Bala Ga’ Lili

Näku Dhäruk (‘nahkoo’ for bark, ‘dahrook’ for message) The Bark Petitions is the final instalment in Clare Wright’s democracy trilogy. The revolutionary set of books recalibrates Australia’s history to illuminate the lived experience of unrepresented and systematically silenced people during the Eureka stockade (1854), the campaign for women’s voting rights (1880s), and the Yolŋu petition for land rights (1963). Read together, the books establish a historical, political, and cultural sequence that constitutes Australia’s founding documents. Materially, they are represented by the Eureka flag, the suffragette banner, and the Näku Dhäruk Petitions.  

As manuscripts depicting the practical and spiritual relationships between Yolŋu people and their environment through millennia, the Näku Dhäruk Petitions hold the gravitas of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were the first native title documents recognised in the Australian parliament and emphasise the great divide between Indigenous and English relationships to the land now called Australia. Sourced from Yolŋu trees, the Näku Dhäruk panels are about two feet long and one foot wide. Bordered in pipeclay, they contain ethnographic images painted by senior Yolŋu artists using brushes made from the hair of Yolŋu children, ochre sourced from sacred sites, and charcoal from ceremonial fires. Individual panels feature human figures, plants, animals, and geometric patterns that delineate clan territories and represent ‘a transliteration of land title’. Centred within each piece of bark, and following the protocol of a Westminster-style petition, is an A4 piece of paper typed in both English and Gumatj matha (language). The petitions present the problem of land theft, and request consultation, protection of sacred sites, and compensation for use of land. There are twelve Yolŋu signatories. 

Bringing over a decade of writing, researching, and conversations together in Näku Dhäruk, Wright credits the book’s ‘forensic detail’ to the collaboration of archivists, historians, library ‘sleuths’, museum curators, and conservators whose contributions expel ‘long-held rumours and give empirical remedy, finally, to internet and oral furphies’. Researching First Nations history in colonial and government archives, where ignorance, paternalism, and racism dominate, requires fortitude. ​​​​Narungga poet and researcher Natalie Harkin describes working in those archives as being like a detective investigating sinister secrets ‘underpin[ning] this colonial crime scene’. She mourns the regular limitations to files and databases due to loss, destruction, redactions and, in some cases, simply withheld without explanation ‘under the guise of legal and professional privilege’. Through the whole archival experience, researchers are forced to confront their own pre-conditioned biases, while also absorbing the historical violence and oppression directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. 

In Näku Dhäruk Wright atones for historic deficit discourses with nourishing excerpts from Songspirals by the Gay’wu (woven dilly bag) Group of Women. The award-winning aural archive of the Yolŋu cultural practice of milkarri (keening) penetrates through time and place to breathe the life-giving, reciprocal connections between Yolŋu people, Country, and culture into the reading. An excerpt of the Guwak songspiral introduces the term bala ga’ lili as an example of the Yolŋu two-way worldview where discourse aims for balance and a place where knowledge is held – the term refers to how water flows from land, meets salt water, and becomes brackish. Brackish is the balance that holds the knowledge negotiated between the two divergent sides.  

One way to interpret Wright’s retelling of the Petitions story is as a practical application of bala ga’ lili – where outmoded attitudes in the archives merge with the everywhen of Yolŋu culture. In the same way that the milkarri of the Guwak songspiral remakes the brackish water – along with each and every connection to that water – the reading of Näku Dhäruk reincarnates the story of the Petitions to include all the people who contributed to and experience the book. In this way, we too become part of the evolution of the story. The value of seeing Wright’s book through this lens of two-way learning is to remind us to seek balance in our relationships, and that every action we make has far reaching, generational consequences.  

