Indigenous Lore
Men’s and Women’s Business in Victorian Aboriginal Communities: Balance, Authority, and Continuity
Across Indigenous Australia, societies have long recognised the distinction between men’s business and women’s business — complementary spheres of knowledge, ceremony, and responsibility that underpin cultural life. In Victoria, among the Kulin Nations, Wadawurrung, and Gunai/Kurnai, these divisions sustained ecological balance, spiritual law, and community governance. They were not oppositional hierarchies but interdependent systems, each essential to the functioning of law, kinship, and Country.
Colonisation deeply disrupted these structures through dispossession, missionary control, and suppression of ceremony. Yet both men’s and women’s domains continue to endure, adapt, and be revitalised, reflecting the resilience and continuity of Aboriginal culture (Broome, 2005; Atkinson, 2002).
Men’s Business in Victoria
Men’s business centred on initiation, hunting, and sacred law.
Initiation:
Among the Gunai/Kurnai, the Jeraeil initiation ceremony marked a young man’s transition to adulthood. It was an extended rite involving seclusion, instruction, and ritual trials. Elders transmitted sacred songs and stories, often connected to ancestral beings such as Bunjil the eagle and Waa the crow, key law-givers across the Kulin Nations (Howitt, 1904; Clark, 1990). These ceremonies took place at specially designated grounds marked by scarred trees, earth mounds, or stone arrangements.
Hunting and Law:
Men carried ceremonial and practical responsibility for hunting large animals such as kangaroo, emu, and wallaby — tasks governed by spiritual protocols that ensured ecological balance and respect for the life taken. Elders acted as lawmen, mediating disputes, teaching customary law, and enforcing rules vital to community cohesion (Broome, 2005). Hunting was not only subsistence but ceremony: success required ritual observance and connection to ancestral power.
Women’s Business in Victoria
Women’s business encompassed birthing, ecological management, and sacred ceremony, central to family life and spiritual continuity.
Ecological Knowledge:
Women provided most of the community’s daily food through the collection of yam daisies (murnong), roots, seeds, fruits, and shellfish. Through digging, weeding, and burning, they cultivated and regenerated landscapes, demonstrating sophisticated environmental management practices recognised today as forms of Indigenous science (Massola, 1968; Gammage, 2011).
Birthing and Kinship:
Birthing was sacred women’s business. On Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri Country, birthing trees and shelters marked ancestral birth sites where senior women acted as midwives, singing protection songs and performing rituals connecting the newborn to Country and Ancestors. These acts affirmed kinship identity and the infant’s belonging to both land and lineage (Broome, 2005).
Ceremonial Life:
Women conducted restricted female ceremonies that passed on knowledge about fertility, menstruation, and motherhood. These rituals sustained female authority and law, ensuring younger women understood their role in maintaining balance within community and Country (Howitt, 1904).
Case Studies in Victoria
Among the Wadawurrung, men’s initiation ceremonies were held in forested areas near the You Yangs, where initiates learned about Bunjil’s law and hunting responsibilities. Women oversaw birthing trees and coastal shellfish harvests, with ritual rules guiding sustainable gathering.
For the Gunai/Kurnai, the Jeraeil was the pinnacle of men’s ceremonial life, embodying ancestral law and unity (Howitt, 1904). Women’s practices included gathering tubers, rushes, and medicinal plants, and conducting birthing rituals that ensured both physical safety and spiritual wellbeing (Clark, 1990; Broome, 2005).
Balance and Complementarity
The strength of Victorian Aboriginal societies rested in the balance between men’s and women’s business. Each gender held restricted knowledge, yet both contributed equally to cultural continuity and environmental stewardship. Hunting paralleled food gathering; initiation mirrored birthing; and ceremonial law existed in dual forms, maintaining harmony within the community.
This structure upheld a philosophy of reciprocity, where knowledge was gendered but interconnected, ensuring that spiritual, ecological, and social systems remained whole (Atkinson, 2002; Broome, 2005).
