Songspirals by Gay'wu Group of Women

Author:Gay'wu Group of Women
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

That’s why we are writing this book. It’s about the rights of people, of the Yolŋu people of North East Arnhem Land. We need to keep things in their place. We want this to assert our rights, to say to all mainstream Australia, ‘This is Yolŋu, it belongs here. It is not yours to take away. We have songspirals, they are strong, our culture is strong, everything is strong.’

And we are writing this book, us strong Yolŋu sisters, because we are always reading about this from ŋäpaki. Non-Yolŋu think they know but they don’t know. The context, the feeling, the word is wrong. We can feel that emotion, carry you beyond the word, beyond the singing.

This is political because we must protect our land, our land has its own politics, its own rights. The ancestors gave Yolŋu our borders, our understanding not to go onto other land. Land and people are connected. And we are connected through language. Communities like ours must have language. Without language, there can be no songspirals. Language, Yolŋu languages, are power. They tell the story through singing, speaking, milkarri. Language identifies who we are, where our homeland is.

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