- Chapter Five -
 
Aboriginal fringe dwellers in Darwin:
cultural persistence or culture of resistance?

 

 

Reaching across difference: the Burarra people of central Arnhem Land

 

In this chapter I introduce my mostly Burarra-speaking interlocutors of Fish Camp and Lee Point who have moved from their homelands near the Blyth River in central Arnhem Land (see Map 2). I examine the past and present relationship between Aboriginal language groups of the Liverpool and Blyth River regions of Arnhem Land and the settlement at Maningrida, established by the Federal Government in 1957. I suggest that the Aboriginal homelands, or outstation movement, which began in Arnhem Land, parallels the resistance of the Burarra fringe camps in Darwin as a reaction against state control of Aboriginal lives. I give examples which suggest that resistance by the Burarra people in Darwin fringe camps is an attempt at engagement, or ‘reaching across difference’, which belongs to a tradition demonstrated since White settlement at Port Darwin. Finally, I construct a model of this process by adapting the Yolngu concept of ganma to an urban metaphor of merging traffic.

 

The town of Maningrida, on the west bank of the mouth of the Liverpool River, derives its name from a local place-name meaning ‘the place where the Dreaming changes shape’ (Carew et al 1996a). In per capita terms, Maningrida is perhaps the most multilingual community in the world (Carew et al 1996b), with most people speaking or understanding four or more of the fifteen languages from the region: Ndjebbana, Eastern Kunwinjku, Kune, Rembarrnga, Dangbon/Dalabon, Nakkara, Gurrgoni, Djinang, Wurlaki, Ganalpingu, Gupapuyngu, Kunbarlang, Gun-nartpa, Burarra and English (Carew et al 1996b). Burarra is the common language of Maningrida (Glasgow 1985:7). The Burarra language group is also described by Benn (1994:iii) as ‘a federation of Aboriginal people, concentrated on the Blyth River, living mainly along the coast between Maningrida and Cape Stewart’.

 

 

While referring to the language used for most internal communications as ‘Burarra’, the people at Fish Camp acknowledge the differences between An-barra speakers (a sub-community of Gidjingali [Meehan 1982:12; Hamilton 1981:3; Corn 2001]), other close dialects of the Blyth River region and the Gun-nartpa dialect of the Cadell River region (see Glasgow 1985:7; Hamilton 1981:3; Green 1987:1).(1) According to Glasgow (1985:7): ‘The Burarra and Gun-nartpa people ... number approximately 600, making up the predominant part of the Burarra Language Family’.(2) Hiatt and Hiatt (1966:1) note that: ‘"Burara" is a term originally used in eastern Arnhem Land for two groups who knew themselves as "Gidjingali" and "Gunadba"’. Hamilton (1981:3) observed that by 1981 Burarra was the inclusive name for all the groups of the Blyth River region and the term Gidjingali was ‘never used’. This coincides with my observations in Darwin.

 

Many of the Fish Camp people claim Djunawunya as their clan estate, four kilometres west of the Blyth River mouth, which has been described in detail by Hiatt (1982; see also Meehan 1982:14), celebrated in the popular song ‘Sunset Bay’ (Wild Water 1996)(3) and shown in the film Waiting for Harry (McKenzie 1980).(4) Kopanga, on the coast, was the nearest outstation (see Meehan and Jones 1980) until the shift inland to Je-bena in about 1985, forty-four kilometres from Maningrida, where water is reliable and the road to Maningrida is open all year (Carew and Handelsmann 1996b).

 

In 1958 the Djunawunya landowners identified themselves as An-barra speakers (Hiatt 1982:21) who comprised almost half of the total Gidjingali population of 600. However, Hiatt (p.21) recounts how groups circulated for rituals and to exploit resources. Hiatt (p.15) claims, ‘access and benefit [of resources] are normally accorded to a wide network of tribesmen over and above the actual owners’ in the interests of ‘an over-riding ethic of hospitality and open-handeness’. Hiatt’s (p.15) observation, that ‘degrees of open-handeness bear a rough correspondence to degrees of relateness’, differs from Sansom’s descriptions of ‘performative kinship’ and a service economy, but corresponds with the ethic of sharing in the fringe camps where the membership is drawn from related, though wide-ranging groups.

 

 

Carew et al (1996b) describe linkages and overlapping between Burarra-speakers, the Yolngu dialects to the east, ‘the Nakkara’ (‘sometimes included with the Gijingarliya [Gidjingali] group’) between Maningrida and the Blyth River, and the ‘Ndjebbana-speaking Kunibidji’ [Gunavidji] people who are the traditional owners of the Maningrida town area. These connections are often reflected in the mixed gatherings at Fish Camp with residents comfortably switching in and out of the above languages.

