We cry milkarri for Guwak at night. The milkarri starts at midnight or in the early morning, one or two o’clock, when people are sleeping. Really there is no time; in Yolŋu way we just know where to start and where to end. It is a beautiful ceremony.
Two Djungaya climb trees; one climbs up one tree, and the other another tree. One calls out, ‘Guuuwaak.’ It is the call of Guwak, a beautiful, high sound that rings clear through the night. The other responds, ‘Guuuwaak’, an echo. The Guwak calls and the echoes reach from one Country to the next, the sea and the sky, up to Milŋiyawuy, the River of Stars.
The call of the nightbird wakes us up. You can hear the sound of Guwak resonant in the darkness.
The women start keening as they wake with the sound of the call, remembering the passing of their loved ones, maybe ten years earlier. In this way we respect those who have passed. It doesn’t matter if someone passed away twenty years ago. When we remember and keep alive our connection with loved ones, it is like a happy ending. Our tears are for those already there, those waiting for us, those who have finally seen the heavens.
The Guwak songspiral talks about a person who has passed away. The spirit waits until Guwak calls out. Guwak and the person who has passed away will journey through the sky together. It’s like opening the gates to the heavens, to the universe and beyond.
Then, when it is our time, we wait to come across the universe. We fly, entwined with Guwak, guided by the Milky Way.
Guwak is a Yirritja bird; in English she is known as a koel. She is all black. She’s from a rocky mountain area of Arnhem Land called Latharra, away from the coastal area. That’s the journey, the Guwak journey. Guwak is a Yirritja song.
Guwak is a messenger, a bird that travels around as an envoy, picking up songs from the land, taking them to the promised land. So Guwak opens the way to the promised land, to the River of Stars, the land that lies beyond the universe. There people are waiting for us.
The Guwak songspiral that we share was sung by our son, Banbapuy’s son, Rrawun. He is Wäŋa Wataŋu, the custodian of the songspiral, and it is his responsibility to care for this songspiral through his father, who is from the Maŋgalili clan. Rrawun and Banbapuy worked closely to carefully write down and translate Guwak for this book. We are proud of our sons, knowing that they can carry on their responsibilities. Rrawun, in sharing this with us and you, is carrying on the work Rrawun’s father’s father, Narritjin Maymuru, did in the 1970s with anthropologist Howard Morphy. Narritjin Maymuru was a great leader, a ceremonial and cultural leader, and a famous artist. In 1962 he initiated and painted one of the Yirrkala church panels. This painting is another form of teaching, of understanding. The painting expresses the Law, and the same Law also exists in the Guwak songspiral.
In our family our grandchildren are Djungaya including Lirrina, Dhaŋdhaŋ, Yambirrwuy and Maminydjama. The children of our granddaughters, Mawunymula, Djamut Dhanaŋayala and Yumalil, are Gutharra. And if our other granddaughters Yambirrwuy and Maminydjama have children, they are Gutharra too.
The Guwak songspiral is the story behind Narritjin and Rrawun’s homeland, Djarrakpi, the land, the universe. Maŋgalili are related to the Milky Way. And they paint that as part of their stories and part of their unknown heaven. From the land to the universe and beyond.
Rrawun says that the story of Guwak is an unknown story to ŋäpaki. It is one that needs to be told so ŋäpaki can understand that there already are spirits up there, in the sky. We must care for space. When we talk about space, we know that there are people already there. Already. We don’t see this but we know this and this is passed on from generation to generation. Guwak is another way to tell people to look after the universe, everything within and beyond it.
Guwak journeys south, following the breeze. Guwak says, ‘For the one last time you will hear my cry.’ The sounds of Guwak will be heard in the River of Stars and on the earth.
We have Guwak in our family too. Our granddaughter and Rrawun’s daughter is Maminydjama. One of Maminydjama’s names is Guwak. Maminydjama is a very successful model whose modelling name is Magnolia. She travels around a lot, travelling as a messenger. She is a messenger of Yolŋu culture and strength.
The affinity Maminydjama feels as Guwak, to the Guwak songspiral and to Guwak’s role as a messenger, is very strong. We have woven some of her story through this section of the book. We spoke to her on the mobile phone, two of us sisters, Banbapuy and Ritjilili, with Sarah and Sandie, sitting on a sarong on the green lawn of Sarah’s home in Gumbaynggirr Country in New South Wales. Maminydjama was in Yirrkala, chatting to various people as they came past her during our conversation, but so enthusiastic and willing to share her story of being Guwak, a messenger, and living in two worlds.
‘Guwak—that is my name. I like my name,’ she said. ‘Yes, it helps me be who I am. I send a message, give a message to the people. Describing it is a bit weird. It is just my name, my totem. My modelling helps me be a messenger. I tell a story. I send a message about my hometown, my people, about simple things, really—respect, manikay, buŋgul—similar to how Guwak does. It sends a message. It informs us of a death, or someone coming, things like that.’
Maminydjama’s voice is clear through the phone. She sends her voice as a model and as an ambassador for the Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices) project of the Australian Human Rights Commission. She says it is so important for women to gather, it has been so long since women in our communities and around the world have been able to do this but that now is the perfect time for women to do women’s business, to come together.
Like Guwak, Maminydjama, her father Rrawun, and his grandfather Narritjin Maymuru have all travelled far. They have sent their message through art, painting, singing and modelling. They tell everyone that we are here.
When she reaches her destination, Guwak lands in a tree. She climbs and again calls out, chanting the names of the Yirritja places. The men calling in the night, in the dawn ceremony of the songspiral, call out, ‘Guuwaak.’ She is here, was here, will always be here.
We are, we were, we will always be here.