Yanagai! Yanagai! Read online




  ANDREA JAMES is a Yorta Yorta/Kurnai woman and graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts. She cut her teeth as the Artistic Director of Melbourne Workers’ Theatre from 2001 to 2008 and is best known for her work writing and directing Yanagai! Yanagai! – a play about her father’s people, the Yorta Yorta, and their struggle for land rights justice. The play premiered at Playbox in 2004 and was remounted in 2006 before enjoying an international tour to Wales and England. Relocating to Sydney, Andrea was the Aboriginal Arts Development Officer at Blacktown Arts Centre 2010-2012 and Aboriginal Producer at Carriageworks from 2012-2016 before embarking upon a freelance theatremaking and producing career. In 2012 she directed Bully Beef Stew, a play about Aboriginal manhood, at PACT Theatre, and co-wrote Coranderrk: We Will Show the Country with Giordano Nanni, which was produced by ILBIJERRI Theatre Company and the Minutes of Evidence Project at La Mama Courthouse Theatre and a reworked version staged at Belvoir in 2013. She was a recipient of the British Council’s competitive Accelerate Program for Aboriginal Art Leaders in 2013 and was awarded the Arts NSW Aboriginal Arts Fellowship to write a one-woman play about Aboriginal tennis player, Evonne Goolagong. Andrea performed in her co-written play Bright World with Elise Hearst by Arthur Productions at Theatreworks in April 2015. She directed Winyanboga Yurringa (inspired by Hyllus Maris and Sonia Borg’s Women of the Sun) which premiered at Carriageworks, Redfern, before touring to the Geelong Performing Arts Centre in August 2016.

  INTRODUCTION

  Writing the introduction to this publication is an opportune time to reflect on the story that shaped the making of Yanagai! Yanagai! as a major Indigenous theatre production in 2003. The story of Yanagai! Yanagai! comes from a long history of land struggle that culminated in the Yorta Yorta Native Title Claim (1994–2002). This claim was an attempt to seek justice through the new land law that was passed after the historic Mabo decision in 1992. It is an epic drama that was acted out on Yorta Yorta soil through a decade of struggle with the Anglo legal system and one that had a major impact on the heart and soul of the Yorta Yorta Nation. Like our ancestors, whose spirits are now at peace in the ancestral lands, we carried the flag gallantly in the hope that justice would be delivered. This is the foundational point from which the narrative of Yanagai! Yanagai! rises and can be told.

  As a claimant in the gruelling and divisive native title process, I am aware that this story remains firmly embedded in the memory bank of our people. The narrative builds on other stories of the land struggle that began at the outset of the European invasion and continues today. The oral testimony drawn from the Yorta Yorta case complements the rich repository of oral source materials that position the Yorta Yorta Nation as one of the many resilient and vibrant Indigenous communities in Australia. ‘Always was and always will be Yorta Yorta land’ is the voice of the Yorta Yorta struggle. Like the rivers that embody Yorta Yorta identity we will continue to assert rights that have been handed down since the land was created and endowed with the laws that flow to our people as inherent and sacred rights.

  It is against this backdrop that the story of the Yorta Yorta word, ‘yanagai yanagai’, emerges from the ancestral lands. Similar words had already been asserted by traditional owners of Botany Bay in 1788. ‘Warra warra’ is the first word spoken to Captain Phillip and his crew, from where the path of invasion and destruction followed the rivers to Yorta Yorta country in the 1830s.

  ‘Yanagai yanagai’ was spoken loud and clear to the first intruders who entered Yorta Yorta traditional lands and waters. ‘Yanagai yanagai’ and ‘warra warra’’s literal translation simply means ‘Go away’, or at least, ‘Go away until you observe the appropriate laws of entry and seek permission from the traditional owners who can then decide whether you should be given entry’. It is a word that is steeped in tradition and custom.

  Whether it be customary law or the imported Anglo law, the rule of law as it stands must apply equally for trespassing on someone else’s land. Yanagai yanagai is an assertion of sovereign rights and customary laws that regulated the ownership and control of land and access to resources. It is the original and oldest law of the land that demanded nothing less than full respect and recognition by the imported law.

