Many of the stories we write for the Nature Knowledge Channel are about the consequence of disconnection, that is, people entirely disconnected from the country and continent in which they live, not all, but far too many. For Australia’s natural world, the consequences of this disconnection have been catastrophic. Something similar has been the outcome for Australia’s original peoples.

In contrast, and in this story, we meet the most connected of all.

“That night the wind punched its way to the east. It was cold and the star filled sky was crystal clear. At our feet, the mirror of wet sand reflected the night sky and, like the thousands of ancestors before us, we walked on a carpet of stars".

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As a basic principle, and this applies particularly to those countries we have close relationships with, and that includes Australia, learning about where you live or work and making a positive contribution is at the forefront of our thinking. As our relationship with Australia has become more tenuous in the last decade or more, as its culture and nature wars have impacted our personal lives and belongings in ways that most people around the world would find it hard to comprehend, Indigenous deaths in custody have continued at horrendous scale.  So, since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1991, which gave a hope for change, around 600 Indigenous people have done just that, died in custody. Child removal and child criminalisation continues unabated as Indigenous  incarceration rates reach new highs. And then there was the Voice Referendum.

As the destruction of Australian wildlife continues at ever increasing scale and ingenuity, the attacks and concocted stories promoting or defending yet more killing of Australian wildlife, the denigration of those who speak out by journalists ‘in hiding’, have also reached new highs. This week, among others, Australia’s Channel 10 and harder to comprehend, the Guardian (which also has a track record of this conduct), are examples of exactly that. It was not that long ago in Australia that a similar and prejudicial venom was directed at the first peoples of this land. We saw it and we lived it.

So let’s get back to what the Australian continent was and what it always should be.

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Baniyala

In the late afternoon we drive along the bush tracks surrounding Baniyala, the sunlight filtering through the forest, casting its flickering and light filled patterns on the land.

"This is a painstaking task, selecting just the right dead tree”.

The hollow larrakitj were used as a ceremonial vessel to contain the bones of the dead during mortuary ceremonies reflecting Yolŋu kinship systems, ancestral traditions and rights to land. The larrakitj remains significant and entwined in cultural practice and is now highly regarded as a contemporary art object. A most culturally significant collection was commissioned at the time of Australia’s Bicentenary (1988) from 43 artists from the Ramingining region not too far to the northwest of where Napuwarri and I were collecting his log. The 200 larrakitj or dupun were commissioned in 1987 and first shown at the 1988 Biennale of Sydney (commissioned by National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, where the collection is now housed).

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East Alligator River

Peter Hylands: You probably know this land like the back of your hand?

Nayinggul: Yes, I do.

Peter: So you have spent many times…

Nayinggul: Yes since I could walk. I understood from my father and grandfather, that is where they started off singing all these areas into my head, and I never forgot.

Peter: Country is so important, isn’t it? Can you describe some of your feelings about your country?

Nayinggul: Yes, I feel a responsibility all over my territory and my traditional land. The land where we are standing at belongs to me and Gumurdal, Oenpelli and the Red Lily area. But we go a little bit further to look at more of my country about 40km further up where I was walking, going hunting with my families. This land is my country my father and my grandfather and my grandfather before him.

Kore karrihdi bolkkime kunred kondah ngarrewoneng ngaye Jacob Nayinggul dja Donald Gumurdul ngarrewoneng kunred manu Oenpelli [Kunbarllanjnja] [Gunbalanya] dja Red Lily. Kaluk karribolknan kubolkwern Ngarduk kunred 40km kabalre mankabo dja kaddum kore ngahrey kore kunred ngadberre kunred ngabbard.

And now we are here at this billabong. The name off this billabong is Wulk [Welk] billabong, there is nothing no sacred site here just free land and there is another billabong the name of the billabong is Inkiw, my country.

This is my Traditional Land and I love my country. This land belongs to me and my father and all my children and grandchildren. I have stayed in my country for many, many years. All my grandfathers are all gone, passed away when I was a little boy. I got culture and my land, there is no other land that belongs to me and my children.

If white man comes and asks me for land I say no, this land belongs to me and my children because I love my country, it’s been here from generation to generation but when I pass, gone dead, all this land belongs to my sons and daughters and all my grandchildren.

