Country Bin Pull em

LOOKING BACK TOGETHER

from the

Corporations

Welcoming Message from the Cultural Foundation of Hesse (Eva Claudia Scholtz) 8 Director’s Foreword (Mona B. Suhrbier)

Introduction. Looking Back Together (Matthias Claudius Hofmann and Richard Kuba)

An Eighty Year Relationship (Richard Kuba)

54 The Country Owns Us. We Follow the Rules of Wanjina and Wunggurr (Prepared by Kim Doohan with Rona Gungnunda Charles, Matthew Martin, Lloyd Nulgit, Pete O’Connor and Leah Umbagai)

74 The Archaeological Perspective. Rock Art in the Kimberley, Northwest Australia (Martin Porr)

88 When the Dreaming Becomes a Nightmare. The Long, Dark Shadows of Colonial Invasion in the Northern Kimberley (Anthony Redmond) 104 Turning Points. Australia in the History of the Weltkulturen Museum (Eva Ch. Raabe)

120 Celebrated and Lost. The Remains of a Collection from Northwest Australia (Matthias Claudius Hofmann)

146 Andreas and Katharina Lommel as Researchers in the Kimberley (Michaela Appel)

162 The Recordings of the “Frankfurter Expedition W-Australien“ (Sally Treloyn)

180 “Rubbish” Painting. Impressions of Site-Focused Archival Research with Ngarinyin Traditional Owners on their Country (Christina Henneke in collaboration with Rona Gungnunda Charles and John Rastus)

196 Bringing It Back to Life. The Re-Creation of the Bulamana Junba (Group discussion with Rona Gungnunda Charles, Lloyd Nulgit, Pete O’Connor and Leah Umbagai, edited by Christina Henneke and Isabel Kreuder)

206 A Message (Stick) to Frankfurt. “We Are Here, Our Stories Are Still Alive!” (Kim Doohan with Rona Gungnunda Charles, Lloyd Nulgit and Leah Umbagai)

224 Exhibition Views

248 Timeline

250 Glossary of Indigenous Concepts 252 Authors

Colophon

Foreword

Foreword from the Wanjina Wunggurr Aboriginal Corporations

As Wanjina Wunggurr Traditional Owners we are responsible to look after our Country, to keep practising our culture and to respect the knowledge from Lalai as our Law.

More than 80 years ago Frobenius Institute researchers and artists travelled to Wanjina Wunggurr Country and met our ancestors. They learned many things; they collected bush craft and made many different kinds of records, which they brought back to Frankfurt.

In 2023, four members of the Wanjina Wunggurr community travelled to Frankfurt to review these records and to create materials for the COUNTRY BIN PULL’EM exhibition. The exhibition has been co-curated as an invitation to the public to encounter some of these records and show that Wanjina Wunggurr Traditional Owners are still alive and their culture is strong.

Wilinggin Aboriginal Corporation, Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation, Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporation

Introduction

Looking Back Together

Matthias Claudius Hofmann and Richard Kuba

At the centre of this publication, as well as the exhibition of the same name, stands the Frobenius Expedition to Northwest Australia in 1938–39. This research and collection journey was conducted by the Frobenius Institute (the then Institute for Cultural Morphology) and the Weltkulturen Museum (formerly the Städtische Völkermuseum of the City of Frankfurt), which were managed in personal union at the time. The aim of the ethnographic expedition was to research the culture of the Ngarinyin, the Woddordda and the Wunambal – who are collectively referred to as the Wanjina Wunggurr  community – in the Kimberley region of Northwest Australia. A special focus of the Frobenius Expedition were the rock paintings of the Kimberley region and their cultural meanings.

The Kimberley is among the very few regions in the world that provides such detailed insights into an Indigenous cultural tradition, of which the rock paintings of the Wanjina Wunggurr people form an integral part. A tradition that has even withstood the violent upheavals of European colonialism and the modern nation state. In 1938 the Frobenius Expedition, under the direction of Helmut Petri (1907–1986), embarked on the first attempt to produce a detailed and systematic ethnographic survey of the region, and in particular the rock paintings.

The research project

Richard Kuba

The Frankfurt exhibition COUNTRY BIN PULL’EM was preceded by another exhibition which was organised, more or less spontaneously, in the large, hot metal shed of the Wilinggin Aboriginal Corporation (WAC) in Derby. This served as a materials warehouse and garage for the large-engined, all-wheel-drive vehicles which the WAC rangers employed for their duties “on Country”. On this day in June 2022 the heavy Land Cruisers were driven out, the shed swept and all materials moved aside in order to make room for the pictures.

Packages with large-format copies of rock paintings had been brought from Frankfurt 1. Prints of copies which were made by two women artists from Frankfurt over eighty years ago on the territory of the Ngarinyin, who are now represented by the Wilinggin Aboriginal Corporation.

