Reimagining and reinventing our culture
Utopia 2050
We switch panels to store, as we unfurl solar sails
And lay the songline down.
We sing with joy when we reach the reef and the fish shoal is found.
We spear the fish, sail the songline back
To the beach where a hot fire glows
We sing to the fish of how our lives are twined as we pass damper to and fro.
The cats are gone, cane toads no more
The valley’s soil is soft
The shepherds herd their mobs of roos through glades of thigh high grass
And everywhere the wetlands spread and wild birds wheel aloft.
We sing on the zeppelin as it orients for home
Following power plant ruins below
It’s ten years now since the last coal was dug…
It’s back to the future we go.
– Gib Wettenhall
We switch panels to store, as we unfurl solar sails
And lay the songline down.
We sing with joy when we reach the reef and the fish shoal is found.
We spear the fish, sail the songline back
To the beach where a hot fire glows
We sing to the fish of how our lives are twined as we pass damper to and fro.
The cats are gone, cane toads no more
The valley’s soil is soft
The shepherds herd their mobs of roos through glades of thigh high grass
And everywhere the wetlands spread and wild birds wheel aloft.
We sing on the zeppelin as it orients for home
Following power plant ruins below
It’s ten years now since the last coal was dug…
It’s back to the future we go.
– Gib Wettenhall
“The politicians and most white people are always quick to tell us how we should change and improve ourselves," Timmy Djawa said to me. "Don’t you think it’s time the dominant culture acknowledged their destructive footprint and turned in our direction for some black on white?”
Australia’s landscapes are as much cultural as natural. People were once everywhere, affecting everything, across the length and breadth of the continent over an unimaginable timescale, recently confirmed at an archaeological dig on our northern frontline at some 65,000 years ago. That’s the conclusion of historian Billy Griffiths in his acclaimed history of Australian archaeology, Deep Time Dreaming.
This primal Indigenous spiritual power is still evident in the country’s remote places from the Gariwerd/Grampians ranges to the Top End. In 2018, I rock hopped for two weeks along the Roe River and scaled the blood-red gorges of the Prince Regent National Park on the western edge of the Kimberley. At every one of the waterfalls punctuating our progress, rock art shelters crowded with ancestral beings and creation stories overlooked the dark, deep green of secret/sacred pools. On gorge tops, artificially-placed standing stones act as markers, sometimes leading to ceremonial grounds, where, if you are willing to pay attention, the ancient power of the land and its people remains palpable.
I agree with writer Richard Flanagan, who said at the Yolngu people’s Garma Festival, we are at a crossroads as a nation. “The world is being undone before us… Our bewilderment with the greater world we live in is buttressed by our determined ignorance of our own country.”
If Australians do not reimagine and reinvent our culture, then we will be undone too. We must fill the silent spaces of the past and acknowledge a far older and richer culture than the Western civilisation brought to Australia by the British.
Where the Western tradition regards land as something that can be bought and sold, Indigenous people have a much more intimate, reciprocal relationship. As animists, Indigenous people right around the globe, regard themselves as the land’s custodians not its owners. Yuval Noah Harari describes in Sapiens how such custodianship brings with it responsibilities to care for and cherish their patch and everything that is part of it.
“The politicians and most white people are always quick to tell us how we should change and improve ourselves," Timmy Djawa said to me. "Don’t you think it’s time the dominant culture acknowledged their destructive footprint and turned in our direction for some black on white?”
Australia’s landscapes are as much cultural as natural. People were once everywhere, affecting everything, across the length and breadth of the continent over an unimaginable timescale, recently confirmed at an archaeological dig on our northern frontline at some 65,000 years ago. That’s the conclusion of historian Billy Griffiths in his acclaimed history of Australian archaeology, Deep Time Dreaming.
This primal Indigenous spiritual power is still evident in the country’s remote places from the Gariwerd/Grampians ranges to the Top End. In 2018, I rock hopped for two weeks along the Roe River and scaled the blood-red gorges of the Prince Regent National Park on the western edge of the Kimberley. At every one of the waterfalls punctuating our progress, rock art shelters crowded with ancestral beings and creation stories overlooked the dark, deep green of secret/sacred pools. On gorge tops, artificially-placed standing stones act as markers, sometimes leading to ceremonial grounds, where, if you are willing to pay attention, the ancient power of the land and its people remains palpable.
