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Tiwi are Aboriginal people of Melville and Bathurst islands in Northern Australia. They speak Tiwi language and English. First time that Tiwi were mentioned in historic records was the early eighteenth century, when they came in contact with Dutch, Portuguese and British explorers. Prior to European settlement on the island, the Tiwi had an abundant subsistence economy of hunting, fishing and foraging in the bush, sea and along the shore, but after the European settlement Tiwi became employed in a variety of jobs related to settlement life, including education, health, community service and government.
Economically they had commercial success in silk-screened textiles, clothing, manufacturing pottery. External trade with the mainland people didn't exist prior to the European settlers' arrival on the islands. Division of labor pre colonial subsistence was such that hunting in the sea or air was exclusive domain for men, while extracting roots, seeds, fruits was for women. They have a matrimonial clan whose members assume common descent from an ancestral group of unborn spirits located in clan-specific localities in or near a body of water.
Each clan have their own name, and clans provide physical, moral and emotional support to fellow clan members. when it comes to marriage pre colonial and in some cases today marriages here are arranged by a system of selecting a son-in-law for a young woman at the conclusion of her first-menstrual celebration. The future mother-in-law and son-in-law are in a reciprocal relationship in which the son-in-law is obligated to feed his potential wife's mother, provide her not only food but any goods and services she demands. in return he will receive as wives all daughters born to his mother-in-law prior to their sexual maturity. When it comes to inheritance material objects belonged to a deceased person are believed to cause illness if touched by others and most of them are destroyed at the burial sites except valuable items like canoes, axes and houses which are "cleaned" and eventually inherited by family members of the deceased.
When it comes to religion the Tiwi do not recognize full-time or specialist religious practitioners and curers. Instead, each person uses culturally transmitted religious knowledge to communicate with the spiritual world by participating in burials, community rituals. Sharing religious knowledge is also essential for interpreting dreams and making sense of illness, death, birth, and taboos. Before the Europeans influence major component of the Tiwi religion consist of taboos, (pukimani) beliefs and rituals related to death and burial. Also religion plays a minimal role in daily life, aside from occasional ceremonials and pukimani system, the pukimani system is described as a temporary state of being. During which certain behaviors are prescribed for example, a woman is pukimani for week or two after giving birth. Historians and anthropologist have increasingly argued that conversion of indigenous peoples to christanity occurred as they wove the new faith into their traditions. but Tiwi people insist they didn't accommodate the new faith and that the catholic church itself converted in embracing them.
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