Wider Australian Examples
Similar gendered yet complementary structures existed across the continent:
Arrernte (Central Australia): Men’s initiation involved circumcision and sacred chants, while women oversaw fertility ceremonies and Dreamings such as the Seven Sisters (Kungkarangkalpa) (Strehlow, 1971).
Yolngu (Arnhem Land): Men guarded restricted song cycles and sacred objects; women performed bunggul dances tied to water, kinship, and creation (Morphy, 1991).
Noongar (Western Australia): Men’s business included initiation through tooth avulsion; women’s business centred on seasonal food gathering, motherhood, and spiritual law (Berndt & Berndt, 1979).
These parallels illustrate a shared continental principle: knowledge divided by gender but united in purpose — the preservation of life, law, and land.
Impact of Colonisation
Colonisation profoundly undermined both men’s and women’s business in Victoria:
Ceremonial sites were destroyed by agriculture, settlement, and mission control.
Initiation rites such as the Jeraeil were suppressed by missionaries and police.
Birthing trees and sacred women’s sites were logged or desecrated.
European patriarchal systems devalued women’s authority and displaced traditional governance.
Men’s authority was weakened by legal disempowerment and violence; women’s authority by confinement and child removal. The Stolen Generations fractured the intergenerational transmission of gendered law (Atkinson, 2002; Broome, 2005).
Yet resistance persisted: elders secretly maintained initiation practices; women continued to use bush medicine and spiritual songlines; and both adapted ceremonies to new conditions of survival (Clark, 1990; Berndt & Berndt, 1979).
Revival and Continuity
Today, Aboriginal communities across Victoria are reclaiming gendered cultural authority:
Men’s and women’s circles are re-established for healing, ceremony, and education.
Birthing trees and women’s sites are protected under heritage law.
Cultural fire and land management practices reflect the return of gendered ecological knowledge.
Younger generations learn traditional law from elders through cultural camps, ensuring knowledge continues in both men’s and women’s lineages (Atkinson, 2002; Broome, 2005).
These revivals represent a return to cultural balance, reaffirming identity, law, and wellbeing.
Conclusion
Men’s and women’s business formed the foundation of cultural, ecological, and spiritual life in Victorian Aboriginal societies. Men’s responsibilities included initiation, law, and hunting; women’s encompassed birthing, food systems, and fertility ceremonies. Together they maintained harmony with Country and community.
Though colonisation fractured these systems, they survive through memory, practice, and revitalisation. Across Wadawurrung, Gunai/Kurnai, and Kulin Nations, men’s and women’s business remains a living expression of cultural sovereignty — sustaining the law of balance that continues to guide connection to Country and Ancestors.
Reference List
Atkinson, J. (2002). Trauma Trails: Recreating Songlines – The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. Spinifex Press, Melbourne.
Berndt, R. M. & Berndt, C. H. (1979). Aboriginal Australia: A Cultural History. Angus & Robertson, Sydney.
Broome, R. (2005). Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800. Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Clark, I. D. (1990). Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900. Monash Publications in Geography, Melbourne.
Gammage, B. (2011). The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Howitt, A. W. (1904). The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. Macmillan, London.
Massola, A. (1968). Bunjil’s Cave: Myths, Legends and Superstitions of the Aborigines of South-East Australia. Lansdowne Press, Melbourne.
Morphy, H. (1991). Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. University of Chicago Press.
Strehlow, T. G. H. (1971). Songs of Central Australia. Angus & Robertson, Sydney.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter and Uncle Reg Abrahams 16/09/2025
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Magic Lands Alliance acknowledge the Traditional Owners, Custodians, and First Nations communities across Australia and internationally. We honour their enduring connection to the sky, land, waters, language, and culture. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and to all First Peoples communities and language groups. This article draws only on publicly available information; many cultural practices remain the intellectual property of communities.