by Scott Ellis

Pitjantjatjara actor Trevor Jamieson has taken his hit stage show, Ngapartji Ngapartji, around the country winning acclaim, awards and the respect of everyone who has seen him perform.

Pitjantjatjara actor Trevor Jamieson has taken his hit stage show, Ngapartji Ngapartji, around the country winning acclaim, awards and the respect of everyone who has seen him perform.

It’s a highly personal account of his family and, by extension, the Aboriginal people, but he’s never shown it to those at the centre of it all. Until now. Heading back into the bush near the remote Aboriginal community of Ernabella in South Australia, he decides to stage the work for his family and community elders.

He hopes they’ll be proud of him, that they’ll be happy their stories are being told to wider audiences, but there’s a major problem. Some of the memories incorporated into Ngapartji Ngapartji are of his father and grandparents, how they lived through the Maralinga bomb tests and what happened to them after. But Jamieson’s father is dead and, in his culture, to talk about him and show images of his face is strictly forbidden. To perform his play he must either rework everything or risk offending his elders. It’s a difficult choice and highlights the struggle of Jamieson and his people as they move forward. How much of their traditional ways should they cling to and how much should they abandon? And more importantly, will Jamieson ”cop a flogging” from the community if he decides to break the law?

A fascinating documentary, this shows the difficulty of bringing a high-tech production to a remote area, the clash of an ancient culture in the 21st century, the turmoil faced by those trying to straddle both worlds and more. The archival footage alone is incredible, reminding us just how recently the people of Jamieson’s homeland were quite happily living on land they had called home for generations before it was literally blown away

Australian filmmaker Alex Kelly is a desert dweller.

Choosing to live in the arid red center town of Alice Springs, she has grown to recognize that here is a country very different to the white fella coast of Australia: Here still there is a people, not yet swamped by colonialism, a people with a 40,000-year-old history to tell. But without government protection that maintains their languages, their histories may, like the desert mountain ranges, erode into dust and be blown forever away.

Alex was in Ubud, Bali, recently where her film that deals with indigenous languages, Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji, was screened during the Global Social Change Film Festival and Institute, Bali, 2011.

Until recently schools in Australia’s Northern Territory taught bilingually, as many children speak only their native Aboriginal languages.

A recent decision to scrap bilingual education and teach only in English, has, says Kelly, cut off at the source many indigenous children’s access to education and their history. Ironically in Australia’s coastal states, many immigrant children are taught in their native languages, such as Vietnamese, Sudanese, Iraqi and Iranian.

To remind the rest of Australia that Aboriginal languages are precious and vital to history, Alex took on the five-year project, Ngapartji Ngapartji with social change foundation, Big hART, taking a live show of Aboriginal singers, dancers and front man, acclaimed Pitjantatjara Indigenous actor, Trevor Jamieson, across the nation to bring to “white fella” some recognition of indigenous languages.

“Every show was sold out and every show received a standing ovation. Twenty-nine thousand people across Australia saw the live show. One of the great mechanisms in the productions was in the theater we were teaching people how to sing ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’, in Pitjantatjara. The audience’s realized they could not even do that, so little was the understanding of indigenous language in Australia. The other thing they took away with them was knowledge of Maralinga [the 1955-1963 nuclear testing in central Australia that is believed to have killed many Indigenous Australians through radiation sickness],” says Alex.

The goal of the project that included 72 short films, radio and video productions, six music albums and the theater show itself, was to push the Australian government to formulate policy on the protection and maintenance of indigenous languages.

Staggeringly a policy of this type had, as late as the 21st century in a developed nation that prides itself on human rights, freedom of speech and diversity, never been considered; this failure is evidence of just how forgotten are the nation’s first peoples to many white Australians.

“Australia is counted as the country with the greatest language loss in the world. Australia has people with 40,000 years of history embedded in their languages, history of weather patterns, its flora and fauna,” says Alex shaking her head at this tragic waste.

Through the stage performances of Ngapartji Ngapartji at Sydney’s Opera House, its premiere at the Melbourne International Arts Festival and performances at Sydney and Perth’s art festivals, policy on indigenous languages finally was framed.

