First published 2015
Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, Broome, Western Australia Website:
www.magabala.com
Email: [email protected]
Magabala Books receives financial assistance from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts advisory body. The State of Western Australia has made an investment in this project through the Department of Culture and the Arts in association with Lotterywest.
Copyright © Text The Estate of Jukuna Mona Chuguna & Pat Lowe 2015
Copyright © Illustrations Mervyn Street 2015
The authors assert their moral rights.
The illustrator asserts his moral rights.
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.
Design Tracey Gibbs
Printed by Everbest Printing Company Ltd
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Chuguna, Jukuna Mona, author.
The girl from the Great Sandy Desert/written by Jukuna Mona Chuguna and Pat Lowe
Illustrated by Mervyn Street
978-1-922142-05-4 (Paperback)
For upper primary and middle school.
Subjects: Walmajarri (Australian people -- Western Australia -- Social life and customs. Great Sandy Desert (W.A.) -- Social life and customs.
Other authors/contributors:
Lowe, Pat, 1941- author.
Street, Mervyn, illustrator.
Dewey Number: 305.89915
THE WALMAJARRI PEOPLE
Walmajarri is one of several languages spoken by people whose homelands lie in the Great Sandy Desert, to the south of Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. Theirs is a country without borders, defined by the waterholes on which desert people’s lives depended. The land is a vast dunefield of parallel jilji, or sandhills, which run in a roughly east-west direction, sometimes for hundreds of kilometres, broken by low outcrops of rocks.
Because of the isolation and dryness of the Great Sandy Desert, the Walmajarri were spared the fate of their nearest neighbours to the north, whose more fertile lands had been taken over by newcomers with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep.
They remained living freely in the desert until the lure of modern life gradually drew them, a few at a time, to the stations. By 1961, the Walmajarri Exodus was complete.
Mana and her relations
Jaja Mana and Tili’s grandmother, who had a bad back
Japi Mana’s youngest ‘sister’
Kaj Lilil and Miwa’s husband
Kana Yinti’s younger brother, uncle to Mana, though younger than she is
Karli Miwa’s youngest son, about the same age as
Kana
Kayi Lilil’s daughter, whom Mana calls ‘sister’
Kurru Mana’s husband
Lilil Yinti’s sister, married to Kaj. Mana calls her ‘Aunty’
Mala Yinti’s mother
Mana (2) Dog with the same name as Mana
Miwa Kaj’s second wife
Pali Mana’s elder sister
Parri Mana’s blind mother’s last son
Parta Yinti’s second mother
Riji Miwa’s elder son
Tili Mana’s younger sister
Yinti Mana’s uncle and age-mate
Contents
Introduction
Mana
Lantimangu
What are kartiya like?
Two brothers
Mana’s blind mother
Two little girls
No water
Uncle Yinti
The cutting
Blacknose
Nearly buried alive
The fight
A sad story
Bitten by a dog
A trick
Mana the hunter
Mana loses her father
Mana nearly dies of thirst
Pakart
Mana gets married
Walmajarri pronunciation guide
Walmajarri glossary
About the creators
Further reading
Introduction
JUKUNA MONA CHUGUNA
Jukuna told me these stories in Broome, between 2008 and 2011, when she was living in the hostel just around the corner from my house.
I had already known Jukuna for many years. The first time I met her was when she came to Broome with her husband, Kurrapakuta, in 1985, to visit her uncle and age-mate, Jimmy Pike, in Broome Regional Prison, where I was working as a psychologist. Pike, who was already gaining a reputation as an artist, was approaching the end of a long prison sentence, and his family was making plans for his release on parole, expected the following year. They had recently set up a tiny outstation on the edge of the desert they had all come from, and the plan was for Pike to serve his parole out there, away from the temptations of town. On one occasion, Jukuna and Kurrapakuta took me to visit their outstation, and I was surprised to see how basic it was: a bore for water, a couple of canvases for shelter, a fireplace, and little else. Their campsite, next to a mining track, was flat and dusty, surrounded by sand and spinifex.
I had no inkling at the time that, before the following year was out, I too would be living close to this outstation with Jimmy Pike, and getting to know Jukuna and her extended family really well. We shared hunting expeditions and Jukuna was a natural teacher, always ready to show and explain aspects of desert life.
Jukuna grew up in the Great Sandy Desert, with a family of hunters and gatherers, whose language was Walmajarri. Her life was like that of her ancestors, although there were already signs of another world outside the desert, where recently settled people with reddish skins now ruled. The stories that came back to the desert were mixed. On one hand, the newcomers could be harsh and unpredictable; on the other, they had created a life of greater security, mainly by providing food for people who worked for them. Hunting was no longer necessary during the working week, although it remained a favoured activity.
