Country, cattle and cooperation: On the potential of Kila in Warmun, Western Australia

Abstract

Gija people in the East Kimberley community of Warmun (Western Australia) negotiate their engagement with pastoralism with varying degrees of primacy. Through ethnography and oral histories, I explore how Gija people manage pastoralism and its effects through acts of accommodation, adoption, refusal and innovation. I begin by outlining the development of the colonial pastoral industry in Western Australia, state and federal legislation that withheld and underpaid wages to Aboriginal pastoral workers and cattle-killing practices and protective measures. I use ‘Kila’, the bovine species killed for local consumption, as an entry point to explore intercultural relations and Gija relative autonomy within this context. Analysing Kila etymologically and through an ethnographic case study involving its procurement, dissection, and distribution, I find that cooperation is implemented to enable the Kila event. Kila emerges as both a nexus for intercultural mutuality and as a facilitator of distinct opportunities for Gija social and cultural maintenance and recreation.