According to Falkenberg (1962: 176), in Murrin-Patha society of the 1950s, and for all other tribal groups at that time between the Fitzmaurice and Daly Rivers, kinship terms were deployed to express the relative age difference between ego and other individuals, although this was not by reference to actual age but to special age-grade terms. These terms and their cultural significance remain intact. Thus, age grades have important cultural meaning as they express social status and normally indicate whether a person is married or unmarried, initiated or uninitiated, or has a particular degree of prestige and so on (Falkenberg 1962: 184; Stanner 1936a: 311). In such a schema, purely social, ritualised factors have great importance in determining the status of males in particular (cf. Warner 1937: 125–37 discussing status in north-east Arnhem Land societies).

The relevant age-grades in Murrin-Patha society in the 1950s as described by Falkenberg are found in Table 2.5. While the broad progression and underlying social significance remain the same, some of the terms in current usage differ and further work is required to establish these more precisely. For example, wakul rather than konunganga is now typically used to refer to young children.

Source: Adapted from Falkenberg (1962: 177)

Returning to Falkenberg’s (1962) account, the youngest of the age grades identified (Konunganga) includes all children irrespective of sex up to around the age of about four to six years among boys at which time they are considered Mamai until puberty (Falkenberg 1962: 179–80). Girls, on the other hand, are considered Konunganga through to puberty (Madinboi). In each case, this represents a period of considerable autonomy. Subsequent grades from Mamai through to Kake for men, and Madinboi to Kake for women represent various incremental stages to full adult rights and responsibilities involving several ceremonial rituals for men and marriage and childbearing for women. These broad categories were also recognised by Stanner in 1958 who referred to them as ‘age divisions’ (AIATSIS Stanner Collection, Field Notes 1932–1981, Series 5, Item 23). In fact he goes much further than Falkenberg in identifying nine stages of childhood (Konunganga) for boys based on physical abilities such as crawling, walking, and running, and then five stages of Mamai with two important ritualised post-Mamai stages (Djauan and Tjambilj) leading into Kigai. Thereafter, three stages precede Kake involving marriage and fatherhood.

Thus, alongside, or woven into contemporary western age categories of infants, pre-schoolers, school age, youth, working age, middle age, old age, and retirement, are uniquely Aboriginal life stages that carry with them different obligations, expectations, behaviours, and statuses. These stages are developmental, ritual and gender-based and often do not mesh neatly with western age categories. For example, the age range from around 10–16 in which western education expects full attendance at school to progress from primary through the years of secondary schooling are also the years when boys progress in stages to manhood with potentially quite different priorities and commitments in mind. Similarly, although working age is conventionally seen in western economic terms as commencing after compulsory school age with the ultimate aim of establishing an independent means to existence, many young Aboriginal men at this age, and for many years beyond, may be viewed as quite junior and lacking in authority depending on their age grade progression, and many young women may already have assumed marriage and motherhood.

While the significance for policy of any mismatch here between the aims of government economic and social policy and the ritualised place of individuals within local society remains to be established, there seems little doubt that the system of age grading was disrupted by the mission practice of establishing dormitories for school age children (Falkenberg & Falkenberg 1981: 34). In recent times the more compulsory nature of schooling and associated restructuring of the regional economy in pursuit of paid employment with their greater emphasis on western knowledge systems may also have unsettled inter-generational relations by introducing positions of authority and status outside of those defined and ritualised by custom. Not surprisingly, then, one of the underlying governance issues expressed by Thamarrurr leaders in seeking to enhance well-being in the region is to ensure that the customary order remains robust (Ivory 2003: 67-70).