Aboriginal Death Rituals

Funeral ceremony

As apart of the Aboriginal culture, funeral ceremonies are a huge part of their rituals and religion.

Painting themselves white and cutting their bodies is a sign of expressing their sympathetic feelings of the loss in the family. A range of different rituals, songs and dances are conducted to make sure the body has enough spirit and is sent back to is birth place to relive another life.

Aboriginals have two separate ways of letting go of the death.

Aboriginal Death Rituals

The Beliefs on the Concept of 'Death'

The Beliefs

The afterlife for the Aboriginal, there is no stable uniform belief about an ‘Afterlife’. A person and there actions during his/her life does not matter when entering the ‘Eternal Dreaming’ known as ‘The land of the dead’. In the beliefs of the Aboriginal they believe that there is no Heaven or hell, but many concepts of the land of the dead. Which some believe rituals such as initiation and some believe it’s the physical sign they have taken in their earth walking. Also some belief the dead require the mourners to follow through appropriate mortuary rites correctly otherwise they gain no entry. The sanctions applied are normally very vague.

One belief that seems to be universal through Australian Aboriginals is that the spirit of the deceased person is believed to retain the identity of the person immediate after death, but generally this is a temporary state.

The loss of a personal distinctiveness or separateness is not seen as the destruction of the spirit. It is looked on as an approach to ‘Immortality’ regardless whether reincarnation is involved.

The whole concept of ‘Eternal Dreaming’ is very basic to the view of the world held by people throughout Aboriginal Australia, as well as a person relationship to the social and physical environment.

Death is seen as a tradition rite ensuring the continuance of the cycle of re-birthing. The main emphasis being on essentially, an unchanging panoramic view of life.

Rituals

Burial Ritual

The first Burial is the Primary Burial which is when the dead body is elevated onto a wooden platform. Whilst being laid down on the platform, leaves and branches are covered on top of the corpse and left for several months for the flesh to eventually rot away from the bones. The second Burial is Secondary Burial which is when the flesh have rotted away from the bone and is collected from the platform. The bones are then painted with red ochre and sometimes are wrapped in paperbark and put inside some sort of cave shelter where the bones are left to break down within the times.

Thank You!

Rituals

Sorry business is mourning the death of the person and their family throughout the loss. Within the Aboriginal culture, the family associated with the persons death move out of the house and move into another one therefore families constantly swap houses to clear the air.

A traditional Law states that saying the dead person’s name would recall and disturb the spirit. It was unacceptable to be saying the dead persons name and after the invasion the law was included in images as well.

Ritual Dances take place for the mourning stages. Family members and other people who attended are painted with white clay as a sign of showing their mourning. Mourning takes several weeks as it isn’t easy to move on quite quickly.

Aboriginals have special Burial and Mourning rituals as apart of their culture, they need to assist the spirit to a sacred place. If the spirit doesn’t have a proper ceremony, it wont have enough assistance and mourning to have an afterlife just as expected.

High and exceptional levels of sadness and stress are done throughout the mourning stages. An act of self harming is also accompanied within the mourning stages such as gashing the forehead or even inflicting burns with hot coals.

Relatives have to commence in restricted foods and have a lot of silence which can last up to about a year approximately.