Normas técnicas o ambientales para el producto

Diane Bell’s essay “Aboriginal Women’s Religion: A Shifting Law of the Land”296 _provides

a valuable complement to the male anthropological coverage of Altyerre. Bell helps to

refocus our thinking when she asks, “Is it sufficient to accept the ideology of male dominance as a timeless enduring reality?”297 _{She questions the notion that in pre-contact Aboriginal}

294 _{Swain, A Place for Strangers, 54.}

295 _{Turner, Iwenhe Tyerrtye, 84.}

296 _{Diane Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion: A Shifting Law of the Land”, in Traditional Aboriginal Society,}

ed. W.H. Edwards. (Melbourne: McMillan, 1998).

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society men held all the power. In her ethnography, she points to the critically essential role that women still play in all ceremonial life. Bell draws the conclusion from her long contact with Warlpiri, Kaytetye, Warumungu and Alyawarre women in an area about 150 to 300 kilometres north and north-west of Alice Springs, where “[a]s long as one has contact with the land and control over sites, the dreamtime as the ever-present, all-encompassing law can be asserted to be reality”.298

Both M.K. Turner and Kathleen Kemarre Wallace published their books nearly a decade after Wenten Rubuntja’s the town grew up dancing. Perhaps this reflects a more recent and

developing sense of authority by Arrernte women in these post-contact days. In fact, only four books have ever been written from a Central or EasternArrernte viewpoint on what it means to be an Aboriginal person from a colonised perspective.299 It is well possible that as Margaret Heffernan, M.K. Turner and Kathleen Kemarre Wallace have become more

confident in their roles as elder stateswomen they have written their powerful books – with a timely space between theirs and Rubuntja’s – as they feel further empowered in their gender leadership. Perhaps unconsciously they have set out to promote Arrernte restoration while also initiating a gender reorientation of political power in the life of Arrernte. It is to be noted that quite a few commentators on Central Australian Aboriginal community development have emphasised the counterbalance to this trend, namely the apparent disempowerment of Aboriginal men, in some settings, in community management issues.300

Bell addresses this issue, observing that “Aboriginal religion301 _{is the political forum within}

which women and men negotiate authority, power, meaning and relationships”.302

Remembering that her analysis is based on her ethnography undertaken in the early 1980s in quite remote Aboriginal communities where ceremony was still at the heart of daily life, she comments: “It is in the living out of the dreamtime heritage, particularly in the ceremonial domain, that we see how the past is negotiated in the present, how women and men position themselves vis-à-vis each other and vis-à-vis the law.”303 _{Bell’s observations imply that, as it}

298 _{Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion”, 255.}

299 _{Margaret Heffernan, Gathering Sticks in 2018, M.K. Turner, Iwenhe Tyerrtye in 2010, Kathleen Kemarre}

Wallace, Listen Deeply in 2009 and Wenten Rubuntja and Jenny Green, the town grew up dancing in 2002.

300 _{In the Ngkarte Mikwekenhe Catholic Community women play by far the dominant leadership role.}

301 _{When Bell uses the word “religion”, she is using the English word for her understanding of Aboriginal}

religion, which she calls Jukurrpa; the Arrernte equivalent is Altyerre.

302 _{Diane Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion”, 253.}

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becomes more evident that Altyerre has survived in Alice Springs, which has suffered a far more oppressive, or different quality, overlay of white settlement, the interplay between women’s and men’s power and roles will continue to be negotiated.

Arrernte women in Alice Springs have become increasingly active over the last 30 years. Recently Ampe-kenhe Ahelhe/Children’s Ground has been established in Alice Springs. It is an educational program designed to take primary bi-lingual education to Arrernte children who are back on their country in the hands of their parents and kin. 304 _{In Alice Springs once}

again, the same small group of Arrernte women have assumed leadership of the project. The emphasis in Ampe-kenhe Ahelhe/Children’s Ground is to teach Arrernte children in Arrernte language about Arrernte topics by Arrernte teachers and locate the teaching on Arrernte Country, all constituents of the tradition so eloquently set out in M.K.’s book.305

Both healing and teaching are where women exert their role of nurturance of their community. Bell notes:

In their religious rituals women emphasised their role as nurturers of people, land and relationships. Their responsibility to maintain harmoniously this complex of

relationships between the living and the land is manifest in the intertwining of the ritual of health and emotional management.306

Bell talks about jilimi307_{/the women’s camp, “which is home to the ritually important senior}

women. It is a symbol of women’s independence, a refuge, the locus of daily activity and information exchange.”308 _{She would see that the Arrernte women at Ampe-kenhe}

Ahelhe/Children’s Ground are simply transferring an ancient tradition of the women’s camp to a modern setting. At Ampe-kenhe Ahelhe/Children’s Ground in Alice Springs, while men

304 _{Ampe-kenhe Ahelhe/Children’s Ground is an Aboriginal corporation run through philanthropic donations,}

established originally in Jabiru in the Top End of the Northern Territory. It has recently expanded to Alice Springs.

