Tracker Tilmouth
Alexis Wright: You were talking the other day about all that travelling around you did with the old men, you called them the ancients. What did you learn?
You got a feeling for the country. What did I learn from them? I learnt everything. If I talk about those trips I cannot say the names of the places because they were sacred sites, and people would get very upset if they knew I saw that. And what were those old blokes like? I learnt that you have got to put everything into perspective. Why rush? Why run up and down the fence like a friggin mad dog? Relax. Nothing is going to change. Sit back under the gum tree, have a sleep. Because nothing is changing. It is going to take a long time to change. These old blokes were just so calm and collected. I would be racing around making cups of tea and cooking damper for them like a blue-arse fly, but they would say, No. Sit down, sit down.
They do not change, so why should the country change? So just relax. This is what we forget. This is why I would give an arm and a leg to go camping down at Coolibah Station in the bush on the edge of the Vic, at Bluey’s [Bluey Pugh], because you can lay back and have the absolutely magnificent ranges looking at you, with the Victoria River running through it. And Bluey is an absolute brilliant bloke.
But they were very powerful men [in the Western Desert]. Extremely powerful men. They have all passed away now but I can remember them. I can see them now. Old Tjutjuna, Mick Miama, Kenny Kulitja, Lesley Munamatji, Tony Tjama, Harry Tjutjuna, and all those blokes. Kutikajarra, and all those places we went. Kutikajarra is two boomerang. That is down near Pipalyatjara. Big boss, really big bosses. Brilliant people, absolutely brilliant. You would sit down and I could talk Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, and they would say grandson, they called me grandson.
Peace. That is what I learnt from them. Peace of mind. They always thought I was half mad. People still think I am half mad. But Rossy said, While you’re laughing at him, he’s robbing you. He said, Be careful of Tracks. Because he would say, Do you want to talk to me or Tracker? They would say, Oh! We’ll talk to you, Tracker’s mad. Rossy would say, Yeah I know. He used to say that. That is the way we played it. We played it for years.
But they give you peace. They give you peace of mind. You have got to have peace inside. If you have peace inside, that means you are happy who you are and what you are, and what you are doing, you have got enjoyment. That is the problem we have got. We have got no method philosophically. We have got no ability to create peace within ourselves. As Aboriginal people we take it on board, we take all the problems on board, we end up on grog, we end up on drugs, we end up on everything. We carry the burden of dispossession, of dislocation, of identity. So much weight is put on identity now and you know [we are questioning ourselves]: Am I a certain person from this tribe? Then you get the title running out before that person even speaks.
Look mate! We know you’re from the country, you don’t have to tell us. We can tell your flat nose, the forehead on you like Mount Gillick, we can see it a mile away. You don’t need to say I’m from this tribe Yorta Yorta, or this, that, or whatever, whatever. You have seen the line-up of titles waiting for the white bloke to tick you off. Oh! I’ve got in? Yes. He is in the box. He is a blackfella. We have got this identity crisis. We bring it on ourselves, an identity crisis. There is no need to let someone else certify you and codify you.
Then they want the professorship to go with it. Dr whoever, whoever, for imparting knowledge on white people. That is like paying the pig feeders, to feed the cream to the pigs, the pig feeders. So you know you are dealing with people who have really got an identity crisis. These old blokes out bush got me away from that identity position. I did not have to find myself, and I was comfortable with what I was and I still am comfortable with what I am. I was glad in a way that I did not go to the Alcoota handback of land to us because we paid five million dollars for a block of land that my family owned for forty thousand years. It was stolen from them in the first place. We paid money for it. Then we got blessed and they said, Here is your title. We have already got the title, brother. We do not need this. We do not need to be part of it. And they put so much store in the Land Rights Act. To some people that is a good thing, for some people who think further than that it is not necessary. It just makes a lot of white people feel really good.
Alexis Wright: Your position of being at peace with yourself, inner peace, is a position of strength too. Would you say you have learnt this from those old men?
Well! Eight years of cancer, nearly eight years of cancer. It was 2008 when they diagnosed me. I have beaten it every time. It is a hard road. Oh! Look, it is your journey, and you can go out and throw yourself around the room and carry on like a pork chop, or get on with it.
Alexis Wright: Would you link the mental toughness and kind of person you are now back to some of those old men, of what they have imparted to you?
Yes. They said peace is the argument; that is what they taught you. They had no problems. Oh! The car broke down, so what? Oh! We’ve got this, so what? What, me worry? And you had people running all over them, whitefellas: make sure you’re this, that. It is like when you go to those meetings down south and they have people from the bush country turn up. The white blokes are all over them, making sure they are set properly and they have got food, and cups of tea all round. These [bush] people are looking at you sideways with a big grin. You know they are laughing at these white blokes running around for them. But they see it all. Magnificent…These are my people, I have been adopted. How many white academics have said that? I am adopted into this tribe or I am adopted into that. I have got this skin and I’ve got…Hang on a minute, who said?
