Mandawuy Yunupingu. Photo by John Elliott, National Portrait Gallery

Mandawuy Yunupingu has fought more than a few battles in his time – most of which he has won hands down.

But, if you believed the title and tone of an article written by Natasha Robinson in The Australian in December last year – Songline fades for Treaty man Mandawuy Yunupingu – you could be forgiven for thinking that Mandawuy had given up hope and that he was soon to “finish up”, as we say up here.

Nothing could be further from the truth – anyone who knows Mandawuy is aware that the last thing he could ever be would be a quitter.

Tomorrow night, Monday 19 October, Jimmy Little, who has had his own battles with renal failure, will present an Australian Story on the ABC that sets out the real stories behind the fight that Mandawuy is having with end-stage renal failure – a curse that disproportionately affects many in Aboriginal Australia and that can only be treated by frequent dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Chart from the Fred Hollows Foundation

This chart produced by the Fred Hollows Foundation gives a stark – though dated – outline of the relative incidence of end-stage renal failure rates between the Aboriginal populations in the Australian States and territories and in the non-Aboriginal population.

The Fred Hollows Foundation says that the rate of death from Kidney Disease among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is:

…approximately nine times the total Australian rate. In the Barkly region of the Northern Territory standardised end-stage renal disease (ESRD) incidence among Indigenous Australians is up to 30 times the national incidence for all Australians. The number of dialysis treatments in the NT is doubling every two years.

…

In end-stage renal disease (ESRD), kidney transplant or dialysis is necessary to maintain life. The health service costs of this rapidly rising epidemic are a major demand on resources. Projected cost of medical services required in the next five years for the treatment of end-stage renal disease in the Northern Territory is estimated to be $50 million.

The current epidemic is probably explained by the confluence of many risk factors over a short time period, associated with dramatic lifestyle changes and serious socioeconomic disadvantage.

I’ve known Mandawuy Yunupingu since the mid nineteen-eighties when I was working as a sound engineer and general factotum for a rowdy bunch of Darwin-based ratbags known as the Swamp Jockeys.

From the dim recesses of memory I recall that Mandawuy turned up one night while we were on tour in Sydney with an old battered guitar, a swag of great songs and a keen desire to get them heard by as many people as possible.

He did a few gigs as a guest with the Jockeys and it was soon pretty clear to us all that he was bound for great things – which he went on to achieve for many years as the frontman of that groundbreaking band called Yothu Yindi.

A testament to Mandawuy’s determination is that he already had a distinguished career as an educator – maybe enough for most of us.

But Mandawuy knew that he could do more to spread his people’s message through his words, music, songs and performances fronting one of the most musically dynamic and politically forceful acts we’ve seen in this country.

Through the work of Yothu Yindi and beyond he has raised awareness of any number of important issues that affect the daily lives of the Yolngu peoples of north-east Arnhem Land and of Aboriginal countrymen and women across Australia.

And these messages weren’t just for blackfellas – they reached out to mainstream Australia as well.

Yothu Yindi was always about more than music.

As their ground-breaking – and chart-topping – Treaty indicates, Yothu Yindi was all about building bridges between cultures and peoples:

Nhima Djatpangarri nhima walangwalang -
Nhe Djatpayatpa nhima gaya nhe-
Matjini…. Yakarray – nhe Djat’pa nhe walang – Gumurrtijararrk Gutjuk -

This land was never given up
This land was never bought and sold
The planting of the Union Jack
Never changed our law at all

Now two rivers run their course
Separated for so long
I’m dreaming of a brighter day
When the waters will be one

Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now
Treaty Yeh Treaty Now Treaty Yeh Treaty Now

Nhima djatpa nhe walang
Gumurrtjararrk yawirriny Nhe gaya nhe matjini
Gaya nhe matjini Gaya gaya nhe gaya nhe
Matjini walangwalang Nhema djatpa nhe walang – Nhe gumurrtjarrk nhe ya-

Promises – Disappear – Priceless land – Destiny -
Lyrics by Yothu Yindi & Paul Kelly

The Yothu Yindi website explains that the band has deep roots into the land, traditional law and decision-making based on consensus and culture:

The Yolngu members of Yothu Yindi live in the tribal homelands of north-east Arnhem Land 600 kilometres east of the Northern Territory capital of Darwin. Some live in Yirrkala, a coastal community on the Gove Peninsula that was originally established by the Methodist Missionary Society in 1935. Others live in Galiwinku, a former mission on Elcho Island originally established in 1942.

A move pioneered in north-east Arnhem Land, the homeland movement has seen Aboriginal people returning to their traditional lands and lifestyles-relying less on the trappings of Western society and more on traditional activities such as hunting, fishing and cultural and ceremonial education.

Yolngu band members are drawn from two of the sixteen clan groups in the region, the Gumatj and Rirratjingu. The people of the region have had contact with Balanda (Europeans) only over the past sixty years or so. Consequently, their traditional cultural, religious, artistic and ceremonial activities are still among the strongest in the country.

The band’s approach to its career is deeply rooted in traditional decision making processes, so all traditional songs that have been performed or released have been done so as a result of substantial consultation with clan leaders and traditional lawmakers.