They will look after the country, my sons and daughters and all my grandchildren when they grow up and become man and woman and have more children. They will look after the country and the land belongs to them.

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Dhuruputjpi

Djambawa Marawili, Andrea and I travel from Baniyala to visit the artist and elder Dhukal Wirrpanda at Dhuruputjpi. As we travel on the road to Dhuruputjpi, Djambawa sings his country and its sacred places.

“Yolŋu law is a constant in time and is set on solid and complex cultural foundations and is unlike the white man’s law that is ever changing”.

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Goat Camp

Albert Namatjira was given restricted Australian Citizenship, he was the first Aboriginal given this right and this allowed him to vote and to purchase alcohol. In 1956 he became the first Aboriginal person to win the Archibald (painting) prize for his portrait of William Dargie.

He chose ‘Goat Camp’ on the beautiful Finke River as the location for his home in which his wife Rubina and the seven children could live. Albert did much of the building work himself, burning lime and carting stone and timber. Aboriginal friends assisted him in the various tasks of preparing materials and construction. Standing where Albert once stood is an honour and we thank the family and our Aboriginal friends.

Albert died in August 1959 shortly after being released from prison in Alice Springs following a conviction for supplying alcohol to another Aboriginal person.

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Finke River country

We are in outback Australia and 140 kilometers to the west of Alice Springs and it is here at Illamurta Springs with Mr Abbott senior, that we discuss the tourist information signs at an old police outpost. It is the missing histories in these signs that shape the sadnesses we all feel today.

Why do we care about what really happened? Well it is about finding justice for the old people who once owned this land and who will never be able to tell their stories.

The first known punitive expedition against Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory occurred on the Cobourg Peninsula in December 1827. There were previous skirmishes, including British ships firing cannon at Aboriginal people, but these were at distance.

The last known massacre of Aboriginal people occurred at Coniston Station on 7 August 1928 when 17 Aboriginals were killed. As late as 1932 punitive expeditions by the Australian Government to East Arnhem Land "to teach the blacks a lesson” were averted by the intervention of missionaries and the anthropologist Donald Thomson. Police were involved in many of the massacres that occurred across the Australian continent, killing more than 6,000 Aboriginal people, including women and children. Many more are unaccounted for.

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The first time we met Bobby Abbott was when he visited our house in Central Victoria, he was at school then. What unfolded since that time has been a remarkable journey of achievement with a lot of hard work and desert adventures thrown in. We all shared the view that the way to stop the disadvantage that impacts too many Indigenous people in Central Australia was to set about improving the share of economic advantage that Aboriginal people in the region can access. So a fairer share and access to stable employment. So we set about that task and now a growing number of successful projects are the foundation for that change. What went before, the capture of most of the economic opportunity by non-Indigenous people, was not good enough and we share a deep determination that things will continue to change.

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Pormpuraaw

Syd Bruce Shortjoe was born in the Aurukun mission 1964. He speaks 9 Aboriginal languages and also English. His tribe is Wik Mynah tribe and his traditional country is North East and inland of Pormpuraaw. An internationally exhibiting artist, Syd’s prints, paintings and ghost net sculptures are a statement about his rich culture and personal wisdom.

In Pormpuraaw Sid learnt to speak the Thaayorre language. In his teens Sid lived with the Kugu, his grandmother’s people and he learnt those languages. He has told me often that these languages are very different from each other, sometimes the words are the same but they have a different meaning.

Like many Aboriginal people on Cape York in North Queensland, Australia, Sid no longer lives on his land, his tribe long since displaced from their lands. The lands on which they once lived now a cattle station.

“At certain times of year we may go to stay with relatives in different country”.

His tribe’s country is north east and inland from Pormpuraaw. A chance to visit country, once more, negotiated as part of land rights, a visit to scared sites and dreaming country. Still a difficult journey in a heart and in a soul.

“They make it hard”.

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On Friday morning, on a rather gloomy day in Melbourne somesunshine arrived in the form of a parcel from the Aboriginal community ofPormpuraaw.

"A world, one of which we are very fond, unfolds beforeour eyes"

In that parcel was the latest publication, a handsome book full of incredible art and amazing Pormpuraaw stories.

