Australian Aboriginal avoidance practices

Aboriginal avoidance practices refers to those relationships in traditional Aboriginal society where certain people are required to avoid others in their family or clan. These customs are still active in many parts of Australia, to a greater or lesser extent.

Avoidance relationships are a mark of respect. There are also strong protocols around avoiding, or averting, eye contact, as well as around speaking the name of the dead.

In general, across most language groups, the two most common avoidance relationships are:

In what is the strongest kinship avoidance rule, some Australian Aboriginal customs ban a person from talking directly to their mother in law or even seeing her. A mother-in-law also eats apart from her son-in-law or daughter-in-law and their spouse. If the two are present at the same ceremony, they will sit with their backs to each other but they can still communicate via the wife/husband, who remains the main conduit for communication in this relationship. Often there are language customs surrounding these relationships.

This relationship extends to avoiding all women of the same skin group as the mother-in-law, and, for the mother-in-law, men of the same skin group as the son-in-law. The age of marriage is very different for men and women with girls usually marrying at puberty while a man may not marry until his late 20s or even later. As mothers-in-law and sons-in-law are likely to be of approximately the same age the avoidance practice possibly serves to circumvent potential illicit relationships. It has also been suggested that the custom developed to overcome a common cause of friction in families.

This usually takes place after initiation. Prior to this, brothers and sisters play together freely.

Both these avoidance relationships have their grounding in the Australian Aboriginal kinship system, and so are ways of avoiding incest in small bands of closely related people.

There are many other avoidance relationships, including same-sex relationships, but these are the main two.

Once children are older, they are viewed as potential marital partners and their sexual behavior becomes one of strict avoidance until married. Permanent relationships are prescribed by traditional law and often arranged before birth.

Same-sex relationships are viewed in the same light as incest or "wrong" marriages (i.e., to a partner of their own choice or wrong skin group) which carry the same penalties as a domestic crime against the community. However, intimate bodily contact between women regardless of marital status is not considered sexually suggestive but affirmation of friendship and a "right to touch". Touch is particularly important when women tell jokes or discuss matters of a sexual nature. In these circumstances behavior such as "nipple tweaking" and "groin grabbing" are seen as signs of friendship.

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