Wurrumila is ready to walk to the canoe. Country has told him that the time is right.
In the songspiral, we sing about walking towards the boat. Warrinda birru birru, that’s the name of the canoe. He is walking with the paddle over his shoulder, on the sand down to the warrinda birru birru. As this is sung, so we dance him walking down.
‘Weh, weh,’ the men sing with a particular beat. They step and jump on one leg. In the dance, they walk to the boat, they are him walking to the boat, walking with his paddle. And we call out the names: the names of the boat, the names of the paddle, the names of the hunter. All this we do while Wurrumila and the dancers walk down.
Rrawun walks down at Bawaka, showing Kate, Sandie and Sarah the steps, chanting the names. His feet on the white sand, the sun, the wind blowing sand onto the tarp. All these are one: Rrawun and us, Wurrumila himself, the women and men who have been sung as Wurrumila through the generations, the ceremonies held, the milkarri keened, Goŋ-gurtha and the fire, the songspirals and the connections they bring, this time and all times.
We sisters and Marri’marri, our mum, the Goŋ-gurtha, we look on. This is our role as Djungaya. This is the balance between generations, between women and men.
And then they stop. Wurrumila is at the canoe. And now they must push the boat down to the water. First, though, they put the paddle in the boat. Because in manikay, if someone walks down and starts to push the boat without putting the paddle in it, the old people will say, ‘He’s still learning so we’re going to put the paddle in the boat. You can’t push the boat while holding a paddle.’
This is part of the learning, part of learning culture and how we pass that knowledge on through the generations, how the songs spiral out and on and on. The old ones teach the young ones. We learn from the young ones too.
When Mayutu was small, her grandmother Gaymala would come over and teach her. She can’t remember it now, she was too small, but our sister Ritjilili keeps this story alive for her. And now Mayutu tells it, ‘Ŋamala Ritjilili lived across the road from us with my grandmother. I don’t remember but I knew it. And Ŋamala Ritjilili told me that every morning my grandmother would say, “I am coming over now to see my granddaughter. Get ready!” I have to, I am meant to carry on my culture.’
We used to hear Mayutu’s high voice from a long way away, ‘Here I am, Manyi.’
Mayutu has her own journey of learning culture. She went to kindergarten in New South Wales, far from Arnhem Land. As she says, ‘So that is the time when you are learning how to talk, how to learn, and because I was there I lost it, I lost a bit of my culture. That is why I talk English all the time. But the last couple of years I have made an effort to talk my dialect, Dhuwalandja, and Mum has been helping me with the structure. I am talking to Yumalil, Djawundil’s granddaughter, who is my little namesake. I have wanted to be there to watch her grow up, to grow her up and make sure that I am her namesake, and make sure I can talk to her in Yolŋu matha. It’s important that I talk to her in Yolŋu matha. And consciously I am trying to learn. My Ŋamalas, my mothers, are keeping me close and they teach me and talk to me. I’m Yolŋu and it’s my job. Mum met Dad and they had me but that doesn’t change my responsibility. I’ve got ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous, in me and Yolŋu in me but that doesn’t change the fact that I am carrying the Yolŋu culture on.’
As Mayutu learns, she also feels a responsibility to carry and share culture. She decided that she wanted to introduce more Yolŋu culture into her school, Nhulunbuy High School, in the nearby town of Nhulunbuy, when she was on the Student Representative Council. She thought, ‘We are on Yolŋu land.’ She taught teachers before school each day. For Mayutu, putting Yolŋu matha into the school is about respecting Yolŋu culture first and then other cultures. Mayutu explains, ‘First I made a slideshow of animals and trees and things. I told the teachers the Yolŋu names for them and how to pronounce them. I showed them that each of these are split into Yirritja and Dhuwa. Then I told them about the importance of names; they’re not labels, they have true meaning behind them. The teachers were good students and said, “Thank you, Mayutu. Now I understand.” I told them it takes practice, like trying to perfect a trick on the skateboard. Now I don’t know whether it was because of that but they decided to build a boarding house at my high school to support the Yolŋu kids from the homelands in North East Arnhem Land. I said, “I’m tired of not seeing Yolŋu kids in my school.” Now they can come and stay at the school and still be on Yolŋu land and learn to live in both worlds.’
Family down at Bawaka: Galpu (Samson), Ruwu (Amelie), Gara (Cadan), Mayutu (Siena), Dawu (Heather), Gawiya (Mikayla) and Nanukala (Grace). (Authors’ collection)
Banbapuy adds, ‘It’s good to have a Western education but you’re still Yolŋu. It is right to have other education too, Yolŋu education.’
Merrkiyawuy says, ‘The students need people there to make them feel comfortable and make sure they’re learning what they need to learn.’
Living in both worlds and keeping Yolŋu culture strong means a lot of learning. And there are lots of teachers: the mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, the old people, aunties and uncles.
It’s like that big boat that Wurrumila will hunt in as he continues his journey. We need lots of people to push the boat. In the songspiral, some push and some pull the boat, the big canoe. That is in the dance. We heave it down the sand to the water, saying, ‘Oooooh weh. Oooooooooh weh.’
