Day 24: Willie & Aboriginal Mind – Part 2

December 8, 2010

The imprint of Aboriginal culture seems less evident the further south we get. The towns are now well groomed. Colonial style buildings line the main streets and tidy green parks offer islands of oasis from all the red dust. We haven’t seen a black person since Coober Pedy.

Along with the scientific west’s version of events, there’s another story surrounding Wilpena Pound. The Adnyanuthanha people of the Flinders Ranges believe the pound (an old English word meaning ‘enclosure’) was created when two serpents travelling up from the south encircled a group of initiates and ate them all up. They were so full they couldn’t move so they lay down in two entwined parallel lines, which became what is now known as the Wipena Pound. Two men escaped and became embedded in stone, which are two peaks just south of the pound. An artists’ interpretation of this has been carved into a giant rock at the base of the Wangarra Lookout. It is chillingly life-like.

Further south, as we’re leaving the Flinders Range National Park we stop at the Yourambulla Caves. It’s well sign-posted with a fenced car-park at the end of 200 metre dirt road, but it doesn’t look like the site receives many visitors. In the hour we spend exploring the area no one else turns up.

Yet it is one of the most remarkable places we’ve visited thus far – and the most striking representation of Aboriginal presence we have seen yet. A hike up a rocky hillside leads to a large cave, accessed via a steep ladder. Inside, the cave is a mural of old Aboriginal rock art, some chiseled into the rock, others painted with natural pigments. A sign below the ladder explains what the various symbols mean. It is thought to be a story of one of their sacred rituals, but the age of the work is unknown.

 There are two other caves, up more steep rocky paths. As I sit quietly next to the last one, I imagine little wiry black men, clad in only a loin cloth, using their fingers and tools and mouths (to blow paint) to create these cryptic messages. Why did they do it? Same reason artists today have? – they just need to express themselves? I’m fascinated by how old these images are – fifty, a hundred, a thousand years? – and wonder why modern science hasn’t yet established a date.

The view from the caves must not be so different from when Aboriginal people owned and wandered this land. Except for the straight highways heading east and south, the long view down the valley that cuts through the southern hills of the Flinders Ranges is largely untouched by modern civilization. I have a profound sense of how integrated these people were to the land, scrambling around on the rocky hills, discovering caves that offer perfect protected murals to express their culture, who they are.

As I ponder all this, I remember Willie. He was one of my students at the prison. Unlike many of the Noongars in the prison who were of mixed blood, Willie had dark brown skin and a face that held the classic character of his people. He was only 20, a small, lanky fellow with a quiet disposition and a gentle nature. He couldn’t read or write very well and he’d got mixed up in drug-taking, which didn’t help his cognitive abilities much. We played a cat-and-mouse game for a while, as often happened with the low-literate students – me trying to coax him towards a greater self-confidence with language; he, fearing the usual reprimand for his lack of ability, shying away into his conditioned “No I can’t do it, miss” response. He was with us for six months before he got a job in another part of the prison. In that time he completed several assignments, including writing a report, a poem, a short story and creating a poster on Aboriginal art. It was from that project that I learned most of what I know about traditional indigenous art. Before he left he told me this was the first time he’d ever completed an assignment or written anything in his life. He was very proud of what he’d accomplished. So was I.

I really felt for Willy. Partly because he was my own son’s age and had gone off the track to the point where he was hurting himself, and others – not the least his mother. But mostly I felt for his lost potential. Sometimes I would watch him and imagine what kind of young man he would be if he lived in a traditional community, initiated into his manhood in a way that would leave him feeling proud and strong and capable. He would be a dancer, an artist, the quiet introvert of the community who would share his creative insight, like the men who crawled up here to create their art. Instead he was killing himself with marijuana, petrol-sniffing, a bad diet and a rough and lawless lifestyle.

It seemed so tragic – especially as he told me about ‘uncles’ (which can refer to many different older male relatives in Aboriginal communities) who were still practicing some of the old ways – and trying to teach him. He wasn’t much better at staying focused on that than he was with his English. But you could tell he had a real respect for it, probably wanted it more than he knew at his young age. He would tell me things, about the ways of his people and his family. He had a rough understanding of Aboriginal law – enough to know that it was secret and not something he could discuss with a white woman. Some of his ideas veered towards superstition, but I put that down to his age and a lack of mature understanding about his culture and spirituality.

What he needed most was a mentor, an elder to help him get back on track. But I’m not even sure if that would be possible, for him or any other of the black men in prison. I was told that doing time was a black man’s modern form of initiation – and the majority of them ended up there; I met 40 and 50 year old black men who’d spent more time in prison than out, their wife and kids struggling to survive on the outside. They weren’t given long sentences; they just kept coming back. In and out, in and out; it became a way of life.

I didn’t have an answer for these guys, or the bigger predicament of their people, only to care for them as best I could in the short time I had with them as their teacher. Willie’s modest success at English wasn’t going to have a profound impact on his life; the forces working against him were too strong, too soul-destroying.

Most Aboriginal people do way better in art class than they do in English or Maths and I think that says a lot about the Aboriginal mind. We don’t respect that much in our culture – an artist’s view of the world. If you’re good at language and logic, you’re thought well of. Art is a hobby. But art, or the creative, instinctive mind that gives form and meaning to our imaginative conceptions of life, is vital if we are to keep a wholesome perspective of who we are and what life is about. That’s why I think the Aboriginal stories about the land – what we call mythology – are as valid a form of explanation as our western scientific stories. It’s not an either/or, right or wrong situation. Both tell a dimension about this land, its spirit and its history that, together, give us deep insight into our origins.

Many of the Aboriginal men I worked with had been indoctrinated with western values to the point where they were not interested in learning about their culture, its language and history. “That’s finished,” they’d say, “we need to move on to the white man’s ways if we’re going to get anywhere.” Unfortunately, that’s probably true, but I never supported comments like those. The loss of Aboriginal mind is not only tragic for indigenous people; it’s devastating for the dominant wadjala, white man’s culture – the loss of a great gift that could save us from our downward spiral towards environmental and cultural destruction.

It is hard not to get overwhelmed by the profound sense of hopelessness in all this. Yet our ancient stories give us clues about where to look for hope in desperate times. Like the Aboriginal myth of the two serpents wiping out all but two young members of a clan, an old biblical story tells about the defeat of a giant strong man by an unassuming young man with a sling shot. Both stories tell how the small, seemingly insignificant forces in a culture ultimately bring about its salvation, ensuring its continuity. Maybe then it’s people like Willie, with his shy, sensitive nature and his longing for the ancestral Dreaming, who will save us. It’s a long shot – but then so was David’s.