[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

27

There are some obvious problems emerging from Mathews’ geographical distribution.
First, it is not possible to determine if the eastwards extension of Region 1 is an extrapolation
from his data, or if he was drawing on ethnographic material. The latter is rather improbable,
because most of the areas in the central Western Australia-South Australia border regions
have only been visited extensively since 1903-04. Conversely and for the same reasons, one
might suggest that it is not because Mathews did not mention section systems for some of the
central areas that they were effectively unknown to local groups. While the answers to these
problems are not to be found in Mathews’ paper, they can be deduced from other data. The
Ngaatjatjarra, a dialectal group in the eastern region that is depicted by Mathews as being
without sections or subsections, did not indeed receive this system of social categories until
the 1920s or 19305. Let me illustrate this case in some detail.

Recent adoption at the section system: a case stugz

Ngaatjatjarra- and Ngaanyatjarra-speaking people of the central and eastern part of the
Western Desert, extending from the Warburton Ranges to the Rawlinson Ranges and north and
south of the latter, have not always been accustomed to the section system, and Pitjantjatjara-
and Yankunytjatjara-speaking people to the south-east, while acknowledging its existence, do
not use it on a regular basis. Elderly Ngaatjatjarra persons remember that they hardly used
sections at all when they were youngsters. However, they knew of the system fiom their
neighbours to the west, the Mandjildjara-speaking people, many of whom are living today in
Jigalong and Wiluna. Since the late 1930s, they had also known about the subsection system
of the Pintupi people in the north and north-east, who predominantly live today in Papunya,
Kiwirrkurra and Kintore.

It is difficult to put a definite date on the arrival of the section system around the Rawlinson
Ranges. However, some elements allow hypothesising that it came into use, albeit with some
structural misarrangements, in the 1920s or 1930s. Indeed, Tindale 19S8:254 wrote that
Pitjantjatjaia people from Mt. Davies, south of the Rawlinson Ranges, had been familiar with
the section system since 1933. Further south, for Ooldea, the Bemdts 1992:47 write that the
section system arrived there only in the 1940s and that it had not been well integrated there as
“people did not really understand it”.

There is convincing evidence for these testimonies. Firstly, elderly Ngaatjatjarra people
remember from which cardinal direction the sections had arrived. Ngaatjatjaxra people use six
names for the four-section system.

Karimarra and Milangka = Purungu

Tjarumi Panaka and Yiparrka

Milangka is an equivalent for Karimarra, and Yipairka for Panaka. Karimarra, Milangka,
Punmgu, Tjarurru and Panaka are said to have airived from the south-west, from the region