Indigenous Australian women's religious beliefs and practices and the nature of gender relations in Aboriginal societies continue to be the subject of considerable debate. Do women have ceremonies that are secret and sacred to them? Do their rituals implicate the entire society or only women? Should gender relations be represented as egalitarian, complementary, or hierarchical? What has been the impact of the colonization of traditional lands, the forced removal of children, and the policies of assimilation and self-determination on women and men's religious beliefs and relationships? Is it possible to generalize for the entire continent, or given that Indigenous people live in different situations across the country, is it only possible to document change for specific groups?

Problems with the Sources

For a number of reasons, women's voices are barely heard, especially in nineteenth-century and early- to mid-twentieth-century sources. Indigenous...