Pormpuraaw: Stories, art and language is the fourth book to be published by the Pormpuraaw Arts and Cultural Centre in the last five years. The first; Pormpuraaw: Totems, an Indigenous language resource, the second, Pormpuraaw: Art and culture and the third, Pormpuraaw: Cultural uses for plants.

So congratulations to Syd Bruce Shortjoe and Paul Jakubowski and team Pormpuraaw for another great book and thank you for sharing.

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Palm Island

"We were nature, we are the true children of the earth. The land is everything, it is a language, it is a song, it is a dance". Billy Doolan

Billy lives on Palm Island in Queensland. Palm Island, also known as Great Palm Island, and by the Aboriginal name Bwgcolman, is the largest of twelve tropical Islands in the Palm Island Group. The 'mission' settlement is named variously Palm Island, the Mission, Palm Island Settlement or Palm Community. The group of Islands is less than 20 kilometres from the nearest point on the mainland (Lucinda) and is 65 kilometres north of Townsville across the ocean.

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Roebourne: Sandra Hill

Well mum had a job so we did not think they would come, well from what I can garner and after many, many years she would talk to me about it. She did not expect them to turn up because dad was in the army so she thought they would leave us alone, because they both had jobs.

Anyway the policeman came from Port Headland, from Roebourne and piled us in to the car and said would you like to go for a ride, and of course what kid wouldn't, so we were driving around and we got up the road and us kids were saying okay, we want to go back to mum now.

We did not know what was going on, they just took us. We were taken to Roebourne Hospital and I do not know why but we were sedated with ether. Then we were put into the Old Roebourne Jail in a cell together and the door was left open. So we did a ‘runner’ and were caught down the road by the policeman. He knew we were going home to mum. Then they locked us in a cell, we just had mattresses on the floor in the Roebourne Jail.

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Alice Springs

On that hot and sunny day the dark clouds of division in the community weighed heavily upon us. And there was Christine at the microphone setting out a way forward through the many complex issues facing both Indigenous and non-Indigenous society in this place.

Since the intervention the number of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory in out of home care has more than tripled. I will not go into the details of what occurred but to say it generated fear in communities and was an act described by the UN for its failure to respect the rights of Indigenous people, its breaches of international human rights and its racially discriminatory policies. We were in Arnhem Land that year, immediately following the intervention.

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Talking Utopia

Our first visit to Utopia was around 40 years ago. It would be 25 years later that we visit Utopia again (Camels Camp) to make a film about Angelina. The joy of being back with our friends again will stay in our hearts for a very long time.

In 2011 Angelina Pwerle took part in an exhibition E(merge): two spiritualities. This extraordinary exhibition brought together two artists from two very different cultures, Angelina and Hu Qinwu, in the Space Station Art Gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District. The exhibition then came to Canberra where it was shown at the Drill Hall Gallery. This film was shown as part of the exhibition. Our film, Bush Plum, was part of that exhibition.

There are both differences and remarkable similarities in the work of these two artists, connected by the strength of their spirituality and their ancient Aboriginal and Chinese cultures. The works are beautiful and serene.

Far away from Beijing and a few weeks after the end of the Beijing exhibition, we visit Camel Camp in Central Australia, both Angelina’s home and workplace.

Angelina’s extraordinary success is reflected in her work that hangs in galleries around the world, including the Met in New York. Bush Plum has toured in major galleries in the US and Canada.

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Murujuga: 1000 generations to make it, just one generation to break it

We stood in our small and twisting valley, the ancient rocks piled high on either side of us, the hair on the back of our necks standing up in awe at what was in front of us.

There, peering back at us from deep time, a face, an image, probably the oldest representation of a human face on earth. There it was – carved in the rock before us, so many thousands of years earlier.

Over the many thousands of years that the Murujuga rock art was being carved, the local indigenous people preserved the art works of countless previous generations and they protected the land. The Yaburrara people, who lived there, led a sustainable lifestyle that lasted many thousands of years.

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Badu

“We speak our language. I am blessed that my father and my grandfather taught me the language and I speak it fluently, I am so proud of it. Language is the core of the culture. We are known today as Torres Strait Islanders after Captain Torres. Captain Torres and Captain Cook, they came through Zenadth Kes (the Torres Strait). That is when we discovered them. They didn’t discover us, we definitely discovered them”. Alick Tipoti

The Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology holds a collection of artefacts from the Torres Strait. These works were collected by Alfred Haddon, his first expedition was in 1888, the second in 1898-99. In total around 1,550 works were collected. Haddon continued collecting from these islands at a distance, sometimes commissioning new works. By the latter of the two expeditions Haddon had commented on the increasing difficulty of discovering more traditional objects, particularly such things as turtle shell masks. Some of the works collected are housed in the British Museum, but most remain in Cambridge.

