[ed. note: This is a guest post by Ronald Berndt, who conducted in-depth anthropolgical research in San Francisco]

Men and women rise and begin to dance.

The dzamalag opens when two Gunwinggu women of the opposite moiety to the singing men “give dzamalag” to the latter.

They present each man with a piece of cloth, and hit or touch him, pulling him down on the ground, calling him a dzamalag husband, and joking with him in an erotic vein. Then each woman of the opposite moiety to the pipe player gives him cloth, hits, and jokes with him.

This sets in motion the dzamalag exchange. Men from the visiting group sit quietly while women of the opposite moiety come over and give them cloth, hit them, and invite them to copulate; they take any liberty they choose with the men, amid amusement and applause, while the singing and dancing continue.

Women try to undo the men's loin coverings or touch their penises, and to drag them from the “ring place” for coitus. The men go with their dzamalag partners, with a show of reluctance, to copulate in the bushes away from the fires which light up the dancers.

They may give the women tobacco or beads. When the women return, they give part of this tobacco to their own husbands, who have encouraged them to go dzmalag. The husbands, in turn, use the tobacco to pay their own female dzamalag partners…