Bird/monsters and contemporary social fears in the Central Desert of Australia

Abstract

Many societies across the world see birds as providers of information – be it environmental, cultural, or symbolic. In Central Australia, birds are seen by Aboriginal people as referents. One way in which central Australian Aboriginal people ‘know’ of monsters is through the visual, acoustic and sensory presence of birds: distinctive calls, fleeting movements, camouflaged sightings, scratched tracks and the sensation of being ‘watched’ are qualities displayed in uncannily similar ways by various species of birds and their monstrous counterparts. Whilst some birds warn of monsters and some accompany them, here I focus on a type of monster I call bird/monsters. They appear as ancestral beings in the songs and associated Dreaming narratives of Warlpiri people, who traditionally lived in the Tanami Desert and today live in towns fringing the Tanami as well as further afar. Bird/monsters are understood to be male figures that, at once, are both men and birds and exist amongst other ancestral beings which take on the form described by Rose (2011: 122) as “shape-shifters, sometimes walking as humans, sometimes travelling in the form of the being they would become.” Being birds and men simultaneously also distinguishes them from classical hybrid figures such as centaurs (part man, part horse) and werewolves (sometime person, sometimes wolf). What is clear is that like all monsters, bird/monsters defy easy categorisation (Cohen 1996). The two-part terminology I apply when describing them as bird/monsters reflects both this and their ability to move between different realms. Cohen suggests that “the ways in which [monsters] shift and refuse definition is what makes them so feared” (1996:6). The spiritual associations that birds have to Warlpiri people and their ever presence in their environment link them closely to the human realm, yet the immoral and culturally inappropriate acts of the monsters they embody continue to make this categorisation uneasy. As I show, despite potentially becoming more human-like these bird/monsters do not play by the rules of the human world, a factor which enhances their power to control and frighten. I begin by presenting portraits of four bird/monsters and explain how I understand them to be ‘monsters’. My main focus is on showing how the manifestations of bird/monsters as immoral, socially inept, violent and culturally defiant monsters highlight deep-seated social fears. The stories of these bird/monsters are passed on and made known to Warlpiri people through Dreaming narratives and songs, intimately linking them to fundamental and highly valued components of Warlpiri cultural heritage. I demonstrate how bird/monsters continue to have monstrous signification even when what is feared has changed. These bird/monsters continue to invoke fear in contemporary contexts marked by the widescale social changes associated with neo-colonialism and increased connections to a broader and more globalised world. Contemporary fears are concerned with loss—of connections to country, of traditional patterns of social organisation, of control over women’s sexuality, and of the gendered forms of sociality which have until recently typified Warlpiri life.