Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Arena Magazine

Even as we speak.

Article Excerpt
A linguist at the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAAD), Jenny Green, was working with some Arrernte women recording their healing songs. Jenny had lived in the Centre since the early 70s and enjoyed enduring relationships with Alyawarr and Arrernte families.

I was keen to join my 'father', Arranye Johnson, on a field recording at St Anthonys Rockhole, close to Santa Teresa. He was asked for his input on this occasion, as he was the only one living who knew the words to the 'healing wasp song', despite it being a woman's song. His neice, Kemarre Turner, the key contact on the project, gave me permission to tag along. This trip coincided with a graduation ceremony at Santa Teresa for a handful of students who had finished their teacher-training course through Batchelor College. There would be celebratory dancing.

Jenny parked the IAD Toyota on the opposite side of the road to our house, at Kemarre's request. She felt that parking on the near curb was an affront to the spirit of her deceased daughter, who had once visited and had her foot massaged when Kemarra told me of her daughter's pain. Something of her presence would have lingered and I had yet to smoke the dwelling with native fuchsia, with the appropriate people. I dragged my swag across the road and joined Arranye and Kemarre in the vehicle.

The road to Santa Teresa was broad and encouraged speed, but in places it was dangerously cambered. Dust on the dry July track powdered our hair and lashes. At Santa Teresa, Arranye and I camped with his nephew, Charlie Hayes. Jenny went over to the women's area.

Old Jack Cavanagh, whose totem was arlpatye, the green-necked parrot, lived in a shed adjacent to Charlie's verandah. We could hear him inside, cooking on his fire. He poked his head out once to mutter something to his dog. Though Jack's shed was only four metres from the verandah, he declined to look our way. I wondered why he and Arranye, surely contemporaries, failed to acknowledge each other. Charlie brewed us tea on the fire he had made on his concrete verandah, the billycan resting on an old Freon fridge coil.

We retired to our swags soon after dark, as the ilpentye/love song dancing was cancelled due to the cold. Arranye admitted he was sorry not to be looking at those young girls' legs. But he said he was pleased to have been well fed and to be leaving the blare of the budding rock session of the younger men. We lay and chatted over our hospital experiences, of father-son conflicts and how initiation shifted the teenager out of direct relationship with the father.

The moths bothered Arranye, flirting on the light bulb above us. He asked Charlie to turn it off, and demanded he roll out his swag, make him tea, and so on, berating him throughout for remaining dumb.

'Him won't talk it. Can't talk it back to old Arranye. Why that? I don't...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!