Yothu Yindi – the band – has cut back its activities over the past several years.

But Yothu Yindi – the concept and the philosophy – has gone from strength to strength through the work of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which, among many other things, runs the annual Garma Festival at Gulkula, outside Yirrkala.

You can learn more about the musical work of Mandawuy and Yothu Yindi at the band’s website here, and see what the Yothu Yindi Foundation is up to here.

And have a look at this site to find out about the Garma Festival.

Spotted Nightjar Eurostopodus argus

I came across this road-killed Spotted Nightjar (Eurostopodus argus) a hundred or so kilometres up the Tanami Track from my home at Yuendumu just after setting off on my current trip that will take me through the east and western Kimberleys, to Broome (where I am now) and down to the Pilbara, where I’ll be heading tomorrow.

There are Aboriginal stories about the Spotted Nightjar right across Australia – but because I found this one in Warlpiri country I’ll include a couple of references from paintings made by several of the Warlpiri painters that work at the Warlukurlangu Artists centre at Yuendumu.

To the Warlpiri the Spotted Nightjar is known as Yinkardakurdaku.

In common with many naming systems across Australia, many birds in the Warlpiri world-view are named onomatopoeically – thus the name for the Spotted Nightjar in Warlpiri sounds, if you bend your ear and imagination just a little, very much like the main breeding season call used by the bird about this time of year.

I heard my first for the year a few weeks back while walking our dogs a few kilometres outside of town one evening.

To me the call sounds like water flowing out of a narrow-necked bottle, a beautiful succession of fluid sounds ending in an almost joyous climax, though I can imagine that for some unfamiliar with their call that it could be quite a surprise on a dark night – it is a remarkable thing.

You can hear the call of the Spotted Nightjar for yourself here as a QuickTime file: the Yinkardakurdaku’s call.

Courtesy of Warlukurlangu Artists at Yuendumu here are two representative stories for the Yinkardakurdaku from two different locations in Warlpiri country, firstly from Mawurriji:

Yinkardakurdaku Jukurrpa (Spotted Nightjar dreaming) (Mawurriji)

The Yinkardakurdaku (Spotted Nightjar, Eurostopodus argus) ancestor was sitting down and making spears (Jarljarri) at Mawurrji, west of Yuendumu.

When Yinkardakurdaku had finished it stood up and threw the spears to the north (Yatija-rra), south (Kurla-rni), east (Kakarra) and to the west (Karla-rra).

During their flight and upon landing the spears created many important Mulju (soakages) and Warnirri (rockholes) that are still evident in the landscape today.

The water from these Mulju and Warnirri later spread underground to form the river and creek-beds found throughout Warlpiri country.

And also here from Yampirri:

Yinkardakurdaku Jukurrpa (Spotted Nightjar dreaming) (Yampirri)

This print represents the travels of Yinkardakurdaku (Spotted Nightjar, Eurostopodus argus), a large bird (Jurlpu) with a brown breast that was living near to Yampirri, near Kunajarrayi, to the west of Yuendumu and Nyirrpi.

Yinkardakurdaku was an heroic ancestor who was both a bird and man. He flew back and forth – east (Kakarra) to the west (Karla-rra) and back again. He always returned to Yampirri where there is a cave [Pirnki].

He travelled far, visiting a big bloodwood tree near the present site of Yuendumu. He even flew to Kulpurlu, to the east in Alyawarr country.

Yampirri is an important men’s ceremonial site; a place to teach Kajirri (’high school’) to young men. The circle in the centre of the painting represent Yampirri. The other circles refer to places he visited on his travels. Japaljarri men are also represented. The footprints (Wirliya) of Yinkardakurdaku have also been represented.

For me this couple of hours before dawn is the best time of day – the stars are at their brightest, the air is cool and clear, the Pied Butcherbirds get an early start on the morning chorus with their mellifluous calls and all the pleasures of the day wait ahead.

In two previous posts here I have explored the work of the Warlpiri artist Alma Nungarrayi Granites and the wonderful work in the exhibition of paintings by people of the Wajarri Yamatji language group from Western Australia’s Murchison region and their exhibition entitled “Ilgarijiri – things belonging to the sky“. Both of those posts illustrate the importance of the Seven Sisters – the Pleiades – in Aboriginal cosmology.

I want to wander through a few further links that I’ve found that reveal what I suspect is just small part of the enormous body of knowledge that Australian Aboriginal people have of our night skies and the wonderful things that live there.

As I’ve said previously – and this may arise from 2009 being the International Year of Astronomy – there seems to be a greater willingness to engage with, or a broader interest in, Indigenous Astronomical Knowledge among the mainstream astronomical science community than there is in many other scientific disciplines – and this could include my own area of interest of ornithology.

But back to the stars!

Questacon provides a popular entry point for the general public to a variety of areas of Australian scientific enquiry and research and has a page dedicated to Aboriginal Astronomy, from which this story of Barnimbir (Venus) the Morning Star from the Yolngu language group of north-east Arnhem land comes:

One day a yam leaf was blown across the warm waters of the sea, north of Australia. It floated from the east, from where the Sun and Morning Star came. A man named Yaolngur found the leaf. The yam plant was very special to him and he decided to travel to the country where it came from – the land of the Morning Star.