In each of our lives there are places in the world where our relationships to Country, and its people, invigorate our mind, body, and soul. Like many of us who have enjoyed the privilege of time on Yolŋu Country (Northern Arnhem Land), Wright reinforces a deep respect and appreciation for the ‘open-heartedness and intellectual hospitality’ of Yolŋu knowledge holders. Among the many interviews, conversations, and group workshops involved in the writing of Näku Dhäruk, Wright consulted with the last surviving signatory of the Petitions, Dhuŋgala; ‘Djapirri Munuŋgurritj, a Gumatj woman who was six years old when the Bark Petitions were created’; Australian of the Year Galarrwuy Yunupiŋu; and members of the Gay’wu Group of Women. Given that this story affects every Australian but is broadly unknown, Wright recognises that there is still more of the Yolŋu perspective of the Petition’s story to be told. Her massive 583-page legacy work shows us the value of ​​​​privilege and determination used in the service of justice. 

The core of Näku Dhäruk’s structure follows the calendar of Yolŋu seasons: wet, dry, and build up. As well as gifting the reader with textural descriptions of the uniqueness of living on Country, Wright identifies how the extremes of weather can affect the psyche. During the build-up season, the Yirrkala Mission superintendent is described as easily riled and erratic, the mission staff seek medical leave; and as testament to an inalienable custodial cohesion, the Yolŋu people are observed as ‘calm, dignified, and rational’. 

‘We were born HERE. We ARE here. 
We are the centre. You are the periphery.’ 

​​​Wright’s succinct translation of the visual text in the Näku Dhäruk panels, that appears in the book’s ‘dry’ section, relating events the night before the panels are to be sent to parliament, highlights her deft use of lineation. These translations feature throughout the narrative to elevate fact above fiction, and challenge worldviews. 

​​In Wright’s earlier works, the inclusion of colourful and dramatic vignettes from different perspectives, times, and locations adds intrigue and increases momentum, highlighting the merit of democratic processes. These vignettes link individuals and experiences across generations to represent institutional advancements or regressions that impact our current lives. We know that the racism and social and environmental devastation happening in the Northern Territory today connects at the intersection of mining and land-rights, but unfortunately, in Wright’s Näku Dhäruk, the layering of contextual anecdotes within the non-linear timeline is at times distracting.​​​ An example where a back-and-forth of dates confuses the reading, approximating a kind of bureaucratic gobbledygook, is: ‘it was Tuesday 8 April, Holy Tuesday, before Robert Menzies replied to Arthur Calwell’s correspondence. On 27 February…’. Then, two paragraphs later, ‘on 25 February...’. Another stimming sequence arises with a ‘secret meeting’ being reiterated across four chapters. While this ingrains the importance of the event within the story of the Petitions​​​​, the chain of command leading from Menzies to the meeting is missing a link. ​Who authorised the meeting, booked the room? Information was spread so thinly that it was difficult to be sure who did what in this particular crime scene. To clearly grasp the characters, and political, social and environmental events within historical sequence, I was forced to create my own timeline spreadsheet. As I populated the chronological grid, I wished that the story reflected the clarity of a clan, or even a mining map. The reading sometimes felt like a butcher’s beef-cuts chart where the metaphorical beast of Australian history was being stabbed with a haphazard array of facts and dates, speculation, entitlement, greed, and aggravation. My sight was blurred in bloody confusion.​ 

Across hundreds of generations, the Yolŋu people enjoyed the benefits of cross-cultural exchange and commercial trading with Maccassans, Japanese pearlers, the RAAF, anthropologists, missionaries, prospectors, and art dealers. The Arnhem Land Reserve was declared in 1931, and by 1935 the Yirrkala Methodist Overseas Mission (MOM) was established to oversee thirteen different Aboriginal language and family groups that had been corralled into the Miwatj region. The mission offered a ‘place of shelter and security’ against mustering cattlemen who indiscriminately shot at Yolŋu men, women, and children. The missionaries permitted language and traditional culture, and provided food and Balanda (white person) education – in exchange for Christian worship and work. A large Yolŋu contingent performed mission-led tasks: ‘with our own hands we made the paddock for peanuts’, sorghum and sweet potato; and in 1943 the Yolŋu workers cleared, flattened and poured bitumen for the ‘Gove’ airstrip. By 1963, the mission was making an additional £5,000 a year from the sale of näku dhäruk paintings. 

