Fast Fact Tag: Aboriginal traditions and ceremonies

In Central Australia, the Quabara Undattha is described as a ceremony characterized by decorations made from birds’ down, which the natives call undattha. 

Consequently, Quabara Undattha is essentially another name for a sacred ceremony. As such, no woman or uninitiated youth is allowed to witness it, except on extremely rare occasions, and even then only from a considerable distance and indistinctly.

Only a limited number of individuals ever take part as performers, and the ceremony usually lasts only a few minutes. The designs used always have a definite significance and are believed to have been handed down from the Alcheringa or, in other cases, shown to the ceremony’s owner by the Iruntarinia, or spirits.

These ceremonies are never passed from tribe to tribe. Instead, they are the possession of certain individuals who have received them by right of inheritance; that is, they are regarded as private property. Each ceremony, except those given by the Iruntarinia, is associated with a specific man or woman of the Alcheringa. However, all of them are connected with the totems.

No. Nineteenth-century sources show that some Aboriginal groups used war cries and war songs, but they do not support one common Australia-wide “Aboriginal war cry”.

The clearest evidence is from the 1841 Rufus River inquiry. Protector Matthew Moorhouse said a noise he heard might have been the local group’s war cry, but added that “it was different from the war-cry of the Adelaide natives”. That is direct evidence that different groups could have different cries.

Other early accounts use similarly local language. An 1838 Moreton Bay report described Molrooben “singing the war-song of his tribe”, while Carl Lumholtz later recorded a particular war cry and war-song in the Herbert River district. Charles Sturt also recorded an armed group moving to what he called a war song in 1829.

The historical position is therefore more precise than the modern shorthand. Aboriginal war cries and war songs existed in some groups, but the evidence points to local or tribal practices rather than a single national Indigenous performance comparable with one standard haka.