“Until then there was no policy, no strategy on protecting indigenous languages. In 2005 the government did a survey on indigenous languages, but if nothing is done within the next 50 years these languages will be lost. Yes there is now a policy, but there is no action, it needs weight and funding behind it. The intervention [that discriminates against Indigenous Australian through quarantine of welfare benefits] is rolled out costing millions of dollars while the Northern Territory Government ends bilingual education,” says Alex of the ongoing discriminatory policies of Australian governments toward the nation’s first peoples.

She stresses language is not a side issue in cultures, but is the very soul and spirit of culture.

“I firmly believe language is not just a nice element on the side, but if you bring language right into the center of Aboriginal policy you would see huge changes — if all schools across Australia had in their curriculum indigenous languages, imagine the country in 30 years,” says Alex pointing to Australia’s near neighbor, New Zealand that has taught Maori language in its schools for decades; this has allowed for deeper understanding, pride and respect for that culture across the island nation.

Audiences that took part in Ngapartji Ngapartji learned about the depth of indigenous culture and language, says Alex.

“People came away realizing that indigenous languages are complete, elegant, poetic, people said they had believed indigenous languages were of just one tense,” says Alex.

In the film Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji, Alex shows that Big hART did not take the easy road and knock up a bush stage, but rather transported Opera House quality sound, lighting, stage and more to the tiny indigenous community.

“The lead actor, Trevor, has a foot in two worlds, he grew up in the West so he was really nervous as he only speaks some Pitjantatjara and here he was performing to an audience of Pitjantatjara speakers. And that community also rarely speaks of Maralinga, so the film is the journey, the conflict and the radiation deaths from Maralinga,” says Alex, highlighting the fact that the lead actor, a Pitjantatjara man is yet another victim of language loss and the inescapable loss also of his own history.

all photos by brett monaghan

Last night a small tribe of Sydneysiders gathered in one of those ever-growing number of Marrickville warehouse-assembly rooms to take in a screening of the doco Nothing Rhymes With Ngapartji. Those following this site will know it had a big and very well received premiere out in Alice Springs a month or so back, and that you will all get to see it on ABC TV later in the year. This was for those of us who would have gone to the Alice screening if we had been able.

As always the goodwill and camaraderie generated from this project flavoured the air as about 30 of us knocked back a few drinks and vegan only tucker (stipulation of the venue), then took to seats couches and swags on the floor to enjoy the movie. I will speak for myself only: I think it is a wonderful film and a remarkable achievement. Why? Because the stage production on which the film is based is very multi-layered (see my original review at australianstage.com), then there was the challenge facing the filmmakers (director Suzie Bates and her team) to capture the adventure of taking this production out to the tiny town of Ernabella – several hundred kilometres south-west of Alice Springs – just over the boarder into South Australia. Thus adding several more layers of fascinating storytelling.

Apart from the raw beauty of the footage, and the innate drama, it is the organisation of he complex material into a grippingly well-told story that most impresses. The partnership between director Suzy Bates and editor Vanessa Milton was clearly productive. This is one of those films where so much fabulous stuff would have had to be cut away, with rigorous discipline the foundation stone of any final product that made both a visual impact on viewers – and made sense.

In the stage production we have the story of the 1950s atomic bomb testing at Maralinga (SA) and how this affected whole communities of Aboriginals, killing some immediately, others dying slowly over time with radiation poisoning, and decimating communities as they were forced to flee hundreds of square kilometres of contaminated homelands. A diaspora of desperation and grief that took individuals and groups in directions mostly to the north and the west. Some ended up at the Ernabella mission to the north: so essentially the project being documented was taking the play back to many of the people who ‘own’ this story. There was an open challenge for any of us to come with a title for the film: and while it’s too late now, my suggestion – after seeing the film last night – is Ngapartji Ngapartji: Back to Country. I think that title or something like it would better focus audiences attention on the film’s central theme.

Others fleeing the ‘sticky poison clouds fled into Western Australia including the grandparents of Trevor Jamieson, star (if you will) of both the play and the film. We follow what happened to Maralinga’s dispossessed through the trials of Trevor’s grandparents, then their children (including Trevor’s father) and then his children, including Trevor’s troubled brother Jangala. The tale as it is unfolds demonstrates the damage done to Aboriginal people inter-generationally as a consequence of their dislocation from traditional homelands. But unlike other versions of this now familiar narrative, Ngapartji Ngapartji – as a work of art – embodies in itself a journey towards ‘healing’.