  Yanagai yanagai was asserted when the first white land-seeker, Edmund Curr, entered Yorta Yorta land and waters in the 1840s. Curr wanted land and resources to depasture stock on the rich alluvial plains that had been nurtured along the Dungala and Kiela River Flats (Murray and Goulburn Rivers). Nothing could be more invasive and destructive for the traditional owners than to witness such an alien culture and way of life forcing itself on the delicate balance that has been nurtured for over 60,000 years. Curr gained access to Yorta Yorta lands and waters through the generosity of a young Yorta Yorta tribesman who canoed him down the river to check out the potential of the river frontage and forest lands for pastoral settlement. It was on this journey down the river that he encountered a local clan group collecting fish from one of their fish trap systems, constructed across the mouth of the flood channels returning water from the forest.

  Curr’s journey into Yorta Yorta territory becomes one of the key scenes depicted in the play Yanagai! Yanagai! The play cleverly weaves together the narrative to expose the prime motives of Curr’s entry into Yorta Yorta country and the conflict that takes place at one of the traditional fishing sites. Here Curr is confronted by the full force of yanagai yanagai. A young woman comes forward from the clan group and she plays a courageous role in keeping peace and calming the hostility between her elder and the invasive Curr. Her name is Underyarning and she is cast in the play to act out the power relations that were happening on-country and her courage in confronting the gun that Curr aimed at the tribal elder. Underyarning’s courage and conciliatory nature made a big impression on Curr who noted that ‘She was a good representative of her race in that particular’. Curr recorded this encounter in his Recollections of Squatting in 1883 and his observations and writings became the definitive evidence used by Justice Olney for determining native title in the Yorta Yorta case. This strange anomaly will be revisited shortly.

  Encounters like these travelled quickly and beyond the bounds of old Dungala. Conflict and violence followed across the country with equal aggression as the frontier pushed into Indigenous land for the next century or more. Driven by the greed for land that the new penal colony offered, and the misguided belief that the country was unoccupied, or terra nullius, yanagai yanagai repeated itself across the linguistic diversity of the tribal lands. While it was an assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and ownership rights, the British Crown imposed its own sovereignty and assumed ownership of the land under the legal fiction of terra nullius. At the stroke of a pen Indigenous ownership of country, and 60,000 years of prior occupation and care for country, was struck down but not out. Terra nullius remained a barrier to achieving land justice for the next two centuries until finally removed by the 1992 Mabo decision. The playing field seemed set for an era of land justice to be delivered, only to find in the Yorta Yorta case that the legal fiction of terra nullius was replaced by the ‘tide of history’ euphemism. The tide had turned in our favour as we thought only to find that it was turned against us.

  The ‘tide of history’ was used by the judge as a euphemism to cover over the underlying causative effects of colonisation and dispossession and to argue that it had washed away our connections with the land. The ‘tide’ concept was not a legal principle but an idea raised in Mabo that Justice Olney used in its absolute translation to deny land justice in the Yorta Yorta case. It was a cover-up job of massive proportions—still to be fully rectified.

  The other impediment to Yorta Yorta justice was the way the materials of a white man were used to the exclusion of the
substantive evidence presented by Yorta Yorta people. While Edmund Curr was one of the first intruders into Yorta Yorta country, his observations and published materials were given precedence over and above the majority of oral and documentary evidence presented by the Yorta Yorta in their case. The extent to which Curr was used as the definitive source of evidence in determining native title, and the way the ‘tide of history’ was construed to deny Yorta Yorta justice, still attracts wide criticism within the bounds of public, academic, and legal institutions throughout the world. In my own teachings of the Yorta Yorta case to thousands of students I have not found one who has been able to find sufficient grounds on which the take a pro-Olney view. This is supported by the general legal analysis of the case.

  It was in this context that yanagai yanagai came back to revisit us as a metaphor for land injustice and survival.

