AUTHORSHIP, AUTHORITY & THE PRODUCTION
OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE
...smoking business and the implanting of the matawirr'...
...the lightning-tongue of the ancestral serpent...
...the Galpu relationship to other clans ...
The ancestral events depicted in the exhibition's paintings—involving Wititj the great Olive Python and the two sisters of the Wagilag clan—are dramatic and powerful. The creation story, of which those events form part, recounts the evolution and encounter between human and animal ancestors who explain and make sense of the world and its creative forces. Among other things, the story heralds the arrival of the first monsoon season and forms the basis both of one of the major ceremonial cycles of Arnhem Land, specifically of the inland freshwater country, and of cultural and fundamental religious beliefs and rules of conduct.
Indeed, the pictorial narrative of the two Wagilag Sisters and their journey and their ordeals documents the foundation of the laws of social and ritual behaviour, in particular the rules relating to marriage, and inspires laws relating to authority, kinship, territory and custodial responsibility. It reaches from the ancient Dreamtime to govern the present and to influence and mould the future.
http://epress.anu.edu.au/hrj/1998_02/pdf/5_lendon_hr2_1998.pdf
BUNDJALUNG
Several Djurbils (i.e. ritual sites for beseeching increases of various
kinds (e.g. food )) were well known, one for possums at today's Wilson Park,
Lismore; and one for echidna at North Lismore on the stone quarry hill. There
was a Djurbil for Cat birds at Mount Lion (Jiggi) and one of the most
awesome sacred sites to the Wiyabal tribe at Parrots Nest. It was here that the
Hoop Pine curse was invoked by the Cooradgi against offenders of the
tribal codes. The ritual coincided with the bone pointing procedure common among
Aboriginal tribes throughout Australia. Blue Knob and Hanging Rock in the Nimbin
district were also very sacred sites for the Wiyabal with deep mythological
significance.
At
this Garma Festival (1999), the clan elders have identified five
principles to guide the developing relationship between Yolngu
custodians of the yidaki
and the Balanda people who use the instrument.
1.
RESPECT
The basis of a new relationship is respect for the origins
and significance of the yidaki
to Aboriginal people of northern Australia.
2.
ABORIGINAL LAW
Aboriginal law protects the yidaki
and establishes ritual exchange processes and reciprocal obligations
between those elders with the authority to collect, make,
perform and teach the yidaki,
and those people – Yolngu and Balanda – who desire
to learn about the instrument.
3.
PERMISSION
Yolngu law has always regulated the production and use of
the yidaki
in Yolngu society. It is wrong for yidaki
to be produced without reference to, and respect for, these
laws. Permission from the custodians of these laws is required.
4.
YOTHU YINDI
The Yolngu concept of Yothu Yindi, which recognises duality
and fosters balance where there is difference, is a guiding
Yolngu philosophy that applies to this new relationship.
5.
ETHICAL RELATIONSHIP
The basis of a new relationship will be mutual respect, goodwill,
and a commitment to
working together to define and evolve an ethical place for
the yidaki
in world culture.
With
this statement, Yolngu elders of northeast Arnhem Land open
their hearts to a new relationship for the yidaki
with global culture.
Protocols -
First, the story emerges out of the country of Arnhemland — the story track (or songline) moves from south-east to north. It intersects with another big creation story of another moiety. (Each story, as well as every person, every creature and every thing in Yolngu culture, belongs to one of two complementary moieties, either Yirridja or Dhuwa). The story is associated with three major ceremonies for both men and women. (Sometimes ceremonies are held separately, e.g., around menstruation and in former times, childbirth. Some major ceremonies are held for all.) To tell it out of country makes no sense, as the story, like the serpent, follows the route of Yolngu Ancestors as they travelled through specific country, which includes for example, the waterhole of Mirramina, in central Arnhemland. ...This waterhole is the home of 'Wititj' the Olive Python (sometimes also known as the 'Rainbow Serpent'), one of the most powerful of ancestral beings. ...
Custodians of the storytellings are elders from five major clans. The place of the country where a storytelling is held will determine which part of the story will be told. It would never be told in what we as ‘whitefellas’ would assume to be its complete form, or any form we might find in a written ‘text’.
The tellings would be carefully negotiated among the clans for a ceremony, ensuring that all clans would be agreeable — this is part of a bringing together and making of relationships of community, through preparation and negotiating processes. The parts of the story and the ways in which it would be told would depend not only on these factors, but the purpose for telling (for initiation, for funeral or another ritual or event), the people present, their ages, gender, and kinship with others, with the country, who the teller is, the relationship with Dreamings in the story. In addition, kinship (or relationship with all, and with other beings and humans) is mapped by the land — gurrutu. It interweaves and overlays everything.
from:epress.anu.edu.au/nts02/mobile.../ch12s03.html -
1963
- Yirrkala bark petitions -
These are the first documents bridging Commonwealth law as it then stood, and the Indigenous laws of the land. These petitions from the Yolngu people of Yirrkala were the first traditional documents recognised by the Commonwealth Parliament and are thus the documentary recognition of Indigenous people in Australian law.
Petitions to Parliament must conform to certain rules of procedure and the acceptance of these petitions marks a bridge between two traditions of law. There had been many earlier petitions from Aboriginal people to Australian parliaments, and attempts to present petitions to the Crown. These petitions are the first to use traditional forms and combine bark painting with text typed on paper.
The painted designs proclaim Yolngu law, depicting the traditional relations to land and the typed text is in English and Gumatj languages.
Yirrkala bark petitions 1963 (Cth) - Documenting Democracy - <<<click
www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?dID=104 -
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Invisible to the state: Kinship and the Yolngu moral order
In the Yolngu-matha languages of north-east Arnhem land, the character trait rendered in English as 'self-centered' or 'selfish' is translated by gurrutu-miriw, literally 'kin-lacking' - acting as if one had no kin. Kin-based obligations structure the Yolngu moral order: everyone is classified as kin, and how one ought to behave to others is framed in terms of one's kin relationship to them. The complex system of rights and obligations entailed in this kin-based universe transcends the boundaries of the nuclear family - indeed elsewhere I have argued that the nuclear family, which is vested with such moral force in the Anglo-Celtic culture of the Australian mainstream, is not a 'natural' category in Yolngu society. Yet the state, through mechanisms such as the census, insists on representing Indigenous social formations through the lens of mainstream categories. Does this matter? I will argue that it does, because, having rendered Indigenous socio-moral systems invisible through a process of mistranslation, the state then proceeds, in policy directed towards Indigenous people, to act as if these systems do not exist. I will illustrate this from the latest government thinking on 'increasing Indigenous economic opportunity', outlined in a recent discussion paper produced by the Australian Government.
from: http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/Seminars/08/Seminar-Topics%E2%80%94Series-2/29_10_Seminar.php - 29 October 2008, Humanities Conference Room, The Australian National University, Canberra.
2007
The insertion of performance: Sacred power made manifest
The Yolngu announced to the court that they wished to perform a short ceremony before the court started in order to ‘welcome’ the judge and the court. This wish was granted.
A group of men, followed by women, all wearing white paint on their foreheads, processed into the court chanting loudly and calling out ceremonial names of country to the accompaniment of clapsticks (Fig. 1). They bore with them two very large public ceremonial objects representing the ceremonial walking sticks of Yirritja moiety ancestral beings associated with a place within the claim area called Gänganbuy, richly adorned with feather-string (Fig. 2).
The choice to represent this place and its law was very deliberate. For the Yolngu clans of the Blue Mud Bay area it is the place from which the rom of the Yirritja moiety originates. 
The second insertion of a performance of rom took place on the first site visit to the homeland settlement of Yilpara on Blue Mud Bay itself.
