“Maḏayin” is the term used by the Yolŋu people of the Northern Territory of Australia for that which is both sacred and beautiful. It is also the name they have chosen for an extraordinary exhibition of over one hundred of their paintings that will tour the United States during the next few years. While the acrylic-on-canvas works,

01/18 made since the 1970s by indigenous artists from the Central and Western Deserts, are widely acknowledged as constituting a major movement within contemporary art, few are aware of the parallel, and arguably equally significant, achievement of Aboriginal artists from regions across the northern coasts of the country who paint onto eucalyptus bark using natural ochres.1 Terry Smith The sacred content in the exhibition “Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal from , Australia” is its revelation of the original Marking Places, world-making actions by the most ancient ancestors of the Yolŋu during what is known as Cross-Hatching “the Dreaming,” the time when indigenous peoples across the continent believe that the Worlds: The universe was created by Originary Beings from whom they are descended. The Yolŋu word for this time and its ongoing recurrence is Yirrkala Panels “Wangarr.” The beauty emerges in that world- making and in how it has been depicted by Yolŋu artists, painting onto bark, from the mid-1930s until now.2 The Yolŋu elders see this exhibition as an opportunity to share their sacred knowledge and the beauty they have created with the wider world beyond Australia. đđđđđđđđđđThe exhibition will include early paintings on bark made to share aspects of the Dreaming stories with missionaries, anthropologists, and visiting museum curators, but its main focus is on recent works by indigenous artists fully committed to the practice of painting. Among them is Manydjarri Ganambarr, whose Dreamtime ancestor was Bulmanydiji, also known as Mäṉa, who took the form of a shark active across several Yolŋu lands (that of the Djambarrpuyŋu, Dätiwuy, Djapu, Dhudi Djapu, and Dhäpuyŋu clans). The stories of the shark’s world-making actions are shared by the two Yolŋu moieties, or ritual groups, the Dhuwa and Yirritja. Among the paintings in “Maḏayin” is Ganambarr’s Djambarrpuyŋu Mäṉa (1996), which shows two key moments early in the shark’s journeys at Gurala. In the lower register, it is speared by the ghostly ancestor Murayana

e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y (who is not depicted). In the upper region of the image, the spirit of the now dead shark crosses the coast, shaping rivers and landforms as it goes, creating the homelands of its Yolŋu descendants, everywhere marked by its continuing presence. Such vivid depiction of transformation across multiple registers in space and time is typical of Yolŋu art.3

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST Manydjarri Ganambarr, Djambarrpuyŋu Mäṉa, 1996. Natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, 192.7 x 57.8 cm. Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia Gift of John W. Kluge, 1997. 1996.0035.017

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST Yirrkala, Northern Territory, 1962–63 urgently needed as geopolitical disunity In the later months of 1962 and the early months increasingly fails to deal with the dangers of of 1963, elders of Yolŋu clans from the area global warming. known by the balanda (“white people”) as the Gove Peninsula in North East came This Is Their Dreaming together to paint what became known as the The Yirrkala Church Panels were painted using Yirrkala Church Panels. Today, the panels and the natural ochres on two Masonite panels, each stories that they show are revered more than 03/18 twelve feet high and four feet wide, in the later ever. As a collective statement, they continue to months of 1962 and early 1963, when large-scale resonate on multiple levels, from the local mining of bauxite on the peninsula was about to community outwards through several registers begin. Yirrkala, where they were painted, was a to, I suggest, a worldly scale. The entirely mission established in 1935 at the site of a Yolŋu collective process through which they were ceremonial ground and near a former Makassan produced – and which I will explore in depth in station where Makassan people processed this article – models a collaborative form of trepang with the help of Yolŋu people. Thirty indigenous and non-indigenous participation in years earlier, in 1905, the newly federated the processes of reparation and reconciliation so Commonwealth of Australian had asserted its essential to Australia’s national polity. Historical sovereign claims on Yirrkala by closing this accuracy, moral accountability, restorative important Yolŋu trading center. Resistance to a justice, and social unity were at stake, as they similar takeover, this time on an existence- remain. For both their artistic merit and their threatening scale due to mining initiatives, social resonance, the panels deserve greater seems to have been on the minds of the clan recognition in the history of Australian art. They leaders as they and Reverend Edgar Wells, the are, at the same time, a founding document in Methodist minister and superintendent of the Australian postcolonial national imaginary. Yirrkala at the time, worked together to establish Finally, on the largest, planetary scale, they a viable, difficult-to-move community – inform, and should inspire, the quest for including a bulk store, a technical school, and a postnational, coeval coexistence that is so mission church at the site. Wells recalls that

The Living Knowledge Project, Yolŋu Geography of North East Arnhem Land, 2008. See http://1. http://livingknowledge.anu.edu.au/learningsites/seacountry/06_map.htm.. đ

