'The book presents 38 songs from the Jardiwanpa song line, which traverses Warlpiri country from south to north. It passes through three major dreamings, Yarripiri ‘Snake’, Yankirri “Emu’ and Ngurlu ‘Seed’. Owners from each of these ritual groups spoke at the launch, about the importance and value of the Jardiwanpa songs.' (Source: Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education website)
'Seeking to fully know the other can have the effect of minimising the wholly different gestalt of the other’s lifeworld. This mode of knowing can thereby be a means of reduction, generalisation, possession, and control. In this essay, the author analyses a contemporary ethnography of Warlpiri women’s song-poems, Jardiwanpa Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu (2014). This ethnography is theorised as a mode of open text that animates a collision of epistemologies: those of Western settler culture, and those of the Warlpiri women who collaboratively authored the book. The author emphasises the cultural lenses that she brings to the intellectual and emotional work of reflexive close reading, and insists that her own position as whitefella, settler, Westerner, combined with the necessary partiality of the text, renders her incapable of any sort of comprehensive access to the ‘total poem,’ the ritual situation, which the
book represents.'
Source: Abstract.
'This paper explores issues around the representation of Indigenous cultural property, voices and images in two books of Warlpiri women's yawulyu song traditions that form part of a series published by Batchelor Press (Gallagher, C.N., et al., 2014. Jardiwanpa Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu. Batchelor: Batchelor Press and Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu. 2017. Yurntumu-wardingki juju-ngaliya-kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu [with Accompanying DVD]. Batchelor: Batchelor Press). These publications stem from collaborations between Indigenous knowledge holders and non-Indigenous researchers and involve long-term relationships between the team members. We draw out discussion of the motivations for making these books, and the agency within these intercultural teams, considering the colonising impact of academic research, the intercultural dimensions to Indigenous identities and the role of publications such as these in repatriation and reparation efforts. We demonstrate how Warlpiri women have directed the production processes and surrounding events so that these books not only represent forms of Warlpiri cultural knowledge but also contribute to the dynamic forms of cultural reproduction that ensure continued engagement with these song traditions into the future.' (Publication abstract)
'This paper explores issues around the representation of Indigenous cultural property, voices and images in two books of Warlpiri women's yawulyu song traditions that form part of a series published by Batchelor Press (Gallagher, C.N., et al., 2014. Jardiwanpa Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu. Batchelor: Batchelor Press and Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu. 2017. Yurntumu-wardingki juju-ngaliya-kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu [with Accompanying DVD]. Batchelor: Batchelor Press). These publications stem from collaborations between Indigenous knowledge holders and non-Indigenous researchers and involve long-term relationships between the team members. We draw out discussion of the motivations for making these books, and the agency within these intercultural teams, considering the colonising impact of academic research, the intercultural dimensions to Indigenous identities and the role of publications such as these in repatriation and reparation efforts. We demonstrate how Warlpiri women have directed the production processes and surrounding events so that these books not only represent forms of Warlpiri cultural knowledge but also contribute to the dynamic forms of cultural reproduction that ensure continued engagement with these song traditions into the future.' (Publication abstract)
'Seeking to fully know the other can have the effect of minimising the wholly different gestalt of the other’s lifeworld. This mode of knowing can thereby be a means of reduction, generalisation, possession, and control. In this essay, the author analyses a contemporary ethnography of Warlpiri women’s song-poems, Jardiwanpa Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu (2014). This ethnography is theorised as a mode of open text that animates a collision of epistemologies: those of Western settler culture, and those of the Warlpiri women who collaboratively authored the book. The author emphasises the cultural lenses that she brings to the intellectual and emotional work of reflexive close reading, and insists that her own position as whitefella, settler, Westerner, combined with the necessary partiality of the text, renders her incapable of any sort of comprehensive access to the ‘total poem,’ the ritual situation, which the
book represents.'
Source: Abstract.