In the dance the dancers create that movement. With their hands they pull and push the boat together. ‘Oooooooo ooooooh, weh weh.’
Now the boat is in the water. Before Wurrumila jumps in the boat, he must sing. He stands with his arms up in a special shape. With his hands over his head, bent at the elbow, he holds his spear and stands with his power ready to go hunting.
His hands are up representing the cloud, representing the cloud beneath the sea, the reflection of the cloud on the ocean’s still surface. This is the cloud you see across a far distance in the ocean; the small cloud you see reflected in the sea. He’s telling himself, ‘I am like that cloud that stands in the far distance in the ocean.’
Rrawun puts his hand up at Bawaka to show us and he is that cloud too. He is Wurrumila and the cloud and himself showing us, teaching you.
As he stands, Wurrumila is empowering himself for the big hunt. He might be getting whale or dugong. He is calling the names, the different names of the hunter: Bäpa’yili, Wurramala, Lanytjun Dharra, Wurrumila, standing tall and strong. In the songspiral, we always do that, call his name. Wurrumila, a great sea hunter in his time, in the beginning.
From there, we feel emotion. We feel like the spirit is ready to hop on that boat. Honest, sometimes we cry, we feel our brothers or sisters who have passed away on that boat, on that same journey. They’re dancing with us. We feel the motion, their presence. We feel their help. Then we start crying milkarri. We think about that person, when they were alive, what they saw, seeing the fire. We don’t keep that to ourselves, we express it through milkarri. It’s healing.
Our memories are released through milkarri. We don’t keep them bottled up in our bodies. It is healing and healthy. We do it in the song and in the open. People see us keening, singing. Tears may roll down the men’s faces as they think about their fathers or sons as they share the feeling of being a hunter. It is driven by our feelings.
The men might sing about Djambatj, a person who provided for the family, getting fish, turtle, dugong. The women crying milkarri might go, ‘Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, djambatj-djulŋi, our dearest hunter. You provided all the meat and were a very good hunter.’
Or we might cry for the dulŋay-djulŋi, the one who is an expert at gathering bush tucker and maypal. We might sing milkarri, ‘Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, dulŋay-djulŋi. You’ve done well in collecting yams, gathering bush tucker, getting maypal for us.’
With the milkarri, if you see the fire, you start straight away singing the fire. We cry tears of milkarri for the fire that’s started from the Goŋ-gurtha. When we see it, we feel the one who has started the fire, the Goŋ-gurtha. The fire burns from Wuymuwuŋu.
Even though you may have passed away a long time ago, for Yolŋu you are still alive. Why? When we sing we always think about that person. It doesn’t matter if they passed away twenty, thirty years ago, we can still think about that person. Because the manikay, the song, tells the story of each particular person’s journey.
When that person was alive, they saw the hunters go out to get dugong or whale, pulling the boat into the water, going out and paddling, that person saw the Goŋ-gurtha’s fire burning and saw how the gurtha, the fire, lights up the islands along the coastline. And then we see the hunter. We stand by the fire we have lit and we see afar, another hunter on their journey. From there it goes back around and starts again. We see the hunter.
Goŋ-gurtha is a celebration of someone’s life. When we see the cloud that’s that person seeing the cloud. They’re not there to see it, so we keen and sing to make the person and the cloud alive together. It is the same for the land too. If trees have been damaged by mining, if there is death or destruction, or if Country hasn’t been visited for a time and is missed, we sing it to make it alive. We feel Country with us.
Things that happened a long time ago are with us now: people and Country. The songspirals hold us together, the songspirals and Country, the winds and the animals and all the beings that communicate with us. It happened then, it will happen in the future, and it happened now, in this season, in and with this place, through the songspirals.
Even the starting point is with us now and always. The land sang itself into existence and it still sings. At the beginning of time someone had to talk for the land, it was quiet, nothingness. And then it began with the sound from deep within the water, ‘Hmmm hmmm’. That was the starting point. We know that is the water from the land; in all the songspirals, that is where it all began, life and language begin. The first language was the ‘Hmmm’ from the songs, the sound, the sound that we make. Without dhäruk, without language, there is bäyŋu, nothing.
Water is life, knowledge, and what came out of the water is sound. On a baby’s head, the Milŋurr, the fontanelle, that is where the water came out, the knowledge, like on the Wapitja given to Laklak. So, we have water and we have fire. These things have knowledge, are knowledge.
Wurrumila, Goŋ-gurtha, they are here now. Not only Wurrumila, not only Goŋ-gurtha, but our other ancestors. They still hunt with us, look after us, show us their ways, and that is why we always announce ourselves, to let them know we are coming, because they are still around.
Merrkiyawuy remembers the time she went with Bambuŋ and Mayutu to the Wessel Islands and she felt this connection, ‘We got there, and I said to the others with us, “Wait, we will go onto shore first, me and my children.” We went on the boat. I got onto shore and announced us to our ancestors. I said Bamatja’s name and her brother, the old man, Daymaŋu, he was like the king of that island. He was my great-grandfather but he was also my child, through gurrutu, the cycle of kinship.
