Man the Hunter and the legacy of Enlightenment

Based mostly on the author's own field research conducted chiefly among the Wik-Munkan-speaking people in Cape York Peninsular (Aboriginal Australia) from 2005 to 2015, the article analyses how former hunters and gatherers that during the European colonial rule lost many of their old skills, customs, and rites still in large part retain the traditional norms of mutual help and socio-psychological attitudes that hinder property differentiation among them ('immediate-return systems', 'moral economy' - Woodburn1988; Peterson 1993, 2002; Peterson and Taylor 2001, et al.). The author argues that the tradition of mandatory mutual help is the key to the continuation of Aboriginal communal life and the basis for the very existence of and personal integrity among members of Aboriginal communities. The article gives a number of noticeable examples of how these people handle money and items of contemporary urban culture today. In the last sections of it, some negative and dangerous trends in the cultural dynamics of the Wik-Munkan people over the last decades are discussed, and the possibility of rapprochement and constructive transformation of deeply differing cultural traditions and values that have come into contact on Wik soil is questioned.

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