Pushing past the grief and tragedy into – well wait and see the film. But this is one of its strong points: the impact the show has on members of the Ernabella community. Among the revelations to those of us who witnessed the film-making are the on-screen interviews with local elders – senior women who not only experienced the bombs as children but perform on stage as part of the choir or storytellers in their own language – Pitjantjatjara. And senior law men to whom Trevor must defer on several matters for advice – but one in particular.

A mere three weeks before preparations swing into action in Ernabella with the arrival of a pantechnicon of gear and an advance team of production techies, Trevor’s father dies. Traditionally, the names of the dead are never to mentioned and viewing any images of the deceased is forbidden. Yet not only does Trevor normally talk about his father’s life in the stage production, there is also film footage of Trevor asking his father how his grandmother died. As we discover – murdered in a rage by his grandfather, her husband (the circumstances are as culturally fascinating as they are tragic. So, layered on top of the many stories already captured in the play is this a new one (among others): an immensely significant cultural debate about whether Trevor and the production team need to drop all references in the play to Trevor’s father. As tradition would hitherto require.

The film also captures the response of the Ernabella community from the time the production team arrives, through the building of the set, to  participation of locals in rehearsals, all the way through to recording the (two only) performances under starry skies.I guess what I am trying to suggest here is that structuring a film that can make sense of so many parallel narratives in the ‘less-then-an-hour’ required for television was an enormous challenge – on a par with the demands made on the crew who undertook the filming itself.

In my view, the film is very well put together, makes a lot of sense and is hugely powerful. But I have the benefit of much prior knowledge. Few one-hour documentaries attempt to take on so much. Whether unprepared viewers are able to follow the many journeys the film pursues is a question yet to be answered. That the documentary was not accepted for this year’s Sydney Film Festival raises concerns. Does the film not quite make the grade – or where the assessors looking for a ‘western format’ that could never have done the job. One only has to think of Ten Canoes…

What I would like to say about is that Big hART is a creative company that specialises in deeply layered stories anyway, often built over years, and this film fits into that mold. Those of us who look at dot paintings from Central Desert and only see pretty patterns are usually well aware that, to better-informed eyes, these pictures are also ‘full of story’. Mostly story. One part of the film that sets it apart for Whitefellas from the play is a scene  where one of the senior women tells us a story in Pitjantjatjara. We can tell it is important – but what is she saying? In the film this speech is serviced with sub-titles: and what this woman has to say about the atom bomb testing and its impact over the following 60 years on her people is like listening to a survivor of the Holocaust giving evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

That the entire film is also interlaced with scenes of Ernabella’s children forever at play, tumbling rivers of innocence and natural-born joy, serve as silent visual testimony to another narrative yet to be played out in full.

one of my favourite photos from the trip

Wai! Palya!

While bush workshops, ‘memory basket’ production, planning for attendance at another youth learning workshop in Darwin in September, ongoing documentary work and Nyuntu Ngali creative development all tick along here at Ngapartji Ngapartji, the focus of this news posting will be on an issue that sits squarely behind all of these activities – raising public awareness of the status and significance of indigenous languages, of their rapid loss, and of the pressing need to create policy and strategies to promote, preserve, and maintain indigenous languages, as well as ensure they have a respected and valued place in Australian society and life.

As discussed briefly in the previous posting (June), a big part of the ongoing work done here at Ngapartji Ngapartji has been using the high profile created by project arts activity, such as the theatre show, as leverage to push for social change, in this case to lobby for a National Indigenous Language policy. The last month has seen some significant and exciting developments in this area, including Alex taking an incredible collection of over forty letters in support of such a policy to Minister Macklin in Canberra, and consequently receiving word of a commitment to develop an indigenous languages action plan.

Alex recently shared the background of these developments with us at Ngapartji Ngapartji, as well as detailing where all this sits in both the project’s and Big hART’s commitment to social change. It was a fascinating session and worth sharing some of the details…

Indigenous language and social change.

While much of the projects activity on the ground has been concerned with arts or media activity with Pitjantjatjara people of central and south Australia, indigenous language has always been a significant part of these activities, through the website, the theatre production, youth learning and literacy activity, and film, media and music workshops with young people. Underpinning all these activities has been the Big hART commitment to using project arts activity to create public awareness around issues faced by the target communities, and in doing so instigate positive changes in identity and behavior, and in broader community and public attitudes to marginalized communities. This is based on the idea that ‘nations are narrations’ and that through community arts projects, Big hART can facilitate marginalized communities to change or ‘retell’ dominant negative or disempowering narrations, to create stories that truly reflect the values, qualities and experiences of participants. As the Big hART project booklet says ‘It’s harder to hurt someone if you know their story’.

While there are many models and theories advocated for achieving social change, there is no evidence of a single prescribed road to take. From Alex’s description of the Ngapartji Ngapartji project’s multi-faceted language campaign, it is clear that rather than a top down approach (through policy, law or government change) or bottom up approach (from action by the people and communities directly affected), this campaign has employed a ‘kata, alipiri,muti, tjina’ (head, shoulders, knees and toes) style attack which has involved not only top down and bottom up, but nudging, poking, tapping, schmoozing, pestering, informing, questioning, discussing, moving, and entertaining, at multiple levels of the public domain, including media, academic, political, and general public forums in both local and national communities.

Challenging Dominant values…

From Alex’s description, building such a campaign has faced many challenges. This has included employing a difficult mix of tenacity and sensitivity to counter and meet the prevailing values, misconceptions and ignorance around indigenous language issues. While there are of course many exceptions, widespread values this campaign continually encounters through politicians, the media, academics and the general public, suggest that as a nation, Australia doesn’t value languages other than the dominant English; doesn’t understand what is embedded within other languages (culture, history, and meaning that is not simply translatable); views indigenous peoples, language and culture, as ‘simple’ or ‘primitive’; and has a limited understanding of indigenous languages, ie. how many there were, how many have been lost, and how many, and where they are still spoken. (I recently asked my 16 year old niece who attends a private school in Melbourne how many indigenous languages she thought there were in Australia. She answered ‘two’. My own daughter, brought up in Alice Springs, answered ‘twenty-five’. Both fall well short ofthe actual two hundred plus correct answer.)

Other Challenges…

Part of challenging and changing public perceptions has also been the tricky process of identifying who and what sectors of the nebulous ‘public domain’ to target, and how most effectively to do this in each case. Against this background, Ngapartji Ngapartji staff, particularly Sydney-based Melanie Gillbank and Alice Springs-based Alex Kelly, have conducted extensive research around indigenous languages, about both their existing status, and any existing relevant policies, or the lack there-of. The task has also been to link the importance of indigenous languages to service delivery, consultation and effective strategies to address other challenging issues faced by indigenous people, such as health, education, employment and community capacity building, yet without becoming entangled in the complex and controversial issues of each of these separate areas. Intensive research has also been required to understand how things work in Canberra, and how to fit all this groundwork into the complex processes and procedures in operation at the federal political level.

Allies…

As well as targeting ‘the opposition’, Mel and Alex have also attended language conferences and meetings all over Australia, and over the years made at least half a dozen presentations about the project’s links and commitment to language issues in forums also committed to supporting indigenous languages and halting their rapid loss. Over time, this has gained the trust of many others (linguists, academics, activists, teachers, first language speakers, community language teachers, and indigenous community members) who have been working tirelessly, but often individually, to promote, preserve and maintain indigenous languages. This work has contributed to the building up of a strong network and coalition sharing a similar aim – that is to push for a National Indigenous Language policy. The breadth of this support and coalition building was reflected in the incredible amount of letters sent to the project from many different sources, organizations and individuals, both indigenous and non-indigenous, from all over Australia in support of action around indigenous languages.

The Canberra meeting…

Alex copied, collated and bound these letters to form an impressive and powerful document that she was able to present to Minister Macklin, and the advisors to Ministers’ Peter Garret, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, in the meeting in Canberra on June 23^rd. This meeting was also attended by long-term passionate language advocates Kevin Lowe, Eastern States Indigenous Languages Working Group and Inspector for Aboriginal Education at the Board of Studies NSW, and Faith Baisden, who is on the Queensland Indigenous Language Advisory Committee and works for The State Library of Queensland’s Indigenous Languages Project.

