The ritual site becomes a communal classroom where songs and dances teach history, impart values and preserve cultural identity.
It was the site of historic gatherings, such as a four-day initiation ceremony for young men. Then colonial authorities quashed such practices. The place was lost for more than a century, until now.
Australia lacks standalone hazing legislation that clearly makes it the responsibility of universities, but courts here and overseas are increasingly likely to find them liable for the harm done.
Hidden forces are always at work in the world, and people always want to control them, a cognitive anthropologist explains. Enter the human universal of shamanism.