We sing of special places, particular places. Nothing is abstract or general. Of the place between sunrise and sunset we sing, of the way of Baway. The way of Baway is a place to the south of Yirrkala, between Groote Eylandt, an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the mainland. It is a region between sunrise and sunset where there is nothing except the ocean. We talk of all of Arnhem Land, our Country, with care and attention. While Baway is the middle, Miwatj is the head and these are the people of the sunrise, and Yaŋara, in the middle of Arnhem Land, is the tail, the sunset.
The whales surface and play, circling, breaching. The whale hits the surface of the water with its tail. This is the path for the whale.
As we share with you about the place between sunrise and sunset, where the whales swim with open mouths, we are sharing a version of Wuymirri that Mum did at a funeral, for her grandson who passed away. She was the first Gutharra, because she was the eldest child. She has liya-ŋärra’mirr; this means knowledge inside the head, and Mum had that knowledge.
As Mum was doing milkarri for her grandson, it is he who is singing as he is paddling that journey. It is the paddler singing the song, but the paddler is looking through Mum’s eyes and she is singing. She is the eyes of the paddler; it could be in the past or in the future, but it is also the grandson who has passed away, in spirit, so Mum is guiding him along. It is the perspective of the ancestral being.
We use first person and say, ‘I am now seeing . . .’ as it is more respectful. It does not impose the story on another person or assume anything of them. If we used second person, saying, ‘You are seeing a whale’, it would be less respectful, as it is telling someone what to do. To say ‘I am seeing’ invites others who understand and follow Yolŋu Law to sing the journey, to be that person too.
When a woman cries milkarri, everyone stops what they are doing. Milkarri is what is happening. The person listening to that milkarri can put their own father in that boat and visualise their father or sister or anyone who has passed away, paddling that journey. When it comes time for a person to pass away, they themselves will have already travelled that journey many times. They took the journey accompanying loved ones who had passed. Now it is their turn and others will accompany them.
When we sing, we are with them, we are part of it. We don’t usually see our self but we see the land. Perhaps we are beside or underneath, or flying above them, accompanying them. We are in another dimension. The time is now, when we sing. We go to that dimension. It is the milkarri. The milkarri is so strong, we cry and sob, it takes the body, it transforms. The dead person is there, almost like a hologram, an avatar. It’s that spirit’s journey. We can see it in our mind, yet it is real. That is why people join in, why they cry: they can see it.
We sing whales swimming with their mouths open, scooping water, filtering fish. We have travelled with them, as them. Now we are part of a pod, flipping and jumping, playing and roaming, feeling the water on our skin. As we play, we know the places. We sing Dhawulwulyun, over there, where the whales or the manta rays are feeding, diving with their mouths open, going down. As we sing, we are connecting, remaking, and when we arrive at a place we sing towards the next place, connecting with it, remaking it. Forever.
The way of Dhawulwul, where the whales are feeding, where there is krill, where the clouds sit on the horizon. Rrawulwulyun is in the distance, far away where the people are. There are so many of them. So many people at that place, a group of people. We sing for those people, thinking of those people. The ones far away, visualising them.
At the same time Rrawulwulyun is also an action. The action of the whales when they open their mouths and filter the water to get the fish. The whales are there, flipping, jumping, playing and roaming on their journey. It is the water going into the air from the whale’s spout that makes the cloud, the clouds on the horizon that show the whale’s journey. Sometimes we paint the whale with triangles, the clouds on the horizon.
As we sing, as we cry milkarri, we tell a story. We tell of the contours of the land, the contours of ourselves. Songspirals are a map of Country. We are seeing Country as we fly over it. When we sing or hear milkarri, we fly. We see our self flying through the land, like a bird. We see our soul, sand, land, soil, the grass. The vision of the ground from above, the landscape we travel past; our mind is like Google Maps, we see all through the song.
When we do or hear milkarri, we travel through Country, the song takes us there. We see everything—the soil, the rocks, the leaves, the sea, bäru (the crocodile) making a nest, lightning, everything. The songspirals tell us where everything is, the best place to get fish, to get a spear, gara. They tell us where not to go and where best to go. They describe where the ganguri (yams) and other root crops are, where you can find fresh water, where you can find the kangaroo, the emu. Sometimes milkarri tells us where special areas are. This is the map they make for us, the map of Yolŋu people. Songspirals describe everything, so that you see it, you know where it is, you could go there and gather it. Songspirals are a route. Songspirals walk through the land. Songspirals tell you which is the shortest route, which is the longest, one place to another. Songspirals weave Country together. Songspirals are our foundation.
That’s how Yolŋu people see things. That’s what we learn when we are children. We learn this map. Instead of driving across the landscape, we learn from walking and telling stories: mums, uncles telling us ‘this area is Yirritja’, ‘this area is Dhuwa’. All across Arnhem Land we learn what is Yirritja and what is Dhuwa. The songspirals teach us this. Our Elders teach us this. We have to walk with the map in our head. We are mapping the land. With the song, it gets us to the place we go.
Women learn by crying milkarri. When we cry our milkarri we are singing the map. We are singing about the dangers, the goodness on the land, what we will find, how we are going to find it, how we are going to survive. The manikay, the ceremonial singing, with the contributions of women and men; the buŋgul, the ceremonial dancing; the ochre body painting, its design; the yidaki; the bilma—they all have to be right. The women’s tremulous voices keening the words, the men with their lower-pitched singing, the richness of sound and movement and emotion, the rising dust and sand, the vibrations through the air, the beings of Country coming together as one. This is the land that is never shown to the rest of Australia. We are sharing a layer of this with you through the milkarri in this book. It is in the milkarri, in the bilma, in the movement of the dancing. It is all a map for Dhuwa and Yirritja.