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST Narritjin Maymuru, a clan elder, proposed “a a bridge across which to communicate their law painting or something,” while his wife, Ann Wells, to this formidable new power called the recalls him inviting the local elders to paint for . the church “something of their own choosing.”4 đđđđđđđđđđDuring the 1930s, the anthropologist Donald Wells’s motives are easily discerned. Based on Thomson encouraged Yolŋu clan leaders to paint his experience during the 1950s at the Yolŋu their Dreaming stories on barks – a practice that Methodist mission to the west at Milingimbi – he took from Baldwin Spencer, the first major where he had developed a deep interest in Yolŋu 04/18 anthropologist to work in the Australian colonies. art and a close alliance with clan leaders – Wells A few missionaries saw its value as a means to understood that this was a way to give the clans open communication with the clans. Selling bark a feeling of belonging within the church. A paintings and other artifacts also provided a way photograph from the period of a service in for under-resourced missions to raise funds from session suggests as much.5 As well, he was believers and tourists. The bark paintings draw outraged that both government and church on parts or wholes of complex song-cycles, officials were deceiving the locals about the “episodic narratives” that trace the arrival of nature and extent of the mining on their land.6 ancestral beings, their acts of creation, and their đđđđđđđđđđThe clan elders at Yirrkala had parallel journeys across Yolŋu lands.7 To missionaries, motives. They knew that the mission stations the paintings paralleled illustrations of episodes that had been established throughout central in the Old Testament, while to anthropologists and northern Australia had only partially they were archival records of body paintings that succeeded in diminishing indigenous belief were part of initiation ceremonies. To tourists, systems. Their totemic song-cycle (maḏayin) they were portable versions of the images that remained alive and well across the region, were painted onto the surfaces of rocks in existing alongside and with Christianity, which “galleries” throughout the region, especially in they did not see as a terminal threat. Instead, it Western Arnhem Land. A widespread art practice was a recent story that could be incorporated as of bark painting for a balanda market continues a subplot into their own vastly older and more to this day. replete narratives, and at the same time provide đđđđđđđđđđIn the Yirrkala church, which opened in

Edgar James Wells, Panels in Place in Yirrkala Church, 1963. Photograph. From Anne E. Wells, This is Their Dreaming: Legends of the Panels of Aboriginal Art in the Yirrkala Church (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1971), x.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST March 1963, the panels were shown up front, notes that the Yolŋu clans, while acknowledging behind the altar table and rail, slightly set back that outsiders often referred to them as “,” on either side of the large central panels that usually used more specific clan, family, or were unadorned except for a simple wooden language-group names among themselves. cross. In the Methodist manner, the church had “Yolngu refers to a group of intermarrying clans little other adornment. Its side walls were open whose members speak a dialect of one of a group windows, as befits the climate. Howard Morphy, of closely related languages.”9 The name the leading living anthropologist of the Yolŋu, 05/18 “Yolngu” was first adopted in the late 1950s by emphasizes that the artists “decided how they Western linguists, and the Yolŋu readily accepted would use their art in communicating with it as useful. (“Yolŋu” is the recent orthography, outsiders and how their sacred law could be preferred by them. I will use it, except when presented in public contexts.” They wanted to citing earlier usages.) Before then, anthropologists used a variety of names show that Yolngu had their own sacred depending on the clans they mainly worked with. heritage and to emphasize its connection to The adoption of this name by the Yolŋu, by the land and land ownership … Visitors to the anthropologists, and then by government church would be able to see the ways in officials and wider publics parallels a function of which the paintings mapped their rights in the panel paintings. Both the terminology and land and also apprehend the sense in which the images create a new pan-clan category, one land was a sacred endowment.”8 that asserts the clans’ collective sovereignty as a people, the kind recognizable to modern nation It would be misleading, however, to imagine the states, such as the Commonwealth of Australia, encounter between the Yolŋu and Christians as which was constantly attempting to impose its occurring between two peoples who saw sovereignty.10 themselves as structurally parallel or similarly constituted either politically or socially. In his Dualism, Convergence pathfinding study Ancestral Connections: Art and First and foremost, the Yirrkala Church Panels an Aboriginal System of Knowledge, Morphy reflected a basic division within Yolŋu society

Yirrkala Methodist Church, interior, 1963.đPhoto: Ron Croxford.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST into two distinct but complementary moieties, different moiety from her husband, in this case Dhuwa and Yirritja, each represented on one of the elder who painted a section of one of the the paired panels. This moiety system is an panels. The parallelism of the moieties is such underlying cosmological dualism that unites the that each person has a matching “manager” from clans with each other and the cosmos.11 The key the other moiety who is responsible for stories of most of the nine Dhuwa and seven supporting that person’s spiritual life. Therefore, Yirritja clan subgroups appear in a defined every ceremony and story, and thus every section of each panel. The closely matching 06/18 painting, is known to each moiety, in that a connections but also feared prohibitions within manager of the other moiety is a less and between these clan groups evolved over authoritative but nevertheless necessary centuries and continue to do so today. The presence in their telling. Communality runs changes to belief systems within the moieties through every aspect of Yolŋu life. Their clan during the period since contact with Malay and identity devolves from the two moieties, as if two Indonesian peoples, and since the exploration comes before one. So, an artist, for example, will and colonization of the continent by Europeans, usually have his uncle from his mother’s side suggest that they were not stabilized, and (and thus of the other moiety to him) as an certainly not “timeless,” before the seventeenth adviser. What is unusual in the panels is how century. Little more than that can be known with forthrightly the power of the binary structure of certainty, although much about it is inferred by the moiety system is shown, as if to assert that it some prehistorians and anthropologists.12 is what holds the clans together. Usually, these đđđđđđđđđđIf we take, as we must, the two Yirrkala designs are used in traditional body painting, panels to be one work of art, they amount to a ceremony, and language to distinguish the clans statement of the coming together of the clans as from each other. In the panels, the clan designs the basis of an equitable, respectful mutuality. are orchestrated into a unifying ensemble. The Every Yolŋu inherits stories from both moieties, moiety system declares its role as the as their mothers and fathers are always from transcendental underpinning of the clans from different moieties. Thus, each clan is composed which they ultimately gain their sovereignty of both moieties. Every wife in the clan is a (clans may be formed, or die out, but the moiety