I agree with writer Richard Flanagan, who said at the Yolngu people’s Garma Festival, we are at a crossroads as a nation. “The world is being undone before us… Our bewilderment with the greater world we live in is buttressed by our determined ignorance of our own country.”
If Australians do not reimagine and reinvent our culture, then we will be undone too. We must fill the silent spaces of the past and acknowledge a far older and richer culture than the Western civilisation brought to Australia by the British.
Where the Western tradition regards land as something that can be bought and sold, Indigenous people have a much more intimate, reciprocal relationship. As animists, Indigenous people right around the globe, regard themselves as the land’s custodians not its owners. Yuval Noah Harari describes in Sapiens how such custodianship brings with it responsibilities to care for and cherish their patch and everything that is part of it.
Yumutjin Wunungmurra with trees who are his kin.
Totems as guides
Each child is given a totem – a plant, animal or natural object – that links him or her to the natural world. Totems act as guides. They have to be shown respect and actively nurtured to ensure continued fecundity of plants and animals and a world that is healthy and alive.
Animating the landscape is done through ceremony. To the animist, everything has awareness and feelings. No distinction exists between humans and animals or even mountains and gullies, beaches or the sea. That rock at the top of the hill, the trees that clothe it, that flowing stream, the animals that drink there – all are living things with souls.
While interviewing a Yolngu traditional owner, Yumutjin Wunungmurra, in north-east Arnhem Land, I asked him why he’d told me he would never leave his clan estate and homeland at Gurrumuru. He hit a nearby tree with force and declared: “This tree is my mother.”
He threw his arms wide. “All these trees are kin.”
“The land and everything in it speaks to us. We know all their names and stories. When the wind blows a certain way, we know where the fish will be.”
“My father never stopped singing to the country, calling up places and animals. I learnt by listening and watching.”
“I’m still singing his songs.”
Singing, dancing and painting act as the medium for linking people to the natural world and keeping it alive.
Every totem, every place, every insect, has a creation story attached to it. Strung together, the creation stories form songlines. Each person who develops the abilities to sing, dance and paint the patterns of their songline gains a source of identity, power and a comprehensive map and archive of all that their landscape contains.
At the beach at Raymangirr in Yolngu country, Julie Yunupingu pointed at the bubbles in the ocean, not far out to sea. It’s a sacred site, she said, the climax of the wild honey bee songline, where the honey spills out, emerging as a freshwater spring.
Gurrundul Marika’s parrotfish songline tells you where they can be caught and how to cook them. We stood next to a large casuarina on a sand dune looking out to sea at Yirrkala. The songline details the whole process – where to paddle your canoe, how to bait and cast the line, the fire you build on the beach to cook the fish after you’ve pulled up the canoe beneath the casuarina.
In the dry hot season, two sisters who became stars sit far apart. In the cooler months, they can be seen together, sitting around one big fire. This is an astronomical creation story common to many language groups. Another is how the dark emu in the Milky Way stretches its neck in May – that’s an indicator that emu eggs are ready to collect for eating.
In the Memory Code, author Lyn Kelly highlights how oral cultures discovered that the best way to avoid Chinese whispers and to pass on knowledge unerringly over generation after generation is by attaching vivid stories to specific features of place. Whether it’s via the uniquely distinctive menhirs in the circles at Stonehenge or the sinuous line of rocks depicting the Rainbow Serpent on a sacred Aboriginal performance space.
Yumutjin Wunungmurra remembers his father showing him the spot where Birrindji the warrior danced with knives and afterwards smoked tobacco and played cards and won money. The story refers generations back to when the Macassans would sail on the monsoon winds from southern Sulawesi to trade with the Yolngu people. Birrindji was a protector of Yumutjin's totem spirit Manda the octopus, who lives near where Birrindji danced with knives. The place is a sacred ceremonial site.
