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| ISBN-13: | 9781742240725 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
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Gurindji Journey
A Japanese Historian in the Outback
By Minoru Hokari
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2011 The estate of Minoru HokariAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-072-5
CHAPTER 1
WHAT AM I DOING IN AUSTRALIA?
It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going to be one big saga of the mist.
Jack kerouac, 1957
WAY TO THE GURINDJI COUNTRY
'Why am I majoring in Aboriginal history?'
'Why am I, a foreigner – a Japanese person – interested in Indigenous Australians?'
'Why, in fact, am I obsessed with the Gurindji people and their country?'
These are just some of the questions that people have repeatedly asked and implied since I began studying Indigenous Australian history in 1993. There is no simple answer to these questions, because when I look back, it was just a sequence of related incidents that led me in this direction.
When I entered university as an undergraduate in Japan, my major was economics. At that time, I had a vague aspiration of becoming an economist or businessman. If I had continued studying economics, it was likely that I may never have heard the word 'Aborigine' – let alone 'Gurindji'. However, after two years of studying economics, I got bored with it. I started reading literature in the fields of history, sociology, philosophy and anthropology. I became increasingly interested in different cultures, and particularly interested in Indigenous Australians. For some reason, I was 'captured' by Aboriginal culture, and went on to do a Master's course to study Aboriginal history.
In 1995, I came to Australia to collect historical materials for my Master's thesis. My original plan was to do intensive research in Queensland. But one of the senior academics in Japan suggested to me that I might also look at the Gurindji people in the Northern Territory. He told me about the Wave Hill walk-off and their land rights movement. At that time, I had not yet heard the name 'Gurindji'. However, I could not get an air ticket to Queensland from Japan because they were all booked out. The travel agency said I could still buy a ticket to Darwin. Believe it or not, this is how I ended up writing a Master's thesis about Gurindji history.
By the time I completed my Master's thesis, I had a dream of coming to Australia to do my PhD and undertake fieldwork in Aboriginal communities. I applied for the PhD course. I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship and acceptance to study in Australia.
* * *
When I first arrived in Darwin in December 1996, my plan was to send letters and facsimiles to several Aboriginal communities asking for permission to visit. For fieldworkers, asking Aboriginal communities for permission to visit is such a difficult task. In order to grant you permission, they expect that you personally know some of the community members. However, without visiting the community, how could one know the local people? My supervisor told me that I should be prepared for disappointment. Some other colleagues said it was a matter of luck.
I sent letters and facsimiles to ten different communities asking for permission. The result was: seven communities ignored my application, two sent me rejection messages, and only one approved my application – this was from the Gurindji country. I could not help feeling this was destiny. I applied to ten different communities but received only one positive answer, from the Gurindji people whom I had studied even while I was in Japan.
I have no way to describe my excitement as well as extreme tension while riding a motorcycle to the Gurindji country. A lot of strange concerns came to my mind: what should I say when I first meet them – 'Hello', 'G'day', or something else? What if they cannot understand my weird English accent? Are Aboriginal people 'racist' towards Asians?
On 10 January 1997, I arrived in the Gurindji country at last.
THE GURINDJI COUNTRY
I shall now sketch some background details of the Gurindji country and the Daguragu and Kalkaringi communities within which my discussion of Gurindji history is situated. The Gurindji country is located in the upper reaches of the Victoria River. The landscape varies from hilly sandstone to grassland plains and scrubland. Although there are several large permanent waterholes which provide year-round swimming and fishing, the climate keeps a seasonal wet–dry cycle. Today, the food supply comes mainly from the shop located within the community. However, the Gurindji people often go out hunting, fishing or collecting bush fruits, and the seasonal cycle determines the location of such activities.
The term 'Gurindji' normally refers to the Gurindji language and to the speakers of the language. However, according to the current view, Aboriginal people who live in Daguragu and Kalkaringi are 'all Gurindji'. The Daguragu community is located within the Gurindji country at the basin of Wattie Creek, a tributary of the Victoria River, and the Kalkaringi community is about 10km south of Daguragu. The total population of the two Gurindji communities is about 600 people.
A close study of the social organisation and land ownership of Gurindji society is not the purpose of this book. Patrick McConvell and Rod Hargen have already explored these issues in the context of the Daguragu land claim. However, in brief, as with most of the Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley of Western Australia, the Gurindji have an eight subsection system of kinship-social categorisation: there are eight male and eight female subsections or 'skin names', and each person's 'skin' is based on a marriage rule. While there are many deviations, each subsection member is required to marry a certain subsection member. And their child's 'skin' is determined according to her/his gender and parents' subsections. Like many other Aboriginal societies, the Gurindji country contains many defined areas, and within each area there are related local descendant groups. They establish relationships along both paternal and maternal lines. The Gurindji person often calls such a defined area 'my country'.
