The Kimberley is an area of northern Western Australia - it's a few thousand miles that-a-way.
So, read this story and see if it makes sense to you...
IT WAS meant to be the Dreamtime set in stone, a celebration of reconciliation and a "revival of Aboriginal spirituality". But Wanjina Watchers in the Whispering Stone, an 8.5-tonne sculpture in Katoomba, has sparked vandalism and death threats.
Right, that first paragraph sets the tone and the location.
But the book offended many local Aborigines, not least for its illustrations of wanjina, a sacred creation ancestor of the Kimberley people in Western Australia.
So a white artist, based in Sydney, creates a sculpture that is based on works created by aborigines on the other side of the continent. How on earth would the local aborigines know what a tribe or "skin group" from 4000 miles away was and wasn't sacred? Oh, mobile phones and the internet - two "traditional" forms of communication.
"It's totally inappropriate for a non-indigenous person to be doing wanjinas, especially without permission," said Chris Tobin, a member of the local Darug people who works as a guide with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Who says that a member of the Darug people has any right to speak for another tribe? This would be like me, an Australian, commenting on Swedish rights and customs. The Darug people wouldn't have a frigging clue about the laws and customs of the Kimberly group. I'll bet that the only way the Darug people and the Kimberly mob can communicate is via English, as their native tongues would be utterly incomprehensible to each other.
"Aboriginal law is very specific on what you can and can't do with wanjinas."
Really? Show me the clauses and paragraphs that relate to wanjinas.
The owner of Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery in Bondi, Adrian Newstead, says local Aborigines have every right to be disgusted. ''Only a few Aboriginal artists ever win the right to depict wanjina, and only then after years of initiations and ceremonies. And then this artist rocks up and says, 'Bugger all that; I'll just do whatever I like'. "
Now we have an art gallery owner in Bondi of all places commenting on the laws of a group that live in another state, who speak a different language and have different customs and laws to the locals. Sorry to break it to the soft heads, but there was never an aboriginal people, and there never will be. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of separate tribes, or skin groups, when the white people got here, and they were not unified by language, culture or laws. I bet that 200 years ago, the Bondi mob and the Katoomba mob probably couldn't even talk to each other, and they're only 60 miles apart.
Then again, the Blue Mountains are very rough country. When Hume and Hovell went through them on their journey of exploration, I don't remember them writing about meeting any tribes in the Blue Mountains. I'll have to look that up. It's a nice place to have a cabin amongst the trees, but probably not a great place to live as a hunter-gatherer. Which if true, begs the question of "where the hell did this Darug people bloke originally come from? Is he a blow in from elsewhere?"
Matters escalated when she commissioned the Sydney artist Ben Osvath to sculpt the sandstone mural of wanjina. She describes the work as a "magic stone" with "special healing powers". The night before its unveiling on March 6 it was attacked with an axe.
OK, we are starting to go off with the fairies now. Maybe Obama can solve all their problems by purchasing it and making it the centre piece of Obamacare. The "special healing powers" should sort out the US health care system.
"Some of the locals are going on with the whole 'you are stealing our culture' routine," Osvath says. "But I am an art teacher, and in art it's anything goes."
I love it when Art and Aboriginal guilt collide. The leftie artists are always bleating on about how special aboriginal culture is - until some angry blackfella attacks their work with an axe. Or their house.
Osvath, who teaches at Matraville Sports High School , says there is now a "vigilante thing" going on in Katoomba. The sculpture's opponents have set up a website, which criticises Tenodi for holding in contempt "important spiritual beliefs''.
Ah, a website. A traditional aboriginal method for communicating with other tribes. I also love the bit about them being annoyed for "holding in contempt important spiritual beliefs". I am looking forward to this mob setting up a website next time someone attacks the Christian church.
Asked if she had sought permission to use the image, Tenodi says she did not need to. "It was actually the other way around - the spirits asked me to do this. They asked me to revive the tradition which has turned into dead knowledge, and I agreed."
"The spirits asked me". Yep, after the third bong. Now that's what I call a "smoking ceremony". And now she says that this has turned into "dead knowledge". What have the traditional custodians been doing? Why haven't they kept it alive? Oh, they're pissed all the time on sit-down money.
She calls the spirits "Those-Who-Know" or the "DreamTimeKeepers", "teachers from other realms" with whom she has taken an "oath of secrecy". She says she has been selected to "revive the spirituality from which the so-called Aboriginal elders have become so disconnected".
What a whacko. I think we will visit Katoomba today just to check this out.
17 comments:
Hi Boy
Reckon you're right.
Thought I think they're a bit mixed up, citing law instead of lore.
"It's a nice place to have a cabin amongst the trees, but probably not a great place to live as a hunter-gatherer."
