Australian Indigenous Law Reporter
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Wadjularbinna Nulyarimma
17 October 2005
Dear Prime Minister,
Non-Indigenous Australians are now up in arms against the laws, which are about to take away their civil liberties in the name of terrorism. But Aboriginal Peoples have had our liberties taken from us for over two hundred years …
As an Aboriginal grandmother and elder and leader of the Gungalidda nation, I can see what is happening because I have my culture and my system to compare with what has happened to us in 215 years. As an Aboriginal I can compare our universal rule of natural law and spirituality with what your government is imposing on us.
The truth is that in Australia we have one continent, two systems. The first belongs to the First Nations Peoples since the beginning of time. The other man-made rule of law is a foreign system being imposed on us. Our system is a collective system different from the so-called democracy.
From my perspective this country is heading towards complete chaos. For us to survive in the material world we need a balance between the spiritual and material, but we are having a capitalist system forced on us and we are desperate to uphold the laws of this land which ensure our survival. We have rights, too, in this land and we have to maintain the universal rule of natural law as the first Law/Lore of this land.
Our system is unique and complex. The five hundred nations are spiritually connected even though we all speak different languages and have different song and dance. Even though these 500 nations are as diverse as this continent itself, they all stem from the same Law/Lore. All these nations connect through the songlines. We connect to the sandy ridges, deserts, waterholes, mountains and rivers and we make the continent what it is because we have our boundaries through the creation stories. This whole continent makes us who we are through our languages, spiritual connection and culture.
All these nations, who speak different languages, have a language system that connects us to land, sea and skies, to each other and Creation. For example, as a Gungalidda person, the male/female skin grouping system that I belong to is eight female and eight male. ‘Skin’ is a code connection to Nature and to each other that classifies as either ‘straight skin’ or ‘wrong skin’ and our responsibilities within the system to each other, the land and all creation, because we are bound by this Law/Lore. For example, as a collective People with a collective Law/Lore, it helps us when women who can’t bear children and men who can’t father children can still fit in the family structure and are still mothers or fathers to all the children in a particular skin group and are just as responsible for these children as are their birth parents.
In Gungalidda the female skin names are Nunga-lumma; Noo-lunghma; Nee-wa-numma; and Noo-ru-lumma; Nulya-rimma; Jumee-ngungee; Nimma-rumma; and Noonga-rimma.
As the daughter of Nunga-lumma, I am Nulyarimma. That alone encompasses all sorts of relationships including Law/Lore and spiritual connection. Nungalumma is my mother and all other Nungalumma are my mothers even though they may be one hundred years old or just born. Mothers older than me are referred to as ‘big mummies’ and those younger than me are my ‘little mummies’. The same applies to my sisters. All Nulyarimma are my sisters. This connection binds us all together. The emphasis is not placed on young or old. But they all have a language name as well. My mothers are my Njamathu. ‘Big sister’ is Yagoo-gathu. ‘Little sister’ is Goonathu. Njareeju, my grandmother, is Noonga-rimma and all Noonga-rimma are my grannies, big or little. My aunties are my father’s sisters and I call them Marr-ga-thu. Again, big Marr-ga-thu and little Marr-ga-thu. My Marr-ga-thu’s female children are my cousins, my Nji-da-thu. My ‘mother-in-law’ skin name is Nee-wa-numma. Noongarree is our language name for ‘mother-in-law’. Nee-wa-numma daughters are Nimma-rumma and they are my sisters-in-law or Bubbit. Noo-ru-lumma are my daughters and Noonga-rimma are my grand daughters. Noo-lunghma are Nungalumma’s sisters-in-law, my mother’s sisters-in-law. Jumee-ngungee is my cousin, my auntie’s daughter, my mother’s sister-in-law.
In Gungalidda the male skin names are Bul-la-njhi; Gunga-la; Boorra-lunghi; Nja-ridg-bullunghi; Bul-ya-ringhi; Yugee-murri; Gumma-runghi; and Bunga-ringhi.
My mother’s straight-skin are my fathers and their skin name is Bul-la-njhi. Bul-la-njhi, my father, marries Nungalumma. Language name for father is Gun-tha-thu. My mother’s brother’s skin is Gunga-la, and in language is my Ga-ga-ju and he marries Noo-lunghma, my father’s sister. This is not only blood but also the system. Boorra-lunghi, my sons, my Goo-loo-njunja, marry Nee-wa-numma; Nja-ridg-bullunghi, my sons-in-law, Tho-wulla, marry my daughters, Noo-ru-lumma. My brothers, Bul-ya-ringhi, marry my sisters-in-law, Nimma-rumma, who, in language, are my Bibbit. My cousin, Jumba in language, marries Noonga-rimma, who is my granny, Njareeju, in language. Gumma-runghi, my brother-in-law, Nja-be-gee, is my straight skin. That’s who Nulyarimma marry. Bunga-ringhi, my grandson, is Mul-loo-njinda in language, and he marries Jumee-ngungee, my cousin. My son who is Boorra-lunghi marries Nee-wa-numma. We must marry in this order so that every child knows how to relate properly to each other and to land and nature within the social structure and the Law/Lore.
It is a disciplined way of life and there are boundaries within the system. It embraces spirituality, our health, our education, our well-being. Everyone knows the boundaries within the system, but where it has come undone is where we have been forced to assimilate into a capitalist class-structured divisive system.