Each child is given a totem – a plant, animal or natural object – that links him or her to the natural world. Totems act as guides. They have to be shown respect and actively nurtured to ensure continued fecundity of plants and animals and a world that is healthy and alive.
Animating the landscape is done through ceremony. To the animist, everything has awareness and feelings. No distinction exists between humans and animals or even mountains and gullies, beaches or the sea. That rock at the top of the hill, the trees that clothe it, that flowing stream, the animals that drink there – all are living things with souls.
While interviewing a Yolngu traditional owner, Yumutjin Wunungmurra, in north-east Arnhem Land, I asked him why he’d told me he would never leave his clan estate and homeland at Gurrumuru. He hit a nearby tree with force and declared: “This tree is my mother.”
He threw his arms wide. “All these trees are kin.”
“The land and everything in it speaks to us. We know all their names and stories. When the wind blows a certain way, we know where the fish will be.”
“My father never stopped singing to the country, calling up places and animals. I learnt by listening and watching.”
“I’m still singing his songs.”
Singing, dancing and painting act as the medium for linking people to the natural world and keeping it alive.
Every totem, every place, every insect, has a creation story attached to it. Strung together, the creation stories form songlines. Each person who develops the abilities to sing, dance and paint the patterns of their songline gains a source of identity, power and a comprehensive map and archive of all that their landscape contains.
At the beach at Raymangirr in Yolngu country, Julie Yunupingu pointed at the bubbles in the ocean, not far out to sea. It’s a sacred site, she said, the climax of the wild honey bee songline, where the honey spills out, emerging as a freshwater spring.
Gurrundul Marika’s parrotfish songline tells you where they can be caught and how to cook them. We stood next to a large casuarina on a sand dune looking out to sea at Yirrkala. The songline details the whole process – where to paddle your canoe, how to bait and cast the line, the fire you build on the beach to cook the fish after you’ve pulled up the canoe beneath the casuarina.
In the dry hot season, two sisters who became stars sit far apart. In the cooler months, they can be seen together, sitting around one big fire. This is an astronomical creation story common to many language groups. Another is how the dark emu in the Milky Way stretches its neck in May – that’s an indicator that emu eggs are ready to collect for eating.
In the Memory Code, author Lyn Kelly highlights how oral cultures discovered that the best way to avoid Chinese whispers and to pass on knowledge unerringly over generation after generation is by attaching vivid stories to specific features of place. Whether it’s via the uniquely distinctive menhirs in the circles at Stonehenge or the sinuous line of rocks depicting the Rainbow Serpent on a sacred Aboriginal performance space.
Yumutjin Wunungmurra remembers his father showing him the spot where Birrindji the warrior danced with knives and afterwards smoked tobacco and played cards and won money. The story refers generations back to when the Macassans would sail on the monsoon winds from southern Sulawesi to trade with the Yolngu people. Birrindji was a protector of Yumutjin's totem spirit Manda the octopus, who lives near where Birrindji danced with knives. The place is a sacred ceremonial site.
Julie Yunupingu points to where the honey flows.
Gurrundul Marika with a parrotfish painting on bark that she gave to Gayl Morrow.
Everything emerges from the land
In Australia, the First Nation’s peoples most sacred and profound beliefs centre on the Dreaming. At an indeterminate time, the ancestor beings – some human, some beast – emerged and gave life and form to the previously featureless and uninhabited land. They “ripped through the dead calm surface and life raged into being in a profligate abundance of shapes, modes, movements, moments and desires,” writes Graham Harvey in Animism: Respecting the Living World. As they journeyed, the ancestor beings sang about their experiences and the creatures they encountered, giving out names and passing on knowledge, much of it essential to survival. At the end of their journeys, the ancestor beings left aspects of themselves behind transformed into part of the landscape.
Consequently, Aboriginal stories and songlines are written on land and sea. Everything arises from the land and ends in the land, points out Graham Harvey in Animism. Their ceremonies are location-based, passing on knowledge, power and a creation story referenced to a particular place. The Law is made manifest through performance at the place of the Dreaming narrative. How the act of conception or birth in the Dreaming is interpreted determines everything.
