay) on 27 January
2016. The two interlocutors both affirmed that the planet Earth no
longer had an exteriority because it had been entirely urbanised or
impacted by the conditions that allow for urbanisation. By contrast,
whether it is the multinaturalist perspectivism invoked by Viveiros
de Castro with regard to Amerindians, the reticular cosmogeography
of Aboriginal Australians with whom I have been working for more
than thirty-seven years, or those of various shamanisms from all
parts of the world, these points of ‘seeing’, as Deligny2 used to say,
and the relation between interior and exterior they articulate, do not
fall within the Western ‘perspective’ limited to a reappropriation of
the Earth’s surface as a foundation for construction and drilling.
This form of materialism, which thinks the planet as a surface to
be mined, a spacecraft to continuously reconfigure, and which no
longer knows any exteriority, is fundamentally different not only
from shamanic ontologies, whether they be of Northern or Southern
Amerindian or of Australian Aboriginal provenance, but also from
ontologies that have been reconfigured by both Indigenous peoples
and activists, as well as all those who try to experience the fact that
we can be inhabited or traversed by exteriorities. These kinds of
ontological exteriorities arise from other types of materiality which
assume that spirit is not just interior to a body but multiplied across
visible or invisible spaces. To accept these kinds of transversalities is
the condition of a convivial relation not only with the Earth but any
milieu inhabited by humans, those ‘from here’ and those who come
from ‘elsewhere’, be they migrants and asylum seekers or spirits. To
be inhabited or traversed by exteriorities does not speak to some
2
See ‘Living Networks Ecologies: Fernand Deligny in the Age of Social Networks’,
a filmed seminar by Drew Burk (2013): http://scalar.usc.edu/works/network-
ecologies/living-network-ecologies-an-introduction
343
kind of transcendence. On the contrary, it means to recognise imma-

nence within oneself. For Aboriginal Australians, this immanence of
exteriority is lived in the way every birth of a human is related to the
incarnation of a localised spirit of the Earth; throughout their entire
lives, Aboriginal men and women actualise in themselves other spirits
that are shared with different totems, or Dreamings, Jukurrpa as the
Warlpiri and their desert neighbours say. In other words, totemism
does not here resolve itself in a continuity of resemblance between
an individual and an animal – ‘I am like this snake which is at ease
everywhere it goes, which can live both in the water and on firm
ground . . . like the snake I avoid confrontations’ (Jowandi Wayne
Barker, personal communication). Instead of a unique and essential-
ised attribute, each person is an assemblage of several contextualised
analogies, of relations that change throughout the course of life,
with a singular constellation of totems or Dreamings. A given animal
or plant, the rain, the wind or fire are lived as multiple virtualities
in a process of becoming that is context dependent, in humans as
well as non-humans, and terrestrial and extraterrestrial sites con-
sidered as a partial materialisation of a trace, an emanation or an
organ of a given totem. That is why I speak of Totemic Becomings:
Cosmopolitics of the Dreaming (Glowczewski 2015). Every man or
woman is the guardian of a constellation of Dreamings for which he
or she has the responsibility of regularly celebrating rituals which
consist of mapping the sites and itineraries of each Dreaming through
body paintings, songs and dances; a responsibility which stems from
each person being recognised as a mutable manifestation of a given
Dreaming which corresponds to them, either by his or her own
design (as revealed in a dream), by inheritance from the family group,
or through alliances created over the course of their life.
In light of this, the tragedy that constitutes the destruction of a
sacred site does not only result from the fact that a totemic site is ‘an
ontological incubator, i.e. the site where the identity of the members
of a collective is formed in very concrete ways, the common root for
a group of humans and nonhumans’ (Descola 2014a: 328). Each of
these sites negotiates virtual relations with other sites (other humans
and other beings). To destroy a site associated with any given totem
amounts to endangering other sites and their guardians: all those who
are connected to the same ‘line’ of Dreaming, the songline that links
hundreds of sites spanning an ancestral totemic people, and all the
sites belonging to other totemic lines which intersect the path of the
endangered site. I have said elsewhere that access to the space-time of
344
Dreaming within those sites was ‘holographic’ (in the sense proposed
by Roy Wagner): through each sacred site one can virtually access the
other sites (Glowczewski 1991). This holographic capacity indicates
that everything is related as in an open mega-ecosystem or cosmosys-
tem: everything that affects a site or one of its human or non-human
becomings can have an impact on all that is living and the forces of
the universe. The rituals celebrating the Dreamtime journeys contrib-
ute to the caretaking of sites belonging to these reticulum, but also
other lifelines that they encounter. To dance for the Rain Dreaming,
for instance, is also to take care of animals and plants that are in need
of rain. To sing to a plant is to care for the animal that feeds on this
plant and for all the unborn children whose totemic becomings will
be the Dreaming of this plant, or the animal that feeds on it.
It is important to note that this gigantic meshwork of Dreamlines
is not fixed. Apart from the ‘accidents’ or events that make up the
features of a rugged landscape, which do need to be considered,
the ways of moving through it change according to the seasons and
the climate that continuously transform the landscape. Australian
mythical stories even account for transformations of a geological
scale: the Fire Dreaming, for instance, refers to the ancient volcanoes
and uranium deposits; the Kangaroo Dreaming evokes the marsupial
megafauna that have long gone extinct on the continent; while the
Emu Dreaming of the Northern Coast at the Indian Ocean accounts
for paw prints recognised by specialists as belonging to diverse species
of dinosaurs. Today, astrophysicists study the so-called mythical nar-
ratives about meteors that fell from the sky to leave sacred craters.
Similarly, all coastal groups of Aboriginals relate stories about the
continent’s flooding and the subsequent separation of approximately
4,000 islands which presently surround continental Australia, a geo-
logical event that has been dated by a team of geologists as 7,000
years old (Gough 2015; Glowczewski and Laurens [2015] 2018).
This kind of interconnection between sacred sites and vital forces
can also be found in the Xapiri’s spiderweb of shamanic spirit paths
which, according to the wonderful account by Yanomami Davi
Kopenawa, traverse the Amazonian forest like a network that is
invisible to the naked eye but sparkles like a crystal for the shamans
(Kopenawa and Albert [2010] 2013; see also Viveiros de Castro
2007). There are as many Xapiri paths as there are birds, plants or
other forms of biodiversity. So for Indigenous people and numer-
ous other alarmed voices, the streets and great dams which redi-
rect rivers risk the destruction of the multiple paths that link all
345
living forms. Stripped of its biodiversity, the forest has already been
partially transformed into savannahs or deserts where human and
non-human inhabitants of these lands suffer, increasingly due to
the pollution of local waters with mercury (used in goldmining)
and other contaminants such as oil. Scientists, for their part, have
been able to demonstrate that the disappearance of oxygen due to
the local destruction of the forest severely threatens the rest of our
environments across the planet (Werf et al. 2009) In relation to
the survival of human and non-human populations, the affirmation
of the interconnectivity of sites traversed by ancestral traces and
tracings that are both material and spiritual, visible and invisible
can be found as a critical issue in all the ontologies that Descola
distinguishes (totemic, animist, analogist or even naturalist). I for
one believe that common practices make it possible to bring certain
ontological traits, traits of singularity as Guattari would say, closer
together in a way that doesn’t deny their diversity. For instance,
some groups which Descola distinguishes according to his ontologi-
cal categories (Australians as totemists and Amazonians as animists)
are less different when one looks at their shamanic practices. In
the same way, certain Indigenous conceptions of intersubjectivity
that associate the self, others (human or not) and the environment
in extended relations of aliveness create a new form of ontological
‘commons’: such a process of subjectification can offer a response to
the current challenges of global climate change and social injustice,
a posture that is radically opposed to the one held by those respon-
sible for these threats or those who speculate on accelerationism and
transhumanism (Srnicek and Williams 2013).3
In the 1960s and 1970s, a new appreciation of Indigenous peoples
crystallised in a valourisation of nature shared by the so-called hippie
movement, groups advocating vegetarian and later GMO-free diets,
and philosophies of organic architecture. In part, this new apprecia-
tion grew out of various Indigenous struggles to affirm a mode of
existence in close spiritual relation with the environment, a struggle
that passed through claims for land rights and land use. Thus in
1983 the Arrernte women of the Alice Springs region held that the
construction of a dam that would destroy Welatye Therre or ‘Two
Breasts’, their sacred site related to mother’s milk, imperilled the
3
See also Matteo Pasquinelli’s (2014) ‘The Labour of Abstraction. Seven Transitional
Theses on Marxism and Accelerationism’ and Frédéric Neyrat’s (2014a) comment
on it in Multitudes 56. See also Neyrat (2017).
346
fertility and nursing quality of not only the site’s guardian women but
also of women from other linguistic groups who guard the Dreamline
that connects this site to other places from Southern Australia all the
way to the Tiwi Islands in the north. Furthermore, these guardians of
Arrernte land and law insisted that the breastfeeding and fertility of
all the women living on the Australian continent would be affected
by the destruction of the site. They then received massive support
from other women, Aboriginal and otherwise, and well as Australian
and international feminist movements.
At the time, these protests were successful in protecting the site
and I evoked this example in a 1984 article entitled ‘Les tribus
du rêve cybernétique’ (‘The Tribes of the Cybernetic Dream’). New
digital technologies which were then invented in California tried to
combine a set of values respectful of the Earth with the notion of
generalised interconnection. That is what seduced Félix Guattari and
Gilles Deleuze in their writings, which were later taken up by many
practitioners and thinkers of cyberspace.
SF and Slow Anthropology

We can ask ourselves if the Aboriginal notion of the Dreaming, which
links society and nature by energetic self-referential feedback loops,
does not offer a philosophy adapted to our epoch in search of theories
concerning matter and energy. The fascination that Aboriginal people
provoke (among some people) is probably part of this intuition. We
are close to a science fiction universe when we think that these peoples
have survived 40,000 years of the Earth’s geographical transformations
and that they speak today of sacred sites where we find petroleum and
uranium. Aboriginal people say that we must not destroy these energies,
because they are part of a vast regulatory cycle that gives meaning to
the life and death of humans. Thus it is with as much ease as detach-
ment (which troubles our evolutionary values) that they adopt all of
the material goods that our technological cornucopia proposes: houses,
cars, and media can be used, they say, but the most important is to keep
contact with the energies of the Earth and the Dreaming . . . In American
military bases isolated in the desert, engineers sometimes have peculiar
visions. For example, the vision of an Aboriginal man would appear out
of nowhere in the computer room, then evaporate, but not before saying
in a cavernous voice, that they must cease what they are doing there . . .’
(Glowczewski 1984: 162)
When I wrote this in 1984, Félix Guattari suggested that I read

Vico, Whitehead and Simondon, and to use the notion of ‘singularity’
347
to translate the Aboriginal understanding of energy as ‘image-forces’

that actualise and re-virtualise themselves through ritual in order
to distinguish this from the non-renewable energies produced by
humans.4 The rumours of Dreaming voices haunting the US bases
of the Central Australian desert inspired Wim Wenders to direct his
1991 science fiction film set at the end of the twenty-first century enti-
tled Until the End of the World. With a nuclear satellite having lost
control, the film tells of an eccentric scientist who is obsessed with
controlling time through the technological visualisation of dreams,
and works in a secret laboratory in the Australian desert where he
experiments on the brains of his wife, his son’s partner Claire and
even on himself, up until the point of total exhaustion: the death of
his wife, the delirious fixations of Claire and the final destruction of
the research base.
The generalised interconnectivity and transversality of human
and non-human, animal and machinic subjectivities that Deleuze
and Guattari theorised in their writings is today – it seems to
me – sometimes misunderstood by those who use them to support
transhumanism and those who cite them all the while reproaching
Deleuze and Guattari for legitimising a ‘geo-engineering’ that aims
to modify the climate rather than change our modes of existence
in relation to the milieu. Of course, we do not know what they
would say with regards to the evolution of the world since the
1990s. But I do not think that Deleuze and Guattari would support
absurd geo-engineering projects since these projects fundamentally
fall outside what they valued and defended most: the responsible
and ethical influence of the micropolitical on the macropolitical,
creative of dissensus.5 Evidence of this, amongst others, is the par-
ticular interest that Félix Guattari expressed in the Walpiri people’s
relationship to dreams when he read my thesis in 1983, which
nourished his cartography of four semiotic types in mutual tension
with one another.
semiotics of subjectification (including architecture, town planning,
public amenities, etc.) operate like existential territories (real and virtual).
techno-scientific semiologies, (plans, diagrams, programs, studies,
research) operate like machinic phylums (actual and possible).
4
See Chapters 1 and 2 of this book.
5
An approach very different from Bateson’s consensual conflict resolution is found
in Félix Guattari’s late lecture ‘Producing a Culture of Dissensus: Heterogenesis
and an Aesthetic Paradigm’ (Guattari 1991).
348
economic semiotics (monetary, financial, and accountancy mecha-

nisms) operate like flows (actual and real).
juridical semiotics (property deeds, various legislative measures and
regulations) operate like incorporeal universes of value (possible and
virtual). (Guattari [1989] 2000: 48)
Later, Deleuze cited my book Du Rêve à la Loi chez les Aborigènes
(1991) (From Dreaming to the Law Among Aboriginal Australians)
with regards to the cartographic relation between the imaginary and
the real: ‘This is why the imaginary and the real must be, rather,
like two juxtaposable or superimposable parts of a single trajec-
tory, two faces that ceaselessly interchange with one another. Thus
Aboriginal Australians link nomadic itineraries to dream voyages,
which together compose “an interstitching of routes,” in an immense
cut-out [découpe] of space and time that must be read like a map’
(Deleuze 1997: 63). From the perspective of transversal assem-
blages of singularities, the Aboriginal approach to reticular thinking
allowed me to explore their multiple relations to space and time
as a cosmopolitics, in the sense that Isabelle Stengers defines the
term (Stengers 2005). Contrary to the cosmopolitanism promoted
by Bernard Henry Lévy and Guy Scarpetta in 1981 who went to
war against all claims for identity or territory,6 for Stengers the
notion of the cosmopolitical is inspired as much by her critique
of scientific disenchantment as by the emergence of new alliances,
such as those forged between the ecofeminists and the movement of
Wiccan witches, who have revived an interest in the re-enchantment
of a political world equally anchored in the body, mind and flesh, as
well as in mineral, vegetal and atmospheric matter (Stengers 2011).
Wenders’ film, where the scientist does not understand the creative
breadth of Aboriginal dream-work, as well as the novel Polynesia,
where the cults fall back onto ontological categories that become cari-
catural, stay within a certain science fiction tradition where science
and its technological fantasies are the main motor of dramatic intrigue.
Quentin Meillassoux opposes this literary tradition, in the name of a
certain speculative realism, to what he calls a science fiction ‘outside
science’, as the only path to imagine other worlds (Meillassoux 2015).
In its own way, this notion of science fiction ‘outside science’ refuses
the accelerationist logic of the sciences and echoes what Isabelle
6
See Lévy’s ‘Le fascisme à la française’ (Fascism the French Way) and Scarpetta’s
‘Le cosmopolitisme, encore, plus que jamais’ (Cosmopolitism, Still, More than
Ever) in Art Presse 45 (1981) and my response in Art Presse 47 (1981), p. 2.
349
Stengers calls ‘slow science’. She elaborates the idea through the poly-
semic notion of ‘SF’, which for Donna Haraway can be equally read as
‘science fiction’, ‘scientific fact’, or ‘string figures’ (in reference to the
figures made during string games) (Haraway 2013, 2015). Stengers
explains that the correlations at work in ‘slow’ scientific reasoning
correspond to the necessary correlations for passing from one string
figure to another, a passage which always implies a relation, as the
input of one person’s hands changes the string figure held by the other.
The process implied in the transformations of these figures is an image
(but not a metaphor) for expressing what Stengers in her introduction
calls speculative gestures that can ‘slowly and softly’ change reality
(Stengers and Debaise 2015). I accept her invitation to think how the
‘slow’ social sciences could create the conditions to promote string
figures as well as science fiction. ‘The plea of Whitehead regarding the
task of universities thus also aimed at a “slowing down” of science,
which is the necessary condition for thinking with abstractions and
not obeying to abstractions . . . I would then characterize slow science
as the demanding operation which would reclaim the art of dealing
with, and learning from, what scientists too often consider messy,
that is, what escapes general, so called objective, categories’ (Stengers
2011: 6–7, 10). A science fiction ‘outside science’ joins in its own way
the ‘slowing down’ of science: at the level of anthropology it offers
one way to break out of causal and exclusive reasoning that traps us
in the sciences, exhausting our power to imagine other worlds, and
other ontologies for living on this Earth.
An example of a science fiction ‘outside science’ that invites one
to think another liveable world here and now, and that changes the
relationship to time and ‘objective’ categories of exclusion (between
races, species and spiritual phenomena), seems at work in the recent
television series Cleverman, created by Australian Aboriginal film-
maker Ryan Griffen, whose title references the Australian medicine
men (see Burke 2016 and Griffen 2016). The series stars a young
Aboriginal man as its hero who inherits a superpower allowing him –
in spite of his initial rejection of it – to intervene in an Australia where
strange beings from another dimension, called ‘the Hairy people’, are
sequestered behind a security wall or locked in prison. These char-
acters hark back to ancestral monsters from the Dreaming that are
present in the mythology of several Aboriginal groups in Australia.
But the series chooses to incarnate them in the role of a ‘prehuman’
minority that has been given the right to live amongst humans. In the
series, the acceptance of the Hairy men and women (monsters who
350
scared Aboriginals long before they appeared in the science fiction

series) stands in for an acceptance of Australia’s diverse peoples:
Aboriginals, Whites, and the waves of other migrants from the Pacific,
Asia or Africa, as much as the refugees and asylum seekers. The Hairy
people are ‘monsters’ and their traits resemble the Neanderthals,
the ancestors of man.7 The fantastical cinema of superheroes has
garnered extreme popularity the world over, particularly amongst
youth who ‘recognise themselves’ in it, not just as if they share in
a popular culture but more as if they themselves participate in the
refounding of a veritable mythology. It is not a question of creating
a monolithic culture, but of valourising possibilities for human and
non-human diversity where different spaces and times intermix. We
cannot underestimate the subjectifying force of these stories since
they circulate across the world. The truth of their impact cannot be
evaluated by separating their form (films, video games, costumes and
accessories) from their content, and pretending to define this content
as the basis for the ontology of a society or a religion. The popular-
ity of superheroes and other human-nonhuman hybrids (demons,
zombies, vampires, werewolves, humanoid robots or clones, aliens,
etc.) must be understood beyond their symbolic efficacy or the authe-
niticity of their foundation. Something asignifying about them, in
the Guattarian sense, puts intensities and collective assemblages of
enunciation into play that act and traverse subjectivities, creating a
complicity, a shared world that could elicit a new mode of collective
existence. An activist mockumentary shot in black and white featured
an Aboriginal man in a superman costume named Superboong – a
reappropriated insult – who intervenes against racism and injustice
(see ‘The rise of the Aboriginal superhero’). The invention of worlds
proposed by superheroes participates in the production of new myths
whose wide visibility gives rise to a new ‘cultural patrimony’; an SF
interactive imaginary with a real role for youth, that also produces
new forms of subjectification reinforced by the way the audience
comments on all of this and actualises it in their lives using social
media. For instance, J. K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter is
currently being criticised on Twitter for supporting Donald Trump’s
rhetoric on free speech and has also come under recent scrutiny from
Native Americans for the way she uses their mythology in her latest
book and film.
7
This is far from what the Breakthrough Institute, reinforced by Latour’s ‘Love
Your Monsters’, calls for: man-made technological products.
351
In this context, an Aboriginal auteur’s use of the TV series format

to develop a Cleverman superhero, who has a White mother and
refuses to accept his father’s ancestry of Aboriginal medicine men
until he finally decides to accept the superpowers and become an
avenger of justice in a contemporary urban landscape, reflects an
ontological strategy in the ecosophic sense of Félix Guattari, in that
it is at once aesthetically, ethically and politically critical (a strategy
that knots the mental, social and environmental ecologies, in a milieu
that is equally technical and natural). If university criticism with
respect to superhero films can exhaust or exhaust itself in academic
rhetoric, just like many films of this genre that incessantly repeat ste-
reotypes, this Aboriginal director’s reappropriation of them invites
us, rather, to imagine and produce new ontological alliances.
Ecosophy and Indigenous Alliances

