Wik Mungkan - Marriage and Family

Marriage. The preferred marriage type was between classificatory cross cousins. However, at least one group of Wik Mungkan speakers has shown a strong preference for actual cross-cousin marriages and liaisons, and there were numbers of marriages predating major European influence that did not conform to either of these types and were termed "wrong-head." In coastal regions there was a strong tendency for dialect exogamy and for marriages to form relatively endogamous regional clusters defined by the sclerophyll-forest/coastal distinction and totemic ritual cult membership.

Domestic Unit. Within local groups there would normally be a number of "households," generally made up of a focal male and his wife or wives, their offspring, and perhaps inlaws and aging parents. Residential groups also commonly would include a single men's camp. In the contemporary settlements there is if anything even more fluidity, with a continual flux in household compositions. A household, as a basic unit involving resource exploitation, distribution, and consumption, care of children, and so on, is not necessarily confined to one particular dwelling.

Inheritance. Land, its sites, its associated ritual and mythology, its totems, and the rights to the pool of clan names that are oblique references to the totems, as well as totemic ritual cult affiliation, are all patrilineally inherited. There are, however, rights of access to land and certain sites that may be realized through such factors as marriage or residential association with the landowning group.

Socialization. While the daily minutiae of child rearing may be the province of women, men—older siblings, fathers, and uncles—take part in playing with and caring for young children. Children are indulged, and once weaned they spend a great deal of their time playing with siblings and age mates from compatible kin groups. Learning rarely took place in Formal contexts, with the exception of male initiations. The missions severely disrupted many aspects of family life and child socialization, with children being brought up in dormitories until their abolition in 1966. Of great concern to many of the older Wik today is the perceived lack of social control over children and young people, a matter about which they feel powerless.