Yalangbara: art of the Djang’kawu

Article | Updated 9 years ago

By Margie West AM, Emeritus Curator of Aboriginal Art & Material Culture,
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

Yalangbara is one of the most significant places in the Northern Territory’s Miwatj or northeast Arnhem Land region. It’s the primary site of human and cultural creation associated with the Djang’kawu ancestors who belong to one of the regions’ most geographically extensive religious traditions. They bestowed the yaku bathala (big name) of Yalangbara upon the area south of Yirrkala that encompasses the spectacularly beautiful Yalangbara or Port Bradshaw peninsula, including the offshore islands, Lalawuy Bay and adjacent coastline.  The Marika family who are the traditional owners of Yalangbara regard it as their personal paradise and spend a lot of time here hunting and gathering as well as undertaking land management programs to maintain and protect the region’s rich biodiversity.

So many of the species and landforms at Yalangbara are attributed to the Djang’kawu Brother and his two Sisters who arrived on the mainland after a long canoe voyage from a place called Burralku. According to the narrative, the Djang’kawu women were the original owners of ceremonial law and travelled with their digging sticks, feathered regalia and sacred objects secreted in their conical basket and mats. These objects were powerful and transformed into different landforms along the way. At Yalangbara they plunged their digging sticks into the sand creating freshwater wells before their digging sticks themselves transformed into a variety of plant species. This story reflects the plentiful subsurface freshwater found on the eastern peninsula and when people camp on the beach today they simply dig into the sandy foreshore to obtain sweet drinking water. The water is believed to have special curative properties and symbolises the fountainhead of Yolngu knowledge.

One of the seminal events that occurred at Yalangbara was not only the shaping of the environment but also the birth of the first children. This occurred high in the central dune complex at a place named Balma and today the dunes are a designated restricted site. After giving birth to the Rirratjingu clan and bestowing upon them their language and ownership of Yalangbara, the Djang’kawu performed the first Ngarra ceremony, one of the major regional rituals performed in northeast Arnhem Land. They then passed out of Rirratjingu territory and continued westward shaping the land and giving birth to other clans and laying down their way of life. Everything the Djang’kawu created: the people, the land, plants, animals and so on belong to the Dhuwa moiety. The term, which literally means half, reflects the way in which everything in the Yolngu cosmos here belongs to either Dhuwa or Yirritja moieties.

The Marikas trace their lineage back to these original Dhuwa moiety, Rirratjingu ancestors are the current custodians of Djang’kawu law including its expression through ritual and art. Members of this talented family have been actively painting for the market since the Yirrkala mission was established in 1935 and because of their sustained contribution to the visual arts they have also been likened to the Boyd dynasty. Some of these high profile known practitioners include Mawalan 1 and his brothers Mathaman, Milirrpum, and Roy Marika; his son Wandjuk; and daughters Banduk and Dhuwarrwarr Marika. Currently Banduk is one of the family’s better-known artists, who has also been actively involved in educational, health, copyright and environmental issues. It was her deep love of Yalangbara and desire to protect its pristine environment that resulted in the Yalangbara: art of the Djang’kawu exhibition. This is the first major survey exhibition devoted to the Marikas and traces the Djang’kawu journey across the fifty or so named sites in the Yalangbara peninsula.

Banduk wished to particularly honour the memory of her father, his brothers and her brother Wandjuk with the exhibition. They were her mentors whose advocacy eventually led to the passing of the Northern Territory’s Land Right Act in 1976.  Wandjuk Marika also worked with the Northern Territory government’s Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority to have Yalangbara listed as a sacred site in 1983. Following this, Banduk and Mawalan 2 worked with anthropologist Geoffrey Bagshaw to also have Yalangbara successfully listed on the federal government’s Register of the National Estate in 2003. As part of their research for the listing, they viewed the family’s artworks in various state collections around Australia, so according to Banduk an exhibition was the next logical step.

She approached the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) in Darwin who subsequently worked with her and other family members to develop the scope and content of the exhibition and associated catalogue. The work was undertaken over a number of years with generous assistance from The Christensen Fund. An important partnership was then established with the National Museum of Australia (NMA) to finalise and tour the exhibition, which opened at the NMA in Canberra on December 7, 2010. Assistance from Leighton Holdings ensured that representatives of the Marika family were able to attend this auspicious occasion.

For Banduk Marika Yalangbara: art of the Djang’kawu is the realisation of a long held dream:  … It’s time to show the public that Yalangbara is important. This story is important and this is why our fathers painted all these artworks, to show how these paintings relate to particular sites and what they mean … we want to tell their stories properly now and hopefully … Yalangbara will get the recognition that it deserves.

A touring exhibition presented by the National Museum of Australia, developed by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in partnership with the Marika family. Supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material across Australia.