Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women's Law

By Zohl dé Ishtar

This deeply moving, historical account of indigenous culture—specifically, the elder women of Wirrimanu—offers profound insight into white culture's impact on indigenous women's Yawulyu (law) and an analysis of the competing interests that can make indigenous and white interactions complex, painful, and fraught with problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: May 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9781742194240

Book preview

Studies.

OTHER BOOKS BY ZOHL DÉ ISHTAR

Daughters of the Pacific (1994)

Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation (1998)

HOLDING YAWULYU

WHITE CULTURE AND BLACK WOMEN’S LAW

ZOHL DÉ ISHTAR

Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

504 Queensberry Street

North Melbourne, Victoria 3051

Australia

[e-mail]

http://www.spinifexpress.com.au

First published 2005

Copyright © Zohl dé Ishtar

Copyright on layout, Spinifex Press, 2005

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any process, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

Copyright for educational purposes

Where copies of part or the whole book are made under part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires the prescribed procedures be followed. For information, contact the Copyright Agency Limited.

Photos by Zohl dé Ishtar

Photo collage by Tricia Hanlon

Maps by Karen Batten

Edited by Belinda Morris

Indexed by Margaret Findlay

Cover design by Deb Snibson

Typeset by Claire Warren

Printed and bound by McPherson’s Printing Group

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Dé Ishtar, Zohl, 1953–.

Holding Yawulyu: white culture and black women’s law.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-74219-247-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-1-74219-424-0 (ePub Format)

ISBN 1 876756 57 8.

1. Women, Aboriginal Australian—Western Australia—Great Sandy Desert—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Women, Aboriginal Australian—Western Australia —Great Sandy Desert—Social life and customs. I. Title.

305.4889915

Katimalkuya Yawulyu

kamu kulintjurratjiitjilu

makarrmanulkutjananya

They will hold onto their Women’s Law and teach their children and make them strong.

Dedicated to the Daughters of the Red Desert. Grow strong in Law.

I present this story with respect for and in honour of the Kapululangu Women Elders My walytja (family)

CAUTION

This book contains the names and words of some people who are deceased, or may be deceased at the time of reading. As hearing or reading the names of deceased relatives may cause distress for some Aboriginal people, please take care.

When the fullest breath of a people’s cultural voice is allowed to flourish, this engenders cultural energy so potent that it touches the hearts of its members and stirs in them a conviction in their own completeness which, both unconquerable and impregnable, can heal soul wounds and refashion worlds.

FOREWORD

Zohl dé Ishtar is a remarkable woman with a long background of political activism, demonstrated by previous published work: Daughters of the Pacific, and Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation. Her activism however is balanced by scholarly attention to ethical research practice, with a combination of high-level analytical skills complemented by practical community development outcomes.

This book evolved from and refers to two years, during which Zohl lived and worked with Indigenous women elders to establish, coordinate and administer the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre and its array of inter-generational cultural knowledge programs.

Kapululangu’s programs ranged from forming a Tjilimi (women’s camp and ritual space) with the women elders, cultural classes for girls, cultural workshops for young women, cultural camps for girls and boys, journeys along Dreaming Tracks for women elders and youth to perform ritual and ceremony, and national and international tours to engage in cultural exchanges with other Indigenous peoples.

To facilitate her work with the elders Zohl developed a research philosophy and methodology from an Indigenous-centred approach based on participatory action research (Indigenous Self-Determination), relationship as central to socio-cultural dynamics, and feminist phenomenology.

While Zohl’s practice drew on feminist research paradigms such as reflexive inquiry, it also reflected Indigenous cultural philosophies and principles; facilitated the guidance, leadership and participation of the host women/community; and incorporated Indigenous worldviews. Her methodological focus on relationship/participation observation positioned her to use herself as the source of her data; feminist phenomenology enabled her to learn through the experiences and languages of the body as life is lived (hers and those of her hosts); and Indigenous self-determination allowed her to make a commitment producing immediate concrete outcomes that benefited her host community.