He made a very large canoe and told his wives to collect great numbers of water lily bulbs for food and fill many coconut shells with water for drink during his long journey. He rested that night in his home camp and early next morning he set out. He paddled for seven days, sometimes sleeping on small islands, sometimes sleeping at sea. On the last night of his journey he paddled and paddled – he could hear waves crashing on the rocks. Then the sky lit up, the Morning Star rose in the sky and Yaolngur saw land.

He had arrived at the home of the Morning Star. The island was the home of the spirits, home of the Mokois. He had arrived at the island of the dead. Because he was in a strange land, he wanted to make himself strong. By rubbing the sweat from his armpits onto his arms, legs and chest, he made himself powerful. He also rubbed his sweat in his spear thrower.

Carrying his weapons, he went to seek the Morning Star. He had only walked a short way when he saw the ghosts – so many in number that they stood shoulder to shoulder so many that there didn’t seem room for any more. The spirits looked at the decoration of sea gull feathers on his spear thrower and recognised him as a friend. He sang and danced and then said, “I want to see Barnimbir, the Morning Star.”

He walked and found the old woman Marlumbu, who kept the star. At first she didn’t want to it to him, but he sang magic songs and he assured her that he only wanted to see if it was the same as the one his group used in their Morning Star ceremony. Marlumbu took it out and showed him the parts made from seagull feathers and jungle yams. Yaolngur was pleased the Morning Star was the same as his people used.

He handed the Morning Star back to Marlumbu, who released it into the sky. She controlled the flight of Barumbu by holding the string and allowing the Star to travel all over the islands. She cried out directions to the Star to tell it where to travel. Suddenly the string started to hum. It was the sign that the Sun was coming up.

You can find more of the stories if the rich heritage of Aboriginal astronomical observation and story telling at the Questacon Aboriginal Astronomy site.

These stories can also be found in Questacon’s book The Emu in the Sky, a collection of Aboriginal astronomy stories from all around Australia that is available from Questacon for the bargain price of $AU4.30.

The Emu in the sky

Another widespread story is the popular and widespread story of the “Emu in the Sky“.

As this page at Wikipedia notes, the Emu in the Sky story is a:

…tradition that is widespread in Australia…a ‘constellation’ that is defined by dark nebulas (opaque clouds of dust and gas in outer space) that are visible against the milky way background, rather than by stars. The Emu’s head is the very dark Coalsack nebula, next to the Southern Cross; the body and legs are other dark clouds trailing out along the Milky Way to Scorpius.

Just north of Sydney, in the Kuringai National Park, are extensive rock engravings of the Guringai people who live there, including representations of the creator-hero Daramulan and his emu-wife. An engraving at Elvina Track shows an emu in the same pose and orientation as the Emu in the Sky. constellation. On autumn evenings, the emu in the sky stands directly over her portrait, just at the time when it’s time to gather emu eggs. To the Wardaman [people], however, the Coalsack is the head of a lawman.

Macquarie University Adjunct Professor Ray Norris runs a website dedicated to Aboriginal Astronomy.

In the overview to the comprehensive site he says:

The southern sky is striking compared to that of the Northern hemisphere, often dominated by the magnificent river of the Milky Way weaving across the zenith, crossed by numerous dust lanes. For those living in Australia before the advent of streetlights, the night sky would be an important and integral part of their understanding of the world. Naturally, they would notice that particular stars or patterns are seen only at certain times of the year. Furthermore, since many chose to travel in the cool of the night, they would quickly find that stars are useful for navigation.

Across Australia are many different rich and vibrant Aboriginal cultures, each with its own astronomy. But there are common threads. Many have stories of a female Sun who warmed the land, and a male Moon who was once a young slim man (the waxing crescent Moon), but grew fat and lazy (the full Moon). But then he broke the law, and was attacked by his people, resulting in his death (the new Moon). After remaining dead for 3 days, he rose again to repeat the cycle, and continues doing so till this day. The Kuwema people in the Northern Territory say that he grows fat at each full moon by devouring the spirits of those who disobey the tribal laws.

Some Aboriginal people use the sky as a calendar to tell them when it’s time to move to a new place and a new food supply. The Boorong people in Victoria know that when the “Mallee-fowl” constellation (Lyra) disappears in October, to “sit with the Sun”, it’s time to start gathering her eggs on Earth. Other groups know that when Orion first appears in the sky, the Dingo puppies are about to be born.

And you can find an interesting introduction to many aspects of Aboriginal astronomy, links to other articles,  audio programs and events at the ABC’s Big Aussie Starhunt page.

Further north in the Northern Territory, the fascinating accounts of the Astronomical knowledge of the Wardaman language group, who have country to the west and south of Katherine in the Northern Territory, are revealed in the book “Dark Sparklers“, written by Hugh Cairns and Bill Harney, with whom I’m doing some work on my project on Aboriginal bird knowledge.

I don’t agree with many of the statements that Hugh Cairns makes about some aspects of the traditional knowledge of the Wardaman people but notwithstanding those and other reservations the book represents the most comprehensive account of the astronomical beliefs of a single Australian Aboriginal language group that I have been able to find. Dark Sparklers also contains many wonderful stories of other aspects of Wardaman knowledge and belief systems.

