ABSTRACT
Strehlow’s (1970) apt expression ‘geography of the totemic landscape’ of an Australian Aboriginal people refers to the mapping on to land, and I would add, waters, of myths about Ancestral Spirit Beings, as well as related elements of ceremonies-songs, dances, designs, and sacred objects. Yolngu (northeast Arnhem Land Aboriginal) areas of land and water, and the related myths and elements of ceremonies are ‘owned’ or ‘held’ by patrilineal exogamous clans. These ceremony elements form a stock of programmes that can be drawn on and combined in many different ways to construct particular ritual performances (see e.g. Morphy 1984, Wild 1986). There is a close relationship of types of ceremony and their elements to topographical categories and ecological communities. This aspect of religious organization is illustrated in the first section of this chapter.
