Geraldton: uniting us through story
Peter Salmon has been a stockman for his entire adult life. Now well into his 80s, he has earned the respect of graziers far and wide. Last week Peter took a break from mustering to drive 1200km south to Geraldton. Here, he is known for something rather different: he is the last speaker of Warriyangga.
Down in Geraldton, I looked on as Peter put in long hours with linguists Jacqui Cook and Rosie Sitorus to record the language. It's intense work for everyone: calling to mind expressions that haven't been heard in a generation, teasing out their meaning, deciding how to write them. In the breaks, we had a lighter task: to rehearse Peter's story for the Geraldton Language Party. We felt it lighter, that was, until we heard the translation:
Peter and Rosie rehearse actions for his story
So they went out, Mum and this old girl, they were looking for this nyirlbu [witchetty grub] after the rain. I was a nyirlbu living in a gum tree root. Mum's digging stick hit that root and bust it open. Mum ate that grub and she vomited. The old girl said: "you're going to have a baby, and when he's born, you have a look, there'll be a mark on his arm". So I was born, I was a half-caste kid, white man's kid. Mum wanted to kill me. She threw a blanket over me to smother me. Then this old girl got the blanket off me, and said to mum: "Let him grow up, then he'll be my man". She was about 50.
Some of Peter's extended family inspect the birthmark mentioned in the story
Each day we continued our preparations, making decisions about the running order, compiling the program, planning sound and lighting, rehearsing, and chasing up storytellers. Then, a day before the show tragedy struck the community. For a while, we thought we might have to cancel the show. In the end we were able to go ahead, as Rosie our emcee explained in her opening, reproduced below.
On the day itself, the weather turned cold. The beautiful rotunda offered no protection from the wind. All we had was the adjacent meeting room and a few short hours to convert it into a performance venue.
Rotunda (original venue)
Meeting room (new venue)
Cloth backdrop
And so as night fell, community members gathered. No one knew quite what to expect. But, in the words of one guest, "The moment I entered the space, there was such warmth, it felt so nurturing."
Over the next 90 minutes, we heard stories, songs, translations... and laughter. In the interval, people shared their own stories. Children came up to one storyteller to explain their first guesses about the meaning of her story... she had told it so dramatically they thought she must have been in big trouble!
Once all the stories had been shared, all of the storytellers returned to the stage. The emcee and the audience asked questions, and the storytellers explained how they are keeping their languages strong, and how much this means to them and their families.
Through my week in Geraldton I kept coming back to Peter and his life. Day after day, he would explain Warriyangga culture one minute, and western pastoralist culture the next. I came to understand that his fellow pastoralists -- non-indigenous men and women -- could not relate to Peter's indigenous side, and it sometimes seemed that they wanted to pretend it didn't exist. Yet on the evening of our show, some pastoralists were present and they experienced Peter sharing his stories in language. As I looked on, I wondered what they made of it all: the comfortable setting, Peter's familiar face, and a story in language and explained in English. Here there was no threat, and they could just sit, listen, and enjoy.
–Steven Bird
Rosie's Introduction
Welcome to this language party. Although I don't know whether it is really appropriate to call this a party. It's a celebration of these languages that often go unspoken. Tonight is about Aboriginal and immigrant languages – we don't want to call them minority languages in this room because it doesn't feel like a minority here at Bundiyarra – but about these languages, speaking them again, and about the people who speak them telling their stories, in those languages.
We're here to celebrate the strengths, the connections, the persistence, and the resilience of the people who carry these languages now, and into the future.
Our lives are lived between understanding, misunderstanding, and not understanding. My mother, a dutch woman, always told me that to live peacefully was to be able to enjoy to live with your understanding, to be able to live with misunderstanding, and to live through not-understanding.
On Tuesday a young woman was shot and killed in this town. I don't want to say that she died or she passed away, because it wasn't peaceful. She was killed not far from this place, Bundiyarra, which is called "bundiyarra" for being a good place. And this is not something that I, and probably most of you, can understand. This has brought pain and suffering to this community that is too often bowed by pain and suffering.
And there are people who have used this tragedy, often hiding behind their keyboards, to make bigoted, horrible, insensitive remarks, about people that live alongside them, in the houses next door and down the street from them. Police have reacted to heightened emotion by a situation that was brought about by one of their own. And it seems that these groups cannot take a community's grief as just grief. They are unable to live through their misunderstanding. Which brings us here tonight, to this place, to this beautifully laid out, beautifully lit place. We thought long and hard about cancelling or postponing this evening. We talked at length with our storytellers, with our community, with our leaders, and we sought their guidance. We would never disrespect a family, or a community, in grief. And our community told us that it was okay for this to go ahead.
This is not a party any more. This is an acknowledgement, and a resilient persistence through celebration, of languages that can carry hope forward. So tonight's event becomes even more about that last place where we live: understanding.
You'll hear stories tonight that on the first listen I guarantee you won't understand. I listened to them all and the first time through I laughed in the wrong places and looked sad in the wrong places. The first time through you won't understand and that's alright. I encourage you to put aside worrying about hearing unfamiliar sounds that you can't understand, and instead, follow with your eyes and with an open heart for the bits that you will understand. And I promise you, you will understand.
It's in this spirit of understanding that our storytellers, all of us tonight, dedicate our voices and our stories to the memory of that young woman. We lend our voice to her, so that she may rest peacefully.
The Details
Where: Bundiyarra - Irra Wangga Language Centre
When: 19 September, 2019
Format: Freestanding event
Storytellers: Rosie Sitorus, Toba Batak (Indonesia); Peter Salmon, Warriyangga (Australia); Jacqui Cook, Gàidhlig (Scotland); Godfrey Simpson, Wajarri (Australia); Maringi Querino, Māori (New Zealand)Production: Rosie Sitorus, Jacqui Cook, Steven Bird
Sponsorship: Aesop Foundation, CDU Foundation
Photography: Steven Bird
Program: pdf
More on Geraldton's Language Party
https://www.facebook.com/abcmidwestandwheatbelt/videos/2207044876259475/
https://www.everythinggeraldton.com.au/geraldton-calendar/2019/9/19/language-party-multilingual-storytelling-night
https://www.facebook.com/events/bundiyarra-irra-wangga-language-centre/language-party-storytelling-night/406175240103198/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-18/police-incident-in-geraldton-woman-shot/11522252