A Wardaman rock painting

I’ll leave each of you to make up your own mind about Dark Sparklers but encourage you to forward any further information you might have on projects and research being undertaken elsewhere.

And finally, while it is mainly directed at teachers wanting to use Aboriginal astronomical knowledge in the classrooom there is a great educational resource entitled “Astronomy and Australian Indigenous People” prepared by Adele Pring and produced by the South Australian Education Department that is available as a PDF document here.

Don’t let the educational content put you off – it contains a wealth of information about Aboriginal astronomical knowledge from all over the country.

There is a lot more that I haven’t been able to cover here but I’d be happy to extend the discussion and would welcome your suggestions or links to further information.

Poster for the Ilgarijiri exhibition in Perth

Further to my previous post on Alma Nungarrayi Granite’s paintings from Warlukurlangu Artists at my home town of Yuendumu I found a fascinating set of links between Aboriginal art, the sky and the objects we find there and modern science.

In many ways these links are very similar to the kind of connections that I find in the work that I’m doing on the connections between Aboriginal knowledge and birds – but in the case of Aboriginal astronomical knowledge there seems to be a far more active interest and real curiosity on the part of some astronomers in the Aboriginal equivalent to their work than there is with their counterparts in the the mainstream ornithological scientific community.

And I didn’t know it before I had a close look at this exhibition but 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.

I can’t quite recall how I came across the link to what looks like a an absolute cracker of an exhibition of Aboriginal art from the Geraldton region of Western Australia but I ended up at this blog site for the “Ilgarijiri – things belonging to the sky” exhibition that fired up in April 2009 and has quickly seen an exhibition up and running.

Right now if you are in Perth you can see the show at the exhibition space at the Curtin University.

The Wajarri Yamatji people of the Murchison region of Western Australia are the Native Title claimants over the region including the Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory (MRO), a site being developed as the potential location for the next generation of large radio telescope – the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), as well as SKA precursor telescopes such as the CSIRO Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).

The focus of “Ilgarijiri – things belonging to the sky” is a collaborative project between artists associated with the Wajarri Yamatji region, via the Y-ART cooperative in Geraldton, and radio astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), based in Perth, Western Australia.

The project brings together Aboriginal artists and scientists to exchange an celebrate different perspectives about the night sky and to explore those perspectives in art.

Here are a few of the images from the exhibition:

Emu Egg time, by Sonya Edney

I’m curious as to whether the reference to “Emu Egg time” in this painting by Sonya Edney is a reference to the changing positions of certain star clusters or constellations over time and if they may serve as an indicator of the right time to harvest Emu eggs in the artist’s homelands.

Quite a few Aboriginal people have told me about their knowledge of certain elements – whether it be the position of objects in the night sky, the flowering of certain plants or the movements of birds and animals in or out of their areas – and that these observations are intertwined with their knowledge and exploitation of the plant and animal worlds around them.

And the following images show, to some degree at least, the pan-continental nature of Aboriginal knowledge and beliefs about prominent constellations and star clusters.

These paintings of the Seven Sisters (also known as Pleiades) are the same subject as discussed in my previous post of Nungarrayi’s vision of the Seven Sisters from here in the Tanami Desert – thousands of kilometres to the east of the Murchison  region.

Seven Sisters, by Gemma Merritt

Seven Sisters by Margaret Danishewsky

Unlike Nungarrayi’s painting I don’t have any of the stories for these images and I’d love to hear more about the content and the artists connections to the land and the sky as they put it down on canvas.

I’ll look out for this exhibition and some further information about the project over the next couple of weeks as I move down the west Australian coast – and if you’ve seen the exhibition I’d love your comments about the art, the artists and the project as a whole.

Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa, Alma Nungarrayi Granites

This small image gives but a very limited impression of the power and majesty of the original of Alma Nungarrayi Granites’ painting of her Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa (Seven Sisters dreaming).

It is one of a series of large paintings by the Warlpiri artist Alma Nungarrayi Granites, who paints for Warlukurlangu Artists, the locally-owned and operated arts centre here at Yuendumu 300 kilometres or so north-west of Alice Springs in Warlpiri/Anmatyerre country on the southern fringes of the magnificent Tanami Desert.

Nungarrayi comes from a long and proud tradition of Warlpiri artists.

Her father and mother, Paddy Japaljarri Sims and Bessie Nakamarra Sims, are two of the artists that founded Warlukurlangu in the mid-eighties. Artistic talent in the Sims family runs deep and spans the generations – Nungarrayi’s parents Japaljarri and Nakamarra, as well as Nungarrayi and her brothers and sisters all paint with and sell through Warlukurlangu.

Earlier this year Nungarrayi and her daughter Sabrina joined her mother and grandmother in a unique show, entitled “Mother, daughter, granddaughter; Three generations of Yuendumu artists” at Perth’s Kingfisher Gallery . Brother Otto Sims is the chairman of Warlukurlangu.

The rights to paint and the knowledge linked to the Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa story have been handed down to Nungarrayi from her father, the last Japaljarri who knows all of the songs and ceremony for the Yiwarra – Milky Way Dreaming.

Nungarrayi’s paintings are powerful multi-level images that draw you in and each raise a hundred or more questions – many of which, for various reasons, will remain unanswered.

I want to take one of Nungarrayi’s Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa – or her other Yanjirlpirri Jukurrpa (Star dreaming) paintings out bush on one of those clear starlight-bright nights that we are so often blessed with out here and lay on my back with the painting at arms length above me and read the painting and the skies beyond together.

And Nungarrayi’s story for this particular painting – well, maybe just one of the many stories embedded in them – is that:

The Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa (Seven sisters Dreaming) depicts the story of the seven ancestral Napaljarri
sisters who are found in the night sky today in the cluster of seven stars in the constellation Taurus, more
commonly known as the Pleiades.

The Pleiades are seven women of the Napaljarri skin group and are often depicted in paintings of this Jukurrpa carrying the Jampijinpa man ‘Wardilyka‘ (the Bustard [Ardeotis australis]) who is in love with the Napaljarri-warnu and who represents the Orion’s Belt cluster of stars.

Jukurra- jukurra, the morning star, is a Jakamarra man who is also in love with the seven Napaljarri sisters and is often shown chasing them across the night sky. In a final attempt to escape from the Jakamarra the
Napaljarri-warnu turned themselves into fire and ascended to the heavens to become stars.

The custodians of the Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa are Japaljarri/Jungarrayi men and Napaljarri/Nungarrayi
women. Some parts of the Napaljarri-warnu Jukurrpa are closely associated with men’s sacred ceremonies.

I’m not quite sure if Nungarrayi will be holding any further solo exhibitions in Australia this year but her work is well represented in any number of galleries in Australia and internationally that specialise in quality Aboriginal art.

If you are in Alice Springs this weekend you can do a lot worse than go along to the Aralauen Arts Centre and catch the Desert Mob show that will be opening there Sunday.

My old mate Paul Kelly will be playing a sold-out show in the Araluen Theatre on Saturday night and on Saturday afternoon many of the locally-owned arts centres scattered throughout central Australia will be selling their wares at the Desert Mob marketplace.

This market is a great way to get hold of a range of modestly-priced works of a great variety from some of the 43 art centres that make up DesArt. I don’t know if you’ll be able to pick up any of Nungarrayi’s painting at the Warlukurlangu booth but you could certainly find out more from the Warlukurlangu staff.

The exhibition is described on the Desart website as a:

…showcase[s of] the latest works from each of the participating Art Centres and includes paintings by some of the leading artists in Australia, together with traditional artefacts, weavings, ceramics and other crafts. Each Art Centre exhibits works by some of its senior artists, together with works by emerging younger artists.

And the the marketplace is:

… a large indoor/outdoor market with stalls selling small and low-priced Aboriginal arts and crafts and related products, such as T shirts, bags, books and calendars from Desart member Art Centres. Popular with both locals and tourists, the market offers a chance of some excellent bargains to early browsers.

Me, I’ll be at home watching the football and looking after the dogs while my partner, who works at Warlukurlangu, will working hard in Alice Springs.

Then on Sunday I’m off through the Tanami Track up to the east and west Kimberleys and then on to the Pilbara to talk to people about birds.

It is really tough out here sometimes…

"Fluffy"

Someone suggested that we could call this fine specimen of a leatherback camp dog “Jenny” as a tribute to the abject failures of the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s NT Intervention to do very-much-at-all-really about the parlous state of health of too many of the dogs that live in the 73 communities subject to that most flawed of recent attempts at social engineering on the grandest of scales.

But I thought it better that we give her a name that was more suited to her undoubted charm and character – so for present purposes we’ll call her “Fluffy”.

Fluffy is the best example of a leatherback camp dog that I came across during the last week or so of travelling through some remote corners of the NT.

In many of these communities the Federal government appointed “Australian Government Business Managers”, (AGBM’s) whose job it is to represent the interests of the Commonwealth there.

AGBMs live in demountable buildings or converted shipping containers in secure compounds behind tall barbed-wire fences. It is safe to say that the pay and conditions of the AGBM make the AGBM the most well-paid person in town – for an idea of their terms and conditions see this flyer from FaHCSIA.

How effective – from the perspective of local communities – those AGBM’s have been is a very open question. But it is undisputed that, like many of the measures implemented under the NT Intervention, AGBMs represent a clumsy and expensive attempt at delivering improved services to the 73 remote townships in the NT that they have effectively controlled for the last two years.

And, as one community member told me this week while we were watching Fluffy gobble a lump of meat I’d given her, if either of the NT or Federal governments allocated a mere fraction of the money they’ve wasted on the NT Intervention to looking after the health and welfare of the dogs in those communities then the Intervention might be seen as being more effective and would be more readily accepted by Aboriginal people here.

As it is now, there is no systematic approach to the health and welfare of dogs in remote townships by either the NT or Federal governments. But it is not all bad news – a number of dog health programs are supported on an ad-hoc basis and there is at least one non-government organisation that has done some great work to both raise the profile of dog health ad welfare as an issue for governments and to inform  Aboriginal people of the real benefits that can come from careful and well-planned programs of dog welfare and control.