‘I called out, “Helllllooooo, waku! Helllllooooo, child. We are here. You don’t know me but . . .” I told him who I was, and my children. I announced myself and we walked. And Mayutu looked. One of her names, Mitjparal, is the name of the Wessel Islands. There was a little cave on the beach and bigger caves up on the hills, caves with handprints all on the walls. Mayutu looked and said, “Mum, I can see something there.”
‘I said, “Careful, it might be something dangerous.”
‘She said, “No, it’s fine. Look, that is a swag.” She looked in and found a brand-new swag, a beautiful pink canvas bedroll used for camping.
‘It was a gift from one of her yapas, her sisters, the old one there. So Mayutu is yapa to her great-great-grandmother. That is gurrutu. Mayutu has a link with that one.’
Even though no one lives on the island now, they are still there, all the time.
Time is co-existing. We are with them. They are in their time. You are in your time. We are in time together. We feel them. Wurrumila, a great sea hunter in his time, is here now as he was in the beginning, as he will continue to be.
We know the tide is controlled by the moon. Nowadays we look at watches, but we still look at the tide and the moon to do things, like Wurrumila does. The full moon is good for getting turtle and crayfish because the tide is really low at night-time and it is good for wäkun, mullet, too.
When we keen milkarri, it takes us back. We have travelled. They have travelled. Wurrumila the hunter has travelled, as have those who have passed away. We know where their land is, a person who has never been there can go there. We are thinking about those trees, that raŋi (beach), the person, when the person was born, when they grew up. It’s all about life, what happens when they’re alive. We are all part of the ecosystem. It’s memory and actually telling a story, remembering that person, Country, what you’ve seen, what we hear.
Milkarri tells a story of a person or being that created life or that was there creating the land. As we tell the story of Wurrumila here, we say ‘he’ because this is the ancestral hunter but the Wurrumila songspiral may be for a woman too. We are all here creating and re-creating life and the land. And then is now. It all co-exists. It is all here.
For Wurrumila, now that he has walked down to the canoe, he gets in the boat. He begins to paddle. He is pointing. It is the feelings of the ocean, the feelings of the wind and the feeling of the floating of the boat. He knows that it is the right time. He is getting near to the destination, pointing back to the island. He does this with his arms. The dancers do that. We sing and do milkarri. He is connecting to the land, pointing at the different spots to make sure he is going to the right spot to get the meat.
He uses the harpoon to point. He sees sea grass that is eaten in a certain way. He knows that the whale or the dugong is travelling and which direction it heads. He sees that in the grass and the water. So, then the hunter will know which way to go. It’s like reading the wind, holding up the marrwala, the paddle, to make sure we are on the right path, making sure we are going the right way. It teaches us and connects us and makes it all again.
Wurrumila is pointing to the gamata, the sea grass sanctuary area. Wurrumila is pointing, and behind him are the paddlers. They have to adjust their pace and direction depending on what Wurrumila sees. With the buŋgul, the ceremonial dance, we re-enact Wurrumila. He is pointing, they are pointing, Rrawun is pointing, and in their mind they are going, ‘Which way to go?’
They all become as one, as the sea, thinking which way to go, on the sea, floating. Where to get dugong.
We may come back with nothing; sometimes we come back with something good. But the best hunter knows where to go. Even though it’s rough or murky, the best hunter will come back with turtle or dugong. Like Wurrumila, the one in the songspiral. We are re-enacting him now. He is who we would be.
And beyond this, we can tell you, it’s not just the hunter’s song. It’s about all the family’s journey. It is all about the flames, lighting the fire, caring for ourselves and Country. Goŋ-gurtha.
The song is the person who goes hunting, but it is also the family going on a spiritual journey. The hunter guides the journey. The hunter is the one who is guiding the journey to get the family a feed, ŋatha. It might be a woman or man. It is not just one person’s manikay. That’s why it’s more complicated to understand the songspirals. It’s got layers of meanings inside, it is a spiritual journey.
The spiritual journey is hard, it is difficult. It takes time. We must listen and learn from Country, like Wurrumila. We must be in and with time. And the journey links with other journeys, other families and other hunters. We know this through Goŋ-gurtha, through its connections with the songspiral that Marri’marri keens. For we see the smoke on the horizon and we connect. Goŋ-gurtha is the keeper of the flame, the one who has been successful in their hunt. Goŋ-gurtha lights a fire. Goŋ-gurtha lets us know with the flames and the smoke. We see the flames on the horizon.
And the women see and keen milkarri for the deceased person. The one who passed away can see the land and the fire. They are the hunter. Through our keening, that person is there, through the songspirals. It reduces the distance between the deceased person and the person singing or keening.
They have undertaken their spiritual journey. They have hunted. They lit the fire.
Oh, my dear, you saw everything with your beautiful eyes.
With your nose, you smelled the smoke.
With your ears, you heard the bird singing.