Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions
Clare Wright
Text Publishing, $45
This book opens with the moment Galarrwuy Yunupingu gifted Clare Wright, and in turn, the world, with the book’s title – the Yolgnu name for the bark petitions sent to the Australian parliament in 1963. Naku for the bark of the gadayka tree, used for bark painting. Dharuk for word or message. In both Yolgnu and English, the words of the petition are encircled by intricate designs and images of people, implements, a canoe, terrestrial and sea animals and plants. Each ochred brushstroke signifies ancestral histories of deep connection to Country.
My memory jumped back to the 1980s, driving south of Darwin with a much younger Galarrwuy, who announced that, as he was the chairman of the Northern Land Council (NLC), he didn’t need anyone’s permission to travel through other people’s Country. Earlier, at the NLC headquarters, he had introduced himself by narrating the story of a great ancestral rock under the sea which moved yet stayed strong, in place.
In the 1980s, Northern Territory land rights were new, and the first hearings were being held in Darwin. With the coming of constitutional and other changes regarding the status of Indigenous people, power had shifted away from government powerbrokers such as the long-time director of welfare, Harry Giese, who presided over Indigenous people as wards rather than fellow citizens. The old guard was proud of listing the entire Indigenous population of the NT in what was dubbed the “stud book”. And they were prone to dismiss emerging Indigenous leaders as “mission boys” – as if having a decent education made them inauthentic.
Author Clare Wright, a history powerhouse, works in a range of media. Following The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and You Daughters of Freedom, this is the third book of Wright’s Democracy Trilogy, in which significant material objects provide entrees into important histories. The bark petitions certainly provide an intriguing historical document. But could their story, as the title promises, really change the course of Australian democracy? Will the book live up to the hype?
One of the Yirrkala bark petitions
At 618 pages, Naku Dharuk provides a blow-by-blow account of how the people of the Yirrkala mission community stood up for their rights, insisting on being consulted about mining on their land and potential disturbance to their sacred sites. While Sydney-based Methodist church leader Cecil Gribble supported the government men and their push towards “northern development”, the Yirrkala-based missionaries witnessed the local people’s anxiety. Aware of their status as outsiders in someone else’s world, local missionaries soon learnt respect for Yolgnu belonging.
In an invitation for them to share these belief systems, the superintendent of the mission, Reverend Edgar Wells, had invited elders to prepare bark paintings for their local chapel. A crucial backstory, this became an opportunity for Yolgnu clans to reach out across cultural and religious worlds, articulating their deep sovereignty through enduring visual practices. The missionary teachers were innovative in other ways too, encouraging school students to learn about citizenship, the Australian political system, voting procedures, and even to hold mock elections.
Along with these missionaries and the Yolgnu leaders, one of the standout figures in the story is Labor politician Kim Beazley snr. A member of the international Moral Rearmament movement, Beazley was intent on working with international networks of Christians committed to creating a better world. After witnessing the stunning barks hanging up around the altarpiece of the Yirrkala church, he experienced some kind of catharsis, perhaps appreciating that this was an already deeply storied land, not truly colonised or conquered. An astute political operator, Beazley knew how to successfully steer the 1963 petition so that the government of the day would not continue to ridicule, reject or ignore it. His commitment did not end there; in 1971 he took Wulanybuma Wunungumurra and Galarrwuy to a Moral Rearmament meeting in Switzerland.