They open the door for us so that we can enter
but they close their heart and mind and plug their ears.
What can we do?
Plenty of things, even a hunger strike.
But there is one thing we must never do:
We must never give up our rights, never!!
(‘Bonne nouvelle de l’ONU’)
These are the concluding words of a text written in 2004 during a
hunger strike at the United Nations by seven Indigenous delegates –
including Alexis Tiouka, a Kali’na activist from French Guiana.8 The
hunger strike is yet another ecosophic type of ontological strategy
that accompanies the struggles of Indigenous people. In 2007, the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was signed by all
countries except four – Australia, the United States, New Zealand
and Canada – who all later decided to support the Declaration after
changes in government. In 2008, Australia and Canada held large
national ceremonies to ask their Aboriginal populations to pardon the
abuses they have suffered, such as the forced separation of children
8
The hunger strike signatories include: Adelard Blackman, Buffalo River Dene
Nation, Canada; Andrea Carmen, Yaqui Nation, Arizona, United States; Alexis
Tiouka, Kaliña, Guyane Française; Charmaine White Face, Ogala Tetuwan, Sioux
Nation Territory, North America; Danny Billie, Traditional Independent Seminole
Nation of Florida, United States; Saul Vicente, Zapoteca, Mexico. See Tiouka and
Ferrarini (2017). See also the historical 1984 statement to the French government
by Félix Tiouka in Alexis Tiouka (2016).
352
from their families. The very same year in Ecuador, then in 2009 in
Bolivia, the principle of Buen vivir (living well) was adopted into
the constitutions of these two countries who recognise ‘the rights
of nature’ associated with Pachamama, the name of an Andean
goddess also revered by some groups of the Amazon and other
citizens, including Christians. Figures such as Pachamama, ‘by their
political-symbolic dimension, their hybrid position between nature
and culture, and their utility in spreading the revolutionary message,
can be sufficiently large to hold various cosmologies within them . . .
A prime example is how movements which are sometimes opposed to
one another, such as urban feminism and the trade unionism of rural
women, or Indigenous animists and analogists, by converging around
Pachamama and the rights of women, have been able to ally their
positions on a number of points’ (Landivar and Ramillien 2015: 36).
In 2010, at Cochabamba in Bolivia, 35,000 delegates from
45 countries signed The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother
Earth that has for its preamble ‘that we are all part of Mother Earth,
an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent
beings with a common destiny’.9 Mobilisation around this declaration
also proposes amendments to the Rome Statute of the Criminal Court
that would recognise the crime of ‘ecocide’.10 The internationalising
of the concept of Pachamama as the ‘maternal spirit of the Earth’,
like Indigenous reappropriation of superheroes in TV series, shows
the impact of new mythologies and rituals as active not only during
a performance at the UN, but as tools that traverse the daily lives of
all of the Earth’s actors. This impact of the large-scale recosmopo-
liticisation of ancient and local cosmological concepts stimulates the
virtuality of new subjectivities and ontologies that function differently
depending on the circumstances. In addition to its spiritual sense,
9
For a clip with the text of the Declaration, see: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=YU5HmTucTRg (accessed October 2018); Article 12: ‘Human beings
have the responsibility of respecting, protecting, preserving, and if necessary,
restoring the integrity of the cycles and equilibriums that are essential to the
Earth, and of putting precautionary and restrictive measures in place in order to
avoid the human activities that lead to the extinction of species, the destruction
of ecosystems or the alteration of ecological cycles.’
10
In 2014 the ‘Charter of Brussels’ officially asked for the establishment of an
International Criminal Court of the Environment and of Health: ‘The Charter
introduces Environmental crime as a crime against Humanity and calls for the
recognition of this principle by the United Nations’ (http://www.naturerights.
com/site/campagne_page-10.html). See also: https://www.endecocide.org/en/sign/
353
for some, the Pachamama ceremony for Mother Earth or Mother

Nature is a political protocol comparable to the Maori haka danced
by New Zealand’s sports teams (or the Ma’ohi from French Polynesia,
executed by various overseas French army bodies during the Bastille
Day parade in 2011) or the national anthems that reference the God
of Christianity even when one part of the country’s population is not
Christian. But in contrast to national, and even nationalist rituals, the
Pachamana ceremony is a transnational proposition that extends the
recognition of the living above and beyond the human.
At the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues held in New York
during May 2016, along with the rest of the audience I took part in
the Pachamama ceremony that opened a session on the condition of
Indigenous women that was followed by a number of declarations
and recommendations to states, including a letter from Ecuadorian
women to China, denouncing its destruction of their lands and live-
lihood by oil, gas and large hydraulic dam projects. Here again,
the local approach of a community from Ecuador, which addresses
itself to the Chinese state and a transnational company, echoes the
problems faced by Indigenous Australians, particularly those from
the north-west of the Kimberley where the Chinese have bought land
and become the largest landowner in Australia in order to undertake
a massive shale gas fracking project. As has now been revealed, not
only have the two companies corrupted some Australian political
representatives with astronomical sums of money, but the continent
that partly depends on this region’s water is under the threat of a
complete drought (Cole 2016).
The Kimberley groups in Australia are engaged in a soil ‘cleans-
ing’ programme, a term used to describe the traditional practice of
controlled small bush fires during the wet season which prevents
good plants from being overrun by weeds that are susceptible during
the dry season to wildfires that destroy everything on their path for
hundreds of kilometres.11 Scientists needed time to understand the
wisdom of this ancient practice that today is encouraged by all of
the natural parks that hire Aboriginal men and women for their
knowledge. The strategy has proven itself to be an impressive way to
cut carbon emissions which are exceedingly high in Australia due to –
amongst other reasons – fires that ravage the continent each year. It is
promoted as a model which can be exported and it qualifies for what
11
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqqU-RNkfWk and https://www.you
tube.com/watch?v=mSn2gv3tP60
354
is called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest

Degradation), a form of monetary compensation for carbon emission
reducers, in this case Aboriginals represented by the KLC (Kimberley
Land Council), but also their sponsor, Shell, which thus appears to
be cleared of the emissions caused by its extractive activities.12
During the COP21 (2015 United Nations Climate Change
Conference), diverse official and unofficial meetings discussed
the ambiguity of REDD+ and the trap of ‘commodifying’ nature.
Certain communities don’t have any choice but to participate in the
REDD+ programmes that at least allow them to stay in the forest
in a process of permanently negotiating with the resource extrac-
tion companies. But Indigenous peoples are increasingly looking to
replace these accords with collective land-based programmes that
inherently oppose extractivist industries, from fossil fuels to renew-
able energies, as well as large-scale dams, falsely presented by some
as a ‘clean’ solution even though they destroy the ecosystems by
diverting the river networks that maintain the forest’s biodiversity.
As the Alliance of Mother Nature’s Guardians underline in their text,
if the Indigenous peoples are the guardians of the forest, rivers and
roots, their ethnocide also constitutes an act of ‘ecocide’ (Alliance des
Gardiens de Mère Nature 2015: 163).13
Through these sorts of transplanetary meetings, new awarenesses
are formed and new alliances forged. That is not to say that all dif-
ferences are flattened in an ecumenical mould. In fact, the different
Indigenous speakers at the UN insist on their respective singularities
but allow themselves to compare their respective practices to build
bridges and find common solutions to issues that affect the entire
planet, and to call us to change our economy and lifestyles.
The political importance of these alternative modes of existence
to our present ways is confirmed by the fact that Indigenous leaders
are often threatened. What may appear to some to be anecdotal or
exotic forms of resistance, when put into practice on the ground,
become sufficiently threatening to the giants – mining companies
12
‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is
an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering
incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and
invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development’ (http://www.un- redd.
org/how-we-work).
13
See also Nidala Barker’s statement about the criminal impact on life through
fracking in the Kimberley, at the session on Water during the Indigenous Embassy
at the Bellevilloise, in Paris, during the 2015 COP21 (Glowczewski 2016b).
355
and other powers – who try to get rid of these little Davids, first
with money, destruction and child abduction, as recently seen in
Mexico, or with assassinations, like those of the Guarani in Brazil
or of ecological activists, like Berta Cáceres, leader of the Council of
Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH) (see
‘Environmental and Indigenous rights leader murdered in Honduras’,
Euronews (2016)). In conclusion, it seems vital that an ecosophic
ontology reinvents itself from day to day, to support Indigenous
peoples in their ontological becomings that they continuously rede-
fine in synch with new transnational and transdisciplinary alliances
that resist and confront other international economic and financial
alliances that destroy the planet and all that lives – and stands – on
and with it.
356
PART V
Dancing with the Spirits of the Land

Figure 13.1 An image of Exu incorporated in Father Abilio was filmed in
Florianopolis by B. G., who projects it on Clarissa Alcantara dancing in Geneva.
Extracted from the Cosmocolours performance filmed by Sandra Alves 2015
Figure 13.2 An image of a Pomba Gira incorporation is projected by B. G. on

Clarissa Alcantara who incorporates in turn. Extracted from the Cosmocolours
performance filmed by Sandra Alves 2015
13
Cosmocolours:
A Filmed Performance of Incorporation and a
Conversation with the Preta Velha Vó Cirina
On the other hand (. . .) a more ‘post-modern’ position might insist that

the ethnographer or anthropologist can only hope to ‘represent’ native
words and life in his texts, whilst trances and possessions aim more
to present a force rather than to represent a substance. In this case, it
could be replied that the rapprochement between those different modes
of learning could precisely help us to escape from the representationalist
empire, which post-modern thinkers, themselves, have pointed out as
anthropology’s limit. (Goldman 2015: 24)
The performance Cosmocolours that I proposed for the exhibition
The Beast and Adversity (Geneva, 2015) is a step in a long process of
questioning that has haunted my work as an anthropologist since my
first fieldwork in Australia in 1979, when I filmed desert Aboriginal
rituals.1 Until then I was using an intermittent mode to record frame
by frame the 16 mm film strip, so as to produce experimental films
working on rhythmic superimpositions and flickering pulsating lights:
a music for the eyes and a visual exploration for our senses. In place
of narrative, the fabrication of discontinuous images working on
perception so as to interrupt the continuity of movement. Inspired by
the movement of independent cinema and promoted at the University
of Paris 8 in the forest of Vincennes, near Paris) by the film-makers
Claudine Eizykman and Guy Fihman, this research was aiming to
produce a dis-narrative effect with a material, and sensory perceptual
1
This text was first published in Portugese and in English in the bilingual Brazilian
online journal of visual anthroplogy: GIS, Gesto, Imageme e Som (2 (1): 274–99
[2017]): http://www.revistas.usp.br/gis/article/view/129204 (accessed October
2018). It was written first in Portugese with the help of Clarissa Alcantara and
later translated into English by the author. Special thanks to Clarissa for her inspi-
ration, hospitality and dance, and to the author’s daughters, Milari Barker and
Nidala Barker, for their proofreading of the English version. Milari took part in
the Geneva performances and Nidala met Vó Cirina in Florianopolis in February
2015.
359
effect of discontinuity, by playing with the 24 frames per second

scrolling of the 16 mm film roll. Personally, apart from the aesthetic
and sensory dimension, I was also looking for a way to provoke
altered states of consciousness arising from these subliminal stimuli.
Such experimentations were echoing experimental films made at the
beginning of cinema by artists like Maya Deren (1947–1953), an
anthropologist, who was also questioning how to render forces at
play in rituals and trances that she observed, particularly in Haïti.
To film in the Central Australian desert in 1979, I used a little
Pathé Webo 16 mm camera, which only fitted 3 minute cartridges.
My shots were not even longer than a quarter of a second each,
and with many superimpostions created by rewinding the camera
to re-film on images previously shot. This process created effects
of superimposed images at different rhythms, mixing (in the same
frame) close-ups with zooming movement and wide angle shots with
the line of the horizon displaced as a diagonal and flickering scintil-
lating rhythms; the Warlpiri women, whose rituals I had filmed,
were not really convinced by my attempt to transpose in that way
their relation to what they call Jukurrpa and which they translate in
English as ‘The Dreaming(s)’. To help the viewers to capture some-
thing of this Aboriginal cosmovision of the dreaming process, I had
assumed, mistakenly, that I could suggest the condensation process
characterising dreams, by ‘retranslating’ it through visual experi-
mentations – constrained by the possibilities of a mechanical camera.
Well, the Warlpiri specialists of dream – that is, women who use
their dreams to communicate with ancestral totemic animals, plants,
rain or wind – asked me to film ‘normally’ so as to respect the right
‘rhythm’ of their dances, where they are said to ‘become’ particular
ancestral totemic forces. In those days, in the 1970s, the Warlpiri
women were not familiar with films based on special effects which
were going to be globally popularised later on. So, I filmed ‘normally’
(Glowczewski 2014) and it is 15 minutes of those ‘normal’ images
(16 mm, silent) that I presented at the performance in Geneva.
Like Maya Deren, who did not find in the dreamlike work of
surrealism a response to the transmission of spiritual experiences
(Sullivan 2001), I was asking myself how to render and make feel the
‘presence’ of a ritual, with its affects and effects, in a way that would
escape the reduction induced by any commented representation of
a filmed sequence. Anna Barseghian’s invitation to participate in
her exhibition project The Beast and Adversity stimulated me to try
a visual experience that would confront my images of Australian
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Cosmocolours
rituals with the Umbanda rituals that I had recently filmed in Brazil.2
I was motivated by the desire to make (others) feel that beyond the
diversity of these rituals, there is something that feels ‘common’, that
is, the specific intention of these types of cosmovisions to facilitate,
through the collective assemblage, the emergence of a multiplicity of
becomings in each of the participants that desires so: in Australia,
totemic becomings of the Dreamings, ancestral forces shared by
humans, animals, plants, wind or rain; in Brazil, ancestral becomings
of African divinities, the Orixás, and spirits of Caboclo, Preto Velho,
Beijada, Exu and Pomba-Gira.
After witnessing hundreds of Aboriginal totemic rituals in which people
‘become’ the totems that are given as their ‘dreamings’ since birth or
initiation, I was surprised to see in Brazil some episodes in the Umbanda
rituals that seemed to present certain features that I thought were specific
to Australia. In fact, both kinds of ritual respond in their own way to
Guattari’s definition of ‘I is another, a multiplicity of others, embodied at
the intersection of partial components of enunciation, overflowing individ-
uated identity and the organized body in all directions’. (Chaosmosis: 83)
I met many Brazilians who have been at least once to a Candomblé
or Umbanda house of a pai or mãe de santo (father or mother of saint)
for a divination with cowrie shells and stones to find out which Orixá
(sometimes two or more) they carry ‘inside’ them as a virtuality that
may or may not be actualized. It takes a relatively long initiation for
the ‘medium’ to be ready for his/her Orixá to manifest during the cult.
Certain people choose not to engage in this process, while others, even
after initiation, may never experience it. In other words, ‘becoming orixá’
appears different from the notion of a body being passively possessed as
the vehicle for an Orixá. People talk about being incorporated, receiving
a shade or ‘working’ as a medium. (Glowczewski 2015: 36)
When I went back to Brazil, in 2015, I asked Clarissa Alcantara
(2011) – performing artist, philosopher, schizoanalytical therapist
trained in Deleuze and Guattari studies,3 involved, for many years, in
2
See: https://www.utopiana.art/en/cosmocouleurs. I was invited, from February
to July 2013, by CAPES and CNPq to give a course (in anthropology) at USFC
and to give conferences at other universities: USP, PUC-SP, UFRGS, UFG, UFPE,
Fundação Joaquim Nabuco in Recife, UFMS, UFSCAR e UFPEL-RS. Special
thanks to all these Brazilian institutions for the opportunity to carry out this
research.
3
Alcantara and Glowczewski met in Uberaba, at the International Congress of
Schizoanalysis and Schizodrama organised by the Fundação Gregorio Baremblitt,
in 2013. Alcantara was then invited to participate at the conference organised
361
the type of rituals I filmed in Brazil – if she would accept to collabo-

rate with me for the presentation in Geneva. The proposition was
to create a performative dance, where images made during a session
of Exu (with a recording of dances by the participants in a state of
incorporation by Orixás and other entities) would be projected onto
her, such as might be done onto an animated screen. The movement
of her body, that already had lived through and embodied different
states of incorporation as a medium, would allow to ‘reflect’ in a real
and figurative sense different aspects of the multiplicity incorporated
in the filmed people. Clarissa responded enthusiastically to this pro-
posal which brought together art, anthropology, philosophy and the
sacred, an assemblage that also corresponded to her own research, as
explained in her post-doctoral project:
. . . at the intersection of different fields of knowledge, taking as a motto
a research started in 1988, called Teatro Desessência, the Theatre of ‘de-
essence’ and my relation with the image and the oblivion, I will investigate
now the framework of an anthropological perspective. This research is
made of combinations rising between art, philosophy, literary theory and
psychological clinic, from the invention of a practice of performance, the
‘act/process’ (ato/processo), and my devices (dispositivos) for producing
image in the process of corporeal, visual and sound language, articulated
with pragmatics of schizoanalysis, as proposed by Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari.4
We went together to talk with the Father of saints Abílio Noé da
Silveira, Babalorixá of the Tenda Espírita Vó Cirina in Florianópolis,
the ‘Spiritual tent’ located in his private house where I had filmed
sessions of incorporations, every Thursday, from February till June
2013. With generosity and confidence, he accepted the project. I
filmed, in February 2015, three other sessions of incorporations and
called the project in French Cosmocouleurs (Cosmocolours), refer-
ring to the different colours that characterise each of the Orixás (red
for Iansã, yellow for Oxum, green for Oxóssi, blue for Yemanjá,
etc.), and for each of the phalanges (falange) of spirits: red and black
at the Federal University of Santa Catarina by M. Grossi and B. Glowczewski

