A blend of Dreamtime and history

Sydney
6 January 2002

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A blend of Dreamtime and history

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A blend of Dreamtime and history

Project co-ordinator Sr Veronica Ryan and Winnie

In the late 1970s, Sr Veronica Ryan helped establish a school for the Warmun people of the East Kimberley settlement of Turkey Creek. More than 20 years later that first contact has evolved into a unique book, From Digging Stick to Writing Stick - Stories of Kija Women. Chris Hook reports

As was common in the late 1970s, children of Western Australia’s Warmun community travelled hundreds of kilometres north of their Turkey Creek settlement to attend St Joseph’s Primary School, Wyndham.

Parents would travel also, and the families would camp on the outskirts of town.

“Their parents were living in Turkey Creek and so were living on the outskirts of Wyndham just to mind the children, so they could go to school,” Sr Veronica explains.

“Then, in the holidays, they’d go back to where they really lived. But they had no housing and no water supply where they were camped. One of the children was killed waiting for the bus, and that seemed to reinforce the idea that they should have a school of their own.”

Aboriginal people regard accidental death with suspicion, and Warmun community elders felt that their inability to pass on their culture had resulted in the accident.

“They’d heard of other people having a school where their language and culture was taught, where the locals had a big share in the running of it, so they approached the bishop,” Sr Veronica says.

In 1978 a meeting was held between the Warmun comm unity, Broome’s Bishop John Jobst, Sr Maureen Kenny, WA provincial of the Sisters of St Joseph, and other members of the Order.

Sr Veronica was responsible for taking minutes, but did not return to the new school to teach until 1982.

By that stage the Ngalangangpum school was up and running.

“It was what was called a ‘two-way’ school, and the elders and the parents were very involved in the day-to-day running of it, so there was a very close relationship between ourselves and the community who had actually asked us to come there to start the school,” Sr Veronica recalls.

There were just two non-Aboriginal people in the community, allowing close bonds to form. Sr Veronica was able to share the culture of the Warmun people.

“While I was there the people often shared stories, bits of stories and so on. Even then, I thought their story is really quite an extraordinary one, it would be great if at some stage it could be recorded.

“So, when I was leaving, and we were talking about these stories and how things had come about for them, I said: ‘Look, if you would ever like anything done, and I’m free, I could come back, but you’d have to ask me to come back; I wouldn’t just do it’.”

Originally from northern NSW, Sr Veronica left Turkey Creek in 1987 and was working at Armidale’s University of New England when, a year later, a fax arrived saying that the women of the community wanted her to return to record their stories so that their children could read them.

Sr Veronica spent two solid weeks recording stories - oral histories of the women themselves, their families and the way broader historical events had impacted upon their lives, as well as the old Dreamtime stories.

Then came the difficult part of the job.

“To go through them and to write them down was an onerous task because originally the stories were told in a very heavy Aboriginal English, and extremely hard to pick up from the tapes,” she says. “What you would describe for the older people is Aboriginal English, but a couple of stories were told completely in Kija, the local language.

“I know a lot of vocab, but when I was at Warmun, the language hadn’t been written down and hadn’t been studied, so if you don’t know the rules of the language you can’t really learn it.”

Several women were able to assist Sr Veronica and verify that her transcriptions were faithful to the tapes she’d made.

But it wasn’t until just two years ago that Sr Veronica returned to the project, this time with the financial support of the WA Catholic Education Office.

“I felt that, for the readers, it would give them an insight into the lives of Aboriginal people and some understanding of how things have come to be for them. So, of course, behind all that there’s the desire that it would help in the reconciliation process.

“I’ve been involved with introducing Aboriginal Studies into schools in WA and I can see it as a resource for teachers. That’s why I put explanations into it that could be helpful for teachers who teach Aboriginal children, but also I would hope to see it in schools where there are no Aboriginal students - to get children to learn and to read and to get an understanding and help their attitudes.”

From Digging Stick to Writing Stick - Stories of Kija Women is a blend of tribal history and Dreamtime stories written into the broad context of European colonisation of the Kimberley region. Unusually, Sr Veronica was given permission to use both the names and photographs of deceased tribal elders.

“All the time there was this difficulty as to what would happen when it was time for publication, so I took it upon myself to go and talk to the people several times,” Sr Veronica says.

The elders agreed to the use of images and names.

“I think the people are beginning to realise that at school children are hearing about other people who did good things but, because of their custom of not being able to use the names of their own relatives or deceased people, they don’t hear anything of the exploits of their own people. So they seem to have thought about that and decided that at this stage the children really need to know.”

And the community was delighted, joining Sr Veronica at Turkey Creek to celebrate the launch of the book.

Since then, the book has been read and sold throughout Western Australia. As history is forgotten and the protagonists die, it could prove a model for recording the lives of Australia’s first people and the impact of European contact.

From Digging Sticks to Writing Sticks is available from the West Australian Catholic Education Office. Contact Bob Michel on 08 9212 9212