This book critiques White cultural practices and their effect on Indigenous Australian women’s endeavours to sustain their people’s cultural heritage and pass their cultural knowledge on to the younger generations. The critique includes processes of cultural colonisation, missionisation, socialisation and enculturation through education, bureaucratisation, and the commercialisation of culture.

Particular attention is given to the strategies of cultural survival engaged in by the local Indigenous women and their families over the past sixty years, including clandestine rituals, adaptive use of the Christian Church, White schooling system and the Culture Industry, and the development of a Women’s Law and Culture Centre dedicated to the inter-generational transmission of cultural heritage.

Much work is presently being done to ensure that research within Indigenous context is conducted with ethics and integrity to the needs of Indigenous peoples, and from the philosophies, theories and practices of Indigenous research approaches, complemented by western research ethics and practices. Zohl has bridged that cultural divide beautifully as demonstrated in this book, from the other side of the fence—the position of the White scholar researching White culture’s impact on Indigenous/Black women’s Law. She has consistendy ensured that her research methodology was respectful of and reflected Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous knowledges. She has thus developed a template for others wishing to undertake cross-cultural research.

Zohl has a strong capacity for working with other non-Indigenous Australians to raise awareness around issues of racism and colonialism, and to guide them through the intricacies of reflexive self-inquiry leading them towards enhanced abilities in cross-cultural communication. She has a profound knowledge of, and insight into Indigenous cultural ways of being, which is rare among White Australians. This was evident in the way that the elders of the Great Sandy Desert requested her to work with them to develop a cultural revitalisation project for their grandchildren.

Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples has connections with the women from Balgo where the work evolved. We are aware of the strong support the women have for the book to be published. In fact some of the senior law and culture women recently visited Southern Cross University/Gnibi, to speak to their endorsement and support for the book. During their visit we witnessed their support of, affection for, and request for continuing relationships with Dr dé Ishtar.

This book demonstrates that while Culture is alive—living—at Balgo (and hence other places where Aboriginal women struggle to maintain their rights and integrity), threat is evident through the ill-informed and sometimes virulent politics from outside the community by well-meaning and not so well-meaning others.

I cannot stress strongly enough the value of this work, for I believe this book has great relevance to all of Australia, as we reflect on ways we can do things better in support of Living Cultures.

Professor Judy Atkinson

Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples

Southern Cross University

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Yati Minyirri! Yipimarnkurrpa kamu Pimirikutjarra kamu Karparlikutjarra kamu Ngawitji. Many people must be acknowledged and thanked for their contribution in bringing this book to fruition, but I owe most to my walytja (family), the Kapululangu elders.* They shared their lives with me, and ‘grew me up’ in their ways, teaching me to respect the Tjukurrpa, the Law. I honour and applaud you for your vision and your strength. Thank you for having patience with the limitations of my perceptions and understanding of your world and lifeways, and for inspiring me with your kurrunpa maya (spiritual strength). I hope that this book does you all justice. Yati (thank you) also to the pinta-pinta kamina (butterfly girl) for the yintjanu (gift) of your smile. Your laughter and your insistence on being wildly free have sustained and inspired me.

I thank all of the women, men and children of Wirrimanu, particularly my close-up kin, who taught me and looked after me while I was in your homelands. Thanks also to the Wirrimanu Aboriginal Council for their ongoing support throughout the time I lived in Wirrimanu. I remain gratefully respectful of the Nangala Kutjarra for the dream, and for insisting that I took responsibility for Yawulyu.

Nobody has worked harder to support this project than my sister Tricia Hanlon. She has believed in the Kapululangu elders’ vision since its inception and has been involved in the Kapululangu project since its beginning. Her visit to the Kapululangu Tjilimi in August 2000 (along with a second sister, Margaret Hanlon Dunn), enabled her to come to know the women elders and to gain an understanding into the socio-political situation in Wirrimanu. Her skill with proofreading has proven invaluable. I particularly thank her for her enthusiastic determination that the story be told, and her painstaking insistence upon ‘excellence’. Her extraordinary commitment to the women elders provided me with the sustenance needed to make it through to the end. More than anyone, she has shared this experience with me.