According to Alex: ‘it was a very quick meeting – 25 minutes seemed to flash past. It was fantastic to have advisers from four offices, including the PM and Deputy PM there as well as an executive staff member from DEWHA (The Department of Environment, Water, Heritage, and the Arts) which is Garrett’s dept and where the language program sits…The meeting felt very much as if Macklin was onside and supportive and the conclusion was that she would talk with Garrett and Gillard when they are back in Australia about making a joint statement regarding commitment to developing a policy!!’

Alex Kelly, Kevin Lowe and Faith Baisden outside Parliment House, June 23, 2009.

The outcome..

Only days after this meeting, Alex received word that DEWHA has commenced drafting an Indigenous Languages Action Plan and will coordinate this process through relevant Government agencies before consulting with key indigenous stakeholders. Obviously this is only the start of a long process but it demonstrates a commitment to the issues around indigenous languages being taken seriously at a federal level.

Yeeee-haaaa!

Language campaign Time-line

Feb 2004 – Ngapartji Ngapartji project conceptualised

Sept 2004 – Produced pilot language lesson and website in Coober Pedy

Mid 2005 – Meet with FATSIL to discuss application of project in termsof policy outcomes

July 2005 – Community film production workshops commence in AliceSprings

Oct 2005 – Work in progress season of Ngapartji Ngapartji in Melbourne International Arts Festival

April 2006 – Launch of Ninti site – online Pitjantjatjara language andculture site

Oct 2006 – World Premiere of Ngaparjti Ngaparjti main stage production

June 2007 – Peter Garrett launches tour to Dreaming Festival and news website, Alice Springs

Sept 2007 – Indigenous languages conference, Adelaide

July 2008 – Lingfest Conference, Sydney

July 2008 – Ngapartji Ngaparjti release background paper on indigenous languages

April 2009 – Central Australian Linguistics Circle presentation

June 2009 – Canberra meeting with Macklin et al

And finally..

To sum up, the fight to recognize and support indigenous languages has been a long and complex road, one that started long before the Ngapartji Ngapartji project began, and one that will continue long after. But it is heartening to see some tangible interest and developments around action in this area at a federal level, so thank you to all of you for all the unseen and unacknowledged work in this area (especially Alex and Mel), and to all those who have contributed in big or small ways to this campaign, both recently, and in the long history of those who have fought to have indigenous languages recognized and valued.

PS: If you want to get involved with the campaign or want more info about the meeting in Canberra feel free to contact Alex on alex@ngaparjti.org or at the Ngapartji Ngapartji office on 08 89535463.

Other Relevant Links:

PDF file of letters delivered at the Canberra meeting:

http://www.ngapartji.org/content/view/197/92/

National Indigenous Languages Survey 2005:

http://www.arts.gov.au/indigenous/MILR/publications

AIATSIS paper on bilingual education policy in the NT:

http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/research_

program/publications/discussion_papers

More news on other project activity soon..

Jane –

On behalf of the Ngapartji Ngapartji team, Alice Springs.

Art and Upheaval by William Cleveland features a chapter on Big hART and the Ngapartji Ngapartji project with interviews with Scott Rankin, Trevor Jamieson and I.

From New Village Press:

Citizen artists successfully rebuild the social infrastructure in six communities devastated by war, repression and dislocation.

Author William Cleveland tells remarkable stories from Northern Ireland, Cambodia, South Africa, United States (Watts, Los Angeles), aboriginal Australia, and Serbia, about artists who resolve conflict, heal unspeakable trauma, give voice to the forgotten and disappeared, and restitch the cultural fabric of their communities.

Art can be a powerful agent of personal, institutional and community change. The stories in this book have valuable implications for artists, academics, educators, human service providers, philanthropists, and community leaders throughout the world. The artists documented in the book have generated new technologies for advocacy, organizing, peacemaking, healing trauma and the rebuilding of community. Creativity is our most powerful capacity, and it can mitigate and heal our most destructive tendencies.

