Abstract
Songspirals bring Country into existence. Co-authored by a more-than-human, Yolŋu-led collaboration, this article centers Yolŋu understandings of time and place and elaborates on our work together through a spiral-based framework. Our Indigenous and Country-led Collective nourishes and shares some Yolŋu understandings of songspirals to enable, enrich, and awaken Country; to challenge and expand Western academic frameworks; and to contribute toward more responsive relationships between people and places. To sing or keen the spirals now means the ongoing creation of place and people—an emergent, more-than-human creativity that literally creates and re-creates existence. Songspirals are more-than-human processes that need active engagement to nourish positive relationships and to heal damaged ones. Songspirals are a keening/singing, of, with, by, for, and as Country.
Keywords
Wuymirri
Before Laklak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy, and Banbapuy’s mother passed away, she became the whale. She became Wuymirri. We write this article thinking of her, with her words guiding us on our journey together. We write as a collective and we all have relationships with her. She is Laklak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy, and Banbapuy’s mother, a grandmother, mother, niece, and daughter for us, and together with her sisters, a leader of the Gumatj clan and custodian of Bawaka Homeland.
Gaymala was a very strong woman. She lay in hospital and she knew she was going to pass away soon. She started talking in her sleep and Banbapuy wrote these words down. Gaymala was speaking as the spirit on the journey of the whale, speaking in her clan language, Gumatj, the language of her mothers’ mothers’ clan.
Ŋarra yukurra nhäma mo Ŋarra yukurra Dhäwu Ŋupan Marrawu Ŋilinyu yurru marina rrambaŋina Mirrinyuna Marrawa I can see the salt water carrying me, moving together with the current; Carrying me further into the depths of the ocean, where the foundation of my bloodline lies. Here my grandmother and I, together we paddle, Following the sea breeze, to finish our journey, across the calm, mercurial waters towards the horizon, our final destination.
Gaymala speaks of herself as the whale moving with the current. She travels deep into the ocean. She was letting Banbapuy and the family know that her time was near. These are spirals that have been cried by Yolŋu women through the tears of milkarri forever. This song keeps Gaymala alive, the clan, and Country. Songspirals bring Country into existence. In Aboriginal English usage, Country has a particular meaning. Country encompasses the seas, waters, rocks, animals, winds, and all the beings that exist in and make up a place, including people (Bawaka Country et al., 2013; Graham, 1999; Kwaymullina, 2008; Rose, 1996, 2007). For Yolŋu people from North East Arnhem Land in northern Australia, songspirals, often called songlines or song cycles, are rich and multilayered articulations passed down through the generations and sung and cried by Aboriginal people to wake Country, to make and remake the life-giving connections between people and place—people and non-human beings emerging together, co-becoming, as Country (Bawaka Country et al., 2016b).
This article co-becomes as part of a more-than-human, Yolŋu-led collaboration known interchangeably as the Bawaka Collective and the Gay’wu Group of Women. This collective acknowledges Bawaka Country—the diverse land, water, human, and non-human animals, plants, rocks, thoughts, and songs that make up the Yolŋu homeland of Bawaka in North East Arnhem Land—as lead author, honoring the active agencies, the guidance and teachings of the beings, and becomings of Bawaka. This includes the human authors: Laklak Burarrwanga, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, and Banbapuy Ganambarr are four Yolŋu sisters, elders, and caretakers for Bawaka Country, daughters of Gaymala whose words guide our article. We are also their daughter, Djawundil Maymuru, and Sarah Wright, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Kate Lloyd, and Lara Daley, four non-Indigenous human geographers from the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University who have been taken into the family as granddaughters, sister, and daughter. Laklak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy, and Banbapuy actively chose to place the ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous, women into family relationships when it became clear our work together would be longer term and to ensure the ŋäpaki would become aware of, and enact, their responsibilities. They would become visible within a Yolŋu world.
The “we/us/our” in this article is used with great care and is fluid and always in relation to context and purpose. “We” are Bawaka Country, more-than-human, encompassing, alive, and agentic. “We” are the daughters whose mother’s words offer the foundations for understanding the Indigenous geographies of the Bawaka Collective. “We” are also the academics, ŋäpaki, who need to be very careful to not over-step or mis-represent their place (Kwaymullina, 2016; Smith et al., 2020; TallBear, 2014). As we have expressed through our co-authored book, Songspirals, “we” encompasses our relatedness with each other and with more-than-human kin (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019; Howitt, 2020). This always-contextualized-and-negotiated collective voice exercises our connections and responsibilities.
