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

29

Husband Wife Children Comment in relation to current system
Tjarurru Panaka Karimara children should be Purungu, as in

Blackstone Ranges as in current system
Karimara Punmgu Panaka Purungu should have a Karimarra/Milangka
Purungu Tjarurru n.d. wife

Milangka Yiparrka Tjarurru Milangka should have a Purungu wife

By the time of Tindale’s 1963 expedition to the Rawlinson Ranges, the above—mentioned
arrangements and anomalies had disappeared, and Tindale 1963a reports a system that is
identical to the one used today.

Three explanations can be imagined for the above-mentioned confusions. The first,
simply, would state that Tindale’s recordings were mistaken, or that he did not understand
the informant or his interpreter. The second explanation would hypothesise that the section
system was, during Tindale’s early visits, in transformation and that its structure was being
rearranged. The third and most probable hypothesis suggests that informants were not yet
accustomed to a system that had arrived only recently, and that sections were used exclusively
in inter-dialectal gatherings.

The first two explanations can reasonably be excluded. Tindale was a meticulous field
researcher and it is improbable that he would have noted uncertainties without accompanying
descriptions. Eliminating the second explanation is more diflicult. If the system were being
adjusted to that of neighbouring groups, we would need to determine who these neighbours
were, and what systems were operating there. The neighbours of Ngaatjatj arra people who had
a section system were those from whom it is most likely to have diffused: Kuwarratjarra, that
is, Ngaanyatjarra people today. Their system, however, was already recorded by Tindale as
being stable, that is, identical to the system found today. Readjustment of the section system
takes place if a group is surrounded by two or more neighbours possessing divergent systems
or nomenclatures. This was obviously not the case in or south of the Rawlinson Ranges.

It seems, therefore, that the only comprehensive hypothesis is that the informants had not
mastered the structure of the system because of its recent arrival, as the Bemdts 1992247
stressed in the case of Ooldea. Sackett 2001 arrives at the same conclusion regarding the
Mandjindja people—although here it is the arrival of multiple systems that causes problems-
in relation to whom he says that they were “grappling with problems presented by section
variations in the area, and the implications spreading fiom them”. This was also the impression
of Tindale, who, in the introductory notes to his Frameworks 1965298 for the “Nakako”
people of the Mt. Davies area in 1963, writes: “no class system until 1933, not yet fixed and all
persons at generational level one Tjintul are called Panaka". What is meant by this sentence
is that sections were largely used as equivalents to alternate generational level divisions, and
therefore as a social category system that did not distinguish cross- from parallel-relatives.