Grandmothers’ Law Should Never Be Broken
First Time (I Met My Grandmother)
Sit down in the dirt and brush away the flies Sit down in the dirt and avoid the many eyes
I never done no wrong to you, so why you look at me? But if you gotta check me out, well go ahead—feel free!
I feel that magic thing you do, you crawl beneath my skin To read the story of my Soul, to find out where I been
And now yous’ mob you make me wait, so I just sit and sit English words seem useless, I know Language just a bit
I sit quiet way, not lonely, ’cos this country sings loud Songs I never been out here before, but I feel like I belong
It’s three days now, the mob comes back, big smiles are on their faces
‘This your Grandmother’s Country here, this is your homeland place’
‘We got a shock when we seen you, you got your Nana’s face We was real sad when she went missing in that cold Port Pirie place’
I understand the feelings now, tears push behind my eyes I’ll sit on this soil anytime, and brush away the flies
I’ll dance with mob on this red Land, munda wiru place I’ll dance away them half caste lies ’cos I got my Nana’s face!
From little bit long time, 2009
Grandmothers’ Law Should Never Be Broken
Let no-one say the past is dead. The past is all about us and within.
From ‘The Past’, The Dawn Is at Hand, 1964
Oodgeroo Noonuccal, 1920–1993
In the night someone strung a line of crow carcasses across the fence outside her house. She discovers them as she leaves the house for work. Her breath catches in her chest and she cannot breathe. Jesus! she mutters, half in anger and half in a plea to the heavens. Who would do such a thing? Unable to move, her entire body is frozen with shock. She dares not look at the dull eyes on their avian faces, the heads hanging as if dangling on broken necks. Her hands rise, as if by free will to cover her mouth, to stifle the scream she feels growing inside her chest. It is inaudible. She vomits a mouthful of dark bile into her palms. The darkness acts like a mirror and she stares at the reflection she holds in her cupped hands. It is her grandmother’s face transforming to crow.
In the backyard of the tenement house the young woman’s actions are frantic. Her hands are filthy now, covered with dirt from the large hole she has dug in the ground. She gathers twigs from under the hedge to add to a small fire she has lit next to the hole. She paces between as if undecided. She kneels to scoop more dirt into the grave, bends to gather more kindling for the fire. Squatting on her haunches, she rolls her head back to stare at the sky. It is cloudless, as empty as her shaking heart. Her head flops forward and she sobs into her hands. Through her tears she senses the arrival of her, and quickly wipes her tears in a muddy streak across her face. A willie wagtail hops across the dry lawn to her side. They crouch together, staring in silence into the fire.
Birds. The adventure of feeling an association with birds was taught to me by my familial grandmother, whom I first met when I was thirty-four, in the red desert of central Australia, at the small community where she was living. Nana was a petite woman filled with warm laughter, with an engaging smile and a shock of white hair. I was the second of her Stolen-Generation grandchildren to return home. Now in her senior years, she was respectfully retired from work and always made time to sit and talk, telling story after story, as if making up for those lost years. In the late afternoon we sat outside her house in the shade of the water tank while she sang the birds, feeding them titbits as they arrived. I watched, fascinated, as some flew onto her lap, chirping to her as if joining her laughter. A few years later, Nana moved to Coober Pedy. She was a founding member of Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, a heroic group of senior Aboriginal women who in 1998 headlined a challenge against the Australian government to prevent a nuclear waste dump on their traditional land, and won their case in 2004.
The Stuart Highway cuts through the centre of Australia from Darwin in the north, through Alice Springs, to Port Augusta in the south. It is one of Australia’s major highways and the opal-mining town of Coober Pedy rests on its rim. On warm sunny days I would sit on Nana’s verandah in the company of her dogs, listening to her childhood stories of growing up in the bush before the saga of the nuclear testing by the British on our traditional lands at Maralinga. If the weather was too hot or too cold, we camped on mattresses in her dimly lit lounge room, peering at faded black-and-white photographs of people who had passed. She kept this stash of photographs hidden in a handbag in her bedroom and brought them out to teach me our family tree. There was always laughter and the sharing of food. I loved every opportunity to care for her; it was a blessing prompted by cultural exchange. As Nana grew more frail, she moved into the local aged-care facility where most of the Kupa Piti Kungkas Tjuta spent their final years. Through the kinship system, I was proud to regard most of these cultural law women as my grandmothers. Those years with Nana before she died were among my happiest.