Introducing ‘the story of how resource extraction led to a four-cornered contest between the federal government, the miners, the missionaries and the Yolŋu’, Wright deploys a series of well-honed military metaphors. The story is ignited by the fundamentally undemocratic actions of the Menzies government between 1959 and 1963. With subterfuge and no parliamentary consultation, they excised ‘inviolate’ Aboriginal reserves from across Australia and leased the land to mining interests. This added up to 200 million acres (nearly 2.5 times the size of Tasmania), with another half million acres threatened.  

Ben Dickinson, ‘the man who brokered the deal between Rio Tinto and Hamersley that made Lang Hancock his first millions’, pioneered the push to mine bauxite on the Arnhem Land Reserve. Protected by the confidential seal of Menzies government ‘red stamps’, he worked to remove embargos and taxation laws, and legalise mineral exploration and exploitation. Bauxite on the reserve was examined, with drilling to twenty-five feet. There were charter planes and ‘miners coming and going like gälkal (ants)’. Electric generators ran all night, and a septic system ran upstream from the mission pumps. Hepatitis among the mission staff and Yolŋu became a common affliction. In late December 1962, survey stakes appeared through the peanut paddocks and parts of the mission grounds like a line of ‘stark white gravestones’.  

The Yolŋu did not want to suffer the fate of thousands of other Aboriginal people who were removed from their homelands and reserves and sectioned into internment camps. Over many nights a fire was lit for Yolŋu närra (parliament sittings). Wright explains that, like Western democratic processes, the Yolŋu constitution is predicated on the ideal of ‘for the people by the people’. Guided by the wisdom and experience of elders, the Yolŋu formed a decision-making collective ‘that cannot be used in anger or for personal gain’, with the aim of long-term equality through ‘mägaya: a state of peace and tranquillity’. Using Balanda protocols, they sent letters to government and MOM representatives asking for information about the mining activity and consultations to ensure the sanctity of their water supply and sacred sites. There was no reply. 

On 10 January 1963, the pivotal ‘secret meeting’ was held with just Dickinson, Paul Hasluck, the Minister for the Northern Territories, and Reverend Cecil F. Gribble, representing the MOM. Together these three people approved mining of 140 square miles (89,600 acres) of the Arnhem Land Reserve, mostly Gumatj land, to French company Pechiney Bauxite Mining. At a minimum, Pechiney expected to mine ‘10 million tons of bauxite over 18 years’, with an income of ‘£12.5 million per annum’.  

Wright reveals that the mission staff speculated about the secrecy and the lack of consultation regarding the mining activity on the reserve by presenting privately held letters sourced from the missionaries and their descendants. As ‘the nucleus of the book’, these letters to family, activists, politicians, the MOM, and the Federal Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) demonstrate the emotional turmoil and confusion experienced by the people who called Yirrkala their home; and they describe Dickinson as a ‘ruthless big business mogul’ who gets what he wants at any cost. 

The letters also expose the inequality of living standards between the mining people, the mission staff, and the Yolŋu. In 1963, the mining people had cars, fridges and freezers, booze, generators; they flew in chartered planes, and hosted lavish dinner parties with minestrone soup, then ‘roast pork, baked potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beans, peas and apple sauce’, and, to cap off the night, ‘fruit salad and ICE CREAM,’ with ‘beaut buns and fresh bread’ for guests to take home. At the same time, the mission staff struggled without soap, their kerosene was rationed, and despite access to fish and edible indigenous plants, they were regularly underfed. While the mission staff did enjoy houses with plumbing, for five hundred Yolŋu, there was just one new permanent ‘native’ house built out of concrete blocks and iron roofing. Otherwise, their bark gunyahs were being ‘replaced by permanent housing cobbled together with the leftover metal and equipment from the RAAF base’. The conditions were described by international visitors as ‘second class and squalid’.  

