Dillybag
Encyclopedia
A dillybag or dilly bag is a traditional Australian Aboriginal
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...

 bag, generally woven from the fibres of plant species of the Pandanus
Pandanus
Pandanus is a genus of monocots with about 600 known species. They are numerous palmlike dioecious trees and shrubs native of the Old World tropics and subtropics. They are classified in the order Pandanales, family Pandanaceae.-Overview:...

genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

.. It is used for a variety of food transportation and preparation purposes.

Dilly comes from the Jagera
Jagera
Jagera is a genus of 4 species of small tree in the soapberry family Sapindaceae. Three are found in the rainforests of eastern Australia, the other is found in the Moluccas and New Guinea....

 word dili, which refers to both the bag and the plants from which it is made.

The Dilly bag otherwise known as "yakou", "yibali" or "But But Bags" is a bag worn around the neck to hold food like berries, meat, fish etc. the Dilly bag is normally woven out of vines or tough dried grasses and sometimes had feather or animal fur inside the bag to stop small pieces of food falling through holes in the weave. Mainly used by women to gather food but can be used by men to help carry some tools for hunting.

Another use for the dilly bag (also named Mukurtu) was as a holder for personal or tribal artifacts. Privacy was protected by the threat of being cursed. This concept was used as a basis for the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Digital Archive developed by the Warumungu community of Tennant Creek, N.T. Australia in collaboration with researchers Dr Kimberly Christen, Craig Dietrich
Craig Dietrich
Craig Dietrich is a digital artist, scholar, and educator who is presently on the faculty of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, part of the School of Cinematic Arts, at the University of Southern California.-History:...

, Chris Cooney, and Tim Dietrich. This project has received much comment for its new approach to Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The "Dilly bag" term is also used to describe bags used by non-aboriginal Australians, for example a smaller food bag carried by swagmen along with their swags. (p. 20, Book 9, The 10 Bushcraft books, by Richard Graves, Dymocks publishers c. 1970). The term is also used by Australians to describe similar bags for other purposes.

See also

  • The Politics of Search: Archival Accountability in Aboriginal Australia
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF/IN CIRCULATION: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK