Sign Language 2
Yidumduma Bill Harney and nephew Jonas Doctor share traditional Wardaman sign language and modern usage from the streets of Katherine NT. Sign language was handed down from the Dreamtime Buwarraja, to communicate across distances and languages, in ceremony, mourning, hunting and for the deaf. Featuring signs for: riding, shoeing a horse, sick, doctor, Clever Man (Wizard), white man, ghost, Stolen Generation...
Transcript
Did you have ones you used as a stockman?
Yeah... 'Gallop...with the horse...riding'...
Sometime, you whistle to him and he'll wave to you...
...you wave to him to come, and he say to you...
'What for?' You lift your feet. 'Shoeing the horse'...
Or if you're going to sneak up on a kangaroo or bullock...
if another young fella on that side following you, you tell him...
'Go around him...round him up'...
One on each side. You tell that one, 'Go round that way and...
'I'll go over around this way'...
Or if you ask him...and he'll go like this... you just go like that...
'He want money...write a cheque'...
and he'll say to you... 'Nothing, no money'...
What about, go for a drink?...you wave to him again...
and he'll look, come here and he'll ask you 'What for?'
He knows...go like this...don't go like that...
...for 'Water', but...like this...
...'You go for drink up'.
Do you have one for 'Sick'? For 'Sick'...you go...that one will answer..they'll say...
he'll ask you again, 'What for?'... 'Sick'...he tell you, 'Crook'...
...he'll whistle to you again and you'd say. 'What is it?'...
That means, 'He's gone', like he points at himself...
He goes over there, he goes...this one means 'Doctor'... 'I need the doctor'.
Why the elbow?...that's where all the power,
from the spirit, when he hold him.
Then...he'll tell the doctor, and the doctor will tell him...
'You go back', and he's telling him... 'I got to go here'...
'Put the dilly bag, doctor bag'...
'He put it around his neck to here'...put that circle on him there...
That's a little dilly bag, doctor bag...
...he'd go down and get it then...bring him down.
Then, he tell that bloke... this one mean, 'Fire, matches, fire'... 'Make it like that.'
That bloke get all the 'Firewood'... That mean, 'All the leaf'.
'Put them in there'...He tell him...
...'Smoke'... Yes, 'Big smoke.'
...If they're singing out to you and you want to stay, you have to say...
'No', you say, "No, I'll stay."
Do you have one for...traditional doctor?...
Yes, that's the one...
Same for Western doctor or traditional doctor?
Western doctor and everything is the same, combined in one...
If you say...'Where you going?'...
Then this one will say....
'He's...driving with the car, go down to the hospital.
When you're ready to go back to sleep and if anyone is singing to you...
'Me going back to sleep'.
Do you have one...for 'Clever man'?
Yes...a 'Clever Man',... like this... and you'll say it like this....
He's got a little mark in his chest here, a tribal mark....
...he holds his hair too, like this...
That's a Clever Man that carries all the spirit on his hair, like a doctor,
a very accurate one...
Might be...beef there. You whistle to him, and he'll go like this...
'Come here'...he'll say...'What for?'...
That's a 'Beef'... You're taking 'Half and half'....
You put it like a cross, splitting him in half.
You go like that... 'It's a beef', you split him in half like that... That's 'Half and half,'
he take half, you take half.
If you see someone going mad over there...'He's mad,...'
What about the days when government workers were coming for the kids, were there signs they used then?
Yes... You sing out...you go like this... and they look you....
That mean he whistle and you answer and you point out...
'White men coming'... like this, 'Pick up the kid, he's going to take him away'....
...and he'll whistle... and he'll tell you...
'Take them away in the bush and hide them'...
Yes, that's the Welfare people.
But... 'White man' is that...
Grabbing everything white men. White man...Marnden, still we call them Marnden
This is a 'Marnden'... It's a spiritual ghost.
White man...like a ghost Marnden...
...Marnden connect to that spiritual ghost.
You can see the white glow in the night, that's a ghost, and the white men there...
...you say to somebody... The kids today still know that if you tell them...Marnden
Show them like this, they'll get fright. They know the ghost...they come back to you.
...that's where the ghost and the white man connect together,
everything...white glows.
