Australian Aboriginal Marriage: Living In Lore

4. Degrees of Marriage

Some unions are planned as customary marriages while one or both potential spouses may still be in infancy or perhaps as yet unborn, and if eventually consummated with continuing family agreement from both sides this type of case presents a few real problems of recognition. It is true, of course, that a young girl may go to live with her promised husband and be his 'wife' before assuming sexual relations with him, so that even in this type of case family agreement plus cohabitation do not equal customary marriage in its fullest sense. It is also true that promised spouses may begin a sexual relationship before openly cohabiting (before being 'properly married'; see Warner 1968:75).

Most marriages, however, are not of the 'promise' type. While some are prearranged between families, others are essentially begun by the couple as a non-marital union which is later accepted as a marriage by their kin. Even where such recognition obtains right from the start of the marriage, there are still 'degrees of marriage'. A couple who are recognized as husband and wife under Aboriginal custom, when they start to produce a family, are usually seen as having a marriage which is more solid and more likely to endure than that of a childless couple (see Berndt 1962: 335; Warner 1958: 77; Berndt and Berndt 1981: 200). Childless spouses are married, but spouses who have had children are, perhaps, more firmly so.

Because casual liaisons may develop into 'sweetheart' relationships, which then develop into recognised marriages, it is likely one will often encounter a couple whose relationship is transitional between two such stages rather than surely and simply one or the other. Warner (1958: 82 ff.), writing about north-east Arnhem Land as it was in the late 1920's, lists and discusses five 'extra-legal sexual relations between men and women' which are recognized as 'possible, i.e., the tribe would not condemn them as unpardonable offenses against customary law'. These are:

'(1) relations when the legal spouse of either or when both spouses are carrying on an affair without the mate's full knowledge; (2) runaway matches when the man and woman go to a distant clam to live - usually a true love match, but not always; (3) a union when a man steals a woman from her husband and takes her to his own clan; (4) a union when warring clansmen kill off the husbands of the women and keep them for themselves; and (5) the union of a daughter whose father has given her to a relative without a legal claim to her in another tribe.

Each of the above is considered illegal and condemned by all people, yet each is practiced to a considerable degree among all the tribes in this region, and each frequently leads to a permanent union that has full tribal recognition.

So a gradual, developmental relation between, for example, 'sweet-heartship' and 'marriage' may involve not only 'gradual marriage' but also 'gradual divorce' (in the case of a 'stolen' spouse). The state of such graduations, where the persons concerned speak their own languages, may be more accurately signaled in those languages than in explanations given in English. Note, for example, Shapiro's translations (1981: 71):

As ('sweetheart' relationships) progress, the adulterer is likely to refer to his paramour as his 'female' (connoting 'wife') rather than as his 'hole' (as he had earlier), and to commence presentation (gift-giving) to her cognates (family). The cuckold, for this part, may still claim the woman as his 'female', but eventually the claim will probably be dropped and the woman said to have been 'stolen'.

In English, Northern Territory Aboriginal people will usually distinguish three main kinds of relationship relevant here: 'sweethearts' or 'running around with so-and-so'; 'just living together'; and 'properly married'. Bell (in Bell and Ditton 1980: 92) says she has 'never heard women (in Central Australia) in doubt as to whether a couple were just 'living together', 'playing around', or actually 'married', although she recognizes that questions of adjudication are relevant to the issue (ibid., and see below section 8).

Where a couple live together, there may be a time when the relevant families, or perhaps even the spouses concerned, are not in full agreement as to whether they are also properly married (see section 8 below). Conversely, there may be a period of un-clarity about whether or not a marriage has been diminished to the point of termination after a married couple have separated. Aboriginal spouses may spend long periods apart (see Berndt 1962: 341); Berndt and Berndt 1981: 197; Bell 1980: 262), for example if the husband is a cattle station employee, or the couple is elderly, without losing their married status. Divorce may be gradual (see Berndt 1962: 336-7, 339), and these days is not often marked in any ceremonial way (see Shpairo 1981: 72).Polygamous marriages are often said to have disappeared from communities where missionary influence is strong, but it is not uncommon for second and third marriages to be concealed from authorities where those authorities disapprove of polygamy. This is a good reason for treating non-Aboriginal missionary opinions on who is poligamously married with a great deal of reservation.

There is no strictly necessary relationship between degrees of acculturation and European contact and the extent of polygamy in a particular community (Long 1970). Some young men in their twenties at communities such as Oenpelli at present have more than one wife. It has been suggested that one of the potential impacts of mining royalties may be a bolstering of such marriages in certain areas (J. von Sturmer, pers. com.). At present one must assume that polygamy will be around for an indefinite future, even if it continues to decline in gross terms.

For insurance purposes we suggest that there is no ground for considering some wives in a customary polygamous situation to be more truly married than others. As Professor Crawford has recently written (1982: 15):

It is suggested that selectivity, in the context of functional recognition of (Aboriginal customary) marriage, is both arbitrary and unnecessary. What is being recognized here are the consequences of marriage, in particular in areas of compensation for death and injury, devolution of property etc. To the extent that these consequences involve drawing upon the husband's property or rights, it is arbitrary and unfair to exclude a second wife.

Reference Aboriginal Law Bulletin
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1985/10.html [viewed 15/11/2009]

Kym's Dream: Kym was at a function with his second wife Rachael and a waiter came out offering little cup cakes of sample of fancy sweets. He deliberately avoided Kym and Rachael so we did not get a sweet.
Could the undesirable behavior of the waiter in the dreaming be caused because of actions. We have decided to accept lore.