IDNO

LS.109154.TC1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Australia. Arunta.
Initiation Ceremony. Engwura, of the "Wild cat" achilpa (Dasyurus geoffroyi) Totem.
Performer with nurtunja (sacred pole)." [first manuscript in ink]
"Nat. T.C.A. p.283-286." [second manuscript in ink]

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.359.ACH1: "Arunta initiation ceremony, engwura, of wild cat totem, man with nurtunja. North. T.C.A. pp.283-286."

On Catalogue Card for P.436.ACH1: "Decorated man and Nurtunja Achilpa (Dasyurus, "Wild cat") totem. Engwurra. Arunta. Native tribes of C. A. p.283 ff."

Portrait of a kneeling Aranda (Arunta) man, with nurtunja (pole used in sacred ceremonies). The nurtunja is made of grass stalks tied round with human hair string and decorated with lines of white down. He is decorated with white down on the chest and the head and is possibly rubbed with pipeclay?, red? and yellow ochre? and charcoal?. The man is sitting on the earth with shrubs and small trees in the background. [WV 4/2/2009]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Central Australia

Cultural Affliation

Arunta

Named Person

Photographer

Baldwin Spencer, Walter; or Gillen, Francis James

Collector / Expedition

Baldwin Spencer, Walter; Gillen, Francis James

Date

1894 - 1926

Collection Name

Teaching Slide CollectionHaddon Unmounted Collection

Source

?Haddon, Alfred Cort (Dr)

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Expedition: Note in Baldwin Spencer, W. and F. J. Gillen, 1927. The Arunta. A Study of a Stone Age People (Macmillan, London), Vol. I , on p. vii states that Baldwin Spencer and Gillen spent four consecutive months with the Aranda (Arunta) people in 1896. The results of this stay were first published in 1899, in the "Native Tribes of Central Australia." [WV 10/2/2009]

Photographer: Note in Baldwin Spencer, W. and F. J. Gillen, 1927, p. xiii states all photos were taken by the authors. [WV 23/1/2009]

Date: It is not clear when exactly this photograph was taken. It was taken during Walter Baldwin Spencer’s expeditions starting in 1894 and ending in 1926. This is how he summarises his research trips:
"In 1894, as Zoologist on the Horn Expedition, I had the opportunity of seeing not only the Lake Amadeus region but the whole of the country drained by the great Finke River, including the wonderful McDonnell Ranges. It was then that I met Mr. F. J. Gillen, my late friend and comrade during many years of work amongst the Central aborigines. In 1895, in company with Mr. P.M. Byrne, then in charge of the telegraph station at Charlotte Waters, I had the good fortune of being able to see the southern part of the interior after a heavy rainfall. This enabled me to study the animal life of a very typical part of Central Australia in a way that it was impossible to do during the dry season that we experienced on the Horn Expedition. In 1896, 1897, and 1898 Mr. Gilled and myself were working amongst the Arunta at Alice Springs and the Urabunna tribe in the Lake Eyre district. Later on, still working amongst the natives, we spent a year, extending from March 1901 to March 1902, in a traverse of the continent from Oodnadatta to Powell Creek and then across, eastwards, to Borraloola at the mouth of the Macarthur River, on the Gulf of Carpentaria. In 1911 I was the leader of a small expedition sent by the Commonwealth Government to make preliminary scientific investigations into conditions in the Northern Territory, and traversed the country from Darwin southwards and then eastwards along the Roper River to the Gulf of Carpentaria. In December 1911, at the request of the Commonwealth Government, I returned for a year to the Territory as Special Commissioner and Chief Protector of Aborigines, which gave me the opportunity of seeing much of the country and of studying the natives under very favourable conditions. In 1923, in company with Dr. L. Keith Ward, the Government Geologist of South Australia, I had the opportunity of traversing again a considerable area of the Macdonnell Ranges, and finally, in 1926, visited Alice Springs in order to revise and extend the earlier work of Mr. Gillen and myself amongst the Arunta people." [WV 16/2/2009]

Context: "Nurtunja: A pole used in sacred ceremonies, and emblematic of the animal or plant which gives its name to the totem with which the ceremon is concerned" (Baldwin Spencer, W., and F.J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, (MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London), p. 653). [WV 19/2/2009]