ABSTRACT
We have shown that totemism has its roots in the needs that aboriginal men and women share in common with many other primitive peoples. Too often, however, discussion has tended to centre on the initiation ceremonies and the ; the women’s rites associated with childbirth and menstruation have often been unrelated to the general context of religion, treated cursorily, and as a minor feature of native life. Spencer and Gillen tuck them away unobtrusively in a small chapter entitled “Peculiar Native Customs”,1 Certainly the men’s rites are more elaborate and have wider social repercussions; but some writers have been so dazzled by their spectacular character that they have overlooked the significance of women’s ceremonies, with their sparse economy of spell, taboos, social organization, and bodily ornamentation. They have been tempted to view the men’s ceremonies as the nucleus, as the crystallization of religious values in society.