Beth Sometimes and I had a chapter published in the book Re-awakening languages: theory and practice in the revitalisation of Australia’s Indigenous languages. We wrote about “Ngapartji Ngapartji; Indigenous Languages in the Arts”.

The Indigenous languages of Australia have been undergoing a renaissance over recent decades. Many languages that had long ceased to be heard in public and consequently deemed ‘dead’ or ‘extinct’, have begun to emerge.

Geographically and linguistically isolated, revitalisers of Indigenous Australian languages have often struggled to find guidance for their circumstances, unaware of the others walking a similar path. In this context Re-awakening languages seeks to provide the first comprehensive snapshot of the actions and aspirations of Indigenous people and their supporters for the revitalisation of Australian languages in the twenty-first century.

The contributions to this volume describe the satisfactions and tensions of this ongoing struggle. They also draw attention to the need for effective planning and strong advocacy at the highest political and administrative levels, if language revitalisation in Australia is to be successful and people’s efforts are to have longevity.

The book can be ordered through University of Sydney here and chapter prelims can be viewed here (PDF).

Written by James Waites
Monday, 14 January 2008
Australian Stage Online Wantinyalana! Once in a Life Time!

A few days back on a Festival blog entry I waxed lyrical over the rich treasure of the Kev Carmody tribute concert. There I mentioned how some of us were ready to cast aside our White Supremicist arrogance, sit down at the feet of Aboriginal Elders and listen to whatever it was they saw fit to tell us.

How could I know that the Carmody concert was but a warm up for Big hArt’s enthralling drama –  Ngapartji Ngapartji – about the life of the Central Desert’s Spinifex people and, in particular, the joys and sufferings of lead storyteller, Trevor Jamieson and his immediate family. Do the gods really ever listen? Maybe totems do. For here I was, a few days later, not just in the presence of a truly major work of art – brimming with ideas and emotions, and exquisitely realized – but in the form of the very ‘sit down and listen’ I had asked for.

In a style that bounces joy and sometimes even reckless laughter off the cold walls or wisdom, grief and sadness (found also in the film Ten Canoes to those who saw it), I was among the second-night Festival audience who, first up, learned how to sing the kindergarten song ‘Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes’ in Pitjanjatjara: ‘Kata alpiri muti tjina’. A great ice-breaker. All of us being little kids again. The child in us brought to the surface, we were sat down again and so the lesson began.

Much recent Aboriginal expression deploying western theatre forms has been reminiscent of grief counselling: where the victim initially unleashes the horror of the experiences that is holding their healing back. The story has almost always been personal and, however compelling and sometimes hilarious, we whitefellas cannot help but come away ‘shamed’. I’m thinking of works including the plays of Jack Davis about the 200-year-old ‘White Problem’ in West Australia to the solo shows of Ningali Lawson and Leah Purcell, Seven Stages of Grieving, and many more.

Ngapartji’s writer and director, Scott Rankin, worked with Purcell on her excellent one-person show, Box the Pony, which premiered at the Festival of Dreaming in Sydney in 1997. A decade later he is one among a vast tribe of artists, volunteers, language teachers, activists, web specialists, and others, known as Big hArt – who have brought the elusive dream of ‘community art’ practice to a level artistic sophistication that rivals Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Big hArt’s Ngapartji Ngapartji project centres on the concern for lost language, the glue that holds any culture together. Australia has already lost half of its 300 indigenous languages; and 110 of the 145 surviving are on the critically endangered list.

You could say the current production at Belvoir Street (where, for a Sydney season, this show belongs) is the above-surface component of the Big hArt Ngapartji Ngapartji iceberg; the bulk of the cultural activity taking place beneath this surface. Perhaps it’s better to imagine Uluru as the tip of a mountain rising bluntly out of its shimmering Central Desert surrounds, with the bulk of its meaning, history and purpose lying beneath the surrounding red-earth surface.

Nearby Alice Springs serves as the centre for Big hArt. As the program notes, this location on Arrente country is along way from  the Jamieson family’s Spinifex nation to the south west. But much of this land is uninhabitable, even unapproachable, due to the poison that lies in the soil since atom-bomb testing which took place, most infamously at Maralinga.

