he / she belongs; this is especially necessary if s/he comes from another tribe. If all else fails, the elders of the local group decide his / her relationship to one of themselves and therefore to everybody present. But just as there are differences in languages throughout Australia...so it is with the Aboriginal kinship system."Elkin went on to say: "In our own society we distinguish the family from other relations, but we must realize that we do so quite arbitrarily for certain purposes and that it is not easy to decide sometimes where the family stops or where our relations begin and end. The family consists of father, mother and children, and is some cases also of step-children and adopted children. When these children are married and become parents, are their spouses and children part of our family or not? Generally speaking neither our children nor their spouses and offspring are part of our families in the sense of belonging to our households, and yet for the purpose of inheritance of property and with regard to sentiment and affection, they do belong to it. The limits become even less defined when we think of collateral relatives, such as first and second cousins and their spouses and children. But, in spite of this, we are related either genealogically or through marriage to a very great number of people. Of course, there are practical reasons for not bothering about our relations beyond first or second cousins, but theoretically there are no reasons for not tracing our relationships to every person in the community. In doing this, however, we would be hindered in two ways: by the lack of good all-embracing genealogical family records and by the lack of sufficient relationship terms to prevent confusion. We would probably have to speak of cousins from the 1st to the nth degree, or great uncles and so on. The point is that our kinship system is not meant to be all-embracing, but merely to describe the members of the family and ...
