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January
1999 |
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The Ngarrindjeri Fight for Kumarangk by
Nancy Cato
Hindmarsh Island
The women claim that the bridge to be built to the Island is laid exactly on the line which is most sacred to their "womens business". The protesting women, like Doreen Kartinyeri, are passionate about preserving their past. Though they no longer live on the island, their grandmothers are buried there and they visit regularly to gather rushes for weaving the beautifully crafted mats and baskets which have been valued by generations of Goolwa residents. Long before it was occupied by white settlers, Goolwa was an important Aboriginal meeting place for different clans, as well as a center for trade with links to distant tribes especially along the "lifeline" of the Murray River . Red ochre from the south was bartered for reed spears and for possum-skin cloaks, and flint knives were coveted by central Murray people up to a thousand miles upstream who had no stone in their area. Even the all-pervading sound of the surf beating on the shallow curve of Goolwa Beach was known of in distant parts. It is mentioned in the story collected by my mother-in-law last century, when she was a girl living on the N.S.W. side of the Murray above Moama. An old woman took her digging-stick and her dogs and set off to walk from the high places to cross the dry and waterless plains until she reached the sea. She was followed by a magic snake, who moved in the track her stick had made, shaping the bed of the Murray. At last she heard the sound of the sea. Then she saw it. The old woman went to sleep in a cave, and the sound of the surf is her voice as she sings in her sleep. On Kumarangk it is the rising sun which is the stuff of legend; she is a female, like the moon. At the summer solstice the sun comes up in the south-east and paints a golden line on the calm waters of the Goolwa Channel, pointing exactly into the crook of the Elbow, and linking the island to the mainland. This is the same line that the ferry takes, and the planned route of the bridge. This site is so important, so mysteriously "sacred", that the older women see as a disaster any move to link the island to the mainland with a bridge above the water so that this special reflection is lost. As one of them observed, the bridge will destroy all fertility in the area; fish will stop breeding, birds will stop laying, plants and people will not propagate or grow. Anthropologist Prof.Diane Bell lived for two years with the Ngarrindjeri women, sharing their physical and ceremonial life. She says "The women had ceremonies, sites, objects,song, ritual design and stories that ran parallel with the men 's ... yet this is totally invisible to the male researcher ." Birth practices and pregnancy are "Women's Business". Those who know the full details of the Island's importance, the older Ngarrindjeri women, are uncomfortable in speaking about it. This "Business" can never be spoken of when men are present, which was the women's reason for not giving oral evidence at the Commission of Inquiry. Only "privileged women" are admitted to this special knowledge. It is sacred rather than secret. It may not be divulged to young girls, nor the uninitiated, and only to those Ngarrindjeri who will respect it. Like puberty rites for young girls, it is kept from men. Many of the next generation believe it when, without knowing the details, their elders tell them that Kumarangk is not just any island. It is said to be a women's place, "a place of pregnancy". From what I have learnt, the navel and the umbilical cord are central themes in their lives. The small knotted hole in the center of the coiled-coil mats they weave is a symbol of the navel around which the rest of the pattern grows into life. The weavers, who have not lost their skill with this ancient craft and that of basket-making, still visit the Island to gather rushes. They sit in social groups to work, and discuss intimate matters while there are no men present. I have met two of the women who later had the tenacity to take their protest to the High Court, and I am positive that there is a real belief in some hidden or "sacred" factor which is exclusively "women's business". The women did not testify again after their claim of a sacred site was described by one of the Ngarrindjeri men as a fabrication, and some of the other women said they did not know of any such thing. Of course they didn't; they were excluded, or did not wish to hear. The argument has divided the small community centering in Goolwa. Some residents of the Island whose families have been farming there for two generations do not want the bridge. They have always used the ferry, which is free and runs 24 hours a day - an expense the State Government is anxious to get rid of. Some land owners look forward to rises in property value. The local Shire Council sees a chance to increase rates. Conservationists who know or live in the area are horrified. They say the impact of all those people, cars, four-wheel drives and noisy polluting jet-skis, will mean the end of the Coorong National Park, where pelicans breed in the small lakes on the fragile peninsula. Parts of the area are listed in the international RAMSAR agreement to protect the wetlands vital to migrating water birds from Russia, China and Japan. If the development goes ahead it will mean the triumph of our profit-based, pragmatic society over the spiritual beliefs of the first inhabitants. It will mean the selling-out of a unique and beautiful area for commercial gain. And not all the millions these narrow interests stand to make would be able to restore it. Once gone, it is gone forever.
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