as part of her research programme, TransOceanik (an International Associated
Laboratory between the CNRS and James Cook University in Australia): Blurred
Interfaces: Questioning Norms, Classifications and the Primacy of Language,
27–29 May 2013, UFSC – Florianópolis, Brasil.
4
Teatro Desessência: imagem e esquecimento, a temporalidade do devir.
Unpublished project, 2014.
362
Cosmocolours
for Exu, white and black for Preto Velho (old Black people), green
for Caboclos (Indigenous people and their descendants of mixed
ancestry), pink and light blue for Beijada (children). The colours
of the clothes of the mediums correspond to the entities that they
prepare themselves to incorporate; and the fabrics that cover the ata-
baque drums also relate to specific Orixás. All these colours translate
heterogeneous spaces that constitute the cosmos of those Orixás,
but who manifest and multiply themselves simultaneously trough
several mediums, in each terreiro, as the place for such events. The
term Cosmocolours translates these cosmopolitics that connect het-
erogeneous spaces with a given place and moment. An event which
has its own time, in the ritual, deterritorialising and reterritorialising
the participants.
The performance Cosmocolours that took place in the room Le
Commun (BAC – Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain) in Geneva, on 21
August 2015, unfolded over two hours and a half, in four stages.
First, images were projected on Clarissa Alcantara; secondly, images
of Umbanda filmed in 2013 were projected on a wall; thirdly, an
image filmed in 2015 was projected on another wall, at an angle with
the images of the first wall; during the whole time of the projection
I told a story, standing in the dark of the room to accompany the
images of the Umbanda sessions (Beijada, Preto Velho, Caboclo and
Exu) and interviews with Father Abílio. During the fourth stage, I
commented the Warlpiri women rituals that I had filmed, without
sound, in the Central Australian desert in 1979; the images were
projected alone on the first wall. Finally, there was a half an hour
conversation with all the audience. After the event, back in Paris,
I edited with Dominique Masson a 28’ version of the performance
(that she filmed): Cosmocouleurs – Incorporations can be seen
through Vimeo, on the website of the curators of the exhibition La
Bête et l’Adversité.5
For the online Brazilian journal GIS (Gesture Image and Sound),
I chose the first part of the performance, with Clarissa Alcantara
dancing for 7 minutes, as filmed by the Brazilian film-maker Sandra
Alves.6 Clarissa’s white cloak, like a long veil and dress spread in
5
See paper commenting the film in the exhibition catalogue, Barsaghian et
Christensen (eds) 2017 and the film here: Cosmocouleurs (28’, 2015): https://
vimeo.com/173509321
6
Cosmocores (7’, 2015): https://vimeo.com/208347518, password cosmocores
2017*
363
front of her body, served as a screen for the projection. I trailed

her, projector in hand. The first experimentation of this setting (dis-
positivo) was done with Clarissa, in March 2015, at the terreiro of
Babalorixá Kabila Aruanda,7 now called Nação Livre de Culto aos
Orixás Korrente da Alegria de Aruanda, located in Embu das Artes,
a couple of hours from São Paulo. Clarissa Alcantara saw my films
of the Tenda Espírita Vó Cirina and selected for the performance a
sequence of a session of Exu and Pomba-Gira: ancestral spirits of
dead people, men and women linked with pleasure and lust, who
(after death) turned themselves into messengers between Orixás and
humans.
During the performance in Geneva, Clarissa kneeling head down
rose very slowly to dance. In the dark, a few metres away, carrying
the projector at different heights, sometimes squatting or walking
closer to Clarissa, I tried to make the beam of the twirling move-
ments (giros) of Exus and Pomba-Giras coincide with her own move-
ments. Sometimes a close shot of a face would cover all her body,
other times an entire silhouette would turn like her, or a group of
different entities would multiply on the white outfit of the dancer,
including ogãs, that is people who do not enter a trance, but help the
entities and can also beat the atabaque drums. It is important to note
that the film presents an angle of vision chosen by film-maker Sandra
Alves, who moved around to film, creating a point of view different
from the angle adopted by Dominique Masson, who was posted just
behind me: these two angles are also different from the one I had, or
from the diverse ones observed by the people sitting on my right or
left in the room of the BAC. In other terms, the experience of pro-
jected images on the costume of the dancer that looked like a series
of veils in movement – very strongly felt in each instant by myself as
well as Clarissa and the audience – belongs to the moment of the per-
formance event that filming cannot give back to feel in the same way.
Similarly, according to the public, the story that I improvised along
7
Clarissa Alcantara invited Kabila Aruanda with other Brazilian artists, film-maker
Sandra Alves, musician Ive Luna and ten iaôs (sons and daughters of saints), art-
ists of the Usina da Alegria Planetária – UAP, a collective created by Kabila – to
participate in the Geneva exhibition The Beast and Adversity, by making together
a performance Act/process-ritual Fury, on 22 August 2015. The day after, Kabila
talked about his experience and collective mode of existence in Aruanda (Alcantara
2016).
364
Cosmocolours
the images projected on the wall stimulated a presence effect that

would be difficult to produce with a simple commentary in the film.
In August 2016, when we worked on this paper, Clarissa sum-
marised her experience in this way:
The dance proposed by Barbara in Cosmoscores (Cosmocolours), did not
happen, for me, only like a performative dance. Art is sacred, intensified
by the proposed device/arrangement (dispositivo), forced a passage to
another type of opening. A new dimension was introduced, developing
the performance: the sacred was materialised in a subtle state of incorpo-
ration. The long white cape chosen by Kabila Aruanda, that he had made
especially for a ritual of bombogira Dona Maria Gertrudes, the founder
of his terreiro, served, not just as a screen for the projection of the Exus
and Pomba-Giras images, but also as a vehicle for the vibration of a femi-
nine Orixá, Iansã: the proper force of the winds, lightning, tempests, that
also govern and guard the universe of all Exus. In the absence of a ritual
symbolic mediation, it is thanks to the strange mystery of mediumnity,
that Iansã, anonymous and imperceptible to the others, embodied herself
there, penetrating her vibratile force in each breath of my body. During
Cosmocores, in fact, she was the one dancing.
For me, the beauty and strength of Clarissa’s performance in Geneva

created a presence allowing in its own way to recreate the presence
of multiple becomings, suggesting the effective co-existence and the
capacity to affect those who were attending. During the performance,
as images were projected on her, I felt that our interaction was lifting
her breath to another space-time. I allowed myself, then, to be sucked
into a sort of vortex, materialised by the luminous beams that I
projected on her. She seemed to merge herself within the projected
image, as much as the people that I had filmed in a state of incorpora-
tion were starting to live and animate her silhouette by multiplying
her presence. I had a strange conscience of the presence of the public,
a little bit as if I was feeling them not behind or next to me but from
the point of view of what was animating itself in front of us, as if we
had all crossed the mirror of the projection. It is only when Clarissa
cowered herself in the corner of the walls (under the frame of a new
film projected from the ceiling) that I recovered my own feet on the
ground to carry me to give her my hand to lift her up and take her
out of the dance floor. The words that came to me afterwards so to
accompany the images from the terreiro Tenda Espírita Vó Cirina
came naturally, without having been prepared in this way. During
the final debate, the public expressed how they were very receptive to
all that had happened.
365
Back in Florianópolis in September 2015, Clarissa Alcantara and

Sandra Alves visited Father Abílio at the Tenda Espírita Vó Cirina to
show him the filmed images of the performance and ask him if he con-
sented to their free access on Internet. He showed genuine happiness
and interest in seeing the images. Then quickly accepted their release.
A year later, on Thursday, 11 August, I went back with Clarissa to
the Tenda Espírita Vó Cirina to attend a new session of Preto Velho.
There I was delighted to meet the old sons and daughters of Father
Abílio, as well as a big number of new participants, notably many
young ones. Abílio was very busy giving consultations every day
of the week. I booked an appointment for Monday to consult with
the guardian spirit of the Tenda house, the Preta Velha (Black old
woman) Vó Cirina. We talked for an hour and a half. I tried to ask
my questions in Portuguese, though making many mistakes. Clarissa
helped me to clarify my questions and translate the responses of
Vó Cirina. Shortly after, Clarissa transcribed the conversation and
adapted my (recorded) questions in proper Portuguese, from which I
chose the various extracts proposed below.
It was a very rich teaching exchange. Most of all it showed how the
Vó Cirina spirit interpreted my spiritual and anthropological ques-
tioning so as to give a response that was a non-intellectual response,
but revealed to be at the same time anthropological and philosophi-
cal. Thus, from the spirit’s point of view, it was obvious that my
relation with religion since my childhood and my shared experience
with ‘índios’ (Aboriginal people) of Australia, was connected to a
feeling of the sacred and of socially grounded cosmological relations
(cosmopolitics) with the earth and its forces – common to the experi-
ence of the sacred, revealed by the Orixás – that was different from
Christianity. This declaration comes close here to a form of theo-
retical position that disagrees with various current theories which,
since the beginning of the discipline of anthropology tend to oppose
Australian totemism and cults of trance, such as Afro-Brazilian ones,
as two forms of religion or ontologies with non-compatible forms
of logic. It is obvious that Indigenous rituals and Afro-Brazilian
ones are different. Each of them in its particular way carries its own
singularity, not just as an Indigenous ritual or as an Afro-Brazilian
ritual, but also with different rituals for each of the many Indigenous
peoples (in Brazil as well as in Australia), or for each of the specific
terreiros (Umbanda Angola or not, Candomblé or other) while each
performance of these rituals is unique. However, a transversal trait
of singularity seems to connect them.
366
Cosmocolours
I was deeply struck when I saw for the first time, in 2013, the
incorporations of Orixás and spirits of dead in Umbanda, feeling
it as something familiar. My observation was that this feeling was
producing a sense of ‘common’ with what I had lived in Australia
during the rituals (dances, songs, paintings on the body) that mapped
totemic becomings of the Warlpiri Dreaming lines. I understood later
that this insight of ‘common’ is specifically articulated around the
valourisation of heterogeneity and multiplicity that manifest them-
selves both in Brazilian cults of African matrix and in Indigenous
Australian experiences of totemic becomings.
During the discussion that followed the Cosmocolours perfor-
mance in Geneva, several people shared their impressions in relation
to this multiplicity and the experience of a ‘common’, which is at the
same time social and spiritual.
One thing that I found really beautiful in these Brazilian ritual dances – as
you said, despite the fact that there is a type of image of the Brazilian
society as perfectly mixed, that would perfect, in practice we understand
that there is a blatant inequality between different populations – here (in
the rituals) differences are highlighted, but in fact, without hierarchy,
everybody is accepted. But, in fact, in this multitude, there is also – at least
in my eyes – a type of unity because everybody is accepted, this is what
touched me a lot. (Mucyo Karemara, Swiss young man, PhD candidate in
Physics, Cosmocolours debate. Geneva, 21 August 2015)
The multiplicity in constant becoming is also at the heart of Deleuze’s

philosophy and the ecosophy developed by his thought companion,
Félix Guattari, who accompanied my research (Glowczewski 2015).
I must admit that the experience of such a transversal complicity
with the spirit of the Black old woman, Preta Velha Vó Cirina (who
defines herself as an Orixá, because she helps everybody) brings
me joy.
It is not important if Vó Cirina exists or not as a spirit, she does
exist as affect and effect in the relations with the people who consult
her. Such relations are to be seen partly as the desire of each person.
In this sense, she reveals a reality that cannot be proved according
to a scientific mode, it is a ‘real’ that cannot be named. But we can
try to transmit the ethnographic presence using sentences of our
conversation, inviting the readers to live a subjective reading situa-
tion. An experience that reveals, beyond any image, another order
that does not assume a discursive order, nor any form of symbolic
language.
367
Figure 13.3 Cosmocolours, Barbara Glowczewski’s two-screen installation with

Brazilian Umbanda rituals, BAC (Building of Contemporary Art), Geneva 2015
Consultation of Barbara with Vó Cirina (Extract)

15 August 2016
B – When I was 24 I went to Australia and met Australian Indigenous
people.
VC – What I am going to say for start, is that her level is the same as
that of the ‘Indians’, I do not talk about the Indians? I talk. Because she
brings an energy of persons who already left, Tupi-Guarani, Guarani . . .
Therefore, you have everything at the spiritual level, you can even watch
(Christian ritual), but you are not going to feel well. Because Vó (the spir-
itual grandmother) and the Souls, Almas of Angola, which are Umbanda,
have Candomblé, but the foundation of all of it comes from the source
which is God alone. Only the fact that you did not accept this level (of
Church), accept this spiritual level, why? Because you came over already
with that mission since a little girl to assume it . . . this is why it could not
be done (that you become a nun).
B – When I met these people called Warlpiri, who have a very strong
spiritual relation (ligação) with animals, with the wind, with the moun-
tain, with the water, and they call this dreamings (sonhos, sonhares). In
their language, these relations/connections with animals, winds, plants,
are called dreams. They celebrate, sing the travels of ancestral beings,
a mixture of human and animal or plant people, wind people and rain
people, and all travel from place to place. Creating places, rocks, water-
falls, springs and waterholes.
368
Cosmocolours
VC – And like Vovó says: you talked about the waterfall, it’s the
energy of Oxum. They are Orixás that live in the waterfall. You talked
about the wind. Wind, what works with the wind? It is Iansa. You talk
about rocks. Xango. Xango vibrates at the beginning of the waterfall, in
the middle of the waterfall where Oxum lives. Only inside our ritual of
the Souls of Angola do we hold two qualities for Oxum, we have Oxum
Apa Apará (. . .?) and Oxumaré. Why Oxumaré? Because during six
months it’s a man, and during six months it’s a woman. You talked about
the waters, there is Yemanja. All that you heard here, our talks, it all has
to do with your Self it is your own spiritual level, my daughter. There is
nothing wrong. You talked about the beast (bicho), the animal . . . (Vó
Cirina sings)
‘Oxossi is the hunter, I love to see hunting. Oxosssi is the hunter, I love
to see hunting. In the day he hunts in the forest, in the night he hunts in
the sea’
Why? Because he is a hunter, he kills to eat. The forest is where Oxossi
lives, who is an Orixa who never incorporated in a human being, for this
(reason) he comes as Orixa. If it was like me, I already lived on the earth,
I am an egun, evolved from light. Caboclo is egun, Beijada are egun, but
they are evolved. But the rest of our saints are Orixas, they are brought
they were born inside the waterfall. I have the foundations (fundamen-
tals?) that has a Vo, I have the knowledge of a Vo, né (isn’t that so), my
daughter, there are things that I cannot answer. There are mysteries of
life, that’s it.
B – For Aboriginal people, the ‘índios’ of Australia, every child when it
is born embodies (incorpora) the spirit of a place that links her/him to an
animal, a plant or wind, etc. all newborn children. This revelation shows
in a dream.
VC – Really! When Jurunata, who is an Indian man, who came in the
head of my son the first time, the first time he incorporated in my son.
Jurunata, who is an Indian man, was born in Uruguay (and lived) until 21,
then for reason of fight over land they hurt him, né, he disincarnated. When
he arrived on the strip (terreiro) for the first time, he asked to plant a stem
of a tree, the one here on the front, araçá, this red araçá, you know? These
two stems that are here, are his, they were planted in his name, because he
lives from the energy of the green leaves, when he came in the head of my
son for the first time, and the stem here is his. And it can be removed from
here chopped only when my son is no longer here. This is his.
B –What is the link of this spirit with Vó Cirina
VC – when I opened my house, my son opened it with me with
mother Yemanjá, and we needed another spiritual person that works
369
with leaves. Then, in this space (arraial=terreiro) the Vó made a ponto

(ponto riscado, a special ‘cross out’ design on the ground) of Oxalá
here in the middle and sang so that he would show up and visit my
house. In that prayer what showed up was this Indian (índio), it could
have been another one, né, it could have been the Seven Arrows (Sete
Flechas), it could have been Ubirajara, it could have been Pena Azul,
but the one who came then, is he (Jurunata) who came to us, the Tupã
who is the bigger, who is the God for them, he sent this Indian (índio)
so he makes the work of healing (cura). So, a person who lies down in
my terreiro, here in the middle – you can participate one day if there is
a sick person – she is covered with leaves, and Indians and Caboclos
work around that person. Many people have already been cured here,
those ‘balls’ (bolas, breast nodules) here, and other things inside here
(VC shows her belly). The doctor can’t do it (não deu jeito), but he (the
spirit) can.
His name is Jurunata that was given to him by his tribe. He comes just
to cure. The people stay under the leaves, entirely covered, lying on a mat,
under a white sheet. He already did a lot of good things. He only does
it when I ask, when I request to do so, when there is a necessity. When I
can cure with a candle, a prayer, he does not come. And he comes for the
gyration (gira), then he sings (curimba) a little bit, he smokes his cigar.
Because the cigar is to make the smoke go out, the smoke is relief, that’s
why Vó smokes. My son does not smoke, but when I smoke here, I puff
on this pipe, relieving illness, evil, jealousy, the big eye, breakdown, all
these things.
B – Another question. I felt very well with Aboriginal people because

I was feeling a familiarity with this spirituality of all places and all
that exists. But in those days, thirty years ago, one family that had this
religion also was Christian, because the people had translated the Bible in
their Indigenous language. A ‘syncretism’ with the Baptist Church. They
continued their old rituals of singing, dancing and painting the body. But
they also sang Christian songs in their language (Warlpiri) and painted
their body in the Church (with a Christian cross), only some families.
Other Aboriginal people said that it is not possible to mix the spirituality
of their ancestors with Christianity.
VC – I consider it to be wrong to do so. I consider it wrong. When
they paint, they trace their actual root. Now, when they go to the Church
and paint themselves, they trace the root of others. I do not accept, such
a division. What they are painting on themselves and dancing, is for their
space (barracão). If they meet with another religion, it is not that it is
wrong, but Vó does not accept thus, we are going to divide for this and
that. It’s their root, the painting that belongs to them cannot be lost, they
have to continue forever.
370
Cosmocolours
B – Now, after thirty years, ‘índios’ (Aboriginal people) of Australia

are more often Christians, and, for them, the traditional religion is also
important. Some Warlpiri men and women say that they hold an ances-
tral spirituality that is very important for life, and to maintain connec-
tions with all of nature, but they have to go to Church to experiment
a connection with Jesus, because it is the religion of the Whites, which,
since the colonisation of Australia, has power. It’s not a mixture, it’s
not a syncretism, but their existence is twofold. They have a connection
with nature, with dreams, but also, some people go to Churches, because
for them the Bible is the power of the Whites, of colonisation, that have
transformed their lives, ever changing since. With this power they have to
compromise and negotiate; they understand the power of the Whites so
to appropriate it for themselves to be free.
VC – That is the case. These Whites make a brainwash of Indios, saying

that their God, of the Whites, is bigger, that it is equivalent to theirs. They
(Indigenous people) make their mindset and they pass over to that religion.
Vó does not accept this either. If they are like that, they have to follow their
father Tupã (primary figure for Guarani people, in Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay). When they were in the bush did they not
cultivate father Tupã? Who is father Tupã? It’s the same God. Therefore,
the White is (esta) only today . . . Many people who come here in my
house to develop themselves, evolve spiritually, when they come out from
here, today they are Church believers. Believers are the Assembly of God,
Evangelics (Evangélicos). And when they get there, what are they going to
say about us? That we are no good, only things of the demon. Everything . . .
These men, these pastors are completely wrong, my daughter.
They invent things, they brainwash people, because these pastors,
according to Vó Cirina, make a Church to pick up money (‘patacas’)
from everybody so to live from it. It’s not that I do not like it. Me, I am
Vó, no my son (não o meu filho), I do not accept this level. And my son
does not go to this type of Church, his mission is inside my faith. Ask
yourself it is not a lie that they heal people? Here came a person who had
the sickness of blood (Aids – SIDA). Vó prayed for her and I removed
this thing (she points to the kidney); ‘your problem is serious, you have a
stone of calcium and you have blood . . .’. ‘But how Vó? I did not even feel
anything?’ ‘You go do an examination.’ She went there (to the doctor),
and it was confirmed that she has a disease. She came back here terrified,
crying, having her hands burning (ralando), all the body Jurunata came,
we did a healing work, she found herself cured of all her wounds, but it
continued inside her. She went to this Church that is called Universal.
‘Oh, Vó, I would like to see there if a man (the pastor) is going to cure
me.’ I told her, ‘oh, my daughter, then go’. That’s what I desire, né, I
desire good for others. She went there. She gave her bicho de fogo (fire
371
animal, or car), he told her not to take any more medicine, he took her
house, everything . . . In less than fifteen days the woman disappeared, she
died. The lying took her. What cures is God, my daughter. What cures is
the spiritual level. I cure, because God gives me the light to cure people.
At the moment, the family is very preoccupied, she gave her fire animal
(car) to him, they made a confusion, they came here to talk again with Vó.
She gave because she wanted to. We did a ‘head’ (mente, made of wax) of
this person. It cured her, I cured her, then she left.
People will give anything. People who give their house, who leave
work . . . For whom is it? And the pastor, that man, eats the best, my
daughter.
B – What is different in Umbanda de Angola from syncretism, the

