Kurdiji The boy's first Initiation

At least once a year, and sometimes more often, a ceremony called kurdiji, shield, takes place to prepare one, two or, very rarely, three boys for the man-making operation. Some ritual innovations have been introduced since the 1950s, but until recently the purpose was always the same to ally the young initiate to his future father-in-law, the main initiator, and his future mother-in-law. This mother-in-law is usually a girl of his own age, whose daughter, already born or yet to be born, is to become his wife.

On the day of his capture by the elders, the novice is called marlulu (from marlu, kangaroo), and for the first time he attends a ritual male dance. Meanwhile the mothers and sisters are painted with red ochre and decorated with minyeri headbands. The men, gathered some fifty metres away, display the kurdiji shield, which is painted with a special Dreaming design that they hide in a pile of bushes. The mothers then kneel in a circle and sing with the sacred female yukurrukurru to share the Dreaming power that these boards will transmit to the new initiate. Men and women sing and dance all day. The women also cook for everybody.

In the evening everybody gathers together and the boy is brought back to the middle of the group which is waiting on a plot of ground especially prepared for a nocturnal gathering, marnakurrawarnu, during which the men sing and the women dance. The novice is separated from the men by the women and the children. He sits at the back, and is made to stand up at regular intervals by two guardians, his brothers-in-law, who make him look at the sky where the morning star will appear. The most active role in the singing and dancing is taken by men and women called yulpuwarnurlu, the novice’s ‘fathers’ (father’s clanic brothers), the maternal uncles, the ‘mothers’ (mother’s sisters and co-wives) and the paternal aunts. These women have their chests painted, wear a minyeri headband and dance handing a firestick from one to the other. 

The novice’s clanic sisters and brothers, who in this context are called jarrawarnurlu, also participate, the former dancing and the latter singing until daybreak.

At dawn, the novice passes through the assembly with his guardians, who take him to the seclusion camp where he receives the firestick that passed between the women dancers, and with which he lights his first fire, thus becoming warluwarnu.

The firestick is given back to the women, who light it a week later, on the day before the operation, during a second nocturnal mixed gathering on a new ceremonial ground, kirrirdikirrawarnu. This time, the ground is formed into two big circles linked by a wide path and surrounded by two bough windbreaks, yunta. The men sit by the windbreak located to the east. The ‘mothers’ and the ‘father’s sisters’ of the boy come close to the men where the decorated boy sits and they touch him with their yukurrukurru boards. Then they walk to the windbreak located to the west where all the women and children sit. They dance, punctuating their jumps with the traditional ‘Pah! pah!’

FILM 1

Little boys are called by the men to be painted. They come back running in a line and holding a stick on their necks. As they dance around the women, little painted girls also join them.

FILM 2

The women and children are invited to sit with the men. A big fire is lit for the Yarkinpirri dance performed by a group of young men who finish the dance by throwing sparks on the accompanying women. Everybody laughs.

The women take the novice into the bush. The novice is carried on the shoulders of one of his mothers and then fed. The women bring him back to be laid across three men lying down. After this ritual, the boy is taken behind the western windbreak by his brothers-in-law.

All night the women dance, using the stick from the previous gathering, until the mother of the novice hands it to the mother of the girl who has been chosen as the boy's future mother-in-law. At the end of the night, the brother-in-law guardians of the boy erect a spear next to him on which they fix ropes made of hairstring and many pieces of cloth, gifts for the clanic mothers and aunts of the boy.

At daybreak, the novice is taken from the western to the eastern windbreak. All the women and children follow and sit down, their heads down or covered with blankets. Men start singing and strange dancing noises can be heard, but no women are allowed to watch except the father's sisters of the boy. Soon after this secret dance, the novice's mothers and aunts, accompanied by his sisters and one or two women of his promised wife’s matrilineal family, take him into the bush for a long and very moving smoking ritual, jurnku. When they bring the boy back to the ceremonial ground, his mothers receive from their sons-in-law the ropes and cloths that have been taken off the spear. They give some back to their brothers and some to their husbands before disappearing with the rest.

FILM 3

At sunset, women and children come back to the night ground to attend the witi dance. Witi are leafy poles that male dancers fasten to their ankles in remembrance of the Initiated Man people, who saw such poles growing from their feet. The dancers perform, one after the other, shaking their whole body and rustling the leaves on the poles, which extend almost two metres above them. Men encourage the dancers with shouts while women extend their arms or pinch each other in excitement.

At the end of the dance, at a signal from the elders, most women have to put their heads down. The very old ones, or the ones who have already participated as yulpuwarnurlu in several kurdiji, then see the arrival of ‘somebody’ whose identity must remain secret. Immediately afterwards, at a new signal from the elders, the women run off, all except for a few who stay before they too disappear to let the men procede.

After the men's business, the newly initiated youth must stay in seclusion for at least another week for his convalescence. Unlike the period between the two nocturnal gatherings, a week during which the men staged a series of rituals for him, now he is alone and is visited only by his brothers-in-law or the uninitiated boys, to whom he must say nothing about what has happened to him.

When he comes out of seclusion, there is a gift ritual. The mother, helped by her sisters, co-wives and sisters-in-law (paternal aunts of the boy), their faces painted white as if in mourning, deposit a big pile of clothes on the ground for the parents-in-law. These are women’s clothes, a gift for the future mother-in-law. Similarly, the return gift made by her is intended for the youth’s mother. This ritual is called palkajarri, ‘become body’, that is, to be born. The paint on the women's faces symbolises the death of the boy, who will be born again as an initiate of his clan, which has contracted an alliance with the respective clans of his future father-in-law and mother-in-law.