Talk, Text and Technology

Literacy and Social Practice in a Remote Indigenous Community

By Inge Kral

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2012 Inge Kral
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84769-759-2

Contents

Acknowledgements,
Abbreviations,
Historical Chronology,
Series Editors’ Preface,
Introduction,
Part 1: Living in the Now,
1 From Forgetting to Remembering,
2 Transmitting Orality and Literacy as Cultural Practice,
Part 2: New Figured Worlds,
3 ‘Mission Time’: Adapting to the New,
4 Everything was Different because of the Changing,
5 The Cultural Production of Literate Identities,
Part 3: Past, Present, Future,
6 The Meaning of Things in Time and Space,
7 You Fellas Grow up in a Different World,
Conclusion,
Ngaanyatjarra Glossary,
Appendix: Literacy Assessments,
References,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

From Forgetting to Remembering

In Loving Memory of …

A Panaka relative has passed away and various kin have gathered together to help prepare the funeral text or ‘pipa‘ (pipa kurrakurra) for the church service in five days’ time. An atmosphere of sadness pervades the small room, intermingled with an air of respectful, industrious, focused productivity emanating from the different generations of the one extended family. Five women are huddled around a computer. All eyes are focused on the screen as one young woman responds to the instructions issued by her elders. It is a scene that exemplifies the collaborative, historically constituted and essentially social nature of cultural production elemental to everyday practice in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands’ communities today.

Among the Ngaanyatjarra, everyone is regarded as being related to everyone else. Social organisation is the core force in the structuring of funerals and distinct protocols are respected. All yarnangu belong to one of six sections in the kinship system: Purungu, Karimarra, Milangka, Tjarurru, Yiparrka and Panaka (see Figure 3 in the Introduction). The section system defines everyone’s relationship to each other and acts as a guide to protocols at funerals and other ceremonies. This funeral is organised by those of the Tjarurru section, who are the designated tilitjartu or traditional undertakers. The tilitjartu (the husband, or wife, and brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law of the deceased) are those who take on the role of the ‘workers’ at funerals. It is the role of the tilitjartu to communicate the ‘sad news’ to distant kin and inform them when the funeral will be held and where. Funeral notices are faxed to locations hundreds of kilometres away, and kin travel long distances to attend to the social obligations and responsibilities associated with the funeral. Families who are unable to attend fax their condolences, and these are read out at the funeral service. It is also the role of the tilitjartu (or others who assume the role if tilitjartu are unavailable) to negotiate, write and produce the funeral text.

On the day of the funeral, the tilitjartu escort the family to the church. After the service, the tilitjartu go ahead with the coffin and take responsibility for the burial at the cemetery on the outskirts of the community. In times past, upon completion of the burial, the tilitjartu would return to the wailing mourners and throw gum leaves over them, followed by a ritual exchange of gifts such as spears, coolamons, resin, ochre or hair-belts. Nowadays, once the burial is complete, mourners shake hands with the tilitjartuto thank them for their work, and contemporary objects, such as blankets, are exchanged.

Funerals in Warburton and the other Ngaanyatjarra communities occur with an unsettling regularity – an unnerving reminder of the high mortality rate among Indigenous people in Australia. Since the mid-1980s, with the establishment of community cemeteries, funeral rites in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands have taken on many features typical of Christian funerals. This is manifest in the textual dimension and the manner in which Christian symbols and values permeate the discourse. Funerals signal the ever-evolving nature of social practice in this remote Aboriginal Australian context. Moreover, this contemporary ritual exemplifies how introduced practices have been adopted, adapted and merged with remnant practices of the past. This, in turn, has generated new cultural practices and altered social protocols that have become the new norm for successive generations.

Textual practice as cultural practice

Over the last decade or so, funerals have become textually mediated events. Nowhere is this more evident than in the emergence of ‘pipa‘: written eulogies in the form of small booklets that are handed out to mourners at the church service. These texts represent one of the more vivid examples of the textual dimension of changing social practice in the desert communities of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.

The eulogy production process has undergone a rapid and profound transformation in less than a decade. Prior to this, written eulogies, if they existed at all, were simple, handwritten texts, inclusive of errors in grammar and spelling. By the early 2000s, computer technology had become commonplace. It was, however, typically located within the sphere of non-Aboriginal control. Access to computers was generally negotiated through personal relationships with non-Aboriginal staff who worked in office locations or non-Aboriginal friends who assisted on their home computers. The writing process was thus typically mediated through a literate person (generally non-Aboriginal). Simple templates were often constructed in Microsoft Word, enabling quick layout and production in busy offices. As I discuss in Chapter 7, increased access to computers in public spaces over the last five years has led to greater Ngaanyatjarra autonomy in the writing and production of increasingly complex documents. Now, many young people have computer competence and are independently able to produce ever more sophisticated documents, inclusive of graphics and photographs. Although a typical practice in Warburton, computer-mediated texts are, however, less common in the smaller, more traditional communities, where a simple handwritten ‘Order of Service’ may suffice.

