Special Section: Western Australian Aboriginal History Kooral Dwonk-katitjiny (listening to the past): Aboriginal language, songs and history in south-western Australia Clint Bracknell Noongar, the Aboriginal peoples of south-west Australia, have observed and interacted with Europeans since before the dawn of the nineteenth century.1 Historians have long relied on expedition journals and the diaries of colonists for constructing interpretations of south-west Australian frontier history.2 More recent work in this area emphasises oral histories and the perspectives of contemporary Noongar.3 Focusing on the region know today as the City of Albany in Western Australia, Tiffany Shellam has briefly considered Noongar language as a means by which to determine something of the motivations of certain Aboriginal people engaged in early contact with the British and French.4 Clearly, any interpretation of what people may have been thinking can be only enhanced when underpinned by an understanding of how they use language. Indeed, a language such as Noongar, which carries very little evidence of the inclusion of other languages, could be considered to ‘represent the distillation of the thoughts and communication of a people over their entire history’.5 The bulk of Noongar language material recorded in the nineteenth century comprises wordlists and place names, rather than full texts. However, the few existing records of Noongar songs composed through the nineteenth century offer unique perspectives from the ‘other side’ of the south-west frontier. This is particularly significant because song is generally considered central to Aboriginal historical and cultural practices across Australia6 and because many Aboriginal songs were composed in response to rapid changes associated with the arrival of Europeans and colonisation.7 However, Noongar-language songs 1 Collard and Palmer 2008. 2 Hallam 1983. See also Reynolds 1980; Green 1984. 3 Scott and Brown 2005. See also Collard and Palmer 2008; Colbung 1995. 4 Bracknell 2012. 5 Crystal 2000: 38. 6 Ellis 1985. See also Stubington 2007. 7 Donaldson 1979. See also von Brandenstein and Thomas 1974; Goddard 1934; Gummow 1994. 1 ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2014 VOL 38 have been overlooked in previous studies of Aboriginal music, which have predominantly concentrated on central and northern Australia.8 This paper will review and examine historical literature around Noongar songs from south-west Western Australia and attempt to position song composition and performance as a primary means by which Noongar dealt with change while maintaining cultural heritage and identity. The Noongar research context Aboriginal people of the south-west of Western Australia use the term Noongar (Nyungar, Noongar, Nyoongar, Nyungah, Nungar, Njunga etc) to describe themselves, their language and ‘as an adjective describing their country, their way of life and other features of their culture’.9 Noongar boodjar, or land, lies in the south-west corner of Western Australia, extending westward from Cape Arid National Park on the south coast, moving in a north-western arc up to just south of Geraldton on the west coast.10 This boodjar includes metropolitan centres known today as the City of Perth, the City of Bunbury and the City of Albany. Up to 14 distinct Noongar language dialects have been acknowledged,11 although the increased mobility of Noongar in recent decades is considered by some to have resulted in a gradual linguistic homogenisation.12 While Noongar language is presently regarded as endangered,13 more than 30,000 people identify themselves as belonging to the Noongar language group and some individuals and families in the south-west of Western Australia still converse and sing in Noongar language today.14 Aboriginal people in the south-west have weathered a history of dispossession, colonisation and institutionalised cultural denigration;15 hence, a sense of ownership of Noongar language is extremely important to both collective and individual Noongar identity. I am one of many people descended from Noongar, specifically the first people of Western Australia’s south coast between Bremer Bay and Cape Arid. Different writers have variously named the Noongar language dialect of this area as Koreng, Wudjari,16 Ngokgurring17 and Kwetjman.18 My cultural elders refer to their specific Noongar clan asWirlomin , which literally translates to ‘curlew-like’.19 8 Bracknell 2013. 9 Douglas 1976: 5. 10 Collard and Bracknell 2012. See also Collard and Harben 2010. 11 Tindale 1974. 12 Dench 1995. 13 AIATSIS and FATSIL 2005. 14 SWALSC 2009. 15 Haebich 2000. See also Green 1984. 16 Tindale 1974: 142. 17 Taylor 1886: 392. 18 Douglas 1976: 6. 19 Scott and Brown 2005. 