Edgar James Wells, Painting the Panels, 1963, photograph. From Wells, This is Their Dreaming, 43.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST The Yirrkala Church Panels, 1962-63. Natural ochres on hardboard, two panels, each 12 ft. x 4 ft.đLeft: Dhuwa panel. Right: Yirritja panel. Photo:đHoward Morphy.đCourtesy the artists and Buku-Larrŋgay Art Center, Yirrkala, Northern Territory.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST system is eternal). image of Djaŋ’kawu, Mathaman Marika paints đđđđđđđđđđThe most historically notable aspect of the the sisters entering dry land, creating Yirrkala Church Panels is that this was the first waterholes, and disseminating Dhuwa lore time (at least as known to balanda) that the across the country. In the upper half of the clans came together on such a scale to create a Dhuwa panel, Djaŋ’kawu and his sisters travel work of art with a single, focused, shared throughout the region, encountering much purpose.13 The elders came to Yirrkala, to the existent phenomena, which they react to or church itself, and the mission house to plan the 08/18 change.16 Saltwater regions dominate the format and to execute the paintings. It is known bottom and the top of the panel, while the that the senior members of two clans were sections at the center left, painted by Larrtjanŋa unable to come, so they delegated others to Ganambarr, show the small fish and grassland of paint their panels. Yolŋu clan members living at the freshwater countries of his clan, the Naymil, some distance from Yirrkala did not participate, and the closely associated Ḏäṯiwuy clan. for reasons unknown. Nation building is never a đđđđđđđđđđThe Yirritja panel (the righthand panel) was simple matter. overseen by Birrikitji Gumana, the acknowledged đđđđđđđđđđA photograph taken by Wells at this time leader and custodian of their ritual legends. Each shows several clan elders, Djarrkutjarrku section evokes specific aspects of how their Yunupiŋu, Muŋgarrawuy Yunupiŋu, and probably lands were created and what constituted that Nänyin Maymuru and Narritjin Maymuru, working creation: in the second section from the bottom on the Yirritja panel. Each person paints his at left, the Ancestors convene to devise Yirritja ancestral story on a section of the appropriate law; in the central panels, freshwater regions panel.14 Illuminating the kind of commitment felt cede to saltwater ones; while in the top third the by the artists, Wells recounts a moment early in landscapes of clans in which female Ancestors the process when Narritjin, acting as an are most highly venerated are shown. The artists interpreter between the Yirritja elders and the of these sections were, respectively, members of Wells, asked his seniors whether they would the Gumana, Wunuŋmurra, Yunupiŋu, and offer more than (as Wells puts it) “the routine Maymuru families. Narritjin was most likely the outline of a well-known legend” in their designer of its integrated format: ten large depictions. Their answer, translated by Narritjin: sections, in five pairs, on either side of a central “This time I will give you the yuwal (true) dhawu band – what Wells insightfully calls a “tree of (word).”15 If we take them at their word, the life” – that changes according to the creation panels might be said to mark the first historical stories in the sections around it, until it reaches appearance of most of the clans together as almost to the top where, capped like the screen Yolŋu. Certainly, those who led this project also in a church, and topped by curious birds and stood out in the subsequent fights for Yolŋu animals, wavy lines designate “the ether – the autonomy and were leaders in developing the heavens – back to the beginning to Burralku.”17 bark painting movement that flourishes to this The bottom-right section, painted by Gawirrin day. Gumana, shows Barama, today regarded as the most eminent of the four Creator Beings, The Painting of the Panels emerging from the sacred waterhole at Gängan. The Dhuwa panel (the lefthand panel) was Alongside him another of the Beings, painted under the direction of senior elder Galparimun, is depicted, while above him a Mawalan Marika. Cross-hatching is its primary section shows a third, Lany’tjuŋ. mode of mark-making. Each clan has its đđđđđđđđđđThe diamond shapes always used in Yirritja distinctive way of rendering the highly similar representation originate from the first shapes, and each uses a particular sequencing appearance of these Beings as crocodile-like of ochre colors. These generate signature styles, creatures: foamy water runs off their backs as instantly recognizable to other Yolŋu. In the they emerge from the sea, and from their weed- lower-right section, Mawalan’s son, Wandjuk covered bodies as they emerge from waterholes. Marika, painted the most revered Creator Being, Sunlight shining through these droplets, Djaŋ’kawu, appearing at Burralku, a mythical rendered in white paint, signals sacred presence, island from which he and his sisters came to the e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y like a flash of lighting during a monsoonal storm. mainland, creating all geological formations, life- The diamonds, when slightly modified in shape, forms, and phenomena. These ancestors’ world- also represent honeycomb, fire, running water, or making activities, shown on the bottom four a mortuary sign, depending on when they occur sections of the panel, parallel those of Banatja, within the narrative or which place or event they Barama, and others for the Yirritja moiety. At the evoke. bottom left of this panel, Mawalan Marika paints đđđđđđđđđđWhat is most striking across both panels is the sisters calling into existence the creatures of that all of the sacred figures are shown at the the sea. In the section on the right above the moment they are doing the most important thing

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST Detail, upper rightđsection of the Dhuwa panel showing pregnant Djan’kawu sisters.

