Category Archives: Life as Bilinydjan

Many of the actors that usually appear present on a weaving trip did not seem as powerful this time around. The book made an appearance but it too, was less powerful. This time, funeral business seemed to be performed like a bright strand of yellow pandanas, working its way through a bathi. It is uncanny that on my second weaving trip to Mäpuru this year, word came that another close relative had passed away in a neighbouring community. Grieving rituals were repeated and an exodus was made from the weaving shelter. People were heading to Gapuwiyak to be with family. M and M wanted to make sure that all of us Balanda women understood what had happened. Even though the person who’d passed was very close to M, she held us at the front of her mind. I wondered, would I wake in the night again to hear the cries of the curlew? 


I know very little about funeral time, I’ve only briefly been to one. I don’t really want to write about bäpurru, but maybe what was happening at Mäpuru when people went away to begin that time. I missed my waku’s when they left, they didn’t return to Mäpuru the following week whilst I was there working at the school. I felt their absence most on the last day of school during the assembly. M, D and I were acknowledging all of the families and how much love and encouragement they give the children. W was the only elder there who was able to hear these words. She loved it. So, maybe it was the absence of these strong women, my wakus, that I felt strongest during this week. 


On a completely different note, enter the pool table… 


My wäwa brought high drama to Mäpuru with the arrival of a mini pool table from Galiwi’ku. My märi’s house was the most popular all week with kids and adults coming over to have a go at this new source of entertainment. Sharing and turns were concepts that two wäwas in particular did not want to know anything about. It was a week of tantrums, pool cue snapping and tears!!! 

The other big news for the week was the arrival of B to assemble to solar power installation at Mäpuru. This was my first experience of having the role of gatekeeper projected onto me by a Balanda man. Although there were many people standing around when the B crew arrived, a b-line was made for me. All of a sudden, there were expectations that I had some kind of authority and would give permission for things and be a spokesperson for the community… a very uncomfortable experience and one that possibly tells a few stories about Yolŋu-Balanda relationships. I imagine this happens all the time. Do J and others from Mäpuru feel invisible when this happens? A small glimpse at ‘everyday’ life in Mäpuru when the weaving workshops take a break.

A question that goes to the heart of what I am grappling with at the moment is, what is the issue that my research seeks to address? Is it the recognition of cultural/philosophical and economic practices in a homeland community (through the Arnhem Weaving workshops), a place where Yolŋu are determined to live on country? Or, is the issue more about the nature and quality of relationships that are generated between weavers (Yolŋu and visitors) during these workshops… this idea of being with? Maybe the recognition of cultural practices and cultural survival in homelands is the broader context in which a exploration of relationships needs to occur.

I’ve been back from Mäpuru for almost a week and have been feeling the pinch to get things ‘onto paper’. Where do I begin? 

My time there was different from others in the past in many ways. I nervously adopted my new mälk, Bilinydjan, and on more than one occasion encountered resistance to my new relationships with everything. Many of my young dhuway were now gurruŋ (poison cousins) and did not take to the idea of our close relationships becoming more distant. Neither was I. On reflection, this experience has given me a chance to learn about gurruṯu with a greater awareness of how it does affect being and relatedness. 

When I think of metaphors to describe my feelings of being in Mäpuru, I keep coming back to the lotus. Petals unfolding, going deeper and a brilliant center that I feel myself being drawn into.

End of each day and we were sitting with R under the weaving shelter, the sun hanging low on the horizon and the colours of the newly dyed pandanas glowing in the orange light. R kept on saying about our relationships, ‘Yonlŋu-Balanda, it’s like a world.’ I ponder these words, sometimes getting a glimpse of what R means… A world of connections? Everything exists there in the relationship? We were gurul’yun (going and seeing) R, wanting just to be with each other, weaving and talking. I had never heard of the word gurul’yun before M mentioned it. Can/does it describe being with? There is something here for me to go deeper into, a concept to unfold. 


The other weavers and I had some interesting conversations around the cooking fire. At one point, I asked the other women what they had woven into their baskets that day. Some interpreted the question literally, I was hinting at the metaphor. At times I was weaving a sadness and letting go into my mat (below). This did not go undetected by R, who would catch my eye and ask questions with her hands. In an emotional landscape, she sees everything. So, to respond to my sadness of letting go (goodbye Baŋaḏitjan) I wove a rainbow of colours into my mat. Slowly, I gained confidence in breaking out of one form and created another. Still transforming… What would our baskets look like if the emotional landscape into which we weave (the warp and the weft) were made visible? Can the Mäpuru women read us through the stories we tell in our weaving?

I realise now, that somethings are more quickly unpacked when coming back from Mäpuru. The washing’s the easy bit!

I was speaking with A earlier about the actors that I might follow during the Arnhem Weaving workshops. One powerful actor that emerged from this conversation was the book. 

During the the two weaving workshops I participated in at Mäpuru, I used the book to write down new words I was learning in Gupapuyŋgu, stories people would share with me about my gurruṯu and to help keep the weaver’s time-sheets. It was for this final function that the book attracted a lot of attention from the weavers and its power in the network was reinforced. So how was this book performed at Mäpuru this July?


In hindsight it was not such a great idea for the time-sheets to be in my book. I became a sort of a gatekeeper to important information which the weavers wanted to access. All of the weavers knew about the time-sheet and that G (a weaver) and I were maintaining for the week. Weavers would often ask me, ‘Do you have x’s name in the book?’ and I would have a look in the book and confirm it was there. If not, we would write it in. Looking back at the situation, I realise I was quite anxious about the whereabouts of my book; it contained a lot of things that I considered to be important to my Yolŋu education. I had no idea until later in the week that the book was also being protected by other people, but for a different reason. 