The Yolngu had chosen this time very carefully, situating it near the beginning of the proceedings, and had been preparing for it for months. The male members of the court were taken to the men’s ceremonial ground (Fig 3). Female members of the court, by consent, and including the female counsel for one of the respondent groups, were led to the edge of the ceremonial space, but then were led back (by me under instruction from the ceremonial leaders) to sit with the women in the main settlement while the men went to the restricted ground.
As the men returned the women (including the non-Yolngu women) sat with their backs to them, only turning under instruction when the men were close (Fig. 4).
This was not just a performance of rom in its own ritual space, but an enactment that incorporated the members of the Federal Court as actors, under the terms of rom.
4 The return from the Yolngu law space |
1 The opening ceremony: approach to the court
<<< 2 The opening ceremony: in the court
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The advantages of giving ‘non-evidence’
These two ritual performances could have been admitted as evidence, had the ground to do so been prepared. But before the welcoming performance, no-one had suggested to counsel for the applicants that it should be regarded as having evidential content.
In the case of the performance on the ceremonial ground, there was an issue about procedural fairness, because the other parties had had no opportunity to ask questions, at the time of the performance, about what was happening.
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3 The court at the edge of the Yolngu law space
The insistence on difference
Yolngu thus find themselves in a complex double bind. To submit rom to commensurability is in itself impossible in the Yolngu view, whatever the pretensions of the ngapaki native title law. To submit their own conceptualisation of rom to a process of enforced commensurability risks alienation from rom, and from their identity as Yolngu. Yet in resisting commensurability they potentially deny themselves advantages that might accrue from recognition of ‘their’ native title. Their response to this double bind—seeking to maintain a discourse about sovereignty within the dominant discourse of native title—was equally complex.
....................................................................................................
Source/more>> The Yolngu response <<<
For the Yolngu clans of the Blue Mud Bay area it is the place from which the rom of the Yirritja moiety originates.
from: epress.anu.edu.au/caepr.../no.../ch02s03.html - Photos: Sonia Brownhill
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Yolngu Art and Ceremony
By Jennifer Isaacs, an eminent Australian writer and curator who has worked with Yolgnu people since 1971.
The Yolngu of north east Arnhem Land are amongst the most powerful and culturally committed of Australia's indigenous nations. For probably four hundred years before white men appeared on their shores, they hosted visiting fishing fleets from Indonesia who made temporary villages and traded cloth, metal and foods whilst gathering and processing beche-de-mer, or trepang, the prized sea slug which is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. The many clans have maintained their hunting and fishing economy, whilst carrying on their rich ceremonial lives to the present day...
Yolngu belief system
Yolngu came into lasting contact with a belief system which differed from their own when the Methodist missions were established in 1934 at Yirrkala, then on Elcho Island in 1942. As with the Macassans from the Macassan Straits in Indonesia, whose culture had influenced Yolngu for centuries before, their response was adaptive and creative. The Bible seemed to add to or expand upon basic Yolngu tenets of law, so it was incorporated into Yolngu thought. The Holy Ghost and various angels have been known to appear at ceremonies at Elcho Island, and Yolngu have become office bearers in the Church whilst maintaining their beliefs about the religion of the land. Rather than existing side by side, the two religions have become one, and in turn have released a flowering of Yolngu creative expression over decades. Elcho Island thus differs from the stricter and less syncretic ceremonial codes observed on the mainland.
Aboriginal religion centres on the creative power and laws of what has been termed Wongarr or the Dreaming. This is spoken of as the Creation era when the earth and all the animals and plants were formed, but it exists still. The Creation Ancestors were super powerful humans who travelled over wide tracts of country. As they moved they made the 'tribes' and languages, gave sacred objects to their descendants, and made ceremonies in which, by painting their bodies, they 'revealed' the designs which held the power for each tract of land. These ceremonies are enacted to the present day, during the initiation of young boys, at funerals and at other more 'secret' occasions...
