Strings OF CONNECTEDNESS ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF IAN KEEN Strings OF CONNECTEDNESS ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF IAN KEEN EDITED BY P.G. TONER Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Strings of connectedness : essays in honour of Ian Keen / edited by Peter Toner. ISBN: 9781925022629 (paperback) 9781925022636 (ebook) Subjects: Aboriginal Australians--Australia. Research--Northern Territory--Arnhem Land. Aboriginal Australians--Religious life. Language and culture--Australia. Other Creators/Contributors: Toner, Peter, editor. Dewey Number: 305.89915 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover image: Ian taking notes while observing a ceremony overseen by Djäwa, senior informant and Gupapuyngu elder, Milingimbi, 1974. Photo: Brad Harris. Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2015 ANU Press Cultural warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this work contains images of deceased persons. Contents List of Figures ...................................................vii List of Tables ...................................................ix Acknowledgements ..............................................xi Contributors ................................................... xiii Foreword .....................................................xix NICOLAS PETERSON 1. Introduction: Strings of Connectedness in Ian Keen’s Scholarship .......1 PETER TONER 2. Judicial Understandings of Aboriginality and Language Use in Criminal Cases .............................................27 DIANA EADES 3. Change and Succession in Australian Aboriginal Claims to Land .......53 DAVID TRIGGER 4. From Skills to Stories: Land Rights, Life Histories and the Terms of Engagement .............................................75 ROBERT LEVITUS 5. Conceptual Dynamism and Ambiguity in Marrangu Djinang Cosmology, North-Central Arnhem Land ........................101 CRAIG ELLIOTT 6. Steppe Riders in the East Kimberley Contact Zone: Zoroastrianism, Apocalyptic Judeo-Christianity and Evangelical Missionaries in Australia’s Colonised Periphery. .119 HEATHER MCDONALD 7. The Failures of Translation across Incommensurable Knowledge Systems: A Case Study of Arabic Grammar Instruction .............143 ALLON J. UHLMANN 8. Bakhtin’s Theory of the Utterance and Dhalwangu Manikay . 161 PETER TONER 9. Development of Collecting at the Milingimbi Mission. .187 LOUISE HAMBY WITH DR GUMBULA 10. Rupture and Readjustment of Tradition: Personal Autonomy in the Feminised Warlpiri Diaspora in Australia .........................215 PAUL BURKE 11. The Language of ‘Spiritual Power’: From Mana to Märr on the Crocodile Islands ..........................................235 BENTLEY JAMES 12. Reconstructing Aboriginal Economy and Society: The New South Wales South Coast at the Threshold of Colonisation ................263 JOHN M. WHITE 13. Long-Distance Diffusion of Affinal Kinship Terms as Evidence of Late Holocene Change in Marriage Systems in Aboriginal Australia ....287 PATRICK MCCONVELL Afterword ....................................................317 AD BORSBOOM Appendix: Ian Keen’s Publications, 1977–2015 .......................323 Index .......................................................331 List of Figures Figure 1.1 Ian’s attempt to represent the proposed restructuring of the University ............................................xxiii Figure 3.1 Traditional succession, Gulf Country .........................56 Figure 3.2 Roth sketch map (arrows and numbers show historical movement eastwards). .......................................60 Figure 4.1 Kakadu National Park and surrounds ........................78 Figure 4.2 Kabirriki on the cover of Kakadu ............................89 Figure 4.3 Kabirriki on the cover of Archaeology of the Dreamtime. ..........90 Figure 4.4 Dedication page from George Chaloupka, Journey in Time .......91 Figure 5.1 Location Map—North-central Arnhem Land, Australia. ..........103 Figure 5.2 Merri and Mewal in Marrangu Djinang art and ceremony. ........111 Figure 8.1 The Dhalwangu yuta A melody. ...........................183 Figure 9.1 Djäwa and Wulili from Goulburn Island, c. 1926–39. ............189 Figure 9.2 Beach at Top Camp, Milingimbi, 2013. ......................190 Figure 9.3 Rev. James Watson distributing food to children assisted by Rosie from Goulburn Island, wife of Andrew Birrinydjawuy Garawirrtja, Milingimbi, 1924. .................................192 Figure 9.4 Murayana by Djäwa Daygurrgurr. ..........................194 Figure 9.5 Djäwa Daygurrgurr