305 _{Not surprisingly M.K. is the prime mover again in this local initiative.}

306 _{Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion”, 260.}

307 _{Jilimi is a Warlpiri word for women’s camp. Bell draws this example from the Ali Curung setting where in}

the 1980s Warlpiri, Kaytetye and Alyawarre women lived side by side and interacted ceremonially together. As indicated Alyawarre is an Arrernte dialect.

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are not prohibited from attending and even participating to a degree, it remains predominantly the domain of women.309

Bell also places emphasis on women’s control of marriage: “‘Keeping the families straight’ is part of the women’s responsibility.”310 _{Here is another field of resonance with the role of}

Arrernte women in marriage. M.K. spends a great deal of time talking of the proper way of skin marriage: “they marry from the strong of that Land, they marry through the flesh of that skin group, and also of that skin group, and also through utnenge/spirit, the flesh of that Land.”311

Bell is aware of the nature of change in Aboriginal religious life. She acknowledges the impact of the alienation of Aboriginal land from its owners: “But land, as the central tablet, as the sacred text, is no longer under Aboriginal control across the continent. Ritual politics must now encompass a dramatically changed cast of players and forces.”312 _{Or again: “It is no}

long possible to write of Aboriginal religion as if it existed in a closed world, isolated from the politics of the nation state or gender relations as if independent of the wider Australian society.”313

The Arrernte Voices would have no problem accepting this comment. It is true that change has occurred, but not necessarily to the detriment of the maintenance of Altyerre. The power of Altyerre has worked on change itself and incorporated the alterations, forced upon it by outside forces, into a reshaped Altyerre with its own continuing potency. Change itself has been modified. What has survived is the ethos or core of the eternal. One of the remarkable features of first contact was the readiness of Aboriginal people to quickly absorb elements of the newcomers’ tool kit. Metal was quickly adapted and adopted, replacing stone and bone, sometimes even ahead of the frontier. Soon the rifle and the Toyota became signatures of authentic yet modern Aboriginal lifestyle. And Altyerre also survived, while new technology now often increased opportunity, such as the ability to access distant ancestral sites.314 _So,

309 _{It is notable that William Tilmouth, an Arrernte man, is the Chairperson of Ampe-kenhe Ahelhe/Children’s}

Ground.

310 _{Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion”, 273.}

311 _{Turner, Iwenhe Tyerrtye, 25.}

312 _{Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion”, 255.}

313 _{Bell, “Aboriginal Women’s Religion”, 281.}

314 _{In 1989, three years after our family had left the Pitjantjatjara Lands and were living in Alice Springs, my}

wife Judy was invited to accompany a party of Pitjantjatjara women from Ernabella on a week-long expedition to the Western Australian border with South Australia to film a ceremonial track of the “Seven Sisters”

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Bell is correct that much has been attenuated, but it is still possible to write of the amazing survival of Arrernte religion through Altyerre in an open world.

In conclusion, Diane Bell’s anthropology, conducted principally with women, authenticates the power of the Arrernte Voices. The Arrernte women quoted here, including Veronica Perrurle Dobson,315 _{attest to the powerful, restorative role that women are playing in Arrernte}

society today. The women Bell listened to and whose story she tells lived in a small remote community, while the women in Arrernte Voices are principally residents of Alice Springs. Yet the Arrernte Voices reflect very similar commitments to Jukurrpa/Altyerre as their more remote isolated cousins. For example, M.K. Turner, while a leader of NMCC, is also a leader of Akeyulerre (the Healing Centre), where her daughter Amelia is employed as manager. One of their projects is to collect the raw materials that constitute “bush medicine”, particularly arrethe,316 _{and process it into a paste and then bottle it for sale. M.K. believes that: “plants}

grow with the power of the spirit of the country in them,”317 _{thus linking one of her primary}

themes of the power of apmere318 to traditional healing. Additionally, the availability of bush medicine provides an opportunity for Arrernte people to once again engage in traditional healing practices. Healing promotes restoration and re-empowerment. Essentially for these Arrernte women, the context of their ambition might be different but the dedication to preservation and renewal is the same. Dianne Bell would say, “more power to them!”