Bell, Diane (ed.), Kungun Ngarrindjeri Miminar Yunnan (Listen to Ngarrindjeri Women Speaking). Spinifex Press, Melbourne, 2008, RRP $34.95, ISBN 9781876756697
In 2003 Elders of the Ngarrindjeri Nation, representing the indigenous people of the Lower Murray, the Lakes and the Coorong, presented 'the Proclamation of Ngarrindjeri Dominion' to the then South Australian Governor, emphasising that they had always occupied their traditional lands and never ceded or sold these lands or waters to others.
This same spirit of defiance is evident in Kungun Ngarrindjeri Miminar Yunnan (Listen to Ngarrindjeri Women Speaking), which chronicles the stories and aspirations of powerful Ngarrindjeri women.
The proclamation was intended to remind the government of the original Letters Patent of 1836 issued to Governor Hindmarsh in London by the Crown of the United Kingdom, which expressly provided for the rights of the indigenous inhabitants. In this book there is a continuity of that same spirit of feisty resistance which has survived from those earlier times until the present.
This link to the past is symbolised too by the circular weaving of baskets and mats which is still a feature of Ngarrindjeri enterprise. 'The past constitutes who we are today' is a recurring theme in this book and ancient stories help to weave together a people separated by historical, non-indigenous interventions.
From its opening prologue Kungun Ngarrindjeri Miminar Yunnan adopts a 'take-no-prisoners' attitude as its authors grapple with a number of contemporary issues. These are women who 'have had enough of this system of things' and are 'tired of always having to explain our existence and to prove our Aboriginality'.
Although the book does contain traditional stories handed down from earlier generations (such as the 'Story of the Seven Sisters'), this 'army of motherhood' chooses to confront current issues like the Northern Territory Intervention, care for land (in the face of impending catastrophe in the Lower Murray), economic development and appropriate methods of governance.
The book was fashioned through a painstaking series of workshops, facilitated by editor and anthropologist Diane Bell, and this process reveals an extraordinary spirit of cooperation. Conversations and negotiations took seven months, with young, old, female and male Ngarrindjeri contributing.
The launch took place in Murray Bridge, directly opposite the cemetery where my great-grandparents are buried. My great-grandfather in the 19th century felled trees and cut stone in quarries on Ngarrindjeri land to supply the nearby expanding city of Adelaide. It was inspiring to see the