relation of Orixás with the saints of the Catholic Church, like Jesus and
other saints?
VC – This here (she points to the images/sculptures of the Catholic

saints exhibited on the altar), nothing of it needs to be here inside. Just
one cross, here in the middle (would be enough).
When it was the time of slavery (Senzala), and the master (senhor) of
cane fields, in the coffee plantations (cafezal), we had a ‘ronkó’ (ritual
space), an ibegi (altar), there in a little corner (cantinho). For the master
to admit that we play there our tambourines (tamborzinho), what did
we have to do? We had to tell a lie to the master saying this is all for the
Church. We would arrange those saints and place them on top of tree
stumps (tocos). In that way the master ended up (passou) believing this.
From this came, that to each of the Orixás we give a name of a saint.
Because of this we keep them here. But at the spiritual level, in Umbanda,
in Almas de Angola (Souls of Angola), Candomblé does not use these
things, they are dishes, Orixás are in dishes, that Vó also accepts.
So, it is from there that we have the right to nurture (cultivar) for people
who come from far, who come from abroad (fora), so they will feel good
because of the saints. But if you take away everything, you put only the cross
that corresponds to the Almas de Angola. The cross is the Souls, Angola
is what comes from Africa. It is the difference (defeito) of these Almas de
Angola for the Umbanda, accordingly: my son is going to lay down (deitar)
a person for a saint, he is pure (without incorporation), he will crown the
saint. The Umbanda which is done by Preto Velho, the Congo King (Rei
Congo), the Vó . . . The Orixá makes the saints incorporate, this is the
difference, and the rest is all the same, the song, the foundation, all is same.
There is an Umbanda Branca (White) also that does not beat the drum
(tambor), does not kill animals, works only with herbs (ervas).
B – And why at beginning of every session you say the prayers Our
Father and Ave-Maria?
372
Cosmocolours
VC – This ritual of Almas de Angola was born in Rio de Janeiro

and a Caboclo, the famous Caboclo Lamparina, who was a man who
started all that, that we do now in Santa Catarina, said: the Vó does not
really know, she started like that, she nurtured this, the prayer. And in
Umbanda before it was no like that, they do not kneel down, they make a
song of Oxalá standing up, for Exu, at the opening, all standing up. Here
no, here people have to kneel down for Jesus, like he humiliated himself
for God. Kneeling down and humiliate oneself for Him, né? To make our
prayer. It’s better, it holds more energy. But I like to do that. But if you
don’t wish to do it, you don’t have to do it. Like in Candomblé, it’s not
necessary to do it.
If you wish, it’s possible just to sing for the Almas and Exu and start
twirling (tocar a Gira). But we feel good in doing a prayer of Our father
(Pai-Nosso) and Ave-Maria, we find it better, we vibrate more for God,
and what we desire, light, truth, then, it’s for this that we do the praying.
But if you do not wish to do, you do not need to.
B – Exu. There are many different Exus.
VC – Exu, has a lot of qualities (types of Exus) and they are very
different from one another. Exu, for me, is an Orixá. Exu, for me, is not
like the one that is customary said to have a twig (galho), a bullock foot,
and called ‘tibinga’ the demon, not to mention . . . They are not like that,
my daughter, the people who invented that, people invented that; he is an
Orixá of all the the less evolved, why? He drinks at night, in nightclubs,
with street women, those women that are lost, others that became preg-
nant and took out the child, they ended up losing their own light. Thus,
they became women of darkness. Thus, they come as Pomba-Gira. Each
of them has her own name. Sete, who works (trabalha) with my sons, he
got into fights in a club, so he lived from these things, in a complete mess,
but his name is not only Sete, his name is Ricardo. Why is it Sete, that he
brought this thing of Sete? Because in this time he does not have a place,
any hole to enter, he used to enter underneath a fig tree, there he was
buried. And since the matter of the earth is consumed, thus he come, he
lives where it is dark. Therefore, Sete Sombras (Sete Shadows). But in one
year, two years, or more, he can evolve and turn into a Preto Velho. Then
he is no loger Exu, he can change. And practise good.
B – Many Exus in Umbanda have names of demons of Christianity.
VC – Why? This is something invented, my daughter, all invented by

the priests (padres), invented by men of earth. They came to a house,
saw an Exu drinking, with a black cape. Ah! It is a demon! They would
already, this is a demon. It’s a nickname, they gave a nickname and it
continues like that.
373
B – I was talking about demons, but there are also names in the
esoteric tradition of Christianity. They have particular names, a list of
first names of different demons that exist in Christianity. And priests do
exorcism. Here, in Umbanda, these names appear as Exus.
About Divination with Búzios Cowrie Shells and Pontos

Chalk Designs
VC – If the drop/throw of shells (cair) has seven ‘open’ (aberto), this
person is an ideal person. If the drop has seven ‘closed’ (shells turned
with their opening against the table), this person is honest and sincere.
If in the drop all shells are closed, it’s inside a saint, you are a daughter
of Obaluaê. Conform to what drops here, the quantity of them, I (then)
know the names of the Orixás, the sickness, the work, the result of the
entrance exam (vestibular). Vó discovers all that we are going to do,
evoke here to see from here, thus we are going to ask . . . (She gives an
example) Oxóssi controls this person, who is son of Oxóssi with Iansã,
and what are we going to do? Give food for Oxóssi and Iansã, this person
is going to make a request and we are going to make her succeed the
exam. If it is a sickness, it’s the same. Each quantity of búzios that are
dropped, either closed or open, thus I know the problems of the person.
I will explain. I will draw the búzios for you (on the table). I call for
the Orixás, from Iansã, here talked Iansã, but I desire to know the ponto
(riscado) and for me not to forget that the Vó does this (she draws a ray
with a chalk), Iansã, you are a ray (of lightning), né? If Ogum gives, I
make (the design of) Ogum, if for Oxóssi, I make Oxóssi. Therefore, I
know what drops, and for me I do not forget what I said. Any Father of
Santo is the same thing. And the stones are energies of Orixá: white Oxalá;
bejada; Xangô de Nagô, Xangô da pedreira; Iansã, Oxum, Obaluaê,
Oxóssi, Ossanhã, who has those leaves, Caboclo, Oxóssi is one thing,
Cabloco is another thing, and those Almas (Souls). All this draws energy.
All of this is placed now Vó does not mess anymore with this, these
stones are placed inside a tray with boldo, you know boldo?8 It’s a herb of
Oxalá. You place all inside the boldo, let wash, wash everything real well
inside the boldo, so then they can work, because if one messes with this
today it’s not going to work. The person has to leave this mixture moist.
In other places, houses of terreiro, the owner, father of Saint, learns the
búzios to play, but my son does not wish to learn. I am the one to play. He
can also learn, with other people, there are books. He leaves everything
in my hands.
8
‘Peumus boldus’, the only species in the genus ‘Peumus’, is commonly known as
Boldo: medicinal properties. (cf. Linguee online and Wikipedia).
374
Cosmocolours
All people who come here always like me because I am honest with
my stuff thanks to God. Some things, I cannot talk about, you know?
The daughter knows that all has a mystery, not my daughter (Vó turns
towards Clarissa), the spiritual level has a mystery level. But my function
is to help people. They come with evil, I send them away, and I do not
assist. They look for another place. Because my son does not live for this,
he lives for the saint. Someone helps to do . . . On October 20 it’s going to
be my little feast, everybody wishes to help a little bit, Vó accepts. To give
added value, to charge for a work of cure, no. I came for free, I have to
give for free, my daughter. Even if my son is alive, here on earth, and he
is going to last many years, until he’s 90 years old, I am still here, when
he goes away, I have to arrange another ‘equipment/device’ (aparelho).
But where? It can be here, it can be in another world. Because the world
is very big.
The August 2016 consultation confirms, in its own way, how Vó

Cirina actualises a multiplicity of becomings. Multiple levels of
becomings cross the frontiers of life and death, the body and the
spirit, the masculine and the feminine, the human and the non-
human, all with blurried frontiers. The crossing (travessia) of these
limits does not stop to actualise becomings and to virtualise pos-
sibilities (possibles in French), not only for the incorporations of
the mediums, but more subtly for slipping movements in life which
resonate (ressoam) in different situations. Like Clarissa in her dance
in Geneva, in interaction with me and with a flow of images of
incorporations of Umbanda, at the beat of drums.
During my consultation with Vó Cirina, she embodied the becom-
ing of her Preta Velha spirit that refers to the becoming of her life
as a woman of 140 anos (when she died by the sea), but also the
becoming of her spiritual life after her death. When she answered my
questions, she was sometimes one, sometimes the other. Vó Cirina
expressed also a becoming-woman and a becoming-Black of her
‘son’, her medium the babalorixá Abílio, to whom she referred many
times in the course of the extracts which are transcribed here and at
other moments too. She also mentioned other becomings that inhabit
her son, like the caboclo Jurunata, the spirit of a Tupi-Guarani man,
who died in Uruguay at the age of 21, and who today is a spirit that
makes healing rituals (cura). Similarly, his Exu Sete Sombras, called
Ricardo, is a spirit of a man of the night, an outlaw (fora da lei)
who, according to her, in one, two or more years, can evolve and
incorporate as Preto Velho. ‘Just practise good’ (‘É só praticar o
bem’), says Vó Cirina.
375
The guardian spirit of the terreiro was happy with my visits in her
house and also with those of the people I brought. She asks for news
about anthropologists from Florianópolis, France and Australia and,
also, about my youngest daughter that she knew. She showed herself
satisfied with the work I did in her house and with the fact of spread-
ing her knowledge outside. Her ‘son’ Abílio accepted that we perform
the experience Cosmocolours in Geneva but was not interested in
how the work was received by the public or in the artistic context.
He found himself busy enough with another becoming, of the sons
and daughters who, growing in numbers continue to attend every
Thursday session, as well as consultations during the week. In any
event, this form of virtuality drew for me a possible road to follow,
which opened in respect to all those ‘enchantments’ (encantamentos,
the name sometimes given to the spirits) another reality to ‘present’,
instead of ‘represent’.
The text proposed here shifts through an agency of multiple
actors, human and non-human, so to experiment an ‘editing’ (like
a photo-montage) of multiple entries: my analysis, that of Clarissa
Alcantara, citations, and an interview with the spirit of Vó Cirina, my
photos and those of Sandra Alves and, finally, the film Cosmocores
of Clarissa’s dance with my images of the Umbanda Almas de Angola
from the Tenda Espírita Vó Cirina projected in Geneva. The blur-
ring of frontiers, colours, languages and names accompanies the
smoothness of the surface of perception upon which various spatio-
temporal dynamisms are produced. A cosmopolitics of an ‘indisci-
plined’ anthropology outlines, between distant spaces and times, the
design of a multiplicity of lines, a network in which some traits can
be perceived to be common. Like my first experimental films, which
superimposed discontinuous rhythms and pulsations to produce a
rupture in perception for new emotional stimuli, so also the becom-
ing of this current research disrupts some of the continuity of a
supposed movement. The Warlpiri Dreamings, Orixás and spirits of
dead, anthropology, philosophy, the sacred, art, and everything else
joined in composition of the possibility of a singular dance superim-
posing bodies and images in a Cosmocolour-becoming.
376
14
The ngangkari Healing Power:

Conversation with Lance Sullivan,
Yalarrnga Healer
In April 2017, Lance Sullivan, a Yalarrnga desert healer from Boulia,

a Cleverman as Aboriginal people say, based in Townsville to study at
James Cook University, was part of the Australian delegation invited
by the festival of shamanism in Genac, South-West France. The day
before his return flight, after dinner in my flat in Paris, I showed him
an art catalogue1 with Aboriginal artists exhibited in France. He
stopped on a page with a piece by Brook Andrew with an archival
photo framed in a neon called Union Jack: the black and white photo
showed a group of Aboriginal men posing for the camera, painted on
the body, one displaying the design of the British flag on his chest:
Lance Sullivan (LS): This is Molongo! The ceremony
my great-grand-father passed to other desert groups.
Molongo was a secret cult calling for spirits to help protect the land
and the people massacred and deported to reserves; this resistance
ceremony travelled from group to group at the turn of the nineteenth
century.2 Lance then opened the book on a big black and white
photo taken in 1894 by Spencer and Gillen near Alice Springs, the
country of Arrernte people: seven men were standing facing the
camera, all decorated with designs for the Rain and Emu Ceremony,
four of them wearing one-metre-high headdresses made of hairstring
and emu feathers:
LS: This is my grandfather’s corroboree this one, they say my grandfather
took it across to Alice Spring.
The word corroboree, inspired by a south-eastern Aboriginal word
has been generalised across the continent by the settlers to refer to
1
Vivid Memories. An Aboriginal Art History, co-curated by Morvan and Matharan
(2013), Bordeaux: Musée d’Aquitaine.
2
About Molongo, see Glowczewski (1996, 2004).
377
Figure 14.1 Lance Sullivan during the filmed interview
any Aboriginal dance. Many dances, interpreted for fun or for ritual
reasons were traditionnnally travelling from one language group to
another, with song cycles that were sung like a trend across hundreds
of kilometres. Some of the ceremonies also had ritual objects that
were transmitted in that way to eventually return to their original
owners after one or two generations. This was still happening oin
the 1990s. Some rituals conveyed messages, like the dance of the
Horns and Bumps which imitated the cattle and the camels that were
brought in by the settlers. Sometimes the dance preceded the invasive
arrival of these animals that were using and spoiling the Aboriginal
peoples rare supplies of water.
Barbara Glowczewski (BG): So, who was your grandfather, Lance?
LS: Wooly Sullivan. He was Poolarri, in his language name.
Poolarri is, means, man with the nullanulla (fighting stick) . . .
They say, that they first came to the men,
when they were out walking away.
They were trying to get away from troopers.
He sat in a cave, and all the little Putinyjee, the little short men came.
Them Putinyjee were talking to him, and did a song for that too.
(Lance sings in his language Yalarrnga)
That’s what they sing for them short little people
(about vegetable food) . . .
Yeah, so he was sitting in the cave, and the short men came,
and they gave him the coroboree there.
378
The ngangkari Healing Power, with Lance Sullivan
Figure 14.2 Lance Sullivan during the filmed interview
For that Molongo last part, it’s a five nights,

five days and five nights,
and at the last night, that’s when that Molongo come in.
Molongo refers to devil devil, devil. He comes in with all.
The man comes in with all feathers,
white feathers on his head, headdress.
(Lance puts his hands on the head and up all around)
And he holds, forks, a fork stick,
that he uses to strike down the Aboriginal men.
But the men in this corroboree they come up
and kill him, with their boomerangs.
BG: That devil devil, he belongs to the land?
Or was it the devil devil from the White people coming?
LS: I think myself, that it refers to the White people shooting them all.
And that they, in the end, kill him.
Spencer, no Roth (early anthropologist) he said,
he called it Molonga ceremony. But we call it Butler . . .
Well they say he was on his way,
he was walking towards the Alyawarre people, it’s near Georgina river.
There was a lot of people fleeing,
and they ran into Georgina River because there’s always water there.
And they could hide amongst those mountains and that.
BG: Your grandfather, he was from, he was a Alyawarre, or he was from
another land?
379
LS: He was Yalarrnga. He was a boss for the Yalarrnga mob.

He lived to be 116 plus they reckon. He was oldest man in Australia.
There’s a monument for him at the cemetery, that Boulia council
put up.
But he lived on bush food.
At first when them white fella come to that country,
they were chasing him down, trying to kill him.
And they chased him from one place,
he ran into the river, further down from Boulia he dived into the water,
and as he dived all the ceremonial stuff got washed off him,
and when he got to the other side of the bank,
he said, ‘look I have nothing now.
I’m not doing any coroboree or nothing now.’
So they did shoot him.
But he buried all his hairbelts and everything.
He buried everything in this one place, called One mile water hole.
There was a well there. He chucked everything in the well.
It’s sealed over now. I go there.
But that’s the place of the dingo, that comes from Harts Range.
He travelled from Ayers Rock, through Alice Spring,

come up through Harts Range (215km N/E),
across the border there, Georgina River, he come in our country then,
and they sing (Lance sings in language)
That refers to him, refers to female one (dingo),
dancing for the male one. Male one came from Harts range.
But female one, was a local one,
and from there she went up through to,
up right through our country, right up to the northern part of our country.
And she had a pup there, and the pup is Kankarri, a mountain there.
You can even find up near Townsville way,
you’ll see the mountain on the side of the road.
Opposite the hospital.
And then you sing another song, you gotta dance back, hands on your hip
(Lance bends forward on his chair to show the movement with his hands)
that refers to the back legs of the dog.
And when she dances backward, she was singing
that song there, can’t remember . . .
Then that other song come in (sings in language).

But that song then went on to Long hills,
Long hills mob took over there,
I don’t know what they say when he comes from Northern Territory.
Wanyi, they got hold of that song then . . .
Wanyi people yeah, they took over for the Dingo then.
380
But my people they mainly Emu,

so we sit down there at Yami Yami where our great grandfather came
from.
And my waterhole is right next to his. It’s called Mitamara.
Mitamara refers to the shield,
where the Owl came down to strike the Snake,
but the snake put up the shield
(Lance puts his left fingers on his forehaead while lifting his right arm)
and the Owl hit it and left his footprint on the shield.
But the shield is a big rock, at the bottom of the waterhole,
and on the rock, there’s that print imbedded of the Owl when he came
down.
So a lot of cave paintings in our land, have got paintings,
footprints of the Owl or the Emu.
There the two main totems around there.
From the Emu people, but my personal skin is Owl, Owl Jarra.
That’s where my name is from Muradjarra. Means to climb (Lance shows
the climbing gesture with his hands up) to heavens, the Owl.
(. . .)
BG: Is it a different Emu from the one that in the Kimberley they call
Karnananja, the big Emu?3
LS: There’s one Emu, he come up from South,
he came up from Parajilna. He was heading down from our country.
He started at up . . ., he came through there.
He went down the Burke River, feeding along the creek,
trying scratching up all the wild onions and everything.
That’s why today we eat the wild onions along the bank.
Even all the way down to one place called Blue Bush Swamp,
where he dug up a nest there, to make nest,
he piled the earth up that became a swamp, Blue Bush Swamp.
In the middle of the swamp is a lot of rocks, piled up, around one
tree,
that’s in the shape of an emu.
They represent the eggs and the Emu.
From there, because they say there was two Emus.
There was a short neck one and a long neck one,
and we got them two Dreamings there. That male one,
he went further down, in the Parajilna, South Australia.
That’s why he got speared and blood came out, it turned to red ochre.
3
In Prelude Emu Song by Nakakut Gibson, see also Big Emu as dinosaur, Chapter
1, p. 00.
381
But our old people used to travel down there all the time to get that red
ochre.
They used to follow the Watikujarra songline.
That’s them Two men, them two men go all the way to South Australia,
then through Kimberley’s and all that then, back up through Western
Australia, through all them country there, through Lurija country too,
and Alice Springs and all that. Travelled all the way.
That’s that painting behind you.4
(He sings in Yalarrnga)
The Two-Men Dreaming is shared by Warlpiri from Central Australia
with dozens of other language groups across the desert and the
Kimberley. They are considered as the ancestors of the healers . . .
Lance accepted then to continue the conversation, talking about
healing.
LS: Today it’s all, we all, interacting a lot together.
We got Warlpiri, Warumungu and Alyawarre, Aranda (Arrernte),
we all sort of like allies now, we all help each other out for ceremony,
Kaytej too and (in) Mutitjulu,5
all around from Alice Spring6 area and that,
we all sort of join together now, cause there’s not many of us left now,
not many people.
But I put through about 30 fellas from Hopevale community,
put them through Law (ritual initiation)
and another 20 from Yarrabah went through.7
4
The painting by Bye Bye Napangardi from Balgo of Watikutjara (Glowczewski
1991), who gave the healing power to many tribes on their way, can be seen
in the one-hour interview I conducted with Lance Sullivan who granted access
online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUK_OoVRpQ8. Two extracts of
the transcript were published in the second issue of Alienocene: https://alienocene.
com/2018/06/17/infra-terrestrial-journey/. See also the film Milli Milli by Barker
(1992), with the two sacred hills that embody Watikutjarra (Two Men) near the
Balgo (Wirrimanu, WA) community and the local Kukatja women’s ritual dance
and statement related to the Two Men who travelled from tribe to tribe, leaving
their tracks in places and on their way dispensing their Law of healing and differ-
ent kinship systems (McCarthy 1961; Glowczewski [1998] 2009).
5
Mutitjulu is the name of the Aboriginal settlement near Uluru/Ayers Rock
(NT) where live Ananagu people of Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Luritja,
Ngaanyatjarra and other Western Desert languages spreading in WA and SA.
6
Northern Territory languages: https://nt.gov.au/community/interpreting-and-
translating-services/aboriginal-interpreter-service/aboriginal-languages-in-nt
7
Queensland languages: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/resources/atsi/languages/indi
genous-languages-map?result_240451_result_page=2
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We taught them desert Law you know,

