Whispers of This Wik Woman

by Fiona Doyle

Overview

This absorbing and personal account of Wik activist Jean George Awumpun offers a rare understanding of Aboriginal identity and traditional land. To illustrate her proud Alngith Wikwaya beginnings, Awumpun's early history is told through family member and Alngith descendant Fiona Doyle. This ancestral history combines with the story of Awumpun's struggle in the Wik native title claims, which advanced the earlier Mabo Decision onto mainland Australia.

Using photographs, traditionally inspired art and language terms, Fiona Doyle invites us into the heart of Cape York's Wikwaya country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780702234613
Publisher:	University of Queensland Press
Publication date:	10/01/2004
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.40(d)

Read an Excerpt

Whispers of this Wik Woman

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By Fiona Doyle

University of Queensland Press

Copyright © 2004 Fiona Doyle
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5053-8

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CHAPTER 1

Nana, I think of you all the time, you know,

I think of old days, of nowadays, of tomorrow.

I think of how you kissed me,

You cursed me, you nursed me,

You scolded me and told me of things

I must know.

Through laughter and happiness, we held hands endlessly,

Through pain and bitterness we kept going ... shamelessly.

One day I'll reveal all that you've told me

The pain, the happiness, no shame ... that you gave me.

The pain, the happiness, no shame ... that you gave me.

You gave me so much and you still give me more, and now even still ...

I will always restore.

She is sitting across from me. I notice her eyes look greyish now and they water constantly. She is yarning to me. I can see that she is so excited at what her memories are bringing back. She wants to share it all with me and she wants to pass it all down to me, so that her story can live on. She thinks that maybe I will forget her. How can I? It would be impossible to forget a woman who has played such an important part in my life.

Nana, whose English name is Jean George and whose language name is Awumpun, is Wik. Her language group is Alngith and her tribe is Wikwaya. She was born in either 1924 or 1925. The records show both years although Nana believes that it was 1925.

For as long as I can remember, Nana has been a significant part of my life. My mother, Annie Bandicootcha, gave birth to me in 1969 at the Thursday Island hospital but then became too ill to take care of me. It was Nana, along with my grandfather, who took me and reared me. Even though Mum recovered, got married and had three more girls, I remained with my grandparents. However, I kept in close contact with my mother, as is the case with many Aboriginal families in today's society.

It was my grandparents who made most of the decisions concerning my upbringing, and, as a result of this, Nana often forgets that I am now an adult. She often tries to decision-make for me. When this is met with resistance from my end and with a gentle reminder that I am no longer that lost child I once was, an attempt is then made to target my three girls: her great-grandchildren. 'Orr Sissy', they would say, 'we know what we doing.'

This confirmation of independence is often met with a frown from their great-granny, as she reluctantly withdraws. 'Sissy' is short for sister. In our kinship system a child refers to their great-grandmother (on either parent's side) as sister. In regards to the male lineage, the great-grandfather (or great-grandson) becomes brother.

As I was growing up, Nana passed down to me her knowledge of kinship. She taught me language, boundaries, laws and customs. She would point out sacred places, and particular things with historical or sacred meaning in and around Weipa, within the boundary of the Alngith and the Liningithi people.

Nana never fails to address 'the old people', our ancestral spirits of the past, whenever we enter such places in and around the Weipa region. Places and areas that are sacred and of totemic significance are embedded in her mind. She also ensures that her descendants heed the customary practices, or at least have an awareness of the importance of the knowledge that is a part of our traditional structure. Her totemic spirits of the past, now in the form of birds, reptiles and other bush life, are constantly being spoken to. With the relationship to country grounded in her mind the traditions of the Alngith live on.

Nana casually shares information that is culturally significant to our structural foundation. Her teaching technique and approach is not formalised in any way. My learning was always part of conversations we were having, or maybe we happened to be on country, so it was relevant at that particular time, in that particular context. I never passed up an opportunity to absorb what was being shared in my presence and have disciplined myself to record the experience later, in written form.

Nana's teaching is based on the old way, the way that establishes primary and secondary connections. It is important because today I have witnessed that the lore that determines your traditional identity has been tampered with and redefined by those who do not come from the same generation as my grandmother or do not clearly possess this deep knowledge of traditional structure. It is being redefined because, right before our eyes, members of family groups are being 'clumped' together under 'one tribe' headings. This is a misinterpretation. It is not traditionally correct and is slowly redefining people's connections to country and, as a result, it is altering history.

According to the old ways, if you were born into a particular family group or tribe through your mother, your connection/identity would be a secondary one, a maternal one. Your stand is not as strong as another member who is connected through their father. Culturally, in Cape York the father determines a person's primary traditional connection.

