Mourning For Mangatopi

Because of work commitments and the influence of Christian Missions traditional mourning ceremonies among the Tiwi people of Melville Island were becoming rare at the time of making this film 1974 The full elaborate ceremony called the Pukumani ceremony lasted several days and involved large numbers of people in ritual roles It was performed here with full awareness that this may be one of the last times such a ceremony would be staged in the traditional way The ceremony was prepared by the Mangatopi family of Snake Bay after the death of a 35year old family member killed by his wife The dead mans father Geoffrey Mangatopi and his family requested this film to be made as a public record of a disappearing tradition Unique to the Tiwi people of Melville and Bathurst islands the Pukumani ceremony was not only performed to safeguard the passage of the dead person into the spirit world but to reaffirm kinship relationships and traditional Tiwi culture