Kurdaitcha

The word may also be used by Europeans to refer to the shoes worn by the kurdaitcha, which are woven of feathers and human hair and treated with blood.

[citation needed][dubious – discuss] All deaths are considered to be the result of evil spirits or spells, usually influenced by an enemy.

An illapurinja, literally "the changed one", is a female kurdaitcha who is secretly sent by her husband to avenge some wrong, most often the failure of a woman to cut herself as a mark of sorrow on the death of a family member.

[5] The practice of kurdaitcha had died out completely in southern Australia by the 20th century although it was still carried out infrequently in the north.

Most of the early European descriptions state that human blood was used as the principal binding agent; however Kim Akerman noted that although human blood might indeed have been used to charge the shoes with magical power (turning invisible), it is likely felting was the main method used to bind the parts together.

[10] Spencer and Gillen noted that the genuine kurdaitcha shoe has a small opening on one side where a dislocated big toe can be inserted.

[α][11] In 1896 Patrick Byrne, a self-taught anthropologist at Charlotte Waters telegraph station, published a paper entitled "Note on the customs connected with the use of so-called kurdaitcha shoes of Central Australia" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria.

The paper was described as a "...careful piecing together of kurdaitcha revenge technique from accounts obtained from old men in the Charlotte Waters area in 1892".

[12] Aboriginal people also began to make kurdaitcha shoes for sale to Europeans, and Spencer and Gillen noted seeing ones that were in fact far too small to have actually been worn.

Until the 1970s these shoes were a popular craft item, made to sell to visitors to many sites in the central and Western Desert areas of Australia.

As this term refers to a specific religion, the medical establishment has suggested that "self-willed death", or "bone-pointing syndrome" is more appropriate.

[14][15] In Australia, the practice is still common enough that hospitals and nursing staff are trained to manage illness caused by "bad spirits" and bone pointing.

[16] The following story is related about the role of kurdaitcha by anthropologists John Godwin and Ronald Rose:[17][18] In 1953, a dying Aborigine named Kinjika was flown from Arnhem Land in Australia's Northern Territory to a hospital in Darwin.

Also, they wear kangaroo hair, which is stuck to their bodies after they coat themselves in human blood and they also don masks of emu feathers.