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Friday Essay: Caring for Country and Telling Its Stories Page 1 of 11 Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories Page 1 of 11 Academic rigour, journalistic flair Part of Mandy Martin’s painting Cool Burn (2016): in her painting workshops at Djinkarr, Indigenous rangers brought the threats to their land to life on canvas. Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories May 5, 2017 6.11am AEST •Updated May 29, 2017 12.05pm AEST This piece is republished with permission from Millennials Strike Back, the 56th Author edition of Griffith Review. Small fires streak the savanna beneath me, as the land is worked and cleaned. The gentle smoke on the horizon is sign of a healthy country. In the distance, Billy Griffiths disappearing into a soft haze, lies the rugged stone country of the Arnhem Land PhD Candidate in History, University of Plateau. The plane wobbles over the mouth of the Liverpool River, where saltwater Sydney meets fresh, and descends towards a thin ribbon of grey on a cleared patch of thick, earthy red: the international airport. http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-caring-for-country-and-telling-its-stories-75844 1/07/2019 Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories Page 2 of 11 On one side of the airstrip, a few dozen houses cluster around a football oval; on the other, a neat grid delineates the newest suburb, called simply “New Sub”. Maningrida, as our destination is known, takes its name from the Kunibídji phrase Mane djang karirra: “the place where the Dreaming changed shape”. The town’s simple layout belies the immense cultural diversity of its inhabitants. On any given day, a visitor might hear the rippling sounds of Ndjébbana, Eastern Kunwinjku, Kune, Rembarrnga, Dangbon/Dalabon, Nakkára, Gurrgoni, Djinang, Wurlaki, Ganalpingu, Gupapuyngu, Kunbarlang, Gunnartpa, Burarra and English. In per capita terms, it is perhaps the most multilingual community in the world. Indigenous ranger Ivan Namarnyilk picks up our small team of artists, scientists and historians from the airport and drives us out to Djinkarr, where we will be staying for the next week. Djinkarr is a small outstation powered by a run-up generator with beautiful fresh water pumped from the ground. It is one of dozens of such settlements scattered across western Arnhem Land: small clusters of houses inhabited by one or more family groups, often remote from the main settlements and usually poorly connected by unsealed bush tracks. Maisie Mirinwarmnga and Vera Cameron weaving in Maningrida as part of The Arnhembrand Project. Mandy Martin It is the kind of outstation that is out of favour with the current government, the kind that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott targeted with his “lifestyle choices” rhetoric and that former minister Amanda Vanstone dismissed as a “cultural museum”. With the current government focus on “regional hubs” (the centralisation of services in towns), the long-term future of these outstations seems http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-caring-for-country-and-telling-its-stories-75844 1/07/2019 Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories Page 3 of 11 tenuous. Yet there are overwhelming benefits to having people living on country. People sustain country, and country in turn sustains people. Anthropologist and economist Jon Altman, who has worked in the region since the late 1970s, argues that supporting local Indigenous communities in their efforts to stay on country should be regarded as a form of development and conservation: “Developing these communities in accord with market logic is replete with contradictions.” Instead, he advocates a local “hybrid-economy” where customary activities – such as hunting, burning and painting – interact vigorously with state and market regimes. The experiences of community- based Indigenous ranger groups, which employ thousands of young men and women across Australia, demonstrate the immense benefits of this model. Through these programs, a new generation of Indigenous land managers are using cultural and historical experience, as well as new technology and Western expertise, to care for their country. It is no coincidence, Altman argues, that the most ecologically intact parts of the continent are Aboriginal owned and managed. During the next week our team will be working from Djinkarr with dozens of Bininj, as the people of western Arnhem Land are known, to tell “healthy country” stories through paint and performance, science and oral history. Many of the artists involved, like Ivan, are also rangers who manage the Djelk Indigenous Protected Area to the south of Maningrida. I am helping to record the stories that are being captured in the art, as well as reflections from the rangers about their role in caring for country. Messing with the spirits The Djelk Indigenous Protected Area is a vast estate, extending across monsoon rainforests, tropical savannas, grasslands, wetlands, sea country and stone country – and it encompasses the territories of 102 clans. It has been carefully cultivated and transformed by people for over 50,000 years. But