(4) named exogamous patri‑moieties (with cognate or overlapping sets of names).
139. These four features … are part of a cultural complex which is distinctly different from what was found in … all the neighbouring regions. This is made clear by Elkin's comparative studies (Elkin 1932, 1933), in which he contrasts Northern Kimberley social organisation, with its patrilineal moieties, to the surrounding areas, all of which have section (four‑class) or sub‑section (eight‑class) systems instead. The area he maps out as 'Northern Kimberley' in this respect (Elkin 1932:297) is virtually identical with what we here refer to as the 'Wanjina‑Wunggurr' region, and corresponds very closely to what he later mapped as the 'Boundary of Wanjina Cult Paintings' (Elkin 1964:66)."
73 Later the authors say:
"141. What is most distinctive of the Northern Kimberley region is not the presence of moieties, patrifilial totem local groups or the Wunggurr beliefs by themselves, but the way in which these three strands are intertwined with each other, and with others that have been mentioned above, including a particular kinship and marriage system, and clan‑based exchange system. In the case of the latter two traits also, what we find among the Northern Kimberley peoples are systems which are not totally anomalous, but which are recognisable as distinctive regional variants of more general Australian patterns or institutions. Though the ensemble of socio‑cultural forms found in the Northern Kimberley is distinctive, none of its elements is so exotic as to warrant the inference that it must have been introduced from outside Australia in the recent past (as has sometimes been suggested, for example about the Wanjina complex, eg by Capell 1939:392).
142 Rather, it seems reasonable to conclude that this ensemble evolved through processes of continuous reproduction and transformation within a wider Australian Aboriginal social field. And given the continent‑wide distribution of some of its most basic elements, it seems reasonable to conclude that these processes have been going on for a very long period of time - needless to say, far, far longer than the period of European colonization, since the relevant features - exogamous, patri‑filiative local‑totemic groups, moieties, ideas about the rainbow serpent, etc - could not possibly have swept across Australia during the short interval between the arrival of Captain Cook and the first recorded observations of these features at widely scattered locales. Indeed, it would seem reasonable to conclude on the basis of the ethnographic evidence alone, especially when viewed in comparative perspective, that the evolution of this Northern Kimberley ensemble took place on a time scale such that the state it had reached in 1829 was probably very much like the one reported in the earliest ethnography a hundred years later …."
74 Objection was taken to the form of this passage - "it seems reasonable to conclude" etc. This led to some further evidence by Dr Rumsey as to the basis of his (and Dr Redmond's) conclusions. He was asked what he meant when he described the ensemble as "distinctive", and also to outline the basis for it being reasonable to conclude as he (and Dr Redmond) did. His answer was, in part:
"what we have is a number of elements each of which can be taken to be continuous with things that are happening elsewhere on the continent. You know, the Rainbow Serpent is very widespread; moieties are obviously found elsewhere, although not in the immediate region around the Northern Kimberley, you have to go quite a distance before you find them in North‑East Arnhem Land they're prominent.
Even the Wanjina figures, although the painting style without a mouth and so forth is distinctive, there are certain continuities between that set of beliefs and others that you find elsewhere in Australia, especially when you consider that some of the Wanjinas are not actually represented as paintings, but they're represented as features of the landscape, and many are represented in both ways at once.
So I was trying to argue that, well, there's no reason to assume that any of these elements must have come from outside and the most probable picture, although this is always a matter of inference, but the most probable picture is that this ensemble of features developed over a long period of time out of a combination of things that were already there in some previous form and that each of those things that was there in some previous form …, must have been there for far longer than 200 years because they are attested so widely around the continent.
It's not conceivable, for instance, that beliefs about the Rainbow Serpent could have spread from New South Wales where they are found all the way up to Kimberleys or in the other direction, over the course of 200 years since Captain Cook arrived in Australia. So this is, I mean it's just something that I put as a matter of what's reasonable to believe or not."
75 The authors then refer to the highly skilled technique of pressure flaking:
"147. Like Morwood's, Watchman's and Crawford's findings regarding the antiquity and distribution of painting styles across the Northern Kimberley region, Blundell's findings concerning stone tools further support the impression one gains from the ethnography, of the Northern Kimberley as a [relatively] homogenous culture area. Her survey did not include the Wunambal‑Gambere region or any other part of the far north (hence her designation of it as 'West Kimberley') but other literature on that area (eg Lommel 1952) shows that the same methods for making axes and pressure flaked spear tips were used there. (Indeed Wunambal were regarded, at least at the time of Alan Rumsey's first stay at Mowanjum in 1975, as the pre‑eminent masters of this highly skilled technique). Pressure flaking was not only used across the entire Northern‑Kimberley region, but was unique to it."
