Projects - Anthropology from the Shed

The Science of the Dark and Light Seasons in Nyungar Culture

By Ken Macintyre and Barb Dobson, Research anthropologists and Iva Hayward-Jackson, Nyungar heritage consultant and Land & Culture Protector ‘Qua, bir-ok, mag-goro warh-rang.’ ‘Yes, three years (summers and winters).’ (Symmons 1841: xiii) Charles Symmons (1841) who was the “Protector of Aborigines” and reasonably fluent in the Nyungar language provides the earliest linguistic reference to the … Continued

Investigative Anthropology

Yam lands: the mystery of a holy landscape

Part 1: The Nyungar yam-flood origin narrative ‘Some of the Mountain Natives give a curious tradition of their first knowledge of the native Yam….. They say, the Earth was at one time covered with water, when one black man and woman found themselves on a rock on the top of a very high Mountain. They … Continued

Roots of contention: Noongar root foods and indigenous plant taxonomy

Identifying root foods to individual Linnaean species is always problematic because the Noongar had their own criteria and means of classifying plant foods which did not match the Linnaean speciation model (Macintyre and Dobson 2017). The Noongar people of southwestern Australia, like other Aboriginal groups throughout Australia, over many thousands of years accumulated a vast … Continued

Healing head massage techniques in Indonesia and Aboriginal Australia

While observing and researching the various healing traditions of Western Lombok in the mid-1990’s, it soon became apparent to me that popot or pungut (head massage) was a fundamental therapeutic technique used in the treatment of many traditional Sasak medical conditions. Popot as it was commonly known was not only used for the relief of … Continued

Traditional significance of Nuytsia floribunda (“moojar” or “kaanya tree”)

‘When I die I shall go through the sea to Kurannup where all my moorurtung (relations) will be waiting on the shore for me, waiting with meat and drink for me…Kurannup is the home of my dead people and I must go to them, and my kaan-ya must be free to rest on the kaan-ya … Continued

Ochre: an ancient health-giving cosmetic

Prepared by Ken Macintyre and Barb Dobson Research anthropologists ‘Both sexes smear their faces and the upper part of the body with red pigment (paloil), mixed with grease, which gives them a disagreeable odour. This they do, as they say, for the purpose of keeping themselves clean, and as a defence from the sun or … Continued