Four Circles, the Law Man and the Stars

Justice and equity in Bill Harney’s Imulun Wardaman Aboriginal spiritual law Four Circles, the Law Man and the Stars by Hugh Cairns and Bill Idumduma Harney A Northern Australian People with their intellectual legal world of the Four Circles tradition Dedication As I switched on my television in Sydney this week, there was Bill Harney! Dapper, well turned out, his bush hat slanted in his usual way, he was seated in the third row of the Federal Court sitting in Mataranka, Northern Territory. Calm and secure in aspect, he was listening to the Judge as the Court formally acknowledged the Native Title of the Aboriginal town, only the third town in Australia to receive this. The Elsie cattle station and its black families had been made famous by the pioneer Gunns of ‘We of the Never Never’: now, members of Communities and Land Councils from all over the continent were applauding the High Court’s original Native Title Decision of 1992-3, the hard work of individuals like Bill Harney who since those days had persevered in the Tribunals and hundreds of other meetings and field surveys on behalf of the Originals of the claimed lands, and the lawyers and judges who had – bravely with intellectual integrity – found decisively for this Law of the Land. This is an active man, caring and courageous and hard-working, in his eighty-second year. Last month he was in Alice Springs with Men Elders and Women Elders, pleading for the Government to stop the 2007 Intervention, and its Income Management policies and practices, from being extended for another ten years: its devastations, in many Communities he knows well, should not be allowed to continue. Next month he will be part of the Wardaman consultations with Defence regarding the dozen years for which the Delamere Bombing Range on their land (permitted in exchange for Land Title being, by mutual agreement, allowed to lapse) has so far (and extraordinarily) been free of financial cost to the Government. This payment needs to be negotiated properly, and honoured by Defence and Government with up-to-date costings, to assure us that All the People are being treated honestly. The television snapshot sequence of Bill Harney suggested, by random coincidence, the many types of work in which he has involved himself for his own family and on behalf of others, during his long life. He has been an unsung treasure to Aboriginal people and to all Australia, though his humility and serenity in integrity are well recognised in many quarters in the USA for his art, spirituality, kindness, music and story. This book is dedicated to him and his family with the gratitude of many, many people, and in the hope that his joy in black and white working together reaches its proper completion in his adored original home of Australia. 1. Preface The focus of this book is Bill Idumduma Harney and his Wardaman Law. Part One conveys his Aboriginal authority through his traditional symbol of ‘the downtrodden’ to whom Jesus of Narareth was particularly sensitive, and on whom we whites have inflicted ourselves in upbringing and training as an Elder. Part Two emphasizes the oral tradition and its expression in metaphor and the arts, and culminates Australia for over 2 centuries. So these ‘2 worlds’ can be seen on most pages with the voices of Bill Harney, Hugh Cairns (myself), and in his Spiritual Law painting – The Imulun. Part Three shows him perceiving modern Australian Law in family and other events within some modern thinking and understanding, that filter through us separately or both together, normally pointing to further relevant his community, and seeing its working Law within the Constitution as ‘non-spiritual’, causing ineffectiveness within the Australian law items or valuable sources, that might deepen or clarify one or both of the 2 worlds for the Reader. system in relation to Aboriginal people, and uncertainty in the general population. Their Imulun therefore is better for the Wardaman. The ‘Justice’ and ‘Equity’ of the title remind the reader that when the modern Judge explains to the public in Court that they should ‘not The heavy-script writing throughout the book is Bill Harney talking. Presenting his voice in this way, normally at the top of the page, expect Truth here’, this reflects modern Australian Law resiling from Greek idealism’s ‘Imagination of Perfection’. Many a normal person keeps the central flow of the book. Based in over 100 tapes and video recordings, with words changed, paraphrasing necessary, and (and Judge) is shocked in disbelief at this, feels sadness at hearing it, and privately will disbelieve or dispute it. But this statement reveals cut-and-pasting to ease the flow of associations and ideas, this script text in its selected form is accepted by him as authentic: it forms difficulties for Evidence and much else (including the complexities of individual lives), and therefore for almost