Australia

Fig. 1 Map indicating the three Wanjina Wunggurr Native Title Determination Areas within the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Design by U9 visuelle Allianz

Native Title Determination Area

Wunambal Gaambera

Native Title Determination Area

Native Title Determination Area

Fig. 6 The back wall of the rock shelter at Maliba I demonstrates the complexity of Wanjina Wunggurr rock art with different repainting episodes and a multitude of different motifs that include spiritual beings and animal species. The shelter wall also shows how the artists have used the rock wall itself to position the different images and enhance their presentation. Photo: Martin Porr, 2023

Fig. 7 The nightjar birds Wodoy and Jungurn with Wunggurr Snakes. Rock art site Maliba I. Kimberley, Northwest Australia. Rock art copy by Gerta Kleist, 1938. Watercolours on Paper. 108 x 98 cm. Collection: Frobenius Institute. Foto: Not stated

References:

Balme, Jane et al. 2019: Long-Term Occupation on the Edge of the Desert: Riwi Cave in the Southern Kimberley, Western Australia. In: Archaeology in Oceania 54 (1): 35–52. https://doi.org/10.1002/ arco.5166

Blundell, Valda et al. (eds). 2017: Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee: We’re Telling All of You. The Creation, History and People of Dambimangaddee Country. Based on the Cultural Knowledge and Recollections of Janet Oobagooma, Donny Woolagoodja and Other Senior Dambeemangaddee People. Fremantle: Fremantle Press and Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation.

Bradshaw, Joseph. 1892: Notes on a Recent Trip to Prince Regent’s River. In: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, Victorian Branch 9 (2): 90–102.

Choo, Christine. 2012: Mixed Blessings. Establishment of Christian Missions in the Kimberley. In: Cathie Clement, Jeffrey Gresham and Hamish McGlashan (eds): Kimberley History: People, Exploration and Development. Perth: Kimberley Society. 195–214.

Crawford, Ian M. 2001: We Won the Victory: Aborigines and Outsiders on the North-West Coast of the Kimberley. Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

Crawford, Ian. 1968: The Art of the Wandjina London: Oxford University Press.

David, Bruno. 2017: Cave Art. London: Thames & Hudson.

Donaldson, Mike and Kevin Kenneally (eds). 2007: Rock Art of the Kimberley: Proceedings of the Kimberley Society Rock Art Seminar. Perth: Kimberley Society.

Elkin, A.P. 1930: Rock-Paintings of North-West Australia. In: Oceania 1 (3): 257–279.

Finch, Damien et al. 2021: Ages for Australia’s Oldest Rock Paintings. In: Nature Human Behaviour 5 (3): 310–318. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-02001041-0

Finch, Damien et al. 2020: 12,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Rock Art from the Kimberley Region, Western Australia. In: Science Advances 6 (6), eaay3922: 1–9. https://doi.org/10.22459/TA55.2022.08

Goldhahn, Joakim et al. 2022: Histories of Rock Art Research in Western Australia’s Kimberley, 1838–2000. In: Paul S. C. Taçon et al. (eds): Histories of Australian Rock Art Research. Canberra: ANU Press. 173–204.

Gray, Geoffrey. 2007: A Cautious Silence. The Politics of Australian Anthropology. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.

Grey, Emily and Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation. 2023: Many Ways to See Yams: An Ecological Analysis of Yam Figures in the Aboriginal Rock Art of Balanggarra Country, Northeast Kimberley, Western Australia. In: Martin Porr and Niels Weidtmann (eds): One World Anthropology and Beyond: A Multidisciplinary Engagement with the Work of Tim Ingold. London: Routledge. 227–243.

Fig. 3 Wanjina image on board from a wooden crate. Ngarinyin. Walcott Inlet, Kimberley. Probably acquired by Helmut Petri during the Frobenius Expedition to Northwest Australia, 1938. Collection: Weltkulturen Museum. Photo: Wolfgang Günzel, 2023

Fig. 4 Index cards of objects lost in the war: a clapping stick and a painting on wood of a Wunggurr Snake, with watercolour drawings by Agnes Schulz and Gerta Kleist, plus index card of two boomerangs with extensive description by Helmut Petri. Collection: Weltkulturen Museum. Photo: Wolfgang Günzel, 2024

easy to see. Fewer than half the objects (only 167 catalogue numbers) were recorded as described above. Only three index cards were accompanied by a drawing done by Agnes Schulz or Gerta Kleist (fig. 4). Nonetheless, these documents are particularly revealing with respect to the collection as it originally existed, because Petri, with the memories of his Australian experiences still fresh in his mind, recorded meticulous details about the objects and categorised them thematically.

Not stated

Fig. 6 Leah Umbagai, 2023: Wandjina and Woongudd (Snakes). Acrylic paint on canvas.

30 x 40 cm. Collection: Weltkulturen Museum.

Photo: Wolfgang Günzel, 2024

A Message (Stick) to Frankfurt

Together with the Indigenous communities of the Wanjina Wunggurr –the Ngarinyin, Woddordda and Wunambal – we take a look back at the Frobenius Expedition to the Kimberley region of Northwest Australia in 1938–39.

Conducted by today’s Frobenius Institute and Weltkulturen Museum, it was the first comprehensive ethnographic research expedition to a region which, to this day, is characterised by a living rock art tradition. The publication accompanying the exhibition of the same name is the result of a joint engagement with the expedition’s research history as well as contemporary interpretations of the collections acquired at the time.

The title COUNTRY BIN PULL’EM was chosen by the Indigenous cooperation partners. It alludes to a reversal of perspectives and to their Country’s agency: underscoring the Indigenous viewpoint that the ‘living’ land itself –the Country – is what “pulled” the German researchers there. After over eighty years, it is this same agency that has led to the revival of the relationship between the Wanjina Wunggurr community and the collection institutions in Frankfurt.

With contributions from, among others, Michaela Appel, Rona Gungnunda Charles, Kim Doohan, Matthew Martin, Lloyd Nulgit, Pete O’Connor, Martin Porr, Eva Ch. Raabe, John Rastus, Anthony Redmond, Sally Treloyn and Leah Umbagai.