Through their correspondence with family, we learn that some of the mission staff agree. They are also dismayed and disapprove of the fact that the ‘cash strapped mission’ continues to ignore the urgent need for sanitation and housing, and instead directs labour and funds into the building of a new church: with ‘very pretty citrus yellow’ window frames, ‘glamourous’ imported silky oak furniture, and a ‘hard, bare rocky yard’ garnished with a stubble of alien green grass. 

The arrival of a green truck and a hundred drums of fuel in May 1963 coincided with Dickinson finally agreeing to a meeting with Yolŋu representatives. Wright utilises the Mission superintendent’s correspondence to reveal sixty Yolŋu, ‘interviewing the bauxite exploiters’, had 

By mid-May the first government official, a man from the Welfare Branch, finally arrived to explain the terms of the Pechiney lease and ‘on behalf of the government, make a gesture of goodwill’. They offered a one-off £12,000 allocation, ‘made to the Yirrkala Mission for housing for the native population’, and an invitation to supply laundry labour for the mining workers. Wright adds that the Yolŋu people were advised that mining ‘priorities at this stage were to develop agricultural and pastoral activities – fresh food for the mining company employees’; and that share profit was out of the question because they ‘couldn’t yet know how much profit is to be made. There could be a loss.’ 

The Yirrkala superintendent and his wife were appalled by the secrecy, arrogance, and unfettered lies from Dickinson and government officials. Wright interweaves their letter writing campaign asking for support for the Yolŋu people with examples of human-rights and anti-racist activism from across the globe. She also includes Australian opinions about failing assimilation policies such as Labour Member Kim Beazley’s belief that ‘assimilation breaks down at the point where you pay an aboriginal [sic] 2-3 pound a week and a white man 15 pound’. 

In July 1963, funded by the FCAA, Beazley visited the mission. He was enthralled by the sight of two näku dhäruk paintings that hung in the place of church panels. Learning that the images, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, have codified meanings that convey the Yolŋu system of law, justice and land ownership, Beazley suggested presenting parliament with a composite of Yolŋu and Westminster legislative practices. He was sure that näku dhäruk petitions would ‘arrest media attention’.  

With feminist barb, Wright highlights that the postage for the panels to be sent to Prime Minister Menzies and the Leader of the Opposition was paid for by the superintendent’s wife: ‘As a private citizen’. Ann Wells, ‘a dutiful missionary wife’, provides Wright with a clever and energetic bridge between Yolŋu and Balanda cultures. A published writer working on her third illustrated book about Yolŋu life, she customised her typewriter to include the letter ‘ŋ’. Ann’s collection of historical documents provides context and colour to Wright’s narrative and includes observations of her husband’s emotional turmoil; interview notes taken during the painting of the näku dhäruk church panels and the Petitions; excerpts of letters from the Yolŋu leaders asking for information about mining activity; and even a heartfelt poem from Beazley about his experience visiting Yirrkala Mission: ‘The world walked into my heart today...’

The heart-strong impact of the Yolŋu two-way, reciprocal worldview on Balanda is well documented throughout Wright’s narrative. In tandem with her own glistening anecdotes, Wright shares a 1963 article published in a MOM journal that was written by the Yirrkala school principal. Sick with hepatitis, and responding to the seasonal storms and lack of communication about the mining invasion, the principal was in ‘real psychological need for a change’. As a departing message, he describes ‘The Challenge of Yirrkala’ as ‘a call to come and be a part of a life of reward in this veritable tropical paradise’, where ‘the fruit of the labour is the relationships formed with brown skinned original inhabitants who place their arm around your shoulder when you are so dispirited by the hurt of white men’ and share everything from food to spirit, to hope. In contrast, reports from commercial newspapers (which Wright describes as outdated ‘imperial institutions’) about the Petitions’ reception at parliament are ignorant, superficial, and go as far as branding the Yirrkala missionaries as communist agitators.