In the past dog control in remote townships has been conducted by two main measures – either “do nothing” or to conduct unilateral control measures with minimal community engagement.

The do nothing approach is sadly typical of the approach of governments to domestic animal control generally. For many remote councils and the NT and Federal governments it has been seen as just too hard to establish and build lasting relationships with Aboriginal people to work out fair and equitable systems of animal control and welfare. Local councils were generally overwhelmed by gross under-funding, lack of administrative capacity and appreciation of alternatives. Territory and State governments appear never to have quite come to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Too often the alternative to doing nothing was the apparently easier but far less effective option based on a unilateral decision by a local (usually white) town clerk or administrator that there were “just too many bloody dogs around town” and arranging for someone, often the local policeman, to round up the arbitrarily-selected “excess” dogs and shoot them – sometimes out of town – often in front of their owners. Sometimes the more humane, but no less traumatic for the owners of the dogs, alternative was to arrange for a vet to come out and do a mass cull.

Slowly – too slowly for many – more enlightened approaches to remote community dog management are emerging. In my home town of Yuendumu the local Warlukurlangu Artists arts centre has for several years been supporting and funding a dog welfare program.

You can see some photos of healthy Yuendumu dogs and their close involvement with Warlukurlangu’s artists at the art centre’s website here.

Warlukurlangu describes dog program as:

After several years of running an ‘unoffical’ dog program, the Art Centre Committee agreed to formalise the art centre’s commitment to improving the health of the many dogs in Yuendumu.

The management of the art centre strongly believes that ‘healthy dogs mean healthy people’. As part of this program the art centre feeds dogs, de-ticks and cares for sick and abandoned dogs as well as providing daily advice to community members on how to better take care of dogs. WAAA also helps to fund vets to come to the community and sterilise dogs and treat them for various diseases.

In November 2007 and January 2008 the art centre together with Yuendumu Council organised for the Veterinary Doctor Honey Nelson to spend several weeks in the community putting down unwanted dogs and inserting birth control implants on as many male dogs as she could.

Warlukurlangu has received some assistance from the local Council and has also recently received limited funding from FaHCSIA through the local AGBM.

Another example of a more enlightened approach to the management of dog health and welfare in remote townships is AMRRIC (Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities), an organisation that:

…is an independent group of Veterinarians, academics, health workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We facilitate sustainable dog programmes in remote Indigenous communities to improve the health and wellbeing of the entire community.

AMRRIC receives some funding from FaHCSIA and some other government agencies and is gradually expanding its reach and programs. One important part of its work is to provide relevant and culturally appropriate training material for veterinarians.

Most recently AMRRIC has developed the first-ever manual for Veterinarians and communities undertaking dog health programs in remote Indigenous communities. Conducting Dog Health Programs in Indigenous Communities: A Veterinary Guide has been produced by Dr Samantha Phelan, a Northern Territory-based veterinarian with significant field experience in remote Indigenous communities.

AMRRIC has also recently received funding from the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy to produce a DVD based on Samantha Phelan’s Veterinary Guide.

AMRRIC Board member Dr Samantha Phelan wrote this guide for Environmental health Practitioners (EHP’s) nationally. This key resource is a reference guide for people wanting to make dogs healthier in their own communities or in communities they work in. It was written for the wide range of people who take part in Environmental Health Programs in communities, such as Indigenous Environmental Health Workers (EHW), Environmental Health Officers (EHO), Area Health Services and Health Boards, Departments of Local Government (DLG), State Government Environmental Health Units and Indigenous Land Councils, to name a few. ‘The book is written to help each of those people to do a better job’.

The AAWS Funded DVD will be a project that involves a number of key players. First of all the background will be Samantha’s AMRRIC manual information and some of its illustrations will be animated. There will be film footage taken by the Media Students from Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Studies. Our actors will be Indigenous Students from Batchelor who formed the focus groups for the development of the Manual. This education DVD will enable EHP’s to educate schools, individuals, communities and groups on issues such as Stopping Skin Sores, Stopping Ticks and fleas, the benefits of desexing dogs, Stopping dog bites and what to tell children for staying safe, Stopping Worms in dogs and stopping them getting into people and Stopping dogs getting diarrhoea and spreading germs to people. It is anticipated that the project will be completed by the end of August.

AMRRIC deserves more support from governments and the public – Fluffy looks like an absolute wreck that most people would not hesitate to put down immediately – but, as I’ve seen from personal experience – it is relatively easy to save dogs like Fluffy and restore them to the good health they deserve. All it takes is food, some treatment for mange and ticks and some loving attention.

Through town, aross the creek, and follow the signs past the old car and the Boab tree to...

I was in Katherine earlier last week with a few days to spare – I thought about going out south-west of Katherine to Yarralin and some other small towns in the Victoria River district to catch up with some old people to talk about birds but decided to head further west and pushed on to Kununurra and points south-west…

Kununurra holds little interest for me – it is all a bit too new and expensive. There is a nice man-made lake near the town and it attracts hordes of the increasing numbers of grey nomads that spend their winter months in the north dragging around enormous caravans behind near-new four wheel drives at a constant speed of about 80 km/h.