I express my gratitude to Renate Klein who has continued to believe in the project even in its most difficult times. I was fortunate to have her guidance and advice, illuminating suggestions and comments, and friendship and trust during the research stages, for these formed the rock upon which I was able to stand while navigating academia from my solitary sojourn in Wirrimanu’s red desert. Also to Susan Hawthorne of Spinifex Press who understood the importance of this book eveh before it was written, and without whose trust, foresight and skill this book would never have arrived in your hands.

My gratitude also to my sister Margaret Hanlon Dunn for her ongoing support, and for her timely visits to Wirrimanu; to my mantirri (sister-in-Law) Aboriginal artist Ochre Doyle for introducing the Kapululangu women elders into my life and for accompanying me in my journey with them; to Judy Atkinson of the Jiman and Bundjalung peoples who, as Professor at the Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples, saw the importance of telling this story; to Maggie and Joah Gleeson for giving me a retreat in which to begin writing; and to Delia Guy and Jim Anderson for giving me shelter in Wirrimanu when it was most needed.

Thanks to those Kartiya who gave me their friendship during my time in Wirrimanu: Pat Walker, Sr Alice Dempsey, Frs Brian McCoy and Matt Digges, Brs Bernie Cooper, Cal Cusack and Joe Gabel. Special acknowledgement goes to the previous coordinators of the women’s initiative: Wendy Albert and Pat Lowe who planted the seeds for the Desert Women’s Project and Manungka Manungka, and Sonja Peter, Michelle McKenzie, Barbara Bill, and Barbara Kernick who followed them. I hope that this text elucidates some of the difficulties, and the rewards, you experienced as the coordinators of these pioneering organisations.

I wish to acknowledge the support given to this project by the staff at Women’s Studies, School of Social Inquiry at Deakin University while I was doing my research, and currently at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at The University of Queensland for their support in finalising this book.

I also want to thank all the wonderful women at Spinifex Press. In addition to Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein who must be acknowledged as Australia’s most committed feminist publishers, I also thank Belinda Morris for her careful and considerate editing, Maralann Damiano for her skillful organising and for ensuring we all kept to the timelines, and Jo O’Brien for holding the financial side of book production together. I also thank Deb Snibson for the cover design, Claire Warren for typesetting and Karen Batten for the maps.

There are many others involved in the creation of this book who have not been mentioned. I remain forever indebted to them for their contributions.

Warning: Some of the following people may be deceased and their names may cause distress to some Aboriginal people. The Kapululangu women who I particularly want to thank include Margaret Yintjurru Anjule Bumblebee Napurrula, Mungkina Dora Napaltjarri, Marti Maude Napanangka, Manaya Sarah Daniels Napanangka, Nungunurra Nancy Napanangka, Payi Payi Napangarti. Also those who have since died: Tjama Freda Samah Napanangka, Martingali Bridget Mudgedell Napanangka, Yutjuyu Taampa (Damper) Nampitjin, Yunitja Ruby Nampitjin, Millie Skeen Nampitjin, Nanyuma Rosie Dingle Napurrula and Patricia Lee Napangarti. The young girl with the smile is Cynthia Tjama Smith Napanangka.

PERMISSIONS

Permissions or Pathways to Culturally Safe Research

We Kapululangu women happily and freely give our support to Zohl dé Ishtar to write a book about the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre. Zohl lived and worked with us for two years to set up Kapululangu and make it strong. This is her story of that time.

—Tjama Freda Samah Napanangka (Chairwoman)

Margaret Yintjurru Anjule (Vice-Chairwoman)

Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre

24 June 2004

When undertaking research in any community it is best practice to obtain the informed consent of one’s hosts, but this imperative takes on added dimensions when the hosts are members of a society which has been colonised by one’s own. Then the researcher’s racisms, assumptions and prejudices lay traps of misinterpretation and misreading for the inquirer which continue the colonising practices of silencing the hosts and invisibilising their realities, their meanings and understandings of their world.

The White researcher of Indigenous domains needs to consistently ensure that their project engages with their hosts in ways that honour and respect their Indigenous knowledge processes, their cultural paradigms. They must ensure that their research is culturally safe for their hosts. This can best be achieved by checking and rechecking that the hosts continue to give their permission and by remaining flexible to renegotiating the changing needs of the community one is working with. These directives are delineated in the ethics guidelines of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (2000).

