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

  1. pork was a variety of hooked spear which the Madngella obtained by cultural diffusion from the north-east

References

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