When Yolŋu people sing of water, we are singing our deep knowledge of water. We are singing our connection to water. We sing of that body and of our own body, our own bodies of water. For we are not singing of something that is separate from us. We are not singing about water but singing water itself. Of that body of water we sing. We sing of the body of water.
Ŋuruku miyamanarawu Dhanggala aaaaaaaa.
And when we sing of that water, we remake that water, and we remake ourselves and our connections with water and all else that is Country.
Songspirals are many things. They are a story, a big story. They are ceremony with a story in it. They are not a made-up story. Wuymirri is telling a story about that body of water and the whales we see as we journey in our boat, as whales and as ourselves.
When women cry milkarri our tremulous voices sing a story about pain, heartbreak, hope, loss, anger, frustration, happiness and love. When we say love, we are talking about what binds us together. We are talking about loving our family, our land, our life, and loving who we are and where we come from. Yes, because when we cry milkarri for our Country, us women are claiming our self and the land, we are one.
We’re going to be talking about Country a lot as we talk about keening milkarri, because keening milkarri helps create Country. Milkarri enlivens Country, brings it into being again and again as we all unfold together through songspirals.
We sing and keen milkarri for everything, and it is the singing and doing milkarri that brings everything into being. We cry milkarri for everything, from the smallest living creature that lives in the earth to the furthest stars that we can see, for maggots and flies, for the soil and the deep roots. It’s a big responsibility.
We let that feeling flow through us. Let our body be that body of water of which we sing. Let our singing and crying milkarri be that body and our body, and know that we and Country are one, that we are Country, that we must do milkarri, name Country, harmonise with Country so that our knowledge, our sound, the vibration inside us brings Country alive, makes it sacred again and again and again. Of that body of water we sing. And that water sings us.
We cry milkarri in Yolŋu matha, the family of languages of our homelands. Each clan has their own Yolŋu clan language. It is Yolŋu matha that names the deep names, the true names, of the water and the places, the beings and becomings of our songspirals. Language is like water flowing in the river, picking up all the sediment, the rocks, the leaves and the sand. It moulds it all with the clay. That is how Yolŋu matha is. That is how we are, how our songspirals are. There is never just one Yolŋu person, separate from family or from Country. Everyone and everything is always connected, always in relation. And in the same way, we sing not just the water but all the things that flow with the water.
Our water is never just one water. We name the tides, the currents, the muddy water and the clear, the shallow water and the deep, the salt and the fresh. And it is important to us when these things come together. When the salt water meets the fresh, that is Garma, two knowledges mixing and mingling.
Underpinning this pattern of connection and balance are the two moieties, Yirritja and Dhuwa. Everyone and everything is either Yirritja or Dhuwa. Yirritja and Dhuwa are important to Yolŋu and for songspirals, for everything. They are a pattern, a wholeness that underpins and makes up the universe. This is a foundation for us. Yirritja and Dhuwa are two complementary aspects of our world, of Country. Together they make a whole. Yirritja and Dhuwa together make up the world.
There are Yirritja waters and Dhuwa waters, just as there are Yirritja people and Dhuwa people, Yirritja animals and Dhuwa animals, Yirritja sunsets and Dhuwa sunsets, Yirritja songspirals and Dhuwa songspirals. Yirritja is the mother of Dhuwa and Dhuwa is the mother of Yirritja. It is a cycle that goes from one to the other. It goes from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Our mum, she was Yirritja. So that means we sisters are Dhuwa. Djawundil, our daughter, is Yirritja. Her daughter is Dhuwa again. That is the cycle.
It is the cycle between generations, and it is a cycle in nature too that shows where and how we fit. So, like the relationship between mother and daughter, where Dhuwa is the daughter of Yirritja and Yirritja the daughter of Dhuwa, there is a relationship between the muddy water, Ritjilili, which is Dhuwa, and Mungulk, the water that runs down from Dhälinbuy, our grandmother’s land, which is Yirritja. The waters meet as mother and child. They respect each other. In the songspirals, Yirritja and Dhuwa waters talk to each other. We sing of the currents and the waters passing over each other, the little waves and foams. Yirritja water is clear, on the top. Dhuwa water is muddy, where the sharks roam.
All things are Yirritja and Dhuwa, all things are in that cycle of mother and daughter. And we are Yirritja and Dhuwa. That means we are in a relationship with all things as mother and daughter. We have a yothu (child) water and a yindi (mother) water. All animals and rocks and winds, all things in Country, are Yirritja or Dhuwa too, such as our Yirritja homeland, Bawaka; and Guluruŋa, our Dhuwa homeland at the point jutting out into Port Bradshaw. We always have a relationship with them. Maybe they are the same moiety as us or maybe they are our mother or daughter, so we are caretaker for them. We always know.
This songspiral we are singing now, of the whales and of travelling, is a Yirritja song. That means we are the mothers for this song. We are the mothers because the Whale song connects with Bamatja, our daughter through gurrutu. This song is Yirritja, and we are Dhuwa, so here we sing the songs of the children, in their tune and with respect to them. That was what Mum was sharing with us in hospital.
