Australian Aboriginal Arapaana Tribe Coming of Age Ceremony
Among the many ceremonies of the Australian Aborigines, the most solemn is the coming-of-age ceremony. The so-called juvenile dedication ceremony, also known as "rite of passage", which is a strict procedure for black Australians to include young men who have grown up in the ranks of adults, or through this ceremony to approve young men who have become adults into the ranks of adult men a procedure to make him a full-fledged hunter. In the black Australian society, where hunting plays an important role, it is a major issue that the hunter has the qualities and skills that must be tested and trained to confirm him and nurture him to become a real hunter, thus the "Bar Mitzvah" is testing and educational. "The Mitzvah has the following procedures：
The person to be tested, separated from women and children, to be close to the elderly and men; to master the skills of hunting and the use of weapons; with dietary taboos and a variety of physical tests to develop his firm, hard, hard-working character, such as knocking out teeth, hair, circumcision, skin, smoke, and so on; training discipline, obedience to the elders, adherence to tribal customs and morals; teaching tribal beliefs and legends, and Practicing the ritual of worshiping the gods.
Bar mitzvah is not carried out by one or two youths alone, but collectively by all the youths of age in the headquarters, it involves the whole tribe, so many guests are often invited and the ceremony is especially grand.
When a child of the Arapaana tribe reaches the age of 10, his father or elder brothers will seize the boy one night while he is asleep, tie him up and bring him to a tribal house for the night. At this time, the house has several women dancing all night long. The next morning, the boy was led by his father to visit all the tribes, and at sunset, his grandfather and uncle performed his circumcision with a stone knife. Then his eldest brother gave him a rattling board with the secret of manhood and warned him that it was from God and not to be seen by women and children.
From then on, the boy would go out hunting alone and could not return to the tribe until the cut had grown well. At that time, the tribe will hold a ceremony, and by the tribal leader in the boy's back with a stone knife carved 49 wounds, so that the rite of passage is complete, the boy officially become a man in the tribe.
The rite of passage for girls is followed by a rite of dedication at sexual maturity. The men of another tribe gather in the tribal communal house and chant incantations all night long, praying for the girl's breasts to be developed and abundant. After dawn, a man of standing leads the girl to the public house where the men are gathered and has them apply grease to her naked body and draw many designs on her body with red ochre, especially drawing many circles around the girl's breasts and drawing a straight line, etc.. Then the girl, accompanied by her mother, lives in a temporary hut in the jungle until the patterns on her body fall off on their own, then she returns to the tribe and becomes one of the adult women in the tribe.