Specters of reality: Mamu in the eastern western desert of Australia

Abstract

Aboriginal people in the eastern part of Australia’s Western Desert tell of a soul-destroying, devouring, malignant power called Mamu. The term, often translated as “monster," refers to both the destructive force itself and its diverse embodiments (a dog, a cat, a kangaroo, a bird, a ball of fire). I here classify and analyze a variety of accounts of Mamu-eye-witness reports, traditional stories, dreams, and drawings-most of which I documented during fieldwork in 2002 with Anangu at Ernabella (Pukatja), where I began ethnographic research in 1995. Ernabella is the oldest and, with a fluctuating population of between 500 to 800 people largest community on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia. Run as a sheep station by Presbyterian missionaries from 1938, the settlement also served as a ration depot for Anangu who, until then, had been living as hunter-gatherers. The establishment of the mission marked the beginning of a comparably sedentary life, an increasing incorporation into the state, Anangu Christianity, as well as changing economic practices, daily routines, new forms of knowledge, and school-based education, and a rapidly growing and younger population. Anangu participated in the land rights and self-determination movement of the 1970s and in 1981 gained freehold title over their traditional lands covering 103,000 square kilometers. Although struggling with poverty, illness, and psychosocial stress, they have since creatively accommodated to a remarkable degree these ruptures and transformations of their horizon of meaning and kept alive their knowledge, traditions, ties to the land, kin-based relatedness, language, and core cultural idioms-including Mamu.