Coat of Cliff Humphries

Your old coat. 27:06:2000

There, can you see her? I ask.
There on the horizon
ben-arng with light,
and her ochre stain.
Yet old man I am tired
and feeling cold in your coat.
“Then kaarrla kaalang,
light a fire” he says.
I continue whispering:
Some say it is darkest and coldest
just before dawn.
“Then better kick the coals
to warm ourselves and watch” he says.

I guess old man
you and I must wait.
This new dawn and colour
she will someday come,
but not yet,
and when old ngaarngk bleeds her ochre stain
all will seem momentous
But right now this nyoongar track is cold...
I am alone.

Often on this journey I could despair.
Carrying your coat,
this quest without promise,
it carries much risk.
And at journey’s end
what will I see?
Will your children take your coat from me?
And will it be enough
to warm their backs against the night’s air?
And what if they despair,
what then?
Will your coat be enough for them?

But typically
your answers are few...
And the journey is long...
And me nidja kaadidjiny noonook
waalanginy-ngayanginy:
with you singing the same one song.
And your spirits are many,
they rise and they fall.
And all seem to haunt me
just before dawn.
Just before dawn
when the sky is still black
and the stars are still flickering afar
I know you and your families there watch me
'cause I can see your shapes in the stars.

The Noongar Library of Cliff Humphries

Dark eyes 31:01:99

Dark eyes, Nyoongar eyes look me up and down, you worked with that old man - yarn...?
What they want ?
What am I supposed to say - nartj...?
Yeah, I wandered Kellerberrin’s Massingham Street, baarniny...
I just simply followed my feet, then I climbed into his mind - daandanginy...
Like I climbed into his brain - then wandered corridors that took me to old books and a burning flame - kaalanginy...
What did you see - they ask? djinaanginy...
I saw Volumes of his-story , sagas, Noongar literature,
read of secrets, songs, man-u-scripts and those of women - chapters and chapters of centuries...generations - mai ngaattamornong-koorliny...
I’d be there for weeks at a time, and, you see I had the keys to his mind.
I came and went as I pleased.
But, you know I couldn’t afford a ladder, damned step ladder.
That’s all it would have taken, ATSIC’s promised step ladder - but it never came, yay daandaang daabbatiny...
On the top shelf high above my head down his well lit corridors my stumbling feet were led - kair-koodiny
There many volumes were stacked, its antiquity intact, all of it untouched, unread and waiting - kokkinyininy...
Several shelves were out on loan, his memory fading, never to be returned - kairnyak..
This library of his mind, but with so little time.
I tried to tell ‘em, closing time is near - balartminy kaadjaanginy...
On his death bed, before his last dying breath, I looked into his eyes,
my old friend - werrniny...
This whole library, Nyoongar library,
sagas and all - songs and their law were dying.
Then I heard the Nyoongar crying, when their wailing had ceased, mopoke all sorts of birds were flying or was it the wind - yelbiny...
Then I caught the easterly wind come sighing from the land of his birth - benn bordok...
With the sun.

Ode to the Nyoongar language

Ode to the Nyoongar 07:09:98

Nyoongar Nyoorn - Plenty of time
for their dead, no time for their living.

Nah ! Haven’t the time to record old Jack, this
wadjalla system ties us up.
By the way did you hear the
news - old fella’s gone - Oh nyoorn.
His funerals in Pingelly - big mob’ll come
I bet you.

Yeah Nyoongar songs are special, this language -
our mother’s tongue, grandfather’s tongue so special.
Old Flo knew it all, the last of that lot to know
the lore - just hope someone remembered. Yeah this
wadjalla system keeps us busy, big mob
of funerals it drives you...

Jumped up the other day, thought
I heard the mopoke say - nyoorn. Strange how
the spirit seems to sing, especially with word of
death it brings. Yeah old fella’s language
is special, this we know, if only I had time to record
it though.

Noongar by the fire at night time

10th of November 2009 Dark Night

Doolyaa-moornang nidja waariny,
kedalak.
Aali ngaarngk baal nookert ngoorndiny.
Nidja mai baalap nyarni waarngkiny,
kaadidjiny.
"Benang, ngientj kaabeny ngiyang nidja yiddiny,
ngiyang ngany waarngkiny...
Yey wilo-mai waaliny, kaadjaali
gorr-yuaarl-koorliny.
Baal bidiyaa mabarn waarl-koorliny,
ngiyang kwella waarngkiny?
Nyungaara baalap wayerniny,
kaalaa-ngat-boordak-ngat kokinyininy...
Kaadidjiny, kaadidjin-gaa kokinyininy...

Nyungar; Noongar, noonaa Moort nganaarng!!

Kaalagap 3:21pm July 20th 2009

Nyungarra! Nyungarra! Windjee nidja Nyungaaraaa!!?
Bookadjaa baalap bookadjaa, kaala-ngat nyininy... mai waangkiny, djurrep-kaadidjiny! One day, when the sun is shining, perhaps in spring, perhaps we might meet again, to sing the songs and speak the words by that fire that we all hope we will one day find welcoming us to sit by.
You know that fire!?!
To play in the smoke, to warm your back, to drink your tea and eat those johnny cakes from the pan and dip those dampers into the juices of the yongka and bacon that sit dookeniny... yuret-ngat dookeniny, daartj noonook benaarnginy, djurrepiny, yep we all dream of that day...