So you have this ongoing thing and that is reflected by Aboriginal people the other way around too. I’m this so I need to be accepted by the white society as being different. I go to the barbecue and I am not Johnny Come Lately from over here, I’m Yorta Yorta or something like that, or whatever the name is they give, I’m from this mob, that mob. Yes, wonderful. Uwa! Do you need to tell me that? I thought you are an Aboriginal person and would know that Aboriginal culture extends no matter where you are. You are accepted as who you are, not from what you are or your language. You do not have to prove it and that is the problem. We spend too much time proving who we aren’t, rather than who we are. That is what happened to a certain extent to the Waanyi argument where there were degrees of Waanyi-ness which is bullshit, absolute bullshit.84
I said to Bradley Foster [Waanyi native title holder] on a few occasions, You want to get away from the skull measuring because that will fuck you quicker than anything else. And it did, it buggered them. You had degrees of Waanyi-ness and then this also happened with Yanner with the Gangalidda/Gawara native title claim, also in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland and Northern Territory. He has got a big argument with, what’s his name? Clarence Waldron. They are related and they are arguing about how much of a Gangalidda/Gawara person they are. It is not an argument worth having. It is wasting your energy and Clarry is not a well man. He is very sick. And I have got a lot of respect for Clarry.
But you just waste your time arguing about things that really it is not worth having an argument about. It is like trying to work with the Kalkadoon mob. Degrees of scientificity.85 So you have got these sorts of arguments that are always arising and falling, on degrees of the inner search for peace. That is what it is, an inner search. How do I feel comfortable, because I am not comfortable where I am. We are shuffling each other around and around the top rail.
The trouble with Aboriginal society is that we have gone from an Aboriginal society to a quasi-North American society. We have got a council of chiefs, we have got elders, we have got this, we have got that, like the American Indians. An Aboriginal society did not have that, and we should still not have that. As they said to me, Conrad Ratara [Arrernte leader] and a couple of blokes from Hermannsburg the last time I was in Alice. They all come up and gave me a big hug and said, Brother, you’re still going. I said, Yeah. And Ratara said to me, You know the rules, brother. I said, Yeah. He said, The heart stop, you stop. I said, Yep. He said, You’re going to remember that. That’s the law. I said, I’ve never forgotten. Just to make sure I was comfortable. He was not being frivolous, he was making sure I was comfortable within myself, big hug, big brother. You’ve got to remember, he said, when the heart stop you stop. Because he knows that I am thinking all the time. We go way back. So him and Jakamarra Nelson – we were talking at the airport [in Alice Springs], he could see I was not feeling well. But what he said was inside. He gave me a big hug, Your heart stop, you stop. Remember that. That’s the law. So a quiet word like that, you know he is thinking about you. Me and him have been mates for years.
But that is the sort of little comment you get. Now you only get that off a blackfella, you will not get that off a white bloke. They know you know a little bit about the law and that. So comments like that, that is what the old blacks bring to you, the bush people bring to you. So you say righto, that is noted. Peace. They tell you to just find peace.
Noel Leslie and some whose names I cannot mention. Tjutjuna, I can mention his name and Hairy Big Foot, Harry Brumby, all those blokes. I used to drive Nosepeg [Tjupurrula] around. Big boss. Big, big bloke and big boss Aboriginal way, big law man. But all my old grannies too, like old Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa and those blokes, Tilmouth Well mob. Blokes there that were just as strong, old grandfather old Kaapa Tjampinjinpa. Mr Lynch – Johnny Lynch [Tjapanangka]. We are Yirampa [Honey Ant] Dreaming coming into Papunya that way, from the east side. Right through Mount Allan there, there is a big honey ant man travelling through Tilmouth Well, all the Granites right to Namakurlangu, that is Anmatyerre. That belongs to our mob. Comes right across. I am just saying Anmatyerre, Eastern Arrernte, Alyawarre are all joined. So knowing all that sort of stuff helps.
84. Tracker is referring to the disagreements over identity that occurred, and the reliance on and disagreement over non-Aboriginal professional historical and anthropological advice in the Waanyi native title claim in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland.
85. Referring to the internal arguments that take place among Aboriginal people who have been placed into the position of having to work together, often with very few resources, on major issues affecting their future, such as native title negotiations with mining development on the resource-rich Kalkadoon land in North West Queensland, near Mount Isa.