Mulluk-Mulluk
The Mulluk-Mulluk, otherwise known as the Malak-Malak, are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, Australia.
Language
Mulluk-Mulluk is classified as an independent member of the northern Daly languages, and is considered a language isolate.[1] By 2002 it was estimated to have less than 10 speakers.[1]
Ecology
The Mulluk-Mulluk lived traditionally on the northern side of the Daly River.[1]
Social system
Stanner studied two particular institutions: the merbok system of intertribal exchange and the kue, a ceremonial gift exchange which had both a legal and religious function in the local system of marriage.[2]
Exchange among aboriginal groups was widely thought to be a mere matter of elementary barter. Stanner argued, instead, that it could involve quite complex systems, and he likened the merbok system he uncovered to the Kula system of exchange described by Bronisław Malinowski among the Trobriand Islands and later found to be widespread in areas of Papua New Guinea, such as Milne Bay Province.
In essence merbok, the word denoting both the act and the object exchanged, required 3 individuals, within a tribe or with one from an outside group, in which a material article (ninymer), never food, was given to one person, retained by them for a time, and then passed onto the third. The objects exchanged seem to have followed a
History
By the time
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ a b c McGregor 2002, p. 422.
- ^ Stanner 1933, pp. 156–157.
- ^ Stanner 1933, p. 156.
- ^ a b Ganter 2015.
- ^ Rose 2000, p. 68.
References
- Ganter, Regina (2015). "German Missionaries in Australia: Daly River (1886-1899)". Griffith University.
- McGregor, William B. (2002). Verb Classification in Australian Languages. ISBN 978-3-110-87087-9.
- Rose, Deborah Bird (2000). "Tropical Hundreds:monoculturalism and colonisation". In Docker, John; Fischer, Gerhard (eds.). Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand. ISBN 978-0-868-40538-4.
- JSTOR 40327457.
- JSTOR 27976164.