They clog up the roads, caravan parks and roadside stops where they spend their time talking to other grey nomads talking about the high price of fuel, the many and various techniques for fettling a caravan and the many variations on bumper stickers that trumpet “Don’t tell the kids, Mum and Pop on the run with their inheritance” and similar.

Enough of them.

Anyway, I camped outside of Kununurra near to one of the afore-mentioned roadside stops where that other scourge of the dry-season roads of the north – the backpackers cruising around in “Wicked” campervans – did their best to have a rave party a hundred metres or so away from my camp while the moon rose through the trees and the cattle road trains thundered westwards in search of a load.

The next day and a couple of hundred of kilometres later I found myself in Warmun – previously known as Turkey Creek – which flows through the town.

Warmun is a on small excision (as we would know it in the NT) cut out from the surrounding cattle station.

Most people in the community are from the Gija language group that owns (at Aboriginal law at least) a large area surrounding the township.

With a fluctuating population of about 500 in Warmun and another few hundred people living at homeland communities serviced by the town, is one of the largest Aboriginal communities in Western Australia.

Gija people appear to have taken a refreshingly strategic approach to economic development in their region .

Driving the 200-plus kilomreres down from Kununurra the only services along the route is the Aboriginal-owned Doon Doon Roadhouse and the local caravan park and roadhouse in Warmun – only place to stay in town – is also owned and operated by Gija people.

Both are dry – so if you want a drink you have a long way to north to Kununurra or south to Halls Creek to quench a thirst.

Warmun Art centre gallery

And the Warmun Arts Centre is also locally owned, operated and easy to find – drive through town, across Turkey Creek and past the old rusty car and the ancient Boab tree, follow the signs and there you are at a new(-ish), large and light-filled gallery of local art.

I’ve not had a lot to do with art from the east Kimberley and was unaware that most (all but the prints) of the material produced at Warmun is based on locally-sourced and coursely-ground ochres.

This gives a wonderful rough texture to each of the paintings and some beautiful tones – particularly the variations from the red and yellow ochres of the area, which provide a wide range of colours – from soft pastel washes to a wide range of hard browns and reds that are particularly effective on the landscape paintings.

Warmun has been running as an Art Centre since 1998 but local people have been painting publicly since the late nineteen seventies and the walls of the public buildings, particularly the local school, are covered in a wide and vibrant range of images.

Apparently a lot of this earlier work has been collected for a local museum with support from the Australian National Gallery in Canberra. I’ll try to catch up with that collection when I pass through Warmun again later in the year.

The main reason for my travel to Warmun was to get a better look at the work of, and make contact with several of the local artists who paint bird stories grounded in the local landscape and culture.

Thanks to the staff at the Arts Centre I was able to get a better idea of who paints bird stories at Warmun and a better idea of the number of species that locals paint the stories of. I’ll be in touch with the artists through the local Council and the Arts Centre to arrange my next trip.

And if you want to find out more about the extraordinary artists – both past and present – and their art go to the Warmun Arts Centre site here – and if you contact the Arts Centre they’ll tell you where the several exhibitions planned for later this year.

You need a permit to enter the Warmun community living area and the Arts Centre – but if you call (08) 9168 7496 it is easy enough to arrange over the phone.

I don’t know a lot about the art from this part of the world but from the website gallery it appears that there is some wonderful art being produced there. Artwork from Iwantja includes acrylics on linen, lino-cut prints, collograph prints, woven items and a range of carved wooden items.

Indulkana is just a few kilometres off the Stuart Hight an hour or so south of the NT border – I passed it on my way down last week and made a mental note to give myself time on the way home to drop in.

I’ll do a follow-up post on my visit and let you know what I like and what I bought!

Their website provides the following information about Iwantja’s history:

Iwantja Community is mainly Yankunytjatjara people living on the eastern side of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, 8 km from the Stuart Highway in the far north of South Australia, on a dusty rocky ridge called Indulkana.

Indulkana Arts Association started in the seventies. Initially used for secondary student’s art lessons, the building used was so crowded at times that the teacher had to mark spots on the floor in the morning to make sure they all had room! Skills were learnt and the beginnings of a clear identity formed. People did traditional wood carving (punu), batik, patchwork, dying, painting and around the early eighties linoblock printing started. Over 100 prints and many drawings from that time are in the South Australian Museum. They are mainly monochrome using dreaming symbols. Later, artists had some connection with Studio One in Canberra and three women went there to work with their printers. Some multi-coloured prints were developed then.

Iwantja Arts and Crafts moved into the Family Centre in January 1995. Since then Iwantja has gone from strength to strength on the basis of its strong cultural identity and impressive output.

Shellie Morris & Lynette Lewis

Catherine Lewis, Insight Publications & Andrew McMillan

Jennifer Mills & Mary Ann Butler

Kate Grenville reading from The Lieutenant

Sandra Thibodeaux, Festival Director

Wendy Price & Linda Jaivin

Andrew McMillan & Barry Nicholls, ABC Alice Springs

Andy Ewing, NT Writers' Centre & Steve Gumerungi Hodder

Tjulpi Band - mosh pit

Tjulpi Band - audience

Tjulpi Band - take a photo of us mob!