We attend to songspirals and draw on our book to elaborate our work together through a spiral-based framing. We are guided by Wuymirri, the song of the whale, and the spirals themselves. Like the spiral shape that emerges from weaving a basket (Figure 1; Burarrwanga et al., 2008), our spiral-based framework is at once intensely practical (the intergenerational sharing of knowledge takes a spiral form), innovatively methodological (as we draw on our galtha dupthun, rippling methodology), and ontological (allowing us to acknowledge the generative ontological aspects of songspirals as an expression of relationality, of co-becoming time and place). The framework weaves empirics, methodology, and theoretics together, as it weaves generations of more-than-human kin, through patterns of response and responsibility. Songspirals are creation; they are relational creativity. As Merrkiyawuy explains, Yes spirals, they go up and down, round and round, forever. They twist and turn. This is like all our songs. It lets you talk about the contemporary, the new, and also brings together the old songs. The spiral is good because it shows how it can all keep going.
Spiral weaving by Laklak Burarrwanga.
Gaymala’s words, the way she speaks as she becomes the whale and travels toward the foundation of her bloodline in the ocean, guide us in this article. They are our galtha dupthun, a starting point, like the pebble thrown into the pond from which ripples spread. The older people, the men, as they talk about, “This is what I want for next midawarr harvest,” they might throw the spear into the ground. As soon as it hits the ground then the ripples come out, creating change. That pebble is an intention. The pebble in the water, the spear in the ground, the galtha, creates that energy. It is the rippling out of the water and the vibrations in the earth.
Gaymala’s words are our galtha dupthun. They begin our journey, together with you, and manifest our intention. Our intention is to nourish and share some Yolŋu understandings of songspirals to enable, enrich, and awaken Country; to challenge and expand Western academic frameworks; and to contribute toward more responsive relationships between people and places. Our galtha dupthun shows, how “we” are connected. It shows how the songspirals link us through time and place, and bring those times and places together, the land and the people. The spiral is infinite, it is how kinship spirals through the generations, from before and into the future. It is all connected. (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, p. 261)
In this way, we spiral also outward: as you read this article, you too become part of bringing the world into existence, through, across and as space-time.
Wuymirri: Songspirals Bring Country Into Existence
Ŋarra yukurra nhäma mo I can see the salt water carrying me, moving together with the current;
Wuymirri is one of innumerable, interconnecting Yolŋu songspirals. As Gaymala shared Wuymirri with us, she literally became part of the songspiral—seeing the salt water carrying her and moving together with the current, with and as Whale. Songspirals are Yolŋu life—they are the doing, being, thinking, understanding of Yolŋu life-worlds. They are a generative ontological manifestation of relationality, of the ongoing emergence of everything in relation with everything else, of the co-becoming of time and place (Bawaka Country et al., 2016a, 2016b).
Milkarri tells many stories of beings that created, and continue to create, life and land. As Yolŋu women milkarri, they continue creating and re-creating life and land and the relationships that hold all. In a spiraling and non-linear time, those creation beings are here now. All coexist, then and now. It is all here. And so, the land, in all its beauty, pain, and connectivity, comes into existence as Yolŋu women bring our resonance, our heart, our love, our sorrow, and our vibrations to it through our milkarri: Women cry milkarri to guide our loved ones, living and dead. We cry milkarri to greet the dawn, to make the new day. We remake ourselves and Country, we gather the clouds. We cry milkarri in grief, bittersweet, with love, to heal. Milkarri’s healing sound, its intensity straight from our heart, from our love and grief. (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, p. 225)
As we cry milkarri, we cry for all the beings of Country. We milkarri the mist and, in the mist, spiders making their webs. At dawn, we cry for the dawn and for the first birds that sing. And onward, we cry: we cry the song that wakes other animals. As we do this, we do not just sing about the mist and the spider, we help sing them into existence. We help them along, the song of the bird, helping the spider build its web so it may catch its food. This is not a metaphor, merely a pretty story, but something we do, something real. Whatever we cry, from the earth, the sea, the sky, we bring it to life: animals, grubs, sun, wind, people. Ecosystems are here because of the milkarri.