And that is what we are doing here. We are holding and taking care of this songspiral for our mother, for all our mothers. And for our children.
We start from Bawaka, with the boat, a canoe, that takes us on this songspiral. We could start from many places, as long as they are Yirritja places and are related to the right clan. We could start at Daliwuy Bay or Dhanaya, with that boat. The boat is sailing forever, not coming back. We are sailing to infinity, going on and on and on.
This is a traveller’s story, a traveller’s song, a navigator’s song. This is what a family would do in a canoe. The one in the front would know the way to go and know if there are rocks they can’t go through. They know their way. The eyes are looking and the hands are paddling.
‘The arm of the paddler is knowledgeable, over there is Baŋupaŋu.’ When we sing that the arm of the paddler is knowledgeable, we are saying that the paddler knows where all the places are. This is a deep knowledge, held in their body, in their arm. They name those places, they know those places and so they enliven them. They honour them. They bring them into being, again and again.
The paddler is looking at those places, they know the places are just around the corner, over there. Even with the speedboat as we go out today, fishing or doing other things, we name the places, we know they are there. We know they always have been there and always will be there. It is an acknowledgement of those places. They are still there, were there all the time, are always there in the songspirals.
So our songspirals are in many times. They are in the past and the future. They are in the present. They are eternal stories that talk of our journey after death. And they are everyday stories that talk of us fishing in speedboats. Because—and this is important—the everyday is eternal too.
For Yolŋu, there are layers of depth and meaning in everything. In a songspiral, we cry about getting wet in the rain or feeling mädirriny (the south wind) and so many things that happen on Country. These are not inconsequential. The wind does not just blow. It communicates, it tells us things, it has its own story and Law, its own ceremony. The wind is its being and its becoming. It co-becomes with us and with Country.
So when we sing of a wind in a songspiral we are evoking all those things and more. Fishing and sitting and feeling the breeze are everyday things, but they are also sacred things, deep things, knowledgeable things, meaningful things. Sacred, yes, but not like a religion, not in a way that means they are more special or more linked to our creation and our being than anything else. Everything is sacred. We do not believe in this or that. We are those things. Songspirals are those things. Songspirals are life.
When someone sings this song, they are singing about the paddler seeing those places. So the singer is also with the paddler. The singer sees it, the singer is there. They are that water, and that paddler. We travel along the land. We travel along the water. They are thinking about those places, the trees, that raŋi (beach) where the paddler was born, where they grew up. It is all about remembering the paddler, telling a story about who they are, about their place and their journey, which is our journey too. Even a person who has never been there goes there, through those songs.
We sing, ‘Over there is Baŋupaŋu.’ We sing, ‘The arm of the paddler is knowledgeable.’ The paddler, that is us, knows the deep names, of places and of clans. Every clan has a deep name. Every clan has an essence. For example, that gum tree behind us is different from another type, from the other gum trees in Australia and the world. They are all one, but the leaves and the trunks are different, the soul within them, the essence. Every clan is like that. We are all one, the same, Yirritja and Dhuwa, but the deep name is different, the source is different. So in the songs, when we chant, we have to chant each clan. For the Dätiwuy, it is Djurdjurŋa, Birrwanga, Galirriŋbuŋ, and for the Ŋaymil, it is Dar’miny, Gamburrtji, Bulukmana.
We are reading the sea, we name the islands. We call out place names, islands, and this is deep knowledge. In the dance we have a paddle. We use it to point to the places. And we sing this stanza over and over, with different places.
We are singing about Balwarri, the whale; Nepaway, the open sea. We sing about travelling, in and with the boat. We see whales on the horizon, see the waterspout. We are that traveller and then we are the Whale. We see each other as we go past.
These songs, they are sung by different clans. There are strong rules about who can sing what, but there is overlap too. For each clan, there are some things in the songspirals that are shared, some that are different. We are in relationship with each other through the clans and through Yirritja and Dhuwa. Some animals belong with a specific clan, some insects and trees, but other clans can sing them too because they are also related to them through gurrutu. And the songspirals, they travel, they speak to each other. Another clan might start a different part of a songspiral, the next part in a journey. Every clan’s tune is different. The words can be the same—if they are all singing the Whale, that may be the same—but there are parts that the clan doesn’t have authority for, so they don’t sing it. Our songs spiral out, they link us together.
Songspirals connect our homelands. That is how they link us far and wide. Even when we are singing about one homeland, like Bawaka, it extends beyond that because our eyes can see out and we can sing about that as well. That land over there might belong to someone else but we sing about people walking along, the beach we can see, their feet touching the water.
Like the Whale, the songspiral travels far. Nepaway, the open sea. Songspirals are about the journey of animals and spirit beings, those beings who can be person, animal or both. The animal created something here and then it went to that land, so the clans share that animal. Our places have been created by animals or beings who travel. That is how the songspirals reach out, spiral out. Another clan will take up the next step of the journey, of the whales or the hunters or the ones on shore, watching. This way, our songspirals connect and travel, all the way across the Pacific and to Asia. We are not isolated.