Linguistic hooks iny nj

Continuing Verb ends iny nj, doublegee barbs on kangaroo skins.
The Noongar of old were tracked.
Observers watched them, from afar and up close.
The writer's hand of old moved across the page, and our eyes now follow the markings they made, our eyes follow their lines and make sense of their alphabets, sure, even now as aboriginal writers re-present themselves to the world we follow them too.
For the Aboriginal hand that leaves his tracks on the page has swapped one medium for another.
One such writer I regularly track.
He knows this, he knows I am tracking him, so he doesn't give too much away.
I track his linguistic baggage too, baggage that holds to his fur like doublegees attached to the skin of a kangaroo.
I see by the way he is hopping, he is burdened by what he carries.
The linguistic continuing verb endings hook iny nj into him as he goes careering across the page.
And in speech I am kaadidjiny not 'jenny' or 'jinny' not kaad-did-jinny but, I am kaad-did-jing more like him, than to the others I listen to stumbling upon the linguistic hook.
As I said I have seen these linguistic hooks that lie embedded in them, and hold them down, sharp hooks they fester in their flesh like the wooden barbs of the doublegee.
Now the old man who taught me, his lips danced and curled and his tongue was on fire, like kalamai waarngkiny... he would lick his words and send them on their way. How I wish I could speak like him, and track his talk along the tracks and laneways of his old pads of home.
I once wandered with him, we three his missus and me... we travelled to old haunts of his and her people.
Very often when not playing up for me, the anthropologist watching, I heard him whispering or voicing what the old one's used to say...
He was a Master of the linguistic iny nj, their hooks he'd have used as toothpicks, and doublegees had no hold on him.
And he didn't leave words on the page, he didn't have to.
The lands about him were his pages, and his tracks and those of the ancients lay connected.
His palimpsests and theirs lay about him, names, places and happenings and quick was his recall.
Belly laughs made him convulse, till coughing fits over took him...
The land as you know was read by him, read as text.
And his stories remain in his landscapes, his language remains to be awoken, but, I only hope, that his tracks are cleared of the doublegee and hooks that linguists will surely one day lay, hooks like fence snares for hungry kangaroos - hop beneath the wires if you dare
But then, who knows, across the page and onto the earth you will be seeing hearing 'kaadidjing' them bounding free to see-find their way and true form free from the hooks of the linguist inquistition and impaler...
Free from the hook, the nj that too few understand so that now their fur carries jinny-plenty of doublegees...

Native Title policies

Native Title policy is offal thrown to a legion of lawyers... 22nd March 2009

We want to believe that Indigenous Land Councils offer benefits to Indigenous peoples.
We want to believe that the right of negotiation might bring Indigenous peoples more than simply access to their land, but some kind of economic return from another's want of use...
A while ago I was asked about Native Title, about its policies... and I sat thinking, as I was surrounded by a lawyer and anthropologist, what answer they were expecting...
Are there any right answers here??!
Prior to this meeting I had sat thinking about what Native Title had given to many of Australia's Indigenous peoples... and besides thinking the obvious, the SFA - 'sweet f... all' I had thought whilst sitting there, that Native Title had given Indigenous peoples legions of lawyers and anthropologists... legal and anthropological/historical litigation dressed up as 'benefits' and 'hope' for people, a people, for many, entrenched in poverty.
Yeah right, what kind of benefits are those...??
The right to negotiate when a mining company is breathing down your neck...what kind of negotiations might that be - when rushed into thinking what commercial anthropologists are thinking - when under pressure from lawyers, who are, in turn, under pressure from Mining companies and government administrators...waving fingers and demanding outcomes...
Yep, Native Title has given Indigenous people legions of lawyers.
And what are the policies... ??
The policies are that anthropologists/archaeologists/historians, given limited time, and under pressure, should come up with the 'Indigenous goods' the evidence and the indigenous will to agree and all their hidden memories after an hour or several days of yarning... so their talk can then be thrown into the arena or shark pool where lawyers might feed (read prosper).
I remember having been represented in court by lawyers' Johnston and MacIntyre... when I had climbed a crane at the old Swan Brewery in 1989.
These two lawyers, the latter who later represented Eddie Mabo, spent hours arguing points of law.
Sure, these two weren't what I'd call sharks... they were, more 'givers than takers,' but the Noongar never got an inch of their lands at their site of Goonininup aka 'the old Swan Brewery'.
And whilst the 'Mabo/MacIntyre' case recognised Native Title in the islands off QLD, it didn't translate into something similar on the mainland...or did it???
I mean, Native Title has meant what, exactly??
Has it come to mean the same thing as freehold title??
Can it be sold off by Indigenous 'owners'??
Or can it only be fished from, camped upon, utilised...
And the lawyers... where are they...??
Their business and livelihoods remain the same, there connections will never end.
They have what one might call 'a perpetual lease of association' tied to something that few of us can grasp or understand.
Whilst there are legal questions, the dominant law of the land will always find legal definitions and points of law to contest, resolve and question.
But what and where for for the Indigenous landholder... the land connected... land knower?? (or is that land owner??)
They will always have the right to negotiate... it seems, but only if they are accompanied by a LAWYER...