Literature in our Collection
(M-Z)

National Museum of Australia (Hg.): Yiwarra Kuju: the Canning Stock Route, Canberra 2010, ISBN 9781876944780

Table of Contents        ¦         Cover Text        ¦         Book Review

Table of Contents

From the communities -vii-

From the Museum -vii-

From FORM -ix-

Michael Pickering: Introduction: ‘We do things differently here’ -x-

Map showing art centres on and around the Canning Stock Route -xv-

Part 1: The essays -1-

Carly Davenport: The story behind the Canning Stock Route Project -3-

Monique La Fontaine: Listening to Country: The inseparable links between family and Dreaming on the ‘Canning Stock Road’ -13-

John Carty: Drawing a line in the sand: The Canning Stock Route and contemporary art -23-

Of mining and meat: The story of the Canning Stock Route -33-

Part 2: The collection -39-

Ngurra -41-

Jukurrpa -49-

Minyipuru Jukurrpa -53-

Kumpupirntily -61-

Conflict -73-

Well 33 to Well 35 -81-

Ngurru kuju walyja -89-

Rover’s legacy -97-

The last of the Cannings -107-

Jila Country -113-

The jila men -129-

Paruku and Tjurabalan -141-

Droving time -149-

Natawalu -155-

The moving desert -171-

Other roads -117-

Creating culture -181-

Majarrka juju -193-

The art of Country -197-

Part 3: The artists -199-

Part 4: Contributors -217-

Project team -218-

Aboriginal art and cultural enterprises -221-

Acknowledgements -222-

One family -228-

Index of artists to works -230-

Notes -231-

Image credits -231-

Cover Text

The Aboriginal people of Australia’s Western Desert lived in their homelands for thousands of years. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the expansion of the Western Australian mining and pastoral industries led to the surveying of a track along which cattle could be driven from Kimberley stations to markets in the south. This track became known as the ‘Canning Stock Route’. In July and August 2007 nearly 70 artists travelled up the stock route on a six-week return to Country. Over 100 canvases were produced on that expedition, and more stories and artworks have since been added to the collection, which was acquired by the National Museum of Australia in 2009. Yiwarra Kuju tells for the first time the story of the stock route’s impact, and the importance of the Country around it, in Aboriginal voices and interpreted through Aboriginal eyes. It is a story of contact, conflict and survival, of exodus and return. Above all, it is a story of family, culture and Country.

Book Review

"Yiwarra Kuju" is an exhibition catalogue about an extremely complex and important art project which resulted - over five years of consultation, bush trips, documentary filming, translating, archiving - in the creation of over 180 paintings by more than 80 artists from more than 15 language groups along and around what white men call the Canning Stock Route: 1850 km of track from Wiluna to Billiluna in Western Australia. One of the many art expeditions in the project followed indeed the whole length of the track, in July-August 2007. The project became a kind of family reunion and family history, combined with tutorials in Indigenous lore for both young grandchildren and white project members "from the big city". The organisors were very careful to follow instructions by the senior artists in ensuring that only "proper" lore was referenced in the documentaries and descriptions which are archived with the final selection of 127 art works, in the National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Written by many hands, the approximately 30 pages of text introductions and snippets of history, often with quotations from artists, is extremely lively but somewhat repetitive and gushing with a sense of "We were there!" Instead of dry recitation of third-hand recounts, of doubtful accuracy, personal and emotional quotations jump out from every page. The artists involved where highly motivated to tell their stories of the Canning Stock Route, stories conspicuously absent from every white history. They told how it impacted their lives, the disruption which scattered families across thousands of kilometres, but also of good times as drovers and the chance - finally - to come back home to Country. The official history of the government sponsorship of the creation of the many wells along the Route is briefly stated on page 33, along with the information that Canning was absolved by a court of inquiry of all accusations of mistreatment, kidnapping and torturing of Indigenous people. No Indigenous witnesses were heard. On page 155, eye-witness stories by artists explained how as a boy Helicopter Tjungurrayi (an artist with many works shown in the collection) was flown out by helicopter, with his mother, from Natawalu (Well 40) to Balgo for medical care - and how his family walked the many weary miles up to Balgo to find them, when no word was brought back of their fate. The following pages are filled with artworks related to the area. On page 129, some sense of the devastation and loss caused by the Canning Stock Route can be felt in the telling of how explosives used at Kulyayi (Well 42) were considered by Indigenous people to have destroyed (killed) the ancestral being (Kulyayi) which had made the "living water" there. Lloyd Kwilla explained, "Well, people felt empty when he (Kulyayi) was gone. They felt something not there anymore, they can't come back. They moved away, animals moved away. People, animals, they're connected. Something valuable was lost, you can't replace it." The book closes with photo portraits of all the artists, in format 3cm x 5 cm, with 5-line biographies: e.g. of Elisabeth Nyumi, Rover Thomas, Helicopter Tjungurrayi, Christine Yukenbarri. Some of the family relationships between artists, many living at widely separated communities, are also recorded. The project is described in more detail in: La Fontaine, Monique und Carty, John (ed.): Ngurra Kuju Walyja - One Country, One People. Stories from the Canning Stock Route, Macmillan, South Yarra 2011, ISBN 9781921394676.