Totem.

A while ago when I first met my Indigenous friend Shirley she told me about Totems. I just forgot to write about it.
Basically what she told me is that every person that is born will have at Totem. For example her Totem was the Kangaroo, and a certain type of tree. The tree because it is common in her people's country. There are so many different tribes and differnt countries that they come from. There are so many differnt languages as well. In my community alone ( approx 3500 people) there are 14 different languages.
However, back to the Totem. The concept of a Totem is that it was present either when you were born or your mother was pregnant with you. She told me of one of her children who has a birth mark on their knee. She told me the story that when she was pregnant her husband threw a rock at a Goanna and hurt its knee. She asked if I had any birthmarks. Now I have a couple of light brown patches, but my real visible one is the one on my eye. It is a red spot on my bottom eyelid. Sometimes its barely visible but sometimes its sticks out like crazy. Her explanation for this is that maybe when my mum was pregnant she caught a fish and hooked it through the eye. She couldnt believe however that I didnt have a Totem. Some people will not eat their Totem, because they believe that they are eating their own. It amazing the culture that they have. I nearly wrote just then "and respect they have for the land" but I deleted it. It is the saddest thing because you can see their culture just slipping away through their fingers. They leave garbage everywhere. They do drugs and drink. All these things that should never have interupted their culture. I watched our local team play AFL the other day. ALL of the men here are incredibly athlete. It is just in their blood.
When they eat ANYTHING they eat it to entirety. Its amazing. I watch my friend eat fried chicken (his absolute favourite that he eats with pancakes) and he eats the whole thing. The only thing left is the bone. No grissle, no skin, no tendon. And it is the same with anything that they hunt, they will eat the meat, what they dont eat goes to the dog, the bone will be kept and painted and sold to the art centre, and real good ones will use the sinue and make spears with it.
But with this you can see the impact of the white man more than ever. Something they would have been fine without. They do not do anything. They dont work because the government pays them anyway. They dont buy houses because government provides them for no cost. They have become lazy. Just smoke and drink coke. Its quite sad really. Its even sadder, when watching the boys play AFL the other day, I realised quite a few of them would be good enough to play pro, but the honest truth is that there is no way they would be able to live in the real world. Here they live in a 3 bedroom house with about 15 other family members. They wear the same clothes for days on end. They spit ANYWHERE. They dont have driver's licences or 18+ cards. Most families dont even have cars, or beds.
Apologies for getting off track. Getting back to the Totem conversation, while me and Shirley were talking, we discovered we are from the same family. Her daughters have the same skin name as me. I am not sure but I think that means they are my sisters.  I didnt think it was so important, but it determines everything. If I was to, I cannot marry someone with the same skin name. Another friend of mine here, I cant remember what his skin name is but apparently we are eligible to marry. It was a little confronting hearing that. Not that there was anything in it. Interesting.
Today, Shirley's sister was telling me about marriage. There are a few people in the community that have numbers of wives. They all live together in the same house. She told me of a guy she knew had 11 wives! When one would fall pregnant he would move onto the next one. To them its everyday life, to us its completely unheard of.
Their family setup is pretty strange as well. Certain members arent allowed to associate with others. For example fathers arent allowed to associate with daughter-inlaws and mothers arent allowed to associate with son-inlaws. I see it everyday. One of the girls will come get me to serve someone because they arent allowed to. And they stick by it. If they are seen associating I think there can be consequences. To what extent I am not too sure. Its quite difficult to learn new information, sometimes if they dont know you very well they dont feel comfortable talking about their culture and their laws. I feel pretty excited about the stuff I have achieved considering I have only been here a short time.

I would also like to mention, that everything that I write about, and everything I have learnt is only relevant to this part of the country. The tribes anywhere else can be completely different to everything that I have ever written here.