Many Aboriginal people know the willie wagtail bird as the messenger bird. This small black-and-white-feathered fantail is often known to bring news when loved ones have died. I saw it once relentlessly flying against a windowpane to gain attention, minutes before the phone call arrived, confirming a family member had died. I used to chase them away. My grandmother and her cousin-sisters would sing to them, inviting them to join us, laughing at my nervousness. I learned that these birds also bring good news, and are guardians. In Yankunytjatjara culture, all bird names are their call. The willie wagtail is tjintar-tjintar. The crow is kaanka. Both birds have become essential to my holistic health.
It is common sense that if one stays in one location for a long amount of time, one will learn to know that place in a more intimate way. My traditional family has lived on our traditional lands for over eighty thousand years. Anthropological science has proved that Aboriginal culture is the longest living continuous culture on this planet. A job opportunity in my early forties provided me with the chance to be closer to my traditional Anangu family and live with them in the desert. Within their ‘university’ of ancient knowledge I was their ‘mature-age student’, who had a voracious appetite to learn. Guidance from a select group of senior women and men was grounded and sage; I listened to their every word. As they retired and moved into aged care, I returned to the south. At forty-five, I bought the old General Store in Koolunga, just south of Port Pirie in South Australia, establishing Australia’s first Aboriginal Writers Retreat. I replayed—over and over in my heart and mind—the ethics and memories of those poignant years learning from Nana and the other Elders. The vividness of recent memory began to override unpleasant memories of the racism I had endured during my youth as an adopted child. With my new knowledge, I could enjoy resting in bed, listening for the first bird call of the day. Often, I would gain energy and momentum from the bird calls that were most familiar to me. The knowledge of birds has become an ongoing ritual of focus for me. Familiar bird calls act as spiritual affirmations to my heart and reassurances that those I love are nearby: I am loved by nature, and I am not alone.
I remember too, in the late 1960s, when lines of wedge-tailed eagle carcasses were strung along roadside fences in the mid-north of South Australia where I lived. It was a ruthless practice adopted by sheep farmers. The sight of it horrified me as a girl. I used to stare from the rear passenger window of my parents’ car as we drove past. Sometimes I dared not look at their regal faces and closed my eyes quickly. My adopted father was a gentle man and certainly did not condone cruelty. One of my male adopted cousins was the main offender in our family when it came to these killings; he would ridicule me until I fell silent, insisting that the birds were vermin, shot to protect the newborn lambs in the paddocks. It took me years to forgive him.
I also remember the large mosaic of Jesus above the altar in the local church where we worshipped every Sunday as a family, how Jesus stood in a meek stance of reclamation, displaying the wounds on his hands and bare feet. I remember knowing in my heart that Jesus would not accede to the eagles being killed, their wings stretched open and wired onto the strands of barbed-wire fencing in a feathered crucifixion.
Before school, I spent a lot of time with Dad on the farm; I was known as his little shadow. I can recall a faint memory from 1972 of sitting at the kitchen table for lunch when the radio broadcast a new National Parks and Wildlife Act that gave protection to these majestic eagles. In Yankunytjatjara language, the wedged-tail eagle is walawaru. I always feel safer when I see walawaru soaring the skies. I see them often and know they watch over me.
Since the death of Nana, and all the many other caring, wise, senior women who welcomed me back into my family, including my mother and her sisters, I have travelled extensively across Australia and overseas. Everywhere, my eyes are trained to watch for birds. Using cultural knowledge, Nana taught me how to see, how to watch. In Australia, wherever I travel, both tjintar-tjintar and kaanka are always close by. Tjintar-tjintar is the message bird, the dancer who delivers both good and sad news. No longer fearful, I feel reassured by his presence. Kaanka has become my most defining bird. I believe she is my Nana, still guiding me. When I hear her call, I am immediately inclined to regard my actions and words with kindness, as she instructed. Often, she greets me in the early morning as I leave for exercise or work. Most evenings, when the sun is closest to the horizon, she sits outside my house talking loudly, reminding me of the importance of self-evaluation and responsibility. Kaanka reminds me to remember Nana’s teachings, and to stay humble as I journey on my path.
