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33-617: Making an inference from the number of clans and their members, anthropologist Ursula McConnel calculated that traditionally the Wik-Mungkan must have numbered some 1,500 to 2,000 people. In 1930, McConnel estimated that there were 50 to 100 Wik-Mungkan people living around the Archer River and 200 living on the Kendall and Edward Rivers, a demographic drop in the order of 60%-75%. A combination of traders taking off men to work on

66-457: A 4 or 8 section system , she discerned 5 features:(1) localised exogamous ( patrilineal ) clans; (2) with each people divided into two exogamous moieties; (3) with sororate and levirate marriage; (4) modified cross-cousin marriage; (5) with a comprehensive classificatory terminology. Runaway marriage ( maritji ) was accepted as orthodox if the kinship link considered the couple's relationship licit. When mimicked by theatrical performances of

99-499: A fire in a hole, fanning it to flame with feathers plucked from a black-necked stork ( jabiru ). Pieces of ant-bed (termite mound) were then spread on the coals, and food laid out on top, with a tea-tree bark cover placed on top, and the whole lidded with sand to make a slow bake. Increase ceremonies, while thought of as ensuring the food supplies of any one clan in whose territory they were conducted, also catered to distant relatives in other peoples who would be invited in to partake of

132-524: A grazing property called "Cressbrook" (near Toogoolawah, Queensland ), Ursula McConnel was the eighth child (fifth daughter) of grazier James Henry McConnel and his wife, Mary Elizabeth McConnel (née Kent). Raised on the Cressbrook property in what has been described as an "austere" and "repressed" family environment, she was: Ursula McConnell has been described as a brave, free-thinking, open questing woman with sometimes strong emotions, growing up at

165-568: A poisonous substance that would spur fish to leap out of the water was used to dose waterholes, allowing them to be captured from the banks. Fire-stick farming was employed annually at the start of the dry season to flush wallabies and other prey from their grassland haunts, or, once a patch of land was consumed by a controlled blaze, to allow the women to fossick for bandicoots , snakes, goannas and other small game in their burrows. They trained their dogs to refrained from eating prey they managed to quarry. Abundant food could be readily secured on

198-627: A scarce resource. The Wik-Mungkan call coastal neighbours north of the Archer and Watson rivers "bad speech" ( Wik-waiya ) peoples (such as the Anjingit , the Aritingiti , the Adetingiti and Lengiti ) because they find their languages difficult to understand. The word for totem was pulwaiya , roughly "old forebear", whose place of origin thereby became an auwa or totemic ritual site, and

231-459: A strong sense of duty and justice to the people with whom she had worked. At New England Girls' School she received prizes in singing and languages. From ages 17 to 19 she attended courses in history, politics, literature, and music at King's College London . By the age of 20 she completed and attained a first-class honours in philosophy and psychology at the University of Queensland. At

264-464: A theory totally at variance with hers. Needham's paper was fortunate in that it appeared at a time when direct and nearly immediate field verification of his hypothesis could be undertaken. The British anthropologist David McKnight began to carry out fieldwork with the Wik-Mungkan shortly afterwards. Ursula McConnel Ursula Hope McConnel (1888–1957) was a Queensland anthropologist and ethnographer best remembered for her work with, and

297-595: A time when the first wave of feminism n Australia was coming of age: " .. a perfect test case for the various ideas of self-creation .." who also, during troubled times studying, came under the shaping influence of her brother-in-law and psychologist Elton Mayo , husband of her sister Dorothea McConnel: She was once engaged, never married, and being financially secure in her investments in wool bonds, devoted her life to her anthropological research endeavours in Western Cape York Peninsula, driven by

330-413: A wet season staple, followed by waterlilies. In the wet season they camped in the upper reaches of the riverine system. Their inland hunting grounds were of three types: grass plains, river courses and thickly timbered forest lands. As the dry-season came to an end, they would build dams and kiddles to trap fish swimming up river as the rains began to restock the rivers. A particular type of vine containing

363-804: Is a monotypic genus of sardines of the family Alosidae . The only member of the genus is Sardinops sagax . It is found in the Indo-Pacific and East Pacific oceans. Its length is up to 40 cm (16 in). It has numerous common or vernacular names, some of which more appropriately refer to subspecies, including blue pilchard , Australian pilchard ( S. s. neopilchardus ), blue-bait , Californian pilchard ( S. s. caeruleus ), Peruvian Pacific sardine ( S. s. sagax ), South American pilchard , Chilean sardine ( S. s. sagax ), Japanese pilchard ( S. s. melanostictus ), Pacific sardine , and Southern African pilchard ( S. s. ocellatus ). The South Australian sardine fishery targets Sardinops sagax and