and Edgar Wells at Milingimbi, c. 1955. ......197 Figure 9.6 Arnhem Land dancers performing for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Toowoomba, 1954. .................201 Figure 9.7 George Milaybuma, Matthew Baltha, Ian Keen and Dr Gumbula at Djiliwirri, 2005. ................................203 vii Strings of Connectedness Figure 9.8 Gupapuyngu family and researchers including Ian Keen, Aaron Corn and Louise Hamby at Djilwirri, 2005. ..................204 Figure 9.9 Dr Gumbula in a storeroom at The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2010. ............205 Figure 9.10 Court case for Ngalandir; Djäwa, Edgar Wells and Jacky Badaltja seated at table at Milingimbi, 1955.. 206 Figure 9.11 Burala Rite by Djäwa Daygurrgurr, 1972, collected by Ed Ruhe at Milingimbi. ......................................208 Figure 13.1 Spread of ramparr/lamparr(a) . ...........................291 Figure 13.2 Recent eastward diffusion in the eastern Northern Territory. .....292 Figure 13.3 TyamVny in non-Pama-Nyungan. .........................305 viii List of Tables Table 3.1 Waanyi families by pre-succession estates and post-succession areas. ......................................64 Table 5.1 Groupings of Marrangu Djinang manikay song subjects. .........109 Table 7.1 A schematic approximation of some differences between the two systems. .............................................157 Table 11.1 Body part initial verbal idioms in Gupapuyngu. ................250 Table 11.2 Märr initial verbal idioms. ................................251 Table 11.3 Märr initial verbal idioms in two different Yolngu languages. ......252 Table 12.1 Key features of Yuin economy and society in the Eurobodalla in the late eighteenth century.. 280 Table 13.1 Grandparental loanwords from Marrngu in Nyulnyulan. .........299 Table 13.2 Diffusion and change of meaning of affinal terms from north to west to southeast Kimberley. ...............................301 ix Acknowledgements A book of this kind cannot be produced without a great deal of help from many quarters. My first thanks go to Ian and Libby Keen—Ian for his unfailing support throughout my career and for his cooperation with this volume, and Libby for initiating the whole project and inviting me to steer the ship. Nicolas Peterson, Christine Huber and Liz Walters of the Humanities and Creative Arts Editorial Board, and Emily Tinker and Teresa Prowse of ANU Press, provided valuable logistical support and advice, and my colleague here in Fredericton, Douglas Vipond, provided expert copyediting. Of course, my sincere thanks go to all of the authors, who stuck with the project despite required revisions, some delays, and numerous requests from me, both large and small. On a personal note, my thanks and love to Peta Fussell and our children, Charlotte, Jack, and Harry, for their support throughout, and for tolerating my presence in front of a computer when a million other activities beckoned. As this book was about to go to press, I received word of the passing of Dr Gumbula, co-author with Louise Hamby of Chapter 9, ‘Development of Collecting at the Milingimbi Mission’. Dr Gumbula had devoted well over a decade of his life to research on the documentation, collection, digitisation and repatriation of Yolngu cultural heritage materials, both tangible and intangible, and was widely regarded as a leading cultural authority on these matters. His death is a loss for Yolngu people throughout northeast Arnhem Land, but he has left behind a strong foundation and legacy for others to follow. R.I.P. xi Contributors Ad Borsboom is Emeritus Professor of Pacific Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Since 1972 he has conducted fieldwork in Arnhem Land investigating religion and social change, identity and land rights. His writings include De Clan van de Wilde Honing (popular-science book on Arnhem Land Aborigines) and Thomson at Gaartji (in Donald Thomson, the Man and Scholar), and he is, together with Ton Otto, editor of Cultural Dynamics of Religious Change in Oceania. Paul Burke is currently a Visiting Fellow in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at The Australian National University. During 2009–13 he undertook research among the Warlpiri diaspora all over Australia via an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. His previous work on anthropologists in native title claims, Law’s Anthropology, was published in 2011. Diana Eades, Adjunct Professor at the University of New England, is a sociolinguist who specialises in language in the legal process, especially in the use of