Yolŋu life is fundamentally more-than-human, with songs, songspirals, creation, and creativity starting now and always from the land, the galtha dupthun is always Country. The starting point is always with us. For us, the land sang itself into existence and it still sings: At the beginning of time someone had to talk for the land, it was quiet, nothingness. And then it began with the sound from deep within the water, “Hmmm hmmm.” That was the starting point. We know that is the water from the land; in all the songspirals, that is where it all began, life and language begin. The first language was the “Hmmm” from the songs, the sound, the sound that we make. Without dhäruk, without language, there is bäyŋu, nothing. (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, p. 229)
So, bringing the world into existence is a collective, relational, more-than-human endeavor. It is not just humans who sing. Animals, plants, trees, the wind, all the beings of Country sing. They sing for themselves and they sing to us. Early morning, the calls of the bird, they are singing their songspirals. They, too, sing our world into existence. Gork gork gork, sitting on a branch is the
In this “production of novel togetherness” (Whitehead, 1978, p. 21), creativity is more-than-human and relational in ways that continually animate and re-animate Country with all its beings and co-becomings. Songspirals are ongoing, all encompassing and all embracing. Our sharing in this article is part of the ongoing emergence and creation of Country and life. As you read this, as you sound out the words of Wuymirri, you too become part of the songspiral. You too take your part in bringing the world into existence.
Our conceptualization of songspirals centers Yolŋu understandings of time and place, challenging linear notions of uni-directionality, and enabling simultaneous attention to underlying constancy and an ability to change according to context (Bawaka Country et al., 2016a). Songspirals are not static; they are not sung once and placed on a map. Neither are they artifacts from a creation time that has now ended. To keen the spirals now means the ongoing creation of place and people—an emergent, more-than-human creativity that literally creates and re-creates existence (Tynan, 2021; Watts, 2013; Wilson, 2008). This resonates with Hughes-Warrington’s powerful description of Aunty Anne Martin’s storytelling: Aunty Anne talks in circles. Big and little ones, beautiful and incomplete. They intersect and encircle past, present, herself and the world and me. They also leap, weave and ripple, sometimes plunging with the force of a muttonfish (Abalone) diver and sometimes dancing like fingers tracing the surface of tidal sands. The first time I heard her speak, I struggled to make sense. I searched for a linear order, a spatio-temporal scale to slide up and down, a before and an after, a cause, and its ethical effects. The shortest point between two lines. All the while, her laughing eyes and enfolding stories looped history around me, and she reeled me in. (Hughes-Warrington & Martin, 2022, p. 174)
Wuymirri: Gurrut u—Generations
Ŋarra yukurra Dhäwu Carrying me further into the depths of the ocean, where the foundation of my bloodline lies.
The ripples of songspirals link people to each other and with/as Country through gurru It’s very important because that is how the songlines go, that is how we are related. It’s a recursion of a pattern. So, every fourth generation it goes back to our mother, or our grandparent, and that happens because it is in the kinship, where the spiral is connected to people. It’s a map of how we are related to people. (see Figures 2 and 3)
Gurru
Gurru
Gurru Gurru
Kinship is the pattern that holds us in relationship. Every Yolŋu person and being is held by gurru
The songspirals hold and are gurru
One obligation is to share knowledge of songspirals through the generations, as the generations spiral. Djawundil shares, You know how our mothers are sick, and I’m the same as well, so I’m going through with my mothers, learning. That’s why the granddaughters and my other sisters came in with what we did yesterday, and it is really, really important for the new generation to learn. Even when Yumalil [Djawundil’s granddaughter, little mother to Laklak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy and Banbapuy] and the other children were there they were seeing and learning at the same time.
And in this are deep connections to and as the land, seas, and skies, to and as Country. As Djawundil continues, She’ll learn everything from me, by me taking her out to Bawaka and teaching her there. Yo, from all the great grandmas. So, she belongs to the land, and knows where she comes from, the clan names, she knows who her great grandmother is, her granddad, her father and mother, where she comes from.
Learning and sharing, with the younger generations and, as appropriate, with ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous people, is at the heart of our work, our djäma together.
Wuymirri: Djäma as the Gay’wu Group of Women
Ŋupan Marrawu Here my grandmother and I, together we paddle.