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396-528: Is spoken around Aurukun and the Edward River (including Pormpuraaw , the site of the old Edward River Mission). Uniquely among Wik language speakers, where speech styles are defined in terms of some distinctive lexical feature, those whose mother tongue is Wik Mungkan use "eating" as a classifier for their tongue ( Wik Mungkan literally means "language-eat"), a definition borrowed from their inland clans, whose neighbouring east coast peoples employ forms of

429-488: Is the highest yielding single species fishery in Australia by volume. The fishery employs the technique of purse seining , which contributes to the sardines' status as sustainable. Schools of sardines are encircled by a net up to 1 kilometre in length which is then drawn closed at the bottom. The catch is then pumped on board the fishing vessel where it is stored in refrigerated holds at below freezing temperatures. 94% of

462-599: The Watson , Archer, Kendall, Holroyd and Edward rivers flowing down to the west of the Great Dividing Range to the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. A variety of distinct habitats exist, from flat woodlands to mangrove to rocky ridged spurs and poor melon hole land, the last separating them from the peoples to their east. The year had two seasons-the dry May to November period under south-east winds, broken by

495-803: The Cape, and published numerous articles plus a book (entitled Myths of the Munkan ) mostly about the Wik Mungkan people, and the Aboriginal Australians of Cape York generally. During this period she was also awarded a Rockefeller fellowship (1931–33) to study under Edward Sapir at Yale University , in the United States of America. Her series of articles in Walkabout magazine in 1936 promoted her research, and her concern over

528-424: The abundance once a given territorial group had had its fill. McConnel's initial reports state that the clans were patrilineal . Claude Lévi-Strauss reports that though marriage among the Wik-Mungkan was matrilateral , marrying one's father's sister's daughter, and one's mother's brother's daughter, was allowed. A strict ban prohibited only bi-lateral cousin marriage. Exogamy meant kinship networks ran through

561-486: The age of 35 she commenced a doctorate in anthropology at University College London , but, lonely, stressed, and ill she returned to Australia in 1927 without completing her doctorate. On her return, under Professor Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (University of Sydney) she started doing ethnographic research amongst the Wik Mungkan people, Cape York Peninsula. Between 1927 and 1934 McConnel undertook five field trips into

594-463: The attention of Claude Lévi-Strauss in his seminal postwar study, The Elementary Structures of Kinship , premised on the idea that "primitive" peoples like the aborigines exhibited mathematical precision in their social taxonomies, and which introduced a structural formalist approach to anthropology, and this was in turn developed by Rodney Needham who attempted a total structural analysis whose results, though based on McConnel's articles, advanced

627-519: The catch is used as feed in Southern bluefin tuna ranching operations off Port Lincoln , South Australia. The remaining 6% of the catch serves human consumption, recreational fishing bait and premium pet food markets. The industry commenced in South Australia in 1991 with an annual catch quota of 1,000 metric tons (980 long tons; 1,100 short tons). In 2003, the fishery's annual quota

660-434: The clans, meaning that in times of local abundance in any variety of food stock, relatives outside a given clan area would be called in to partake of the bounty, creating on such occasions large encampments.) The elderly were well-cared for, having a right to certain foods forbidden to the more active people, who would supply them with choice snake and stingray food that was taboo to the younger members. The centre of family life

693-504: The coast, introduced disease, cattle ranchers squeezing them off their hunting grounds, and occasional punitive forays to wipe out entire camps account for the reduction. At the turn of the 20th century a coastal reserve was set aside for them on the Gulf. The 2021 Australian census recorded 952 speakers of the Wik Mungkan language. Wik Mungkan is a form of Paman which is a subset of the broader Pama-Nyungan language family , and closely related to Kugu Nganhcara . Wik means "speech" It

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726-517: The grass plains: nutritious roots and fruit could be culled by foraging, while hunting could rely on wallaby , ducks, ibis, flying foxes jabiru and emu. The wooded hill areas abounded in iguana, snakes and opossums, while extensive stands of flowering bloodwood and messmate yielded up plentiful supplies of honey. The rivers were well stocked with fish, such as sardine-fish , Catfish , Rock cod , white fish , schnapper , barramundi and stingray , all speared from swiftly paddled canoes breasting

