Madngella
The Madngella, otherwise known as the Malak-Malak, are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, Australia.
Ecology
The Madngella lived traditionally in the middle and lower reaches of the Daly River nearby to the Mulluk-Mulluk people.[1]
Social system
In the merbok system of ceremonial exchange, the Madngella used the words in a way that indicated the coastal provenance of the articles (ninymer) exchanged, north-easterly and south-westerly. Medrdok from the former direction was called pork[lower-alpha 1] padaka, as opposed to the south-westerly merbok, called nim berinken, where berinken is a generic term used of tribe(s) living south-west of the Madngella. [2]
History
The Madngella tribe had experienced intense culture shock in the wake of white settlement, whose effects over 50 years, according to who studied them in the early 1930s, had been to disintegrate many of their attachments to the traditional way of life.[1]
Notes
- ↑ pork was a variety of hooked spear which the Madngella obtained by cultural diffusion from the north-east
- 1 2 Stanner 1933, p. 156.
- ↑ Stanner 1933, p. 158.
References
- Stanner, W. E. H. (December 1933). "Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River,North Australia. A Preliminary Paper". 4 (2). Oceania: 156–175.
- Stanner, W. E. H. (June 1934). "Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River, North Australia. A Preliminary paper (continued)". 4 (4). Oceania: 458–471.