In parliament, Paul Hasluck, the Federal Minister of the Northern Territories rejected the partitions on the petitions as ‘unrepresentative’. None of the signatories were over thirty, and ‘only six of the thirteen tribal groups’ were represented. Back in Yirrkala, a second petition was created. Small changes were made to the list of requests, and now there were three columns where thirty-one men and women, from eight of the thirteen tribal groups, pressed their thumbs into the paper and drew a cross. Each ‘signature’ was witnessed by one of eight Yolŋu people who could write their name in English. The average age of signatories was now forty-two, and all together they were responsible for 208 children – many generations to come.

In the meantime, the FCAA ran a letter writing campaign calling for the appointment of a select committee to find out the truth behind land leased for mining on the Arnhem Land Reserve. Letters from groups across the continent flooded into the PM’s office. The government revised their offer of compensation. Wright quotes a response to the offer in a letter that appeared in the West Australian:

Where did the rent and royalties go? In Victoria, evidence of gold rush riches is visible in every town and dominates Naarm’s (Melbourne’s) architectural landscape. But where are the grand buildings and structural riches of the Northern Territory? And what about the earnings from the other leases for the remaining 199 million acres excised by the Menzies government? We know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people removed from their mineral rich lands were herded into internment camps and impoverished for generations to come – where did their inherited wealth go?  

Wright records that efforts to ‘inquire into the aborigines’ [sic] [Yolŋu]’ grievances officially began in August 1963 with the forming of a seven-member parliamentary committee. By October 1963, an entourage of officials landed in Yolŋu Country. Testimonies were taken in the old church with politicians perched on miniature school chairs. For their first evening the visitors were invited to witness the bala ga’ lili of a Yolŋu Buŋgul (ceremony) with a Christian burial. Wright describes children ‘neat as pins in gleaming white shift dresses and button-up shirts, singing hymns in perfect unison, a full moon rising over the ocean’. She uses an excerpt from Wandjuk Marika’s Life Story to explain the Yolŋu aspects of the ceremony. The committee members who attended were ‘transfixed’. Reading ​​​Wright’s and Wandjuk’s combined account of this ​​reciprocal​ moment of spiritual learning ​felt like an experience of​ ​​​​​seeing ​two hands with fingers folded in prayer.  

The following day there were testimonies from missionary staff and eight Yolŋu delegates who expressed concerns about tobacco, grog, money, and the way some of the miners behaved toward the older schoolgirls. They reasserted that they wanted security of their water supply, access to hunting and harvesting, and protection of their sacred sites. No Yolŋu had ever seen a mining operation that excavated beyond ‘shoulder deep’ (twenty-five feet). They asked for fair compensation.  

Wright reports that Dickinson described Yolŋu Country as ‘one of the few remaining waste areas in the world’. He spoke about prosperity and the large and permanent communities mining could create, asking those present to envisage ‘a town the size of Alice Springs, with a power station, a limestone quarry and ancillary services’. Despite insisting that mining offered a safe foundation for civilisation and progress, he could not name a single place where it had benefitted the local Indigenous people. 

The Select Committee report was released to the public on the final sitting day of parliament in 1963. Highlighting MOM’s undemocratic processes, it states that the board gave away Aboriginal rights without safeguard, impugned Hasluck’s ‘ministerial integrity’, and implicated the welfare lead for dereliction of duty and paternalistic negligence. Yet there were no charges brought against any individual or organisation. Wright reminds us that this is the first time Aboriginal land rights were acknowledged and relays the eleven recommendations and democratic safeguards that were to be honoured by successive governments. These included: protection of water and sacred sites; a minimum of £150,000 in royalties to be used to provide ‘parallel development of Aboriginal and European housing’; limits on non-Aboriginal movement; the provision of a medical practitioner and social services benefits; and action to redress harm caused by mining. From the report, a Standing Committee of the House of Representatives was formed to work as a watchdog to ensure continued consultation and commercial and social accountability. 