Although these designs are still primarily revealed in ceremony, they are also occasionally painted on bark, and more recently on paper. Increasingly such paintings are used to reinforce Aboriginal claims to land and to respect by the wider world community. Today's Yolngu clan leaders hold themselves proudly as the direct descendants of the Creation Ancestors and therefore by 'divine' decree the protectors of the sacred sites of 'power of the land'...
Clans, moieties and ceremony
Socially, Yolngu clans are divided into two interrelated and interdependent groups or moieties, termed Yirritja and Dhuwa, each of which owns quite distinct lands and traces descent from different Original Creative Ancestors.
Barama and Laintjang, created the Yirritja people and The Djankawu, a man and his two sisters, created the Dhuwa. All living things are divided into these two moieties hence the right to paint designs or creation stories relating to particular species falls to the correct kinsfolk from that tract of country.
Detailed episodes along the pathway or 'songline' of the Creation Ancestors recount mythical sagas - the creation of fire, of honey, and of waterholes, rocks and trees. A major Yirritja Creation story is that of Baru the Crocodile who is associated with fire. Yirritja fire designs are compositions of diamonds - symbolic of the cracked pat-terns burned into crocodile skin in the Creation Era. The interaction of 'dangerous' creatures like crocodiles and stingrays, each of which can inflict pain, is also a metaphor for the pain involved in initiation and 'men's business' or 'payback'.
The most climactic ceremonies occur at funerals, the time for singing and dancing the spirit to rest. The body or coffin is elaborately painted, and at the appearance of the first star, the Morning Star, a beautiful slow poetic dance and song cycle are performed at which sacred morning star poles and feathered strings are slowly let out across lines of dancers to represent the journey of the star across the sky. This is also the pathway the spirit of the deceased must follow to its resting place.
The journey of human beings from birth through life to death is paralleled in nature's cycles. It is represented by the passage of the seasons, of which there are six, each named according to coming and going of winds and rain, and also by the metamorphosis of insects, for example of butterflies or beetles from eggs to larvae to adults.
[ Jennifer Isaacs is an eminent Australian writer and curator who has worked with Yolgnu people since assisting with their first land rights claim in 1971. This article was written on the occasion of the visit of Elcho Island artists and dancers to Chicago in 1999. ]
from: http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/regions/topend4.php
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Gumatj rom -
Yolngu art of Charlie Matjuwi Burarrwanga & Peter Datjin Burarrwanga
About Yolngu Aboriginal art from north east Arnhem Land. Source, Painting by Charlie Matjuwi 'Macassan', from: >>> http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/regions/topend4.php
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Macassan contact
At first the painting of the Macassan sailing vessel or prau [by Charlie Matjuwi] may seem a figurative anomaly in the company of Yolngu sacred religious art. Yet again, this is special.
Macassan places are well remembered in family oral history and recently a number of Yolngu from Elcho Island made a ceremonial visit to the islands of Indonesia to exchange dance and memories and to seek relatives - descendants from ancestors who had worked on the praus and married into Ujang Pandung community. The designs of the prau with sail and flag has been featured in bark paintings since the first examples were made for the missionaries in the 1930s. These are social history as well as expressions of kinship and cultural connections.
The Macassans came each year in December and went with the close of the wet season (February). As they went, unfurling sails and raising flags on the prau mast, a commemoration, a custom of saying goodbye entered Yolngu culture. Today Yolngu dancers wave flags at funeral ceremonies, farewelling the deceased... |
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THE INTERVENTION
Riyawarray: Common Ground
Riyawarra is where all tribes are represented and take part in the Yirritja Ngarra; this is our House of Representatives.
