Kinship - By Marvin MA
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The Kinship system is a very complex feature of Indigenous Australian's social organization and the relation between them.
Kinship system means the relationships between people, and it allows the Indigenous people to be named in relation with other people. It is valued because it structures people’s behaviour towards other people. For example, who will look after the kids if their parents died, who will look after the old and sick people etc. More deeper in to the meaning of the Kinship system of the Indigenous Australians is for people to identify which clan the person belongs to, then to which tribe and then to which language group.
Back then, a male Indigenous Australian normally had an average on 3 wives. Ranging from 1 all the way up to 10. Now, generally they have one wife each. The benefit for the male to have many wives is that he could have a lot children and have a big family. Generations after generations, the family would grow bigger and bigger until it is big enough be become a clan.
Clan:
In the Indigenous Australian kinship system, a ‘clan’ is divided from a tribe. A clan is an important unit of the Aboriginal society. The clan has its own name and territory. It is made up of 40 to 50 people with a same territory, totems and they all recognize and believe in a same mythical God. If people from an another clan step on any clan’s territory, they were more than welcomed and treated well. However, if they are harmful, this clan’s young male will fight them till they leave.
Tribe:
A tribe in the kinship system in the Indigenous is divided in to many clans for daily hunting, gathering, working and etc.
Language Groups:
In each language group, there are around five hundred people. From its name, you can tell that it is the group of people who speak the same language. Then, the language groups divides in to tribes and then into clans.
This is a secondary source drawn by the historians of a family blood line. Indigenous Australian’s parents had an average of three children. The grandparents and the parents would have more than one wife.