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Dreamings and Connections to Country

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Dreamings and Connections to Country DREAMINGS AND CONNECTIONS TO COUNTRY AMONG THE NGAANYATJARRA AND PINTUPI OF THE AUSTRALIAN WESTERN DESERT. VOLUME 2: RESTRICTED ACCESS SECTION (This volume contains Appendix 2A, to which access is restricted for cultural reasons) Permission required from author before viewing. David W. Brooks Part of: A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University April 2011 RESTRICTED MATERIAL Marlu / Red Kangaroo Dreaming Ngaanyatjarra people say that Marlu is their most important Dreaming. They, and the Pintupi of the northern sector, consider it to be the signature Dreaming of both the Ngaanyatjarra and the Pitjantjatjara (as the Tingarri is the signature Dreaming of the Pintupi). Thus I will be dealing with it at some length here. The Marlu tjukurrpa is integral to the physical initiation (embracing both circumcision and subincision) of boys into manhood. The ceremonies (known as yulpurru) that surround circumcision in particular are, by a whole series of indicators, the most significant on the Ngaanyatjarra calendar. It is at yulpurru time that people gather in large numbers and from many places, more so than for any other ceremonies. The ceremonial ‘man- making’ procedures themselves are basically common to the desert as a whole and have been described a number of times in the literature,1 but some recent developments have occurred in the larger organisational structure. In many instances (though not all) the larger organisational structure involves a lengthy ‘return’ journey by the marlulu (pre-initiate or ‘special boy’), under the care of men in the category of ‘brother-in-law’. The journey (called tjilkatja), the purpose of which is to summon people over a wide area to participate in the rituals, is a long-standing practice, but as Peterson (2000) has pointed out, the ‘catchment area’ for participation in the process has dramatically increased since the mid 1960s. The picture from the Lands shows some further developments again, in the structuring of the engagement between participating communities. The main rituals are undertaken at the conclusion of the journey, back at the marlulu*s home area (A). At each place (B,C,D and E) visited on the journey, short rituals are performed with the local people before the journey is resumed. Once the entire cavalcade of people has assembled at A, a sequence of rituals occurs at a ceremony ground specially established and with a particular structure, called a walupurrku. The ceremonies last around 3 days. The marlulu, together with other pre-initiates who have been ‘grabbed’ in the meantime and 1 E.g. by Tindale, the Bemdts, Tonkinson and Peterson. Tindale (1935) saw and documented these ceremonies as they were performed close to Warburton. His account, with accompanying diagrams, is remarkable for its detail and accuracy. There has been no significant change in the procedures since then. Appendix 2a 2 brought into the proceedings, are circumcised. The ceremonies conclude with the ‘revealing’ of the initiates, the ‘new men’, to the wider Ngaanyatjarra public, followed by the making of the payments that the kin of the initiates must give to the ‘workers’ who have supervised the complex set of events and carried out the active roles. These will mostly be people from places distant from A, and chief among them is the circumcisor, the waputju, of the marlulu. In between these rituals, focussed as they are on the circumcisions, sub-incisions are carried out on other young men who had been circumcised in prior rounds of yulpurru ceremonies. Before the visitors disperse and the walupwrku is dismantled, arrangements are made for the staging of a whole ‘reciprocal’ yulpurru in the near future. Normally, this next yulpurru will be instigated by the people of place E, the furthermost point to which the group travelled in the first event. The second marlulu, whose home will be E, then travels on tjilkatja to places D, C, B and A, before returning with everybody to E. Soon after all this is happens, and sometimes hard on its heels, another set of local groups in a nearby, possibly intersecting part of the desert may commence another yulpurru which will in time become a similar paired sequence. As an example, let us say that for the first event Warburton is local group A; and B is Jameson, C is Blackstone, D is Wingellina and E is Indulkana.2 3 As outlined above, the reciprocal event that follows soon after will begin at Indulkana and go to Wingellina, Blackstone, Jameson and Warburton, in that order, before returning to Indulkana for the main ceremonies. This is basically an east-west sequence. But in addition, Warburton may become involved in a pairing of tjilkatja that runs north-south. It could be that Kintore is the instigator here, with the participating groups being Tjukurla, Warakuma, Warburton and Tjuntjuntjara. The subsequent reciprocal event will see Tjuntjuntjara as the instigator. In such ways, during the course of the T . .... ‘season’- a local group like Warburton might participate in several tjilkatja, whether as instigators/hosts or ‘visitors’. 