 

In the fringe camps where I did my fieldwork between 1996 and 2001, the members of the groups converse amongst themselves mostly in their native languages, with English as a second, third or fourth languag(5) In contrast, Sansom (1980a:11) likens the fringe camp to ‘Babel’ where people ‘ethnically unlike, will speak in different ways and so have different words for things. They therefore cannot share properly in understandings’. He then asks: ‘If ethnicity does not serve as a basis for association, what else can?’ (Sansom 1980a:12). One response to the mixed nature of the ‘Wallaby Cross’ mob is the adoption of ‘Aboriginal English’, or Kriol, as the ‘prime camp language’ (Sansom 1980a:29). However, unlike ‘Wallaby Cross’, where ‘the distinctiveness of rough camp English is that its very roughness makes it English that is unwhite’ (Sansom 1980a:31),(6) Kriol was rarely used at Fish Camp and Lee Point and there was never a demand that ‘Aboriginal English’ be used as a common language.

 

Almost all of the Aboriginal people who were associated with the Fish Camp community at some time during my fieldwork originate from the central coastal region of Arnhem Land, which was declared an Aboriginal Reserve in 1948 (see Map 2). In comparison, the people of ‘Wallaby Cross’ came from a hinterland of fragmented Aboriginal Reserves, alienated land and cattle stations, which has a long history of contact (see Sutton and Palmer 1980:17; Sansom 1980a:iii). In Arnhem Land, Aboriginal land ownership is comparatively secure and social organisation is relatively intact. My interlocutors always explain their relationship to each other in kinship terms, such as ‘I call Dulcie grannie’, or use more specific Burarra titles such as mununa (mother’s mother - see Hiatt 1965:48), galikali (spouse) as well as the sixteen subsection names recorded by Hiatt (1965:49) and Glasgow (1985:925).

 

The majority of the regular Aboriginal users of the camps at Fish Camp and Lee Point are members of the Gidjingali clans of the Blyth River region discussed by Hiatt (1965, 1982, 1986b), Meehan (1982:16), Hamilton (1981), Bagshaw (1982:50, 1994) and Meehan and Jones (1986). The Gidjingali people, who generally refer to themselves as An-barra or Burarra, are also predominant in camps at Palmerston and around the Darwin suburb of Tiwi. I suspect that the movement of people from the Blyth River region to Darwin has been partly because their homelands are located between the Aboriginal towns of Maningrida and Milingimbi. With no regular direct road service, access to services and goods is mostly through the traditional lands of rival clans.

 

Bob Bunduwabi came from Yilan, to the east of Blyth River, and had close ties to the Yolgnu people from northeastern Arnhem Land. His niece, Dulcie, had a Nakara father and An-barra mother with close family extending into the Maung, and as far west as the Gundjeihmi dialect groups. Her partner was a Djinang speaker from the Ramingining area and a renowned singerman who often returned for funerals and other ceremonies in the region. His family connections extended to Barunga, south of Katherine, where Kriol is more widely used. When groups from this region came to visit, the tensions at Fish Camp were noticeably increased. Although some men from the extended family group had lived with women from Central Australia, these languages are not as well understood and visitors with affinal connections through these relationships seldom stayed long in the camp. Fish Camp therefore accommodated a group who were closely related, spoke closely related dialects and came from adjoining estates, predominantly the areas described by Hiatt (1965,1982), Meehan (1982) and Meehan and Jones (1980).

 

The two main exceptions were the husbands of two women in the core group. Apart from the Djinang man, there was a 71-year-old man married to an elderly Burarra woman who had been a patient at the leprosarium. The man was of mixed descent but identified as a Larrakia. He looked after his wife by shopping and fishing with his cast net. He drowned while on a night fishing excursion near the camp in 1998 (see NT News, November 21). While these men were accepted, tension was created during one week when a single urban Aboriginal woman evicted from her home sought refuge in the camp. With no kinship ties, and unaware of the expected behaviour towards kin, this woman offended a male relative of the camp doyen and had to seek my protection. She moved out soon afterwards.