Detail, lower right sections of the Yirritja panel showing major Creation Beings.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST that was ever done, and would be done, that is, eucalyptus tetrodonta) alive through ritual create this place, this world. The Creator Beings observance, which is used to make larrakitj are being presented as they first appeared, when (hollow log coffins), yidaki (didjeridu), and appearance became possible, when there was nuwayak (the bark used for bark paintings). first something to see, something to be seen. The đđđđđđđđđđThe panels are another way of keeping invitation to contemporary spectators, in 1963, Wangarr alive, of declaring place and therefore and since, is to witness the creation of these sovereignty. The artists declared this, first of all, places, this Dreaming, as it happened. How does 10/18 to the other Yolŋu clans. In doing so, they argued this sense of the world’s beginning square with for an equivalence between the moieties in a the other most powerful idea in Australian world shared by both. The overall narrative in indigenous cosmology: that of the Dreaming’s both panels is that of the creation of Yolŋu lands, eternal return? those subsequently owned by the clans. They describe acts as causes, and picture their Time vis-à-vis Place effects on other Beings, on environments, Describing the panels in terms of beginnings and people, and animals. True, a certain temporality ends gives a misleading sense of their is suggested in the movements from one section temporality: it conjures parallels to the Book of to another, mainly from the bottom to the top, Genesis, and implies that, for Yolŋu, time flows although a strict narrative sequence is not historically, in the manner it does for Europeans. followed in either panel. The actions of the Yolŋu recognize epochs, not least the changes Creator Beings occurred in the Dreamtime – the engendered since the arrival of the colonists, but equivalent, for Christians, to God’s eternal time, they also know, and do not see as mutually or the time of the gods in other mythologies. exclusive, the power of ancestral returning, the Perhaps the proximate sequencing of the stories incessant recreating of places, the fact that in each panel was an adjustment oriented to just these acts “abide” – as anthropologist Tony one set of intended viewers: the balanda, who Swain (following his predecessor William are used to understanding things mostly via Stanner’s idea of “everywhen”) puts it, using a cause and effect, through accumulating, somewhat Biblical word, but with an Aboriginal historical narration that plots movement from perspective. one place to another. The Yolŋu artists’ gesture in this direction, however, does not preclude their The basic tenant of Abiding Events, as own conception of temporality, with its Nancy Munn has perceptively shown, is multiplicity of roughly parallel and simultaneous that something came out of, moved across, occurrences. and went into, the earth … In the boldest of đđđđđđđđđđThe panels show the yuwalk dhäwu, the true terms, Aboriginal ontology rests on the word, as the Yirritja elders promised, but not all maxim that a place-being emerged, moved, of it. The so-called Dreaming Stories are and established an abode. This, Munn traditionally shared in ceremonies of the correctly concludes, is the basis of initiated that, after lengthy preparation, unfold Aboriginal “world theory.”18 over days, or weeks, or sometimes months, as in the case of major foundational events of the kind The Yolŋu believe that these acts of creation and treated in these panels. Shorter ceremonies are recreation are constantly occurring, constituting devoted to parts of these stories, or to lesser a world that is always in significant ways the ones. Brief ceremonies that show unrestricted same but also in perpetual transformation. Yolŋu material have been developed for the uninitiated, representation is animated by this sense. Dhuwa and others for balanda. While the Yirrkala panels cross-hatching and Yirritja diamond-shaping is introduce, with elegant compression, the main rarely simply decorative or infill: mostly, its flow outlines of the Dhuwa and Yirritja Creation and gathering seems to generate the figures that Stories, some aspects seem underplayed. The appear, or are implied, in each section. We saw travails of the Djan’kawu sisters, for example, are this in the shifts between registers in a conspicuous quality of their story, even as Ganambarr’s painting of the ancestral shark at shared with uninitiated audiences. In the top-

Gurala, Djambarrpuyŋu Mäṉa. The acts of the e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y right sections of the Dhuwa panel, they are Originary Beings founded places which they are shown pregnant, and dancing awkwardly, but in a believed to continue to occupy. This makes a rather restrained manner.19 place always alive. It also implicates the living đđđđđđđđđđOver a short time, there have also been beings who are ancestral incarnations shifts in the aspects of the stories present on the responsible for them. For instance, Wukun panels that are worth emphasizing. In 1997, an Waṉambi, who I met in 2019, is a current member exhibition, “Saltwater: Bark Paintings of Sea of the Marrakulu clan, which has the duty of Country,” began an extensive national tour aimed keeping a particular eucalyptus (gaḏayka; at demonstrating that the Yolŋu exercised land

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST Djunmal, The Djan’kawu Cross Back to the Mainland, 1966.đNatural ochres on bark, 138 x 53 cm, National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Copyright:đestates of the artists, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd. Photo: National Museum of Australia.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST rights over the seas of the region and not only the what happened to him conflicts with the land. The catalog pages include images of the affirmative message that all involved in the panels. Captions to them celebrate Barama, who making of the panels in 1963 intended to convey? is “said today to be the most eminent of the I think not, because each of the images is, like Yirritja Creation beings.”20 Current discourse in the front cover of a book, a placeholder, a the region similarly highlights Barama’s role. In gateway to the complex, contradictory, and often the account given by Ann Wells, as told to her in confusing behavior of the ancestors and, by the 1960s, however, the Yirritja peoples’ 12/18 inference, their descendants. Wells was told one “creative legends were based on and woven side of a complex story; current discourse wishes through those of Banatja,” who is “an ancestor to emphasize another. She was also given to figure of ritual power, and leader or relation of understand that there was a deeper level of three other spirit men.”21 meaning, one on which both Beings were đđđđđđđđđđThe Saltwater catalog does not mention manifestations of the same originary spirit, itself Banatja at all. It names the figure in the section complex and contradictory, like much of Wangarr. above Barama as a depiction of another of the This is what yuwalk dhäwu actually amounts to, four ancestors, Lany’tjuŋ. Wells, in contrast, when taken seriously. devotes four pages of close description to this exact section, treating it primarily as a picture of Convergence and Difference Banatja, but also saying that, in this case, At the entrance to the exhibition “Old Masters, Birrikitji painted both ancestors as one man “for Australia’s Great Bark Artists,” at the Museum of that is the way they may be seen by those who Australia, Canberra, in 2013–14 (and touring Asia are not initiated.”22 Is it possible that negative, in 2019 and 2020), hung a painting, The contradictory, or confusing information is being Djan’kawu Cross Back to the Mainland (1966), by withheld? Banatja, who brought knowledge to Dhuwa artist Djunmal. Djunmal used Dhuwa people, became so strong, wise, and beloved by cross-hatching to show the freshwater all that the other three spirit Beings – Barama, waterholes created by the Djan’kawu sisters as Galparimun, and Lany’tjuŋ – grew jealous and they birthed the first peoples (on Dhuwa land), killed him, an action that they immediately then switched to Yirritja diamond designs to regretted, and have continued to regret ever show the return of the sisters to the saltwater since.23 Is Banatja omitted because the story of mangroves (Yirritja country). In between, through

