by Fiona Doyle
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.
Jean George (Awumpun) at Pelican Island, Weipa, with great grand-daughters Sheridan and Justice Doyle
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 TWO
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.
Dick Kelinda, Nana’s father, holding Nana’s brother, Richard Aurukun, North Queensland (Photograph by N.F. Nelson, 1936, Nelson album, Qld Presbyterian Historical Records, 234.
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.
Dick and Nyrlotte Kelinda outside their messmate bark house that Dick made in Aurukun. (It is believed that the baby on Dick’s hip is Nana, aged approximately 3 years.) McKay collection, QldMuseum.
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 unfoldi
ng 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.
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.
Life consisted of learning, observing, and acquiring the skills to perform and function traditionally, under the watchful eye of older, more experienced elders and teachers. Nana would learn by observing the older female relatives, her mother Nyrlotte and her aunties. Younger siblings also had a responsibility to watch and learn, just as the parents and elders had a responsibility to teach and pass on this important knowledge to their children. Nana’s other siblings were Betty Snr, Jessica, Richard and Betty Jnr. I never met Betty Snr and Jessica as they passed away during their teenage years. Nana claims their deaths were a result of blackfella magic or poori poori, with jealousy being the instigator of these curses.
A chain of mothers, grannies and older sisters led and taught the young girls, and, likewise, older brothers, fathers and grandfathers oversaw the training of the young men. While Awumpun’s brother Richard underwent skilful training in spear making, spear throwing, hunting practices and tracking, Awumpun and her sisters were shown the techniques of digging yams and their preparation. They learnt the traditional and correct way of preparing acool shells (mud mussels). The shells were placed face-down on strips of paperbark, which were carefully placed on clear, levelled-out earth. These were then covered with sticks and a fire lit. This served as a natural open-air oven which slowly and perfectly cooked the succulent meal. Oysters, crabs and periwinkles (ndrangle) would also be collected.
These were practices that the younger generation of that time learned and carried out and these skills have been passed on to the next generation, so that our cultural and traditional practices would not be lost.
The learning of the traditional ways was often interrupted by the demands of the missionaries, who insisted that the Kelinda siblings interact with and perform tasks with the other Wik children in the dormitory. Cooking, scrubbing, washing, milking and sewing were some of the tasks that had to be performed at the mission house, and my granny was required to help. However, Awumpun was fortunate because she had the freedom of going home at the end of the day to her own parents. Dick Kelinda was clearly in charge of his children.
Nana remembers how during those camping trips her father took care of everything by himself, rather than getting help from relatives. He would choose camping spots that were far away from the nearest camp of families and relations, for what reason she didn’t know. He hunted alone and cleared land to build bark humpies, helped only by his wife and his children. He was a skilled hunter, and I was told once that the old man would crouch silently in a swamp, fully submerged, with a reed stick in his mouth for air, waiting for ducks. As the ducks swam close enough, he would quickly and very quietly grab their feet and, snapping their necks, throw them up on the bank. He would then wait for the next victim to innocently swim by. Twenty to twenty-five ducks would be caught in one hunt and taken back to the family for plucking and cleaning. The insides would be prepared and cooked in the traditional method, the way the Alngith preferred to eat it. Duck was considered a rare treat, a delicacy, and was extremely nutritious.
Because the missionaries respected Dick Kelinda’s traditional knowledge and his social prominence in the community, he was given the responsibility of tracking down members of his own mob who committed an offence in the village and had run off into the bush somewhere. Great-grandfather had to ‘bring’ them back to the mission for punishment.
Nana remembers how once he brought back men who had been on the run. They had been caught just outside Edward River. After capturing the men, Nana’s father gave a signal to everyone at the mission that his search had been successful and they would be entering the village within hours. This signal was to prepare those affected by the offence these men had committed. On returning to the village, the men were lined-up, wearing ankle and neck chains. The missionaries always called upon old ‘bada’ Dick to punish offenders by whipping them while they were chained. Apparently, the men only cooperated if one of their own with the same colour skin carried out the punishment.
One prisoner (now deceased and also a relative), chained and waiting for punishment, had whispered to my great-grandfather, ‘Just lucky it’s you; you my blood relation, otherwise you know I wouldn’t be here now.’ He had surrendered out of respect to Dick Kelinda, as tracker, because there was no way someone with this man’s advanced bush skills would allow himself to be caught by anyone other than a relative. My great-grandfather refused to whip his relative and threw the whip away on his return to the mission.
Nana once told me about a bizarre happening that occurred as the result of a crime that took place. This story has stayed with me because of its strangeness.
One day husband and wife bin go thoonki for yams. That day, people bin sitting everywhere under shade, yarning together about the past ... you know. Some of the women were getting yam stick and sticking them in the ground so then they make basket. Men make spears, while others practising to throw spears good for hunting.
Anyway that husband and wife bin plan to go by themselves. They were sitting under the shade talking about it when four men bin look them. A’ one bin go over to them two. ‘Hey, what you two doing?’
‘Oh we going thoonki for yam’, they bin tell him, not knowing that that one they bin ask gammon one where they going. Them two bin silly to tell because them men bin straightaway plan evil. Off the couple went. Anyway, next minute they can hear noise ... it was noise belonging to a spear. That spear bin flying through the air straight for those two. That spear bin go right through that old man, come out other side here (points to other side of waist). Poor thing, that old lady bin pregnant one too. She bin fly from that place right up to main road leading to landing. She bin turn into a bird and bin fly, mind you. All trees were upside down and ant beds were dancing everywhere. This was because of the evil that bin just happen. Murder bin take place. People bin see her fly, my mother and old lady Laura bin see her and ran over to their sister-in-law.
My father bin go for that old man to help him. E bin cut out the spear with pocket knife and pulled it out at the blunt end because the other end had stingray nail on it ... You know; for rip properly.
They bin take the woman one to the hospital. She bin proper short-wind from what had just happened to her and her husband. That old lady then took a fit. My mother and old lady Laura started dancing when they saw this. My father told me this story when I saw him. I bin ask him about everything that happened. He to
ld me.
He then told me he got chains and went to look for those men. By now they bin run away into the bush somewhere. Halfway after walking they bin find ‘eeree’ blong to human men behind bloodwood tree but men nowhere to be found. My father bin then stop and think. He bin think to himself they mighta bin go to Kendall. So off they went that way. They bin make camp in one place.
Then one of them men bin go toilet when he heard tapping noise like ‘tap, tap, tap’. (That’s the noise they make when you relative to them.) ‘E bin turn around and see one of the men. That man bin straightaway run and talk to my father in language. He told my dad that he bin hear signal and them men folks bin wanting cigarette. My old dad got all them Kendall mob to help surround and get them four who bin do that bad thing now. One of them killers bin say ‘Come brother, come’ and just gave himself up to my father. They bin still camp for a couple of nights before they bin start for Aurukun again. My father did not chain them until they started walking again; he let them free one stay with them and they never bin run away. When they bin start off for Aurukun again, those men bin in chains. They bin reach Yarnangoon and my father bin fire shot to let the villagers know they not far now. MacKenzie went out with boat called ‘Waterlily’ to pick them up and take them the rest of the way ... them four to get punishment now. They got twenty strokes with whip; Councillors whipped them. Some men bin sent away too. The men bin lie down across big drum, belly down to be whipped. That’s that story now from long time when my mother and father bin still alive.