Kungkarangkalpa Inma Alatjila Kuwari Palyani: Dancing the Seven Sisters Songline Today!

Abstract

The focus of this article is the cross-cultural translation space of bicultural bilingual performance of Inma, traditional Pitjantjatjara song and dance. The article structure reflects the two languages and cultural concepts of storytelling, song and dance in which the Kungkarangkalpa Inma—Seven Sisters performance was presented at the Centenary of Canberra Indigenous Festival in 2013. This method of bilingual bicultural translation of words, song, dance and choreography was intrinsic to the many acts of translation involved in communicating the power, passion and meaning of a traditional Indigenous Inma performance to a western city audience. Inma song and dance conveys the connectivity of people to their Tjukurpa, the Law and Dreaming of their country. The performance space of translation is one in which people choose to share their culture by performing it in language, written or spoken, song, dance or mime, and translation occurs through intermediaries with some knowledge of both cultures who translate each to the other. The authors acknowledge that the acts of translation involved in translocating the desert Inma to the Canberra stage and the presentation of this in the secondary formats of a dialogue at an academic conference and now in a written article are all abstractions from the real performance of meaning in country of the Tjukurpa. Translation is but a reflection of meaning, a narrowing of the breadth of cultural referends of language, time and place. In this case, through several portals: a condensed city performance, a film of this performance, an oral bilingual conference dialogue and now a written account. This article references these portals and incorporates direct and indirect bilingual speech and reflection in an attempt to convey the importance of Inma song and dance in the cross-cultural communication of Indigenous knowledge of country.

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to all of the Anangu dancers and singers who participated in the Kungkarangkalpa Inma Performance at the Centenary of Canberra in 2013, the Artistic Director Wesley Enoch, the Songlines Partners the NMA, ANU, Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council (NPYWC) and Ananguku Arts, and Robyn Archer, Festival Director of C100, who decided to commission this performance for Canberra.

Notes

1 Charlie Ilyatjari, personal communication, recorded and translated by Diana James, 1990.

2 Nganyinytja and Charlie Ilyatjari were Directors of Desert Tracks Tours, an immersive Pitjantjatjara cultural tour with bilingual translation of teaching about Songlines, 1988–2000. For more information, see James (1991).

3 For further discussion, see Corn (2009).

4 Nganyinytja Ilyatjari, Senior Pitjantjatjara Law woman, personal communication 1990.

5 For more details on the story of the Seven Sisters performed in Canberra, see James and Williamson (2017).

6 The performance troupe came from the APY Lands in the north-west of South Australia.

7 The Songlines Project refers to the ‘Alive with The Dreaming! Songlines of the Western Desert’ Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project 2012–16 managed by the Australian National University with Partners: Ananguku Arts and Culture Aboriginal Corporation, NPY Women’s Council, National Museum of Australia, Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa, Australian Department of Sustainable Environment, Water, Population and Communities, and AHMS Australian Heritage Management Systems.

8 The two Songlines researched were Ngintaka, perentie lizard, and Kungkarangkalpa, Seven Sisters.

9 Transcription and translation by Diana James of the joint presentation by Inawinytji Williamson and Diana James at the Musicological Australia Conference, Perth, 2018.

10 Wesley Enoch, speech to the sponsors at the NMA at the Kungkarangkalpa Inma opening night in Canberra, 1 March 2013.

11 Kungkarangkalpa Inma Score, the Pitjantjatjara verses by Inawinytji Williamson translated by Diana James included in this article were recorded by Inawinytji Williamson in 2012 and are the first written record of this ancient oral song cycle of the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara peoples to be published with approval by the traditional owners of the Songline, Canberra, March 2013.

12 Kunmanara refers to someone who has passed away. Sadly, senior song-woman of the Kungkarangkalpa Inma, Mrs Yarritji Connelly, contributed this Stanza at the Balfours Well rehearsal but was not present at the C100 Performance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diana James

Diana James has been a student of Pitjantjatjara language and culture since 1975 when she first went to live with Inawinytji Williamson and her family at Kaltjiti (Fregon). Since then she has worked with Western Desert people as a researcher in cultural heritage projects recording and translating their rich performance traditions of story, song and dance. In 2010 Ananguku Arts approached Diana, a senior researcher at the ANU, to assist them in developing the Alive with the Dreaming! Songlines of the Western Desert ARC Linkage Project. This collaborative research project tracked two major Songlines across APY Lands, and the Seven Sisters Songline across Martu, Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara country. The research was governed by senior artists, singers, dancer and storytellers, Traditional Owners of the Songlines in country. Major outcomes of the collaboration included the Kungkarangkalpa Seven Sisters Inma in 2013 and exhibition of the Seven Sisters Songline in 2017-18 at the National Museum of Australia.

Inawinytji Williamson

Inawinytji Williamson is a senior law woman and traditional owner of the Kungkarangkalpa Inma Seven Sisters Songline of the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands of NW South Australia. Inawinytji, like her father Andy Tjilari, is custodian of great oral archives of the traditional knowledge of her people. Widely respected as a leading song woman with great knowledge of traditional inma she teaches these traditions to younger generations and shares her culture with the wider Australian community through public speaking, writing and exhibitions. She has worked since the 1970s in the arts at Fregon and in 1995 was the first Chairwoman of the regional organisation Ananguku Arts. Since 2011 Inawinytji has been a senior co-researcher on the Alive with the Dreaming! Songlines of the Western Desert project. She was the traditional song librettist and Anangu Inma Director on the Canberra production of the Kungkarangkalpa Seven Sisters Inma in 2013 and a key member of the Indigenous Curatorium of the Seven Sisters Songline exhibition in 2017-18 at the National Museum of Australia.