True but there are some carvings and evidence that a number of abs lived here (I'm up in the middle mountains) hunter gathering, in caves. And a community of abs has lived in shacks at Katoomba near the old racetrack as long as the town's been there.
Food would have been scarce but they wandered a lot. Apparently Emu Plains was where a big annual gathering took place, probably because some abundant tasty food like tree nuts was in season, and all tribes would show up and parly, settle scores etc.
But I agree with your general point - that abs are hoping we don't notice that their common culture is a recent invention totally reliant on 'white' culture. They're a sly bunch though, one local elder put it to me, 'If a guy in the North hopped on an Indonesian boat and took a ride up the coast, then that was 'his' boat see? He had boats when he needed them, why trouble to build his own?' He was half serious.
Great post Boab.
Next we will hear that the spirits have some sort of saintly powers that can perform miracles and even cure cancer.
Cheers
Dan
Not that I trust Wikipedia all that much, but here is the entry on the Darug:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darug_people
It says they lived in the foot hills of the Blue Mountains, and that the next mob were on the far side. I doubt many actually lived in the rugged areas of the mountains. I can understand travelling into the mountains for ceremonies and so on - but not actually living there. Too bloody cold in winter!
If by foothills you mean Springwood to Wentworth Falls and 'rugged areas' you mean Katoomba to Lithgow, then you'd be mostly right. Springwood actually has a practically ideal climate, more temperate than western Sydney plains. Bathurst gets more snow than Katoomba.
They've found signs of large groups staying at Kings Tableland Wentworth Falls, some 20k yrs old.
Remember there really are no mountains, it's a plateau dissected by deep gorges.
I've seen places near Hazelbrook where a small tribe could have lived perhaps permanently in sheltered caves, off possums maybe (we're infested with 'em). And axe-grooves at water basins show they did live there for some time. Some caves have black roofs from soot.
The aborigines would have kept it well burned with bushfires too. My experience is it's actually nicer after a fire, probably warmer with all that heat absorbent ash, soft underfoot. Plenty of food too.
Bruce, just a minor point based on my experience with campfires and black rofofed caves (I speak as someone who has been on heritage surveys in the Pilbara for the mining industry) is that the black is more often mold than anything else. Light a fire in the back of a cave and you would have to leave for smoke inhalation would soon kill you otherwise.
As for the Wanjina story, a couple of years ago someone took to daubing it around Perth suburbs with the traditional method of spay cans. We have a rather nice one in metallice blue on a footpath close to where I live which despite the council being happy to paint over other grafitti have left this untouched. I have come to enjoy it for what it is... a fun image, though totally inappropriate for this region. I remember a month or so later picking up some news item of how people thought these images were inappropriate to have them plastered on subways, buildings etc. To me it does look a bit like a religeous icon with a halo type appearance, but cannot comment on the legitimacy of its painting, though I believe I have heard about this "license" to paint the image before.
All of this human endevour makes the world an interesting place though
They also have hand stencils and primitive charcoal drawings Bigtones, but actually I didn't mention the black roofs as proof of occupation, rather to show how people may have kept warm when BoB said it would be too cold.
I wouldn't claim a cave had been occupied just because it has a black roof.
Sorry if this is confusing, I always have difficulty compressing my points into a few words.
I agree that current Aboriginal studies need a healthy dose of skepticism and every claim should be challenged.
As a kid I watched an ABC drama called Wandjina and thought it was the best Aussie TV show I'd ever seen. It's probably 'banned' now, since it claimed the Wandjina were visiting aliens from space.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426821/
Yup, good you see the other evidence, but a black roof is often misinterpreted as evidence of fires in caves (as I once also assumed) but have had the concept laughed at with a comment (have you ever lit a fire in a cave?).
I have been working near a mine called Wodjina 100km south of Port Hedland and tried to find the connection to Wandjina but counldn't remember how it was spelt and Goggle couldn't make the connection for me.
Thanks for your connection to the TV show.
Do you have the fainest clue what you're on about?
How on earth would the local aborigines know what a tribe or "skin group" from 4000 miles away was and wasn't sacred? Oh, mobile phones and the internet - two "traditional" forms of communication.
Exactly. Why make such a fuss about blackfellas using non-traditional communication methods? Lachlan Macquarie didn’t have a Twitter account either.
Who says that a member of the Darug people has any right to speak for another tribe?
The other tribe I reckon, Einstein!
This would be like me, an Australian, commenting on Swedish rights and customs.
But you comment on a lot of things you have nothing to do with.
I'll bet that the only way the Darug people and the Kimberly mob can communicate is via English, as their native tongues would be utterly incomprehensible to each other.
Funny that. Could be said about French and Germans too.
Now we have an art gallery owner in Bondi of all places commenting on the laws of a group that live in another state, who speak a different language and have different customs and laws to the locals.
