This is all the families that we live here. Some of them are still in town, but this is
only a few people. We are a family here at Kujan. My name is Dwarwar Marika. I live with my grandchildren
and my son here. I talk to them and tell them most of the cultural life of the Aboriginal
people, not there, but from the past when I learned from my father's and from my grandfather's.
It's from Ireland, but in our own language we call it Dambalaya, the name of this island,
Dambalaya. It's from the past, it's just not yesterday or year ago now. It's from the past
when they taught us and we're just carrying it on and we're teaching our children so the
children are learning. So the boys, same thing with spear, how to catch fish and other things,
they still learn. Well, this is what happened when they didn't follow the rules. They have the law
have to send them here to this place so they can stay and do like hunting, helping, clean
up areas, cutting lawn, ditch them for everything. A good life here staying, not thinking about
alcohol, staying, healthy, working, fishing.
It's way from the township in an area like this one in a homeland, it's more better for the young
people to live on an old style and carrying on and teaching them that knowledge, the love of it.
Yeah, let's go.
Okay.
The life is very good here when you wave from town. The life is very good.
It's free life. You can do something.
If you go this way for hunting spear fishing, if you get thirsty, we eat this one. We drink it.
It's a totally good one. Some kids come here without their mom and dad.
So we have to look after our myself and all my family.
Let's go. We're cutting some trees. It's a spear to make spear.
We're going to cook it, like burn it, take the skin off, take the skin off,
and we'll cook it, burn it to spread it up, spread it up, then we scrape it,
scrape the skin up and throw it in the sun for a couple of hours. Okay, let's go.
Before I was staying at Irkala working, so I moved over here to look after my mom.
Two months.
Like a foreigner. I suppose I felt very much like a foreigner when I first came up here
two years ago, less so now. Having been adopted into the extended Yongle family very early in the
piece, I've really been made to feel like I am Yongle and one of the family. Well, it's very different
to what I grew up with. I've gone from a Western situation where I had a mother and a father to
having countless mothers and fathers and grandparents and brothers and sisters.
The extended family is very important socially and is part of the support structure for raising
children and for the function of the community. A nursery always has plenty of things to do.
We spend a lot of time in the bush collecting seeds and young little seedlings coming up and
transplanting them back here.
They're just made of plants. Just for the decoration. For garden.
This one for my painting. I'm an artist. I do painting. I just don't want to come
help. I come from a family of artists, traditional artists.
In the 1990s that I started painting. My sons are good artists as well.
Nearly everybody in the family. My young daughter, Rosie, she's a good artist. She's a very contemporary
artist. She's a contemporary artist but she assists me with painting as well.
That's a good one. That's how easy it should come off like that. See, beautiful. No rips.
That's what you look for. Beautiful. Smooth, no bumps. Only a little bit of
thing there but that's nothing. And we can get two barks out of this. No slips on the end.
And this is Yolma people. Yolma in Northern Territory. We know how to survive.
This is the stingray. We know where to find. It can make sting, somebody. Our natural food?
Smaller net. In a forest? Very dangerous. On an ocean.
Sometimes all people make stingray, tail spear, sting. This thing, they make spear.
It's better for our children to live in a place like this but not in a gale.
I've spent a lot of time at Bremer Island. I live there for two months straight at one point.
My aunties and grandmothers, they're using their own money. I've chosen to
take care of and manage some of the more problematic youths in the community.
We've had ongoing problems with crime and substance abuse to keep them away from
negative influences and give them a more calming environment which is a positive.
Yes, we eat them. As a little boy or young people like girls over there,
we sit down around the campfire and listen to our elders to tell us about the connection of the land,
what to eat and what not to eat. And that's how it passes the message.
And then when we learn, we know all this outside the land because you will know
for the survival. You know, when you're out there alone and stranded, you need to eat something.
And with that knowledge, you will die.
They have to follow the rules and conduct. If the women have to say anything,
like a leader of that place, have to say something, they have to do it and they have to follow the rules.
It's too small. Too small. Let them go. After one year's time,
that turtle will come back and lay an egg. That's the time that we're going to
grab the turtle and we'll cook it. Big one. It's too small. We don't usually have small ones.
Let them go. Let it grow and breathe.
Just talk. We tell them by talking.
Pandanas. This is pandanas. This is just one steam from the middle of it.
And tomorrow we'll walk down to the swamp and show you what sort of a pandana tree it's really looked like.
Young girls, like my granddaughter and my son, always when I ask them and do something,
they always come and watch me what I do. And the same color, just natural out of the rock.
The women go out and collect, like pandanas, and then go and get some colors for a pandana,
like yellow, brown, and red. The boys always help, especially here, to our ladies.
We'll take an hour, then the pandanas will make color and it'll come yellow.
Then afterwards, when everything's dry up, we make dye into red or this one.
This color.
This is a place I should never be. Meeting you would be a crime. Another place, another time.
Feel the pull across the line. Go spirits on my mind. On my mind.
It doesn't feel like we're getting some. Shadows fade if just begun. Right skin you have to be the one.
Must be gone before the sun. Let the cry have the cockatoo. Hot beats, what can I do?
Culture is being strong here because we teach our people, young people, to learn how to take
over what we have been taught, how to do the plastic and the dances that talks about the land.
Young people, how they feel, where to live or to carry on the culture and law from the past and for their children.
In a place called Township and that's where the bad things are happening and in our family we don't want to.
We just keep on teaching how we were taught.
Our families, relatives have been teaching our people is through campfire at night and the storytelling.
Story passing through generations after generations. The same story never changes.
We are all connected, the connection, the sea country and the land. My brothers and sisters overseas, we are here to welcome you.
We respect our land and us. We will respect you and take care of you. Thank you.
This is a place I should never be. Meeting you would be a crime. Another place, another time. Feel the pull across the line.
