Kaurna Cultural Recovery
Kaurna Elder's Story of Lost and Reclaimed Indigenous Identity
Excerpts from a speech by Georgina Williams Yambo Kartanya, Ngangkiburka Kaurnayerta (Senior Woman, Kaurna Country), about recovering stolen identities.
My name is Georgina Williams Yambo Kartanya. Ngankiburka. I was born in a country hospital in the Narrunga country of my Grandfather Joe Edwards, a senior man and a wise Elder of the Narrunga tribal clans of what is today called the Yorke Peninsula in the state of South Australia. That is the home of the once mighty fighting warriors of the Narrunga past who are now in the modern world, and are some of the best footballers of today.
In the country of my Kaurna Grand Mothers I represent a gathering force for a spiritual renewal of the Peace Law of Tjirbruki (Tjilbruke) which lies in the spirit of the land at Warriparinga and other places along the Ancient Journey of the Dreaming Song of our Ancestor Being Tjirbruki and the surviving family clans people of the Kaurna lands who are the traditional owners of the land you walk upon and sit upon in the city of Adelaide — Tarndanyangga — and beyond.
I am sixty-two years of age and what is now generally known as a Kaurna Elder, although I do not use those English words to describe myself. I prefer instead the descriptive term — Ngangkiburka — Senior Kaurna Woman.
It was at CASM (Centre for Aboriginal Study of Music) that I experienced the beginning of my coming home. Through my relationship, over a period of two years, with the Pitjantjatjara people, their language and the songs of their land, the spirituality of my tribalism was re-awakened within myself and to my country here on the Adelaide Plains.
My life’s journey has been to recover myself as a Kaurna person, together with the Kaurna people, to the spirit of place, our place, the Adelaide Plains. My personal journey of recovery has involved me in attempting to adjust mentally to being a white Australian, which I was unable to do. I then began to adapt rather than adopt western things that I could use as an Aboriginal person living in the new environment of ‘urban life’.
My life has been a continuous struggle to maintain and keep alive the profile of our remnant tribespeople of the Kaurna first nation of the Adelaide Plains. This has been reflected in the cultural and spiritual renewal practices for our ancient ancestor beings of the land and for sustainable environment in the way in which we once lived. My most recent of recovery work over the past decade has been the development of the concepts and the vision of ‘coming home’ to the spirit of the land of the Kaurna peoples; renewing my clan and other Kaurna peoples’ clans to our spirit of place, beginning with the recovery of the law/lore story, Tjirbruki (Tjilbruke), and his ancestral Dreaming, Munaintya, of law and law in the land.
The beginning of the work today on retaining all of the Dreaming sites of Tjirbruki has become focused for the present mainly on Warriparinga — windy place by the river. This site of significance at Warriparinga along the journey of Tjirbruki (Tjilbruke) provides the opportunity for cultural survival, through spiritual renewal, for the Kaurna people, and other Aboriginal peoples across Australia. My family clan as custodial keepers and caretaker initiators for sustainable revival of our traditional culture, calls on all of the Kaurna peoples, through the restating of tribal structures, to become involved in developing the caretaker and custodial roles with the spirit of the land, our dream story in the land for my family clan and for the remaining tribespeoples.
The Kaurna Living Cultural Centre came about because Tjirbruki (Tjilbruke) called us home. The Aboriginal cultures of our clans and tribal groups are still undergoing a recovery process, after so many years of dispossession and alienation from our Dreaming which is in the land and in us, the traditional owners of this land.
For me this means that we have to know, once again the Dreaming laws of the land. Our hunter-gatherer way of life was able to sustain our lives for thousands of years uninterrupted, allowing us to develop the longest continuous surviving culture in the world. What little there is known of the complexities and order of our hunter-gatherer cultures has been trivialised and maligned, and we have been marginalised because of it. Our language of life has been totally ignored, its complexities little known to this day.
