Feminist Anthropology· 2026Q1
The matrilineal Turn: Wiradjuri matrilineal leadership, colonial disruption, and the work of cultural return
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- 2026year
Short summary
Wiradjuri society's descent, identity, and ceremonial authority are matrilineally organized, contrary to colonial misclassifications, and cultural revitalization requires returning to these matrilineal foundations.
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Key points
- Wiradjuri descent, totem, moiety identity, and ceremonial authority are matrilineally organized.
- Colonial institutions deliberately severed the transmission of matrilineal leadership through various means, including frontier conflict and assimilation policies.
- Wiradjuri cultural revitalization is argued to require a return to matrilineal foundations, such as the Dilbi and Kupathin moieties and the diamond symbol.
- The article employs a Wiradjuri matrilineal methodology grounded in Yindyamarra.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract This article advances three claims regarding the matrilineal organization of Wiradjuri society in central New South Wales. Drawing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century ethnographic record, it demonstrates that Wiradjuri descent, totem, moiety identity, and ceremonial authority were and are matrilineally organized, despite typological misclassifications as patrilineal. Drawing on twentieth century scholarship, survivor‐led testimony, and contemporary Wiradjuri‐led research, it argues that colonial institutions produced the specific effect of severing the lines through which matrilineal leadership was transmitted, beginning with the war of resistance on the Macquarie and Bathurst frontier (1822‐1824) and continuing through the Stolen Generations and the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home. Framed within a Wiradjuri matrilineal methodology grounded in Yindyamarra, the article argues that Wiradjuri cultural revitalization requires a return to matrilineal foundations: the moieties Dilbi and Kupathin, the diamond as a Wiradjuri symbol of women and stars, and the matrilineal lines through which leadership has been carried under conditions designed to break it.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Feminist Anthropology, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Anthropology
AnthropologySocial Sciences