When Gaymala went back to the ocean she went with her grandmother. Her mother’s mother is her märi, Gaymala is her gutharra, her grandchild. Gaymala’s grandmother is her backbone, and the märi–gutharra relationship is critical as the backbone holds everything together (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, p. 6). Sung into being through the songspirals, kinship underpins all interactions between Yolŋu people with/as Country. This is also the case for ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous people, who are in relationship with Yolŋu. Here, we talk about our djäma, our work together as the Gay’wu Group of Women, as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous collective—our relationships with each other, how these relationships form through the cycles of gurru
Our collective is bound together in many ways: by Rom (Law/Lore which provides rules for living), by gurru
For Kate, Sandie, and Sarah, a galtha dupthun—a spear in the ground that vibrates outward, a pebble in the water that ripples onward—was the initial invitation 15 years ago to work with Laklak and Djawundil to share Yolŋu knowledge and to do so in a respectful and responsible way:
Sandie, Kate, and Sarah came from down south and were starting to do their research in the Northern Territory. We invited them over. They came, they were nervous. Laklak and Djawundil were nervous too. Now we remember that time and laugh. When we met, we were this songspiral, just the beginning of it, starting our spiral together. Our other sisters joined too and our families. Our Elders helped us, Country guided and cared for us, children were born. We slowly gathered like clouds in the sky and things came to life for us (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019). When Laklak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy, Banbapuy, and Djawundil began to work with Sandie, Kate, and Sarah, a key aspect of building relationships was placing them into the realities of gurru When we adopt ŋäpaki in the family, it’s like guiding them, so they know where to stand, so they can learn from us, so people can see that person, that ŋäpaki is in the family. And it’s not just responsibilities like making sure they are sitting down and learning about things, it’s valuing your own values, but you have a family, a Yolŋu family as well, so when you can here you are with us, when we go there, down south, we are with you, we have a family also. You look after us, we look after you, so we are not strangers. That way you are learning more when you are with us, you know you going through our footsteps and following us, and we are training you there, making sure that what you say is correct, what you say it’s safe.
Being placed into the family is important for daily practice—enabling communication, using appropriate kinship names, knowing who is in avoidance relationships—where you can sit and who you must show the greatest respect. 1 Lara was recently placed into the family as sister to Lirrina and Dhangdhang (Djawundil’s daughters) and given the name Wirriyay—Banksia. She now calls Djawundil and Kate her Amala, LakLak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy, Banbapuy, and Sandie her Märi and Sarah, Galay (see Figure 4).
Lara learning her adoptive Yolŋu relationships.
Becoming family, for ŋäpaki, should not be understood as a romantic move to innocence, an overcoming of one’s complicity in ongoing colonization, or a gesture of somehow becoming Indigenous, connoting a more authentic or intimate connection (Conran, 2011; Hart et al., 2017; Jáuregui, 2016; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013; Tuck & Yang, 2012). Indeed, here we want to acknowledge the important critiques leveled at settler-adoption fantasies as represented, for example, through literature and movies (think Dancing With Wolves, for example), that might deploy adoption-as-absolution, as a means of alleviating settler guilt in ways that attempt to erase the realities and consequences of ongoing colonization in places like so-called Australia (Hunt, 2018; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). For Kate, Sarah, Sandie, and Lara, these critiques are a reminder to attend always to and from their places within this collaboration, which include the unearned privileges they have garnered as non-Indigenous, uninvited guests living on unceded Gumbaynggirr, Awabakal, and Dharug Countries, and to center gurru Visiting Arnhem Land before I was brought into the family, I didn’t have a proper place. So, there was a sense of unease around me, like I couldn’t be fully related to, or relate to others, with clarity. When I was given a place in the family, I became visible on Yolŋu terms, in a pattern of existence. The family decided where I would be placed, and accountabilities were set in motion. There was a shift in how people engaged with me, and it was made clear to me I needed to step-up and learn my relationships.
Becoming family means responsibility and respect built on trust. As Banbapuy says, “we know you are our family and we can trust you.” Doing djäma together is important: because it’s a teaching, it’s part of our Rom, Law, to teach, to pass it on to people that are working with us so they can understand. And it’s vice versa, you learn from us and we learn from you.
In this way, our djäma centers relational responsibilities of care through ongoing relationships of co-becoming (for important discussions of relational research, see Martin, 2008; Wilson, 2008; Yunkaporta & Shillingsworth, 2020).
