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28 Oct 08
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Returning to the Yir Yoront, we find that adult men kept axes in camp with their other equipment, or carried them when travelling. Thus a woman or child who wanted to use an axe as might frequently happen during the day–had to get one from a man, use it promptly, and return it in good condition. While a man might speak of “my axe,” a woman or child could not This necessary and constant borrowing of axes from older men by women and children was in accordance with regular path of kinship behavior. A woman would expect to use her husbands axe unless he himself was using it; if unmarried, or if her husband was absent, a woman would go first to her older brother and then to her father. Only in extraordinary circumstances would a woman seek a stone axe from other male kin. A girl, a boy, or a young man would look to a father or an older brother to provide an axe. -
It will be noted that all of these social relationships in which the stone axe had a place are pair relationships and that the use of the axe helped to define and mantain their character and the roles of the two individual participants. Every active relationship gong the Yir Yoront involved a definite and accepted status of superordination or subordination.A person could have no dealings with another on exactly equal terms. The nearest approach to equality was between brothers, although the older was always superordinate to the younger. -
It can be seen that repeated d widespread conduct centering around the use of the axe helped generalize and standardize these. sex, age, and kinship roles in their normal benevolent and exceptional malevolent aspects. -
The stone axe was an important symbol of masculinity am the Yir Yoront [just as pants, or pipes, are to us]. By a complicated set of ideas the axe was defined as “belonging” to males, everyone in the society [except untrained infants] accepted these ideas. Similarly spears, spear throwers, and fire–making sticks were owned only by men and were also symbols of masculinity. But the masculine values represented by the stone axe w constantly being impressed on all members of society by the that females borrowed axes but not other masculine artifacts Thus the axe stood for an important theme of Yir Yoront : the superiority and rightful dominance of the male, and greater value of his concerns and of all things associated . him. As the axe also had to be borrowed by the younger people it represented the prestige of age, another important theme ring through Yir Yoront behavior. -
As a result a woman would refer to the axe as “mine,” a possessive form she was never able to use of the stone axe. In same fashion, young men or even boys also obtained steel directly from the mission, with the result that older men no longer had a complete monopoly of all the axes in the bush unity. All this led to a revolutionary confusion of sex, age, kinship roles, with a major gain in independence and loss of information on the part of those who now owned steel axes n they had previously been unable to possess stone axes. -
The trading partner relationship was also affected by the new situation. A Yir Yoront might have a trading partner in a tribe to south whom he defined as a younger brother and over whom he would therefore have some authority. But if the partner were in contact with the mission or had other access to steel axes, his subordination obviously decreased. Among other things, this took some of the excitement away from the dry season fiesta–like gatherings centering around initiations. These had traditionally been the climactic annual occasions for exchanges between trading partners, when a man might seek to acquire a whole years supply of stone axe heads. Now he might find himself, prostituting his wife to almost total strangers in return for steel or other white man’s goods. With trading partnerships ended, there was less reason to attend the ceremonies – and less fun for those who did. -
Not only did an increase in steel axes and their distribution to women change the character of the relations between individuals [the paired relationships that have been noted], but a previously rare type of relationship was created in the Yir Yoront’s conduct toward whites. In the aboriginal society there were few occasion outside of the immediate family when an individual would initiate action to several other people at once. In any average group, in accordance with the kinship system, while a person might be superordinate to several people to whom he could suggest a1 command action, he was also subordinate to several others with whom such behavior would be tabu. There was thus no overall chieftanship or authoritarian leadership of any kind. Such complicated operations as grass–burning animal drives or totemic ceremonies could be carried out smoothly because each person was aware of his role. -
On both mission and cattle stations, however, the whites imposed their conception of leadership roles upon the aborigines consisting of one person in a controlling relationship with subordinate group. Aboriginals called together to receive gifts including axes, at a mission Christmas party found themselves facing one or two whites who sought to control their behavior the occasion, who disregarded the age, sex, and kinship variables of which the aboriginals were so conscious, and considered– them all at one subordinate level. The white sought to impose similar patterns on work parties. [However, he placed an aboriginal in charge of a mixed group of postdiggers, for example, half of the group those subordinate to “boss,” would work while the other half, who were superordinate to him, would sleep.] For the aboriginal, the steel axe and European goods came to symbolize this new and uncomfortable form of social organization, the leader–group relationship. -
The most disturbing effects of the steel axe, operating conjunction with other elements also being introduced from white man’s several sub–cultures, developed in the realm traditional ideas, sentiments, and values. These were undermined at a rapidly mounting rate, with no new conceptions defined to replace them. The result was the erection of a mental and moral void which foreshadowed the collapse and destruction of all Yir Yoront culture, if not, indeed, the extinction of biological group itself. -
From what has been said it should be clear how changes in overt behavior, in technology and conduct, weakened the v inherent in a reliance on nature, in the prestige of masculinity and of age, and in the various kinship relations. A scene was in which a wife, or a young son, whose initiation may not have been completed, need no longer defer to the husband or father who, in turn, became confused and insecure as he was forced to borrow a steel axe from them. For the woman and boy the steel axe helped establish a new degree of freedom which they accepted readily as an escape from the unconscious stress of the old patterns–but they, too, were left confused and insecure. Ownership became less well defined with the result that stealing and trespassing were introduced into technology and conduct. Some of the excitement surrounding the great ceremonies evaporated and -
they lost their previous gaiety and interest. Indeed, life itself became less interesting, although this did not lead the Yir Yoront to discover suicide, a concept foreign to them. -
The whole process may be most specifically illustrated in terms of totemic system
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breakdown of a culture.
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The adoption would require a much more difficult procedure; the acceptance by the entire society of a myth, either locally developed or borrowed, to explain the presence of the canoe, to associate it with some one or more of the several hundred mythical ancestors [and how decide which?], and thus establish it as an accepted totem of ore of the clans ready to be used by the whole community. -
The steel axe, shifting hopelessly between one clan and the other, is not only replacing the stone axe physically, but it is hacking at the supports of the entire cultural system. -
The totemic ideology can no longer support the inrushing mass of foreign culture traits, and the myth–making process in its native form breaks down completely. -
Both intellectually and emotionally a saturation point is reached so that the myriad new traits, which can neither be ignored nor any longer assimilated simply force the aboriginal to abandon his totemic system. With the collapse of this system of ideas, which is so closely related to so many other aspects of the native culture, there follows an appallingly sodden and complete cultural disintegration, and a demoralization of the individual such as has seldom been recorded elsewhere. Without the support of a system of ideas well devised to provide cultural stability in a stable environment, but admittedly too rigid for the new realities pressing in from outside, native behavior and native sentiments and values are simply dead. Apathy reigns. -
Without the past, the present could be meaningless and the future unstructured and uncertain. Insecurities would be inevitable. Reaction to this stress might be some form of symbolic aggression, or withdrawal and apathy, or some more realistic approach. In such a situation the missionary with understanding of the processes going on about him would find his opportunity to introduce his forms of religion and to help create a new cultural universe.
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