It has been my privilege to learn snippets from cultures outside my own. In 2018, I travelled to Colombia in South America, to attend and present at the 28th International Poetry Festival of Medellín, which celebrates both shamanism and poetry. During the opening ceremony, the shamans welcomed us. This seven-day event was an incredible experience for me. During my time in Medellín, I met with three South American women poets: Negma Coy (Maya Nation) from Guatemala, Alba Eiraji Duarte Portillo (Guarini) from Paraguay, and Rayen Kvych (Mapuche) from Chile. Through an interpreter, we spent time talking about the Stolen Generations and the sadness I carry inside me. This ongoing chapter of Australian history shocked and saddened these cultured women. They explained to me that Grandmothers’ Law should never be broken; it is a cultural law that should remain intact. My new friends reminded me of the importance of my role as grandmother: to mentor a positive and encouraging presence; to affirm a loving companionship; and to foster a long view of family connection, as all children crave a sense of belonging.
These women reminded me that Grandmothers’ Law is an ancient law, bound through all indigenous cultures. They were appalled that the sanctity of Grandmothers’ Law for Aboriginal Australians has, for generations, been broken by ongoing government policies of child removal. I remember them saying in dismay, ‘Even war doesn’t do that!’ These three generous women told me about the Grandmother Ceremony they honour in each of their villages, and assured me that they would pray for the grandmothers who have suffered the traumatic legacy of the Stolen Generations. And, through the interpreter, we prayed together for the rich and sacred blessing of grandmothers to continue in all our families.
My first grandchild was through kinship, as was her mother. There was always an invitation to join in caring for her. She is now seventeen. In my experience, it is a different and often difficult role as a Stolen Generations grandmother. Some parents of adopted children shift their duty, allowing and inviting space for the birth parent(s) when they arrive. I see this gesture as both accepting and empathetic; the rights and wellbeing of the child are of primary importance. Some adoptive parents cling tightly to the child, even when the child is an adult in the process of working out their identity, at a time when they may be emotional about the past. When conflict arises, human nature seeks what it has known. I have witnessed emotional bribery, when relinquishment has been neither forgiven nor forgotten, as if there is a permanent stain of character on the birth mother. Healthy relationships grow slowly, even those of blood. Some adoptive parents sabotage the reunion.
For me, there has been no easy path around the relinquishment of my son and the issue of adoption. In my experience, the rights of the birth mother have been relegated to second place. If the adopted parents are reluctant to co-share the grandparent role, it feels so unkind if they also persuade the adopted child to snub the birth parent(s). As an Aboriginal grandmother, I feel I am constantly punished for a decision I was forced to make when I was a teenager. It has become a guilt returned to me over and over, a guilt from which I will never be released. I feel I have become the wedged-tail eagle carcass tied to the fence, crucified by the moral code that could not prevent the removal of myself as a baby from my mother. This is what intergenerational separation and trauma feel like on a daily basis. I do not get the opportunity to state my case: there has been no counsel for reconnection as yet.
In Australia there is a self-driven organisation called Grandmothers Against Removal, a grassroots organisation started in 2014 by First Nations community members directly affected by forced child removals. GMAR is a community group that advocates against the forced removal of First Nations children from their immediate and extended families and works to prevent further Stolen Generations. GMAR supports families in navigating the child protection system and lobbies government and child-protection agencies for self-determination and improved outcomes for First Nations children. This organisation needs all the support it can get.
After a period of threatened absence, I cherish every moment spent with my two young grandsons, however intermittent this is. At first, my time with my grandchildren required personal private time for my healing, as I had rarely held a baby since losing my own. My time with my grandsons taught me exactly what I had lost through the relinquishment of their father. This after-effect hit me so unexpectedly; I had not foreseen those brutal tears. It remains important to me that my young grandsons know my essence. It became obvious that we all respond best to time spent together out bush. I can teach them about the wind and birds, and fire. This is where I feel happiest and more relaxed. I want them to know me in my wholeness, the way I knew the wholeness of my grandmother.
I miss holding my Nana’s hand so much. I know she continues to hold mine.
Alone, she pretends happiness. She hums softly to herself as she washes her face and body, early risen and indebted to the genesis of each day as she was taught, smiling ever so slightly at the sepia photograph of her grandmother that rests permanently on the polished rosewood ledge above the white porcelain sink. Unhurriedly, she gets dressed into the uniform of routine and manual labour that she wears to work each morning. A greying sky hangs heavy over the grey cobblestone road as she exits the bluestone house, pausing only to slip her hand into her blue-grey blouse, tucking the latchkey inside her bra. She nods to the black crow perched on the electricity pole above her. Kaanka. Its call is long and loud, repeated as if in greeting. Her footsteps are silent as she walks to catch the train to the city. The crow flits from pole to pole above her. Tjintar-tjintar flits close by.