Work

The matrilineal Turn: Wiradjuri matrilineal leadership, colonial disruption, and the work of cultural return

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This article advances three claims regarding the matrilineal organization of Wiradjuri society in central New South Wales. Drawing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century ethnographic record, it demonstrates that Wiradjuri descent, totem, moiety identity, and ceremonial authority were and are matrilineally organized, despite typological misclassifications as patrilineal. Drawing on twentieth century scholarship, survivor‐led testimony, and contemporary Wiradjuri‐led research, it argues that colonial institutions produced the specific effect of severing the lines through which matrilineal leadership was transmitted, beginning with the war of resistance on the Macquarie and Bathurst frontier (1822‐1824) and continuing through the Stolen Generations and the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home. Framed within a Wiradjuri matrilineal methodology grounded in Yindyamarra, the article argues that Wiradjuri cultural revitalization requires a return to matrilineal foundations: the moieties Dilbi and Kupathin, the diamond as a Wiradjuri symbol of women and stars, and the matrilineal lines through which leadership has been carried under conditions designed to break it.

Source: Feminist Anthropology

DOI: 10.1002/fea2.70079

Author: Jessa Rogers

Institution: The University of Melbourne

Language: English

Topic: Australian Indigenous Culture and History

Subfield: Anthropology

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Gender equality

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,090