Old Moon: Noonkaa Djinaang!

Ahh old Meeak the Moon Man... 15th November 2008

If there ever was one constant in our lives, besides the sun, it has to be the moon.

It isn't that we never look at the earth, but the earth is the familiar and years ago we didn't know it was 'the earth' and that it was 'round,' and that it was 'somewhere in space,' no we didn't know that, although we did know the 'sun was round' and beautiful in the dawn sky and sunset evening.
But we could never look at it for long and wonder...
Nah, that is why we were given the moon.
The moon has been that one constant, that one revered being, beside the sun, and beside Venus, and all the planets, and meteor showers, and comets... Ok, ok... how do I know what was revered and what wasn't... but it is just an idea isn't it?!
And we're allowed to have ideas even if they are proven wrong...
But I reckon the moon has been the most observed, the most revered and the most mused...

There sure are a lot of tales about him.
A lot of Noongar stories say that one shouldn't look at him.
And I wonder why this is so??
The old fella who taught me stuff said the old Noongar would say 'noonkar djinaang' - 'don't look,' and I think, the fear was that what lived inside of it would jump out and scratch your eyes out...
Sorry to tell you such things, because, for me, I like nothing but to look at the moon.
I even speak to him, 'kaya kongk' I say - 'hello uncle...' you know the yarn.
Now, I was just thinking... one time, myself and a number of archaeology students were excavating a house called Ellensbrook near Margaret River.
We had to pass a giant cave on our way there and this cave seemed an eerie place... The water from the stream swirled down the cave's mouth, and it resembled a giant mouth and throat of a yongka (western grey kangaroo) or something, its incisor tooth stood out where the water swirled down... anyway, not wanting to ramble on... it was in this cave or the other side of it that was known as Meekadaaribee: 'place where the moon bathes...' And it was here that two Noongar childhood sweethearts played together.

Now this is a story of the Wodarn-ngat Nyoongar of the south-coast.
And I tell it from what I have read, and through having been there and lastly, and most importantly, I tell it out of my respect for friendships with Noongar Webbs, Harris, and Isaacs families of the lower south coast.
Maybe it was their people who were the main contributors and actors of this story...no doubt...

Now in the cave these children played and one day, one of them, the younger girl, 'Mittan,' told her mother she had seen the moon bathing therein: "Mum, guess what I saw, you'll never guess..." (something like that...maybe) "...Meeak nidja kep yaaragat daaribiny...' might have been some of her words... And her mother, alarmed and troubled had spoken against looking at such things...saying bad luck would come to them if they did... and they did...look at that moon. Tell a child not to do something and they will do it.

"Hey!" "Don't look, but there is a car full of police following us" and nine times out of ten, all and everyone in the car will look and strain to look over their shoulders... "What did I just tell you fellas"... and nine times out of ten, that blue light will flash and the siren will wail...

Anyhow, they grew older, and in time, Mittan was promised and then given to an older man and her childhood friend 'nop' or as the story says, (Nop-el) Nobel... refused to accept their union and threw spears at the old man and was killed (or something like that).

Mittan, when the news reached her, was heartbroken.

Mittan then despaired, and refused to eat, and growing thin, like the moon grows thin, she died.

She died, it was written, out of love for her childhood sweetheart Nobel, and it is also written that their spirits can be heard in the gurgling of the waters of that cave today.

So if you ever get the chance to visit Meekadaaribee where the moon bathes have a look... but not at that full moon in the water...

Ngoorl

Art by Lindsay

Ngan Kaalap Coarin

Ngan Karlap Coaring, By Lindsay Harris

Memory of the Skin of Earth

Art by Lindsay Harris

Memory of the Skin of Earth 6th Nov 2008
Last night I was invited by a friend, Lindsay Harris, to speak and sing at his gallery opening.
I always find such invitations confronting.
I don't like being the spectacle and I can't help but think that doing such a thing, no matter what honesty and conviction I bring to such a space, might still seem a little odd and misinterpreted by those who don't know what I am saying.
My Noongar friend who invited me paints in abstract form.
The topic or his exhibition was ngoorl - skin.
I have written about this previously. Anyhow, as people gathered and my heart beat raced, in walked another Noongar artist of note, Tooga Morrison.
"Ah yes," I thought. "An audience of real scrutiny, an audience of Noongar!"
But then so too they are ngany moort, maadarn, ngoodjyar!!
And so, when the gallery owner called everyone present to be silent, she introduced my friend the artist and then introduced me.
All went silent and I began.
I don't know whether it was the paintings or the nod of my friend, but I began and talked about the ngoorl, the skin, and what rests beneath it.
I first told of my teacher, the late Cliff Humphries, my wonderful old friend who had showed me the ngoorl on top of his hand.
How he'd pinch it and there it would remain, upright...
And I asked the wadjalla there in gathered to think of this skin and of what once lived here upon it.
I asked them if they could imagine the trees that stood here, the giant jarrah and Marri - djirralmaari nidja yaarkiny!!
And I told them that here people moved, continued to move.
Here a fire glowed and smoke blue trailed from the hot coals that someone tended and cooked upon, nidja daartj dookerniny, yongka daartj ngaarniny... Yum!
And then I mentioned the willy wagtail djitti-djitti I had seen dancing the day before.
Had they seen it too? I asked them.
And then alerting them to the presence of the Noongar amongst them, that they were still here, I sang the song of the djitti-djitti an imitation of the mai - the sound - and movement, weaving its elongated tail and body in flight, in dance, flicking, hunting, joy!
I then told them how the dingo had moved in between this space chasing the tracks of the yongka djen-daalanginy, djen benaanginy sniffing at the tracks and then I sang the song of the dingo and then I moved the conversation to the east, to where I said the smoke trail was floating, booy moornong koorliny... and the white gums, salmon gums and jam that stood there and the woorep, white owl guardians that rested in their branches.
I then sang the song of the owl, and said to those present.
To understand the art here before you, you need to go see it.
To stand atop the hills, the boya goombaa - the ancient monoliths of granite and to look bookadja kaadjali djinaanginy...
To see the water atop the granite, the tracks below.
All of it I said, I had seen.
And if they would only do the same then the art they had just purchased would take on an entirely different meaning and feel.
And then the songs and stories concluded. And no one spoke.
Afterwards we went out for a meal.
My Noongar ngoonden he paid for my meal.
A dish of lamb cooked tender, and the conversations around that table were vibrant and full of colour, resembling the art that had hung from the walls.
Tooga said to me before I started. "Tim, it is good you tell 'em because it will give them a feel, give them a sense of feeling" and I think I knew what he meant. Because I felt it and this was our shared hope, that the wadjalla might feel it, and then respect it too.