Mawalan Marika, Sydney from the air, 1963. Natural ochres on bark, 43.3 x 91.3 cm. National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Copyright:đestates of the artists licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd. Photo: National Museum of Australia.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST the center of the image, fresh and saltwater of butcher’s paper by Marika and other Yolŋu at meet in confluence: brackish, generative.24 the invitation of anthropologist Ronald Berndt in Another example of clan convergence is that of 1947. What may be pictured in Sydney from the Mutitjpuy Munuŋgurr, who did the freshwater Air are the clans that Marika imagines inhabit section of the Dhuwa panel of the Yirrkala Church this region. He does not know or have the Panels. He was also entitled to paint some clan authority to represent their designs, thus they designs of his mother, who was Yirritja. In the appear as unfilled rectangles or squares, and as

“Old Masters” exhibition, he exhibited two 13/18 dark or light brown in color. Dhuwa hatching, paintings, one in the style of each moiety.25 however, grounds the whole, but not as a unity. These instances bring out the interplay of This is a restless, churning world, its clans convergence and divergence, of close proximity unevenly dispersed, differing in size and power, and respectful distance, which is the whole point its areas folded into dynamic tension. Unlike of the moiety “system.” Yolŋu land, which is replete with ancestral đđđđđđđđđđA small painting by Mawalan Marika, energy, the movements of ancestor and earth modest in size relative to the church panels but here have not yet generated well-formed figures, painted at the same time, is comparable to them at least not ones that Mawalan can see or show. in its speculative ambition. As part of the travel This is, then, not only a rare glimpse into the involved in pressing the case against bauxite subjectile, the underlying compositional format, mining of their lands, in 1963 Marika was upon which Yolŋu representation builds; it may required to travel by air, for his first time, from be a rarer revelation of the schemata of the clans Gove airport, at near Yirrkala, to in their contestation, before moieties, or, even Sydney. Known for some years by a description more radically and simply, without them. But “Map of painter’s travell [sic] by plane from they will come … and the dark and light brown Yirrkala to Sydney,” the painting is now titled shapes, small paintings in themselves, will be Sydney from the Air. Under the first title, it ready to receive them.29 evokes an overview of thousands of square miles of mostly open country, the lands of many “A new Yolngu politics” peoples. The distinctively jagged coastline along In October 1963, the panels were on prominent which the city clusters is shown at one side, display in the Yirrkala church during a visit of while in between a plethora of unknown places, parliamentarians charged with making doubtless other peoples’ lands, are connected by recommendations for or against mining. One of lines. The title Sydney from the Air, however, them, Kim Beazley Senior, a Labor Party suggests the artist’s arrival at a great modern politician from Western Australia, recommended city.26 Morphy believed Marika was responding to that the Yolŋu incorporate the concept of the the bright lights of “a shimmering city at night.” panels into a petition to Parliament opposing the He remarks: “Aesthetic forms are not limited to a mining. They decided to follow his suggestion, particular content and can be used as a means of mounting the typed text of the petition on two conveying experience cross-culturally: the small bark panels, one Dhuwa and the other Arnhem Land idea of spiritual power to the Yirritja, each bordered with figures painted by Sydney audience, the energy and the electricity Narritjin with permission from several of the of the city to the Arnhem Land one.”27 Morphy is, same elders who did the church panels. While of course, not speaking literally. He is unsuccessful in stopping the government’s highlighting the work’s capacity as a metaphor, granting of the lease, the court acknowledged and projecting forward, metaphorically, its that a claim to sovereignty was being made, one metaphorical resonance. He conjures some of its impossible to grant under the principle of terra potential audiences, and suggests the kinds of nullius, through which British settlers declared reception that Mawalan might well have the land unoccupied. anticipated, given the growing interest in his đđđđđđđđđđPublicity around the case raised public work, and that of some of his fellow artists, by consciousness that Australian indigenous people major museums, such as the Art Gallery of New believed that their relationship to their land was South Wales in Sydney, through the collecting one of primary ownership. It took until 1992, activities of its deputy director, the artist Tony e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y however, in the case brought by Eddie Mabo of Tuckson.28 the Mer Island in the Torres Strait, for the High đđđđđđđđđđMarika’s composition, at first glance, looks Court of Australia to rule that a native title like that of the circles and lines in a Central existed. Such a title remains contested, but Desert painting – the Tingari cycle, to take a artworks continue to be recognized by the courts famous case. But this is misleading. The as the basis for the claiming of titles. In 1997 an composition follows directly on from the kind of extensive national tour of the exhibition mapping of clan lands found in some of the “Saltwater: Bark Paintings of Sea Country” colored crayon sketches made onto large sheets began, including works depicting many of the

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST 14/18

Yirrkala Bark Petitions, August 14 and 28, 1963. Typed paper and natural ochres on bark, 46.9 x 21 cm. Parliament House Collection, Canberra. Courtesy Table Office, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra.

