Doing and Becoming: Warlpiri Rituals and Myths

This chapter analyses the relation between Warlpiri myth and ritual from the perspective of the cosmological and ritual differentiation of male and female. It is a challenging repositioning of gender in relation to religion and spirituality based on an Aboriginal cosmologic which values a mythical androgyny of some hybrid totemic human and non human ancestors of current humans and their totemic species, animals, plants, or phenomena like rain or fire. To reactualise such a virtual androgyny in themselves, both men and women perform ceremonies reenacting through dances, songs and painted bodies the totemic travels but in ritual spaces restricted to one gender. In this ritual separation, they are both involved in land tenure and dream revelation of new designs to paint, sing or dance as a reactualisation of a virtual collective and earth memory. Women can dream for men and more rarely men dream for women. First published in French in 1991.