Pleading not guilty to encouraging the Yolŋu community to seek human rights, the Yirrkala mission superintendent was dismissed. The position was awarded to a Victorian pastoralist who had zero Methodist Mission training or experience of remote community work. Wright’s concluding chapter, ‘The Right to Be Heard’, draws out this narrative of systematic abandonment by exposing the abject failure of the Standing Committee of the House of Representatives: less than ten years after the appointment of the new superintendent and committee, the Yolŋu people were experiencing full-scale industrial, environmental and cultural assault; Balanda enjoyed five air-conditioned supermarkets, while the homes built for the Yolŋu people were unsuitable for the weather conditions.  

Amid the betrayal, Wright pays tribute to the Yolŋu people’s continuing fight to retain culture and land rights: in 1968 they had a win with their Wuyul Näku Dhäruk Petition requesting to change the name of the mining town from ‘Gove’ to ‘Nhulunbuy’ (Mount Saunders) – one of the sacred sites that was devastated by miners without accountability; then in 1971, the case of Milirrpum and Others v Nabalco Pty Ltd and the Commonwealth of Australia – in which the claimants sought to protect Yolŋu people’s right to perform buŋgul – became the first litigation in Australia dealing explicitly with native title. Choosing monarchy over democracy, Justice Richard Blackburn ruled that ‘they [Yolŋu people] did not hold proprietary rights under British common law […] although they had a connection to the land, communal native title had never formed part of the law of Australia. The plaintiffs enjoyed merely a religious relationship with the land.’ 

The profit-driven brutalisation of culture and Country ‘under British common law’ continued. In 2007 Rio Tinto took over the mining leases, and seven years later announced the refinery closure. A thousand workers lost their jobs and left a ‘ghost town’. With a plan to cease mining bauxite by 2030, Wright documents that Rio Tinto aims to ship over 140,000 tons of scrap metal overseas. It is the largest demolition project in Australian history, its ‘hazardous chemicals’ and ‘decades’ worth of toxic sludge’ needing to be monitored for 120 years, according to some estimates. 

​​Yet, regardless of weather extremes and environmental devastation, the Yolŋu people will never leave their Country – it is their home, their faith, their family. In 2019 the late Dr Yunupingu, on behalf of the Gamatj Clan, lodged another native title compensation claim for $700 million from the Commonwealth Government. The claim argues that the Commonwealth was required to compensate the Gumatj people on ‘just terms’ when it compulsorily acquired their property. It also challenges the assumption that compensation cannot be sought for acts affecting native title before the start of the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975. In May 2023 the Federal Court of Australia ruled in the claimants’ favour. The Commonwealth Government appealed, but following three days in the High Court, the appeal was dismissed. In an interview with the ABC, Mabo Centre director, Professor Eddie Cubillo, said that the win ‘confirms […] that extinguishment of native title requires just compensation, just like any other property right in the country’, and ‘corrects a longstanding injustice by insuring Indigenous people in the territories have the same constitutional protection as others’.​​​ 

More than sixty years after the Yolŋu people extended their hand towards ‘progress’, Clare Wright’s Näku Dhäruk reaches back toward the Yolŋu people with love, respect, admiration, and the gift of truth-telling and recognition. Through detail and divergency she presents an immensely valuable resource that exposes an Australian government which, instead of ensuring the safety and dignity of its citizens, ‘den[ied] accountability, pass[ed] the buck and blame[d] the victims’, in Wright’s words. But she also provides an understanding of the experience of missionary life, and the struggles of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who were moved from their homelands and robbed of their custodianship and inherited wealth. While Näku Dhäruk is a lesson in the failure of democracy to safeguard against unlimited power, justice has finally been served. It is a story that should be included in school curricula alongside stories about the Eureka Stockade and the Vote for Women.