Dhäŋgal’s video interview after Robynne Quiggin’s Teaching from Country workshop, CDU, 18 June 2009. Interviewed by Trevor at Yirrininba’s house.
Trevor: So the first question was what you thought, anything that, any new ideas or concepts that Robynne presented was new, and what you thought about her talk?
Dhäŋgal: The talk with Robynne? Yeah, that was very interesting she delivered it in a way that we understood about the copyright systems especially how we didn’t even know it the first place, but the way she presented that, was good and we understood the whole sort of, understood the system properly than we had before. 1:06
Trevor: Ga one of things that came up with that the system of copyright that Robynne was explaining is sort of a Western law, and then we also talked about how Yolŋu law treated copyright different. Do you want to talk a little bit about the differences between what you understood the western copyright rom? 1:30
D: Yuw, the way I understood it, is that by comparing it with our rights of everything within our culture, and the western society? Of how each sections are different, I mean, in different areas, sections. But it’s, in the Yolŋu way, it is all sort of connected, in between the clan groups. It doesn’t really involve the actual, one clan but involves different others, like in the situation where we say is ‘yothu-yindi’.
‘Yothu’ means the child, ‘yindi’ means the mother, it’s actually talking about the clans. What’s your mother clan, you act as the custodian of that group of people. It’s not an individual, it’s a group, so the ‘child’ has right to take care of his ‘mothers’.
And then again there’s another family structure which we come under, is the ‘märi-gutharra’ relationship. ‘Märi’ is the grandmother, ‘gutharra’ is the grandchild and that goes within each groups connected.
Like we can look after our grandmother clans’ things, like the dance, the song, the painting, the stories, and so forth with our mother’s clan nation. And who ever is my grandmother they have every right to that, what you would call the custodianship. 4:30
There have every right to, they have a last say, especially our grandmothers because that’s when they take care of us when we are gone. They are the first for all the ceremonies, then my clan would go, come after them, but the grandmother lives on, as for the mother it can come in when ever is asked by the grandmother clan nation. 5:09
Clarification added by Yiŋiya and Waŋgurru during the transcription: When you die your body becomes sacred and the people who take care of the funeral ceremony are your grandmothers’ mob (your mother’s mothers’s clan)
Clarification added by Yiŋiya and Waŋgurru during the transcription: Your grandmother’s (mother’s mothers’) clan has responsibility over after you’ve died; if there is a boy’s initiation ceremony they have all responsibility
T: Yow
D: Yow
T: So, individual people don’t have copyright things.
D: Individual people doesn’t have copyright, if, it’s just a story we can be directed to tell at such a level and what is underneath the story that story that has to be consulted with the leaders.
Clarification added by Yiŋiya and Waŋgurru during the transcription: We, as individuals can only talk and tell stories about public ceremonies, but any sacred and serious issues must always be consulted through the senior elders in the clan.
T: Yeah
D: Yeah
T: If a judge was to ask you, she’s an expert in copy right law if, if the judge want to ask you from your perspective as a yolngu woman. How could you explain copyright for example over a painting that you might do. How would you explain how, or over a story that you told or have a dance that you know how, how would you explain that to the judge, how, how copyright works? 6:15
D: There are many different stages of every songs, painting and dance. So I would only be telling of the first level of everything like the painting the song and the dance. I wouldn’t talk about the second or the third level.
Clarification added by Yiŋiya and Waŋgurru during the transcription: There are public and confidential stories, there women and unauthorized persons may only talk about stories that are in the first level, or public stories, second, or third deeper meanings and sacred stories are left to the senior elderly men to talk about and away from public places.
T: Yeah.
D: The paintings, I’II start with the painting first, the painting tells a story it speaks of the land, it speaks of the creation first, then the land, and what is in the land that was created. And when we talk about the land what the person does is just put it on a bark or a canvas, but there’s deeper meaning behind it, and what is shown to the public talks about the land. 7:50
T: Yeah
D: And land and the person are one, the land isn’t divided into different sections, when we talk about the land, we refer ourselves as the land and we are part of the land. 8:11
T: Yeah some of the things that we that we started talking around which, were a bit confusing was that copy right law doesn’t cover thing like language or a story that’s been told or a dance, is that a concern to make sure that the western law understand that?
D: It is concern that western law should understand even though people would see, is specially in videos or DVD’s nowdays or on television, people dancing, but what they don’t know is, what group is dancing on the DVD? And which clan do they belong to, the clan nation they belong to, that they don’t know they just tell us that it is Yolŋu, and that’s from the North East Arnhem and that’s it. No, there is, this identity in every clan nation, the every clan nation. That every clan nation has particular areas, to cover through the dancing, about the land, the sea, the sky, even the clouds or the birds.
T: So for Yolŋu copy right or custodianship in the land and
D: … everything! It’s just that, what we see ourselves as we’re the land, and the land is us. 9:50
T: I wonder what if we could talk a little about, how that makes, all the discussion that went today, how that makes your feel about the all of the recordings and the teaching sessions that we done with teaching from country project, and the copy rightthat is inside those videos that you took and the stories you told, and how it does looked after by groups like CDU. 10:23
D: yeah we grateful for the ways that CDU’s documenting all these thing what we’ve talked about, during our Teaching from Country, and it’s a good way of documenting these things. Because we’ve had it, within us, and so some of those special things can be put away for the use of future generations if they want to go into it, and if we have the chance of getting the information ourselves and if we want to do future documentation with our own clan nations. So it’ll be accessible for the future generations to go into it. And get those informations. 11:29
T: Um I was thinking about, if you feel clear and confidant that your intellectual properties being looked after by this project.
D: I feel manymak (good), yuw about those things as long as kids will. We know it’s going to be safe and that nothing going to get it. If is use proper way of making sure if it in a safe place and we as the lecturers know, know what the how to get in to it and be able to get that information for later use. 12:30
T: And now anything else you can think of about copyright?
D: Liŋgun (that’s finished). All we want to know. All we want is for the western society to know the copyright is within the Yolngu rom.
Clarification added by Yiŋiya and Waŋgurru during the transcription: The copyrights have always existed through creation ever since time began
T: Yeah.
D: Yuw.
T: Thank you.
Transcribed with clarifications by Waŋgurru and Yiŋiya, edited by Michael .