During the 1940s and 1950s, desert people began drifting towards the stations, first as fringe-dwellers, later as workers. Some kept in contact with their desert relations, walking back to the sandhill country during the wet season break from work, taking gifts such as tools and blankets, and bringing news about family members and station life. They might return to the station at the beginning of the following dry season, or choose to stay in the desert with their relations for another year until rain had fallen again, filling up the waterholes.
Jukuna’s husband, Kurrapakuta, led his young bride out of the desert, to take up life on Cherrabun cattle station in the Kimberley. Both of them worked on the station and later moved to the Mission in the small town of Fitzroy Crossing, where Jukuna became a committed Christian. There the pair met two linguists, Joyce Hudson and Eirlys Richards, who were studying the Walmajarri language. Both Jukuna and Kurrapakuta helped Joyce and Eirlys to speak and analyse their language, and they themselves learnt to write it. They provided the linguists with stories in Walmajarri, which were published in small editions as the first books of readings for other people who wanted to learn to write their language.
In the 1980s, Karrayili Adult Education Centre was opened in Fitzroy Crossing, and Jukuna attended regularly, following classes in English literacy and starting to paint pictures. Not long afterwards the new art centre, Mangkaja Arts, was set up in the town, and Jukuna, along with her husband and many of their relations, took advantage of the new fa
cilities to paint there. Jukuna developed her own style of painting: scenes from her desert country, with its waterholes, its trees and flowers. Her works were exhibited in Australia and overseas, and she travelled to France and England. I accompanied her to Brighton in 2003, and on one leg of the return journey a fuel line on our aircraft developed a leak, causing one of the two engines to emit explosive sounds and to be shut down. As we slowly turned around and returned to Kuching, Jukuna held my hand, closed her eyes and prayed. We landed safely.
Around the same time, Jukuna wrote her life story in Walmajarri, which was translated into English by Eirlys Richards and published in 2004, along with the story of her sister, Ngarta, in one volume called Two Sisters.
In later life, Jukuna suffered from diabetes and eventually kidney failure. She had to go to Perth for renal dialysis until there was a vacancy in Broome, where she continued receiving treatment three times a week and lived in the dialysis hostel, just around the corner from my house.
On most days when she didn’t have to attend the dialysis centre, Jukuna would walk to my house to do her painting and share a cup of tea. She would sit at a table and work quietly and steadily, often completing a painting in one afternoon. She was so dedicated to her art that she sometimes ran out of canvases before I could order more from Mangkaja Arts in Fitzroy Crossing. On rare occasions when she didn’t feel like painting, Jukuna would sit and tell me stories of her childhood in the desert, a time she remembered with nostalgia. I would write down her stories and, as the collection grew, I suggested that we should publish them in a book. Jukuna liked this idea, and tried to think of new stories to tell me.
At other times, especially in the cooler months, Jukuna liked to build a small fire in my yard and, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of it, burn bark she had gathered; when the ashes were cool she scooped them into a small container and took them away for her hostel companions to mix with their chewing tobacco. When her friend Karen brought her a drum of ngarlka, desert nuts, from a field trip, Jukuna would cook some of them in the coals of her fire, just as she had done as a young woman. She would then spend hours breaking them open and putting the kernels into a tin to take home.
Over the two years she lived in the hostel, Jukuna suffered from frequent bouts of illness and was often admitted to hospital. I watched her grow frailer. She could still make her way to my house with the aid of a walking stick.
Although I wrote down Jukuna’s stories in her own words, it was clear that they could not be published just as they were. She told them to me in her own, heavily Kriolised English, which would have been difficult for most readers to understand. Also, in telling them to me, Jukuna assumed a great deal of knowledge that the average reader would not have. In addition, some of the people in the stories were no longer living, and using their names was therefore not appropriate and would cause offence. I put it to Jukuna that we could overcome these difficulties if I rewrote her stories in the third person, and gave her characters different names, as I had done in earlier books I’d written with Jimmy Pike: Yinti and Desert Cowboy.
Jukuna immediately understood the problem, was happy with my proposal and helped me choose alternative names for the people in the stories. For historical interest, we kept all the original place-names. When I had drafted a new version I read some of it back to Jukuna. She didn’t want to hear the whole thing — her English wasn’t up to it — but she did get the idea and gave my efforts her blessing.
In 2011, Jukuna, whose health had been steadily deteriorating, died of complications from her diabetes. At her funeral in Fitzroy Crossing, many people spoke of her work in recording and teaching the Walmajarri language and telling stories. The present volume is her last contribution to the world of art and storytelling.
Pat Lowe
Broome 2015
‘Jukuna’ is now the accepted spelling of the author’s personal name. It is pronounced with the ‘u’ sound in ‘put’, with the emphasis on the first syllable: Jukuna. Jukuna was given the English name ‘Mona’ on Cherrabun Station, in keeping with the practice of the times, and her own name was spelt ‘Chuguna’ and became her official surname. Her relations and friends have continued to call her Jukuna. However, Jukuna signed her paintings with her official name, ‘Mona Chuguna’.