In September 1998, the women elders of Wirrimanu asked me to assist them to establish a women’s organisation which would promote women’s Law and cultural practice and support their roles as Law women, protectors, healers and teachers of their people. The elders also entrusted me with the documentation of their cultural knowledge and skills, for safekeeping in the Kapululangu Keeping Place, for the benefit of future generations. As part of this work it was agreed that I would conduct research into the impact of White culture on the women’s initiative.

The elders’ request was reiterated and backed by other women and the Wirrimanu Aboriginal Corporation (the local council) in April 1999. The elders confirmed our agreement in June when I arrived to live in the community, and restated it once again when Kapululangu was legally incorporated in August that same year. The project was announced in the local community newsletter, the Mirli Mirli, in April and August.

From June 1999 through July 2001 I lived closely with the elders in the women’s Tjilimi (womens camp), sharing their lives with them and participating in both their domestic concerns and their cultural practices. Our mutual mission to achieve their aims of bringing their grandchildren up strong in Law and culture saw us weave together our Black and White skills until we created a vibrant inter-generational cultural program.

During the two years that I lived and worked with the elders our agreement was implicit in our ongoing relationship of walytja (family), but I repeatedly checked for consent to proceed and I obtained the written permission of all of the women whom I interviewed individually.

On returning to the city to write my PhD I was in telephone contact with the elders, needing to check on certain information, and I continued to receive their unmitigated support. In May 2003 before submitting my thesis for examination I received yet again the agreement of the Kapululangu elders, including Kapululangu’s Chairwoman and Vice-Chairwoman.

In June 2004 I returned to Wirrimanu to meet with the Kapululangu elders and to obtain their written agreement before publishing my thesis as this book. Parts of the text were read to the meeting and the four women who were directly quoted (although not named) signed personal agreements that I could use their words in the book. At the meeting, Kapululangu’s Chairwoman and Vice-Chairwoman and seven other founding members gave their unanimous blessing, which was reiterated during the four months I lived in Sorry Camp with them.

In 1999 I received a commendation from my university’s ethics committee for the care that I gave to ensuring that I received the women’s agreement to my research project. I was granted my PhD in 2003, and in 2004 it was awarded Deakin University’s Isi Liebler Prize 2003, conferred for advancing knowledge of racism, religious and ethnic prejudice and furthering multiculturalism and community relations in Australia.

This book is based on my thesis of that time. It is my own story, reflecting my own perspective as a Kartiya (Whitefella) living and working with Senior Law Women, the elders of Wirrimanu’s Indigenous community. But the story of Kapululangu and its successes remains the elders’ story, for it is a story of a vibrant living culture which will continue to inspire their grandchildren’s children and those who come after them.

I thank the elders of Kapululangu for their blessings and ongoing support in bringing this book into being.

PREFACE

This book has its genesis in a circle of women elders sitting in the red earth of the Great Sandy Desert surrounded by flies, sun and their own illuminating attentiveness to the constant presence of the Ancestors. It was 1999, and the women were meeting to discuss establishing a women’s organisation to help them heal the acute trauma which was tearing their families apart. The meeting culminated with the formation of the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre.

Having been raised in the ways of the Tjukurrpa before the Kartiya (Whitefellas) arrived in their lands, the elders believed that only a strong sense of pride in their identity would protect their youth from the traumas manifesting in their lives, and they knew that this pride could only be secured if their grandchildren were raised according to their own Law and culture.

The elders asked me to work with them as their ‘Culture Woman’, assisting them to establish and facilitate their organisation and its cultural programs, and documenting their stories, skills and knowledge, to be preserved for their future generations.

Living with the elders in a one-room tin shed on their Women’s Law Ground for two years I became intimately involved in their lives. Inviting me to participate with them in their everyday customs and ritual ceremony the elders sought to teach me the importance of their Law to the well-being of their people.

To the extent that the elders have seen fit to teach me some of their Law I repay their trust with my silence, for I am not qualified to speak of the Tjukurrpa. Indeed much of what I learnt from the elders during the time I lived with them has not made it into this book, but it does inform my understanding of the impact of White culture upon their lives and Law.