  After the failure of the Anglo legal system to deliver land justice, we needed to seek pathways that would allow us to tell our story to the Australian public and to the world in our own unique way. The power of the voice, spear of the pen, and collective organisation were political strategies nurtured by our leaders and carried forward from the Scholars Hut at the Old Maloga Mission (1974–1888) and Cummeragunja (1889–2016) to the cities and towns. They were the political strategies that fired the passion for justice and the struggle for land justice and racial equality. Cummera people were renowned for their fighting spirit and resilience, and their ability to bounce back from setbacks was all too familiar. The power of the voice and spear of the pen were the tools of empowerment that our people used to advance their cause. They are the foundations on which yanagai yanagai chose to tell our story through the medium of live theatre, music, art, education and community action.

  During the course of the native title claim many of the younger generation sat and watched tentatively as the case was being heard. Some sat in the public hearings listening to the multitude of non-Indigenous landowners stepping up to the microphone asking questions about what was going to happen to their land, deaf to Yorta Yorta voices. (Private land could not be claimed, end of story.)

  The mediation process was a travesty. It lacked direction and control of the way the media had misrepresented and often sensationalised the process. The cavalcade of the industry that emerged from the native title process was like a travelling circus in itself. So many chose to ride on the bandwagon of native title while the claimants sat patiently waiting in hope. Justice was certainly being seen to be done, but whether it could be delivered to the Yorta Yorta was the reality in the waiting.

  Following the dismal outcome of the Yorta Yorta claim, and the way the law and the politics of the day combined with the media to pervert the course of justice, it was a time to reflect on our direction forward.

  A talented and energetic Yorta Yorta playwright, Andrea James, witnessed these events as they unfolded, including the Olney judgment in 1998, which left us all dumbfounded when it took just nineteen seconds to deliver. Andrea was ready to take action and started the ball rolling. She wrote the script for Yanagai! Yanagai! and recruited a cast of talented Yorta Yorta and Indigenous artists. The task of writing and creating a play to depict the enormity of the story was a big call, but not beyond the passion for justice within and the combined talents and capability of the cast. The voice of yanagai yanagai, the denial of Yorta Yorta justice, and the desire to expose the way the native title process was conducted were the driving forces for the play. Live theatre was the way forward in telling our story to the world. Thus Yanagai Yanagai rose to the occasion.

  The cast included some talented people of the calibre of Tony Briggs, who also produced the highly acclaimed play and film The Sapphires; Lou Bennett of the famous Tiddas and Sweet Cheeks bands; Bryan Andy, a very talented and versatile young man from Yorta Yorta country; Lisa Maza, daughter of one of the founders of Indigenous theatre in Australia, the late Bob Maza; and David Adamson of the Melbourne Workers Theatre, who had the unenviable task of playing the role of one of the intruders that copped the full brunt of yanagai yanagai, Edmund Curr. The cast and producer of Yanagai! Yanagai! are fine examples of the quality of talent that bonded together for the play’s performance in Australia and overseas.

  As we said at the end of the long and gruelling native title process, ‘No tide of history will ever wash away what we assert is something that always was and always will be Yorta Yorta lands’—‘We are here and we’re here to stay’ is the narrative that resonates through the power of yanagai yanagai.

  The power of theatre as a medium for empowering the Indigenous voice is best indicated by the excellent and positive reviews the play continues to receive as ‘Immersive and deeply affecting theatre—proof that, long after the song of justice falters, the strong voice of art carries on’.

  As a tribute to the Yorta Yorta struggle for land justice it is important to conclude by saying yes, we did bounce back as our great leaders of the past would have expected. The Yorta Yorta Nation Corporation was successful in campaigning for land justice through the political process. In 2010 they achieved the declaration of the Barmah-Millewa National Parks and Joint Management Agreements for the future management of their ancestral lands. Their traditional ownership of the National Park is recognised and they are now in the process of negotiating for a hand-back lease-back of the land. A long struggle, but one that has brought positive outcomes for the Yorta Yorta Nation and the means by which greater self-determination can be achieved in the future.

  Congratulations to all those who contributed to the making and performance of Yanagai! Yanagai! and to Andrea James and cast for all of the hard work that culminated in this publication. It was a great pleasure to be involved and to see the play achieve wide support and acclamation in Australia, New York and the UK, which certainly put our story and the Yorta Yorta Nation firmly on the world map.