Artists like Alick are a part of the resurgence and re-interpretation of Torres Strait Islander culture through contemporary art practice now occurring across the Torres Strait. And once more their work is being collected by art galleries and museums around the world.

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Erub

Erub is also known as Darnley Island. It is here Bully and Peter discuss some of the island’s history and Bully recalls his memories of the battle of the Coral Sea, so long ago in May 1942, and many more adventures of his seafaring life.

Torres Strait Islanders have played a significant role in the land rights movement in Australia. Bully discusses his role in the land rights movement.

With a long history, Erub’s residents have been at the forefront of the movement for recognition of Torres Strait Islanders' rights, with George Mye among the most prominent advocates of Islander interests from the 1960s to the 90s and Carlemo Wacando among the first to challenge the idea of terra nullius.

These efforts were to be successful, on August 7, 2013, Australia’s High Court handed down a decision recognising Torres Strait Islander native title rights to the sea.

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Peppimenarti

In the wildness of the Peppimenarti floodplain we spend the day with artists and elders Regina Wilson, Kathleen Korda, Margaret Kundu and student Joy, gathering traditional food plants. What a wonderful day it was.

Foods are seasonal, from April to December the tubers are pulled from the mud, they are separated from other plant material and cooked in the fire. From April to September the seed head is harvested, it can be eaten raw or cooked or ground and the ‘flour’ is used to make damper. We also peel the stems from the plants we collect and eat them raw, they are delicious. The Flowers can also be eaten. Not much is wasted.

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Bawaka

Laklak and Djawundil describe their lives and work at Bawaka. The blue sparkling sea and the white sand and lands with their stories, with their connections, with their patterns and rhythms and songlines.

Here is homeland, here is language, here is nature.

Our numbers are in the land. In your way, you see your mathematics in a book, our numbers, our mathematics, are in the land that we can see and we can walk. It is the knowledge. The language is strong because of the land. The language comes from the land.

We have one law, we do not change. In your world you change every day, every year. Our law we don’t change, because we have just one law. We don’t change.

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Yirrkala

My name is Ishmael Marika, I am a young artist and director at the Mulka Project. My work is filming, directing, editing and producing, working in the Yirrkala community and surrounds in Eastern Arnhem Land.

I thought about the film work because I worked as a ranger for five months, my father was a manager of the rangers. I liked the job, looking after the land and the sea, dealing with the feral animals and the weeds. I liked that job but I wanted to find another job to build my skills and change my skill level. Then it came to me that as a ranger I was looking after the land and the sea and feral animals and plants but I might move to the Mulka Project which was looking after the culture and the languages so I moved here and got this job because the Mulka Project stands for the languages, culture and some sacred stuff, so I am looking after these things for future generations.

We worry that the languages will fade away or maybe our culture or our skin will fade away. Most of the people will end up talking another language. Holding culture and holding languages, holding everything is really important for us because we have to keep the culture strong for the next generation and document everything, document everything that we have here from past to present. Document the culture and how it has changed from the past to the present. And maybe in the future it is going to be different to the past and present. If you look at the documents we have, it is really important for the future generations, for the young ones so they can keep this culture strong and keep it going.

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Around the world there are knowledge hotspots and these places illuminate human existence. These hotspots include the great universities, Harvard and Cambridge among others, and the great institutions, the storehouses of knowledge and creativity, the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Musée du Louvre in Paris and Milan’s La Scala and so it goes. These places draw us in because we need to know, to see, to listen and to share.

The Indigenous world also has its knowledge hotspots and in Australia’s Arnhem Land the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre is one of these places. Aboriginal culture in Australia is deeply knowledge based, a creative and spiritual force where art making, music and dance are at the core of culture, of law and sacred meaning.

Mulka means a sacred and public ceremony, to hold and protect.