We come from our place and we make our place and we are our place. That is what we mean by Country. It is the way we are connected, as yothu–yindi, child and mother to all beings and becomings. We keen milkarri and we bring ourselves into being, as we do Country. We follow and remake the paths of the whale and the open sea. Mother and child, they sing and they dance and they do milkarri. Our Country is land and it is sea.
Country is home, it sings to us and nourishes us. It is the feeling of home, the feeling of the seasons that communicate with us. It is all the beings of home. It is everything that we can touch or feel or hear or sense, and it is everything beyond that too. It is everything that belongs in Country, with Country and as Country, including us. And it is the relationships between all those beings too. We come into being together.
Mum was the first child and daughter for Mungurrawuy Yunupiŋu, and her father taught her everything about the songspirals, the places, the deep language, the deep names, the ceremonial designs. She learnt from her father the way we younger sisters now learn from Laklak or Djerrkŋu. Sitting with them and doing milkarri. Sometimes, Mum would help her brothers out, telling them the place names, correcting them, telling them how to sing and what not to sing. Mum used to tell the men, ‘Don’t sing that way, that is not right. Follow me.’ She had such deep knowledge.
Mum was so very strong. No one would tell her what to do. She learnt that from her father and her mother. We daughters learnt from her. She would make the women and men shut up every time she was talking. Mum told us stories. Every time we heard her keen milkarri we would cry tears full of emotion. Us crying would make her feel proud. She was like her mother, very beautiful in the heart.
Mum taught us to weave. Sitting down talking, we watched her and started weaving. Stories were woven into the dilly bag. She used to tell us funny stories or tell us where to go to get the pandanus to weave our baskets or dig the roots to make our dyes. Mum was one of the first women to do screenprinting at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, not only producing beautiful art communicating culture, but artworks to sell near and far. Merrkiyawuy’s husband, Will, is a Gumatj man who looks after the family and is a good hunter; he works at the Art Centre and he encouraged her. Now her artworks enrich this book.
Mum was a good hunter; her father and mother taught her. She taught us to look for beehives, looking up in the trees for yarrpany, the Dhuwa bees, and down on the ground for barŋgitj, the Yirritja bees, which nest there. We’d look up and down to see the two kinds of bees and their hives. When we went out hunting mud crabs, she would show us how to be still and look for their outline. When we looked for mussels she would show us how to see their breathing holes. She showed us how to look for snakes, for the tracks as the snakes move around. She told us how when she was young clans weren’t allowed to go into another clan’s land. If you see a pond of water, she taught us to use it like a mirror. Don’t drink right away, but lean down and pretend to drink in case something is going to attack you.
Nanukala holding her grandmother Laklak’s dilly bags. (Authors’ collection)
She took us out every time she went hunting for food or gathering pandanus, and she would always have her grandchildren with her too. That way we learnt how to be independent, not to be lazy, how to take what people offer, how to have strength for our children. When she collected food, she saved it in a basket and shared it. She taught us to do this too. Now we are putting our knowledge in this gay’wu, this dilly bag, and we share it—mother to children to grandchildren—and we ask you to share it with your family.
During the land rights days in the 1960s and 70s, all the mums, especially our mum, travelled around with the anthropologists who were helping with land claims, naming places, singing songs, and showing them which clan groups belonged to which area. They went everywhere camping. It was hard work. All this hard work eventually helped us get our land rights. Mum knew so many places, as she had travelled around with her father so much. She was number one daughter of the Gumatj clan. All the second daughters were taught by her. They had to sit down, listen to stories, cry milkarri.
Mum had the idea of doing milkarri at the Yolŋu Garma Festival. This was when Garma was starting in the late 1990s. It was small and run by the family then, without any buildings or electricity. Garma is about celebrating and sharing culture and is now one of the best-known Indigenous festivals in Australia. Mum used to cry milkarri, for the dawn, for the land. We would wake up listening to her crying milkarri, so beautiful. Mum then had the idea of making it an ongoing part of Garma. In Yolŋu Rom, when people come from a far Country we welcome them crying milkarri; that is respect, and with her guidance it has become a really important part of Garma. In 2003, when the Art Centre created the Gapan Gallery, an outdoor gallery showcasing the community’s art, Gaymala keened milkarri to open it, welcoming people to Garma. We still do it today, opening the Gapan Gallery with milkarri and doing the dawn milkarri at every Garma Festival. But now people join in from different clans. Even young people are starting to do milkarri. Mum said when I am gone I want my sisters to carry the milkarri on, greeting the dawn. And we have carried this on, and it remains so beautiful.
When Mum passed away, the church service was full of people. Yolŋu and ŋäpaki, so many, we weren’t expecting it.
Our mother, as she sang to us in hospital, sang that body of water, was that body of water, was the boat, was the whale travelling through time, travelling down towards the deep blue ocean and coming to a place where the other whales are playing and roaming. This was our mother. She is still our mother, singing of the whale, the open sea. Country is her and she is Country and so are our tears both then and now.