2 KOORAL DWONK-katitJINY (LISTENING to THE PAST) I mention this not because of a belief that mere membership of a particular ‘ethnic’ group necessarily grants privileged knowledge. Indeed, the historian Inga Clendinnen has argued that ‘the cherished stories of a particular ethnic, religious or national group (do not) have a truth status equal or superior to post- Enlightenment historians’ criteria for evidence and probability’.20 Nevertheless, although not conceding any special insights on account of a person’s Indigenous heritage, Clendinnen does clearly demarcate boundaries for non-Indigenous researchers investigating Indigenous history, closing off anything outside of the colonial archives at the same time as emphasising the centrality of that source as a site for contestation. In my view the sacred world of the Australians in 1788 — the world of mind and spirit, none of it written but stored in landscape, artefact, dance and story — is closed to us outsiders.21 Interestingly, some information inside the archives concerning south-west Western Australia is naturally impenetrable to ‘outsiders’ by virtue of it being written in Noongar language and having emerged from Noongar oral tradition. A Noongar researcher may not have special access to the thoughts of their ancestors simply by virtue of descent, but a researcher with an understanding of Noongar language and song would certainly have the capacity to divine more evidentiary data from the archives. Carter convincingly describes how early colonial observers failed to understand the significance of Aboriginal language, song and performance.22 Contemporary scholars relying exclusively on written records, without cultural or linguistic understanding of Aboriginal subjects of those records, risk a similar fate. Understanding songs in the archives Literature written by early colonists and audio recordings held in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) archives from south-west Western Australia illustrate the importance of song in Noongar society as a means by which a Noongar person continuously articulates connections to country and kin.23 In recent decades, ethnomusicologists have investigated the ways in which music is central in the construction and maintenance of individual and collective identities.24 Similarly, and in research relating to the act of ‘musicking’,25 Small notes that performer(s) and audience collectively create relationships that enable the articulation of individual and group identity/identities. Consequently, Frith explains that notions of identity are lived and enacted through music, a process that facilitates the maintenance 20 Clendinnen 2003: 40. 21 Clendinnen 2003: 5. 22 Carter 1992. 23 Bracknell 2013. 24 Frith 1996. See also Small 1998; Stokes 1994a. 25 Small 1998: 10–13. 3 ABORIGINAL HISTORY 2014 VOL 38 of self and allows for group membership.26 By constructing boundaries between groups, music also constructs, shapes and preserves ethnic identities.27 In research pertaining to ethnicity and music in Ireland, Stokes observes that migrants assert their ethnic difference through music, which provides a link to some other country of origin.28 However, Australian Indigenous music demonstrates unbroken continuity of connection to country, as Magowan and Neuenfeldt explain in their study focusing on Indigenous performance in Arnhem Land and the Torres Strait Islands, ‘[i]n local contexts, singers … present identity and belonging as emergent from local and regional senses of place and personhood’.29 Historical evidence demonstrates how Noongar have used song to this end in the past.30 The association of song with regional Indigenous identity is also reflected in contemporary Noongar literature.31 Furthermore, audio recordings of Noongar singers from the 1960s and 1970s held in the AIATSIS archives serve to illustrate a significant degree of cultural continuity in what have been hostile colonial circumstances.32 Noongar song, country and identity Early colonial writers convey the importance of vocal music in the lives of Noongar people.33 Some writers transcribed Noongar song lyrics,34 albeit with inconsistent orthographies and questionable translations. Additionally, nineteenth-century examples of musical notation from the south-west of Western Australia exist.35 These historical accounts, combined with more recent insights from Noongar people, help to form an analytical context for the place and function of traditional song in Noongar culture. Comparison and analysis of these various sources confirm that song was central to Noongar communication and expression. These accounts note that both men and women composed and performed these songs.36 While some Noongar songs were performed by groups and accompanied by dance, others were sung as solo vocal pieces.37 Historical