There is now an intensity of knowledge production from the Mulka production team that is remarkable and of enduring cultural value to us all. The infrastructure and skills that enable this work include the recording studio, a digital learning centre and the cultural archive and all of it is within a framework of governance which maintains standards and in the framework of Yolŋu law.

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A discussion with Prince Charles

There are two actions that are both essential and possible in a globalised world. The first action is standing strong and protecting culture and language, the second action is the idea of projecting culture outwards and embracing the world.

When it comes to standing strong and connecting globally, the Yolŋu set the gold standard for us all. It is in this way and in April 2018 that Prince Charles visited Yirrkala in East Arnhem Land.

Today (9/4/2018) the Member for Nhulunbuy, Yingiya Mark Guyula, and many Yolŋu clan leaders (convened by Dennis Wanambi and Waka Mununggurr) met with His Royal Highness Prince Charles at the Buku – Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala. The Member for Nhulunbuy made the following declaration:

“This here is Yolŋu Land, we are sovereign people and we live by Yolŋu law".

"We have many difficulties with the Australian Government because they do not recognise our sovereignty. We need to correct this situation, for the sake of our children and their children, for our cultural survival, for our ancestors. We are the oldest living culture in the world.

I request, on behalf of the people standing before you, and the Yolŋu nations that you intervene on our behalf and take a strong position to acknowledge our sovereignty and promote a pathway to Treaty.

We are the only indigenous people of a Commonwealth country that does not have the respect or dignity of a Treaty with our people. Will you advocate on our behalf for our justice?

Please accept this letter stick and create a diplomatic passage for this letter stick from your highly respected position to the Prime Minister of Australia, in order to help our sovereign nations reach Treaty".

Prince Charles graciously accepted the letter stick.

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Langarra

These northern Arnhem Land island communities like Langarra have strong artistic and creative cultures. The nearby and larger community of Galiwin'ku, with its population of around two thousand Yolŋu people, was the birthplace of internationally famous musician G Yunupingu. However beautiful his work was, today is not for music, we are on our way to meet the weavers of Langarra.

The shadow of our plane dances on the waves below. Flying low is always a joy as the patterns of the seabed and land pass beneath us. Then we sight the small settlement of Langarra ahead, we fly in across the woodland below to check the runway and circle down back out across the sea and then low over the beach as we touch down on the gravel runway.

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Blue Mud Bay

Ever vigilant over his land, always looking, always knowing what is going on, there were native title and sea rights to reclaim and defend, Djambawa has fought long and hard to reclaim the sea for his people.

What is so deeply moving in this creative, intellectual and complex world is the way that the Yolŋu people have used art as sacred, as law and as protest.

A masterpiece of international art, the Yirrkala church panels painted in the early 1960s, were the first significant land rights statement by Yolŋu people. There were to be many more.

Art was to be used yet again as a weapon to defend land and culture. The famous Bark Petitions of 1963 were created to demonstrate opposition and resistance to the Commonwealth Government’s exclusion of Yolŋu people from decisions at that time relating to mining on traditional Yolŋu lands.

In such a way and many years later, did Djambawa and a generation of elders express a statement of knowledge, law and ownership by creating 80 bark paintings to oppose intrusions into their lands. Today these masterpieces of art are kept in the collection of the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

At last victory came, in July 2008 the High Court of Australia confirmed that the traditional owners of Blue Mud Bay have exclusive rights to tidal waters overlying Aboriginal Land. The ruling was to extend far beyond Blue Mud Bay.

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Ankabadbirri

There is a connection to land with the deepest of roots. There is a joy in the abundance of the seasons, people coming together to celebrate a certain harvest. Human beings interact, the living and the spirit world work together to maximise access to resources and to ensure successful collection of these resources. This is not only a co-operative thing, it is a protocol thing. This is what you have to do to get it right. There are forces in the world that are unseen and you have to communicate with them and continue an ongoing relationship with them. They have a responsibility and so do you. There is a total network of interconnectedness. Human beings with objects and human beings with spirit figures who interact with people and sing out to people to tell them this is the right time to harvest this thing, a calendar marker of the seasons. Also people interacting with places in the country like the scared sites to set certain seasonal processes into action. This happens around the same time each year for a given event and type of harvest and it is about people interacting with the metaphysical world to make the order of the universe continue in a balanced way.

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Find out more on Creative cowboy films’ Art and Culture Channel.

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