76 Dr Rumsey was solely responsible for the section on linguistic evidence (s 2.3). He says (par 91):
"Ever since the first extensive research on Northern Kimberley languages was carried out by Arthur Capell in the 1930s, they have been classified together as a distinct group. O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin (1966) held that this group is a family of languages, related by common descent from a single ancestral language. I have adduced further evidence in favour of that claim here [see s 2.3.1], with particular reference to their system of compound verbs and of body‑part prefixation. Data from geographically contiguous languages show that they contrast sharply with the Northern Kimberley ones in these and other respects. These shared features of the Northern Kimberley languages are extremely unlikely to be due to borrowing alone, because of the systematic nature of the resemblances among the languages, and the fact that they are shared even among non‑contiguous languages in the group, but not with neighbouring languages which are not members of the group. Both the overall affinities within the group and the pattern of differentiation among the languages strongly suggest that they have been developing in situ for a very long period of time."
77 In his examination in chief Dr Rumsey was asked how the linguistic evidence in s 2.3 fitted into the scheme of things. He replied:
"it's striking that … the boundaries of the Northern Kimberley Language Family is fairly closely aligned with those across which all of these other features are distributed, the moieties, the named clan groups each associated with the Wanjina, the set of beliefs about Wunggurr and so forth.
So those two kinds of evidence reinforce each other and suggest that there is a relatively distinct community here, not one which is totally bounded and never, you know, ventures outside its own boundary, something like that, but a relatively distinct regional community of people in interaction with each other and evolving a set of institutions in close interaction with each other.
And so the linguistic data corroborates that, and it also, in addition, gives you some basis for putting some numbers on this in terms of years, you know, a time span over which this thing has been developing. As I explained yesterday the margin of error is considerable but it takes us back at least a thousand years into the past.
Okay, now having done that we look at the evidence from archaeology, from the dating of these Wanjina paintings for example, and we see that a minimum figures of 600 years has been put on those; some people think they're more like, you know, they've been there for more like 3000 years. Again that's another kind of evidence, together with the mapping, the distribution of the Wanjina figures across this region, which goes along with the others and gives you yet another kind of evidence that can be quantified in a way that the ethnographic cannot."
78 Section 3 of the Report - The Wanjina‑Wunggurr Cultural Domain in the Present and Recent Past - deals in turn with continuing beliefs and practices regarding Wanjina and Wunggurr, and other continuing aspects of the Wanjina‑Wunggurr cultural domain (moieties, clans, patrilateral cross‑cousin marriage, clan level exchange relations, and conception). The authors' conclusions regarding traditional ties to Wanjina‑Wunggurr country include the following (par 205):
"1. There are ways of identifying country which are not mediated by particular people's relationship to it. Places and regions have this or that clan identity stamped upon them by what happened during the larlan ancestral period and retain those identities even where the clans have no surviving members. In the same way, larger regions have this or that language identity stamped upon them notwithstanding the more complex and varied language repertoires of people who are associated with the region. At an even higher level, there is a more extensive region that is identified by what went on there during the larlan as the Wanjina‑Wunggurr region. That is the region within which the landscape was created and endowed with significance by a particular class of beings, namely the Wanjinas, which are intrinsically associated with the named dambun across the region.
2. Particular places and regions in general have people related to them in more than one way. A given site may be the Wungurr place of persons A and B, within the clan country of C and D (to which A and B do not belong), to which E is linked by a father's father's sister name, F and G by the fact that it is within Ngarinyin country, to which they also belong, etc. To the extent that these various forms of social identification may be used to specify groups of people, the groups are neither mutually exclusive (since people belong to multiple more or less overlapping ones) nor undifferentiated in their identification with country, since the people in each group have multiple, cross‑cutting ties to other country on other bases.