Nana is Alngith Wikwaya because her father, Dick Kelinda, is Alngith Wikwaya. Her mother, Nyrlotte, is Wik-Ngathan of the Apalich, and that establishes a secondary connection for Nana to her mother's country. My mother, Annie Bandicootcha (Athailpun), is Mbaiwum/Troch, a connection established by her father, Roy George, my maternal grandfather.

My secondary connection is to Mbaiwum/Troch country through my mother. I am related to Alngith/Liningithi Wikwaya people through Nana. I have no primary connection to land, as my father is European. My three sisters, however, are Wanam because their father, Percy Bandicootcha Ornyageia, is Wanam.

The country you are traditionally connected to and the clan group or mob you descend from determine your totemic dreaming or your totemic ancestry. The dreaming of my three sisters is the Baby Story, Freshwater Crocodile and Bandicoot. The main dreaming of my mother is Oochunyung or Wattle Flower.

My older sister Lynette and I have connections to country and dreaming. These connections are established through our adoption by our stepfather and our maternal lineage through our mother and grandmother.

In order for me to use Oochunyung as a professional name, I needed permission from my mother. My intent in explaining this traditional structure is not to disqualify members of certain family groups but merely to preserve and share what my grandmother was taught, and, in turn, what she has taught her own descendants. Traditional protocol that determines cultural identity differs from region to region Australia-wide, but this is how it is with our people, in this part of the country.

My Nana has a wealth of knowledge about the Alngith language. She is fluent and among the last members of this group to use the Alngith and Liningithi dialects. It is quite disheartening to see that there is only a handful of people living today who Nana can communicate with in the Alngith tongue. Few can speak it back to her. The majority of the 'grass roots' Weipa Elders belonging to the other Weipa tribes communicate regularly in their native tongue. Although the dialects are different, the 'common knowledge' and the use of 'common words' is what helps communication take place. This is because, although there are many different tribes in and around the Weipa area, they are all connected and interrelated in one way or another.

Over time, I have realised that my Nana is remarkably strong by comparison with some other Aboriginal women of her age. This is partly because of her commitment and passion to see justice come to her people, who have been and continue to be grossly dispossessed. Nana also has a good, healthy diet consisting mainly of traditional bush tucker and she is skilful in the bush. A stove in the kitchen may confuse her, but hunting, gathering and preparing bush food come quite naturally to this woman. She is not much of a supermarket shopper. She does enjoy the actual process of shopping 'white man style', but it is not with the same 'wisdom' she displays when roaming freely in her bush supermarket and gathering food from the land and sea. Today, even though there is a mining town close by, we can still visit the surrounding areas of Weipa and gather traditional bush foods.

My eldest daughter, Sheridan Nyrlotte, aged ten, has not developed a taste for traditional bush foods. Being on country poses problems, as she will not eat anything that comes directly from the earth or off the land; something needs to be packed from home. The other two, however, will eat off the land. Justice, aged seven, and Ebony, aged three, will open their little mouths as their great-granny feeds them oysters, crab, roast fish or yams cooked in hot ashes. They love the fishing trips, and the freedom of the outings with their cogai (older aunt) and numerous cousins. Off they go across the river, roaming and eating off the land as the 'old people' once did.

The most important element of Nana's strength, not only physically but spiritually, I believe, is her belief in God's word. This is not such a contradiction as some would imagine when it comes to her Aboriginality. Being a believer helps her in knowing who she is, not only as an Indigenous person of this country but, more importantly, as a person who has been and still is a significant contributor to a fast-changing society, which she has witnessed first-hand evolving before her eyes.

CHAPTER 2

Doy they know the voice of Old Man Kelinda? who watches silently ... at what they do His feelings are plenty his words are few He sees their Lack of what is true

Nana, 'e see what they do to you.

Nana's parents, I was told, were incredibly strong people. Her father, Dick Kelinda (1900c–1948), was apparently quite a prominent man at Aurukun. My great-grandfather was tough and intelligent. He also had a heart for the Lord Jesus and His word.

'So Nana, tell me about old bada Dick. What is he? Where is he from?' (I say 'bada' when referring to Dick Kelinda, my Nana's father, because I am down four generations from this man and I have been taught to call him 'brother'. My children in turn call him 'cousin'. The cycle repeats itself every four generations. Great-grandparents are adopted by their great-grandchildren as brothers and sisters in a custom that ensures the care of the elderly.

In its entirety, this photo of Nana's father includes a man who looks like the anthropologist Donald Thomson. Seeing it reminded Nana ... 'I was good size girl when he used to come in his little plane. Us kids would run along the ground as the plane would lower to land. Once he jumped out of the plane, he would throw lollies on the ground. We would rush and fight to grab our share.'