After European colonisation, many Gurindji people worked at cattle stations as stockworkers. One of the biggest cattle stations in Australia was the Wave Hill station, located in the upper reach of the Victoria River Region, Northern Territory. The Wave Hill station was set up mostly on the Gurindji people's country. In 1944, the anthropologists Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt visited the Wave Hill station and surveyed the living conditions of the Aboriginal workers. According to the Berndts, Aboriginal people at the Wave Hill station received, other than meat, bones and offal, 'two to three pounds of white flour, sometimes with rising (to those requesting it); one half to one pound of sugar (often less), to which was added a small handful of tea (under one ounce); and one stick of tobacco (to those requesting it)' per week. Environmental damage by the introduction of cattle, relatively settled lifestyles, and the lack of young hunters and gatherers due to station work all limited their access to supplementary bush food. Only 68.4 per cent of offspring survived at that time. If such colonial exploitation had lasted a few more decades, it is possible that the Gurindji people would have literally died out.
In 1966, supported by labour unions and a journalist, Frank Hardy, the Gurindji people declared a 'pastoral strike', left the Wave Hill station and established their own community at Daguragu, about 20km away from the station. They carried out a nation-wide campaign for their 'land rights' and asked the station owner to return their traditional land. In 1972, after a long struggle and negotiation, Vesteys, the owner of the station, agreed that a part of the Wave Hill station would be returned to the Gurindji people. This episode gained the public attention of contemporary Australia, and remains an event that is deeply engraved on the memories of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, particularly in terms of the Aboriginal land rights movement.
This was roughly what I could learn about the colonial history of the Gurindji people from the already published literature. When I left for the Gurindji country, I was naive enough to expect that collecting oral histories would round out the above historical understanding; I was to collect 'useful' and 'good' oral histories as an academic historian.
* * *
Today, the Daguragu Community Government Council is a body representing the interests of owners and people associated with the Daguragu Aboriginal Land Trust (the area 'legally' defined as the Gurindji country). The council members, who are elected by the community members, mainly deal with funding, Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) and other activities, which are more related to 'kartiya [whitefella] business'. Many middle-aged and younger people today are working on CDEP, which includes road construction, making bread, arts and crafts, etc. Children attend a school located within the community.
'Ngumpin [Aboriginal] business' such as rituals or marriage arrangements are discussed and determined by gender-divided groups of elderly people. Like many other Aboriginal communities, the Gurindji socio-cultural space is highly gendered. Although I later found out that I was being oversensitive, I was careful not to spend too much time with female groups – I did not want to give the impression of 'stealing women' or of 'not respecting elderly men' to my main teachers. Even though I often went hunting and fishing with the younger people or elderly women, I spent most of my time with a group of elderly males while staying in the community.
MEETING OLD JIMMY MANGAYARRI
For a while, as I planned, I asked them questions based on my original research topic. I received answers which were similar to what I had read in other academic accounts. The people were happy to answer my questions, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves more when they taught me their language. This is worthwhile emphasising: the first thing they wanted to teach me was their language. I thought they were 'testing' me. Was I just another interviewer like they had met a hundred times before, or was I ready to be involved in 'their way' in a deeper sense? I picked up as many words as possible. People laughed at my peculiar accent and pronunciation all the time.
They also gave me one of the subsection terms or 'skin names': I became 'japarta'. People started to refer to me using kinship terms: 'I'm jampin, I call you jaju [grandparent]', 'I'm juluma, you're my son', 'I'm nimarra, I'm your sister', and so on. I spent most of my first fieldwork days learning their language, both Gurindji and Creole. My Gurindji did not improve much but I could manage to handle Northern Australian Aboriginal Creole, which is the standard language in the Gurindji and its surrounding societies today.
* * *
On 15 January 1997, I met a very old man, Jimmy Mangayarri, for the first time. Four days later, I had a long discussion with him. In fact, it was neither a discussion nor an interview, but instead it was his teachings. Those two sessions with Old Jimmy completely changed my research project – and probably my life as well. I did not have to ask Old Jimmy any questions. He had his own agenda to teach. He had a talent for analysing Australian colonial history, the origin of the European people and what is the 'right way' or 'earth law' that we should follow. He is a great historian, political analyst and moral philosopher. And, for some reason, he was eager to teach me about all his ideas.
While learning from Old Jimmy, I began to doubt if we – Gurindji people and I – really shared a single concept of 'history'. In Gurindji language, there are two words which are relevant to 'history': larrapa and ngarangarni. Larrapa means 'olden time' or 'early days', and ngarangarni means 'Dreaming stories'. What is crucial here is that you cannot say ngarangarni is an older time than larrapa. As I will discuss in the following chapters, Dreaming consists of place-oriented stories which have been 'active' throughout history. Naturally, larrapa and ngarangarni co-exist and, more importantly, interact with each other. Or it is more precise to say that ngarangarni is 'everywhere' and 'everywhen', which includes the space and time of larrapa. Therefore the study of the colonial history of the Gurindji people and their country should be a study of larrapa, which constantly interacts with ngarangarni.
