Warlpiri preserve language, culture through animal tracking program for next generation

Warlpiri woman Alice Henwood is an expert tracker from Nyirripi. (ABC Alice Springs: Victoria Ellis)

“Nyiya Nyampuju?” What is this?

The call rings out across the red clay and sand.

The voice belongs to Warlpiri woman Alice Henwood from Nyirripi, a small community about 400 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs.

“Nyiya Nyampuju?” she asks again.

The group of people, spread out like the tufts of spinifex across the land, slowly gather around to look at where she is pointing.

They are quiet.

Alice knows the answer to her question, but right now she is teaching.

Finally, someone speaks up.

“Wardilyka,” Bush turkey, he guesses correctly.

The questions continue.

“Ngana-kurlangu?” Whose is it? “Nyarrpara-purda?” Which direction?

Over and over she asks the group with each new set of tracks that are found.

There are many of the puluku, cow.

There’s also the ngaya, cat, the puwujuma, fox, the warnapari, dingo and excitingly, the endangered walpajirri, bilby.

Kuyu-pungu share their skills

Ms Henwood is a Kuyu-pungu, an expert tracker of the Warlpiri people, who live across the Tanami Desert in outback Northern Territory.

She has been teaching rangers from the central desert how to track and identify animals using the Yitaki Maninjaku Ngurungka or Reading the Country program, which she helped create.

Ms Henwood’s English is limited, but her daughter Christine Ellis, also an expert tracker, helped convey her message.

“You have to follow the tracks really straight and see which way the track’s going,” Ms Ellis translated.

“The Warlpiri people are really strong, the elders go out hunting and teaching.”

Ms Henwood said she was proud to share her knowledge to create the learning resource, which helps “anyone” — Yapa or Cartiya (Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal) — learn more about the Warlpiri way of understanding animals and their movement.

Reading the Country

The Yitaki Maninjaku Ngurungka was launched this month at the Central Land Council’s annual ranger camp.

Over the past three years, Warlpiri and North Tanami rangers, knowledge holders, educators, and language experts have developed the bi-lingual animal tracking training package.

There are 16 different resources within the program, such as films, animal tracking cards, a quiz, worksheets and training activities, which can be embedded within ranger work plans and used to help beginners learn to track.

Yuendemu’s Enid Nangala Gallagher helped translate words between Warlpiri and English for the program.

“We were transcribing the names of the animals or insects, plants, trees, water places, and hills that belong to the old people,” she said.

“[It is important to] understand the country that our grandparents used to live on and walked on and hunted for food.

“We want this so … we can get young people to learn, listen, understand and keep on teaching other young people as well.”

Ms Ellis has been teaching her grandson the difference between rabbit and bilby tracks.

“It’s different tracks they’ve got, but I keep telling him, ‘Look real hard’,” she said. “He knows the goanna track.”

Ms Ellis said the elders had a mental map of their knowledge, but the learning resources put that knowledge on paper, preserving it for the future generations.

“We are losing a lot of elders so we need to get the knowledge from them,” she said.

Sharing Warlpiri knowledge

Collaboration from people across the whole Warlpiri language group was essential to bring the program together.

While Ms Henwood and Ms Ellis are from Nyirripi in the southern Warlpiri area, expert trackers Myra Herbert and Jerry Jangala are from Lajamanu on the northern side of Warlpiri country, and also shared their significant knowledge with the project.

Project coordinator Kim Webeck said the Warlpiri wanted to share the program’s resources so it could be adapted to other groups’ knowledge systems and languages.

“Although the focus of these frameworks has been on tracking, I think it can be applied to other knowledge, so plant knowledge or other cultural traditional knowledge,” she said.

“I can see how challenging it is for Yapa, for Aboriginal people, to really make space for Yapa-to-Yapa learning and teaching. And I think for non-Indigenous people, it often takes a while to really get a sense of how to support and create that situation.

“To have resources that explain a Warlpiri knowledge system, or Aboriginal people’s knowledge system, in a way that non-Indigenous people can understand, that in itself is going to create much more opportunity and space for Yapa to teach each other. And that excites me.”

The link to the Framework and Resources is here. The resources are also available on the Indigenous Desert Alliance (IDA) members portal. The InDesign files are available from the Central Land Council or the IDA for people who would like to create resources in another language.