The Noongar word for Skin

The Noongar word for skin is ngoorl.
This is an eastern Noongar word and one taken from Cliff Humphries (1910 - 1998). His word for bark was similarly configured, it being yorl.
It seems to me that these two words are similarly composed and describe something in Noongar terms for the outer skin covering that beneath it.
What lies beneath this 'Noongar metaphoric skin' is what I want to discuss in the following.
It seems to me, that there is the constant anxiety by some Noongar I know, of the opaque quality of their untanned skins, as if their skins are the central substance of their being.
But this belief and opaque anxiety is not only theirs, but it is an anxiety for many human communities throughout the world.
In India, in the land of the mystic, many Indians advertise their marriage suitability based on their "wheatish" appearances.
And here in Australia, until very recent times, generations of the pale-skins among us laid out on beaches (solar barbecues) till we were cooked and blistered, hoping and waiting to be tanned.
Still today some risk all, sunning themselves in solarium's hoping for the same result.
Why this want to change one's appearance?
Why this want to be something one is not, and to change the skins we wear?
For the Noongar of old their skin was worn covered.
Beside their treasured worabwok (grey doe kangaroo skins) they wore, their human skins were rubbed and smeared with animal fat, in particular emu, kangaroo and whatever else they could put their hands on.
Sometimes mixed with the fat was red ochre, and their bodies were said to glisten.
I don't know whether this was singularly a ritualised covering, or whether it was used in more general attire, but their skin, even when bwokbert, uncovered and naked, was dressed against the wind and rain.
But was it just decoration or did it cover what was revered within?
The yorl of the tree was used as a funnel to dish out and carry water.
It was the Noongar equivalent of the Wadjalla bowl and Wongi yandy, or carrying dish.
So the yorl was the vessel that was used to carry water from the ngaamaa rock water hole, or ngoora, water soak, or the boorna-bip, water trees to wherever the family were camping.
The yorl was both a dish and the bark of the tree and when Noongar obtained water from the roots of some eucalyptus species, it was yorl they removed to suck or carried with them to keep the water within.
But it was the water within that preserved their life, it was, I suspect, what was within that mattered most.
And yet the bark was not simply something discarded, but something revered.
For the Noongar nop when first born, they were rubbed with the bark ash of the maang-art or acacia accuminata.
At life's end they were buried with this same bark and ash.
The bark of this tree, the jam tree, was burnt in the grave before the body was interned.
The bark was thus revered and signified for those Noongar present something of beginnings and endings, or was it the continuity of something much larger?
Human skin was dressed in oil and at birth in bark ash, and so too in death. Something was being said in these rituals, something that identified a meaning that went beyond the skin, to what lay within it.
In the decorations that men and women wore in their dances, something of the power of their borongaa or ritual being was infused and marked atop, and within and beneath the skin.
In my Masters I had written about the Wadjalla preoccupation with skin.
I quoted the work of Bates and written on where I thought she had erred in her translations.
I had written:

There is a Nyoongar word for he who was selfish in providing meat and that was Daadjert. I argue, it is an abbreviation of daadj-bert. The word daadj-bert means: “meat-without”. Bates’ (1992: 120) link between “half-caste” and “daadj-bert” is a wrong translation of this word. Daadj-bert infers the breakdown of the traditional sphere of reciprocity, marriage and classificatory skin and relationships between individuals. It has nothing to do with the genes, mixed blood or of being “half-caste”, as Bates and the audience of her early writings understood it. Bates wrongly inferred that the “full-blood” Noongar was antagonistic toward the Noongar of mixed ancestry because of the singular reason of their mixed blood. I suspect the issue of Noongars of mixed ancestry was Bates’ problem, not the early Noongar. Daadjert merely identified the lack of Noongar dowry “meat promise” through the Noongar custom of daardjalak – “with meat”. Daadjert was the opposite of this. Daadjert brought about the breakdown of the social networks that Noongars had relied upon for millennia. The breakdown of daadjalak eroded Noongar confidence in their traditional networks of self-sustenance. Daadjert forced Noongars into poverty, not as Bates implies through them being lesser human beings (less than full bloods) or half-castes of mixed ancestry or blood (Humphries and McCabe 1994)"

The issues of skin and what it communicated to the 'Noongar wearer' of old was different, I think, to the way it absorbs us 'the wearers' of the present.
The anxiety of the present day seems absorbed in the qualities of identities, or beauty, ignoring the deeper quest to understand and accept what life lies within us, and what the ngoorl, or yorl signifies and carries with it between life and death and beyond.