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST same places as on the panels, and many more đđđđđđđđđđIt is true, as mentioned above, that the from the wider region. The exhibition was panels’ creation might mark the appearance of material to the Blue Mud Bay Case brought by the clans in an alliance as Yolŋu, the historical the Yolŋu in 2008 to the High Court of Australia, moment when they came together, for the first which recognized that the people’s land rights time, to declare their shared identity against that extended into the sea to the extent of the low of the federal government. Yet “historical,” here, water mark. Today, the Yirrkala bark petitions are perhaps comes too close to implying that only regarded as among the “founding documents” of 15/18 registration in the narrative of European world the Commonwealth of Australia and are expansion, colonization, and universalization displayed in Parliament House, Canberra.30 counts as history. But the Yolŋu, like Aboriginal đđđđđđđđđđReverend Wells was dismissed from Yirrkala peoples across the continent, have lived for in 1964 for his role in the petition. A subsequent, millennia in their own temporalities, those of the more fundamentalist minister discarded the Dreaming and its eternal recurrence in the Yirrkala Church Panels and they were left to rot. present. They have also always lived in active They were recovered in the late 1970s as plans to relation to the times of those others with whom establish a museum at Yirrkala arose. It opened they interact. The potential productivity of such in 1988. Interest in them has recently been temporal doubling is what the panels revived by the thriving Buku-Larrŋgay Art Center, demonstrated in 1963. They were an affirmation arguably the most successful center of its kind in of Yolŋu spirituality in another sacred setting, Australia, serving the now five-thousand-strong the Methodist church – it is, after all, located in Yolŋu community, as well as by national and their place, on their land. In a broader legal international interest in their art. Their context, that of the land rights case against association with the church a fading memory, the mining, the panels declare a Yolŋu sovereignty, panels are now the centerpiece of a museum one that challenged the kind claimed by the space adjacent to the art center. They are fully government and its courts. More broadly, in their encased in glass and bolted onto metal sheets in address to the earth, the panels manifest each a structure designed to protect them from unique clan’s specificity and its moiety earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. As of 2020, underpinnings as processes of world-making the space remains unfinished, but it is planned that keep on making place, despite the scarring to serve as an entrance as impactful as the and destruction of the lands by extraction. experience of passing through the well-known Balanda world-making will impede that of the Aboriginal Memorial when one enters the Yolŋu but will not stop it. Similarly, in current National Gallery of Australia in the nation’s circumstances, the 2017 Uluru Statement from capital, Canberra. Until then, they may be seen the Heart, with its request that a First Nations by the general public only in the black-and-white Voice be enshrined in the Constitution of images that accompany this article. Australia, continues the many processes of đđđđđđđđđđThe panels were a deliberate showing of reparation and reconciliation that, despite the sacred material, first and foremost, by each clan resistance of conservative politicians, will not to members of the other clans. The line between cease the “Makarrata” – that is, the coming secret and public knowledge is not fixed but is together after a struggle between all constantly negotiated within and between clans, concerned.32 and always between representatives of the đđđđđđđđđđCoeval communality, we might infer, will moieties which are cemented in the kin relations definitely entail thinking together, feeling of the clan, according to the contexts and needs together, experiencing together, after struggle.33 of the time. Yet to see some of the most sacred It will also entail talking and listening together, images, and to see all of them together, at once, having meetings, writing documents, side by side – what else is this if not revelation? demonstrating, protesting, occupying, painting The fact that all those who painted them are now murals, presenting exhibitions, and the like. dead means that the revelation has also become Doing these things, Yolŋu tell us, is also, and that of the immediate ancestors of living Yolŋu, mainly, about making places, many of them, who experience it as such. The revelation goes alongside each other, through processes of world right back to the Originary Beings, and returns to e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y weaving: coming from the earth, moving across all, including non-indigenous peoples, who it, returning to it. That is, through practices of experience it now. This legacy demonstrates how cross-hatching and shape-making, in the revelation of what is usually secret totemic concurrence with each other, in what might knowledge may be used, if the contemporary become, in however fragile a way, our common situation becomes dire enough to demand it, for place. a political purpose. As Ian McLean puts it, the đđđđđđđđđđ× panels “embodied the origin of a new Yolngu These reflections were triggered by the experience of politics.”31 attending the “Postnational Art Histories Workshop,” hosted

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST by Wukun Wanambi at the Baku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre, Terry Smithđis Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Yirrkala, June 10–15, 2019. I am indebted to Wukun and the Contemporary Art History and Theory in the coordinator of the Centre, Will Stubbs, and to the conveners Department of the History of Art and Architecture at of the workshop, Ian McLean and Charles Green of the the University of Pittsburgh, and Professor in the University of Melbourne, my fellow workshop participants, and to the artists who work at and show through the Centre Division of Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought at the and who made us balanda welcome. I especially thank Ian European Graduate School. He is also Lecturer at McLean, Howard Morphy, Henry Skerritt, and Will Stubbs for Large, Curatorial Program, School of Visual Arts, New their close and insightful reading of this essay and their many York. Author ofđMaking the Modern: Industry, Art and helpful suggestions. Design in Americađ(University of Chicago Press, 16/18 1993),đTransformations in Australian Artđ(Craftsman House, Sydney, 2002),đThe Architecture of Aftermathđ(University of Chicago Press, 2006),đWhat is Contemporary Art?đ(University of Chicago Press, 2009),đContemporary Art: World Currentsđ(Laurence King and Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2011),đThinking Contemporary Curatingđ(Independent Curators International, 2012),đTalking Contemporary Curatingđ(Independent Curators International, 2015),đThe Contemporary Compositionđ(Sternberg Press, 2016),đOne and Five Ideas: On Conceptual Art and Conceptualismđ(Duke University Press, 2017), andđArt to Come: Histories of Contemporary Artđ(Duke University Press, 2019). See www.terryesmith.net/web/about. e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST đđđđđđ1 emerging within the Methodist đđđđđđ13 Wally Caruana and Nigel Lendon For a discussion of the mission to Arnhem Land. It was Of course, ceremonial exchange (National Gallery of Australia, contemporaneities within not, however, fully embraced by had been occurring for 1997). Australian indigenous art, see the church hierarchy. See John millennia. Sociologically “Country, Indigeneity, Kadiba, “The Methodist Mission speaking, the missions had đđđđđđ20 Sovereignty: Aboriginal and the Emerging Aboriginal already concentrated the clans Saltwater, Paintings of Sea Australian Art,” chap. 6 in my Art Church in Arnhem Land into one large area. There were Country, 25. to Come: Histories of 1916–1977” (PhD diss., Faculty also some art precedents. In Contemporary Art (Duke of Education, Northern Territory 1942, Wonggu Munuggur and his đđđđđđ21 University Press, 2019), 156–97. University, 1998). children made bark paintings for Furthermore, having given the Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art anthropologist Donald Thomson people language, lore, kinship