we didn’t do anything like,
they didn’t do any songs of their own people.
We just sort of showed them our way,
and they’ve been with us now, all time,
trying to build our number back up.
But it’s hard. Unlike before back in 1985,
down in South Australia, in Amata they had 2,000 men.
We can’t get them numbers no more,
all the younger people not interested in the culture no more.
Hopevale is a coastal community north of Townsville where Lance

went to live to study at James Cook University in the mid-2000s.
Regularly working as a court translator for desert people and also
during native Title proceedings, or in jail, he met a lot of Aboriginal
men from Queensland. He was then asked by the men from Hopevale
and Yarrabah further north to help them to revive ritual initiations
that they called, as elsewhere in Australia, the Law. Lance organised
for some desert elders from Boulia to come to the north to initiate
these men. The ceremonial protocol was the desert one and not the
coastal traditional intiation practised by these groups before it was
forbidden in the missions and reserves. Some of the coastal men made
boomerangs in their own coastal style which are used for fishing and
they sent them as presents for the desert elders. But the desert elders
sent them back, asking the coastal men to cut for them boomerangs
in the desert style so that they could use them for hunting and clap-
ping for music in the desert country. A lesson of cultural exchange . . .
LS: Everything dying. Over the years, all our old men are gone.
But over the years a lot of middle-aged men have stepped up into their
place.
We sort of try to encourage each other.
Like when I first started, them old men came,
and see me there and they said:
‘Oh you got to continue, what your uncles and that were doing,
we remember you uncles when they were doing the coroboree with us,
your grandfather and that.’
And I said, ‘oh ok, I don’t really want to do it anymore,
the people run you down and back stab you.’
They said ‘don’t worry about what anyone says,
you got to continue the culture, follow in it.’
So I always try to follow it,
383
do what them old fellas say you know.

Keep good books with them.
But all our old men are gone, slowly. We lost many from Tennant Creek.
I think about 5 of the great leaders passed away, all our old fellas.
But now the new ones coming up there, new leaders.
I had to step in place of my uncles and do a lot of ceremonies.
BG: So Lance, would you like to tell us how you became a ngangkari?
LS: When I was about twelve, I went through the Law,
and the first cut they put on me was that deeper one,
(Lance shows horizontal incision marks on his left upper arm)
that deep one,
that was with a Stone knife.
They taught me to make stone knife, all that.
And then the next one was about fifteen,
that’s when I really got into the things, like.
But, I was born into it, all the time.
When I was little, old people used to get me to rub em all the time,
cause they knew I was Clever (with healing powers).
So over the years,
all my old people kept on coming to me.
But then when I was fifteen it increased and they started
to ask me to do funeral rites and burn skin, the right skin,
people’s clothing and swags and that,
smoke their houses out,
go around them, go through the house,
they showed me that.
During funeral rituals, some relatives of the right skin-name have
the duty to burn the goods that belong to the person who passed
away and to do a smoking ritual where they used to live to clean
the place from the spirit. This is done to help the spirit to find its
way away from the living but also to help the living to live around
in peace.
LS: And they showed me knowledge of medicines.
But I started seeing more things then,
I started reading what they were, in dreaming,
and what they were saying and all that.
I got more and more healing people, more, rubbing them down and
that,
pulling things out of them, giving them advice,
how better to look after themselves.
384
Anyway, after that, I was put in this cave,

and when I was, a bit older, I was put in a cave.
In that cave was all the bones of dead people, great Clevermen.
And when I . . . they came up at night,
the old people come crashing through he bushes, three of them.
One stood this side of me, and another stood next to him,
but the main one was coming up, coming up the hill,
and there’s a spring in the cave.
Must have been where all the other Clevermen was,
I don’t know. I never asked them.
But he came up and I thought he was going to break my neck,
and throw me.
There was a spirit, and he . . . and he kept on like,
getting real angry with me,
and I kept on saying:
‘no . . . you’re my family nyuntunyanga
Ngaya-ka Tjupurrula’,
I said like that, ‘I am Tjupurrulla “Ngaya-ka Tjupurrula”,
you’re my family and that.’
I was saying, ‘Oh you my grandfather!’ and all this
‘We family, don’t kill me!’
And then, that was a real scary night.
And I said to him,
‘work through me, help me, to heal, help me to heal people.’
And he came, he laid his hand on my hand.
When he laid his hand on my hand, my fear for him went away,
(Lance, who was talking head down, looks up
and puts his right hand on top of his left shoulder)
and he stood behind me, with his arm over me
(Lance slides down to his hand)
holding my hand, on top of my hand.
From then I didn’t fear him no more.
And by the time the sun came up,
I knew that something serious had happened,
and that I’ll always be able to heal.
From there, nothing would stop me.
I was starting to, in that song,
(he sings)
came to me then.
That’s for pulling out bone out of people.
When I touch people, my hand click click click all the time,
and I keep going pulling until there’s nothing left, no more clicking.
(Lance pulls with his hand and closes his eyes)
385
Sometimes I close my eyes, and I see a redness where their sickness is.
(Lance touches his forehead)
I touch it, and I close my eyes,
and when it turns yellow, I know that it’s healed.
Sometimes, it’s like you can see through people.
You can see where their bloodline is clogged up.
That you have to touch it, and loosen it.
Get their blood flowing through their body again, and it works.
It’s like wire, all wires going everywhere, all these different colours,
and you can see which ones need to be touched,
and which ones need to be healed.
But I had two fellas, one day, who were ‘boned’ (cursed)
One was from Western Australia, other from the Northern Territory
He was a Alyawarre and the other one, I don’t know what tribe he
was.
They brought him to me,
and I thought, they both
when they sat him in front of me,
‘boned’
When I touched the Western fella,
I got a bit of worried because I could feel a real strong power . . .
kurdaija on this fella.
In many parts of Australia a kangaroo bone was used to point at

a distance at a person one wants to harm. The technique was used
by the sorcerers or spirits called Kurdaija, both walking with emu
feather shoes which prevent the identification of the walker by his
footprints. This witchcraft technique was also used to punish people
judged guilty of a crime or ritual transgression. It aimed to empty
the person of his/her soul, the body then dying, slowly dying. The
Cleverman can help to stop the process.
LS: I said to him, ‘you stop playing around with woman now’
and he got shock.
I said ‘you played around with wrong skin’,
(Non-respect of sexual classificatory kinship avoidance)
that’s why them old people got you.
And he got a bit of a shock,
thought I didn’t know about it.
But when I touch people, I sort of know.
And I told him, I can pull this out.
And the thing is, I hit him in the back,
(Lance claps in his hands)
386
and when I hit him in the back,

that bone it came out, and he felt better.
And he went then ‘how come you never pulled it from the front?’
– ‘Well because it went through the back’
It was coming through the front, but it got stuck,
so when I pushed it, and it came straight through.
And that other fella,
I sucked, I had to suck it, suck
(Lance brings to his mouth his right fist, with the left underneath like a
tube)
all that poison blood out of him,
before that thing come out
And I thought to myself,
these two fellas have the same thing, same sickness,
but they need to be treated in a different way.
And that’s when I understood that each individual person,
has their own ability,
has their own power,
and own soul and spirit that you’ve got to use
and talk to to help heal them.
So when I sing,
I just sing through the crown of their head,
(Lance touches the back-top of his head)
where I believe the spirit comes from.
When someone gets a headache,
a lot of other, what people call ngangkari
they go for the head.
But really,
only the other day, when I did that one lady there (in Genac –
France)
I touched her foot.
She said, ‘why you doing that ey?
I got a headache.’
(Lance laughs)
But the headache went away, ’cause I knew she stepped on something.
And that’s what happens sometimes, its a spiritual problem,
sometimes its physical.
Thats where, if you ‘ clap’ a ngangkari, he could tell those things.
But you’ll also get like a picture of what they’ve done.
So when I touched the lady
I knew she had stepped on something.
I had like a vision I guess.
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I had a picture of her stepping on something,

and I see them pull her foot,
so when I touched her foot,
I knew it was the right one.
(Lance laughs)
Yeah, some strange things happen!
But yeah I learnt, over the years too,
I got more, over the years as I age,
I sort of slow down more,
and look more closely at people,
yeah, more knowledge.
One old fella, Marvin from Western Australia,

when I was there working, he said to me,
‘I know you seek power,
but power comes only when we need it.’
I think thats true.
I couldn’t understand it.
For a long time I tried to understand what he meant,
cause I knew he was talking in roundabout way.
And he was talking about power,
when you need it, it’ll be there to help you.
It’s not always going to be with you.
I learnt but he’s . . . always with us.
BG: And how did you feel when you were at this festival of shamanism
in Genac?
LS: Truthfully . . .? (Lance laughs)
There were a few odd characters there! that were a few bobs short.
But they . . . a lot of the participants
they were all serious, and I knew
there was a lot of great healers there.
I always try to use the old people spirits
you know, to help heal.
I never forget what they’ve done for me,
so I always acknowledge them.
Every time I touch somebody,
always acknowledge that.
Cause I would be nothing without them.
I’d probably be, cause I was born to it,
but I wouldn’t be able to heal as many as I could.
It drains you when you do that.
It makes you weak. You’re like a sponge,
388
you suck up all the sickness of the people.

So sometimes it can wear you out and make you sick too.
You got to be careful though what you do . . .
And how much you do.
BG: But there, during those four days, you treated a lot of people, how
could you do that, where did you get the strength from?
LS: I felt really sorry for them,
and yeah and um, it was, when I was healing in the tent
I went into a sort of a trance8
I don’t look at the person I’m touching,
because I see with my mungan.
(Lance taps his forehead with his open right hand)
mungan means power.
And usually call . . . they call em’ munganayi ‘eye’ . . .
or they call em’ ngangkari ‘eye’ (in Warlpiri) . . .
I always look with my mungan,
so when I touch somebody, I don’t see their face
and I don’t see their sickness or anything,
(Lance puts his hands forward, palms open to the camera and turns them
clockwise)
I just got like this, down them, feel, where it’s hot,
and then I close my eyes and see this redness
and then I just pull! And it just comes out whatever is there
(Lance shows the pulling gesture)
That’s how it always works,
and it just comes out, whatever’s there.
I’ve been shocked sometimes
I get hairstring in my hand,
I’ve had bones, splinters, sticks.
I’ve had a lot of different things come out.
I can’t explain it, but it just happens.
But sometimes I got like into a trance
and when I was, you might have noticed,
when I was on my knee, I might have swayed a bit?
(Lance puts his arms forward and balances himself on the chair to the
front)
That’s when I’m in that trance.
I go like that when I’m singing somebody,
8
See photo of Lance in the video.
389
but mainly I go like that when I am healing now, I noticed.

So I was in a trance,
as quick as they could put them there, I was ready to heal them,
ready to grab another one.
But then my body starts getting weaker,
(Lance bends his arms to this chest)
and I start slowing down a bit,
and breathing heavy, and out of wind,
and my arms get heavy, my body, my head and that.
Sometimes I get the headache
after I’ve pulled it out of that other person,
I soak it up.
I get heavy and I’ve got to wash my arms, cool down.
When you pull poison out,
you have to take a bit of water on yourself.
If I’ve got no water I put dirt on my hand,
and that’s what I was doing, putting dirt on,
to wipe the sickness away
(Lance scrubs his hands)
before I touch another person.
When you touch people too,
you get like a vision of what they’ve done to get sick.
Sometimes you can explain to them,
to go retrace their steps,
Or someway repay.
Like some people I’ve touched,
I had to tell them, you’ve got to put meat out at night,
for the spirits, or stuff like that, water out.
And that’ll repay them.
I’m always thinking that
the more we harm the land, the sicker we get.
If we look after the land,
we look after ourselves.
And the land will look after us also.
We get stronger that way,
but if you . . . not looking after land, you get sicker.
If you go to a place, wreck it
or cut a tree or something like that,
then you will get sick, because of that.
We always have to repay with a part of ourselves,
we always got to give back to the spirits,
(Lance traces a bend up with his hand like a cup)
390
not only the spirits of the land, but the spirits

but the spirits that walked the earth.
We have to repay,
with a piece of our health, so I was,
I’m always careful about that.
A lot of ngangkari they losing their ability, to heal,
I noticed that because in my land, there was five old Clever fellas,
there’s only one left now, and me.
And that other old fella, he’s asking people for payment,
(right hand fingers squeezed, a hand sign for money)
I said, we can’t ask people for payment.
Because what we have to do is give,
(Hand forward)
what we do is a gift, given to us by a spiritual . . .
we’ve got to do what is right by the people,
so I stopped associating with him.
And there was another four of them
that used to hang around him,
they’re all dead now.
But I stopped associating with them,
because all they ask, been asking for is money.
Then one girl comes up from South Australia,

(Lance points to the south)
From Coober Pedy area, she came up
she came all the way up to Tennant Creek.
And I just happen to come into town that day,
and word was going around for the communities,
all the elders, all the camps . . .
They wanted to pay some Cleverman to heal her.
None of them old fellas in that town wanted to go near her.
It ended up being me and that other fella, my cousin,
my cousin, we ended up cleaning her there,
and I sung
that stuff for her,
so that it would take the sickness away.
I said to her, ‘you’ve been hit,

I’ll take that away and turn it around,
you’ll be clean now.’
And all the old men stood up behind us,
and none of them would touch her!
And I noticed that in Mount Isa too,

when another girl, niece of mine was ‘boned’,
391
went straight through her kidney fat,

and when, she was ready to die you know,
she went real skinny and everything,
and I found out I came home from hunting one day,
I said whats wrong with that girl?
nah she’s caught, nobody go near her now.
I knew that they left her for dead you know.
So I told her, ‘come here!’
and I put my hand straight into inside.
I can’t explain how I did it,
I just went in like that,
(Lance bends)
and grabbed her kidney.
Grabbed that, there was a stone inside her kidney,
I could feel it and I said to this other fella:
‘come here, put your hand behind
and I’ll push this stone into your hand.
When I put it in your hand, you hold it tight
and I’ll come around and I’ll pull it out.’
He was shaking, like a leaf.
And I said ‘you supposed to be Cleverman’,

his father was supposed to be the Cleverman.
But his father took off inside the house, wouldn’t come out.
And this young fellow was shaking,
and I said, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll push it in’,
(Lance leans towards the camera with his arms wide open)
straight through the body,
and I reached around and grabbed it,
to pull it out (the kidney stone).
And that girl coughing up all the blood then,

(Lance makes the gesture out of his mouth)
but as she was coughing,
I said to her ‘it’s gone now, it’s gone!’
And she got up, and she was better.
I can’t explain how that happened.
But I noticed, that these fellas that were saying they were Clevermen,
they were afraid to do things, and I know
they drink that alcohol a bit,
and I don’t associate with them sort of people.
Yeah, but um, maybe them shamans are not listening to the spirits
enough.
I’ve done that a lot lately,
392
I’ve tried to listen more,

that’s why sometimes you might have noticed,
I blew in the ears of the sick people,
that was so that they could hear the spirits more.
And I blew into their eyes, so that they could see the spirits more,
and listen to it, and not fear it.
You can’t fear the spirit world.

There is a lot of things you can say about the spirits like,
one of the things that my old fellas told me,
they tried to scare me one time I think,
but it helped me also to understand them.
They said ‘The spirits are jealous of the living,
they want the power of the living to grow strong themselves
so they will try to take your life.’
But they can’t, remember that, they can’t,
because the living is stronger than the dead.
They’ve always taught that right through
when I was about ten years old.
I’ve kept that memory,
and I always think about that,
(Lance points his right finger to his right temple)
No matter how strong the spirit is, he can never harm you.
BG: But do you think these spirits were people who were alive before, or
is it something different?
LS: Some of them are spirits who were alive before,

but a majority of them were spirits from the land.
There is, I believe that . . .
I’ve never spoken about this before but I believe that,
and I never usually look with my eye much,
(Lance hides his eyes with his palm)
I always look with my mungan,
and that’s the way I can look into the spirit world.
I can talk to them when I use my mungan.
I can talk to them, they talk back.
And if I try and explain it to somebody,
they might think I’m crazy you know?
(Lance smiles)
But I, it’s like this glass, someone is underneath here,
(Lance bends to the camera)
you can look through,
(He stands up over the glass table)
you can see them,
393
If you got your mungan,

but it’s night now, you can’t see.
There’s a wall there too. But if you use your mungan,
you can talk to this person behind this wall, this glass.
Others, other people of today just see only the glass,
they don’t see what’s beyond.
So you got the little people Putinyjee
and you got Mugai . . . Mugai is the big tall one, spirit also of the land,
he killed Aboriginal men.
But I learnt that all the spirits, even though they’re fierce and that,
you can use them to help, help you.
So them little short men Putinjee we got song,
for them to bring us bread, or food.
With the Mugai, when you talk to him, introduce yourself respectfully,
then he will not harm you,
he will leave meat there for you, and go away.
A lot people fear him, first thing they do is run away,
they don’t talk, stop to talk.
But, I noticed the more spirits you talk to, the more you understand
them.
There is a lot of, like I was saying glass,
There’s a lot of those glasses,
they layer them, upon layer.
The more you look into it, the more you see.
That’s how I see the world today.
Like if I wanted to, I could tell you
who was here before you.
(Lance points his arm to the wall)
I could ask the walls, I could look beyond this time now,
you can look back and see what it was before,
by looking with your mungan,
and not seeing this glass,
but the others below it, with it.
It’s a bit hard to explain it.
Best way I can say, that there is a line of glass,
glass walls.
(Lance draws in space vertical parallel lines)
Like this one time this lady went missing.
She went missing in the bush. I said to her son, ‘she is there under the
grass.’
He thought I was crazy!
394
(Lance laughs and Barbara too)