Songspirals are a bit like a Yolŋu GPS; well-trained people use them. When we are lost somewhere we will follow the stars. We will follow the stars and also we will follow the wind. If we are lost somewhere in the bush, if we see leaves blowing from the east, it could be telling us that we are in this area and that our family is this way. Without the songspirals we couldn’t know Country. That’s why ancestors gave us everything for our survival. Like the fire—when we see the fire we know where we are going. As we will share with you later, the fire guides us.
That’s why it’s important that we are sharing the stories in this book. It’s already written through our blood. Our ancestors recorded everything through the songspirals.
That’s why we have to learn. Songspirals are a university for us. They are a map of understandings. We have to learn how to walk on the land. Sometimes the songspirals tell us to avoid an area where we have no authority to walk on that land; this might be to protect us from danger or sickness. That’s why Elders say to always be aware and learn the map through the songspirals before we journey through those woods, those rocks. We need to understand Country for our own safety.
When we’re painting the songspirals, on our bodies or on bark, canvas or screenprints, we have to make sure we put the animals in exactly the same area, the same way we sing it. If a place is in the north, we put it in the north; if an event happens in the east, we put it in the east. The art is a map that tells new generations where the sacred areas are, where the riŋgitj (sacred place or embassy) is that belongs to that area. Part of our learning is to paint the songspirals the right way. The paintings are a picture of the songspiral, a map of Country in a deep and spiritual way.
When women keen milkarri, we are telling the story, we think back to our family, what we’ve done. We keen milkarri about the spirit, about the soul, about seeing our children and the land, about tens of thousands of years, about hundreds of thousands of years, about forever. We see the spirits; they are still here. So the songspiral is the journey of all animals, spirit beings, that passed through a place. And it is a journey that connects people and places. Mum’s song, Wuymirri, is a long songspiral that goes to Papua New Guinea and into the Pacific, to Fiji and beyond. Every place shares things with other places through the connections of the songspirals, but the combination of beings that pass through any one place at any one time is always unique.
Mum lived with her grandmother, her märi, on the Wessel Islands when she was small. She travelled around a lot with her mother and father in the canoe. She went from place to place, hunting and gathering, with her parents, moving around. That is how she learnt so much. Her father would tell her, ‘This is the place and this is the song that belongs here’, singing to her, telling her who the place belongs to. She didn’t only know the surface name of the place but the deep name of the place too. That’s why she knew every place, every Country around here. She travelled around until she was about twelve and then she went back to the mission at Yirrkala. The Methodists had established a mission at Yirrkala in the 1930s, drawing the clans from nearby areas into the mission.
In the mission days, things were different. If she went to school at all, it would have been just a week or two of a religious school and then they’d go off again in the canoe, paddling. Just her, her mum and dad, her brothers and sisters. She had four sisters, including Djerrkŋu, who helped sing this Wuymirri here. She had one brother, and also brothers and sisters from other mothers. Her father had four wives. The amazing part is that he kept them all together. That is unusual, that is how strong he was. They were a big family then. Her father’s sons include M. Yunupiŋu and G. Yunupiŋu, famous men. They have the same father but different mothers, all Gälpu mothers.
We wonder how they all fitted in the canoe. In a book by anthropologist Donald Thomson he describes how he saw the family pack up and go together like an army. That is what made us so close together and what keeps us strong now. We sisters always look after all the mothers, as there aren’t many left. We bring them mud mussels and other foods when we go hunting.
It is one of the rarest things we’ve seen, a man with so many wives keeping them all together. We say that’s why we’re here, because of our grandmother and grandfather, because they had so many skills. Our grandfather always had time to sit down and tell stories to the grandchildren. And he loved dogs. We had hundreds of dogs following the family.
Mum’s marriage was a promised marriage and she went to Rorruwuy, a long way to the west of Yirrkala, to be with her husband. She had us five girls and one son. Mum also raised Witiyana, her sister Djerrkŋu’s son, as well as Guluwu and Gärŋarr. Witiyana is so strong and has now travelled the world. That is what happens. If you don’t have children, or your children have grown up and are no longer in the house, you raise others. It is the same rule now. She had to raise one son so the son would carry on the songspirals, the stories. Mum and Dad then separated. My grandfather was worried about us and sent a message to Mum to come to Yirrkala. Mum decided it was time to go, so we walked together across Arnhem Land to get there. She wanted us to get an education.
Mum died first, on 10 March 2005, and Dad died soon after, on 2 April 2005. Their coffins were together in the morgue. She’d said to him, ‘You have other wives, but when we die we will be together.’ She knew! Mum is the first child from her father, she had all that knowledge, so she had to be buried back in her home and is laid to rest at Gurrumiya near Dhanaya, across the bay from Bawaka. One of Gaymala’s names is Gurrumiya. Her name was on that land, Gurrumiya, a land of the great chiefs, the ancestral Gumatj chiefs. The four chiefs, the four leaders of that area, the ancestors of modern-day Gumatj: Gätjiŋ, Daymbawi, Garrandhalu, Gurrmulŋa. This shows her specialness, because one of her names was that land. It meant respect and honour to bury her back in that place of chiefs, the ancestors of all Gumatj people.