Dalkarra is a leader or a professor who climbs up the sacred tree, the ceremonial tree of knowledge. He is highly academic in Yolngu law. He dictates the clans who are named at the Riyawarra (the Common Ground) then the people who are painted will dance and represent their totems and the symbols of their paintings. Each day a new clan will be named to continue the ceremony. When the time comes, two special clans will be mentioned by the Dalkarra, then everyone will know the time for the ‘Cleansing Ceremony’ will soon begin...
We are wanting balanda policy makers to recognise and respect Yolngu Law, as just as important as White Law. For example, it is Yolngu Law that we take part in ceremonies such as Dhapi (Initiation Ceremony), Ngarra (This is where we contribute to Yirritja People who have passed away and come together to pay respect to the deceased and celebrate a new life for all Yirritja tribes. This is a Cleansing Ceremony), Bapurru (Funeral) and other ceremonies.
As tribal Indigenous people, all over Eastern Arnhemland, we want you to identify us and accept who we are so we can stand firm. Please, all Yolngu and Balanda, plan together, learn together and teach together in both ways. This way everyone can be happy and free to live. Let us share our knowledge, understanding and education of both laws, Balanda and Yolngu.
It has been too long for both societies to work apart not coming to terms with an understanding of what is right and what is wrong. This is our chance to come together, to share knowledge, experiences, understanding and wisdom with truth and a sincere honesty aiming to improve our education and our futures.'...
Source/More>>>http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=24002697573&topic=5411
mägaya rom
These words of instruction ... for discipline and teaching.
They proceed from the märr (the deep-seated political and spiritual authority) of the
Djirrikay and Dalkarra (the Dhuwa political leaders and the Yirritja political leaders),
and from the ?ärra’ (the Parliamentary and Judicial sacred chamber of law).
These words are from the ?urr?gitj (tried and tested law since time immemorial)
and from the djalkiri (foundation of the world)
which create mägaya rom (peace, harmony and due process of law).
About Yolngu Traditional Law <<< click from: www.ards.com.au/yolngu_law.htm -September, 2005
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...Mawul Rom Ceremony
belongs to the Yolngu people of East Arnhem Land and has been used for centuries as a conflict resolution and healing ...
For Yolngu this restoration can only occur through Wukindi Rom. ...
Wukindi literally means to atone the blood between the affected parties and their respective clans. Blood is very sacred to Yolngu people as it is central to the sanctity of all human life www.indigenousjustice.gov.au/resources/.../03_djiniyini.pdf from:www.mawul.com/index.php?option=com_content...
Mawul Rom Masters Project
Mediation : cultural healing through community healing
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from>>> Video Rom
Bangana Wunungmurra
Infused with Ancestral potency, replete with layers of story and significances, Gularri, and the sacred sites associated with it, is an important source of Yolngu identity. For Yolngu of the Yirritja moiety, these waters are a foundational source: not only do they and the rangga [sacra] come from Gularri: they are Gularri. Gularri does not simply represent them, it is them.
...[T]he genius of the Yolngu imagination lies in its ability to recognize the Ancestral in new contexts and to envisage a place within a modernity that does not imply a break with the past. The Yolngu imaginary allows for mimetic forms of adaptation--a play of sameness and difference--without necessarily invoking a sense of contradiction or loss. To see and make connections with the practices and priorities of the generations that have gone before, while taking up the possibilities of the modern and the technological--this is Yolngu contemporaneity: the shimmering screen of the television set is a site for revelation and ritual participation (p. 210).
... Rock 'n' roll and disco were discouraged, painting of
ancestral designs on bark for sale in the balanda marketplace
(as done in Yirrkala) was deemed a violation of the Law.
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Ancestors, magic, and exchange in Yolngu doctrines; (Pt 2)
All three domains are aspects of Yolngu sociality with distinct but related bases, and each is a kind of rom ('the proper way' or 'right way')...
Yolngu do not draw absolute boundaries between domains such as sorcery and the domain of ancestral beings. Sorcery is implicated in the protection of secrecy of ancestral rom ('law', complexes of rituals, songs, designs, and sacred objects), while ancestral powers may be drawn on to attack one's enemies....