Throughout my time with Kapululangu I was brought face to face with some of the harsh realities of White culture. Walking with the elders as they endeavoured to pass their cultural knowledge onto their younger generations I experienced the obstacles raised against them on the treacherous terrain of White-Black interactions. With each turn I gained deeper insight into the entity called ‘White culture’. Consequently I have come to know that until we White people truly challenge the negative aspects of our culture we will continue to violate Indigenous lives. Only when we can eradicate our racism will we be able to celebrate that which is honourable within White culture and only then will we be able to live to the fullest expression of our own integrity.

Nothing could have forewarned me of the dimensions and depth to which an inquiry into White culture would lead. Despite working with Indigenous Australian and Pacific women for over twenty years nothing prepared me for the full weight of the impact of White culture as it was, and unfortunately continues to be, played out in Wirrimanu. It was only towards the end of my time with the elders that I began to comprehend just how deeply ingrained White racism runs within the psyche of even the most well-meaning Whitefellas.

I have written this book for Kartiya in the hope that it will provoke us to rethink and restructure our relationships with Indigenous Australians. When confronted with the deep psychological pain of Australia’s Indigenous peoples only the hard-hearted can deny that Whites have an immense responsibility to hasten an end to this dreadful cultural rupture which is tearing Indigenous souls apart. The situation is so dire that Wirrimanu’s youth have begun to commit suicide. There can be no more significant indicator of a peoples cultural trauma than for their children to start killing themselves.

The history of Kartiya involvement in Wirrimanu has proven extremely fickle. With high levels of staff turnover, and limited communication between local agency personnel, Wirrimanu’s White history has only been recorded in piecemeal fashion. There has been a stream of reports written over the years, each one identifying the same problems and recommending the same solutions as the one before it. This has occurred to such an extent that one cannot fail to notice the harsh echo of unrequited government action which accompanies them.

That Holding Yawulyu should be the first substantial sociological analysis of Wirrimanu’s sociocultural circumstances, and the first extensive historical chronicle, should send alarm bells ringing. It is as if there has been a wall of silence which has existed around Wirrimanu behind which government departments, the Catholic Church, and local White agency staff have been left to get on with the task of delivering basic services as best they could. It is this resounding silence which has enabled the paternalism, corruption and mismanagement which has dogged Wirrimanu so persistently since its inception, and which has consistently undermined the women elders’ attempts to care for the cultural needs of their families. This book is an attempt to break the silence behind which the violations of Indigenous lives by White culture practitioners has been allowed to go unchecked.

I contend that Whites can best assist Indigenous peoples by studying our own culture. We are well placed to engage in a determined investigation and analysis of White cultural attitudes and behaviours as they are played out upon the lives of Indigenous peoples for we are the insiders to that intruding society. White culture and White culture practitioners must be the focus of such investigations, not Indigenous people or Indigenous society.

I wish to clarify that I am not interested in apportioning blame to individuals, or to races. What interests me are the systems and lifeworlds—the ideologies, ontologies, attitudes and behaviours—the cultural practices and the interactions which are played out between dominant and subjugated/resistor cultural paradigms. For expediency’s sake I use the terms ‘White’ and ‘Black’, but I am cognisant of the heterogeneity in both and perceive their difference to be a continuum where the ideology of ‘White’ is at one extreme, juxtaposing ‘Black’ at the other. There are many determinants between these polarities, and individuals are positioned variously along the continuity of ideologies and behaviours. Although the position of any one individual can be fluid and multiple, and it is possible for individuals to seek to achieve a balanced comprehension of the other extreme, Eurocentric (Henderson, 2000b:58–60) individuals tend to cluster towards the Whiteness end of this spectrum, and Indigenous-thinking people towards its opposite. Because people are enculturated from birth into unique cultural regimes specific to their own societies, it would not be possible for individuals to truly attain the ultimate positions of their opposites. There is, for example, a marked difference between Euro-Australians and the Kapululangu women elders who were raised in the ways of the Tjukurrpa when the influences of White culture in their lands were at their beginnings. The Maori academic Graham Hingangaroa Smith has made the same observations in regard to the Maori and Pakeha (White) people of Aotearoa/New Zealand (2000:218). Thus there is a continuum with Eurocentric White ideology and ways of being at one extreme, juxtaposing Indigenous/Black ideology and ways of being at the other. It is these polarities to which I refer when making generalisations about ‘White’ and ‘Black/ Indigenous’ culture.