Importantly, working relationally through the spirals of gurru We share songspirals with you [the reader] and we ask that you treat them with respect. Respecting the knowledge means not writing about things that you don’t understand, not putting things into your own words. The words in this book are our knowledge, our property. You can talk about it, but don’t think you can become the authority on it. You can use our words for reflection. You can talk about your own experiences and think about how to take lessons from our book into your life. You need to honour the context of our songspirals, acknowledge the layers of our knowledge. You can talk about the very top layer but you need to be respectful and aware of the limits of what we are sharing and what you in turn can share. (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, pp. xxv–xxvi)
The important limits to what may be shared and important protocols about how sharing might be received can include silences and information withheld and refused as an expression of sovereignty (Rubis & Theriault, 2020; Simpson, 2007; Theriault et al., 2020; Tynan & Bishop, 2019; Wright, 2018). Respecting the layers of knowledge, of what can be shared and by whom, is important within the Collective, with different authorities between elder and younger Yolŋu sisters, between Yolŋu generations, and between Yolŋu and ŋäpaki collective members. Limits are also central to the sharing beyond the collective as the quote above makes clear. Songspirals demand a respectful relationship, one in which academics might resist “imperialistic” and “consumptive” desires to know all, might go beyond a sense of entitlement around rights to question and extract knowledge (Bell, 2008; Brigg, 2016). Limits give shape to knowing and suggest a need to learn, share, know, do, and be relationally (Christie, 2006).
Responsibilities to and with each other, to and with Country, ripple and vibrate outward from our galtha dupthun to all parts of our work and lives together. The concept of rippling responsibilities is expressed too through the artwork of Kamilaroi artist Leah Brideson, commissioned for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research. The artwork, titled Warranggal Baynyi (“strong ripple” in Gamilaraay language) is a visual yarn of the strong ripple of perspectives, relationships, and knowledge underpinning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander research. The ripples move out through open pathways of “understanding, respect, relationship building and reciprocity.” These pathways “connect the four principles of leadership, self-determination, impact and value and sustainability and accountability” and are underpinned by integrity and Aboriginal people’s relationships with Country (AIATSIS, 2020, p. ii).
In our djäma together as the Bawaka Collective and the Gay’wu Group of Women, we have chosen to characterize our relationship as a Gay’wu, a dilly bag (Fisher et al., 2015). The Gay’wu holds knowledge and gives a sense, too, of the need for limits that come with integrity, authority, and following the right protocols around relationships with Country. As Banbapuy explains, Gay’wu holds the knowledge, it holds everything. And what we get from the gay’wu we share . . . In those days when we, when the ladies went out hunting, they got everything in the gay’wu and they took it back home and they shared the bushfood. Without gay’wu, you don’t have everything, so you have to have gay’wu all the time with you. It’s a tool women carry . . . Songspirals and sharing the knowledge is gay’wu. Some of it we share. The most important thing was we share only what we can share. But with authority you can share. If you have the authority you can share everything. Gay’wu, it holds the knowledge in a safe place. It is like a shelter where you put everything . . . it’s ŋumpa, warm and safe. Gay’wu is for women only, women like us, we are all the same, we must hold and share knowledge, share it with the younger generation, you are ŋäpaki but you are women like us.
As a collective, both Yolŋu and ŋäpaki women co-become together (Bawaka Country et al., 2016b, 2019), balancing different accountabilities, different authorities, and imperatives through our djäma. For example, the ŋäpaki academics produce academic outputs such as books, peer-reviewed journal articles, and competitive grants to satisfy the criteria of research excellence. The Yolŋu women are teachers, tourism providers, and grandmothers, and have strong cultural obligations to share and teach the younger generations, and to share Yolŋu knowledges with ŋäpaki through books and articles as a way of bringing intercultural understanding through respect. This process of creating things together is underpinned by a fundamental collaborative aspiration of reciprocity, and for us reciprocity is encompassed by our coming together through bala ga’ lili (Bawaka Country et al., in press). Bala ga’ lili is balance, the balance that emerges from the water flowing from the land and meeting the salt water, the balance of the brackish water, which is where the knowledge is. Bala ga’ lili sustains and nourishes us, it ensures our existence as we live with each other, and with and as the world.
Wuymirri: Spiraling as Time and Place—What Happens When Things Are Broken
Ŋilinyu yurru marina rrambaŋina Mirrinyuna Marrawa Following the sea breeze, to finish our journey, across the calm, mercurial waters towards the horizon, our final destination.
