From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Have you heard of any good...
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 93 09:29:31 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <86334@ut-emx.uucp> martini@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu writes:

 > so does that mean that women who had spiritual power/influence in tribes
 > and cultures described as primative (as always, a horrible word for the
 > concept) just didnt want to be known by strangers/researchers, or that the
 > researchers who found them didnt have a catagory to put them, and treated
 > them as of no more "merit" than midwives?  are there any good interviews
 > or collections of similar encounters with midwives from all cultures?
 > does anyone care about these women who were at the birth of *everyone*,
 > before midwives were replaced by hospitals and alms houses??

No, it is only that people with the high knowledge which comes with a
lifetime of study and practice are not usually bothered as such with
neonates and the ignorant. They have better things to be doing with
their time than to be constantly fending off silly questions.

An analogy is quite reasonably related to the access you would have to
a figure of authority in your own culture, from whom you may be kept
separate by various social and architectural demarcations within your
built environment, because they have work to do which is of relevance
and importance to the society as a whole, where your interests are
usually private and limited.

For societies who live out away from the built environment, ritual
demarcations are made to protect important people instead, but the
reasons are much the same. I find the offers to "introduce" you to
someone, BTW, quite dubious, although maybe you will be introduced
to another in order to protect the really important one.

We would be watching you very closely indeed for what sort of person
you are, and what you want from us . . .

 > or would some anthology on the history of women be a place to go?

That would most probably help, although your recognising women's power
explicitly would reveal you as an intelligent, knowledgeable sort for
whom more doors may be opened as time goes by.

 > questions, questions..

We call these constant pestering questions "gammon", revealing the
person pursuing them not of inquisitive and enquiring mind as in the
Western scientific tradition, but crass and ignorant. Patience and
watchfulness are virtues . . .

 > one more:  Gil, where in Australia are you, generally?  I've only been to
 > the east coast down by ya, and even then, not really near any Aboriginal
 > cultures.. are the politics and culutre and identity of Aborigines uniform
 > across the entire continent?

Southwest of Western Australia right now. If you take language as an
indicator of cultural diversity, we know that prior to contact there
were some 28 language families, 200 languages and 500 dialects here,
among probably less than 1/2 million people. Respect for the local
integrity of each mob, or related sibling sets, is of paramount
importance.

Against the sheer overwhelming presence of the Europeans, however,
people tend to stick together and provide support for one another,
although this type of support network today extends just about right
around the globe. Aboriginal people are great travellers . . .

"Politics" I tend to regard as something pertaining to cities, as
derived from the Greek "polis". Some related words are "metropolis",
"politician" and "police", which are inappropriate to the notion of
aboriginality.

Gil