But Big hArt has worked on projects across the length and breadth of Australia, including sites in Tasmania, the troubled Sydney beach community of Cronulla; and even Northcott – the daunting Housing Commission estate that raps its loving and sometimes troubled arms around the Belvoir Street Theatre.

In development is Gold a Murray-Darling basin project which is looking at the effect of water (or lack of it) on communities from the Queensland border and along the course of the river system down into South Australia. It is Big hArt’s first foray into the matter of global warming. And in typical fashion it is coordinating opportunities for those effected to share their stories, and by whatever means appear appropriate, art-making will emerge.

In yet another most fortuitous merging of opportunities, Big hArt’s National Creative Director and Cofounder, Scott Rankin, was invited to give the 2008 Rex Cramphorn Lecture, included for the first time in a Sydney Festival program and delivered yesterday. Rankin offered an extraordinarily insightful commentary – again, like all Big hArt’s work I’ve now seen, swinging artlessly from sombre fact-telling to self-deprecating joke-telling, taking in both big-picture vision and microscopic and respectful observance.

Ngapartji Ngapartji is the perfect example. The production’s central performer, Trevor Jamieson, explains that he began on this project because he wanted to make a film about one of his brothers, Jangala, who – like so many dispossessed – was having trouble holding his life together. There is some stunning footage of this film where family, including Jangala’s own children, gather round after his release from jail to discuss, quite animatedly, where he might go from here.

This story of one young man’s troubles is used to personalize the big version of the Spinifex people who were driven from their land after the Australia agreed to Britain’s request to use nearby country to test atom bombs. We are all aware, to varying degrees, the impact this had on those who were poisoned. While physical illness in terms of cancer is widespread, so was the dispersion of community and consequently language. To quote Cape York elder, Roger Hart, “When I speak language, it makes me feel home”. And Rita Mae Brown: “Language is the roadmap to culture. It tells you where people are coming from and where they are going.” So this is the story of profound loss.

And it helps explain why, if you dip into the Big hArt website, you can find out how to enroll in Pitjanjatjara, the language of the Spinifex people. This company is not just out to point the finger of blame, it is rolling up its sleeves and getting into the business of helping with the healing. On the matter of radiation poisoning, the cast includes Japanese-born Yumi Umiumare, who contributes her own people’s version of this catastrophe; and we are reminded too that Australian scientists stole the bones of hundreds of infants for years, both black and white, to test for the effect of pre-natal radiation poisoning. So white people have also been abused.

Drawing on the malleable language of western theatre practice, this production takes the previous work (above mentioned) of Davis, Lawson and Purcell, et al, a step further. Here we go beyond identifying the crisis and releasing some of the pain, to a new phase of learning and healing – the beginning of. That we start with rehearsing the most simple kindergarten song is fun, but no joke. Most of us really do have to go right ‘back to the very beginning’ to make our start. In a stark reminder touched on during the production: we all know how to go to France and say ‘bonjour’ to the locals. But how many of us can do the same in even one of Australia’s 150 surviving traditional tongues? As Rankin reworked this alarming fact into his lecture: John Howard sent in the army to help but, after jumping off the trucks, not a single soldier knew how to say ‘hi’ in the vernacular of the people they had supposedly turned up to help.

By familiar western theatre standards, Ngapartji Ngapartji is a profound and moving drama, exquisitely told. Trevor Jamieson carries the weight of the production with such a gift for movement and story-telling that you imagine he is carrying around a feather. He share’s the stage with a fine supporting cast including artists and artisans, Australians of other blood-lines, and half-a-dozen women elders. Their presence proffers, in equal share again, both laughter and gravitas.

Already eight years in the making, Njapartji Ngapartji is, at its core, the unfolding of one family’s story. Without giving too much away, now is an amazing time to catch where this family story is at. Let me just say this: I called my response to the Kev Carmody concert: ‘Art Can Save Lives’. Ngapartji Ngapartji is living proof.

To hear the David Byrne/Talking Heads anthem, ‘Once in a Lifetime’ wash over you in Pitjanjatjara is a once-in-a-life-time experience. So is this show: the bold little foal I mentioned last week is now bolting around the paddock. Go take a look. Such beauty can make you weep!

