Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

There are 2 main subcategories in this category, sacred and secular. The sacred law is considered the most important, involves regulations, codes, and behaviours based on the supernatural. It has a religious connotation similar to the concept of sin. The other category is of offences against people or property. Not all offences are as clear cut as those at the extremes, many tend towards one extreme or the other, depending on their seriousness. Some offences such as incest come under both types of rules, traditional and supernatural. In practice, less serious offences are not usually covered by both category of law.

Sacred law

Appropriate punishments for breaches under this category of law were decided upon by ritual leaders in secret meetings. The maximum punishment for some of these breaches could be death. 2 or more ritual leaders may take action themselves or delegate it to another man. He was not always told immediately what they expect him to do, and they may coerce a man more subtly. One example was that a man may be given tabooed food to eat, after which he was told to kill a certain person. In Arnhem Land there was a form of compulsion in which a sacred object was placed on a man's head, the man could not then refuse to carry out their instructions to kill another man.

Occasionally, when wider repercussions might be involved, an when the act that was actually mainly personal vengeance, supernatural sanctions could be used to disguise the real motive for the act. Another method, that was used in the Daly River area, was to throw a stone spearhead into a sacred ring while chanting ritual invocations. This placed an obligation on all initiated men to co-operate.

There was an report of this being used at the end of the 19th century, at the time of early contact with European settlers. In the newspapers it was reported as the 'Copper Mine Massacre'. According to the report, a man who thought he had a grievance against the settlers had carried out this ritual, compelling all the initiated men to take action on his behalf by invoking sacred law. This case is an example of how supernatural authority could be invoked to take physical action against a transgressor against sacred law.

Kaberry (1939) makes the same point "when some laws are disobeyed, punishment is inflicted by the old men who are concerned with maintaining the status quo and conformity to tradition. They are the instruments of justice...." (Berndt & Berndt, 1964). On rare occasions, when women or children intentionally or unintentionally see sacred objects or rites they are prohibited from seeing, they are usually speared immediately.

Punishment involving death for a serious offence against sacred law by any method that achieves the end is used. A marked man may be speared in the back while hunting, with no warning. Which ever way a man is killed there should be no redress and no feud should follow, as it is capital punishment, just as in many modern countries.

The same punishment by group action can be carried out against a member of the tribe who refuses to respond to the usual sanctions, persisting in spite of repeated warnings. If he continues to ignore warnings he risks being declared to be uncontrollable, a menace to any people he comes in contact with, and could be killed.  An example of such rebellious behaviour could be a young man who wouldn't keep away from other men's wives, and especially if those men were ritual leaders. They can invoke capital punishment even if he doesn't break any sacred law. A man who elopes with his wife's daughter or a close mother-in-law incurs the same punishment. As it is 'state' sanctioned punishment it is with the approval or passive consent (at least in public) of the group. Women have little if any say in the punishment, and may not even know what is about to take place.

Sources & Further reading

R.M. & C.H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1964