Gift to One Another: Interpreting Songlines Through the Relational Dynamics of Kuruwarri

ABSTRACT

This dialogue between Warlpiri ceremonial leader and educator Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu and academic Samuel Curkpatrick explores important Warlpiri concepts related to social interconnectedness and responsibility. With characteristic narrative dexterity, Pawu develops concepts that originate within traditional Warlpiri thought and performance in provocative ways, interpreting ngurra-kurlu (home within), kuruwarri (system) and wantarri-tarri (travelling route) to generate insight within contemporary issues of cultural and national identity. Extending from Pawu’s appraisal of songlines as a form of hermeneutic activity, we consider how intersecting narratives of people and place allow meaningful relationships to be sustained and communities to be nourished by one another, in their mutual differences. The material presented in this discussion arose through a series of conversations between the authors, and through keynote presentations delivered by Pawu at the University of Divinity and Indigenous Knowledge Institute, University of Melbourne, in December 2021. The themes and narratives of this dialogue reflect Pawu’s teaching ethos, artistic direction, and approach to language and interpretation.

KEYWORDS:

• Warlpiri
• ancestral
• law
• song
• narrative
• ngurra-kurlu
• relationality
• epistemology

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 While traditions of ceremonial song have readily been explored from narrative, aesthetic, historical, social, educative and legal perspectives, there has been little consideration of the hermeneutic processes and patterns of intellectual enquiry these expressions shape. We have begun to explore how songline hermeneutics relate to cultural and theological enquiry in Curkpatrick et al. (2023), through the novel juxtaposition of Warlpiri ngurra-kurlu (see below) and Pancasila, the foundational ideology of the Republic of Indonesia. Similarly, in Curkpatrick et al. (2023), we explore ways that Pawu’s pedagogical approach encourages responsiveness and responsibility between different people and cultures.

2 Skin names refer to the naming system for patterns of kinship governing interpersonal behaviour, forms of address and often marriage, found across Indigenous Australia. While the specific patterns and ordering of terms used differ between regions and language groups, a broadly applicable description is provided by Langton and Corn (2023): ‘Your skin name locates you on an interpersonal grid that scopes all possible relationships in society, which are always expressed via a finite set of kin terms, no matter how near or far you might be related to other individuals.’

3 Cataldi (in Napaljarri and Cataldi 1994: 103) observes that the composition of classical Warlpiri storytelling depends on who is present and the context of narration, such that the events and characters emphasised within a story seek to make sense of the relational connections of people and place.

4 The flying emu which can be seen in the dark spaces of the milky way is crowned by the Southern Cross, ‘just like the single white feather that Warlpiri people wear as a headdress in ceremonies’ (Langton and Corn, 2023). Pawu explains that the emu is the great teacher and that the Southern Cross is the ‘crown of knowledge’ that binds together multiple perspectives and experiences.

5 This story tells of a time when the Warlpiri and Walmadjari, two separate language groups today, were known as one people group, called Warnmajarri-jarra. This story of the four winds marks the point in history when they became separate groups. (WP).

6 ‘The name Warlpiri is a contraction of warlpa-wiri (big winds) in reference to the high winds that characteristically sweep the Tanami Desert’ (Langton and Corn, 2023).

7 See Corn and Patrick (2015), Langton and Corn (2023) and Laughren et al. (2016) for a more detailed breakdown of these patri-moiety subsections, especially as these relate to ceremonial responsibilities and the differing narratives of family groups.

8 In a similar way, Holmes & Jampijinpa [Pawu] (2013: 19) consider how ngurra-kurlu is a framework that resists ‘the common tendency to transform ecological knowledge into something abstract and objective rather than something that is lived day to day.’ This entails the transformation of the ecological landscape into a social one.

9 Wantarri-tarri was the theme of a symposium and keynote presentation by Pawu, from which this paper originated. Wantarri-tarri: The Gift Road, University of Divinity, 8 December 2021. For a recording, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppc8vm1SqHQ&list=PLtTFZcoa-nWlBjj0BhsmROFZIb2H-XLYU&index=17.

10 Raypirri’ is a concept from Yolŋu people in Arnhem Land that translates as ‘respect’ or ‘discipline’, and related to the manikay (public song) tradition and educative processes through ceremonial performance (Curkpatrick and Wilfred 2023b, 2023c).

11 Likewise, Curran (2011: 43) writes: ‘As a boy makes the progression from child to young adult during the course of this ceremony, he strengthens and gives meaning to relationships with people whom he might have known only distantly before this.’

12 Curran (2019: 21–22) observes that, where other ceremonies typically focus on narratives associated with one Dreaming ancestor (who may encounter others along the way), the Jardiwanpa incorporates narratives owned by different Warlpiri groups, including Yarripirri (Inland Taipan), Wampana (Spectacled Hare Wallaby), Ngurlu (Edible Seed) and Yankirri (Emu).

13 Curran (2019: 20) reflects that ‘most of all, it was the contingencies of daily life that interrupted efforts to bring everyone together and prepare for this grand-scale ceremony,’ which has perhaps had the greatest impact on the regular performance of Jardiwanpa for Warlpiri. She details the extensive preparations for Jardiwanpa in October, 2006, which involved ‘long nights of singing … for several months’ (Curran 2019: 25–28). Through his work as Artistic Director of the biannual Milpirri festival, supported by the Tracks Dance Company, Pawu has sort to reinvigorate community participation in Jardiwanpa across multiple generations. See Doi (2015). See also Langton (1993) on the complex contractual, investment and copyright negotiations undertaken prior to the production of Jardiwanpa – A Warlpiri Fire Ceremony by Ned Lander and Perkins (1993).

14 As a Professorial Fellow at the Indigenous Knowledge Institute, University of Melbourne, Pawu is undertaking research to explore and creatively reconstruct a songline from the New South Wales coastline, through Central Australia and to the Kimberley coastline (a distance well over 3000 km). By surveying traditional artwork, narratives and practices related to cooking the kangaroo, held by different Aboriginal groups, he seeks to discover what this songline might have to say to us about community, responsibility and identity. See Pawu (2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Divinity, under the research grant ‘Openings for collaborative theology through classical Yolŋu and Warlpiri epistemologies.

Notes on contributors

Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu

Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu is a Warlpiri elder, Professorial Fellow at the Indigenous Knowledge Institute, University of Melbourne, and Artistic Director of the Milpirri Festival, Lajamanu. He has led and collaborated on various research projects through the Australian Research Council. These give focus to Warlpiri song, epistemology, education, the repatriation of archival records and youth engagement. Pawu has provided policy advice on Indigenous law, education and youth matters to multiple government and industry bodies, including the Australian Government's Indigenous Voice National Co-Design Group, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and the Northern Territory Department of Education.

Samuel Curkpatrick

Samuel Curkpatrick is a researcher specialising in Indigenous Australian music and philosophical issues of language and epistemology. He completed a doctorate in ethnomusicology at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies (ANU, Canberra) and further postgraduate research in theology at the University of Divinity. Sam is a Research Associate in Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.