In my Master's thesis, I studied the Gurindji history in an academic historical sense, but I did not know anything about the Gurindji history in their sense. Old Jimmy told me that my brain was sleeping, and needed training to wake it up. He was right. I did not care about my original research project any more. I decided to learn the Gurindji history and their law by following the way they wanted to teach me. After spending ten days at Daguragu, I had to go back to the university, but I promised them I would return.
LIVING WITH THE GURINDJI PEOPLE
I sold my motorbike in Sydney and got a car licence. I went to a used 4WD car market and bought a second-hand NSW bushfire truck, an orange-coloured(!) Toyota Landcruiser Troopcarrier. After months of preparation, I left Sydney again in June 1997.
When I arrived in Daguragu on 19 June 1997, the Gurindji people warmly welcomed me, although the young people seemed to be a little disappointed by the fact that I did not ride a motorcycle any more. At the same time, they perceived me as a new resource – a troopcarrier can carry a lot of people. People started calling my car 'japarta motika [car]'.
I explained to them that I wanted to learn ngumpin [Aboriginal] law and their colonial history. However, at the same time, I minimised asking 'my questions' and tried to follow whatever they wanted to teach me. I often just repeated what my teachers said. I found that this repeating technique was the best way to encourage them to keep talking without controlling their stories. This way of listening was also useful because I could confirm what I had heard, since I sometimes misunderstood what they said.
I normally took notes while we were talking. I also often asked them for permission to record their teachings on tapes. Some people did not mind at all. Some said all right, but then became nervous about speaking. If so, I gave up recording; for me, hearing the stories was much more important than recording the stories. They told me what was secret and what was not. Some stories were not allowed to be recorded on tape, not because of who was speaking but because of the secrecy of the story. For the same reason, sometimes I was not allowed to even take notes. They instructed me to memorise it, as they do all the time. They pointed to their heads and said, 'Nomo [Don't] put down on paper, you must gotta put in your memory.' So I did.
Even though I talked a lot with many other people, I spent the most time with Jimmy Mangayarri. The people in Daguragu also regarded Old Jimmy as a good teacher for me. It is hard to explain, but after months of spending time with him, Old Jimmy became one of the very few people in the world whom I could fully trust. I cannot explain why, but beyond an undeniable cultural gap, I somehow completely trusted him. Old Jimmy asked me if I knew why I came to the Gurindji country. I said, 'I wanted to learn ngumpin [Aboriginal] way.' I knew I was doing research, but I also knew that, by that time, my motivation was more than simply academic. Old Jimmy had a clear answer. He said Dreaming told me to visit this country: 'He [Dreaming] bin talk'n to your memory – "Come out this country!"' I replied, 'But I don't remember ...' Jimmy said my 'memory' was dead and 'he [memory] never think' so I needed training to wake it up – 'Wake 'im up. Just like you come out the bed. Get up!'
In a sense, the Gurindji people's cultural/spiritual reality gradually came to dwell in my being. Let me give you another example. One night, I had a dream about two snakes dancing together. One of them held a baby. When I told this story to Peter Raymond, one of the Gurindji elders, he said I would have a baby: it was karu [children] Dreaming located in the Gurindji country. Old Jimmy was happy to know that my 'memory' had started working.
They told me that karu Dreaming would follow me all the way to Japan. It is worth emphasising: the Gurindji Dreaming follows me all the way to Japan. Since then, I have been more careful about contraception! What happened to me? It has been difficult for me to ignore the words from the Gurindji people. When I have a baby in the future, I am sure I will remember this karu Dreaming story. Of course, my cultural reality – whether Japanese, scientific, academic or 'Westernised' – will probably be different from the Gurindji people's. I also know I am not into so-called New Age culture at all. However, through my fieldwork, I found the 'reality' of Dreaming gradually affected my life and being. I am sure many fieldworkers have had similar experiences. The problem is, such experiences are seemingly 'supernatural' so you are not supposed to discuss them in a secular-academic context.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Gurindji Journey by Minoru Hokari. Copyright © 2011 The estate of Minoru Hokari. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
A supervisor's reflections Ann McGrath,A conversation with Minoru Hokari Tessa Morris-Suzuki,
Being connected with Minoru Yuki Hokari,
Introduction to the Japanese edition translated by Kyoko Uchida,
Author's preface,
Author's acknowledgments,
Yuki Hokari's acknowledgments,
1 WHAT AM I DOING IN AUSTRALIA?,
2 MAINTAINING HISTORY 89,
3 PLACE-ORIENTED HISTORY,
4 JACKY PANTAMARRA,
5 WAVE HILL STATION,
6 CATTLE, DREAMING AND COUNTRY,
7 THE GURINDJI WALK-OFF,
8 'NEW GENERATION',
9 FOR THEORY LOVERS ONLY (IF YOU ARE NOT, PLEASE SKIP TO THE NEXT CHAPTER),
10 CHILL OUT: BUT THE JOURNEY NEVER ENDS,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Images,