‘A Song for Country’ is one of the more unusual exhibitions on the program of the Canberra Multicultural Fringe Festiva, and there’s still time to catch it.
Nakarrma and Thompson at the opening
Together with the SharingStories Foundation, they’re presenting a show featuring the work of photographer and award-winning documentary filmmaker Liz Thompson, working in collaboration with senior Liya-dhälinymirr Djambarrpuyŋu cultural custodian and songman, Nakarrma Mark Guyula. Both were in town last week to launch the show, which runs all weekend during the Festival.
Through image and text, ‘A Song for Country’ explores depth of relationship and connection with Country through ancestral dreaming tracks and songlines.
Nakarrma with Thompson’s image of healer Cyril Nalkin McKenzie
Nakarrma says he firmly believes that the knowledge of his cultural reality cannot be taught away from his ancestral country. “When I go out onto my country and start teaching, it all comes naturally,” he says. “When I look at the clouds, there are predictions, when I look at the waters, there are calculations.” The Yolgnu people, he says, look at the land and the environment and see knowledge, at the trees and surroundings and see a calendar. Far from being a naive society, as has too often been said, “We have law, and a system of governments. We have structured society with systems with governing our country,” he notes.
Stories like that of the Giant Sea Turtle Mukarr, which some people might take as just entertainment, become “an entire value rich curriculum… There is language, there is geography, there is maths, there is science, and there is economy.”
Dhapi boy with ‘Honey bee’ face at circumcision ceremony, Liz Thompson
In this exhibition Nakarrma and Thompson have documented ceremonies and processes such as a ten day Wagilak funeral ceremony that teach not only younger generation indigenous people, but also “Balanda” (white Australians).
Initiate listens to the sound of the Stringybark Tree, Liz Thompspn
For Thompson’s part, working along senior cultural cars stadiums mapping stories and knowledge has led her to be “grief stricken by the clearly evident loss of language and culture that has occurred, and is teaching me to occur.” With that in mind Thompson set up the SharingStories foundation, on the board of which she and Nakarrma sit, working with the Paakantji community and language speaker Murray Butcher.
‘A Song for Country’ in Nishi Gallery in Kendal Lane, NewActon until Feb 15. For more details on SharingStories and to donate to the foundation, visit sharingstoriesfoundation.org
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