Kinship Systems in Aboriginal Society

Kinship Systems in Aboriginal Society The Aboriginals of the Australian outback enjoy a very unique culture, one that is incredibly different from our own. The group is actually a compellation of many individual tribes, who have different cultural norms and speak very different languages. Thus, there is a strong presence of diversity in Aboriginal culture, which reflects the unique and isolated behaviors of the individual tribes within the larger system. Yet, there are many commonly shared similarities for this ancient society.

There are a number of very interesting and unique kinship systems within the various tribes included in the larger Aboriginal cultural group. One of the first kinship systems to explore in this research is the rules that allow cross-cousin marriages, where "cross-cousins are the children of opposite-sex siblings, such as the father's sister or the mother's brother," (Nowak & Laird 3.7). Therefore, marrying a blood relative is actually accepted, as long as it is in line with the cross-cousin rule set up the Aboriginal kinship system.

This is an incredibly strange concept for those within American society, whose kinship system discourages marriages with blood relatives. Moreover, the Aboriginals of Australia make use of societal divisions into skin groups. Thus, there are divisions between two to eight differentiated skin groups in various tribes across the Australian outback. These skin types then generate rules for marriage and how individuals interact with other members of the social group.

Often, these relationships are based on familial ties, and who one is related to helps determine their skin name within the larger group. Thirdly, the denotations of grandfather or grandmother are actually much broader than we are used to here in the United States. In fact, any person of an older generation can be referred to as grandmother or grandfather. Here in the United States, these terms are reserved only for the actual grandparents of blood relation.

Despite these seemingly foreign kinship systems, there are some common relations that are shared between the Aboriginals and people from American society. This, then, essentially generates the same types of behaviors towards the social group, despite thousands of miles of distance and a completely different attitude and perspective on life. Australian Aboriginals do share a complex practice with American societies. They include skin types and names for members of the social group that are not of direct blood relation.

Even strangers and foreigners who have spent enough time with a particular group can be assigned a specific skin name from within that group that they are familiar with. People and families in American society do the same thing. For example, I am not related to my sister-in-law or a father-in-law, yet we enter them into our family structure under a certain position and title because of their close proximity to the family one would actually share blood relations with.

This generates a common behavior, where we adopt people not of blood relation into the familial structure based on marriage, adoption, or other events that bring people of different families together. They are not blood related to us, yet we treat them like we are. This is one.