Bodily connections and practising relatedness: Aboriginal family and funerals in rural North Queensland

Abstract

[Extract] This paper is based on fieldwork with Aboriginal people in Charters Towers, a rural town in northern Queensland in Australia. It concerns Aboriginal funerals, which are one of the most important events by which rural Aboriginal people in northern Queensland revitalise kinship relations. The paper examines the ways in which kinship and notions of belonging are embodied at funerals in the performance and practice of relationships, which in turn re-create notions of ‘family’ through an exploration of the co-constitution of family and the deceased.