Life on the West Island - Three things

Distinguished West Island historian Prof Clare Wright has recently published Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions – How the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian Democracy. Prof Wright has become a pre-eminent expert in tracing the development of our nation’s democracy and has published detailed and well-researched books on subjects including the Eureka uprising, the women’s suffrage movement and the Bark Petitions.

Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions has received critical acclaim. For example, reviewer Ann McGrath wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald:

A history powerhouse, Clare Wright works in a range of media. Following The Rebels of Eureka and You Daughters of Freedom, this is the third book of Wright’s Democracy Trilogy, in which significant material objects provide entrees into important histories. The bark petitions certainly provide an important historical document. But could their story, as the title promises, really change the course of Australian democracy? Will the book live up to the hype?

The answer to these questions can only be found by reading this monumental work of more than 600 pages. It chronicles how Clare Wright and her family moved to live in Yirrkala in the early 1960s. Little by little, Clare learned about an extraordinary moment in West Island history, when Yolnu people used their artwork and their language, Yolngu Matha to petition the federal government over excision of a large portion of Native Reserve land for a planned mine on their traditional lands.

The bark petitions were not sent in the traditional sense, pleading up to an authority, but rather asserted Yolnu custodianship of the land, and spoke as equal partners to the federal government.

Without any consultation with First Nations peoples, the government had approved a huge bauxite mine on their lands, requiring the building of a town for some 5,000 people. This brought into contention four distinct parties: the government, the mining company, the Methodist missionaries in the Yolnu lands and the First Nations Yolnu people. Supported by the church workers, the Yolnu insisted on being consulted on the planning and operation of the mine on their land, with implications for sacred sites.

McGrath summarises Clare Wright’s account of what happened next:

In an invitation for them to share their belief systems, the Methodist Superintendent had invited elders to prepare bark paintings for their local chapel. This became an opportunity for Yolnu clans to reach out across cultural and religious worlds, articulating their deep sovereignty through enduring visual practices. The missionaries were innovative in other ways too, encouraging school students to learn about citizenship, the national political system and voting procedures.

This resulted in 1963 in the Yolnu people creating two petitions on bark and submitting them to the federal parliament, calling for meaningful consultation with them about plans for their traditional lands.

Professor Timothy Rowse described the petitions as:

…combining paintings on bark with typed text, in both English and Gumatj. The painted images symbolised the petitioners’ ownership under customary law of certain lands, close to the mission, which were threatened by the Menzies government when it excised a portion, rich in bauxite, from the Arnhem Land Reserve. The petitions asked parliament to appoint a committee to “hear the views of the Yirrkala people before permitting the excision of the land”.

In Canberra, the Yolnu cause was taken up by parliamentarian Kim Beazley Snr, who was committed to working with international networks of Christians committed to creating a better world. He had seen the stunning bark artworks displayed in the Yirrkala church, and arranged for the bark petitions of 1963 to be prominently displayed at federal parliament in a manner ensuring that the government of the day could not “ridicule, reject or ignore” them.

In the event, a commission of inquiry was established, which confirmed that the Yolnu people had not been consulted. While it did not overturn the mining approval, it recommended measures it considered protective of Yolnu interests while mining went ahead.

After reading Naku Dharuk, Prof Rowse concludes:

Wright suggests this encounter “changed the power dynamics of hunter and hunted, possessor and possessed”, because Yolnu were enacting their citizenship by speaking “truth to the power of the colonial (Commonwealth) authorities”.

Reviewer Amy McGrath was deeply impressed with Prof Wright’s book:

To answer my earlier question, yes Naku Dharuk does live up to its hype. It provides a sizzling account of what led to this important moment. Wright has delivered an unforgettable saga of Australian democracy’s engagement with deep Indigenous sovereignty – writ large on the detailed canvases that depict epic stories of the moving lands both above and under the sea.

Prof Wright clearly believes that the beginnings of the Indigenous land rights movement can be directly traced to the Bark Petitions. Rowse reports that Wright likens the petitions to the Eureka Flag of the 1850s and the women’s suffrage banner from the turn of the century. The flag, the banner and the bark “constitute the material heritage of Australian democracy”. They are emblems of the popular demand to be heard.

It is significant that the originals of all three of these iconic items – the Eureka Flag (1853), the “Trust the Women” poster (1901) and the Bark Petitions (1963) – are now on prominent public display in the federal parliament in Canberra. Wright might well be correct in her view that these three things all represent watersheds in the development of West Island democracy.