Yolngu Aboriginal Australians live as members of around 20 different clan groups in northeast Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory. They organise their collective and individual lives through a mathematics system very different to the modern system of abstracting through number and quantification. The modern system is incorporated as a subsidiary to their indigenous mathematical system. The Yolngu form of indigenous mathematics can be understood as exemplifying the many similar systems that have life in hundreds of Aboriginal Australian communities.
To consider notions of Aboriginal mathematics usefully in a short space we need to avoid the academic controversies over what mathematics is about and how we know it, while still demonstrating something held in common between the two arenas we identify as Western and Yolngu Aboriginal mathematics. Before we can say anything about mathematics in the life of Aboriginal Australian communities it will help to look briefly at the...
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cooke, Michael. Yolngu, Seeing Mathematics. Batchelor, NT: Batchelor College, 1990.
Harris, Pam. Mathematics in a Cultural Context: Aboriginal Perspectives on Space, Time and Money. Geelong, Vic: Deakin University Press, 1991.
Marika‐Muninguritj, Raymattja. How Can Balanda (White Australians) Learn About the Aboriginal World? Batchelor Journal of Aboriginal Education 1.5 (1992): 7–25.
Rudder, John. An Introduction to Aboriginal Mathematics. Canberra: Restoration House, 1999.
Verran, Helen. Logics and Mathematics: Challenges Arising in Working Across Cultures. Mathematics Across Cultures: The History of Non‐Western Mathematics. Ed. Helaine Selin and Ubiritan D'Ambrosio. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000a. 55–78.
‐‐‐. Aboriginal Australian Mathematics: A Mapping of Disparate Mathematics of Land Ownership. Mathematics Across Cultures The History of Non‐Western Mathematics. Ed. Helaine Selin and Ubiritan D'Ambrosio. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000b. 289–312.
Watson, Helen. Language and Mathematics Education for Aboriginal Australian Children. Language and Education 2.4 (1988): 255–73.
‐‐‐. The Ganma Project: Research in Mathematics Education by the Yolngu Community in the Schools of Laynhapuy (N.E. Arnhem Land). Language Issues in Learning and Teaching Mathematics. Ed. Gary Davis and Robert Hunting. Melbourne: LaTrobe University, 1990. 33–50.
‐‐‐. Aboriginal Australian Maps. Maps are Territories. Ed. David Turnbull. Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1989. 28–36; and University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Watson, Helen with the Yolngu Community at Yirrkala and D. W. Chambers. Singing the Land, Signing the Land. Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1989.
Watson‐Verran, Helen. Review of Language and Number: The Emergence of a Cognitive System, by J. Hurford. Australian Journal of Linguistics 11(1991): 113–20.
Williams, Nancy. The Yolngu and Their Land: A System of Land Tenure and the Fight for its Recognition. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.
Yirrkala Community School. Living Maths – The Book of the Videos. Boulder Valley Films. Distributed History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, 1996a.
Videos
Yirrkala Community School. Living Maths 1 Djalkiri – Space Through Analogs. Boulder Valley Films. Distributed History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, 1996b.
‐‐‐. Living Maths 2 Space – The Grid Digitised. Boulder Valley Films. Distributed History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, 1996c.
‐‐‐. Living Maths 3 Gurrutu – Recursion Through Kinship. Boulder Valley Films. Distributed History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, 1996d.
‐‐‐. Living Maths 4 Tallying Number. Boulder Valley Films. Distributed History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, 1996e.
Website
Ethnomathematics Digital Library. http://www.ethnomath.org/.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Verran, H. (2008). Mathematics of Yolngu Aboriginal Australians. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8745
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8745
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-4559-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-4425-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law