WALBIRI RITUAL AT NGAMA

RA61 col. 23 mins.
Director: Roger Sandall
Anthropological consultant: Nicolas Peterson
Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies

This film ‑ with Walbiri Ritual at Gunadjari and Emu Ritual at Ruguri ‑provides an outstandingly sensitive and vivid account of traditional Australian Aboriginal ritual in the Central Desert.

Ngama is a ritual site, used by members of the Walbiri tribe, near Yuendumu some 200 miles north‑west of Alice Springs in Central Australia. It is disting­uished by a spectacular rock painting of a python and we are shown an increase ceremony held there designed, in particular, ‑to promote the fertility of pythons and of members of the python clan. We are also shown how a young novice is initiated by being taught the sacred songs and legends known only to the older men and by being introduced to the snake painting and to tile sacred boards known as churinga which express in their decoration the journeys of the ancestors in the dreamtime, the legendary past. Songs describe dreamtime journeys and camping places.

C. Hugh-Jones, 1979. From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 26. Cambridge University Press.

S. Hugh-Jones, 1978. A Closer Look at Amazonian Indians. The Archon Press, London. (Book intended for children aged 10-14.)

--- 1979. The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No.24. Cambridge University Press.

B. Saler, 1974. Review of the film. American Anthropologist, Vol.76, pp.210‑212.