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Bora is an initiation ceremony of the Aboriginal people of Eastern Australia.The word "bora" also refers to the site on which the initiation is performed. At such a site, boys, having reached puberty, achieve the status of men.
Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. The words "law" and "lore", the latter relating to the customs and stories passed down through the generations, are commonly used ...
Another group of sites may have been where initiation ceremonies were held, to celebrate and facilitate the transition of a young boy into manhood. In other parts of Australia , we know that an initiation ceremony often involves a ceremonial path from childhood into manhood, and so the lines of steps, or mundoes, may indicate initiation sites.
Corroborees, together with initiation ceremonies at a bora ring were also held, and while in the hills, the Ngarigo and other tribes culled plants like mountain celery and alpine baeckea (Baeckea gunniana) for medicinal ends, preparing the former as a paste for problems in the urinary tract, the latter as a sedative and cough medicine.
Aboriginal people did not own land as property in the past, but their relationship to an area of land provides a deep sense of "identity, purpose and belonging" and is a relationship of reciprocity and respect. [2] "Country includes all living things ... It embraces the seasons, stories and creation spirits."
An Aboriginal club, otherwise known as a waddy or nulla-nulla, could be used for a variety of purposes such as for hunting, fishing, digging, for grooving tools, warfare and in ceremonies. [ 8 ] [ 9 ] A fighting club, called a ‘Lil-lil’, could, with a heavy blow, break a leg, rib or skull.
"[initiation's] function is to reveal the deep meaning of existence to the new generations and to help them assume the responsibility of being truly men and hence of participating in culture." "it reveals a world open to the trans-human, a world that, in our philosophical terminology, we should call transcendental."
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies was established as a statutory authority [6] [12] under an Act of Parliament in June 1964. [13] [14] The mission of the Institute at that time has been described as "to record language, song, art, material culture, ceremonial life and social structure before those traditions perished in the face of European ways".