The process of writing the pipa is communal. It brings the sociality of related kin together in textual form. The relationship with the deceased continues on, living in the text ‘so the children continue thinking of him, being with him’. In this collaborative literacy event, everyone can contribute ideas on how the text should be constructed, what images and symbols should be used and, importantly, how the list of grieving relatives should be ordered. As a literacy event, the production of the funeral text involves, firstly, research – finding accurate dates of birth, names of extended family, and details of personal histories and selecting appropriate verses from the Bible in English or Ngaanyatjarra. Next, the text is drafted on paper, keyed into the computer, edited and borders and symbols are inserted. Previous funeral texts are also referred to, thus, features of this new written genre, including layout and formulaic phrases, are modelled, imitated and transmitted. Older relatives dictate recounts of significant events that younger writers attempt to structure into a cohesive written narrative, usually in English and occasionally Ngaanyatjarra. Young people with computer skills may take on the role of writers, but they defer to their elders who have the authority to approve the content:

That’s a big gap in there from when he was a boy to when he was working on stations. I’ll print it and have a look. They should explain it to us properly so we can write it down, they shouldn’t talk in riddles. Can’t jump from little kid to working straight away. Go and see XX, she’ll know.

The order of the funeral service, including Bible readings, hymns and prayers in English and Ngaanyatjarra, is listed in the text. The affective significance of the text foregrounds not only the continuing and binding obligation that kin have to the deceased, but also the protocols of social interaction. The list of mourning relations is a key feature of the genre and is marked by a specific protocol. Oral memory is used to compile the extensive kinship web – living and deceased – with older people, recollecting the intricacies of the genealogical connections in the written listing of some 200 named relatives or more. Close relatives are individually named and more distant kin are listed in surname groupings, often followed by a cautious addition: ‘and many more too numerous to name’ – in case some names have been forgotten. These texts enable younger people, or kin from urban centres in the Eastern Goldfields, to see genealogical links they may have forgotten or have never known. The process of negotiating the text can take days: deciding which kin should be listed, in what order: ‘put kurta and tjurtu (older siblings) and their kids first’, suggests one woman. Those who prepare the written list must ensure that no-one is left out and that the list is written in the ‘right way’. A writer comments on the structure of one such list: ‘He might get wild and spear me if his name’s not there!’ she jokes in a half-serious manner.

The prominent inclusion of turlku (hymns) and excerpts from the translated Bible highlights the symbolic significance of Ngaanyatjarra as a written language. It also allows the older ‘mission generation’ to show off their deep knowledge of passages from the Bible. A touching aspect of many of these texts is the foregrounding of significant relationships with non-Aboriginal people who have played an important role in the historical memory. As such, the texts are emblematic of the respectful and positive relationships between Ngaanyatjarra and ‘whitefellas’ that have developed in this region.

Symbolic structuring

The multilayered symbol system of the Ngaanyatjarra social and cultural world is powerfully indexed in the funeral texts and expressed in a complex interplay between the rich imagery of Christianity intertwined with the cultural emblems of contemporary Ngaanyatjarra identity and sentiment. The cultural organisation of Ngaanyatjarra communicative processes and oral genres is apparent in the texts, as is the overarching framework of symbols that draw on Ngaanyatjarra cultural schemas. A rich interplay of symbolic references is revealed in the layering of text, images, icons and colour in specific ways, in accordance with the affective recalled image of the individual. Gentle images of flowers and birds frame the photos of softer personalities, whereas strong leaders are framed by defining lines and the Aboriginal colours of red, yellow and black ochre. Christian symbols, such as the Bible, an angel or cross are commonly used. Such attention to detail flows into the funeral service: ‘Gotta make the funeral in a good way so people can see what he was doing in this community’.

In this new narrative, the sentiment of nurturance, ‘looking after’ or ‘caring for’ kin, as a core value in the framework of social relatedness – expressed in Ngaanyatjarra as kanyilku or miranykanyilku – is symbolised in the poetic tenderness of the messages:

To our loving uncle, We will miss you. Our hearts are breaking knowing that you are not here with us.

We never wanted memories, we only wanted you. A million times we needed you, A million times we cried.

Gone are the happy days we shared but not the memories; they last forever. When thoughts go back as they often do, I will treasure the memories I have of you.

To you my son-in-law, You went away from us so quick. We will always remember you in our hearts. So many sad tears I’ve shed.

We all miss you and love you very much. And the memories are deep in our hearts forever.

Concern for the well-being of kin is typically expressed by the close family in a message on the last page of the booklet, thanking mourners for sharing their sorrow and wishing them a safe journey home. In one text, the family gives:

… thanks to everyone for their help and support during this very sad time, if we have left any one’s names out, we are sorry please forgive us.