Tjulpi Band drummer and best friend

Tjulpi Band - Guitar and Bass

Tjulpi Band - Keyboards

Andrew McMillan & Sammy Japanangka Butcher - desert surf guitar hero!

Sand grasshopper

This little fellow – I think it is a Urnisiella species – and it’s close cousin below (it may be what is known a different level of instar nymph according to my insect field guide) are quite common here at the moment and give the dogs no end of excitement chasing them around the scrub.

We’ve had a good season this year – the ground-water has been replenished, there is still some surface water available and the occasional storm cell that stomps around the country provides a welcome late-season top-up.

There is plenty of good grass still around and new growth on the trees so there is a good load of insects, which, as someone who likes to spend a lazy hour or ten a day watching birds, is good for me as well.

More grasshoppers and small insects, more birds – happy me!

I recently bought a butterfly net & associated kit, including a wonderful field guide to Australian Spiders, and have been paying a bit more attention to those smaller things we share our world with.

Another Sand Grasshopper

Another recent purchase is the excellent introductory Field Guide to Insects in Australia, by Paul Zborowski & Ross Storey and published Reed New Holland.

The chapter on the Order Orthoptera (Crickets & Grasshoppers), tells me that in Australia we have 14 families and over 2,800 species of crickets and grasshoppers.

One thing I was not aware of is that Orthoptera go through a range of life stages that are often dependent upon local resources for progression.

As Zborowski and Storey say about crickets and grasshoppers:

Nymphs are wingless versions of the adults, with, at first, disproportionately large heads. Many species develop wing buds in later instars. The final moult to adult is around the fourth to sixth instar in grasshoppers and up to the tenth in crickets. The whole process takes a few weeks in good conditions, to many months if food supply and weather are adverse.

I’ve not come across too much information locally about uses for grasshoppers – though I have a paper somewhere in my files that discusses insects as food among a number of language groups across central Australia – I’ll update this post when I find that paper if it is relevant.

Kirr-kirr, the Warlpiri interactive dictionary, tells me that the Warlpiri word for grasshopper is Jintilyka:

Kala jintilyka kulaka wangkalku – kala yurnungkapilyirriji ka wangkajala. Kulalpa wangkayarla – wapami, paarr-pardimimipa ka. Palkaju jiilpari-jiilpari yangka marumaru yangka wita karla nguna, pinkirrpawanarlangu – purturlurla, manu piirrpirrparlanguyijala puunpuunpa walyapiya, ngulanya jintilyka. Jintilyka, kujaka wurliya parnka, ngulaji ka parnkanjarlaju wurliya wuurr-kijirni, ngulaka yangka pirri-manilki, walyakurra.

But the grasshopper doesn’t make a sound, whereas the yurnungkapilyirri insect really makes a noise. It cannot make a sound – it moves about and it flies. Its body is speckled, with those little black spots on it, on the wings and along its back, and it has white spots on it and it is also a red-brown colour like the earth. That is the grasshopper. The grasshopper which runs along on its feet, after flying for a bit, straightens out its legs and lands on the ground.

Nyanungu jintilyka, wardilykarlunya ka ngarni. Wardilykarlu ka ngarni, wardapirlangurlu ka ngarni jintilykaji nyanunguju. Ngarni kapala – wardapirli, wardilykarlu. Kuyu kapala ngarni – warduwarduku. Munku wiri-maninjaku.

The grasshopper, it is eaten by bustards. Bustards eat them and goannas eat the grasshoppers. Goannas and bustards both eat them. They eat it as their meat to satisfy their hunger. To fill up their bellies.

Wilypirirla kaji kurdu nyina, nyanungu yangka – kankarlarrarlangu nyinami – yurdingkayijala. Kujakarla – kuyurlangu jintilyka kurduku kanyirni. Puuly-mardarninjarla. Wiringarrirliji. Yinyiyijala karla kurduku – witakuju wiringarrikiji. Kuyuju.

If the baby bird is in the hollow of a tree trunk, placed high up in a tree, then the owl brings the baby bird a grasshopper to eat. It catches it and then it gives it to the young one – to the little owl.

One other source of information that I’ve found concerning grasshoppers and Aboriginal people is a reference in Roman Black’s Old and New Australian Aboriginal Art, published by Angus and Robertson in 1964.

Between pages 63 to 70 there are a number of references to Aboriginal ceremonial boards and one image that refers to Jukurrpa beliefs about grashoppers:

Ngalia Warlpiri Grasshopper Jukurrpa

According to Black this design relates to the following events at a place called Ngapatjimbi (1), where there were a number of grasshoppers.

There they came out of the ground, and flew up, and on coming down they went into the ground again. The grasshoppers multiplied, and after the next rain they came out of the [unnamed] places marked (2).

They flew up and came down as men. These men went to Wantangara (3), and going into a cave, turned into churingas.

In this particular design the bands of parallel lines linking circles represent the paths the grasshoppers made by breaking down leaves. Pairs of lines represent their tracks.

As I said above, there are a lot of grasshoppers around at the moment – if I come across any more that will stay still enough for a photo I’ll keep you posted!

Got a grasshopper story – send a comment!