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Tiwi Pitek, Emily

Description

The Tiwi are Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia’s Melville and Bathurst islands. This entry focuses on the Tiwi living on Melville Island around 1929 (before substantial European influence). At this time, the primary social unit was autonomous clans with fluid leadership based upon prestige. The major components of the Tiwi religion consist of taboos (pukimani), beliefs and rituals related to death and burial, initiation ceremonies for boys, and mythology (Hart and Piling, 1960:87). Religion played a minimal role in daily life, aside from occasional ceremonies and the pukimani system. The pukimani system is best described as a temporary state of being, during which certain behaviors are prescribed (for example, a woman is pukimani for a week or two after giving birth) (Hart and Piling, 1960:88). There are no religious specialists or practitioners (such as a priest, shaman, or medicine man) among the Tiwi.

Item Metadata

Title
Tiwi
Creator
Pitek, Emily
Contributor
Database of Religious History (DRH)
Publisher
Database of Religious History (DRH)
Date Issued
2019-01-07
Description
The Tiwi are Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia’s Melville and Bathurst islands. This entry focuses on the Tiwi living on Melville Island around 1929 (before substantial European influence). At this time, the primary social unit was autonomous clans with fluid leadership based upon prestige. The major components of the Tiwi religion consist of taboos (pukimani), beliefs and rituals related to death and burial, initiation ceremonies for boys, and mythology (Hart and Piling, 1960:87). Religion played a minimal role in daily life, aside from occasional ceremonies and the pukimani system. The pukimani system is best described as a temporary state of being, during which certain behaviors are prescribed (for example, a woman is pukimani for a week or two after giving birth) (Hart and Piling, 1960:88). There are no religious specialists or practitioners (such as a priest, shaman, or medicine man) among the Tiwi.
Subject
Australian traditions; Religion
Genre
Other
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2019-04-11
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International
DOI
10.14288/1.0378131
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/69585
Affiliation
Non UBC
Peer Review Status
Unreviewed
Scholarly Level
Other
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Rights

Attribution 4.0 International