all modern law cases. a picture of him with his traditional Imulun Law, accurately recording him, not always verbatim, but accepted as his authentic voice by The rise of Equity, on the other hand, has gradually brought public and legal realisation that, since Magna Carta, the Common Law and the other Elders as well as himself. Royal Decision of historic Britain (now including Statute Law) have needed to be balanced by increased accuracy, fairness, kindness and mercy; and the problems of Evidence and so much else arise from the developing scientific and bureaucratic understandings Bill Harney’s Aboriginal voice in the main text has the co-writer’s thoughts and comparative data swirling in the section below, in of ‘accuracy’, ‘demonstration’ and ‘truth’. As time has passed, the legal community has reflected on global experience, and on written interpretation, attempted clarification or critical comment; and in smaller black type, below this, are some notes based in wider fields history and personally-known cases, and finds negatives and positives in the thinking, results and consequences – legal, social and of scholarship or interest, particularly relating to socio-economic or historic political events, or other material that may have shaped personal – of cases and their outcomes, and inadequacies, including those of the laws of the land. Changes in Law therefore take place, indigenous life after 1788. but continuity is normally necessary in a legal system and its community. Today in parliamentary democracy, this means it ‘all takes time’. These notes reflect the co-writer’s background in academia embedded in modern, sophisticated institutions. This connects with The Equity Court in our Parliamentary Democracy is nowadays of great importance, in this. Strictly speaking, this book suggests it the book’s claim to present – through its 2 authors in sharply delineated natural contrast – the ‘2 worlds’ which Bill Harney relates may now join fruitfully with the Aboriginal Law Tradition, because this has evolved virtues and necessities over aeons of time, with together, in his life with people of all types, in his books, in his daily work, in his co-authorship of the present book. Different but both adjustment built in to its processes. Indeed, its own equitable history is a valuable, major, legal premise in the indigenous mind as it ‘spiritual’ (the general word) and ‘Spiritual’ (in our own spiritual Tradition), we two authors nevertheless see ourselves as ‘Responding struggles with the pressures and intense agonies, as its people appear in our western Courts. Even in today’s more equitable world, to the Cosmos’ in our lives: his own word ‘cosmoscape’ represents the valuable modern ‘epigenetic’ understanding that we both serve. misunderstandings on both sides (black and white) could find much redress through Imulun Law being respected under Australian Law. This reality of the ‘Two Worlds’ – and this he confirms in the Epilogue-Coda, as well as on the first page of the book – is what Australia Our book’s title therefore means that we are attempting to present, know and understand ancient Traditional practices which may yet need to accept, to get black and white living and working together: they must be properly together, for it ‘all to be better!’ be valuable in developing better laws in Australia for the whole population, in this multi-cultural world. Witnessing to our indigenous peoples’ intellectual wisdom, and grasp of sensible human life, within its ancient Law that includes its legal system, may enable whites In writing this book, then, my part has firmed up in the following way: realising that the ‘white’ is European Culture with the ‘Writing’ to further respect them and their traditions; and such a development would be of immense value within the indigenous communities civilisations that have been modernising the human world for more than 6000 years, and that this is what has been hitting indigenous that have suffered, for so long, from the arrogance, pseudo-rationality and brutality of earlier times in the Australian law system. peoples hard all over the world for millenia, my voice is still a definitely western voice but with an empathy that chooses to tandem with Bill Harney on his journey throughout the book. The Wardaman story is a small part of the Aboriginal story which is a continuing All Australians – Migrants as well as Originals – need each other’s respect for our own histories and integrities – but so (it must be 2. 3. Introduction remembered in these reforming times) do the long-settled British families of Australia, who need respect for what has happened well. Bill Harney’s Wardaman remote community Menngen is 100 miles west of Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia, and 300 miles (Being contrite for what was terribly wrong is hard for them: but they must help to set it all right).

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