Part of djäma is nourishing songspirals as people and Country, through and as time and place. This is vital work for continuing to bring patterns of relationships into existence, it is part of Yolŋu survivances and creativity, ongoing creation (for a discussion of survivance as vibrant Indigenous presence over a colonially constructed absence and victimry, see Atalay, 2006; Vizenor, 2008). As we grow nearer to the end of this particular journey, to our final destination, we are reminded that this is also the start of new journeys, that there are many more journeys to make, many spirals to nourish. As Merrkiyawuy explains, When we talk about spirals there are different types of spirals. There can be small spirals within a place, within certain elements in our environment, or people, from immediate family to wider family. From immediate families to clans, to tribes. Not just in the people but also in our elements, in our environments, from water to plants and animals. When I talk about the spirals of the people, the spirals are not only physical but spiritual as well and not only physical, spiritual but also in the way that it is structured in the gurru
Spirals are multiple, multigenerational, and multidirectional; they don’t stay in one time or one place. They can go up, like a spiral whirling up into multiple futures, or they can go down, whirling down to billions of years ago. Yolŋu spiraling as time and place resonates with diverse Indigenous ontologies across different contexts. Zuni tribal member, Jim Enote, talks about how his people use spirals to signify transition, movement, and migration of the Zuni people to where they are today—connections across time and place (Grand Canyon Trust, n.d.). For scholar and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Kyle Whyte (2018), multigenerational ways of knowing and being are an experience of spiraling time. Reflecting on Anishinaabe knowledges shared with him, Whyte (2018) suggests that an Anishinaabe perspective on intergenerational time is a “spiralling temporality (sense of time) in which it makes sense to consider ourselves as living alongside future and past relatives simultaneously as we walk through life” (pp. 228–229). Spirals are always emergent, tracing connections past and future in ways that remain always rooted in relationships with place and Law. They are deeply ontological, so need to be sung, shared, cared for as part of survivances and creations across the generations, forever. Yet, this is not easy work, nor do we always feel good doing it. Histories and presents of ongoing colonization continue to harm people and Country, creating patterns of domination that can break spirals, throwing relationships out of balance. This is felt by other Indigenous peoples and places too (see Daigle, 2016; Ngurra et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2021).
A Yolŋu spiral-based framework of more-than-human kinship guides responsibilities and knowledge sharing, expressing and maintaining sovereign relations with and as Country. This resonates with Mushkegowuk (Cree) scholar, Michelle Daigle’s (2016) sharing on Cree self-determination and Law in what is now known as Treaty 9 territory in so-called Canada. Daigle writes how a vital expression of Awawanenitakik, the “importance of living an Omushkegowuk Cree way of life by acting according to our ancestors’ ontologies and the values,” is kinship relations. These relationships are foundational to “the process of learning and living Cree ontologies and, simultaneously, who we are accountable to in order to be self-determining peoples” (Daigle, 2016, p. 265). Through gurru So, everything connects. And we Yolŋu believe that if we control one thing or if we dominate one thing . . . it makes the essence change, it becomes something really new and therefore it destroys that essence . . . it’s a balance, a spiral is a balance, everything is a balance. Everything.
Merrkiyawuy elaborates on what can happen if the songspirals and Law, the Law of balance, are not attended to: . . . the spiral can come tumbling down and burst. That’s what we say, it will burst open and just float and you will be like a leaf floating in the air, nothing controlling you, that’s what the old people say. So, the spiral is more than a thought, it’s belief of a way of living, and understanding it and following it. And so, to have human beings have that belief of the spiral, it’s the human beings who’ve got the voice of the songs of the land, so if that spiral is burst open, then the songs disappear.
To be unconnected, nothing controlling you, is a terrifying thought. For it is in and through relations that we exist. And such relationships are, always, more-than-human. As Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee scholar Vanessa Watts suggests, for many Indigenous people, ecosystems and habitats are societies with ethical structures, inter-species treaties, and agreements. These are agreements that must be followed. To break treaties, to rescind and ignore agreements with more-than-humans brings consequences (Watts, 2013). Merrkiyawuy shares the story of the dingo fence. A fence that goes from Western Australia to Queensland: Do you know why [they built that fence]? Because the early settlers wanted to be farmers of course and they took over the land of the Yolŋu [Indigenous people throughout Australia], cleared the land and brought in all the sheep and the cattle and everything, but who was taking the sheep and the cattle? The dingos were and so they built a fence to shut out the dingos and the emus and let the sheep roam freely so that they could make money and build more houses and clear more land. So the ecosystem became unbalanced, because nothing grew on that side and because there were no dingoes to eat the emus and kangaroos, and so everything grew wild and died and the soil became barren and so the ecosystem was destroyed in that way.