Pipa, as a written record, marks not only cultural change, but also language shift. It used to be that even the use of the written form of the name of the deceased challenged oral protocols. The sad news was, and often still is, announced by referring to the status of the bereaved: ‘Karirrkanya pirnkurringu – Karirrka has become a bereaved sister’ or ‘Nuninya wangulyararringu – Nuni has become an orphan’ (Glass, 1997: 39). In oral discourse, yarnangu still announce the news from the perspective of the bereaved: ‘Have you heard the sad news? Barbara nya kutjurringu – Barbara has become one’. Whereas, in the new written genre, relatives are referred to from the perspective of the deceased: the ‘loving uncle of’, ‘nephew and cousin to’. Moreover, loose Aboriginal English kin terms are seeping in from the urban towns of the Eastern Goldfields. The English term ‘uncle’, for example, is now commonly used to refer both to ‘mama‘ (father’s brother), as well as ‘kamuru‘ (mother’s brother).

Historical memory

Funerals, like so many aspects of Ngaanyatjarra social practice, have undergone profound change in only a few decades. In this modified rite of passage, we see not only a documentation of accelerated change, exemplified most poignantly in the changing practice associated with names and images of the deceased, but also amplification of memory.

In the classical past, protocols associated with death and burial were strictly observed. Sorrow was such a powerful emotion that it caused the bereaved to wail, keen and hit themselves with grief. The ‘sad news’ was communicated by word of mouth, gesture and ritual wailing. Close relatives would cut their hair short as a sign of sorrow, a practice still evident today. In the past, people were so grief-stricken after a death that possessions belonging to the deceased were burned or given away, and people moved away from the location where the death had occurred. According to Brooks, this allowed people to ‘survive in the kind of present that prevails in the desert’, as prolonged grieving for the deceased was seen to hamper ongoing life (Brooks, 2011a). In the past, the grieving process involved an erasure of any memory of the deceased, including avoiding the name of someone who had recently passed away. When referring to the deceased (or someone with the same name), individuals used the term kunmarnarra (as a substitute name), until a suitable period of mourning had elapsed. A new term was also temporarily substituted for any other words that sounded similar to the name of the deceased. Today, the term kunmarnarra is still used. Families also leave the house of the recently deceased and move into a temporary camp, known as a ‘sorry camp’, until the funeral takes place, often not returning to the house where they previously resided, because they are ‘too sorry’.

New cultural orthodoxies

With the arrival of photography and film, new cultural orthodoxies have emerged. The insertion of photographs of the deceased in the funeral text is a recent innovation, although a reluctance to incorporate images of the deceased remains an issue for some older yarnangu. Prior to the arrival of cameras, images of the deceased were non-existent. Until recently, hard-copy images were put away and not viewed until a suitable period of time had elapsed and the family gave permission for the image to be seen once more. In addition, images in newsletters, magazines and other printed matter were covered over. The advent of Aboriginal ‘media organisations’ has led to the production of locally made videos. As a consequence, new protocols have been developed, and films containing images of the recently deceased are locked away in specially designated cupboards. The community digital database of historical photos – Ara Irititja – maintains this practice by having a category of ‘sorrow’ photos closed off from public view, until the family agrees to have them restored to the ‘open’ category.

The turning point for considering the inclusion of images in funeral texts may have come in 2001, with the funeral of a significant Ngaanyatjarra leader. This large funeral included many important visitors from outside the local community. The family of the deceased worked on the memorial document for many days, preparing hundreds of copies, each bound with a thin, coloured ribbon. A debate ensued around whether to include a photo; however, his sisters prevailed in their refusal to allow his image to be included. With the introduction of digital cameras over the last decade, a surfeit of images of people has entered the public domain. This is challenging the contemporary cultural orthodoxy associated with the photographic permanency of images of deceased relatives. Yarnangu are once more accommodating new transformations by inserting digital images of the recently deceased into funeral texts.

Texts are now commonly mastered by young people with computer skills, who independently produce them in community offices, media centres or the small Youth Arts Project studio in Warburton (see Chapter 7). Young people search for images of the deceased in folders of digital photos and weave the symbols of Ngaanyatjarra sociality into an integrated whole, as noted above. This practice is, nonetheless, still in a state of transformation. In a 2010 funeral text for a woman born in the 1930s, not only was her image on the front cover, but also digital images of 24 of her extended family were embedded in the document. Rather than wanting to forget, digital technologies are allowing yarnangu to hold on to images of their loved ones: ‘to keep that one for memory’. Families note that holding a copy of the text in their hands is meaningful: ‘instead of just having a funeral where they walk out, they have something’ as a record, a tangible memory to take away with them. Today, even the name of the deceased (and sometimes his or her relatives) may be inscribed on the headstone of a grave as a permanent marker.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Talk, Text and Technology by Inge Kral. Copyright © 2012 Inge Kral. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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