Melbourne School of Population and Global Health - Theses
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ItemKanyirninpa : health, masculinity and wellbeing of desert Aboriginal men( 2004)Kanyirninpa, or holding, exists as a deeply embedded value amongst desert Aboriginal peoples (Puntu). It is disclosed as authority with nurturance, where older generations assume the responsibility to care for and look after younger people. Kanyirninpa also holds in balance two other key cultural patterns of desert life, autonomy and relatedness. These values are transmitted across generations where they provide desert society with identity, cohesion and strength. While kanyirninpa can be identified in the nurturance provided a child after birth, its presence and power is particularly disclosed at ceremonial time. Here, the meanings of the ancestral tjukurrpa (dreaming) are celebrated and renewed. Desert society is reproduced as the deeper, social and cosmic meanings around ngurra (land), walytja (family) and tjukurrpa are gathered, ritualised and re-enacted. The older generations of men and women enable this holding to occur. When boys (marnti) become men (wati) the manner of kanyirninpa changes. No longer do young men seek to be held by their mothers and female relations. Instead, they seek to be held by older men: brothers, uncles and other males. By holding them older men induct younger men into the social meanings and behaviours of desert, male adulthood. A generative and generational male praxis is disclosed. Colonialism and mission activity in the south-east Kimberley severely impacted desert society. Puntu were dislocated from their traditional lands as a sedentary life in Balgo mission was accompanied by a dormitory, rations and labour system that effectively and forcibly separated generations of men and women. The research that conducted in this desert region investigated how Puntu perceived kanyirninpa, its transmission and how this transmission had been affected by colonial history and experience. Male and female Puntu emphasised that, despite the effects of seventy years of colonial contact, they continued to value holding as an essential ingredient for social and emotional wellbeing (palya). They also revealed that young men continued to explore experiences that offered the possibility of kanyirninpa. Within the social contexts of petrol sniffing, football and prison particular aspects of male holding could be identified as could risks to men's health. Finally, the research led to an elucidation of the social circumstances that have been inscribed on the contemporary Puntu male and social body (yarnangu). They reveal the effects of colonisation on transgenerational processes and key social relationships. The Puntu social body can be understood as traumatised. Transgenerational trauma describes how separation has wounded the transmission of kanyirninpa within key social relationships. While desert people have worked to protect the value and continuity of kanyirninpa, expressions of social trauma continue to seriously affect the health and wellbeing of all, particularly young men.