3. At the most inclusive level we have discussed above - the level of the Wanjina‑Wunggurr region as a whole - … the landscape is stamped with the distinctive features which define the system in terms of which the lower‑level identifications (of named dambun, Wunggurr places, etc) are made. People's identification with particular places and areas within the larger region are underwritten by their common adherence to the sets of beliefs and practices regarding … Wanjina and Wunggurr described in 5.1, and these beliefs and practices pertain to the entire region, notwithstanding the fact that they link people in multiple, cross‑cutting ways to specific places and areas within it. That is one reason why we think it is most appropriate for this level to be taken as the one at which the claimant group is specified (cf section 5.3)."
79 In the course of his evidence in chief Dr Rumsey explained what he meant by "multiple, cross‑cutting ties" and "multiple, cross‑cutting ways":
"there are two different aspects of it, the multiple and the cross‑cutting, and they're both necessary to have in there in order to describe what's going on. Take a given site, site A what we're calling here; you can have ‑ you could imagine a situation where people were related to that site in multiple ways at successive levels of a kind of hierarchy, at, you know, successive levels within a kind of Chinese box structure.
So you've got - let's say that that's a site that is in the clan region of one particular person and that site is also within the language group region or language area that that person belongs to. So you've got a kind of, a larger area of country that the site is in that that person is affiliated to, and you've got a smaller region, a clan area that they're affiliated to. So you can imagine ‑ a kind of Chinese box set of, hierarchical set of relations and that's, there is such a thing, but on the other hand you've also got these cross‑cutting ties, ones which go across any of those levels, for example the connection of conception.
Basil Sansom refers to this as the joker in the pack, because this can actually connect people to somebody, and outside of those, outside of that language area in any kind of set of circles within circles that you want to draw, can be cross‑cut by a, one of these conception spirit connections. So that's the sense in which they are cross‑cutting ties. So we're saying that they're both of those together."
80 In the section following the conclusions set out in [78] (s 3.5) the authors illustrate the first of them by reference to Dodnun, an Aboriginal community on Mt Elizabeth Station. This was the community in which Dr Redmond lived for about twelve months in order to study in situ what the authors call "multiple, cross‑cutting links".
81 In section 3.7 - On defining the claimant group - the authors say:
"278. The claimants in this claim … are the group of people that we have called the Wanjina‑Wunggurr community. This community consists of people who share the set of beliefs and practices which we have called the Wanjina‑Wunggurr cultural domain, as described in this and the previous section of the report, and who are linked to land in the region in accordance with the principles we have been discussing. Most of the people who are linked to specific places and locales in the region have more than one kind of link, as exemplified in sec 3.5. This follows in part from the high rate of endogamy within the region, and from the fact that clans are strictly exogamous, which means that many people have specific links to at least two distinct dambun within the region, through their father and mother. The great majority of people with one or more links of that kind within the region also have their Wunggurr place within it, even if not necessarily within either of their parents' clan countries (dambun).
279. There are of course some people who are linked to the region through one parent only, the other one having come from outside it. For these people, in every case we are aware of, a link through either parent seems sufficient to establish membership in the community, notwithstanding the other links that such a person may have outside the region, just as a person may be identified with different languages through each parent (cf sections 3.3 and 4.3)."
82 Section 5 of the Report - Rights and interests held within the Wanjina‑Wunggurr Cultural Domain - deals first with rights and interests as evident in the earliest written sources (pars 372‑383), and then with those evident in the present and recent past (pars 384‑423). The authors summarise their conclusions in section 5.3, which is in part as follows (par 433):
"As we have pointed out in section 5.2, rights to specific places or locales within the region are not held in common amongst the entire Wanjina‑Wunggurr community, but by certain members of it who are linked to the place or locale in specific ways. But, consistent with what we have said above about 'intellectual property', one thing that the entire community does hold in common is the set of culturally recognised forms of linkage in terms of which all such links to specific places and locales are established. For that reason, the level of the Wanjina‑Wunggurr community as a whole is crucial for questions of native title. Here again, as in our discussion of rights above, what might seem like opposing emphases, on the local and on the regional, are actually two sides of the same coin. For example, in relation to specific locales within the Wanjina‑Wunggurr region, clan‑level connections figure importantly, as exemplified many times in this report. But in relation to the region as a whole, clan membership is equally significant at a higher level in that it gives people a certain kind of connection to country which other members of the community also have, in relation to other places within the region (in contrast, for example, to what happens outside the claim area to the south and east, where the estate groups [are] of a quite different sort). These shared kinds of connections to country, and the shared beliefs and practices which underwrite them, provide the basis on which the claimants constitute themselves as a single community in relation to all of the land within the Wanjina‑Wunggurr region."