On the misinterpretation of the Aluridja kinship system type (Australian Western Desert)

What Is ‘Kariera’? Detecting Systems and Overlap in Australian Kinship Using the AustKin Database

“…The section systems clearly spread in relatively recent times (the last few thousand years at most; see McConvell (in press‐b.) They did not reach all the areas where Kariera kinship systems existed (such as Northern Cape York Peninsula), but also spread and took root in areas with different kinship systems (such as the Western Desert, see Dousset ; Elkin ).…”

“…Throughout this area, as in Kariyarra, the daughter term also refers to the ‘parallel niece’ same‐sex sibling's daughter, and the son term refers to the ‘parallel nephew’, the same‐sex sibling's son. The cross‐nieces and nephews are referred to by different terms generally but there may be an overlay which substitutes the parallel‐nibling term for the cross‐term in the context of close kin (Dousset reports this for Ngaanyatjarra: Dousset :57; :269) but it may be more widespread). For further discussion of overlays and overlaps see following section and McConvell and Hendery (in preparation).…”

Inclusion–Exclusion: Recasting the Issue of Boundaries for the Western Desert

“…Here I will not go into a detailed discussion of the complexities, since I have addressed them elsewhere (Dousset 2002(Dousset , 2003b(Dousset , 2012; however we need to briefly recall the issue, as resolving it has created a new problem. In an era during which kinship had been the bastion of anthropological inquiry, Western Desert or Aluridja kinship, as it was called, was considered highly unconventional, intermingling aspects of various so-called systems in one and the same place (Tjon Sie Fat 1998), or was even dismissed as being 'aberrant' (Lévi-Strauss 1967[1947, 231, 251 and 249 figure 56) and hardly worth further inquiry, to quote just these two examples.…”

Aboriginal Community Education Officers’ Border Work: Culturally Safe Practices for Supporting Migrating Indigenous Students From Country into Urban and Semi-Rural Schools

“…In the A n angu Pitjantjatjara Yunkunytjatjara Lands (APY) where the author worked as a teacher, many of the ACEOs had kinship connections to the students they taught and they routinely acted as an adoptive or foster parent. Dousset (2003) states that in Indigenous communities on the APY Lands, nominal adopted children are ‘recognised as having identical ties to the community or locale to which her own children affiliate, for adoption is considered to create similar ties to birth ties’ (p. 24). Kinship connections and correlating mutual obligations go beyond ‘blood’ ties and incorporate Country and location in many communities.…”