'Your brother was an Alngith man; Alngith from this ground', she says, pointing to the soil as we sat one evening outside her house in Peppan Street in Napranum.

How come he was in Aurukun then?' I asked, totally engrossed in this particular conversation, 'and how come you spent your early days in Aurukun?'

I found it interesting that Dick Kelinda, who was most probably born at old Weipa Mission, had left his own country and lived elsewhere. Why hadn't he returned, I wondered. Nana told me how a long while back, probably the early 1900s, Old Yepenyi, Dick Kelinda's father, and other Wikwaya (that is, Alngith and Linignithi) people had walked to Aurukun from Weipa. In those days it was common (and it still happens today) for people to move around to other communities, visiting each other for short or long stays and often intermarrying. Relations and in-laws made exchanges and traded in goods in the early days. When the visit of this particular group of Wikwaya people came to an end, the missionaries reportedly prevented them from leaving Aurukun (and returning to Weipa) and ordered them to remain among the other 'Wik' groups.

After Weipa Mission was established in 1898, the missionaries would have had contact with people from the lands to the south of Weipa. Founding missionary Reverend Edwin Brown wrote in 1902 that the mission had been visited by people from the mouth of the Archer River and Pera Head. When Aurukun Mission was started by the Reverend Arthur Richter in August 1904, most of the people who came to live at the mission were from the country between Aurukun and Weipa. Richter wrote in 1905 that about forty people lived at Aurukun Mission and they came from the country between Ina Creek and farther north.

No doubt the regulations under the Protection Act (established 1897 as The Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act) would have been the reason Yepenyi's children spent their childhood at Aurukun rather than back at Weipa.

Aboriginal people were forbidden under the Act to leave the reserve without permission from the Protector of Aboriginals or the Superintendent. There was a continuation of the policies outlined in the 1897 Act and an increase in government powers when new legislation enacted in the 1939 Protection Act (The Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act) re-named Queensland's Chief Protector the Director of Native Affairs.

Removing people from their own place of living and transferring them to another community without appeal would have been among the more severe regulations imposed by the government of the day.

Yepenyi, forbidden to return to the country of his roots, although he would have travelled throughout bushland between Aurukun and Weipa (south of the Embley), remained at Aurukun, later home to his children Dick, Barry, Mary and Lucy. As a result of this enforced displacement, my grandmother has always had to explain her traditional connection to Weipa to those who oppose her claim. I now find that I also, as a descendant of Yepenyi, am continuously subjected to this questioning of our traditional identity and connections to country.

Although Dick Kelinda grew up in Aurukun, he was taught by Yepenyi about his history and traditional identity. He knew who his people were. He knew that his father was of the Alngith and that his mother, Maapun (also recorded as Wapoon), was Liningithi. Her main traditional area was Moingam, or Hey Point.

Dick Kelinda in turn taught his children the ways, the history and the knowledge of their ancestry. In the early 1940s he decided to send one of his children back home to country to consolidate all that needed to be learned. The one who was chosen to return was Jean (Nana). A husband was selected from inland Weipa to wed my grandmother and so began the saga of the return of one of the Alngith's prodigal members.

My grandmother's arrival as a third-generation member of Yepenyi's ancestry must have created great controversy. From the moment she arrived on Alngith soil there was open resistance by certain Weipa people. These people also continued to play a big part in the unfolding discriminatory process which has denied my grandmother her rightful traditional status at the Weipa level dating back almost sixty years and continuing to this very day. The way Nana has been denied recognition ranges from not being invited to certain meetings to not being verbally or publicly recognised at community functions and performances, through to not being compensated as an Alngith woman where others have.

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Nana recalls how, in her early life, when out on hunting and camping trips with her parents at Aurukun, her people travelled all over their land, walking from one area to the next in family groups. All that area across the river from Moingam around to Cockanin, right up to near the Aurukun boundary and the inland, was regularly covered on foot. Nana was only a child and she remembers that the walks were done quite frequently as part of their routine lifestyle. From early childhood until her late teens, Nana went along on the trips, as she had to learn how to hunt, and how to prepare and identify foods, medicines and other useful plants.

It is clear that my granny's childhood was full and rich in culture. As a child she observed, contributed to and participated in cultural practices. Being the eldest of her siblings, a lot would have been expected of her. It is not uncommon for older siblings to take on the daily responsibilities of looking after younger brothers and sisters, as well as the gathering and preparing of foods.

Nana did not live in the dormitory, as did other children at Aurukun. Dick Kelinda refused to allow the authorities to house his children at the mission house. They lived with their parents but participated in the day-to-day routine put in place by the missionaries of that time.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Whispers of this Wik Woman by Fiona Doyle. Copyright © 2004 Fiona Doyle. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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