Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were social beings who were linked to other people (including ancestors), through a number of totemic relationships. These relationships were very complex and test the intellectual agility of those who try to understand them.Most commentators speak and write about Aboriginal social relationships using the word tribe."The system is worked out according to certain principles which are observed by the Aborigines: (i) A start is made from the family and close blood relations reckoned to the second generation up and down, and also collaterally to the second line on both the fathers and mothers side of any particular individual (but) we should remember that the Aborigines do not distinguish own or blood relations from those related only by marriage or by legal fiction (in other words, every member of a tribe is considered to be a relative). (ii) But in reckoning collateral relations, aunts, uncles and cousins, they employ a principle which distinguishes their kinship system from ours; they regard brothers as equivalent and sisters as equivalent, and apply terms according to this principle. Thus, mothers sister is classified with and called mother, and fathers brother is classified with and called father. Likewise grandfathers brother is grandfather and so on. Moreover, certain consequential relationships follow from this; thus, since fathers brother is my father, his son is my brother; he is not my cousin as with us; and likewise mothers sisters children are not my cousins, but my brothers and sisters; or a brothers children, in the case of a man, are not his nephews and nieces, but his children, or if a woman be speaking, then her sisters children are sons and daughters to her. (iii)In the third place, except for very special and rare purposes, the children of a brother and sister are distinguished in terminology, and different behavior is observed towards them. Thus my children and my brothers ...
