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                                                                                                   Goŋ Djambutj - Clever Hands

    Eunice as a girl digging for ganguri. Goŋ Djambutj.                                                                                                                      Digging for ganguri. Goŋ Djambutj. 

​Goŋ Djambutj means 'clever hands' in Yolngu Matha, the language of the Yolgnu people of Northern Australia. The Yolngu have lived in their country for around 80,000 years. They remember who they are. They will tell you with clear eyes how they descend from two sisters who came from the Pleides star system and travelled over that part of the world, creating its features. The Yolngu name for their region is Laynhapuy, although the Englishers still insist on calling it Arnhem Land, after some Dutch explorer.

I lived in Yirrkala for four and a half years. Goŋ Djambutj is a diary of that time and holds precious memories of encounters with Yolgnu people, their culture, friends I made, relationships that developed with people from all over the Laynhapuy homelands, and stories shared with me about the land and its spirit, and its animals. Long after I had moved south to the Central desert region and begun a new scroll, I continued work on Goŋ Djambut to revisit the places and the friends I made there.

Goŋ Djambutj scroll is dedicated to Banduk Marika who shared her time, spirit, and precious knowledge of traditional Yolgnu medicine. Banduk, with her beauty, her passion, her wild and soaring intelligence, her rage against injustice, was a force to be reckoned with in both Balanda and Yolgnu worlds.

I was blessed to know Banduk. I feel her with me, looking on from the Pleides system, from which her people had come and to where she said she would return.