If you did any research, you’d find that he represents a lot of Kimberley artists. He’s also one of the country’s most respected experts on aboriginal art.
Sorry to break it to the soft heads, but there was never an aboriginal people, and there never will be.
Break it to the soft heads? That’s pretty much universally accepted and always has been. Nothing wrong with solidarity though when there are pricks like you around.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, of separate tribes, or skin groups...
Tribes and skin groups are not the same thing. Not even close.
When Hume and Hovell went through them on their journey of exploration, I don't remember them writing about meeting any tribes in the Blue Mountains.
Hey genius, that’s because Hume and Hovell didn’t travel through the Blue Mountains!! They crossed the range in frigging Victoria! Maybe that’s why you don’t remember reading that the Darug have inhabited the Blue Mountains for thousands of years (surely you'd heard of the Three Sisters legend).
It's a nice place to have a cabin amongst the trees, but probably not a great place to live as a hunter-gatherer.
Bullsh*t. Possums, snakes, birds, fish, plants, goannas, roos. Lots to hunt and gather, mate.
I love it when Art and Aboriginal guilt collide. The leftie artists are always bleating on about how special aboriginal culture is - until some angry blackfella attacks their work with an axe.
This guy doesn’t sound like much of a leftie. He was paid $30K by some hippy shyster to rip off part of someone’s sacred beliefs and co-opt them for the sake of fleecing gullible spiritual types.
Ah, a website. A traditional aboriginal method for communicating with other tribes.
Idiot. You think websites are only for whitefellas or something?
I also love the bit about them being annoyed for "holding in contempt important spiritual beliefs". I am looking forward to this mob setting up a website next time someone attacks the Christian church.
WTF? It’s blackfellas behind that website. The Christians can set up their own damn site.
And now she says that this has turned into "dead knowledge".
If she were to visit the 3 tribes who do hold wandjinas sacred, she’d find it’s far from dead knowledge. They repaint the wandjinas twice a year.
Why haven't they kept it alive? Oh, they're pissed all the time on sit-down money.
I hope you get hit by a bus, you clueless racist f*cking bastard. Being right wing isn't an excuse for racism, mate. How much of a dickhead can you be? I know a lot of blackfellas, a lot of elders, and none of them – not a single one – is alcoholic or unemployed (the Kimberley mob have diamond money). Whitefellas on the other hand…
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story...
The local Aboriginal people were only quoted because a lazy journalist could not be bothered tracking down the Kimberly people involved.
The Kimberly Aboriginal people are in fact the ones who are most upset about this.
Thanks, white trash, for reminding me what an enormous supply of second rate people we have in this country.
Karl, in my opinion, not exposing any group to scrutiny, questioning and criticism is paternalistic and racist. We should all have an equal opportunity to have everything questioned and picked over.
I may be wrong, but to say that these things are off limits or beyond the pale is racism at its worst - you are all for the separate treatment of a people based on their skin colour. I am not.
Duh. Hume and Hovell started outside Yass. Should have known that - I've tracked down and had a look at the roadside marker. Should have talked about Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson.
Good on ya boy on the bike.
Boy On A Bike, I didn't even came close to suggesting any group should not be exposed to scrutiny or criticism. Nowhere do I say that discussion of these things is off limits - I strongly believe the very opposite. Please show me the part where I say I am "all for the separate treatment of a people based on their skin colour" (and isn't that what you were doing with your suggestions that blackfellas using the internet was somehow amusing?). What I was "all for" was exposing the inaccuracy or your arguments, your lack of facts, lack of comprehension, lack of research, and your inexcusably racist comment about all elders being drunk on sitdown money. That is an intentionally inaccurate generalisation based on your own racial intolerance and/or hatred - THAT is racism at its worst, and when I see it, I will fight it tooth and nail every time. It's one thing to scrutinise, but you stooped to lowest-common-denominator redneckdom there - there are now laws in Australia that could see you prosecuted if anyone thought you were even worth it. This country doesn't need atavistic scum like you. There is a big difference between scrutiny and racist bigotry. Of course I believe in freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean you get to say what you do without someone rebutting it, or exposing you as a fraud and a racist, which is all I was trying to do after all.
And you're still wrong about Hume & Hovell. They started at Appin, where Hume had a land grant (along with several of my early Australian ancestors). There's a monument there to mark the spot where they set out from. Hume was the real explorer though, having started at the age of 17 with his brother John and a local aborigine named Doual. Yass just happens to be the northern point of the Hume & Hovell Walking Track (established later to commemorate a section of their journey).
It is incredible what you comment on what you saw riding a bike is amazing how much you see, the dirty dirty city bay is amazing how much filth in the street
Hi Boy. I see this is an old blog but feel free to jump on your bike and visit the Kimberley so that you are better equipped to provide educated and informed opinions about aboriginal culture. I would be more than happy to be your guide.
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