‘She’s under the grass there!’
Grass is only up to your um, halfway up your leg.
He thought I was crazy. ‘How could she be hiding under that grass?’
It’s only more clump of grass.
I said ‘she’s there, sitting with them Putinyjee.
I can hear them talking, and they’re telling me that she’s there.’
(Hand movements from out to his body)
I can see her there. ‘How can you see?
if you can see her, grab her, bring her out!’
I said, ‘she will come, when the time is right,
and the Putinyjee will let her go.
We’ll just sit here, light a fire, put the tea on, and we wait.’
He was going off his head, carrying on, threatening to burn the grass!
‘You can’t burn that grass, it’s the grass for them little people!’
But, when she walked out, well the next day,
the fella was making tea and he heard behind him:
‘Can I have a cup of tea?’
He spun around and looked, and there she was standing up with the
grass,
same grass that he wanted to burn.
(Lance laughs)
And, he said to me: ‘How did you know she was there?’
I said ‘I could see her.’ I said ‘tell her to explain.’
And she said, ‘I could hear youse all, and I could see you, but
when I call to you, it was like a wall up, between us. I could hear you
faintly.
They were holding me down and had me covered over with grass.’
BG: And what did they tell her? Why did they take her?
LS: They wanted to kill her because she walked on men land.
But they let her go. And when I went to smoke her,
they came and got me . . . to clean her.
So I took her down to the creek, I smoked her and I sung her,
and blew her ears and eyes, make her feel better.
And we went back to the camp.
And this Mugai walked straight up straight into the Marlkarri.
Marlkarri now. Marlkarri is another one.
He’s normal man like us, but he’s wild one.
And he walked up to the house, straight into the room
and he said, ‘We’re not finished with her yet’, and walked away.
My mother and that were going off their head.
They came and got me:
395
‘This Marlkarri just come here,

he said “he is not finished with her yet”.’
I said ‘We’ve done what we can, that’s that’,
I knew she’d done wrong by that country.
I said to my mother ‘Well, you know, that Marlkarri said
“she’s gone womba now”’
(Lance turns his finger on the side of his head)
She’s gone a bit off
because she hasn’t shown respect to that country.
But it’s, like that old lady explained it.
She could see us, she could hear us, but when she called out,
it was like a wall was there
(Lance puts his right hand on top of the other)
she couldn’t, like a glass wall, she can reach, but we couldn’t see her.
I could see her, because I used my mind
but none of that other fellow could.
BG: I don’t know in your country . . . in the Kimberley side, the Yawuru,
Djugun and Jabirr Jabirr up north, they associate the, what you call that
name, when you say you don’t see with your eyes?
LS: mungan.
BG: They say the third eye, the third eye.
LS: ah yeah
BG: but they connect it with Rayi, which is the spirit child that everyone
has, like Kurruwalpa for Warlpiri. Is there a relation somewhere?
LS: OK . . . I always say ‘look with your heart,
see with you heart, don’t see with your eyes.’
BG: But you know like parents or somebody from the family before
you’re born, dream and see where you’re coming from, which place
you’re coming from? And which, your dreaming, like your . . . This
one that they call in Warlpiri, Kurruwalpa, they call Rayi on the
coast there, in Broome side. But there is a lot of Rayi, waiting to be
born.
LS: yeah . . .
BG: So for you there is a connection between those spirit children? Those
little people?
LS: We call them Tharmu. Yeah. Tharmu. It refers to spirit.
They’ll say, oh, when someone dies they say Tharmuga, that mean,
‘He’s returned to the spirit’, returned to the spirit again, he died.
Returned to the spirit.
396
It’s like them Arrernte mob saying kumanjayi9

and things like that, same.
They showed great respect to us when
one of our family members died.
During the funeral they called, in Yalarrnga too:
‘Don’t forget the Yalarrnga, he is descendant from the Yalarrnga
He is Tharmuga, and he is kumanjayi’
They said like that, they use both terms.
We were very happy with that because they showed respect to us,
to our family member who passed away.
When we are on our country,
there are places, where them Tharmu hang around, spirits,
where they associate with (humans).
We believe one lady walks out there,
or a man walk along, he might spear a kangaroo
or something or shoot a kangaroo,
and if he hear some child crying behind him,
he knows that he’s gonna have a boy or a girl.
And he’ll say, ‘Oh, that Tharmu bin follow me,
that Tharmu must be that Kangaroo totem.’
Or that if he killed a turkey:
‘oh that Tharmu must be the turkey.’
He tells his wife, and sure enough she will have a baby,
with that totem then,
with the marking where the bullet or the spear went through.
It’s really powerful.
BG: So, that is the same kind of story for Warlpiri and in the Kimberley.
But what relationship with the power to heal? How do you understand
that? Is there a relationship with that spirit in you?
LS: Oh yeah, I use my Tharmu all the time.
I always think about my Tharmu again
and I ask it to help, work through me also.
When I’m touching someone,
I always think about where I come from,
where my spirit came from, you know?
I think about it all the time when I touch somebody.
I always ask the power of my country to help me,
my Tharmu to help me, to help me to heal.
9
See Chapter 4 with regard to ‘no name’, the expression for names that become
taboo because of a dead person whose name it was.
397
I never forget that.

My mother, before she was born,
her grandmother was at the creek fishing with her uncle,
and he was pulling out all the fish,
one after other, one after other,
big buggers too, yellow belly and that.
And they could hear this child crying,
peeping behind the bushes at him,
and the old lady said:
‘Oh don’t, our grand-daughter there,
that’s our grand-daughter coming.’
And he said, ‘Get away, I know you there,
I can see you there, get away from me!’
He was panicking that old man.
He was only a young boy then.
He said: ‘Go away leave me alone!’
And as he’s pulling in the fish,
and he gets up and packs all his stuff up, and he takes off!
And she follows behind him, crying all the way.

That was my mother, her totem was fish.
Her totem was that yellow belly that he was pulling in.
Cause she had the marking of the yellow belly (fish) on her.
And she, yeah that was her Tharmu.
But we are all born like that.
Like my brother he was born with patches all over him,
so he was like a perentie (lizard) so we said
‘Oh you’re a perentie that one there.’
Another one born was a fish too.
BG: But then, Warlpiri they say there is what you call Tharmu, Kurruwalpa
for them, and that’s that spirit that comes from one special place, that’s
got a special songline that is like the secret name for the person. And this
is, they say, what allows a baby to walk, and to talk.
...
But they say that the spirit that travels in dream, that’s different.
LS: That’s a different one, yeah.

BG: Pirlirrpa, they call it.
LS: Yeah that’s a different one that one.

You can use that one to know where to go hunting the next day.
Sometimes like, the community where I came from,
the men get up early.
We all sit out and have a cup of tea
398
(Lance mimes drinking with his hand up and down several times)
‘Hey what did you dream about?’
‘Oh I dream about a lot of kangaroos at such and such place,
Parapitri, or something like that.
What did you dream about?’
‘Oh I saw a goanna at such and such place.’
We believe our dreams are more real than what reality is.
We take those dreams very seriously.
So if that man just seen this goanna,
so he’s got to go there and get that.
If this man saw kangaroo at another place,
he has to go there and get them.
So we tell him, ‘you take a couple of men with you,
(Lance indicates the south)
and you take a couple of men with you,
(Lance indicates the north)
and we all meet back here tonight!’
OK, and it always happens, we always come back
with what we’ve dreamt about.
And if someone is sick, we will dream that also,
and we take that seriously,
Like that person could be having a cup of tea good as gold,
(Lance drinks with his hand again)
we say: ‘We dreamt you, you were sick, in such and such spot.’
So we go over there and touch them,
we heal them, and they listen,
we all think alike, like we believe in the dreams.
BG: But Lance like, Warlpiri say also that when you wake a person too
quickly, that Pirlirrpa (soul that dreams) has no time to come back in the
body,
LS: That’s right.
BG: and that person can be very sick. That’s when you need the mapan
(in the Kimberley) or ngangkari (in the desert) to bring it back.
LS: To look for the spirit, yeah.
BG: Did you ever work that way?
LS: When someone’s spirit is,
like what happened to me once,
bone went through me
and come out under my shoulder blade.
I was in Alice Spring at the time,
399
I got ‘boned’, and I crawled down into the creek,

and this Clever fellow was there,
he was an uncle to me,
and I said to him, ‘Look me! I’m “boned”, I’m dying,’
and he panicked, he panicked,
(Lance laughs)
He was making tea there,

and he look back like that
(Lance turns himself on the chair)
and he panicked,
‘Oh no, what am I gonna do?’, he must have been thinking.
And he said ‘Come, sit by the fire.’
He taught me how to find my spirit,
how to find spirit of others when they left the body.
So he went looking through the grass and everything for my spirit.
And then he found it
(Lance mimes picking up something on the floor)
and caught it.
And he said here, and he pushed it back into my chest,
(Lance touches his chest with a smile)
back where the hole was in my chest.
He said ‘Your spirit is back in there, I’ll seal it up now.’
So he showed me how to seal it up.
And today I learnt that, a lot of people think you’re crazy

if you’re looking through grass and everything.
I didn’t think that when I seen him doing it,
cause I knew what he was doing.
But a lot of people today’s civilised society,
they would think I’m crazy.
But we believe that the spirit does leave the body sometimes
and it takes a ngangkari to bring it back and put it back into the person,
and we always sit that person down
and give him/her a cup of tea, water,
make him feel a bit better then,
make his spirit associate with his body again.
And we smoke him a bit more.
Eh he right then, when we sing him, he right then.
But a bit tricky that power too, a bit tricky.

It’s like that, we believe at night to,
the spirit leaves the body to travel, he can travel,
if you ngangkari you can travel anywhere
400
and talk to your family members,

in another place you know.
And they can see you, they can hear you, just like day.
And then you’re back, you come back to your body.
But sometimes, normal people dream
That, like you say, they got awoken too quick.
Then their spirit is disturbed,
and you have to make them better.
But a Cleverfella, a ngangkari, he can use that ability
to help heal people too.
When someone is sick long way away,
he can go there and heal them,
and people ask that sometimes:
‘Can you, they ring up, can you come?’
(Lance signs for telephone, tumb and little finger up others down)
Today lot got mobile phone,
‘Can you come here and see me please?’
But they all see, I seen a lot of, so called ngangkari
but I think they are kurdaija (emu feather curse throwers)
I’ve seen them using mobile phone for sorcery nowadays.
(Barbara laughs)
Yes! They get a picture of somebody, and they sing it,
and they poke it with knife, and they sing it,
(Lance mimes poking with hand)
and they say they gonna kill that fella.
I seen that happen, so today, society it’s all changing ey?
They take photo of somebody, they’ll take it back and sing it,
Yeah they doing that now.
BG: So before photo what did they use?
LS: They use drawing, drawing in the dirt,
they used to draw symbol of the people in the dirt,
(Lance draws with his hand above the table)
and sing that there.
BG: Also, the Western sorcery, antique, they would make a doll, you
know, in the shape of the person or just a thing of them.
LS: Oh yeah I heard of that . . .
they use clothes of people.
To catch another one, they use the sweat,
Try to get the sweat part of the body, of the clothing
and they catch them with that.
They, sing that sweat, or they burn it.
401
Or sometimes they say like the first law women,

in creation time, dreaming time, dreaming,
there was this woman who was upset by her husband,
playing around too much with other women,
so she got his hairbelt, and put it in a,
put a hole in this tree, and stuck the hairbelt in that,
poked it in the stick, and she burnt it, and she sang,
(Lance shows poking with his fists)
sang some songs, and she caught him that way.
And make him swell up that way.
But nowadays they using parts of clothing
and their doing the same thing,
they putting it in a hole in the tree,
(Lance shows poking again)
and they burning it, they singing, they do that.
And they also burn it on a fire.
BG: And this is to harm the person, or stop him running around?
LS: Yeah, to harm them, make them sick.
BG: Last time I was in Lajamanu, a month ago, the women just hap-
pened, we went camping and, had lots of stories and they were all talking,
there was a story of one woman who disappeared in the bush, a very good
friend of mine. It happened Christmas, not last Christmas but Christmas
before (2015).
She went missing for four days, she was sitting in a circle gambling,
and walked up to answer the telephone and never came back. And they
even had a helicopter to look for her, and they found her, and she was
lost, but not far, like maybe a few miles from Lajamanu.
LS: Yeah.
BG: And she could not come back. And the women were saying that she
was caught by a . . ., I forgot the name now.
LS: Marlkarri (wild man)
BG: Yeah, but like a spirit that comes in dream for sex.
LS: yeah, yeah, yeah
BG: And then they were telling many more stories like that, of men who
are called by a woman in dream.
LS: Yeah the Labirinja
BG: Yeah and the other way, woman that are . . .
402
LS: Yes the Labirinja (woman) and Marlkarri (man).

He does that now, he takes . . .
(Lance suggests with his hand holding a woman by her hair)
he can steal a woman. Or even a child.
If they walk along, and they lag along behind,
We’re going: ‘Oh, they gone now!’
Then we know that Marlkarri took them.
And if it’s a bloke, he’s out hunting,

that’s the story connected to the that Emily Gap,
there’s a spring there, at the end of the golf course there.
And when I was young man,
we used to walk around from spring to spring hunting,
and we used to go to that spring there,
down at the end of this new golf course they got.
We used to send the dogs around to bring the kangaroo in,
and I was sitting down there one day,
and this old man said,
‘You know you got to be careful there,’
– ‘what are you talking about?’ I’m a bit worried now,
‘What are you telling me?’
– ‘this is where that Labirinja come!
she’ll hit you on the head and dance on top of you.
And she’ll steal you and take you away!’
I said ‘Why did you tell me that, why did we come here?’
And he said, ‘She goes all the way to Emily Gap.’
Now the others had gone ahead to Emily Gap,
we best catch up to them.
I said, ‘Bloody oath we should catch up to them,
shouldn’t hang around here no more!’
But that Labirinja she’s supposed to hit you on the head,

Wild woman and when you knocked out,
she dances over the top of you.
(Lance brings his hands together on top of his head down
then mimes a dance of stomping feet with his hands)
she is singing and then you’re gone with her!
And there’s another place at Heart Range,

The Tulkin Downs Area there
where a wild woman came from the mountains,
and the Labirinja came there from the mountain,
and the old fellas, would always sneak up from all them other camps.
And they would put on long hair,
(Lance combs his hair)
403
and they’d tie on their hairbelt

(Lance shows putting on headband)
and they would pretend to be women.
And the Labirinja would come to see their sisters,
looking to see Aboriginal women hunting and that.
And the men would act as women,
and when the Labirinja got close,
he would grab her, and take her for his wife.
So a lot of the wild women were caught that way but,
But them Labirinja, they are very dangerous, all right.
BG: Now Broome side, I was told a story of one man, everybody was
saying, he likes it! he’s in love with that spirit woman. He’s not interested
in any other woman. He’s always waiting for her.
LS: Yeah, that happens.
I know one cousin of mine, he wasn’t tormented,
he was sort of attracted to that one Labirinja again,
must be a few years ay.
About five years I think, he was used to camp on his own,
wait for her, but yeah she sing him, catch him.
He’s hers, for ever then,
until someone cleanse him . . . yeah
This must be a hairstring she using, pull him,
and ngangkari got to cut it, and sing him, and clean him again.
But, I heard one old man, in Alice Spring there,
he was taken away for about forty years.
He come out, he left as a young man in Heart Range.
He come out somewhere in Alyawarre country.
He walk on up to the bore,
and all them Aboriginals there, saw was a wild man coming out of the
scrub,
so they cut for it. And he’s calling out, water! water!
And he said the last thing he remembers, when I spoke to him,
he said he remembers going to toilet, and the next thing he remembers,
he’s looking at his hand, and there’s a spear and a boomerang in his hand.
And in his other hand, is a woman, and she’s leading him closer to the
camp.
And then she goes like that to him,
(Lance shows the sign for going away)
‘go back to them, go back to them!’
He didn’t know he was old.
When he went up closer,
all the other people were running everywhere.
404
And when some old man came over to talk to him,

this was in Alyawarre country.
So he was a Aranda man, he end up in Alyawarre country.
And he remembers looking back,
seeing the wild woman in the scrubs
still looking at him, going like that to him.
(Lance signs away)
Anyway they took him to Alice Springs,
and they brought his kids, who were old men now,
they brought his kids to him,
his wife had passed on.
And they said, these are your kids,
And he said ‘Oh, I don’t know them,
I only know my family in the desert.’
(Lance points his thumb to the back of his right shoulder)
And they couldn’t really connect with him.
But that old man,
in winter time or anything, no fire, he’ll be sitting in the creek,
with no shirt on, nothing, and don’t get sick.
Everybody say, ‘You stay clear of him’
But he was a good old man, I liked talking to him, he was good.
He told me now that story . . .
He lonely too,
like he still desires to go back, bush.
There was a few men like that.
I hear there was one, near, whereabouts was that?
West I think, Western Australia.
I was there, up that way for a while, working.
Around Mongrel Down Station . . . Tanami Downs!
I was working there and . . . they say,
When you go, when we getting closer to these hills,
lined up hills, all the men start panicking now,
‘Don’t go toilet without taking another couple of fellas with you!’
I said:
‘What for?’
– you’ll see all the bushes shaking, that’s wild people behind there,
they’ll bring you, and that’ll steal you!
– Oh . . .’
So I had to be careful in that country, that was around Western Australia,
That’s the worst place, they reckon, down Balgo Hills.
BG: Watikutjarra (Two-Men Dreaming)
LS: Yeah around there that’s worst place, I was working there.
405
The Two-Men are the Dreaming ancestors of the shamans or

Clevermen (ngangkari, mapan, bapan) from the desert and the north-
west. They turned into two hills in different places from the desert
to the north-west coast. In the film Lance sits in front of a painting
of the Two-Men Balgo Hills painted by Bye Bye Sunfly Napangarti,
a Kukatja artist. Warlpiri say that their father Invincible tried to get
rid of all boys at birth and was marrying his daughters endlessly, but
they took revenge on him by tricking a travelling foreigner to attack
and wound his testicles, whose pus became the gold in the Tanami.
He ended up following his daughters who became the Pleiades and he
keeps trying to chase them as a constellation (Orion for some). The
Two-Men would turn into whirlwind to seduce and swallow women
on their way. But also playing with their healing colourful stones
to produce many different kinship systems that differentiate several
north-western language groups. For some groups they are connected
to two birds that name the generation moities, Wir and Girdir, as
well as to the Rainbow Snake and the Magellanic Clouds galaxies.10
BG: And when you used to go work in jail to help people, what would
you help them with?
LS: What problems? So of them would . . . one fella was love sick with
magic
(Lance laughs)
He was worried about his wife, that she was going to leave him
while he was in there.
Another one was crook in his heart, big fella.
He was fighting with everybody this big bloke,
but when he came to me, he showed big respect,
he said ‘would you look at me?’
I said ‘I’m not old.’ He said ‘Can you look at me please?’
and I said ‘Alright’. I looked at his heart, chest.
See another mob get, they get anxious, and anxiety attacks, things like that
and you have to sit down and talk to them.
‘Don’t panic now . . . you’ll be alright’ and all this.
Some had pains, aches and pains, some had mental problems,
couldn’t help them much them mental fellas.
You’d try you know, talk to them.
But I noticed all those fellas that were a bit off,
they all still showed respect to me.
10
See Chapter 2, Chapter 4 and note p. 382; see also more in Glowczewski
(2004).
406
Yeah, they never disrespect me in any way.