(Phaidon, 1998), and Ian đđđđđđ6 17/18 that explained major Dreaming behavior, and the designs for McLean, Rattling Spears: A See Jeremy Long, “Wells, Edgar stories, such as that of the ceremony, “Banatja is a very History of Indigenous Australian Almond (1908–1995),” Australian Djan’kawu, including a painting special name for the Yirritja Art (Reaktion Books, 2016) are Dictionary of Biography, National of one of the sisters in half- people. He is said to be the excellent introductions. See also Centre of Biography, Australian human form. See “Ancestral ancestor for the Yirritja as Fred R. Myers, Painting Culture: National University, 2019 Power and the Aesthetic,” Ian Djankawu is for the Dua, for the The Making of an Aboriginal High http://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra Potter Museum of Art, University senior men say that Banatja and Art (Duke University Press, phy/wells-edgar-almond-27835 of Melbourne, 2009. Four years Djankawu are equal in all 2002). /text35581; Ann E. Wells, later, anthropologist Ronald M. things.” Wells, This Is Their Milingimbi: Ten Years in the Berndt encouraged Yolŋu to do Dreaming, xi. đđđđđđ2 Crocodile Islands of Arnhem crayon drawings of their “Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Land (Angus & Robertson, 1963); Dreaming stories. The 365 đđđđđđ22 Aboriginal Bark Painting from and Wells, Reward and resultant drawings, made in a Wells, This Is Their Dreaming, 48. Yirrkala, Australia” is curated by Punishment. While at Milingimbi, five-month period by twenty- Yolŋu artists from the Buku- Wells had arranged for Karel seven Yolŋu, are held in the đđđđđđ23 Larrŋgay Art Centre, Yirrkala, Kupka to design stained-glass Berndt Museum, University of In 1948, the Berndts heard a Northern Territory, and curators windows featuring Yolŋu motifs Western Australia. Each of these version of this story in which from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal gathering around a central precedents echo in the panels. Lany’tun is the father of Banatja, Art Collection at the University cross. Aesthetically, a greater who became in turn a great of Virginia. It will also include a contrast to the achievement of đđđđđđ14 religious leader and teacher. In six-screen video installation by the Yirrkala panels is difficult to Wells, This Is Their Dreaming, 43. this version he is killed by his Ishmael Marika and the Mulka imagine. disciples. See R. M. Berndt and Project, which is based at đđđđđđ15 C. H. Berndt, “Sacred Figures of Yirrkala. The exhibition will open đđđđđđ7 Wells, This Is Their Dreaming, 41. Ancestral beings of Arnhem at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth See Howard Morphy, Ancestral Written for the general reader, in Land,” Oceania, vol. 18 (1948): College, New Hampshire, in Connections: Art and an a story-telling style, this 314. Cited in Swain, A Place for September 2020, and complete Aboriginal System of Knowledge moment has some earmarks of Strangers, 199. its tour at the Fralin Museum, (University of Chicago Press, apocrypha. University of Virginia, in January 1991), chap. 3. đđđđđđ24 2025. đđđđđđ16 See đđđđđđ8 Wells, This Is Their Dreaming, https://www.nma.gov.au/exhib đđđđđđ3 Howard Morphy, “Acting in a 7–37, offers a detailed account itions/old-masters/artists/d In his exhibition “Everywhen: Community: Art and Social of each section, as she does for junmal. The Eternal Present in cohesion in Indigenous the Yirritja panel, 39–71. Indigenous Art from Australia,” Australia,” Humanities Research đđđđđđ25 at the Fogg Art Museum, Journal 15, no. 2 (2009) đđđđđđ17 See Harvard University, in 2016, https://press-files.anu.edu. “Yirrkala Church Panels, https://www.nma.gov.au/exhib Stephen Gilbert included a au/downloads/press/p14881/ht 1962–63,” Saltwater, Paintings itions/old-masters/artists/m painting by Ganambarr, Mäṉa ml/frames.php. See section “The of Sea Country, The Recognition utitjpuy_mununggurr. ga Dhukurrurru (1996), which Bite in the Bark.” of Indigenous Sea Rights, 2nd ed. depicts Wandawuy, a place (Baku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art đđđđđđ26 where fresh river water and đđđđđđ9 Centre, 2014), 25. Sometimes “… as if done by the Dutchman saltwater from the Arafura Sea Morphy, Ancestral Connections, named “The Island of the Dead,” Piet Mondrian.” Peter Nauman, converge into a turbulent but 40. Burralku is the place from which “Old Masters: Australia’s Great vital foam. This concurrence is a the Creator Beings of both Bark Artists,” reCollections 9, no. major symbolization of the đđđđđđ10 moieties came, and to which the 2 (2013) unity-within-difference of the It is worth noting that the clans spirits of the dead return. Swain https://recollections.nma.go Yolŋu moieties. See Everywhen: still maintain that they speak speculates that, for the Yirritja v.au/issues/volume_9_number_ The Eternal Present in different languages (as it is a in particular, this mythical 2/exhibition_reviews/old_mas Indigenous Art from Australia, defining feature of clan domain is in some sense ters. ed. Stephen Gilchrist (Yale difference), whereas the coterminous with parts of University Press, 2016). linguists insist they speak Indonesia. See Tony Swain, A đđđđđđ27 “Everywhen” is a term coined by different dialects. Place for Strangers, chap. 4. Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art anthropologist William Stanner (Phaidon, 1998), 37 and 39. in a 1953 essay “The Dreaming,” đđđđđđ11 đđđđđđ18 in Stanner, White Man Got No These are the main Dhuwa clan Swain, A Place for Strangers, 32. đđđđđđ28 Dreaming: Essays 1938–1973 groups of East Arnhem Land: The internal reference is to See Natalie Wilson, “(Works of) (Australian National University Rirratjiŋu, Gälpu, Marrakulu, Nancy Munn, “The Spatial Paradise and Yet: Stanley Press Books, 1979), 24. Dhuḏi-Djapu, Djapu, Ḏäṯiwuy, Representation of Cosmic Order Gordon Moriarty, Tony Tuckson Ŋaymil, Djarrwark, and in Walbiri Iconography,” in and the Collection of Oceanic Art đđđđđđ4 Golumala. The major Yirritja clan Primitive Art and Society, ed. at the Art Gallery of New South Edgar Wells, Reward and groups of the region are these: Andrew Forge ( Oxford University Wales,” in Hunting the Punishment in Arnhem Land, Gumatj, Wangurri, Munyuku, Press, 1973), 197. See also Collectors: Pacific Collections in 1962–1963 (Australian Institute Maŋgalili, Maḏarrpa, Warramiri, Nancy Munn, Walbiri Australian Museums, Galleries of Aboriginal Studies, 1982), and Dhalwaŋu. Iconography: Graphic and Archives. ed Susan 58–59; Anne E. Wells, This is Representation and Cultural Cochrane and Max Quanchi Their Dreaming: Legends of the đđđđđđ12 Symbolism in a Central (Cambridge Scholarly

