| Ganalbingu |
'The song for that wind was already here. We told them where that fresh water was. They gave us their name for everything We told them where that trepang was. They gave us their name for the north and the south wind. But the song for that wind was already there. For several centuries until the early 1900s Macassan traders used to visit the coast of northern Australia to fish for trepang. Their boats would arrive on the northwest monsoon winds, stay throughout the wet season and return to Sulawesi when the prevailing winds swung around to the southeast at the end of the rainy season. The Macassans brought many goods with them for gifts, payment and exchange with the people of Arnhem Land: tobacco, knives, axes, cloth, rice and flour. Over many generations these annual visits and the regular arrival of these valuable trade goods became part of existing exchange of ceremonies between different Aboriginal groups. As Bulun Bulun says, "the Macassar mob, they came here and they gave us names for everything, like mitjiyang [boat], like marayarr [mast], all that language from the Indonesian mob, like jambako (tobacco)." The importance of the Macassan's annual visits and the valuable goods that came with them is reflected in their integration into the cosmology of the Aboriginal groups that had regular contact with them. For the Ganalpingu the Macassan visits form the thematic core of Murrakundja: their own clan ceremony. The central symbolic token of the Murrakundja ceremony is a pole, also called murrakundja, which represents the mast of the Macassan prau. The murrakundja pole is adorned with strings representing the sail ropes and decorated with emblems owned by the Ganalpingu clan. The painting in essence represents where two cultures meet; so it celebrates an abstract or intellectual landscape as well as a geographical location.' |
