Gujingga Songline
Yidumduma shares part of his Gujingga Songline as the Ancestors "zigzagged" through his country and naming everything as they travelled. The Songlines connected all the Wardaman clan estates. Bill's clan Yubulyawan is one of 13 clans, Yulglennie, Yuljarra, Geleji, Muy Muy, Giling Giling, Yulnajaran, Guinin...Flora, Mamuldatsgarni, Jiggaigarn, Barnanggaya…Mt Gregory, Wurrula, Buerrgumayin.
The Songlines moved through the lands of all the neighbouring tribes and then across the entire continent linking all Aboriginal groups together in song and ceremony. Yidumduma offers a unique contribution to this amazing and sophisticated mapping of the land.
Related Links:
- Songlines & Peace YDP Project
- Reclaiming Our Rivers: High School & College Lesson Plan by Global Oneness Project. Pulitzer prize-winning poet Robert Hass writes about the physical state of rivers around the globe.
- ABC Darwin Interview: Songlines with Bill Harney & Paul Taylor
- The Memory Code: How Oral Cultures Memorise So Much Information.
by Duane Hamacher
- Indigenous Stories: Enduring Memories of Ancient Sea Rise. Kosmos journal article on the historical power of Aboriginal storytelling.
Recommended Reading:
Singing Saltwater Country by John Bradley.
Transcript
1/ Gunudjarri mardbamardba
Rainbow is resting, curled up sleeping
2/ Gunudjarri yolbirriar
Rainbow now moves, making the rivers
First song I sang gunudjarri mardbamardba.
That mean he was curling up
and he sang gunudjarri yolbirriar…
That mean he started to make a move now to travel,
make it into a big Songline.
2/ Gunudjarri yolbirriar
Rainbow now moves, making the rivers
He was travelling and he kept going
and the sound of the boomerang
was coming in…from all different angles.
3/ Dalaman dale laburanjane
Dancing all lined up, clapping with the boomerang
That’s all the sound was coming in now when they were singing,
with the dance that was coming in with all the Kangaroo People.
4/ Mayu barnay dingurrup barnay
Kangaroo People dancing here, making the springs.
That’s with all the dancing and they were stampeding (foot stamping)…
each time they travel and stop and look around and name the place.
5/ Gattagatta lerrbonbo
We stop dancing now, end of the Songline.
We’ll be singing all these songs for about a month…
In this big area, you’ll be zig-zagging and naming
all the different plants and soils, earth and trees and springs,
all sorts from the sand, the gravel, to everything that could name it.
Where it buried like this ochre buried like this…white pigment…
Doesn’t get washed off, not allowed to move out,
you stay there when the floodwater come,
you can’t drag him away…Marvellous how he stay on…from song, he put it there.
He stay there, even the pigment red one, stay there.
That make it one big Songline, zig-zag everywhere, all the way.
We still got that song today, the original one.