A lot of, there were some spiritual problems,
some believed that they were ‘caught’.
because the belief is, them Aboriginals,
they believe that if they killed somebody,
that Kurdaija . . . gonna come for them even if they’re in jail
So they would ask me to clean them, things like that.
BG: And what can you do then?
LS: You ask to clean them, I sit to clean them.
One fella there, he was next cell over from me.
I heard this (knock) on a window, near the bars.
(Lance taps the table with his fingers)
I knew, I thought I was going crazy first.
I looked up from my bunk like that ‘did I hear that?’
(Lance bends his head backwards)
Then I hear glass smash,
and I got up quickly and went to my window,
I thought it was that glass smashed,
No, and I went to lie down again,
and I hear footsteps walking,
(Lance mimes steps with his hands)
crunching on the glass,
and next cell over, man started screaming and carrying on.
‘Leave me alone!’
I thought he was going mad,
I didn’t think about Kurdaija see, I wasn’t thinking about that,
and I went back to sleep, straight to sleep.
Next morning, he wouldn’t come out of his cell.
And he came out the next day after,
and he was red and raving like a loony.
Lunatic you know. And everyone say, ‘He’s caught.’
And then the next fella over from him,
he also come to me and said,
‘Did you hear glass smash?’ I said ‘yeah’.
‘There’s no glass smashed!
did you hear someone walking on glass?’
I said ‘yeah’,
He said ‘There is no glass on the ground . . .
what the hell was we listening to?’
I said ‘Hold on, don’t talk about it,
people will think you’re mad!’,
meaning, try to forget it.
(Lance laughs)
407
To be faithful to the title of this book, Indigenising Anthropology,

I would like, with this concluding chapter, to leave the last word
to my eldest daughter, Milari Barker who, after transcribing this
interview with Lance Sullivan, wrote the following comment. She
had met Lance as a little girl when we were living with her sister
and dad in Townsville in 2004–2005. She met him again when we
all went to the festival of shamanism in Genac in April 2017. Her
grandmother, Djugun healer Theresa Barker,11 had told her when she
was a child that she should nurture the healing powers she inherited.
Milari was invited as a member of the Aboriginal delegation, to help
the Aboriginal guests with the ceremonies they performed and the
cultural and spiritual presentations they did there.
The spiritual world, beyond and through our way, responds in waves,
to our energy and willingness to listen, to see through. For ourselves, or
others. To simply understand, or possibly heal. Learning from the elders
how to shift shadows/energy. As Lance does with healing, when he pushes
the liyan back in or the pain out. Sometimes, it manifests physically as a
splinter or coughed up blood or bone, or maybe a part of it/the pain sticks
with him. In his words, that is the cost of his gift.
People over time, throughout the world have had different ways to
refer and name spiritual becomings and events.
Our acceptance, that something that cannot be labelled, explained or
dissected, becomes a part of our reality, gives us power, as living beings, to
draw from this energy, lets us tap into another dimension of our ‘potential’.
I believe even stronger in the fact some of us, humans, are more sensi-
tive than others to these things. Listen harder, or are chosen to carry this
weight, gift, burden. I have seen it, through my Aboriginal blood and
descendance, and the weight that THAT carries. It gave me eyes to see
through. Like my grandmother used to say, when I truly listen.
All is network, blood, spirit, stories, land. Spirits connect it all, and
have always lingered to teach us, shape us, warn us, protect us and link
our dreams. We are all free to choose how to listen and see. Look without
your eyes. And we can start by respecting and caring for the world we do
see, we do use. If we don’t, we shall get sick.
It is hard to talk about spirit and not mention Bugarrigarra, our
Dreamtime. This is what we call the popularised ‘Dreaming’ in Yawuru
and Djugun languages, but different Aboriginal groups throughout
Australia have different names for it, like for the Warlpiri it’s Jukurrpa.
Imagine our world slave to time, where the Dreamtime is all time. Past,
present and future, a constellation of spiritual forces. Us, Aboriginal
11
See Chapter 8 in this book, ‘Culture Cult’.
408
Figure 14.3 Smoking ritual after Yukawala women’s intertribal ceremony in

Western Australia. Theresa Barker (Djugun and Jabirr Jabirr) with her son’s wife,
Barbara Glowczewski, and their first baby daughter, Milari Barker. Broome, WA
© Wayne Jowandi Barker 1992
people, can understand, see and feel this. We use it to tell stories, draw
energy and communicate with spirits. Elders have a greater understanding
of this, a sensibility, which is why the passing down of knowledge is so
important – why our languages, traditions, knowledge and heritage are so
rich and vital to our ways, our life.
This all gives us the tools to use our liyan, to feel a spiritual world, and
heal.
Lance is an amazing healer, I have witnessed it, felt it. His intui-
tion guides and mends, however also draining, it has a cost. His person
is a testament to his sacrifice and good. A humble and quiet man, of
great respect who doesn’t question what he sees, but accepts some things
cannot be explained.
I have been lucky enough to observe and learn from him, as he has
inspired me to listen and see, as my grandmother wanted, without my
eyes, but with my liyan and my heart. (Milari Barker, Paris, 10 July 2017)
409
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Index
Ackerman, Kim, 267 Anderson Stephanie, 318

activism, 11, 20, 30, 33, 49, 56, 59, anthropology, 7–8, 12, 37, 55–6, 61,
74–6, 237, 243, 250, 254–5, 300, 77, 85, 119, 260, 311, 322, 327–8,
308, 310, 318n, 333n, 338–9, 338–9, 347, 350, 366, 376
342–3, 351–6 indigenise, 4, 26, 77, 116, 252,
actual see virtual 285–7, 359
Africa, 372, 7, 60–1, 75–6, 93, 199, restitution, 31, 36, 257, 276, 281–2,
217, 303–4, 306–9, 330–3, 351, 286–7, 291–2, 295
361, 367, 372 urban, 1314, 307n, 326, 336
Gorée island (Senegal), 328–9 see also ontological; sacred objects
Indian Ocean, 306, 328 Arrernte (Aranda), 22, 156–7, 203, 215,
Mascarine Islands, 338 217, 231, 262, 346–7, 377, 382,
Mayotte (French), 311 397, 405
Reunion Island (French), 33–4n, Asia, 32, 50, 75, 234–7, 244, 249, 263,
307n, 311 268, 305, 308, 333, 336, 338, 351
Union of Comores, 311 Andaman Islands (India), 317
see also Americas; diaspora; Europe; China, 354
racism Israel, 333n, 241
Ahouansou, K. Mariquian, 310–11 Japan, 58
Alcantara, Clarissa, 358, 361, 364–6 Java (Indonesia), 325
alliances, 16, 20, 45, 49, 57, 76, 118, Macassar (Indonesia), 30, 246
126, 131, 146, 149, 159–61, 166, Palestinians, 12, 75, 114, 312
277–8, 286, 325, 342, 349, 352; Vietnam, 308, 310
see also activism; conflict; marriage see also Australia
Alliez, Eric, 14, 103, 111, 124 assemblage, 48, 54, 70, 102, 106, 108,
Aluridja, 214–15, 217 115, 120, 122–4, 308, 312, 323–5,
Alyawarre (Yalyuwari), 156, 379, 382, 332, 344, 349, 351, 361–2
386, 404–5 Australia, 20–1, 29, 30–1, 33–4, 41–3,
Americas, 7, 24, 32, 46, 50, 53–4, 58, 45–6, 48–9, 50, 96, 119, 125,
61, 75, 259, 271, 303, 307, 310, 225–7, 237–8, 240, 243, 248–52,
328, 335, 338, 341, 347 268, 282, 311–14, 316–17, 319,
African-American, 43–4, 56, 58, 76, 345–6
293, 319–20 ‘Afghan’ cameleers, 32, 69, 108, 378
Bolivia, 21, 353 Asian indentured labor, 32, 234, 338
Brazil, 7, 11, 44–5, 53–4, 59–60, 305, asylum seekers, 47, 313, 327, 343,
325–6, 356, 359, 361–76 351
Canada, 21, 59, 255, 335n, 352 ‘Intervention’ (Act 2007), 43, 50,
French Caribbean Islands, 306–7, 313–15, 334
309, 328 Melanasian indentured labor, 338
French Guiana, 34n, 44, 59, 76, 302, Muslims, 32, 244n
307n, 310, 312, 352 Noonkanbah 1980 protest, 97, 269
Haiti, 309, 336–7, 360 Palm Island, 42–3, 48, 316, 333
Native Americans (NA), 21, 28, 45, Referendum 1967, 249, 268
59, 76, 82, 352, 114, 116, 125, 259, ‘Refugees from the inside’, 335
261, 276, 310, 324, 341, 351–2 Stolen generations, 33, 41, 314, 333
439
Australia (cont.) 280, 301, 305, 312, 324, 328–9,

Stolen wages, 33, 49, 333 333–4, 338, 342, 371
Torres Strait Islands, 31, 37n, 44, decolonial, 53–4, 56, 116, 303, 335n
122, 227, 250–1, 273 ‘communitarism’, 303–4
see also language; racism conflict, 3, 16, 20–1, 32, 35, 43, 51,
Azoulay, Ariella, 312–13 116, 161, 181, 199, 218, 220,
247–8, 259, 274, 286, 299, 303,
Barker, Jowandi Wayne, 29, 36, 271n, 312–13, 322, 325, 328, 333–6
290–2, 344, 409 settlement, resolution, 69, 182–5,
Barker, Milari, 29, 359n, 408–9 195, 269, 271, 278, 348n
Barker, Nidala, 3, 355n, 359n Coombe, Rosemary, 261
Barker, Theresa, 408–9 cosmologics/cosmological, 12, 38, 63,
Bateson, Gregory, 71–3, 115, 323, 348n 69, 125, 169–70, 73, 195, 197,
becoming, 7, 10, 12–13, 15, 23–4, 59, 200, 217, 219, 342, 353, 366; see
77, 91, 117, 120, 126, 131, 146, also space-time; time-space
162–4, 284, 344–5, 361, 375, 408 cosmopolitics, 56, 63–4, 299, 341, 344,
becoming-Black, 375 349, 363, 366, 376
becoming-in-common, 311 recosmopolitisation, 353
becoming land, 4–5, 69, 74, 161–2
Cosmocolour-becoming, 61, 365, dance, 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18, 24, 35, 58–9,
376 61, 73, 84, 101, 108, 118, 121–3,
ontological becoming, 356 138–9, 157, 161, 165, 200, 242,
totemic becomings, 16, 54, 60, 65, 258–60, 265, 278, 282, 285, 288,
73, 81n, 119, 367 292, 345, 360, 378, 380, 382n,
vampire, 169, 185 403
see also Dreaming; totemism Brazilian, 362, 364–6, 367, 375–6
Benthall, Jonathan, 327 Japanese, 58, 265
Black affirmation, 301, 305, 307–11, Kimberley, 246, 263, 268, 272–3, 275
319, 338n; see also racism Laura festival, 291
boundaries, 37, 51, 61, 82; see also May day, 341–2
limits Warlpiri men ritual, 140–7, 153, 261,
278
capitalism, 6–7, 11, 40, 48, 56, 62, 76, Warlpiri women yawulyu, 132–8,
113, 120, 321, 323–4, 331n 146–7, 150–1, 154–6, 174–5, 186,
capitalistic subjectivity, 105–9 199, 201, 203, 363
refusal to accumulate, 118, 181, 264 see also ritual
see also colonisation; mining De Largy Healy, Jessica, 58n, 269n,
cartography, 16, 27, 51, 62–5, 72, 86, 271n, 291
91, 109–10, 114, 122, 126, 323, death, 13, 23, 27, 34, 42, 63, 93–4,
348–9; see also map 100, 120, 137, 144, 149, 158, 169,
Certeau, Michel de, 8 172, 181, 184, 197–9, 220, 235,
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 321 245, 253, 267, 316, 325–6, 384–5,
Chomsky, Noam, 21 391–3, 397
Christianity, 32, 152n, 235, 240–5, Brazil, 61, 364, 367, 374–6
264, 283, 353–4, 366, 368, 370–1, France, 304
373–4 Indonesia, 331
cinema, 6, 13, 62, 255, 281, 292, see also funeral; spirits
308–9, 319, 329–30, 332, 337n, Deleuze, Gilles, 5–7, 11, 14, 27–9, 39,
351–2, 348–9, 350–1, 359–60; see 42, 53, 57, 60–1, 64, 67, 71–3, 75,
also experimental films 114–15, 125, 286, 323, 347–9,
Cixous, Hélène, 6 361–2, 367
Clastres, Pierre, 7, 116, 118 Deligny, Fernand, 71–2, 343
colonisation, 7, 9, 13, 20, 30–1, 35, 48, Deren, Maya, 360
52, 54, 64, 69, 76, 85–6, 88, 109, Descola, Philippe, 38, 52–5, 117n, 340,
118, 120, 122, 231, 251–3, 264, 342, 344, 346
440
Index
deterritorialisation (deterritorialization), Snakes, 24, 158, 160, 177, 184, 190

28, 63–4, 73, 75, 120, 119–21, Yam, 15–18, 21, 126, 135–6, 141
323–4, 363 see also dream; space-time; time-
diaspora, 35, 61, 76, 303, 308, 310–11, space; totemism
323, 328–9, 332, 337 Dumas, Alexandre, 309
digital, 36–7, 57, 63, 73, 75, 281–3, Durkheim, Emile and Marcel Mauss,
286–7, 291–4, 295, 347 21–2
copyleft, 279 Dussart, Françoise, 137, 150
divination, 184, 361, 374
Djugun (Jugun), 3, 35, 243, 246, 264–6, ecocide, 353, 355
270, 271n, 275, 396, 408–9 ecofeminism, 7, 56, 349
Dousset, Laurent, 291 ecology, 7, 14, 39–40, 73, 90, 115, 323
dream, 1–3, 8, 18, 72, 81, 83–4, 90, ecosophy, 27, 40, 47–8, 51–3, 57, 74,
123, 349, 360, 399, 401, 408 115, 127, 323–4, 352, 367
condensation, 284, 360 Eizykman, Claudine, 6, 359
Dreamland, 85 Elkaïm, Mony, 73
dreamscape, 101 ethnocide, 7–8, 32, 115, 333, 355
Dreamtime, 37, 87, 197, 239, 242, Europe, 6, 30, 32, 51, 199, 245, 308,
408 309n, 313, 321, 331, 337, 339
images, 167, 151, 186 Afropeans, 76, 311
interpretation, 121, 162, 186, 235 Basques, 12, 114
revelation of songs, paintings, 13, 19, France, 13–14, 23, 25, 34n, 43–4,
101, 106, 117, 119, 135–6, 140–3, 49–51, 59, 75, 70, 72, 74–6, 262,
149–50, 186, 197, 204, 263, 274, 300–12, 317–18, 326, 334, 338–9,
286 352, 354, 377, 387
of spirit-children, 167, 228, 235, 284 Muslims, 303–6
see also Dreamings; images; spirits: Roma and Gipsies (Gypsies), 50, 114,
spirit-child 336, 338
Dreamings (Jukurrpa), 10–11, 25–6, Russian consortium, 44
37–8, 63, 73, 81–2, 97–9, 102, see also diaspora
116–17, 119, 131, 133–4, 137–8, exchange network (Wunan), 265,
145, 151, 153–4, 161, 163–7, 198, 267–9
203–4, 231–2, 239, 241, 245, experimental films, 6, 9, 36, 284–5,
262–3, 290, 344, 348, 360, 384 292, 359–60, 363, 376
Birds, 99, 137, 139, 142, 159–60,
170, 182–3, 193–4, 269, 381, 406 fire, 6, 16, 20, 97, 119, 135–6, 141–3,
Bugarrigarra, 269, 274, 275, 408 146, 157, 182–3, 185, 269, 272,
Bush Bean, 130, 187 341, 344, 354, 371–2, 395, 402,
Digging Stick, 24, 63, 117, 137, 405
153–5, 156–60, 166, 193, 201, 278 Freud, Sigmund, 18, 22–3, 87, 119
Emu, 1–4, 19, 63, 69, 134, 140, 184, funeral, 100, 171, 185, 195, 198, 209,
192, 345, 377, 381, 386 218, 232, 234, 245, 304, 384, 397
Fire, 143, 345 mourning, 13, 93, 131, 149–50, 153,
Gecko, 184, 193 172, 177, 184, 186, 196, 199–201,
Goanna, 154–5, 157, 160, 194 219–20, 263, 278–9
Honey, 99, 157, 179, 194
Initiated Man (Witi tree), 137, 146, game, 30, 36, 109, 118–19, 125, 282,
154–7, 161, 179, 186, 191–4, 256 289–91, 293–4
Invincible and Two-Men, 97, 190–2, Garond, Lise, 316n, 333
386, 406 gender, 24, 84n, 131, 144, 150–1, 155,
Kangaroo, 160–1, 173, 345 158, 161, 165–8, 173, 178, 186,
Plum and Possum, 4, 193, 230 197, 220–1, 278–9, 289, 294, 329,
Rain, 140, 151, 166, 193–4 404
Seeds and Wallaby, 134, 138, 142, androgyny/two- or double-gendered,
159–60, 183–4, 193, 381, 406 24, 159, 167, 176, 200, 151
441
gender (cont.) images (16mm), 359, 360

gendering, 167–8, 267, 272 images-forces, living images
indeterminate gender/non gendered, (kuruwarri), 15, 26, 69, 152, 164,
161, 167, 186 167, 174, 178, 180, 189, 200,
sexual bias, 7, 22, 26, 132 222
see also virtual/actual sculptures, 372
Genosko, Gary, 47, 277 see also dream; Dreamings; dancing;
Glissant, Edouard, 309 painting; singing; spirits
Godelier, Maurice, 12 imprint, 138, 151, 161, 163, 289, 326;
Goodale, Jane, 244, 347–8 see also line
Guattari, Félix, 5–7, 11–15, 18, 22–3, inalienability, 34–5, 117n, 126–7,
27–9, 34, 39, 42, 44, 54, 60–1, 257–60, 262, 269, 276–7, 279–80
71, 73, 75, 81–3, 87, 90–4, 102–3, incest, 22, 97, 171, 188–92, 196–7; see
106, 108–9, 111–13, 114–26, 323, also taboo
361–2
asignifying, 104–5, 109, 351 Jampijinpa, Jimmy Robertson, 288
dissensus, 320, 348 Jampijinpa, Wanta Steve Patrick, 63–9
metamodel, 40, 62, 64–5, 348–9 Jangala, Abe, 112
ordology, 103, 124, 346 Japaljarri, Paddy Gibson, 66
SF, cyberspace, 61–2, 347 Jaulin, Robert, 7–8, 115–16
see also ecosophy; refrain Jupurrurla, Maurice Luther, 121
Gumbula, Joe Neparrnga, 58
Kaberry, Phyllis, 267
Hage, Ghassan, 312 Kariera, 215
Haraway, Dona, 350 Kennedy, Randall, 319–20
Hau’ofa, Epeli, 56 Kinship, 107, 118–20, 125, 131, 146,
health, 11, 23, 35, 100, 123, 177, 228, 189, 191–2, 197, 202–5, 209,
240, 244n, 251, 313–14, 353n, 391 214–15, 220, 231–3, 291, 382n,
Cleverman, 70, 350–1, 377, 384, 406
385–6, 391–2, 400–1, 406 matriline, 67–9, 146–8, 152, 253–4
healers (ngangkari, mapan, mungan), niece exchange (kaminingi), 25, 189,
38, 70, 350, 352, 377, 388–90, 206
393–4, 396, 401 patriline, 148, 152, 175, 206, 253–4
healing, 69–71, 90, 132, 134, 245, see also skin-name(s) (subsections)
370–1, 375, 382–8, 397, 399, Kukatja, 263, 268, 382n, 406
408–9
healing stone, 374, 406 Lacan, Jacques, 26–7, 120–1, 125
see also sorcery land, 4–5, 69, 74, 101, 162
Henry, Rosita, 291 claims, 19–20, 48, 87–8, 92, 95–6,
hunter-gatherer, 69, 86, 90, 116, 120–1, 116, 132, 227, 240, 251–3, 333,
137, 139n, 148, 156–9, 161–3, 346, 349
172–3, 179, 196, 198, 244n, 272, holding, 162, 252, 254
278, 291, 369, 383, 392, 398–9, management (kirda/kurdungurlu), 20,
403–4 118, 137, 143, 260, 277, 291
Native title, 31, 88, 122, 227, 250–4,
identity, 11, 29, 31, 35, 38, 56, 58, 61, 259, 269, 296, 333, 383
68, 82, 95–6, 98, 106, 110, 114, restitution, 31, 202
119, 147, 150, 162, 166–8, 204–5, Langton, Marcia, 281n
220, 226–55, 269, 272, 278–9, language, 10, 22, 25–7, 38, 42, 43, 48,
288, 305, 321, 338, 349, 361 53, 61, 81, 95, 116–17, 119, 122,
French, 305–9 150, 205, 219–20, 224–5, 230,
of resistance, 225 234–5, 242, 244, 258–9, 282, 308,
see also gender; totemism 326, 378, 382n, 406, 409
images, 8–9, 36–8, 72, 100, 115–16, bilingual education, 34n, 245, 273,
162, 245, 275, 282, 285, 287–8 314–15
442
Index
Breton, 33, 83, 308 totemic, 116