 

Heppell and Wigley (1981:52) note that ‘residents of the [town] camps maintain traditional ties with traditional country’, giving the camp life a familiarity for its residents despite the geographical separation from country. Although many of the campers have a long association with the Darwin area and claim rights to space in Darwin, as I discuss in Chapter Seven,(7) my fieldwork also suggests that they maintain many traditional connections to specific sites and land-tenure systems in Arnhem Land described by Hiatt (1965, 1982, 1984), Bagshaw (1994:122) and Sutton (1995c:13-17). These ethnographic descriptions of Burarra social systems, values and beliefs appear apposite, even in the fringe camps where I did most of my fieldwork. As Merlan (1991:271) notes, ‘the town camp and rural settlement situations exhibit commonalties which are not as strongly associated or fully shared with house-in-town living’.

 

The Fish Camp group is typical of the mixed ‘residential aggregates’ model that Sutton (1999a:26) derives from his thorough analysis of Hiatt’s (1965:24) descriptions of Gidjingali social groups, called ‘communities’ in Hiatt’s text.(8) In another a Northern Territory Aboriginal town camp, Doohan (1992:79) noted: ‘I have not experienced a situation where Aboriginal people without some immediate kin ties at Aputula would take up residence there’. Similarly, those who camped at Fish Camp from August 1996 to January 1998 for periods of between two weeks and six months, with numbers peaking at twenty-five between September and October 1997, were almost all from central Arnhem Land.

 

My experience confirms the observation by Heppell and Wigley (1981:64):

 

The town camp provides a recognised order and ready community to which visitors can attach themselves. They can be sure of obtaining shelter among kin with whom they have an established set of reciprocal obligations, and can be reasonably certain that everyone else living in the camp, if not immediate kin, are members of the same tribal group and therefore, linked by historical ties of amity.

 

My record of residence over time (Figure 3) indicates a shifting population of more than 150 ‘countrymen’ (and women) who associated with Fish Camp for varied lengths of time. However, in a submission for housing assistance, Simmering (1999; see Appendix II) states that Fish Camp had a core group of twelve who identified twenty-seven others who the group wished to accommodate on visits ‘of weeks, months or longer’ (see also Appendix III).(9) Ages ranged from three to older than eighty, although children were rarely present. As Doohan (1992:75) found at an Aboriginal camp near Finke, it is possible for an individual to identify with more than one location.

 

In Chapter Three I gave some first impressions of the camp. Although I lived in the camp from May 1997 to January 1998 and visited regularly in other months, the language barrier I describe above precludes a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of life in a fringe camp. In addition, I maintain that the ‘classifying practices’ of the hegemonic power noted by Asad (1993:17), Abu-Lughod (1990:47), Kapferer (1995:88) and other analysts of resistance are a reasonable cause for ‘ethnographic refusal’ in studies of resistance amongst subaltern groups like the fringe dwellers.(10) As I have cited, authorities know little about the campers. Scott (1990:xi, 1985:321) notes that ‘sequestered settings’, ‘offstage’ and ‘removed from institutional circuits’ are sites where resistance may be fostered. I suggest that anonymity remains the fringe dwellers' strongest defence. However, for the benefit of the reader unfamiliar with Darwin Aboriginal fringe camps, the following section gives descriptions of everyday life in one such 'sequestered setting' during my fieldwork before the camp was closed in 1999.


 

 

5.2 Some observations of life at Fish Camp: 1996-8

During the dry season, the shelters at Fish Camp were used only for storage. People shifted their ‘sit-down’ camp into the shade of the surrounding trees as the sun warmed, and continued dragging tarpaulins and mattresses around with the shade as it shifted throughout the day. The tents were used as a windbreak during the colder nights when heavier logs were gathered in the evening for the night fires. Sleepers laid their bedding close to, and around the two or three hearths, depending on the numbers and family groupings in the camp. If there was no alcohol to be consumed and no visitors to entertain everyone settled down when darkness set in. Apart from the half dozen dogs, who barked fiercely if anything or anyone approached, there was usually little apparent concern for physical barriers or other protection for the exposed sleepers.

 

When there was alcohol being shared, the group would stay up by the fires until very late at night, singing and dancing to the clap-sticks and ngorla (didgeridoo) kept at the camp, or sharing stories in a relaxed mixed-gender circle sitting on the earth (I discuss drinking at Fish Camp in Chapter Eight).(11) At times of less abundance, the camp was often kept awake by domestic arguments, fuelled by alcohol, which were highly repetitive night after night. These arguments were usually over failure to reciprocate, accusations of sexual unfaithfulness, allegations of talk behind the back of the accuser or disputes over who was the most important representative of the camp. These internal tensions are fuelled by alcohol and controlled within boundaries of kinship and do not motivate the forms of resistance described in this thesis.(12) In a ‘miler’ week or on a Sunday when people have no cash or the convenient liquor outlets are closed, silence reigns and people rest, go fishing or gathering bush foods and recuperate.(13)

