干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The circulation by exchange of mytho-ritual complexes is an essential feature of Australian Aboriginal societies. This article deals with such exchange in the Western Desert region and beyond, focusing on women’s rituals. Ethnographic material is drawn from fieldwork conducted in the community of Balgo Hills (Wirrimanu). Two women’s rituals, Tjarada and Walawalarra, are described, and an account is presented of their respective origins and routes of exchange over a period of forty years or so, and of how they met in Balgo in the early eighties. I show how, in the process of exchange, mytho-ritual forms can be locally reinterpreted, usually in terms of the connexion between myth and land. Without transforming the underlying structure of the rite itself, new sequences and songs are added to it, generally following dream revelations. The analysis highlights a dialectic inherent in Western Desert societies between ’the forms of permanence’ and those of ’openness’ and creative innovation.