Reclamation and Repair 10—11
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Article — plains with her clanswomen’s Reclamation group, digging root foods (tubers, rhizomes, corms, bulbs). They and repair were accompanied by some of the younger women from the neighbouring clan who were also Bunjil, having married in to the Waa Words by clan. The women had spent most Paul Memmott of the morning targeting murnong tubers (daisy roots) whose presence across the plain was conspicuous by their bright yellow flowers. But they supplemented these with other species of orchids that had shot up after the good winter rain. Their metre-long digging sticks, water coolamon and reed baskets were placed to one side together with tied bundles of grass for thatching the domed roofs in the camp. The women were taking a break in the shade of a small patch of shrubs on the otherwise open plain, and lightly roasting a small portion The symbolic content of the Repair lipped above the horizon, all of the of their foodstuffs for a midday exhibit at the 16th International Venice camp had to be at the side of the big snack. The gossip was about the Architecture Biennale reflected a swamp a kilometre away. eligibility of particular young women developing architectural practice of The local Bunjil (Eaglehawk) from other tribal groups as wives integrating built and natural systems Dreaming clansmen emerged in to be promised for the young boys to repair the environment and a full-body paint in a single line to who would undergo the ‘making- contemporary re-valuing of heritage. commence their Kangaroo fertility men’ ceremony at the forthcoming The following narrative draws from dance. The Waa (Crow) Dreaming assembly. Margurah, a visiting senior early ethnographic descriptions of men from the neighbouring clan woman was praising the virtues as the temperate grasslands in what is stood ready with their green boughs well as promoting the economic now Victoria, South-eastern Australia, ready to manage the fire. When the preference for the daughters of 1835 and moves to nineteenth-century dance reached its crescendo, the the Stone-Dreaming people to the duel fighting and perform mourning their homeland. All those from one contact history. senior clan Elder, Jagajaga took west, who controlled rituals and obligations for the deceased. The language group had to be together Dooti awoke at the pre-dawn the burning firestick to the swamp rights over the greenstone axe and Tanderrum ceremonies had then and broken down into clusters to the sound of the song-man’s edge and lit the tall fringing grass. obsidian knife quarries. followed over six days to ritually according to their constituent boomerangs clapping. She emerged Flames leapt high as there was smoke all of the visitors, cleansing clans, which could be either Waa Some weeks later, when the moon had from her domed wuurn (house) to much dry dead grass interspersed them of any malignant spirits that or Bunjil Dreaming. Public dancing grown full: blow the fire coals and raise flames with green on the swamp’s edges. may have entered upon their well- corroborees had commenced in for warmth. The winter rains had It was the role of the Waa men to The great assembly was now well being, and then to bestow them with the evenings with each language departed a month before and the control the fire so that it burnt in underway. All of those invited rights to join in the local collection group vying to be the most polished bone moon was hovering low in the a narrow band from north to east had arrived, according to the clan of food and material resources. performers and at times, humerous sky to the west with the Morning (clockwise) around the periphery of messengers who had travelled with And then the hundreds of visitors dancers. This pattern would only Star. There was not a breath of the 500-metre circular swamp. As the invitation ochre and feathers a (perhaps almost 2000) had to be all be broken on the three nights of wind, giving perfect conditions to the song men raised their pitch, the moon before. The square-up rituals carefully allocated their camping the man-making ceremony when make the great smoke signal to great spiral white smoke began its had been completed to equalise places between the foothills of the everyone would camp around the invite the surrounding tribespeople ascent into the still morning sky. If emotions – resolve grievances by woody uplands and the fast-running ceremony ground in two large to gather at Mirraywuyay for the it remained calm, the spiral would stream on the edge of the plain, groups, either Waa or Bunjil group, annual assembly of the grassland reach the height necessary to be with an allocated defecation area at to represent the two inter-marrying tribespeoples. More and more seen for a radius of 250 kilometres the rear. They all needed access to halves of the regional bloc of the boomerang