I acknowledge that Australia is a continent of many countries which are the ancestral homelands for hundreds of diverse Indigenous peoples. In respecting the divergent cultures of these societies, I wish to make it clear that while this book focuses on a remote community of Indigenous people, in no way do I detract from the cultures of those Indigenous peoples who live in Australia’s urban and rural areas. All peoples live according to their mutable cultures and all Indigenous cultures are under attack by the multiple tentacles of an intruding White society which positions its own cultural paradigms as the ‘norm’ to which all other peoples must aspire.

In writing this story I have been conscious of, as Edward Bruner put it, the discrepancy between the richness of the lived field experience and the paucity of the language used to characterize it (1986a:147–8). There is a necessary condensation in the reduction of lived experience to the written word such that the writing-up process leaves some experiences unmentioned, and favours others. While I was engaged in the processes of writing I felt as though I was attempting the impossible task of capturing circular, performative life in the two-dimensional world of paper. Nonetheless, I offer my writing here as a statement of my continuing commitment to assisting the elders to ‘hold Yawulyu’. This book is a respectful celebration of the kurrunpa maya of the Kapululangu elders.

There is an urgent need for White people to take responsibility for our own society’s cultural practices. It is my hope that this book will be a small contribution towards the construction of a world which is racially just.

—Zohl dé Ishtar

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE TIJILIMI

As the early sun brightened the eastern sky the dogs stirred, chasing and squabbling, growling and barking. A woman turned in her blanket, yawned, coughed, threw a half-hearted whack at the dogs lying on her swag and stood up. Taking a tipa (billy, old milk can) and a bucket, she ventured outside just as the sun pushed itself over the horizon, flooding the desert with crimson red. She returned to the stove with water for the tea. Standing back she pondered the stove, finally reaching out to carefully turn the knob which brought it to life. She placed the billy on the burner, and the bucket on the floor, and sat down on a chair and waited.

Her sister-in-law rose up and went to sit on the floor beside her. They listened to the water humming as it slowly came to the boil. As it reached a high pitch, the first woman returned to her swag, foraged in her mountain of blankets, old clothes and secreted food, and returned with tea bags, milk powder and sugar. She took a handful of tea bags and threw them into the water, and waited.

She retrieved a loaf of white bread from the freezer. When it was time to make the tea, she half-filled the bucket with cold water, emptied the tipa into the bucket, tipped the tea in the bucket back into the billy, and returned it to the bucket. Rescuing two kartak (cups) from the debris on the table, the two women dunked them into the bucket and filled them, then proceeded to up-end the milk tin and the sugar bag into the two cups. They tore the bread into small pieces and added them to the milky sweet tea, then sat back and chatted, consummating their morning ritual. Only when they had finished did they give some tea and damper (bread) to the two oldest women—the mothers of the second woman—who had remained in their swags, waiting patiently. These two blind, frail elders, sisters who had shared a husband, were referred to by all the Tjilimi residents as ‘the kaparli (maternal grandmothers) although I alone was their classificatory granddaughter, the term had been adopted as an affectionate nickname.¹

A third woman got up, went to the fridge and took out the remains of a bullocki (bull’s) thigh and joined them. They watched her eagerly as she placed the large slab in her mouth, held it with her teeth and cut a chunk off with a sharp knife, before passing it over to them. The dogs prowling and growling around the trio were thrown a few pieces of bread. Other women gradually rose to join the day. One woman went to the stove and made damper, kneading it on the table and cooking it under the grill. She then returned to her swag carrying three dampers, a large bowl of Weet-Bix and a billy of sweet white tea, and shared them with her mother and little granddaughter. The television was turned on, and we watched the Teletubbies waving out at us. The granddaughter came and crawled into my swag, we shared her damper and played her word-learning computer game: Apple—A.P. P.L. E.—Apple!