On occasions the book, which often sat on the mat next to where I was weaving, would be carelessly abandoned (by me) and safely put away by one of the weavers. This protection and care of the book (usually by others and not myself) was starting to tell a story. Was the story about the time-sheet? If so, what kind of story? At some point I need to write the back-story on how the time-sheet came into being, but I’ll do that later. 


Throughout the week I increasingly felt like some kind of supervisor, for I was giving power to the time-sheet (a very Balanda construct) by helping to fill it in. Although we never spoke about this with each other, I have a sense that G also felt like she was in this prickly role. Whilst I could pretend that there was a balance that we were disrupting, I think that would be naive. There are all kinds of actors that have more power than others when these weaving workshops are being enacted (e.g. confidence in speaking English, mother’s with babies, bright and abundant piles of dyed pandanas and Balanda confident in speaking Yolŋu Matha to name a few). 

At the end of the week G and I explained to the weavers how the time-sheet would be used to divide up the payments made by workshop participants. This was not the first time a time-sheet had been used, but was its performance during this workshop any different? My book was certainly not always an actor.

So, again it was A who reminded me of Latour with the question, what would it cost to break the network? A question I’ll leave open and contemplate! One thing I am becoming increasingly aware of is how I am trying to grasp ANT terminology – for me it is performing as an awareness that helps me to observe which actors are there, how they are performing and what networks are being formed/undone. 

To begin this story properly I need to go back to July 2010 when I first went to Mäpuru for an Arnhem Weaving workshop (I love how reality is like a labyrinth; just when you think you are moving to the heart of something you are steered back to where you came from). 

On my first morning of our weaving workshop I sat next to an experienced weaver M, watching her hands rhythmically work with the pandanas. Soon after a young woman and her mother came and sat nearby. It wasn’t long before these women, D and L started to take on teaching me gunga djäma; one coil at a time, through the kala changes, slowly weaving me into their story. D asked me, ‘Are you adopted?’ I told her that no, I wasn’t adopted… well, I was soon after that. My new yukuyuku and ŋäma gave me my mälk, Baŋaḏitjan and began teaching me about my gurruṯu and country. I contemplated, What does this all mean for me? A question I am sure many Balanda have asked themselves when they are made part of the Yolŋu universe. J offered some insights as to why adoption happens with Yolŋu – perhaps Yolŋu are trying to make sense of a Balanda world, give clarity to how they should appropriately relate to Balanda. I was made a Yirritja woman, part of the Gupapuyŋugu clan. My bäpurru, the Guyumirrilil. All of a sudden, this identity Baŋaḏitjan, my place in the Yolŋu universe, spread around to all of the Yolŋu in Mäpuru. Walking around the community, people would call out and acknowledge me, ‘Yow Baŋaḏitjan!’ Very soon, the concept of Nia as identity, began to morph and that name left behind.   

To unpack all of my experiences relating to gurruṯu at Mäpuru since then will take time, but a feeling that has grown inside me each time I’ve gone back is the sense that I am a small child beginning my learning in the Yolŋu world as Baŋaḏitjan. All of the teaching that my mari’mus M and B have shared with me and my waku R, had begun to give me a tiny glimpse into the connections I had when I was being with… people, country, everything. At the time I struggled to comprehend the act that was taking place, the meaning underlying the teaching. Friday’s events have brought to the surface feelings and thoughts that have been germinating for a long time; I have a felt understanding of what these teachings mean, even if I can’t articulate a cognitive understanding.  


Meeting and getting to know M, a Balanda ḏirramu who was adopted by Yolŋu and given the mälk Bulany, has been a blessing in my life. Realising that we were ‘wrong mälk’ for each other (particularly as Baŋaḏitjan and Bulany are both Yirritja moiety) presented an ‘issue’ to be resolved. A possible way forward was for one of us to ask our Yolŋu family to change our mälk. It seemed fairer for me to do this as he had been adopted for longer and was more established in the Yolŋu world. A reluctance set over me and I put off speaking with my family. I knew that changing mälk was inevitable, it was a show of respect to our Yolŋu families and other Yolŋu we would come to know. Despite this, I was reluctant. [Unusual that I am writing this as a story for an audience… is that because I have told a few people about this blog?].All of the relationships I had established seemed relative to me being Baŋaḏitjan. Were they? How much did this affect how people related to me? 

A balance disrupted when I phoned my ŋäma on Friday to tell her about my love situation, ”Ŋarra djäl waŋgany Balanda ḏirramu ga nhanŋu Bulany mälk.” She repeatedly told me that I should be with Wämut. “Ŋarra marŋgi,” I told her I understood. Through my rough Gupapuyŋgu and her attempts at English we established that a mälk swap could be a way forward – despite my yukuyuku declaring, “Yaka!” when asked if I should swap (what did it mean to D to be my yukuyuku? I feel distant from her but maybe this meant nothing, we were sisters). Finally my ŋäma declared me to be Bilinydjan, her yapa. I am now Dhuwa, a Djambarrpuyŋu woman… to the other side of the Yolŋu universe. I am now the ‘right mälk’ to be with M, so everything’s ok, right? 

I still can’t get over the feelings of upset I experienced after this phone call. Part of me tried to drag myself into the trivial, I’m not even Yolŋu! but it didn’t feel like that. I felt like I was in a new place, like something foundational had shifted. Most of all, I was worried that all of the Yolŋu who had invested their energy in teaching me might feel like it had been a waste of time. Maybe they would be reluctant to teach me about my new gurruṯu. Thank goodness for the generous listening of M, A, Y and J who didn’t make me feel like it was all trivial. 

So what now? I return to Mäpuru as Bilinydjan, in an open relationship with Bulany and start again… a newborn in the Yolŋu universe.