percussionists joined covering the territories of the seven ample firewood and freshwater, but plains tribespeople. These two the distant singing as the local tribes of the Plains Nation. Right John Skinner Prout, Melbourne from Collingwood, the camping pattern was according categories of people would also be clansmen began their ceremony for Later in the middle of the 1847, with swamp ecology destroyed, Lithograph: 22.8 x to locational positioning and had expressed during the ceremony in 37.5 cm on sheet 33.6 x42.8 cm State Library of Victoria the invitation smoke. As the sun day, Dooti was on the basalt-strewn Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Countries to be preserved: each party had both sitting and dancing groups as to be camping in the direction of well as styles of body paint-up → Re-valuing Heritage 10—11 Architect Victoria and dress apparel. Husbands had to animals into the stream junction at ancestors whose spirits she believes when they had delivered gifts to be getting, land clearing, feral plant and split from wives and adult children Bukadi where long net traps were are still at those sites; all being sent for Queen Victoria and Prince animal introduction, soil erosion, went with their father’s clan. All slung between poles and spearsmen subsumed by the fast-expanding Albert in return for their granted land atmospheric pollution culminating young children were separated were waiting. The right flank was urban development. rights. Unfortunately, the Queen did in the emerging Anthropocene with under a chaperone, well away from led by the Bunjil men and the left not hear. Bulthuku (Jane) was left the likelihood of severe climate Once the steam engine-driven the ceremony ground. These were by the Waa men. Once the kangaroo angered and bitter. change. The proposition of restoring a industrial era reached Australia in the the socio-spatial customs of the and emu meat was all consumed, In Aboriginal belief, the landscape to some pristine imaginary late 1800s, the colonial conversion of grassland peoples. the camp would fall back to the first travellers across the Australian model of an earlier non-human the continent for economic purposes reed-plaited eel and fish traps set continent were the ancestral heroes ecosystem becomes questionable The hunting drive begins: irreversibly damaged the ecology and in the rock weirs left by the Snake of the Dreamtime who created if not impossible to model let alone habitats, either by urban expansion, Jemba, the husband of Dooti was Cousins in the Dreamtime along the numerous sites as they travelled in achieve. pastoralism, mining, farming, logging, in charge of the right flank of the two streams. This system of stone- which they deposited their sacred But is there something that over-fishing, draining and damming great kangaroo and emu drive wall traps would yield the camp’s energies, perpetually left behind. In we can call partial repair around waterways, and feral animal and plant which would supply the camp with sustenance during the final days of classical Aboriginal societies (before which one can identify some sound introductions, all bringing the onset fresh meat for the duration of the completing the ceremonies. the colonial invasion), these creative ecological planning principles that of the Anthropocene in the Southern ceremonies. Patchwork mosaic acts were re-enacted and celebrated mitigate against loss of species Colonial impacts Hemisphere. The differential spread burning had been carried out before in ceremonies, as in the case of the and support a healthy reproductive of the frontier over 180 years had the wet season in the drive area, The narrative returns. The year is Black Snake Cousins who travelled ecosystem? Ongoing interrogation is variable impacts in different ecological and now these patches contained 1881 and the scene is a rural roadway through the grassland country creating needed around this question. Situating systems. succulent grass shoots from the leading into Melbourne: the weirs. Today the popular term projects within Aboriginal landscapes, The party of Dooti and ample winter rainfall. It was these Dooti is now a very old woman, but ‘Song-lines’ is often used to describe a challenge then for contemporary her relatives is travelling in protest, shoots that drew in the feeding still strong and animated, riding on these lines of travel and the creation architects is how to relate a project along the 65 kilometres journey kangaroos. The drive was happening the tray of a horse-drawn wagon sites at which songs, sacred histories with some moral integrity, to a south from their Aboriginal farm on day 4, after the visitor’s offerings with some younger Aboriginal and ceremonies and sometimes sacred changed cultural landscape, often an station of Coranderrk to Melbourne. of smoked eels and fish as well women and children, and led by objects were left behind.