BEFORE CONTACT
The history of Aboriginal people since Europeans first arrived in Australia has been very different from one part of the country to the other. The east and south of the continent were settled first, and the impact on Aboriginal people who lived in those areas was huge. The north and west of the continent were settled much later, while the central deserts were considered too hot and arid for white settlement and were only visited by a handful of explorers, a number of whom lost their lives on their journeys. Aboriginal people in the deserts were, for the most part, left in peace to continue their age-old, stable existence as seminomadic hunters and gatherers. So it was that Jukuna grew up in the Great Sandy Desert, not leaving until she was a young married woman, in around 1960.
Many details about the way people lived in the desert will be found in Jukuna’s stories, but some explanations may help the reader to understand them better.
Mana
Mana was born under a tree. The country she grew up in was wide as the sky, and the sun shone hot for most of the year. In every direction was sand: deep, red, warm sand that showed the footprints of every creature that walked on it; people, dogs, lizards, snakes, insects, all left their marks. At night, Mana went to sleep under a myriad stars.
When Mana was small, she was surrounded by her family: her mother, her older sister, her father and his second wife all camped together. At night, she slept on the sand beside her parents in their windbreak. During the day, her mother carried her everywhere in a wooden coolamon. While her mother gathered food, Mana lay in her coolamon in the shade of a nearby tree and when she got hungry, her mother fed her from her breast.
When Mana grew too big for the coolamon, her mother carried her on her hip while she walked and sat Mana down in the shade, on the soft sand, while she was working.
Little Mana watched her mother collect seeds from the bushes. She listened to the birds and looked at the lizards and insects in the spinifex. She noticed the different patterns made by their feet. She toddled around on the sand or sat and played with leaves that had fallen from the trees.
When Mana was a little older, she was often cared for by her grandmother while the other grown-ups went hunting and looking for food. Her grandmother was her mother’s mother, so Mana called her Jaja.
The family didn’t stay in one place for very long. They would camp for a while on a sandhill near a waterhole and go hunting every day from there. When they weren’t able to catch so many animals, they would move to somewhere else.
Mana’s father would pick up his spears and hunting sticks, his wives would carry their digging sticks in their hands and wooden coolamons of water on their heads. One of the women would lift Mana onto her shoulders and everyone would set off, stopping to gather food or hunt an animal on the way.
Often, other people joined Mana’s little family group: aunties, uncles and cousins would come and camp nearby, or Mana’s family would find relations at the next waterhole. And so Mana learnt about her country and got to know all the people who lived in it.
RELATIONSHIPS
Desert men often had more than one wife, and the wives called one another ‘sister’. The women shared the care of their children, who called all their father’s wives ‘mother’. Jukuna therefore speaks of her ‘own’ and her ‘second’ mother, to distinguish them in her stories.
Aboriginal people have many relationship terms, and use different names for their mother’s mother and their father’s mother (as well as different terms for their mother’s and father’s fathers). In Walmajarri, Jukuna’s language, one’s mother’s mother is ‘jaja’ and father’s mother is ‘ngawiji’. These terms are reciprocal — that is, the grandchildren are called ‘jaja�
�� and ‘ngawiji’ as well. This is why Aboriginal people speaking English often refer to their grandchildren as their ‘grannies’.
GETTING FOOD
Desert people gathered all their own food and hunted animals for meat. When grass and wattle seeds were in season, women gathered them and ground them up on rocks with water into a smooth paste, which they cooked in the coals to make a type of dark, unleavened bread.
Women carried the food they gathered in large wooden dishes or coolamons, usually made by their husbands. They used deep coolamons to carry water when they were travelling far from camp. Shallow coolamons were used for carrying babies.
Other tools used by desert people included spears, made from tall, straight saplings, and hunting sticks, carved out of hardwood, shaped and smoothed. Spears were men’s weapons, but women sometimes used them as well. Women more often carried long digging sticks, with which they probed the ground to find yams or to trace an animal’s burrow. Both men and women used hunting sticks to kill or knock down prey from trees.
WATER
Water in the desert was scarce. There was no surface water except here and there in claypans and rockholes during a good wet season. For most of the year, people got water from wells or waterholes they dug at known places in the sand, often a day’s walk or more from one another, and they had to remember exactly where these places were. Each waterhole had a name, and people always made their main camps near waterholes. Small family groups spent each year walking across the desert from one waterhole to another, guided by their knowledge of the country and its resources. They would base themselves at one place for a time, living off the land around them, then move on to a new waterhole when food began to get scarce.
The most important waterholes were the jila, because they never ran dry. Even in the driest time of year, people knew that if they dug out a jila, they would always find water. Other waterholes held water after rain, but eventually they would dry up.
The Girl from the Great Sandy Desert Page 1