Painting Virtue: a portrait of Laurie Baymarrwangga

BENTLEY JAMES

explained. At this time in her life Baymarrwangga is looking to provide resources for children’s education in the region. This year she wants to provide a trilingual Yan-nhangu dictionary to the children for free. Laurie Baymarrwangga has been working on a trilingual Yan-nhangu dictionary project to support language education on the islands. In 1993 there were only 300 of her words documented, now she has recorded some 4000, containing the local knowledge of countless generations. Learning local language, aside from the positive health outcomes and psychological resilience attending bilingualism, promotes the intergenerational transmission of local knowledge to a new generation. This dictionary brings together two languages, Yan- nhangu and Dhuwal/a (6000 speakers) with English, as a learning resource to fill the vacuum left by the removal of bilingual education. Baymarrwangga plans to give this beautiful full colour dictionary to all Yolngu children, their schools and homelands throughout the region as a gift before Christmas 2013. Baymarrwangga’s concern for her country’s vibrant Gillian Warden, Virtue (portrait of Laurie Baymarrwangga, 2013, 120 x 120cm; linguistic and customary heritage generated a family of image courtesy the artist interrelated projects under the Initiative. Designed to support language, livelihoods and gentle sea breeze touches the tamarind trees of homelands, the initiative aims to skill and employ people Milingimbi where Laurie Baymarrwangga is on country, follow traditional law, and protect the sitting in the dappled shade on the beach of her linguistic, cultural and biological diversity of the Islands. mother’s country. The ninety-six-year-old Her initiative to nurture local diversity resonates with the SeniorA Australian of the Year 2012 is weaving while global need to find a sustainable future, and focuses on Melbourne artist Gillian Warden keeps her company. practical engagement through livelihoods-based activity Baymarrwangga saw the arrival of the first missionaries, on country, including a Ranger Program. In 2011 this the bombing of Milingimbi, started an island homeland, a initiative won her the NT innovation Life Time school, a ranger program, a turtle sanctuary, saved her Achievement Award for services to country. language, created ‘language nests’ and a trilingual The Ranger Program she started with her own dictionary, and is still looking to reach out to everyday money was formally launched in 2010, after a decade of Australians and to make them aware of her culture. struggle. In 2012 it won the Ministers Award for I suggested The Archibald portrait prize as an Outstanding Team Achievement in the NT Ranger opportunity to promote Baymarrwangga’s humanitarian Awards. The Crocodile Islands Rangers now protect more work and approached Gillian with this idea. The than 10,000 square kilometres of sea country with 250 preliminary drawings were done on the Island, outside square kilometres of registered sacred sites. Caring for Baymarrwangga’s granddaughter’s house, sitting with some of the last breeding and nesting places of many family on a tarpaulin under the trees. There for several endangered species, they have created a 1000 square hours a day over the course of a week, the artist kilometre turtle sanctuary. The Rangers are working to attempted to capture the impossible: nearly a hundred improve economic, social and cultural wellbeing by years of extraordinary life etched into one human face. providing meaningful employment and education through Baymarrwangga went on weaving and talking dedicated language and cultural programs. These about the future, how she wants the children to learn their programs are set to manage, conserve and enhance the country and their language, while Gillian worked away natural marine resources and traditional ecological mapping the contours and colours of Baymarrwangga’s knowledge living inside local languages. face. Later in her Melbourne studio she translated the ‘Big Boss’, as she is affectionately known, says Milingimbi studies using ink, oil and enamel paint. ‘I ‘Homelands are at the heart of our country’. Knowing wanted to capture the spirit of Baymarrwangga’s country depends upon complex cultural relationships profound and serene presence and to acknowledge a sense linked to living on homelands, and provides vital services to of her extraordinary kindness and generosity’, Warden the Australian nation in heritage preservation,

32 261 July 2013 Art Monthly environmental management services, and biodiversity. What’s more, homelands provide better health and education outcomes, not to mention the jewels of our national cultural heritage and arts. They are the sites for transfer of the oldest living traditions, deep cultural knowledge, and globally rare Indigenous languages. These relationships are assured on the homelands where positive engagement with country life promotes their vitality, but they are under serious threat. Baymarrwangga says it looks just like her and laughs. And it is true; this picture portrays something of her life’s long and exceptional experience. Wisdom, tolerance, insight and foresight are some of many qualities Baymarrwangga represents – the virtues of leadership. She says that to resist assimilation we must ennoble the hearts of those who do not know and try to change us. Her great fear is that her culture and country will be destroyed. It is this thought that keeps her struggling on against ignorance. She continues to struggle against forced assimilation and the destruction of Indigenous languages long after others have given up. Perhaps her greatest virtue is in her wisdom and in her kindness; by sharing so generously the gift of her knowledge, her language and her country, she may protect it for a (clockwise from top left) 1/ Baymarrwangga weaving at Milingimbi, 2012; photo: Bentley James future generation that will appreciate its value.

2/ Baymarrwangga (left) and her grand-daughter Michelle Barratawuy making pandanus baskets (basket: ganangirr; raniya: Laurie Baymarrwangga’s portrait, Virtue, is currently showing in The peeled, dried and dyed pandanus: Yan-) on Hidden Faces of the Archibald, an exhibition comprising portraits by the homeland at Murrungga Island; woven mats/baskets have been produced at the Crocodile Islands (Milingimbi) since the Victorian-based artists which didn’t make this year’s Archibald prize 1930s; Baymarrwangga has been making baskets for over 90 years; photo: ‘Mission Times’, Papa Sheperdson Collection exhibition; showing at the Hilton Hotel, South Wharf, Melbourne, 18 June to 16 August 2013. 3/ At Murrungga Island looking towards Wudulpalnga (site) waiting for the tide to come in; photo: Bentley James Dr Bentley James is an anthropologist and linguist, and a Crocodile 4/ The making of a betngu fish trap by Crocodile Islands Rangers, Murrungga Island, 2010; photo: Chiara Bussini Islands Ranger.

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