759-499: The incoming tides and even the poor country around the Kendall river supplied rich stocks of bream . Two types of crocodile were hunted, the upper river Freshwater crocodile and the estuarine saltwater crocodile : the eggs of the former were a winter staple in the upland rivers. The roots of a coastal swamp rush called panja was an important vegetable source towards the end of the dry season. Cooking ovens were improvised by lighting

792-611: The kangaroo totem could endow a child with the name pampointjalama (kangaroo sniffs the air and smells a man). The prefix mai refers to vegetable food ( maiyi ), while that of min refers to meat ( minya ). Where confusion exists as to the precise state of a clan, those which are numbered (a) (b) etc., indicate presumed sections of one clan, though the totemic groups thus listed may have been independent. Archer River Kendall River Holroyd River Edward River The Australian aboriginal evidence for kinship has attracted particular attention from anthropology, and within this area,

825-579: The material gathered on the Wik-Mungkan has played a notable role. The first ethnographic study of the Wik people had been done by the British anthropologist Ursula McConnel starting in 1927. Her fieldwork focused on groups gathered into the Archer River Mission at what is now known as Aurukun . Shortly afterwards, they attracted the attention of Donald Thomson in 1932-3. McConnel's analysis drew

858-459: The onset of storms and humid conditions with the brief wet season, beginning in November, with north-westerlies blowing in from December continuing through to April, resulting in extensive flooding of the coastal flatlands. A division of labour existed, with men hunting and women foraging, armed with a digging stick ( katjan ) and a dillybag . Yams ( mai watea ) and arrowroot ( mai woppa ) were

891-441: The place where one returns to on death. The Wik-Mungkan are thought to have been composed of approximately 30 patrilineal clans, each with distinct territorial rights, before the white man's arrival. A clan could have more than one totem, and they were complementary to each other, not reduplicated. One's clan totem influenced one's birth name. Thus a member of the "meteor" totem could receive the name Aka (ground)- battana (hits), and

924-440: The practice at large corroborees, maritji often elicits much laughter. Bride kidnapping , though traditionally practised when no spouse could be obtained by the usual means, was, according to a white informant, undertaken by formal prearrangements made between the raiding people and the group from whom the woman was to be "snatched", so the actual raid was a symbolic artifice rather than an act of violent intertribal competition for

957-549: The records she made of, the Wik Mungkan people of Cape York Peninsula . First trained at University College London, then supervised by Professor Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney , McConnel was one of the first women to be trained in anthropology and then go out to observe Aboriginal Australians in remote areas, systematically documenting, recording, and describing their culture, mythology, beliefs, and way of life. Born on

990-495: The treatment by government and missions of aboriginal people, to the general public. She attempted to obtain a doctorate in anthropology from University College, London, by submitting her publications, but, in the end, never obtained that doctorate, though still laying a significant foundation for present day anthropological research amongst the Aboriginal peoples of the region. South American pilchard Sardinops

1023-582: The verb "eat" to distinguish their dialect differences. Wik-Mungkan territory covered a strip of land from 30 to 50 miles wide running parallel to the Gulf of Carpentaria , but separated from it by coastal peoples such as the Wik-Natera or Wik-Kalkan who lived south of the Archer River. Their land, extending over 7,800 square kilometres (3,000 sq mi), was watered by five major watercourses,

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1056-457: Was set at 36,000 metric tons (35,000 long tons; 40,000 short tons). By 2014, the annual quota had increased to 38,000 metric tons (37,000 long tons; 42,000 short tons). The fishery's total landed catch peaked at 56,952 metric tons (56,053 long tons; 62,779 short tons) in the financial year 2004-05 stabilising at around 32,000 metric tons (31,000 long tons; 35,000 short tons) per year thereafter. A key area of concern for industry compliance in 2004

1089-508: Was the hearth, reflected in the words for father ( pan tuma : man of the fire) and mother ( wantya tuma : woman of the fire). McConnel described the Wik-Mingkan kinship and marriage system in 1934, arguing that, in its essentials, with minor variants, it could be extended to apply to all the Wik peoples. Affirming that in its general lines it reflected the general structure typical of Australian Aboriginal peoples, differing only in lacking

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