Summer reading
Our Community Matters • 3 •
Walking two paths BY MARATJA DHAMARRANDJI
Yo nhämirr bukmak! (Okay, how are you all!)
there are no orphans, as I have many women who are in a mother (ngandi) relationship to me, many grandmothers (mari, momu), many “Community” is a word used a lot in Aboriginal brothers (wawa), many sisters (yapa), etc, circles. I am a Yolngu (Aboriginal) man who and the obligations of these roles are carried lives and works in Galiwinku on Elcho Island in by each one. So our community, through the Northern Territory. This is my community: relationships, is very strong. the place I identify as my country, where I have connections to people and place; to past, Sadly, community now is very different present and future. “Community” for us means from what it was in past generations. The pressures of the outside world are reshaping both relationships and people living in one place, maybe a town or wherever we are living. everything. The old folk talk warmly about the days when people lived in family groups I feel that the word has a bigger meaning for on their homelands. Community was smaller us Yolngu than it does for Balanda (people of and happier. Our law enabled us to live European descent). together and to trade and interact with other Our moiety or kinship system gives us clans or tribes. Now, for a few generations, community wherever we are, with everyone. some people have been put together in the In my culture I know, or work out, how I am in one place to create a “community”, and that relationship with other people, and then how has brought lots of pressure on everyone as I should interact with them. This is the way it well as the maintenance of culture. Culture, has been forever, where no-one is an isolated through ceremony and language, is our life. rock in the sea, but everyone is connected We are educated and disciplined (raypirri) and in community with everyone else. Our as we sing, dance and share to learn what is relationships then define our relationships expected of each of us as we live our role in and obligations to each other, and how or if we our community. But the media (TV, film, radio, interact with each other. This is all contained internet, phones etc) are all showing another within our madayin law. In Yolngu community way to live – even though it is counter-cultural
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