ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the complexity of pre-invasion place-based culture and the continuing intellectual influence of one group of Aborigines upon another. It highlights that Aboriginal worldviews were never static, but continued (and continue) to grow and shift, to shape and be shaped by the variety of outside influences upon them. The chapter focuses on Aboriginal land relationships prior to and during the early phases of European occupation. In Aboriginal tradition, the Adelaide people originally came from country to the northeast. Aboriginal relationships to land existed on many levels. In the Adelaide area, each person had a strong kinship connection, traced mainly through the male line, to a particular piece of land defined as the territory of a locally based descent group. The intention of foreign Aboriginal groups to incorporate themselves into the Adelaide settlement does not appear to have been generally welcomed by the original Adelaide inhabitants.
