Lecture link: http://new.livestream.com/accounts/2047566/events/1840804/videos/64883628
[Watched in the Sir Roland Wilson Building, ANU, 6pm Wednesday, November 12th 2014]
In this lecture Ṉäkarrma talks in depth about his relationship to Buḻanybirr (Dolphin)
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Ṉäkarrma:we never choose where we want to stay, we don't ... we we're given land by our ancestors ... and they gave us songs and ceremonies and language ... and they gave me songs and ceremonies and that's how I'm related to the dolphins ...
When we give names to our children ... those names are very closely related to our Yothu Yindi, Märi gutharra, waku yapa ...
When we give names to our people we try to only use names within that yothu yindi, märi guthara, waku yapa ...
You wouldn't want to hear when people say "that person is a djambarpuyngu" ... he don't come from bawaka because ... that is a different name altogether.. . We can straight away tell when someone calls out someone's name, we can work out what clan they come from, we can work out what language they speak and sometimes we can work out whether they are Dhuwa or Yirritja.
Last week I was asked to talk about ... the dolphin story ... I have a songline ... when we are given land, when we are given songs ... our ancestors, our creators walked across that land, and created land and gave us language, ... gave us yäku ... and so on ... In a little area called Gupawupa is where I come from, is where an ancestral spirit, ancestral being/creator lived and that was the Buḻanybirr, that was the Yinydjapana ... animals, songlines also have lots of names ... when we sing about one particular ... like the dolphin (the Buḻanybirr) ... we sing them by their name ... and here [indicating picture] you can see an adult dolphin is called by Yinydjapana, the baby dolphin is normally Buḻanybirr or Yothu Riyapulmirr and that's how we name them. Not that we name them, that's what their names where when they created us, when they gave us the songlines when they gave us a land, a country ...
... a father [dolphin] is called Dhawululŋani - that's the name that is given to the father dolphin. A mother dolphin can be called Yinydjapana or Riyapulmirr ... baby dolphin is the Buḻanybirr ... and they are in my totem like I said before ... I only speak about my country, that's what I'm authorised ... within the Yothu yindi, märi guthara, waku yapa of this circle here [indicating picture of clan relationship diagram] I can freely speak. We don't go into someone else's boundary ... we try and ask for permission to use their names, to use their songs, their paintings, their stories, we always get permission, otherwise we don't go in that area, we only talk within this Yothu yindi, märi gutharra, waku yapa, clan - that's where we are authorised to talk about stories.
When I call myself I can speak about it as an image of me - there are more further names that we use - there are literally hundreds and hundreds of words for one particular song ... hundreds and hundreds of words for every song that we sing ...
Here the dolphin is associated with the Dhuwa moiety ... when we sing we always sing about the dhuwa environment that it belongs to ... songs that Yirritja people sing must relate to Yirritja waters and Yirritja creation - the wind, the plants or maybe the fish
Say for instance the whale belongs to the Yirritja clan - they associate it with the Yirritja water ...
When we sing about songs, they are the words that we use [the yäku mala mentioned previously], and they only come from the knowledge that this land can give, its not something that we make up. When Balanda want to do song writing ... they use other names ... [they] use words they want to fit into their song ... but the ... songlines and the words with our songs and ceremonies that we sing about, they have been fitted there once and for all a long time ago by the creation, and we don't change them. When we write them, or we want to sing or young people sing, senior elders [are] listening very very closely - if they make a mistake they correct them. If the make a mistake the elders are watching with watchful eyes and listening with sharp listening ears and when hear some young people make a mistake and use the wrong word, they correct them ... because the older you are the wiser you become and the land, the waters, the coral, the clouds up there, the wind, the rain they give you knowledge and you become part of that - you become part of the creation ... and healing takes place in there, through healing we get a strong knowledge being restored on to us.
Something else in my clan in my tribe ... when we ... someone passes away people never buried the body in the ground, in the sand, they never dug sand, they left him on planks of shelter and sometime a few years later, a few months later they came back and in that rulyapa waters of gupawupa there lived an ancient spirit called Ḏaymirri ... this is the painting that I got from another clan which I'm quite safe to use from ... in those waters there once lived this creature called the Ḏaymirri which now doesn't live there but is there in spirit and we sing about the Ḏaymirri ... and in the burial when people used to bury bones they used a hollow log and in our Dhuwa burial pole we use the burial pole called the Ḏaymirri ... Ḏaymirri can be this creature that lived a long time ago ... when we want to have a burial pole placed in the ground the songs that we sing about this burial ceremony associated with the rulyapa gapu ... and the rulyapa gapu cleanses ... the spirits of our fathers, cleanses the spirits of our ancestors and the bones, the skull are placed in these hollow logs here [indicating picture of burial pole] ... this is a quick sketch I did of the Ḏaymirri - hollow log and it is called the Ḏaymirri ... and it is the Dhuwa Larrakitj. A couple of weeks ago I talked about the Riŋgitj and I spoke about a place called Gapuwiyak ... and there I told you the lake at Gapuwiyak is the home of the Yirritja Larrakitj ... but here this Rulyapa gapu saltwater is the home Dhuwa Larrakitj and that's how we sing. This is the hollow log [indicating picture] ... and the paintings [on the hollow log] can be of ... the Buḻanybirr (dolphins) and the flat fish or turtle provided they are Dhuwa and they are associated with the ceremony we sing and they are associated with the water that they live around in these waters [indicating picture of Rulyapa gapu] where these creatures [indicating picture of Ḏaymirri ancestral creature] lived and the fish that still live like the dolphins and the flat fish, moon fish which is called the milika and in songs and ceremonies we create, we paint stories and we sing stories and we bury our bodies, dead bodies, the bones of our people into a hollow log called the Ḏaymirri - the hollow log coffin called the Ḏaymirri. And over here [indicating picture] you can see that is a yiḏaki, a dhuwa yiḏaki - its called a digeridoo [in english] and it can have paintings like this and some arm bands ... and it is called Yothu Riyapulmirr or a baby dolphin. This in a digeridoo is an image of a baby dolphin. And they are related with the songs that we sing about.
When someone passes away, when I pass away, with my spirit these yothu riyapulmirr yindjapana [indicating picture of yiḏaki] will be made ... and those people within my clan nation ... they'll come together and towards the funeral ... would normally ... go and find a hollow log, chop it down, clean it up, paint it up and do paintings and they will find a digeridoo as well ... and make a yothu riyapulmirr our of that and that will go and be placed where my bones will be resting... and hopefully that's how my bones will be rested. I wouldn't like to see it in a coffin buried in the ground but on a larrakitj, on a dhuwa larrakitj, like this one [indicating picture of Ḏaymirri hollow log coffin]. And that's really something that's inspirational, its part of you, it makes you who you are.
So this is the other end of that story of all the yäku and I've only named the water ... the list can be long but we don't have that much time ... I can talk about the splash, just this spalsh here and the words can be a long list ...Lecture series home