 

Temperatures during the dry season nights fall to as low as 16 degrees Celsius. Foam mattresses were dragged closer to the fires for warmth, and it was not uncommon for bedding to smoulder or for sleepers to suffer bad burns. Couples and single women slept around their own fire apart from the single men and women. Occasionally, if too many single men were drinking and the spouses were not present, the single women, mostly middle-aged, brought their blankets to my hearth for protection or removed themselves altogether for the night. Early in the morning the fires were stoked to boil tea and cook whatever food was available for a light breakfast. If there was a major drinking session continuing, people would be woken at first light to continue the celebrating and to share what alcohol had been saved as a ‘reviver’ until the liquor outlets opened for business.

 

Sometimes a man, but more usually women, gathered firewood in the late afternoon for themselves and the pensioners. The fittest, younger men were often slow to help. At Fish Camp, the firewood was mostly dry mangrove timber that was plentiful in the tidal regions of the Kulaluk lease. In the wet season, there was no attempt to keep wood dry, but fires could be started even on all but the wettest days. In the dry season, mangrove wood burns relatively quickly, leaving a fine ash that built up after a few nights until it was eventually shovelled to the side of the cleared sleeping and activity area. When a larger log of black wattle or similar better-quality wood was burnt, it was allowed to smoulder continuously until it was consumed. Occasionally a vehicle might help bring wood from more distant areas for the fires that are a distinctive feature of the fringe camps. Pieces of arc mesh or similar metal scraps were used as grills for cooking, or pots were perilously balanced on the burning logs (see Plate 4). Sparks flying, these burning branches were sometimes wielded as weapons, more in spectacular threat at night than in blows, although the scattered coals did create havoc with clothing and bedding.

Arguing at night, noted by Tonkinson (1992:150), or shouting across the camp from where people lay could be vitriolic but cleared the air of pent up grievances. Sometimes, in the darkness, ‘wires were crossed’ with humorous results. One old man who was also rather deaf, while arguing with his partner in English shouted racist remarks at her that were understood by others to be insulting responses to a shouted complaint from across the camp from another couple, which the old man had not heard. As I lay listening, the man continued insulting his wife, which was interpreted as further insulting replies to the complaints from the other side of the camp, inflaming an already noisy dispute. Usually no mention was made of these night arguments the next day although they could ignite again on another night. One night I recorded on tape a particularly loud and insulting tirade in Burarra, and the responses from across the camp which caused great amusement when it was replayed the next morning, and many times thereafter.

 

With no vehicle, and several disabled pensioners, Fish Camp was reliant on taxis and ‘minibuses’ for trips to the bank and shops. Fares are negotiable on the minibuses, which can take up to thirteen people at a reasonable charge, making this form of transport indispensable to fringe dwellers, particularly for ceremonial gatherings and for protests. Unfortunately, at thirty dollars for the round journey to the shops, the fares took a sizeable proportion of the pensioner income on pension day. There were also friends who came to take pensioners shopping, or to the bank to collect debts. None at the camp had a drivers licence, so I sometimes drove a hired a vehicle which was paid for by contributions from the camp. In later months, the White activist friends began helping with shopping and excursions.

 

Fish Camp was rich in utensils, cooking pots and fishing gear compared to other camps and even to many Aboriginal homes. However, this was not always immediately evident because cups, spoons, saucepans and plates lay scattered about on the ground or hidden until they were needed. Occasionally there would be a clean up and washed utensils would be stacked together but mostly they were retrieved and washed when needed. Old cardboard made useful plates for meat or shellfish or as a firelighter or fan. Empty plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes were used to share out the wine that arrived in four litre casks called ‘suitcases’ or ‘yellow boxes’. Once used, the ‘plastic’, as the wine containers were called, was cast aside without the top and not used again. There was little attempt to put aside the bottles for the next drinking session or to wash and keep them for later use. At Fish Camp the used drinking bottles were raked into the piles of litter and put in bins that were removed weekly by the Keep Australia Beautiful utility, one of the few services provided to the camp.

 

When money is short, groups went crabbing, fishing with lines in the nearby creek or gathering food in the mangrove swamps, including worms from dead trees, shellfish called ‘longbums’ (telescopium telescopium) from the mud flats, periwinkles (nerita lineata) clinging to mangrove trees and small oysters from the rocks (see Plate 10). Wild honey, yams and berries were also collected from the surrounding monsoon forest. The camp usually had at least one cast-net that was used to catch smaller fish in shallow water. Friends and family might bring a wallaby, geese in season, long neck turtle or seafood from a hunting trip out of town. An urban Aboriginal entrepreneur usually drove into camp on pay weeks with saltwater turtle meat, offering the campers the cheaper, less saleable parts that made a popular soup. However, most ‘bush tucker’ came from shops that specialised in this type of food, including kangaroo tails, fish, shellfish and live crabs. It was also quite common for groups from the camp to spend a day out of town hunting or fishing when transport was available.