Someone went outside to make a fire and eventually, one by one we all joined her, sitting around the fire, eating and chatting. Dogs hovered around desperate to get some food, or lolled in the heat of the previous evenings cinders. One dog cheekily tried to snatch food away from one of the blind kaparli, only to receive a whack over the back with a heavy stick. Large chunks of meat splattered on the fire. Scattered about the hearth were an assortment of blackened milk-powder tins, half-full of tepid tea. An enamel basin encrusted with old damper, and a jar lying in a puddle of honey which some ants were attempting to clean up, added to the clutter. The women vied with the dogs for the right to sit on a few tattered blankets: the dogs won by sheer persistence and the women, uninterested in challenging them, sat in the dirt.

A car pulled up at the gate and waited, in hope of getting some mangarri (bread) or ngurlukatji (tea). The woman who had made the damper gave two loaves to the male driver, her son. When she returned to the fire, the women joked that they should set up a supermarket at the Tjilimi. Two daughters arrived toting towels, ready for breakfast and a shower, and the phone rang with another daughter asking for money.

A magpie lark flew in and strutted around the yard. Tjirrtjirr, said one of the elders, breaking into song, joined by her sister. After several stanzas they stopped to discuss the puya (‘skin’ or kinship classification) associated with the bird, and one of the old kaparli interjected with a correction. They continued comparing, reminding and reaffirming each other of their knowledge. The bird continued to strut around and the sisters returned to their singing.

Breakfast over, one woman made herself busy watering the few precious trees that she had planted and was trying to nurture through the first stages of life, despite the obvious intentions of the relentless desert sun. Her mother-in-law began to rake up some of the plastic bags, empty drink cans and other rubbish that lay strewn around the yard. A woman went to fetch her clothes from where they colourfully flagged the cyclone wire fence-cum-clothesline, or lay scattered about the yard, blown there by the night wind. Two women moved out beyond the fence and began to build a wilytja (wind break/bough-shed) of spinifex bushes, planning to use it for shelter while they were making baskets. Blankets were dragged out onto the verandah, forming a base-camp for the old kaparli, and they were guided to their blankets, given kartak of water and wana (digging sticks). They would spend most of their day sleeping on the verandah, surrounded by dogs.

Then we sat around the fire playing cards, waiting for the Store and the Art Centre to open. Some women finished off their paintings, wanting to get some money so that they could go shopping. I drove the little granddaughter to school, and returned to the card game and another cup of tea.

When we heard the Store siren, most of the women clambered into the Women’s Car and we began our morning round of Store, Art Centre and Clinic. The clearing outside the Marwuntu Store was filling up with people preparing to do their shopping, to join the card games, or just to sit and socialise. We made the solitary tree outside the Store the hub of our meanderings.

The Store was a sea of women, children and men, busying themselves with their shopping. Young women hovered towards the back, giggling at the gangs of young men who sat on the bread freezer. They were hanging out, but also waiting for their mothers, aunties, grandmothers so that they could ask them for money. Teams of kids ran around trying to sneak bites out of apples. The occasional dog managed to worm its way into this mass of bodies only to be chased out again. A long line snaked past the bank window as people tried to get their money out. Two lines of shoppers meandered past the check-outs. All of these lines grouped and regrouped, depending upon who was chatting with whom, and who was avoiding whom. Mothers-in-law remained ever ready to hide among the shelves should their sons-in-law (whom they must avoid) arrive unannounced. Shoppers sat on the floor with their cardboard boxes crammed full of groceries, chatting while they waited their turn at the cash registers. The loud hum of activity was broken into acute silence when a drunken man entered the Store and started yelling at the Kartiya working on the till, but everything soon returned to normal as people became engrossed in their own social interactions. Having loaded all of the shopping into the Women’s Car, I left the elders to complete their morning socialising while I returned to the Tjilimi.

On my arrival back at the Tjilimi, I found one of my kaparli standing inside the shower yelling at the three dogs who had also squeezed themselves into the cool of the small recess in a bid to shelter from the