Kimberley, 35, 235, 263, 265–75, see also cartography; paintings
279, 315 marriage, 95, 107, 109, 118, 147–8,
Kriol, 30, 239 159–60, 165, 171, 174, 206,
sign language (rdaka-rdaka), 90, 210–13
171–2, 177, 197, 200, 218 bestowal (promise), 146, 148, 160,
‘upside-down” (ngudalj-kitji-rni), 174–5, 181–3, 193–4, 244, 278
172, 197 endogamy, 192, 231
Warlpiri, 18, 29, 63–4, 69, 161–3, exogamy, 187, 192, 234, 263, 268
172, 231, 238, 242, 259–60, 288, polygamy, 244
315 polygyny, 160
see also Americas; Oceania; taboo wrong marriage (warrura), 179
Latour, Bruno, 55–6, 343, 351n see also kinship; taboo
Laughren, Mary, 168 Meggitt Mervyn, 151–2, 156, 159
Lazaratto, Maurizio and Angela memory, 10, 16, 37, 39, 41, 71, 90, 98,
Melitopoulos, 54 100, 104, 111, 119, 163–4, 182,
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 25, 53, 116, 241, 282–6, 323, 325–6, 332,
119–21, 125, 206, 210, 299, 302 333n, 393; see also refrain
limits, 52, 72, 82, 86–7, 151, 179, 259, mining, 1, 3, 19–20, 44, 70, 76, 96–7,
292, 323, 327, 375 125, 204, 242, 246, 251, 253, 260,
limitless, 100, 121, 217, 289 269, 291, 315, 324, 336, 346, 355
lines, 17, 27, 36, 39–40, 52, 58, 61, fracking, 20, 35, 74, 271n, 354, 355n
67, 72, 89, 102, 125, 138–9, 187, Mnouchkine, Ariane, 326–7
208, 290, 294, 344, 367–8, 376, Morvan, Arnaud, 377n
394 Mudpura (Mudbura), 3, 150
path of travel, 10, 11, 13, 15, 31, Munn Nancy, 133, 150, 161
37, 73, 101, 111, 116, 118, 126, Murinbata, 210, 212–13, 217
132–3, 137–8, 152–3, 166–9, 187, museums, 11, 121n, 199, 257, 259–63,
193, 205, 221, 285, 345 270, 272n, 273, 275, 280, 289–92,
songline, 16, 20, 25, 63, 123, 131, 301, 310, 326, 328
151, 286, 290 Myers Fred, 262–3
storyline, 86, 287–9, 291 myth, 82,99, 107–8, 126, 155, 160–1,
track(ing), 2, 4, 22, 36, 53, 63, 69, 163, 187, 189, 350
117, 119, 151, 187, 285, 289, male/female versions, 157, 155–61,
311 166, 168
trail, 1–3, 98, 131, 133, 139, 184, mythic network, 117, 241, 279, 280,
285 287–8
see also Dreamings; kinship; mythico-ritual complexes, 205, 234
totemism ‘payback’, 101
love, 6, 8, 23, 27, 32–3, 61, 173, 176, transgressors, 192–3
181–2, 191–3, 237, 300, 404 see also Dreamings; lines; ritual
love magic (yilpinji), 70, 132, 156,
157, 159–60, 195, 267 Nakamarra, Janjiya Liddy Herbert, 11,
love sick, 406 130, 135–6, 140–3
Lupasco, Stéphane, 26 Nakamarra, Nakakut Barbara Gibson,
1–4, 19, 123
Mabo, Eddie, 31, 122, 227, 251 Napaljarri, Peggy Rockman, 293
Manning, Erin and Brian Massumi, Napanangka, Nelly Morrison, 15–16
40–1 Narcisse Pelletier, 318
map, 36, 71–2, 88, 89, 96, 110–11, 125, nature/culture, 38–40, 46, 52–4, 57, 63,
266, 292, 349, 367 98, 119, 123, 166, 322, 324, 328,
mapping, 81, 206, 210, 212, 215n, 338, 342–3, 346–7
267, 282, 289, 344 Pachamama, 353–4
mind-map, cognitive, 283, 287–9 renaturalising, 343
painting-maps, 73 New Age, 37, 322n, 341–2
443
Neyrat, Frédéric, 342 316–17, 319, 332, 335, 338,

Nungarrayi, Betty Jamanawita, 17–18 350–1
apartheid, 236, 249, 252, 268, 333
Oceania, 50, 57, 59, 97, 115, 125–6, Black Lives matter, 43–4, 341
199, 243, 335, 338 and multiculturalism, 311–13
Banaba Island (Kiribati), 56–8 Racial Discrimination Act 1975
Festival of the Pacific Arts, 58, 255 (Australia), 43, 314
Kanak (New Caledonia), 111, 304, reverse racism, 247, 300
306, 309–10, 312 slavery, 33, 45, 49, 59, 76, 248,
Ma’ohi (French Polynesia), 41, 75, 306–7, 310, 328, 333, 338, 372,
300, 304, 306, 309–10, 312, 324, 408
354 structural racism, 311, 313–14
Māori (New-Zealand), 46–7, 50, 255 ‘whitening’, 32–3, 237
Palau, 58, 126n refrain (ritournelle), 15, 71, 73, 323n,
Papua New Guinea, 126 323–4; see also memory; singing
Trobriand Island, 22, 34, 37, 117n, refugee, 50–1, 269, 306, 308, 310, 311,
217, 277 313, 326–7, 332, 335–7, 342, 351
Vanuatu, 126, 306 rhizome, 6, 14, 39, 73, 76, 125–6, 286
Wallis and Futuna (French), 310 reticular cosmogeography, 343
see also Australia reticular thinking, 36–9, 282, 286,
ontologies, 40–1, 46, 52–3, 54–7, 77, 294, 296, 349
103, 115, 117, 120, 123–4, 299, reticular travelling, 288
324, 340–4, 346, 349, 350–3, 353, reticularity, 324
356, 366 ritual, 121, 147, 153, 155, 165, 168,
Orixàs, 61, 361–7, 369, 372–4, 376; see 201, 341, 205, 230, 267–8
also becomings, spirits Cargo cult, 264
depilation, 150, 183–4
painting, 5, 16, 64, 73, 132, 161–3, female camp (jilimi), 151
168, 242–3, 275, 329 female innovations, 132–3, 135–6,
with acrylics, 37, 66–7, 116, 261, 138, 149, 186
281, 287–8, 382 hairstring exchange, 144, 277–8
body, 2, 103–4, 108, 116, 133–5, Kajirri, 107–8, 136, 172, 199, 204–5
137, 154, 174, 315, 344, 367 male, 23, 139–40, 143, 147, 159,
‘looking after the country’, 122, 131 165, 178
of objects, 135, 137 ‘smoking’ (fumigation), 70, 146–7,
rock (cave), 125, 151, 381 273n, 384
sand, 11, 121, 140, 165, 262 Umbanda, 60, 361, 363, 366–8,
see also dream; Dreamings; 372–6
inalienability; ritual see also conflict; dance; funeral;
Pal Pelbart, Peter, 59 painting; sacred objects; singing,
Pannell, Sandra, 262 taboo
Peterson, Nicolas, 132, 157–9, 182, Roheim, Geza, 22
193, 269, 278 Roth, Walter, 379
Pintupi, 162, 191, 231
Pitjantjatjara, 161–2, 204–5, 213, 382n Sabatier, Arnaud, 311
pluriverse, 15, 38, 53, 59, 69, 70, 76–7 sacred objects, 131, 194, 199–200, 263
Polack, Jean-Claude, 84–91, 109–11 female (kuturru, yukurrukurru), 1–4,
pollution, 46, 54, 228, 300, 346 86, 137–8, 154–5, 199, 201, 256
Povinelli, Elizabeth, 24, 54–5, 57 hairstring, 267, 276–9
male (tjuringa or churinga), 139, 262
Querrien, Anne, 62, 83–4, 91, 93n, 97, pearl-shells, 229, 234, 248n, 266, 278
120 science-fiction, 13, 26, 28, 52, 61–2,
125, 169n, 340, 347–51
racism, 32, 41–4, 47, 57, 75, 227–8, secret, 149, 151, 155, 167–8, 180, 186
243, 247, 299, 301–5, 307, 310, ‘below’ meaning, 191
444
Index
mangaya, 1, 3, 137, 149–51, 167–8 soul (pirlirrpa), 99–100, 137, 147,

maralypi, 150–5, 167–9, 178 151–2, 169, 386–7, 399
mungamunga, 123, 135, 136, 141, almas (Brazil), 368–9, 372, 374
143, 149–51, 167 space-time, 10, 14, 15, 117, 119, 126,
see also virtual 137–8, 149, 163, 168–70, 176,
self, 27, 48, 238–9, 305, 312, 340, 344, 186–7, 195, 200, 204, 209, 221,
346, 369 279, 282
self-affirmation, 40, 115, 323 holographic, 345
self-appropriation, 105 of images, 364–5
self-constructed, 74 relativity, 37–8, 69, 169n, 340
self-determination, 30, 44, 243, 247, see also Dreamings; virutal
250, 250, 270, 275, 315 Spencer, Walter Baldwin, and Francis
self-generation, 189 James Gillen, 22, 174, 179, 188,
self-management, 3, 12, 248, 250, 377, 379
270, 312 spirits, 13, 15–17, 30n, 38, 61, 99, 135,
self-penetrate, 169–70 140–3, 151–2, 169, 197, 200, 227,
self-referential, 71, 73, 111, 163, 189, 235, 241, 245, 267, 273–4, 344,
198, 238 353, 361–7, 377, 387–8, 390–6,
self-regulated, 321 398, 402–4, 407–9
self-reproductive, 198 consultation, 368–75
self-sufficient, 52 incorporation or trance, 60, 93, 182,
Sembène, Ousmane, 329 325, 331, 358–66, 375, 389–90
sense of ‘common’, 367 path, 345
sexuality, 7, 23, 92, 165, 154–5, place of, 273–4
157–61, 165–6, 168, 171–2, spirit-child (Kurruwalpa, Tharmu,
174–9, 181–2, 402; see also love Rayi), 18, 64, 69, 92, 95, 98–100,
shamanism, 12, 38, 52, 53, 70, 100, 125, 150–1, 165, 167–9, 200,
116, 169, 191, 324n, 342–3, 228–30, 235–6, 283–4, 286, 395,
345–6, 377, 388, 406, 408; see also 396–8
health spiritual cleansing, 384
singing, 1–2, 16–17, 19, 93, 101, 108, spiritual danger, 272–3, 385–6,
116, 122, 131, 135, 137–8, 144–5, 399–401
153n, 156, 161, 316, 380, 389, spiritual forces, 290–1, 343
402–3; see also lines spirituality, 19, 21–2, 38, 59, 60, 63,
singularity, 12, 28n, 35–6, 40–1, 52, 100, 116, 229–30, 239–43, 245,
106, 124, 161, 230, 263, 286, 296, 262–4, 276, 281, 283, 341, 343, 346
346–8, 366 see also Christianity; death;
maralypi, 152, 154, 167, 169, 178 Dreamings; Orixàs; soul; totemism
site, 25, 31, 46, 48, 73, 85, 90, 96, Spitz, Chantal, 300
98–100, 103, 131, 155, 180, 287, Stanner, W. E., 210, 241
344 Stanton, John, 291
of conception, 17–18, 95, 98, 236 stars, 14, 16, 66, 74, 97, 193
sacred, 12–14, 16, 19, 70, 116, 124, Magellanic Cloud galaxies, 100, 147,
136, 151, 250, 266, 288, 344 152n, 169, 406
see also Dreamings; land; map; Milky Way, 68–9, 102, 169
mining; spirits: spirit-child Orion and Pleiades, 190–1, 193, 406
skin-name(s) (subsections), 15n, 18, 24, Southern Cross, 16, 63, 67, 69, 147
67–8, 95, 107, 118–19, 135, 183, Stengers, Isabelle, 28, 56, 349–50
206, 208, 211–12, 232, 233, 267, sterility, 235, 284
381, 384, 386; see also kinship; Sullivan, Muradjara Lance, 69–70,
land; marriage 378–9, 408–9
sorcery, 184, 195, 239, 401–3 survival, 13, 119, 227, 281, 283, 285–6,
kurdaija, 165n, 185, 386, 401, 407 289–94, 317, 322, 328, 331, 335,
singing to death, 199 346
see also health; soul Swain, Tony, 152n, 242–3, 265n
445
taboo, 13, 47, 153, 178, 193–7, 201, virtual/actual, 7, 37, 47, 61–2, 71–3,
206, 209, 218–21, 227, 229, 308, 117, 119, 121, 125, 165, 167, 173,
324 193, 222, 274, 279, 283–4, 289,
on food and water, 171, 177–9, 187, 324, 344–5, 348–9
198, 200, 229 kanunju/kankarlu, 169, 176, 208–9,
incest, 22, 97, 171, 188, 189, 192, 219, 256, 284, 361, 375–6
196 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 53–4,
inversion, transgression, 182, 192, 124n, 343, 345
198
mother-in-law/son-in-law, 22–3, 158, Walmajarri, 159n, 191, 231, 263, 268,
171, 193 271
sacred objects, 198–201 ‘Walmadgerisation’, 233
totemic, 178–81, 186–8 Warlpiri, 11–12, 19, 29, 36, 64, 68, 98,
on words, song (kumanjayi), 13, 17, 104, 131, 155, 182, 202, 267, 382,
95, 153, 170–3, 178, 95, 180, 193, 314, 382, 408
196–7, 200–1, 218, 263, 397 in Alice Springs, 182
see also death; ritual; totemism in Docker River, 204
Taubira, Christiane, 302 in Katherine, 144, 224
Teaiwa, Katerina, 56–8 in Lajamanu, 140–2, 148, 150, 153,
time-space, 4, 91, 98, 153, 164, 285; see 261–3, 278, 314–15
also Dreamings; space-time map, 88–9, 288
Tiouka, Alexis, 352 new system, 107, 159
topology, 24–7, 41, 124–5, 202, 206, in Noonkanbah, 148, 268
209, 218 in Paris, 140, 199, 262
5D cube, 216 system of knowledge, 285,
Boy’s surface, 217 288
Hypercube, 25, 64, 125, 210, Walpirised,107
213–15, 217, 219, 221 Woneiga (Warnayaka), 231,
Klein Bottle, 25, 125 242
Torus, 217 in Yuendumu, 1, 3, 29, 132–3, 135,
totemism, 39, 82, 95, 106, 118–19, 119, 137, 150, 334–5
166, 199, 229, 290, 340, 344, 346, see also language
361, 366 Warumungu, 150, 183n, 382
conception totem, 18, 94–5, 98, 254 Weiner, Annette, 34, 117, 276–7,
totemic forces, 360 279
totemic kinship, 232 Wenders Wim, 348–9
totemic marks, 230, 398 Wild, Steven, 144–5
totemic name, species, 125, 200, 231, Wotton, Lex, 42–3, 316, 333
263, 381 Wurundjeri, 45–6
totemic sites, 262
totemic spirits, 239, 254, 262, 397 Yalarrnga, 69–70, 377–8, 380,
totemic territory, 120 397
see also becoming; Dreamings; Yanuwana Christophe Pierre, 44
image-force; lines; ritual; spirits: Yapa/Kardiya (Aboriginal/White),
spirit-child; taboo 29–30, 36, 231, 238, 288
transversality, 28–9, 37, 41, 46, 74, Yawuru, 35, 263, 268, 270–2, 396, 408;
102–3, 124, 127, 308, 324, 343, see also Djugun
348–9, 366–7 Yolngu (Murngin), 58, 205, 210, 212,
Traoré, Tiécoura, 330–1 214, 216–17, 219, 290–1, 292n,
Tsing Anna, 56 314
Yulparija (Yulbarija), 230, 271
UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples 2007, 257n, ZAD (zone to defend) of Notre-Dame-
335 des-Landes, 59, 74–5, 318
446

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Indigenising Anthropology

with Guattari and Deleuze

Editorial Advisory Board

Titles available in the series

Visit the Plateaus website at edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/plat

© Barbara Glowczewski, 2020

Edinburgh University Press Ltd

Typeset in 11/13 Sabon LT Std by

ISBN 978 1 4744 5030 0 (hardback)

Prelude: The Wooden Egg Made Me Sick

Part I: The Indigenous Australian Experience of the Rhizome

Part II: Totem, Taboo and the Women’s Law

Part III: The Aboriginal Practice of Transversality and Dissensus

Part IV: Micropolitics of Hope and De-Essentialisation

11 Resisting the Disaster: Between Exhaustion and Creation 321

Part V: Dancing with the Spirits of the Land

All my gratitude to the Indigenous Australian multitude who taught

sharing their Kali’na heritage and struggles in France, Felix Tiouka

disastrous effect of globalisation in Mali and Sénégal, Henri Courau

Sincere indebtedness to all my other friends for their intellectual

I was eighteen, when, during a stimulating course on the history of

authors mentioned Marx. It was my way of validating a course criti-

fortunate to have benefited from a summer workshop in women’s

by the anthropologist and Vietnam specialist Georges Condominas

The Indigenous Australian Experience of the Rhizome

The Dreaming, as Law, is the principle of adaptation par excellence

be capable of helping us respond to numerous questions regarding

What’s the purpose of these vertigenous implosions within the lower

Chapter 3, ‘Guattari and Anthropology: Existential Territories among

and the refrain [la ritournelle]8 that is simultaneously more multi-

all over, everywhere. Our fathers Japanangka and Japangardi stopped.

Miyikampi kampi yarlaangka warlawuru

In Yalingparunyu a new yam was born. The Dreaming made a yam in

almost a full-time job travelling to diverse regions from one meeting

for providing important opportunities for geologists, astrophysicists

I think there have been quite hopeful developments in the last 10 or 15

Totem, Taboo and the Women’s Law

whose arguments rest essentially on his interpretation of the Arrernte

flee the scene in shame. I saw this first-hand on several occasions in

of Dreaming androgyny which is encountered among many of the

sisters as wives. Instead, I focused specifically on the actions of the

neither structuralist in the Lévi-Straussian sense of the term, nor

as simultaneously a recognition of irreducible singularities and the

deterritorializations engage us [. . .] creating the conditions of emergence,

The Aboriginal Practice of Transversality and Dissensus

across the whole continent. My aim in referencing the Kimberley

other gas development in the region. Similarly, other groups which

of Notre Dame, 1995–2000) and then in Paris (Advanced School

relativity and current use of the notions of ‘pluriverse’ or ‘multi-

To overcome the impasse of the alleged irrationality of the practices

This text is extracted from the introduction to my French book Rêves

Social and mental ecology, which rightfully function as complements to

Micropolitics of Hope and De-Essentialisation

I want to propose three different ways to think about the micropolitical in

‘Myths of ‘Superiority’ and How to De-Essentialise Social and

and social and political local context, including autonomist posi-

Aboriginal people to question government decisions in Australia. In

cancelling rights over Native American land in favour of big extrac-

clans of the Wurundjeri who go by the same name – provided in law