Blue Tongue Lizard by Bill Harney
Yidumduma Bill Harney of the Wardaman people was
born on Willeroo Station circa 1936. He is a famous painter, storyteller,
and maker of didjeridu. His father W.E. (Bill Harney) was an Anglo-Australian writer and storyteller noted for
his exploits in the Northern Territory. His mother, Ludi Yibuluyma,
(Wardaman) raised Bill with his Aboriginal stepfather,Joe Jomornji, during an era of Australian history when Aborigines faced genocidal
and ethnocidal policies imposed on them by government and private
citizenry. As a child Bill Harney witnessed incidents of cattle
station owners poisoning Aborigines and welfare officers forcibly
removing Aboriginal children of mixed-heritage from their parents.
His sister, Dulcie, was one of these "Stolen Children".
Occasionally parents would take ash from the fire in attempt to
darken the skin of children with lighter complexions.
"Bill Harney here, I got a lot of stories about
the didjeridu and my paintings. We're the Wardaman people
in the middle ... like in the center. We're the border
of the didjeridu making. We make didjeridu and the didjeridu making
goes west and north from my country. The eastern and southern
side is more or less all boomerang making country. We make boomerang
and we make didjeridu. "
"We sort of split all of the instruments design
and paintings and all this. We're the boundary for painting
for all of the designs. The west and the north is all of cross-hatching
and we do that because we're the boundary. Then there's
all the dots. The dot paintings go down, to the desert over east
and down west. That's all dot country and we're
the boundary for that as well, so we do a little bit of dots too.
Mainly we are in the middle, we do the long strike design ."
" Where we cut trees we got yellowjacks, sand
bloodwood, red woolybutt, white woolybutt, black woolybutt , stringybark,
and the yellow salmon. We got seven trees all together for didjeridu
making around the country for what we make."
"The didjeridu was more or less fading from
our country... it was made by a long-tail little bird called the
(fass-in) ... when he was a human in my country. Now today he
is a little bird. When he was a human he the one invented all
these didjeridu in the past... he always played didjeridu, always
sang a song and named all the country. There's another
little bird again who invented the clapstick. When he was a singer
he was called butcherbird. Then the two when they sing and play
didjeridu they was naming all the country, the human body, all
the different plants and all this. Then later on when Aborigine
change in the country... this little bird changed from the human
to become a bird and whenever he went around part of his didjeridu
stuck on his tail and that's what they call the long-tail
fassin or gil-eh'-boot Anyway, we're the boundary
for all the didjeridu making and the boomerang and the clapsticks.
"
"With the didjeridu instrument, in the past,
when we tried didjeridu just all Aborigine... it wasn't
fully designed and painted... it was just little bit different
ceremony what we had in the country then. But later on when the
white people saw all the didjeridu going on with the music, they
started taking a liking to it and one or two people bought it
and took it away.... Then more people started to get a connection
on it, buying it up, it started to get bigger and bigger,people
saying what a wonderful instrument. So we said, 'Ok we can
share what the instrument we got.' We're happy to
share our images what we make, and culture and didjeridu with
the Europeans and white Australians."
"To Wardaman people, that little bird designed
and invented the didjeridu with the big bottom (that) comes out
thin up-top. When we make didjeridu, a good one, we have a look
around for trees that have a big hole down the bottom and a small
hole up-top. When we see one we bring it down and clean it up.
Most of the people who make the didjeridu chop any kind of hollow
tree...I don't know... I think they are just chasing the
quid (money)."
"The one with the big bell down the bottom that's
the one they used in the "trade time" What they called
"mamaru." The "mamaru" is when everyone
started to trade the didjeridu, boomerang, clapsticks, spears
and all this. And there was some special dances that they did
when they came (together) to do that..performing. It's
this big bottom didjeridu that they used for doing that...Anyway,
then when they went to get married and that, they used another
deep sound, straight-up-and-down didjeridu with a big sound. They
do all the performing then as well."
"Now with all the paintings we make... with
all different shapes and sizes... we used to paint em up on the
bark ... and everyone had to have his own designs, and totem and
images of their heritage put on the bark ....and then dance with
that. Now those paintings--since the Europeans and white Australians
like them-- we are quite happy to share our knowledge and the
cultural side with the paintings."
This interview was conducted by Fred Tietjen in July of
1997 in Katherine,
NT.