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ABSTRACT
Much has been written about Yolŋu social organisation since Lloyd Warner’s early ethnography (1937). Debates within this literature have predominantly focused on the relative independence of bäpurru groups, a significant social unit within Yolŋu society, and whether these can accurately be described as ‘corporate descent groups’. To develop a fresh perspective on Yolŋu social organisation, this paper presents an exploration of five drawings by Dhambiŋ Burarrwaŋa and her waku (daughters, sister’s daughters), a novel methodology which has allowed us to recast well-known anthropological tropes within a setting of relational growth and cross-cultural communication. Rather than outlining a structural model, themes of raki’ (strings), luku (foot, footprint, anchor, root of a tree), gamunuŋgu (white clay), and lirrwi (ashes, shade) are explored in detail, as they reveal multiple layers of complexity and connection within otherwise abstract notions like ‘clan’. The drawings and accompanying exegesis situate Yolngu identity within living social connections. What emerges is a relational portrait that embeds the ‘clan debate’ within those relationships that make understanding possible in the first place.
Acknowledgements
My deepest gratitude to gurruṯumirri walala for your generosity and kinship. Without your generosity and patience my research, and collaborations like, this would not be possible. Fieldwork for this paper was originally undertaken on an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship. Many thanks to Samuel Curkpatrick, Howard Morphy, and Frances Morphy for your helpful feedback on the draft.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Sociomateriality is a concept used to describe the entanglement of social and material elements in the production of human action and meaning-making.
2 I use a kinship term to refer to waku throughout because, while she was happy for this article to be written, has asked not to be named.
3 A moiety system is a structural system which divides the social world into two divisions.
4 On raki’, see also Curkpatrick and Wilfred (Citation2023), who explore the ways different voices entwine in song as akin to rärrk (crosshatching) in painting and the texture of raki’ (many fibres intertwining). Corn and Gumbula (Citation2006:178–179) write about yarraṯa (string lines of descent) which ‘represent within each moiety and, more specifically, within each mala the direct patrilineage or yarrata (literally ‘string’ ‘line’) of contemporary Yolŋu from their waŋarr and the authority that Yolŋu have always possessed over their wäŋa and madayin [sacred law] by virtue of those lineages.
5 Joseph Gumbula (in Corn and Gumbula Citation2006) has drawn an insightful diagram of the different ‘domains’ of Yolŋu knowledge and associated polities, entitled ‘the Yolŋu knowledge Constitution.’ See also De Largy Healy (Citation2022).
6 Thank you to the anonymous reviewer who pointed out a missing annotation for the red fruit in this drawing. Dhambiŋ and waku reported that the fruit represents the children of the bäpurru.
7 Kinship is considered as a measure of distance, from galki ‘close’ to barrku (distant, far away). That is, spatially, the place kinship is measured from is the ḻuku and that the ḻuku impressed in the lirrwi’ (ashes/shade) is the possessive and protective shade of kinship.
8 Ian Keen notes that people who share a particular set of maḏayin will contextually say they are ‘one bäpurru’ for that maḏayin complex (Citation1994, Citation2000). This is consistent with the terms explored here. With reference to Dhambiŋ and waku’s drawing, we can see this potential relation between two bäpurru who share the same inside string, root or set thereof. People certainly say that bäpurru are ‘one’ where they come together as riŋgitj groups, for example, on the basis of shared maḏayin and connections to place. Keen describes these as ‘extendable’ strings of relatedness – new connections that may be discovered. However, I have not come across the notion of ‘extension’ used by Yolŋu in this way.
9 The Yolŋu marriage system is actually defined by the mother-in-law bestowal rather than the bestowal of women as future wives (Morphy Citation1991).
10 A number of anthropologists have also noted that socio-political, ceremonial relationships are frequently represented in ceremonial performances by handmade strings (e.g. Williams Citation1999, Rudder Citation1993: 20).
11 Maṯamaṯa is the father’s country for Warramiri but has been ‘looked after’ by the Burarrwaŋa Gumatj as their märi (MM) country in line with principles of succession since a time before European arrival in the area. This does not affect the relations between people and country depicted in these drawings because the foundation of rom does not change: language and maḏayin exist a priori in the form and identity of country. When a bäpurru succeeds to a particular country they become the people who stand with their feet in the foundation of rom in that place and they ‘look after’ the country and associated maḏayin as it existed before and always. It simply becomes part of their ‘body’, as it were. There is a clear line and process of succession in Yolŋu rom between particular clans of the same moiety. Howard and Frances Morphy (Citation2023: 10–11) have recently written on this topic: ‘The Ancestral footprint of the land cannot be changed. Land has belonged from the beginning of time to a clan of the same moiety. Hence a group cannot succeed to its mother’s country – a clan of the opposite moiety. The primary claim to succession is for gutharra to take over their märi’s country. The group taking over will sing the songs that were already there, will take on the ritual responsibilities associated with place and will speak the dialect associated with that estate.’
12 Frances Morphy has written about this patterning in terms of Yolŋu cultural topography exploring the way it manifests in contemporary Homeland life, in the location of the settlements themselves and also in the ‘mobilities and immobilities’ among and between settlements throughout the region (Citation2010).
13 This echoes the concept of ‘relative autonomy’ that Frances and Howard Morphy have written about regarding Yolŋu orientations and political desires in a cross-cultural context (Citation2013).