since the arrival of Europeans, this management system has broken down and the land is rapidly degrading. Buffaloes, pigs, feral cats and cane toads have trampled, chewed, rubbed and wallowed their way across a delicate ecosystem, destroying habitats, spreading weeds, muddying springs, transforming the vegetation and exacerbating the eroding impact of wildfire. The effect on native species has been devastating. Their decline and extinction have deprived the Bininj of bush tucker as well as delivering a more existential loss: the displacement of totemic beings from their ancestral homes. “Such loss,” argues conservation biologist John Woinarski, “stains our society; it demonstrates that we are not living sustainably; it degrades our legacy.” As Ivan reflected in 2015: “Country is in the heart … Bininj, today, it’s like we’re suffering.” In the painting workshops that artists Mandy Martin and David Leece are facilitating at Djinkarr, this frustration comes to life in magnificent fluorescent colours on canvas. A sick echidna burrows into a termite nest surrounded by http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-caring-for-country-and-telling-its-stories-75844 1/07/2019 Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories Page 4 of 11 invasive plants and orange cane toads; the stomach contents of a feral cat are painted in x-ray style; electric-green mission grass grows up against white mimih figures on a rock wall. “That mission grass,” Ivan tells me, “it’s messing with the mimih spirits. It’s hiding them.” Mandy Martin’s Cool Burn’ (2016), ochre, pigment and oil on linen, 75 x 75 cm in full. Author provided The art is a powerful way of telling stories about the changes that are happening on their country, and which the rangers are working to control. It is also a means of raising awareness at a time when government support for Indigenous land management programs remains flimsy and ephemeral. The contrast of traditional ochres and fluorescent pigments seeks to capture the rupture that feral animals, invasive weeds and wildfire represent. Ivan, who was taught to paint at the age of 12 by his father Timmy Namarnyilk and his “big” father, the rock-art master Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, shows me another painting that captures the essence of the project. Ivan Namarnyilk paints a fluorescent feral pig rubbing against ochre rock art. Hugo Sharp It is of a fluorescent feral pig rubbing up against the ochre art of a rock wall. “This troublemaker,” he tells me, pointing at the feral pig, he’s destroying all of our painting, this rock art here. Damaging stories. So maybe we’re going to tell stories of this one troublemaker, damaging our land. http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-caring-for-country-and-telling-its-stories-75844 1/07/2019 Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories Page 5 of 11 ‘We know our sea country’ Despite many attempts, Arnhem Land was never conquered, nor systematically settled by white colonists. The failures of successive large-scale and ill-devised schemes for development have, ironically, allowed northern Australia to retain vast areas of relatively unmodified landscapes. In 1933, journalist Ernestine Hill described Arnhem Land as being the only corner of Australia that has persistently baffled, and even frightened, the white pioneer… For one hundred years Arnhem Land, by the sheer ferocity of its natives, has defied colonisation. Anthropologists Rhys Jones and Betty Meehan believe the key to the resilience of the Bininj is their long history of contact with other cultures. For centuries, Macassan voyagers from Indonesia visited the shores of Arnhem Land in search of trepang, building houses and growing rice along the coastline, trading with local communities and even taking Bininj with them back to foreign ports. Macassan words entered the local dialects and still remain: “Balanda” (whitefella) is believed to have a Macassan root. This long history of interaction ended in 1907 when the government refused to grant fishing licences to non-Australian operators. Only a few industries were exempt from this aspect of the White Australia Policy, and in the early 20th century Japanese pearlers began to frequent Bininj sea country, building wooden huts across the landscape. Since 2007, the Djelk Rangers have joined with the Australian Customs Service (now the Australian Border Force) to monitor illegal fishing activities off the coast: the modern manifestation of a long history of cultural contact. This innovative arrangement involves fee-for-service payments, which are an integral part of the meagre funding the Djelk Rangers receive from the federal government. http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-caring-for-country-and-telling-its-stories-75844 1/07/2019 Friday essay: caring for country and telling its stories Page 6 of 11 Ivan Namarnyilk on sea patrol. Hugo Sharp “We know all their hiding spots and where they need to come for fresh water because we have been trading with fishermen from Makassar for many centuries,” write rangers Victor Rostron, Wesley Campion and Ivan Namarnyilk.
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