ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a fieldwork done with Aboriginal women performers by Catherine Ellis in the north of South Australia in the period 1963 to 1972. The area on which the Ellis’s field work concentrated was the eastern Western Desert. The performers with whom she worked most closely identified themselves as Antikirinja and Pitjantjatjara speakers. The first recordings of Antikirinja women's secret singing were made by Ellis at Port Augusta in 1963, on the insistence of knowledgeable men who knew the importance of having a woman collector record women’s songs. The power of the women’s performances was clearly acknowledged by the Indulkana men, who on one occasion approached the research team because they were afraid that the songs the women were performing might cause an elopement. Healing ceremonies could be performed for men or women. At one level they operated to draw the ailing person into the community to experience the support of others in a strong social bonding.