When the missionaries got to Doomadgee, for a long time our people still married ‘straight skin’ because the missionaries had no understanding of our system is. Later the missionaries started to arrange marriages at random and were marrying skin sisters to skin brothers; skin nieces married skin uncles; skin son married skin mother, which put our whole system in turmoil with devastating consequences. To this day family members cannot relate to each other in the proper way through the skin system. This causes social confusion, creates shame and accounts for much of the dysfunction our people are suffering today. It is just chaos. Yet people wonder why our people are sniffing glue, petrol and suiciding. Interfering with our skin system created a condition of life set to destroy the group in whole or in part. … To live in harmony in this land and to live with the Law/Lore of this land, people have to marry the right way.
There was a three-pronged attack on our people by the government of the day, the mounted police and the missionaries. We know it was deliberate because, for example, the Superintendant of Doomadgee married my brother Bul-ya-ringhi, to Jumee-ngungee, my cousin. When my uncle, Jumee-ngungee’s father, pleaded with those missionaries not to let it happen and he made them aware of what they were doing, the missionaries ignored him. He and his brother tried to stop the marriage and there was a terrible fight between the missionaries and the Aboriginal people. I was in the Dormitory at the time and we were locked in while the Superintendent was shooting into the air and our people were throwing spears and boomerangs around. The repercussions of these wrong-way marriages continue to this day. These stories are absolutely true and I am alive to tell the tale. It was deliberate and systematic then and it is deliberate and systematic today.
Our Laws/Lores and spiritual belief are intertwined. Our law and spiritual belief are not separate. It is a unique system. Spiritual connection to land in our system cannot be washed away by the ‘tide of history’ or by any other way. This system has been in place since the beginning of time. This system and how we connect to everything provides a wealth and a wellbeing that can never be replaced.
Land can only go father-son, mother-daughter or brother-sister to come down the ancestral line. The connection to land can be male and female but cannot be husband and wife. To be handed down in the ancestral line the male and female must be sister and brother – People will say that land is Nungalumma and Gunga-la and everyone knows what Country they are talking about.
There are seven other nations with the same skin grouping as ours and they are Yunjulla of Boorooloola and McArthur River; Garrawa on the other side of McArthur River; Nadjiburra Waanyi up the river (Nicholson River and into the Northern Territory); Lardil of Mornington Island; Kardil of Bentick Island; Koothan of Normanton; and Bidungu Waanyi down the river along the Gregory River. Every other Aboriginal nation has a similar system in their language. Our language is alive and well and still connecting us to the land. They thought by taking me and my sisters from our parents and punishing us for speaking they could destroy our language and break our connection to land.
What we are saying is something that has been in place for thousands of years, but where is our place in today’s society – nowhere!
…
For thousands of years our system has flourished without money, but because of what has been done to us, we now have to survive in a material world, as well as a spiritual world, and we demand that this capitalist system compensates us before they can ever ask us to reconcile. We have nothing to reconcile, except amongst ourselves. It is you who must reconcile with us. Reconciliation Australia Ltd doesn’t fit within our system.
We need full reparation so we can heal ourselves and the white people, who are in the other system too. We want to teach them and share with them this common sense system for the benefit of all humanity and Mother Earth.
I believe beyond a shadow of doubt that we are leading the way and that is why governments past and present are trying to destroy us, because our system is so simple and has nothing to do with money. To take our system on board everyone has to live within their means, as there is a fine line between need and greed. At the moment everyone is living beyond their means at our expense. In our system we have the answer not only to Australia’s problems but to the world’s problems. Our system has stood the test of time. In our system we hold the key to the sustainability for the survival of planet earth and the human race. It is all bound up in this system we are trying to explain to you.
To reconcile to a foreign capitalist system is assimilation, which is what we understand is the goal of ‘Reconciliation Australia Ltd’. Justice is about recognising our identity, our sovereign right, our dignity and allowing us to be who we are in our own land, with no-one controlling us but respecting and accepting our differences in our own land. To go forward and put ourselves back on the map we require schools, spiritual schools for the spirituality of this land and we can share our teachings. Other cultures and religions can have their schools in Australia, so why are we denied the opportunity to have our own schools to teach our children about our culture and our Laws/Lores and our spirituality? We are happy to share this knowledge with people of other nationalities. We want our basic human rights …
Since we don’t have a national voice and there is much unfinished business, it is important that the Aboriginal Embassy remains as a place of self-determination, which flows from our sovereign right in this land. We are fighting for recognition of our identity and we have never ceded our sovereign right, but we are prepared to walk side by side as equals, without losing our identity. Aboriginal people from all parts of Australia come to the Embassy, because grass–roots Aboriginal people are out of sight and out of mind. We see the Embassy as a place of unfinished business and a place where people from all walks of life can come together and for that to happen we reach out to non-Aboriginal people who are living in fear and confusion. Because of the black history of white Australia we need to continue to reach out to the confused and fearful people who are in chronic denial of their place in this land. We need to set things straight now. For the sake of future generations we must not delay.
I belong to an ancient system, which is far superior in humanitarian terms, to the man-made rule of law, which you administer. I remind you that our system is centred on Respect and on behalf of the Aboriginal Embassy you are, once again, invited to be humble enough to come and sit with us at our Sacred Fire for Peace and Justice to put an end to this undeclared war of aggression against us.
In spirit and humility,
Wadjularbinna Nulyarimma
Wadjularbinna Nulyarimma is a Gungalidda Elder and a Member and Elder of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUIndigLawRpr/2005/81.html