Further Reading www.bighart.org

Company B, Sydney Festival and Big hART in association with Melbourne International Arts Festival, Perth International Arts Festival and Sydney Opera House present
Ngapartji Ngapartji

Venue: Belvoir St Theatre, 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
Dates: 12 January – 10 February 2008
Times: Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday to Saturday 8pm, Sunday 5pm
Duration: 2hrs, 20mins, including interval
Tickets: Full $54
Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) & Groups 10+ $45.
Concession $33.
Student Rush $25 for Tuesday 6.30pm, available from 10am on the day (subject to availability)
Bookings: Belvoir St Theatre on (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au | www.sydneyfestival.org.au

by Alex Kelly
Arts Hub
Friday, June 15, 2007

What could a young resident of an Alice Springs town camp possibly have to teach a successful white city-dweller? How about one of the oldest languages in the world?

You might have heard about Ngapartji Ngapartji as a huge stage show that has toured to critical and audience acclaim in Melbourne and Perth festivals. The show follows the story of Spinifex man Trevor Jameson and his family, and their encounters with the dark history of nuclear tests at Maralinga.

Ngapartji Ngapartji, which means “I give you something, you give me something” in Pitjantjatjara, is more than just a performance. Making its debut in Adelaide is the other, more interactive version of the show – a theatre performance, language and culture course, and history lesson rolled together, where the opportunity to learn and exchange culture and language is taken to a much deeper level.

The Ngapartji Ngapartji project, which straddles grassroots and mainstream festivals, also attempts to engage with national policy, particularly in the area of Indigenous languages. Working on the project can mean joining in on skill-sharing workshops with young Pitjantjatjara speakers in town camps one minute, and meeting with ministers in Canberra the next. It can mean having a crowbar in one hand, helping elders to look for goanna, and a backstage pass to the Sydney Opera House in the other.

Jumping between these worlds is not easy, but Big hART recognises that these are exactly the kind of stretches that are required if we want to talk about reconciliation, about Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians making a future together which works for everyone. First, we have to learn how to talk to each other, find out each other’s stories. The big challenge is to make those connections work at many different levels.

The Ngapartji Ngapartji language show asks audience/participants to step up to that challenge, to take the opportunity to learn more than a few words of Pitjantjatjara, to learn about a complex culture, its kinship networks, its strength in family and incredible history of survival. The show is an invitation to participate in a generous exchange.

It’s a challenge that, for many audience members, has been an incredibly rewarding and emotional experience. Here’s some of the feedback we received from Melbourne audiences of the language show we performed there in 2005:

“Best honest performance I have seen in many years – exactly what is needed to bring worlds together”
“I was ‘transported’ to ‘your’ country and I felt welcomed”
“As a linguist seeing such an innovative way to get people aware of, involved in and keen to learn language it is the most wonderful project I have ever seen”
“It changed my experience of the world”
“I hope I get the chance to give you something”

What is given to the performers/participants in exchange is a powerful sense of pride in their culture, and the confidence to access “mainstream” ways of sharing, through theatre, film, story, and song. The strength of being respected for language and culture feeds back into health, empowers communities, and changes the story of poverty and helplessness in Indigenous communities which is so often told by the media.

These changes are not always immediately obvious to audience members. The audience might leave the show feeling that they have been given an amazing gift of insight into a culture and story. But working with the young people, we have a chance to witness the changes that take place for them, and the transformation is just as dramatic.

The depth of exchange happening at the language shows is rewarding for everyone involved. It’s only through this reciprocal learning that we can make the connections we must make with each other to walk together into the future. Like the Big hART principle says, ‘it’s harder to hurt someone if you know their story.’ And there is already so much hurt in the story of Aboriginal Australia.

It’s a joyful and very overwhelming project to be working on. The stresses of touring a massive show with ever changing team of performers, entire families, etc are also an exchange for us – the emotional demands are great, and the learning curves are steep. But in return we feel we are making the kind of theatre that really can change the world.

Ngapartji Ngapartji toured The Dreaming Festival from 8 to 10 June, and is appearing at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival until 17 June.

It’s a unique and unforgettable experience, and we hope you take up the opportunity to share in the story.

For more information about Ngapartji Ngapartji, visit http://www.ngapartji.org.