The location is not a mere backdrop, but is the principal actor and the subject of performance. Places are not objects, but are animate; they are agents in their own right. Songs, ceremonies, sacred stones – all are aspects of the ancestral beings who gave form to the land. A place name is the ancestor’s proper name, just as the place is the ancestor. Ceremony expresses the life of the ancestor directly. The performance is possessed by the ancestor. Art is expressive not representative.
As aide memoires, not only are ceremonies rooted in observable aspects of the landscape, but they are also set in rhyming couplets or quatrain form, aligned to particular songs and dance movements, and to patterns painted in rock art shelters or on performers’ bodies. It’s a brilliant system for connecting people to place, as well as providing a map of how to live.
Over 20 years from 1932, T.G.H. Strehlow journeyed through Central Australia collecting 4,270 Aranda song verses. While he had immersed himself in the study of the founding legends of Western civilisation at European universities, he eventually concluded in his magnum opus Songs of Central Australia that the Aboriginal songlines represented a far more impressive poetic achievement. Moreover, when regularly performed, they held “a vital function in daily life.”
In Australia, the First Nation’s peoples most sacred and profound beliefs centre on the Dreaming. At an indeterminate time, the ancestor beings – some human, some beast – emerged and gave life and form to the previously featureless and uninhabited land. They “ripped through the dead calm surface and life raged into being in a profligate abundance of shapes, modes, movements, moments and desires,” writes Graham Harvey in Animism: Respecting the Living World. As they journeyed, the ancestor beings sang about their experiences and the creatures they encountered, giving out names and passing on knowledge, much of it essential to survival. At the end of their journeys, the ancestor beings left aspects of themselves behind transformed into part of the landscape.
Consequently, Aboriginal stories and songlines are written on land and sea. Everything arises from the land and ends in the land, points out Graham Harvey in Animism. Their ceremonies are location-based, passing on knowledge, power and a creation story referenced to a particular place. The Law is made manifest through performance at the place of the Dreaming narrative. How the act of conception or birth in the Dreaming is interpreted determines everything.
The location is not a mere backdrop, but is the principal actor and the subject of performance. Places are not objects, but are animate; they are agents in their own right. Songs, ceremonies, sacred stones – all are aspects of the ancestral beings who gave form to the land. A place name is the ancestor’s proper name, just as the place is the ancestor. Ceremony expresses the life of the ancestor directly. The performance is possessed by the ancestor. Art is expressive not representative.
As aide memoires, not only are ceremonies rooted in observable aspects of the landscape, but they are also set in rhyming couplets or quatrain form, aligned to particular songs and dance movements, and to patterns painted in rock art shelters or on performers’ bodies. It’s a brilliant system for connecting people to place, as well as providing a map of how to live.
Over 20 years from 1932, T.G.H. Strehlow journeyed through Central Australia collecting 4,270 Aranda song verses. While he had immersed himself in the study of the founding legends of Western civilisation at European universities, he eventually concluded in his magnum opus Songs of Central Australia that the Aboriginal songlines represented a far more impressive poetic achievement. Moreover, when regularly performed, they held “a vital function in daily life.”
Djjambawa Marawili AM at Yilpara on his homeland.
Timmy Djawa relaxing at his Bawaka homeland.
Learning on Country
The first question many visitors ask of Indigenous rangers at national parks up north is how do they know that when the wind blows from a certain direction or a plant comes into flower, it’s time to go fishing or foraging? It’s not magic. The source of the intimate environmental knowledge of people like the Yolngu comes from being on country.
Djambawa Marawili is a strong leader of his people on his Baniyala homeland, a renowned breakthrough bark artist, a senior cultural adviser to the Yirralka Rangers and a ceremonial leader of the Madarrpa clan of North East Arnhem Land. I sat outdoors with him on hard dirt in his homeland and asked him where his knowledge came from. Not from boarding school in Darwin, he answered. After a year and a half, his father took him out of school. ‘I’ll take you to visit my country,’ he told Djambawa.
From that time on, father and son paddled in a canoe up and down the coast.
“Every place he landed, he knew the country and the name of everything in it. He taught me how to sing, paint and dance. I learnt the clan rules, patterns and designs, songlines and stories, how to do ceremony.”