  Do enjoy, and thanks to the publishers for the opportunity to write the introduction which took me back to the scene of yanagai yanagai and bought me forward to the power of the Yorta Yorta and Indigenous voice in live theatre today.

  Gulpa gaka anganya—gaka yawal ngulla yenbena Yorta Yorta woka. (‘Welcome, friend—come walk with us the people on Yorta Yorta country.’)

  Wayne Atkinson

  March 2016

  Dr Wayne Atkinson is a Yorta Yorta elder and senior fellow at the University of Melbourne teaching Indigenous Studies. He has worked extensively in Indigenous affairs and was a principle claimant in the Yorta Yorta Native Title Claim (1994–2002).

  Yanagai! Yanagai! was first produced by Playbox Theatre, in collaboration with Melbourne Workers Theatre, at The CUB Malthouse, Melbourne, on 10 September 2003, with the following cast:

  CURR / QC David Adamson

  LYALL / DINGO 1 / UNCLE COLIN /

  LITTLE ALBERT / CHORUS Bryan Andy

  LITTLE MAY / DINGO 2 / LOLA /

  LESLEY / CHORUS Lou Bennett

  UNCLE ALBERT / CHORUS Tony Briggs

  MUNARRA / CHORUS Lisa Maza

  Director, Andrea James

  Designer, Adrienne Chisholm

  Lighting Designer, Phil Lethlean

  Composers, Lou Bennett and The Crazy Baldheads

  (Tim Prince and Peter Lawler)

  Sound Design, David Franzke

  Audio/Visual, Michael Schoell

  In dedication to the lives of

  Lynn Shadrach James (13.4.46–13.11.00)

  Sofia (Zoshka) James (1.5.48–13.12.02)

  and the new James clan—Nathan, Kobe and Dayna

  CHARACTERS

  MUNARRA, a Yorta Yorta superhero thrown from The Dreaming to save her land; she wields a large digging stick.

  DINGOES, two dingoes (ONE and TWO), Munarra’s faithful companions; they are clumsy and hopeless, but have a good nose.

  UNCLE, a 70-plus Yorta Yorta elder; he has come back to his river to die.

  LYALL, a young Yorta Yorta man entrusted with the land justice dreams of an entire nation.

&
nbsp; CURR, the ghost of Sir Edward Curr, a stubborn, sickly presence with a pale face.

  TOMMY, a young traditional man, Curr’s guide.

  OLD MAN, an historical character, traditional, appearing in the re-enactment of Curr’s arrival.

  JUDGE, a courtroom character.

  QC, a courtroom character.

  HAROLD, an ancient murray cod.

  COLIN, a Yorta Yorta man, Senior Aboriginal Sites Officer.

  LESLEY, a Yorta Yorta man.

  COW HERD, a herd of clunky wooden puppets; they shit on cue.

  LITTLE ALBERT, Uncle as a little boy.

  MAE, Uncle’s little sister.

  TELLERS, a chorus of four who play a variety of roles.

  SETTING

  Yanagai! Yanagai! is set in a mythical landscape on the banks of a mighty river. We call him Dhungula (the Murray River). This river is made before our very eyes. A sparkling celebration. The one constant. But somewhere in the distance she is crying. Touching this river, on either side, is the land. The landscape is expansive, like a plain dotted with ancient trees.

  There are many trees floating in the space. They are as delicate and as wavering as the culture. They sway precariously when people pass. They are forever in danger.

  Images and spirits sometimes appear in these trees. These trees are alive. Storytellers move behind and around them.

  At the end of each story a tree is felled—like the pages from a book—each tree representing a memory, a person, a language, a culture.

  There is a glorious high river bank which shows the midden timeline of centuries of existence. This is Uncle’s camp. In bright blue neon, the word ‘Maniga’ [to fish] floats in the air—an ever presence.

  In opposition to this camp is a line and an object which represents the ruins and ghosts of Curr’s Homestead. An antique chair stands in colonial defiance. On this chair sits the ghost of Sir Edward Curr.