 

Multi-pronged spears were made in camp for hunting stingray during the dry season. A wading hunter hurls the spear at the stingrays that fed on the seabed and remained plentiful in the tidal shallows around Darwin. After removing the liver, the stingray meat was cooked on the open fire or in pots, then rinsed and mashed with the liver into stringy but tasty ‘fish cakes’. Spears might be hidden in various locations but rarely remained for long in the possession of the maker - they were always in demand and often broken, not returned.

 

 

 - Endnotes -

1. A resurgence of a distinct identity for the people to the west of the Blyth River mouth is suggested by a recently released CD titled, ‘An-barra clan’, sung by the Letterstick Band (1999; see Corn forthcoming). The CD includes original compositions and adaptations of clan songs, in particular Diyama (see Hiatt and Hiatt 1966; Corn 1999a:2). Meehan (1982:13) notes: ‘The Gidjingali are divided into four loosely knit communities called Anbarra, Matai, Marawuraba and Gula’ (Glasgow [1985:7] uses the spelling, ‘An-barra’).

2. Glasgow (1985:7) adds that the two other dialects belonging to the Burarra Language Family are Gurrgoni, to the west, and Yanyangu, to the east. People from both these language areas lived at Fish Camp and Lee Point during my fieldwork.

3. The song is written and sung by Dulcie Malimara’s son, Paul McKenzie. The CD cover notes describe Sunset Bay as ‘Dulcie’s home - Djuna-winya on the north coast of Arnhem Land’ (Wild Water 1996; see also Corn forthcoming).

4. See also the forthcoming CD-Rom ‘People of the Rivermouth’. Kim McKenzie (2001) states that the disk:

 

centres on a remarkable body of work created by Frank Gurrmanamana of the Anbarra people of north-central Arnhem Land. In 1960 Gurrmanamana dictated to anthropologist Les Hiatt a sequence of imagined scenarios as a way of explaining Anbarra kinship and the responsibilities that accompany relationships... The project has been able to draw on some forty years of scholarship undertaken in a range of disciplines with Gurrmanamana and his family.

5. I do not speak any Aboriginal languages.

6. As I have described, Sansom (1980-82:6) elsewhere draws a distinction between ‘that pidgin’ for ‘organizin for business’ and traditional language, or ‘lingo’, reserved for ‘High Culture’.

7. In her study of a town camp community in Pine Creek, south of Darwin, Jacqueline Wolfe (1987:57) stresses that many Aborigines camping in the town have a long association with the area. She continues: ‘They are not newcomers nor transients’.

8. Sutton (1999a:24) notes that, as an assemblage of people from different descent groups, the ‘community’ is not a generalised model for land ownership. He adds (p.24) that this does not mean that the members of the community have no rights to the land where they live.

9. In noting the ‘substantial residential stability’ at Aputula camp, near Finke in Central Australia, Doohan (1992:73) states: ‘A number of researchers have also noted the existence of a "residential core" at other Central Australian Aboriginal communities’.

10. Arguing for ‘thick’ ethnography examining the ‘ambiguity of resistance’ amongst ‘internally divided’ subaltern groups, Ortner (1995:175) believes that the ‘ethnographic thinness’ of many studies of resistance is caused by ‘a failure of nerve’ to examine internal politics of subaltern groups and the ‘crisis of representation’ in anthropology (p.190).

11. Chairs were also popular when they were available. When I purchased four steel-legged plastic chairs, they were constantly being ‘borrowed’ from my area (see Plate 15).

12. In his analysis, Robinson (1994:142) states unequivocally: ‘the "oppositional culture" apparently directed outwards in destructive or self-destructive acts, offending or overt protest, is to be explained in terms of the resolution and externalization, through an often complex series of displacements, of group-internal tensions and oppositions'.

13. Sansom (1980a:232) also observed the alternating of ‘miler’ weeks and weeks of plenty at Knuckeys Lagoon. Sansom (1980a:241) was told the term comes from a losing phase in a game of cards. In the 1990s, only hotels sold takeaway liquor on Sundays, at higher prices than the stores.

 

5

Contents Appendices Bibliography
Plates Maps Illustrations Figures

 

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