Panels of Aboriginal Art in the See Ronald M. Berndt and e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y Australian Society (Cornell Publishing, 2014), 221–42. Yirrkala Church (University of Catherine H. Berndt, The University Press, 1973). Queensland Press, 1971), 41. Speaking Land; Myth and Story đđđđđđ29 in Aboriginal Australia (Penguin đđđđđđ19 For a similar reading of this đđđđđđ5 Books Australia, 1989), chap.1, See Wells, This Is Their painting, see Henry Skerritt, Wells, This Is Their Dreaming, x. for some such inferences. For a Dreaming, 37. In Central Arnhem “New Lines of Flight: Bark Of course, exactly this was the skeptical view, see Tony Swain, A Land, a parallel theme, the story Painting as Contemporary self-evident purpose of the Place for Strangers: Towards a of the Wagilag Sisters, is much Encounter,” Art Guide Australia photograph. Wells was pursuing History of Australian Aboriginal elaborated in ceremony and in (January–February, 2014): 61–66 a policy of “contextualization,” of Being (Cambridge University art, by Dawidi Birritjama and https://www.academia.edu/118 relating Christianity to Press, 1993), Introduction, chap. Paddy Dhatangu, for example. 29758/New_lines_of_flight_Ba Aboriginal cultural, social, and 1. See The Painters of the Wagilag rk_Painting_as_Contemporary_ political contexts, that was Sisters Story, 1937–1997, ed. Encounter. There are many

12.22.20 / 11:22:33 EST resonances across these cross- t.pdf. cultural spaces, the pursuit of which would take us too far off đđđđđđ33 course. Four come to mind On this expanded sense of immediately, one each for the “coevality,” involving a shared kinds of spatial and temporal possession of the same projections we have been temporality based on an considering. A concurrent exchange between equals, see instance of cross-cultural Johannes Fabian, Time and the convergence: Margaret Preston’s Other: How Anthropology Makes later works, notably in this case Its Object (Columbia University her painting of 1942 Flying Over Press, 2002). 18/18 the Shoalhaven (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra). A subsequent Yolŋu collective enterprise, this time out of Ramingining: The Aboriginal Memorial 1988 (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra). This was at least as ambitious as the church panels, was arguably more monumental, and has been, to date, more consequential. A later compilation of stories across a territory, a chronicle of dispossession, of mourning: Spirit Dreaming through Napperby Country, a scroll-like painting made in 2008 by Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri for filming by Geoffrey Bardon (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). And a gesture of historical retrospect, in a spirit of coevality: Kunwinjku man Gabriel Maralngurra’s series of paintings made in the 2000s, about the visits to Oenpelli made a century earlier by one of the founders of the discipline of anthropology, Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer. On this last, see especially, Henry Skerritt, “Seeing Through Spencer: Gabriel Maralngurra’s Paintings of Baldwin Spencer,” Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association, 14, no. 1–2 (2015): 106–19.

đđđđđđ30 See https://www.foundingdocs.gov .au/item-did-104.html. This does not mean that they were seen and understood by all who saw them. Liberal Party Treasurer Joe Hockey, currently Australia’s ambassador to the United States, recently admitted to having never heard of them. See Will Stubbs, “A Short History of Yolgnu Activist Art,” Artlink, June 1, 2016. The economic future of the Gove Peninsula within the global economy is destined to diminish considerably, as Rio Tinto closed the aluminum mine in 2014 and plans to cease extracting bauxite in 2030. See https://www.riotinto.com/ope rations/australia/gove.

đđđđđđ31 Ian McLean, Rattling Spears: A

History of Indigenous Australian e - f l u x j o r n a # 1 — s p t m b 2 0 đ T y S i h M a r k i n g P l c e s , C o - H t h W d : T Y Art (Reaktion Books, 2016), 110.

đđđđđđ32 See https://www.referendumcounci l.org.au/sites/default/files /2017-05/Uluru_Statement_Fro m_The_Heart_0.PDF and https://law.unimelb.edu.au/_ _data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2 791940/Uluru-Statement-from- the-Heart-Information-Bookle

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