In contrast with the living community--transient and relatively mobile on (in former times) their daily and seasonal round of hunting, gathering, and fishing--the community of ancestors to whom a person is related according to the same categories of kin relations as between the living has been more or less bound to places and made permanent. (9) This ancestral community is the source of power, of the reproduction of life, identity, and of the proper order of things....
from >>> iDIDJ Australia Didgeridoo Cultural Hub • View topic - Ancestors ...
- men's business -
Detailed episodes along the pathway or 'songline' of the Creation Ancestors recount mythical sagas - the creation of fire, of honey, and of waterholes, rocks and trees. A major Yirritja Creation story is that of Baru the Crocodile who is associated with fire. Yirritja fire designs are compositions of diamonds - symbolic of the cracked pat-terns burned into crocodile skin in the Creation Era. The interaction of 'dangerous' creatures like crocodiles and stingrays, each of which can inflict pain, is also a metaphor for the pain involved in initiation and 'men's business' or 'payback'. ************************************************ |
THREE CORE YOLNGU PRINCIPLES
 Lapulung Dhamarrandji
This is just a part of an explanation that I'm developing to help Balandas understand why customary law is such a profound and important element of Yolngu life. I will be adding more soon. I have been been assisted in the noting of this by Stuart Porteous.I would like to know what you think of this work. Thank you.
Within these three Yolngu Core Principles there is always a living truth. That truth lies within the country. (Yirralka wanga ngaraka Our country: our origin) If you peel off the top layer you can still only see the surface layers. It means you still cannot see our cosmology; how we are mounted or made up, both physically and spiritually. We are mounted from the cultural roots of our ancestral legacy within our profound Yolngu lineage.
Within that knowledge are the deepest elements of human, mythical and cosmic belonging.
Stage 1:
GARMA: Public Cultural Celebration of ceremonial importance through Yolngu rom (law) and bungul. These are presented through very important, diverse cultural practices and rituals that demonstrate how we all are connected, and the sense of how we are connected through that rom and rituals.
Stage 2:
DHUNI: Semi-private ritual of parliamentary status. This is an intermediate transition of cultural endorsement towards the decision-making of Ngarra through honouring its sacredness. Interconnectedness.
Stage 3:
DHUTHUNGUNGU NGARRA:
A parliamentary Yolngu House of Representatives or Chamber through Yolngu Clan Nations who assemble in Parties. Nourishment. Interconnectedness.
from: http://en-gb.facebook.com/lapulung.dhamarrandji
Maḏayin
The complete system of Yolngu Law is known as the Maḏayin.
Yolŋu believe that if they live out their life according to Maḏayin,
it is a right and civilised way to live.
The Maḏayin creates the state of Magaya, which is a state of peace, freedom from hostilities and true justice for all.
from >>> http://wapedia.mobi/en/Yolngu:
Yolŋu Law, Kinship System, Avoidance relationships...
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‘Payback’,
Customary Law and Criminal Law in Colonised Australia
‘Payback’ is an Australian Aboriginal English term (also known in Melanesia) commonly understood to refer to a vendetta. Satisfaction of a grievance, such as a death or wife-stealing, may be sought through ritual ceremony, gift-giving, corporal punishment and ordeal, or even killing. Such phenomena, often characterised as vendetta or feud, have been noted by non-Aboriginal observers during most of the period of European colonisation (from 1788). In spite of the presumption of sovereignty that recognises only one law, it is shown that the criminal law in Australia has conceded limits to its reach in dealing with payback. More recently we observe that judicial attitudes have tended to recognise the positive functions of certain forms of payback in resolving conflict and upset in communities. Far from being eradicated by colonisation, payback retains a rationality in Aboriginal communities in a country that is subject to white man's law.
from:
>>> Customary Law and Criminal Law
>>>Indigenous courts and justice practices in Australia |
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