This artwork represents my connection with the land here because I grew up here, and my connection with the land up north. The symbol in the middle shows the travelling between here and QLD. This skateboard deck was created by the artist during the Deadly Decks workshops in early 2023.
This design depicts the story of the artist’s ancestral dreaming, the Djomi fresh water spirit mermaid.
The Djomi figure is a mermaid like spirit with fish tail that lives in the fresh water stream that flows out to the sea cliff near Maningrida. Djomi is a known to be a very powerful fertility symbol.
‘If you go there you can get pregnant easily. Djomi has babies, and they can give others babies too. The Djomi spirit is so powerful, that women can end up with multiple babies at once, twins or sometimes even more. The Djomi spirits lay eggs near the sacred freshwater stream in Maningrida. Inside the eggs are human babies as well as young Djomi.
Men do not go near that swamp, because Djomi is so powerful that men might get pregnant there too. So men, they are too scared of that Djomi. When we visit the Djomi freshwater spring, we can hear young Djomi crying. They sound like normal babies crying, those Djomi spirits. They are looking for a mother.
This Djomi is my dreaming, I got permission from my djunguys to paint this Djomi design. For me I always ask my djunguy permission to paint, because that is our cultural way.
This design also depicts the fresh water lily leaves, and seaweed from the base of the sea floor.
This is a depiction of Ngalkunburriyaymi or Yawkyawk, the fish-women spirit. Sometimes compared to the European notion of mermaids, they exist as spiritual beings living in freshwater streams, particularly those in the stone country. These water spirits are perhaps the most enigmatic, and are usually described and depicted with the tails of fish. Thus the Kuninjku people sometime call them ngalberddjenj which literally means ‘the woman who has a tail like a fish’. They have long hair which is associated with trailing blooms of green algae (man-bak in Kuninjku) found in freshwater streams and rock pools. At times they leave their aquatic homes to walk about on dry land, particularly at night.
Aboriginal people believe that at one time all animals were humans. During the time of the creation of landscapes and plants and animals, these ancestor heroes in human form changed into their animal forms via a series of various significant events now recorded as oral mythologies. Today the Kuninjku believe that ngalkunburriyaymi are alive and well and living in freshwater sites in a number of sacred locations. The Kuninjku also believe that ‘clever’ man (magicians with mystical powers called na-kordang) may take these spirits as wives. The father of Mandarrk, a well known artist who resided in the Central Arnhem area, is said to have had such a spirit as a wife. Unfortunately, it is said, she failed one day to return from being sent to fetch water from the river, and returned to her kin. The ngalkunburriyaymi also have husbands and children of their own kind. Their sites are usually shared with the rainbow serpent ngalyod. Some have ritual importance, for example in some depictions, the yawkyawk spirit holds ceremonial string, just like the lengths of string women hold between both hands today during certain public ceremonies.
There are at least three major ngalkunburriyaymi sacred sites that are well known in the area south and south-west of Maningrida. One site Bolerrhlerr is on the Mann River at a place near Yikarrakkal Outstation where there are rugged rocky banks and clefts beneath stone overhangs in the water. Another very similar site further west in the Kumadderr River district is surrounded by a number of small but very old rock art sites and has become known in English as ‘Dreaming Lady’. A third site is a major yawkyawk dreaming place which is so significant that the traditional Dangkorlo clan custodians have set up an outstation near the site. The identity of this group is very much related to their yawkyawk dreaming for which they have spiritual and practical responsibility.
The mimih spirit exists in a realm that runs parallel to and mirrors many facets of human life, also demonstrating the deep sense of time and place understood by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Such spirits feature importantly in relation to Aboriginal spirituality, cosmology, social and moral tales as well as ritual. As is true with the multiple mediums employed by artists of West Arnhem Land, the development of artistic style and form is in line with an awareness by the artist that the work produced is predominantly made for a broader audience. Whether show in a national or international context these works communicate and exist in a particular space that is cross-cultural and simultaneously so particular to the Arnhem region.
The mimih sits within a complex and important pedagogical and religious body of knowledge which links Kuninjku people to their distinctive escarpment homelands. Young Kuninjku artists, or apprentices, employ the mimih as an important exercise for the practice of the rarrk technique, as it could be achieved on a smaller surface area before, being attempted in larger scale, on pieces of bark. The mimih serves a purpose for those young artists first learning to carve in a social space of sharing and innovating. The initial mimih manifestation was a large form that almost mirrored the anatomy of a human and at this stage the sculptures have been likened to morkuy carvings visible in eastern Arnhem Land. Contemporaneously, mimih are depicted in a refined, slender, even emaciated form with a broad range of facial expressions giving both individual character to, and denoting the potential volatility and humour that mimih spirits are notable for in their interaction with bininj (humans). The sculptures are frequently carved from the thin trunks of softwoods such as kapok (bombax ceiba or cottonwood) kurrajong, beach hibiscus or leichardt and are painted with earth pigments for their colouring and design.
A leading figure engaging the spirit in visual storytelling was Crusoe Kuningbal, a Kuninjku man, who while traveling was familiarised with carving styles from the east of Arnhem at the mission in Milingimbi pre-dating World War II. This showing a notable connection and interaction of different language groups across such space. As well as travel and the development of art forms being informed by cross cultural dialogues within northern Aboriginal language groups. The mimih became a valued inclusion in performance and public ceremony by Kuninjku people like Kuningbal. At times these ceremonies were performed for extended language groups in the local region.
Now a familiar and broadly depicted figure of iconography, it is important to acknowledge the development of this quite recent sculptural tradition. The depiction of this particular spirit being, once used as an addition to the sharing of song cycles and ceremony, has since been elevated to a prominent form and subject of contemporary sculpture. Variation in the creation of mimih acts as an indication of the individualism of each artist and their stylistic markers. Additionally significant to note is that in the space of the past thirty years the mimih has begun being produced by multiple language groups residing in the Maningrida area including the traditional owners of Maningrida, the Ndjébbana, speaking Kunibidji as well as Gurrgoni people who have strong ties to Kuninjku.
________
*Maningrida Arts & Culture acknowledge the work of many academic and non-academic voices when writing on this topic, it is important to note Luke Taylor, who’s broad research has informed this text.
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.
Burlupurr, or dilly bag, is a large woven collecting basket. These large bags are often made from the vine ‘Malasia scandens’, a strong pliable plant which grows along the floor and into the canopy of monsoon vine thickets. The bags are used to collect any kind of large numbers of heavy foods such as fish caught in conical fish traps or large collections of yams.
They can also be made from Pandanus spiralis, a plant which grows in many areas of Arnhem Land. These dilly bags are a tightly woven collecting basket, very finely made. These dilly bags are often used to collect sugarbag, the native honey
As well as being of practical use, dilly bags are also of religious significance to Arnhem Land people. Dilly bags are said to be totemic objects and associated with particular sites in the landscape.