<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/14/its-warlpiri-identity-indigenous-photos-drawings-and-sacred-objects-come-home-after-60-years>
"A group of Warlpiri men contemplate a black and white photo of a lean
Aboriginal man. He sits, his hat at a jaunty angle, his beard neat, the
scarification lines on his chest stark.
“Ahhh that’s the warrior,” one murmurs. “Bullfrog!” says another.
“That’s my great-great-grandfather,” Jamie Jungaryyi Hampton says.
Hampton has never seen this picture before. For more than 60 years it has been
in Chicago along with hundreds of other photos, drawings and men’s secret
sacred ceremonial objects from Yuendemu in the Northern Territory.
Emerita professor Nancy Munn studied the Warlpiri people at Yuendemu from 1956
to 1958. When she left, she hauled a large collection of Warlpiri objects back
to the US, including that 1957 photo.
Munn got her doctorate (on the Warlpiri people) from the Australian National
University in 1960 and went on to become an esteemed professor and “renowned
expert on the commingling of space and time” at the University of Chicago.
When she died in 2020, the long process of returning this cultural heritage to
the Warlpiri people began. On Friday a men’s group from the Warlpiri Project
came to Adelaide to be reunited with their ancestors’ stories.
“It’s a time capsule,” says Karl Japaltjarri Hampton, Bullfrog’s great-grandson
and Jamie’s father.
“All the stuff that was taken has been there, waiting to come back. And a lot
of the stuff, I think our ancestors did this because they knew that in 50 or 60
years’ time, maybe we’d come along and would pick it back up again.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
