Lecture link: http://new.livestream.com/accounts/2047566/events/1840804/videos/62890721
[Watched in the College of Law, Room G021, ANU, 6pm Wednesday, October 1st 2014]
In this lecture Ṉäkarrma tells us how he and others recently made a trip that followed the same path as that taken by some ancestral turtle hunters.
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Ṉäkarrma:The elders here stand to look at these rocks which are the images of turtle meat... They're not rocks picked up and put there by human hands...
When the great giant turtle ... was speared ... from the waves that it made as it took off towards buckingham bay ...
We sang and we danced and we told stories about what had happened there a long time ago
These elders are actually sitting on a rock which was a canoe [indicating photo] ... once the turtle was speared it took all the debris. When they speared it they chased after it. They caught up with it, killed it and cut it up and ate some meat from the turtle.
That reality is not always there, so we have to take our children, take them away from the classrooms, take them away from the style that makes them to understand the foreign education from asking questions from sitting in classrooms, in rooms that doesn't talk to you... in an environment that doesn't welcome you ... so we take our people - its a practice that our elders have always done, when young men are ready to be shown something. When a senior elder knows that it is time to train young men ... to pass on the knowledge, to pass on the story.
And when the ... senior elders are ready they know that its the right time ... it is really the old people that tell the story ... they are doing the talking and we get the story and we get understanding and we know that there is power on that land in the image of these rocks. ... you can meditate and be with your grandfathers ...
Even though we were on a white man's boat but feeling we were journeying closer to a destination that we'd never been to before. These were the clouds we sing about ... and it tells a story ... and we say 'that's where we're going'...
The water goes out almost to the Timor Sea... and with that goes our identity.
These clouds are saying 'don't forget us' ...
This is where the turtle spear when it was thrown ... all the way from Badaypaday
But that spear when it landed it went right into the ground and you can't see it ... but fresh water bubbles ... you can't see it anymore, its only the story ... and as we were sitting he said to us, I'm looking for bubbles in the water because everytime a new group of people come to visit this area, a bubble comes out - that means it acknowledges you ... and welcomes you ... when we got there there was no bubbles comes out - and it was a fresh water ... 'I can't see any bubbles, maybe this place is not recognising you' ...
Everybody was starting to cry, everyone was starting to feel that warmth of that journey that they belonged to ...
Everyone of us has journeyed from young to old ... we are always talking about it and we are always in our life we want to journey that road, take our children, clear them away from foreign material from foreign deception that they get ... when they go into school they go into a different environment that is not within their spiritual belief ...
Balanda classroom ...
Those same clouds were hovering above those islands and they were a sign saying "come back, your destiny is here... your answer and your songs and dances and ceremonies lie beyond these waters ..."
About the great mukul hunters ... taught them how to dance, taught them how to sing, taught them how to listen and learn....Lecture series home