Djambawa vividly remembers his father’s rebuttal when challenged as to the source of his wisdom by a group of elders and napaki experts. “ ‘Ask the trees, the sea and the land,’ was his response.”
This was the common story that I struck when probing the most senior Yirralka Rangers about where they learnt about bush tucker and medicine, their mastery of artwork and what was the proper way to perform ceremony (bunggul). They had arrived at their knowledge through experience; by travelling on country over many years with parents and kin. They had learnt in minute detail who was responsible for each tree, waterhole or rock and how to exploit and care for associated plants and animals. They had memorised songs, dances, paintings and rituals in order to connect with each other and to maintain the unity of all things.
Clearly, we cannot appropriate Aboriginal totems and songlines. We can, however, go further than simply acknowledging their culture. We could learn from their 65,000 years of honing their land management skills and move to adopt animist aspects of their culture, aiming to enrich the shallowness of the existing dominant Anglo-Australian culture. We could pay them respect.
The Yolngu people now run Learning on Country programs for their children as most are no longer immersed in the landscapes of their homelands. We could do the same, taking kids out of city classrooms to connect with the environment outside.
A Yolngu elder, Timmy Djawa, once arrestingly remarked to me that all they ever heard from the “dominant culture” was “white on black.”
“What do you mean?” I responded.
“The politicians and most white people are always quick to tell us how we should change and improve ourselves. Don’t you think it’s time the dominant culture acknowledged their destructive footprint and turned in our direction for some black on white?”
Yes, I do.
By Gib Wettenhall
August 2019
1,870 words
The first question many visitors ask of Indigenous rangers at national parks up north is how do they know that when the wind blows from a certain direction or a plant comes into flower, it’s time to go fishing or foraging? It’s not magic. The source of the intimate environmental knowledge of people like the Yolngu comes from being on country.
Djambawa Marawili is a strong leader of his people on his Baniyala homeland, a renowned breakthrough bark artist, a senior cultural adviser to the Yirralka Rangers and a ceremonial leader of the Madarrpa clan of North East Arnhem Land. I sat outdoors with him on hard dirt in his homeland and asked him where his knowledge came from. Not from boarding school in Darwin, he answered. After a year and a half, his father took him out of school. ‘I’ll take you to visit my country,’ he told Djambawa.
From that time on, father and son paddled in a canoe up and down the coast.
“Every place he landed, he knew the country and the name of everything in it. He taught me how to sing, paint and dance. I learnt the clan rules, patterns and designs, songlines and stories, how to do ceremony.”
Djambawa vividly remembers his father’s rebuttal when challenged as to the source of his wisdom by a group of elders and napaki experts. “ ‘Ask the trees, the sea and the land,’ was his response.”
This was the common story that I struck when probing the most senior Yirralka Rangers about where they learnt about bush tucker and medicine, their mastery of artwork and what was the proper way to perform ceremony (bunggul). They had arrived at their knowledge through experience; by travelling on country over many years with parents and kin. They had learnt in minute detail who was responsible for each tree, waterhole or rock and how to exploit and care for associated plants and animals. They had memorised songs, dances, paintings and rituals in order to connect with each other and to maintain the unity of all things.
Clearly, we cannot appropriate Aboriginal totems and songlines. We can, however, go further than simply acknowledging their culture. We could learn from their 65,000 years of honing their land management skills and move to adopt animist aspects of their culture, aiming to enrich the shallowness of the existing dominant Anglo-Australian culture. We could pay them respect.
The Yolngu people now run Learning on Country programs for their children as most are no longer immersed in the landscapes of their homelands. We could do the same, taking kids out of city classrooms to connect with the environment outside.
A Yolngu elder, Timmy Djawa, once arrestingly remarked to me that all they ever heard from the “dominant culture” was “white on black.”
“What do you mean?” I responded.
“The politicians and most white people are always quick to tell us how we should change and improve ourselves. Don’t you think it’s time the dominant culture acknowledged their destructive footprint and turned in our direction for some black on white?”
Yes, I do.
By Gib Wettenhall
August 2019
1,870 words