children are sons and daughters to me, but the children of my sister are nephews and nieces; or, to look at the relationship from the point of view of these groups of children: my brothers children call me, and regard me as, father while my sisters children look upon me as uncle, that is, mothers brother." The complexity involved in identifying the different social groups in which the people lived, is simple compared to understanding Aboriginal relationships to other people.A.P. Elkin Aboriginal commented on these relationships by saying: "The Aborigines reckon their relationships throughout the whole community and even beyond the borders of any one tribe. Indeed, every one with whom a person comes in contact is regarded as related to him (or her), and the kind of relationship must be ascertained so that the two persons concerned will know what their mutual behavior should be. In other words, relationship is the basis of behavior; indeed, it is the anatomy and physiology of Aboriginal society and must be understood if the behavior of the Aborigines as social beings is to be understood....What they do in effect is to enlarge the family for the purpose of social behavior until it embraces the whole tribe, and they do this not by increasing the number of relationship terms and speaking of third cousins, great-uncles, or anything of that sort, but by classifying various groups of the community under the normal relationship terms of mother, father, uncle, aunt and so on, going no father up and down than grandparent and grandchild, nor as a rule, collaterally [sideways] than second cousin." ("This principle applies also to the brothers and sisters of my parents, grandparents or grandchildren, Thus, fathers brother, according to principle (ii), is father, by mothers brother is quite distinct, being called by a special term, say, uncle; likewise, mothers sister is mother, but fathers sister is aunt. Following from this are the facts that while ...