These are the harsh consequences of what happens when the Law is not followed and spirals are broken by relationships of colonization and domination. Aunty Shaa Smith and the Gumbaynggirr-led collective, Yandaarra (Smith et al., 2020, 2021), also draw attention to these harder places that must be acknowledged as part of re-binding and re-making protocols, healing ourselves and Country. Speaking from Gumbaynggirr Country (mid north-coast NSW), Yandaarra write how so-called recent events such as bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic are consequences of “relationships fallen out of balance”‘ and “wider and longer histories of colonisation and destructive patterns of existence and broken agreements” (Smith et al., 2021, p. 168). These processes speak to limits, boundaries, and agreements that must be maintained (Hernandez et al., 2020). They highlight that part of survivances and nourishing songspirals is healing self and Country, pointing to the interwoven nature of creation and destruction. As Aunty Shaa says (Smith et al., 2021), The creation time is now. It is imbued with openings and possibilities. We need to continue this creation story, to arrive at the changed landscape as we come off the koala gut-string bridge and rebuild protocols and relationships and come together to create a new story through which we can heal people and Country and learn to belong well. (p. 167)
And so songspirals continue; continue as co-healings, co-creations, co-becomings spiraling through and as time and place. As we write in our book, Songspirals have been here a long time. Forever. They are Yolŋu Law. They bring us into being and they link us to the land, to Country. They come from the land and they create it too. It’s not just that songspirals created our land a long time ago, but they keep on creating it, and us, and everything in our Country. We are still doing milkarri of the songspirals. Our mother was famous and respected for her milkarri. Milkarri is another way of healing people, healing self. (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, p. xvii)
Spirals create and maintain connections, linking us through time and place, bringing times and places together in an infinite pattern of connections, “from before and in the future. It is all connected” (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019, p. 261). Songspirals must be sung.
Wuymirri
Gaymala sang these words all those years ago, she sang them again in our book and sings them again for us, and you, now. Her galtha dupthun forever ripples through our lives and thoughts, through the lives and thoughts of those who have passed away and those who are yet to be born, those human and non-human beings who are known, and those who are unknown and unknowable. Songspirals bring the world into existence, they are creation and creativity, they are always in emergence. Songspirals are not human-centered, but humans have a responsibility to nurture, to attend, to contribute to balance, and where balance has been broken, to heal.
This imperative is especially poignant now, as there is a sense of urgency to ensure the songs continue to spiral through Yolŋu generations. For us Yolŋu authors, our journey of intergenerational learning must be continued; we must ensure the songspirals are nurtured, that Country and ourselves are sung into existence. To do this, the younger women need to be supported, brought into their own authority, the young ones must be taught, and we must give them that knowledge back. Each time we sing our songspirals, we learn more, go deeper, connect onward through gurru
And there is an urgency for ŋäpaki to look at the world in a new way, to recognize their place and step up to their responsibilities. Here, Kate responds to a question from Banbapuy about what, as a ŋäpaki, she has learnt: Yolŋu people’s way of looking at the world, way of seeing and thinking and doing and being means that everything is connected. And when everything is connected we can have good relationships, we can have strong relationships with each other, with everything that constitutes Country, meaningful relationships, and when we don’t see those connections, those relationships fall apart. And so I think Yolŋu ways of seeing the worlds are so important for non-Indigenous people to learn and so I think sharing the knowledge enables people to look at the world in a new way.
Gaymala’s words are our galtha dupthun as we spiral through the article, as we spiral with the songs, with the generations, with our more-than-human kin. This relational creativity connects us as it creates and re-creates existence by weaving generations of kin through patterns of response and responsibility. This is not always easy, as we come together it means sometimes sitting with grief of Country or listening to messages we may not want or expect to hear (Tynan, 2021). But it always spirals back to our intention to nourish, enable, enrich, and awaken Country, to nurture songspirals bringing Country into existence.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been funded by a Discovery Award from the Australian Research Council as well as Sarah Wright’s Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council.
Notes
Author Biographies
The Bawaka Collective is an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, more-than-human research collective. It includes