2 “ In practice there would always be more than five groups involved. The point 1 am making with this example, though, is that the groups will always lie in a geographical sequence. 3 The ritual season basically comprises the summer months, the period when in classical times (as explained in chapter 5) the major waterholes were most used by the desert people. Appendix 2a 3 The structure of the yulpurru, together with the moral force that it carries as the desert’s supreme event, demands and ensures the participation of most (and ideally all) members of the local group which is the instigator and host in any given case. The adults, the women and even the children of the group have roles to play that are integral to the structure. Hence the event is an expression of, and fosters, the unity of the people at a local level. In addition, as just outlined, the event requires the local group to ‘reach out’ and take into its midst people from, or representatives of, a selection of other such groups, some of them located hundreds of kilometres away. On top of this, each of these other groups will from time to time fill the same role. In this way, it is apparent that a ‘web of connectedness’ is promoted among a large number of groups and places across the desert landscape. At the heart of this phenomenon sits the symbolism of the Marlu. Marin songs and designs are the ones primarily used in the rituals, and the major symbol, which is revealed to the initiates at a certain moment in the proceedings, is the very sacred waniki, a large decorated structure of wood and string that is considered to be the body of the Dreaming Marlu. Ritual performers enact (particularly in the course of the three days of the culminating ceremonies at the home area of the host group) mythological events that are represented in Marlu Dreaming sites within the Lands and other parts of the desert. There are two Marlu Dreaming tracks within the Lands, which I have labelled ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ respectively. Both are very much in the category of ‘major’ tracks. At one level, both may be seen as part of an undifferentiated Marlu Dreaming with a common set of meanings and associations. Usually the individual Marlu men associated with the two tracks are regarded as different men, but at times when talking about ‘Marlu tjukurrpa’ people do not actually distinguish the two tracks from one another. Certainly persons possessing a Marlu ‘totem’ would not be viewed as in any way different by virtue of being connected with one track as opposed to the other. However, each of the two tracks has many singular features, and there are a number of extremely revealing differences between them. I discuss them separately below, starting with the Western Marlu. Appendix 2a 4 Finally, it must also be mentioned that a Marlu Dreaming presence manifests itself in a number of other places in the Lands, unconnected with either of these two very distinct and major tracks. These cases, which are mostly localised and unimportant in themselves, invariably see the Marlu cast entirely in the role of a creature who is being hunted by another protagonist, usually a Papa (Dingo) Dreaming being. (In the two main Marlu tracks some of this pursuit by dogs also occurs.) These sorts of case are probably more accurately classed under the heading of the hunter, as the main party. The most important case is one in which the Papa beings of Wingellina chase two Marlu westwards for about 70 km until one of the dogs impales herself on a mulga stake (See the section on the Papa Dreaming entry below.) Marlu # 1 / (Western) Red Kangaroo Dreaming 1 have learned about the Western Marlu track in the course of working in two different areas - the Northern sector and the Southern sector respectively. The men of both areas with whom I worked know one another, though not intimately, and are aware of one another’s country, though they would have seen little of it. There is broad agreement about the nature of the overall story, and about the route that Western Marlu took. However, there are some considerable differences in focus and emphasis. In fact, it is almost certain that the two sections of track were until fairly recently separate entities, and that they have been ‘joined up’ as a result of (a) an increased amount of contact between the people of the two regions; and (b) an overall spread through the arid zone of the influence of the Marlu tjukurrpa and associated ritual.
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