Lajamanu!

After spending 5 weeks in Alice Springs getting used to all the procedures and completing all training requirements I have finally made it to Lajamanu. Due to the short route being closed due to flooding after the recent cyclone that went through the Tanami Desert a few weeks ago my ranger coordinator, and I drove to Lajamanu via the long route which we did over two days (about a 12-hour drive from Alice Springs, while the short route would have taken 9 hours). We left Alice Springs on the afternoon of the 9th and aimed to get to Tennant Creek by 7pm, but alas we had to stop at Wauchope which was 120kms short of Tennant Creek. We stayed at the Devils Marbles Inn in bunk beds and the food there was amazing. We left Wauchope at 6:30am the next day so that we could make it to Lajamanu before nightfall. Driving here at night is particularly deadly due to the animals you can encounter on the road while driving at 100+km speeds. It was a wonderful drive on the highway driving at speeds of 130kmph (the speed limit on sealed roads) which was amazing. The latter few hours of the trip from Dunmarra to Lajamanu was on dirt road and I drove at 110kmph which was the speed limit, whilst dodging cattle on the way. We got into Lajamanu at around 6:30pm on the 10th. The closest non-aboringinal town is Katherine which is 6 hours north of Lajamanu.

I am very happy to report that my house was indeed not a tent (when my boss asked me if I owned a tent I was worries that my house was going to be portable), but a very luxurious house with two bedrooms, with fans and air conditioners, a very roomy kitchen and hall with a TV. I have a lovely garden and share the premises with my Ranger Coordinator who lives next door. An added bonus was his two adorable dogs, Lottie and Indi who spend most of their time at my house (particularly on the weekends) and only go home reluctantly in the evenings when I order them to return to their master.

The Lajamanu town is only around 2km long and the police station is the first building you pass as you enter the town. My office is a minute walk from my house, with the school separating my house and the office. All the Kardiya people (term used for non-indigenous people) live on my street (Kiwinyi Crescent). There is an airstrip, store, fuel station, health clinic, a Baptist church, library, a Shire Council, a recreational hall, basketball courts, footy ground, an employment agency and clothes store here. All the other buildings are houses used by the Warlpiri people.

My first week at work involved a lot of administration work and getting used to Lajamanu. We have 5 rangers excluding my ranger coordinator. Silas James, Lionel Mick, Helen Wilson, Joy Herbert and the senior ranger Dione Kelly. Dione Kelly is like royalty here as he is the heir to take over as the leader of the Warlpiri in Lajamanu. Whilst having him on the ranger team is a privilege, due to his commitments he is away most of the time for various Warlpiri matters. However, I was told that if am ever I am in trouble or feel I am in danger from any indigenous person even if in Alice Springs I can just say his name and people will leave me alone. There is also an anthropology researcher called Geoffrey Matthews at the office who knows which Warlpiri person is responsible for which area of land within the IPA (Indigenous Protected Area). So we have 8 people on the ground to manage 40,000km2 of land area. To put that into perspective that is roughly 2/3rds the area of Sri Lanka.

Silas and Lionel took me around town in my first week to meet everyone and see the town. We went to see the senior most elder in Lajamanu, Jerry Jangala Patrick (leader of the Warlpiri in Lajamanu), but he was having a nap so we couldn’t see him, but I did meet him on my next visit.

Jerry is a remarkable man with a story of heartbreak, courage and hope. He was uprooted from his traditional lands by the Australian government from the eastern lands of Central Australia and brought to Lajamanu. Lajamanu and the lands surrounding it belong to the Gurindji tribe. He walked back to his homeland on three different occasions through various weather conditions and living off bush meat throughout his journey only to be carted back to Lajamanu each time. The so called missionaries who were stationed in Central Australia were cruel and horrible people. Through all these struggles he has ensured peace and harmony prevailed in Lajamanu. The Gurindji people have given Jerry the authority to speak on behalf of them for their lands out of Lajamanu and he in return respects them and makes wise decisions knowing he is on foreign soil. He has been a widower for the past 22 years and recently lost his elder son who died very suddenly. He is in his late 80s and lives with his 2nd son and daughter who take good care of him. Jerry holds an Australian Order medal and helped to translate the bible into Warlpiri. He speaks good English, which he learnt quite late in his life. He is well respected by all in the community and is also the priest at the Baptist church here which I attend, provided he can get up in time for the service. His son told me that he saw his first white person, who was a lady when he was 8 years old.

The proper priest who was assigned to this parish has left so we have no priest yet to give out communion. Jerry has not turned up for service yet, but his trusted associate Lynette Tasman faithfully leads service instead. We are lucky if we have 15 people for the service which includes a few teachers from the school who are Kardiya and myself while the rest are all from the tribe. The service is very simple. We sing a few hymns which also include a few Warlpiri ones, have a reading say a prayer and that’s it. Best of all, no sermon, hooray. We use guitars for the service, but we now have finally got a keyboard as well which I hope to utilise.

The mail service here is very basic, but works very efficiently. The mail plane arrives every Wednesday. There is no postman here so you have to personally go to the post office and collect your mail on Thursdays. Any outgoing mail has to be delivered to the post office by Tuesday. Kiwi runs the post office and is originally from Punjab, India. On the first day I went into the post office to introduce myself she had my mail ready for me. She knew immediately as soon as I said my name that I was from the subcontinent. Her husband, Powell, is the mechanic and his workshop is right next to the post office.

Everyone in Lajamanu is so nice. All the main enterprises here are run by non-Warlpiri people. Richard, Debbie, Gary, Carol, Netta and Reagan (son of my Ranger Coordinator) run the store and fuel station. The employment agency and clothes shop are run by Dianne and Yura (from the Cook Islands). Jody runs the library and we have three police officers stationed here lead by Sheree. I have yet to meet the health workers and here is why I have been unable to do so.

We had a few incidences occur last week which have shocked everyone here. The main one involved one of the Warlpiri teen’s setting fire to the ambulance which resulted in an explosion destroying the emergency ward and closing down the health centre. The culprit has been caught and is awaiting a severe punishment as this is the first violent act of this nature to ever occur in Lajamanu. At a time when the health centre is most needed we are frantically running around trying to get it up and running again and have temporarily moved services to another building for emergencies and medication visits only. The arsonist had a tiff with his girlfriend and decided to burn the ambulance in retaliation although no one can understand the connection. His trial is due to be held soon and since he has already confessed he will be exiled from the community for a start and any other punishment the elders see fit will be passed on him. Adding to this we had a few teen’s break into the employment agency and the store to steal the cash inside. For their bad luck there was no cash on the property so they left empty handed. A community meeting was held and the Kardiya threatened to leave Lajamanu if another incident occurred. They know that if this threat is carried out it would mean no store, fuel, health centre, employment agency, library etc. The culprits were caught by the tribe on the same day following the threat and further supplemented by keeping the store closed as leverage till the arrests were made. I was informed that a public flogging is customary for the wrongdoers irrespective of gender on these occasions (which I did not witness) which is carried out by the respective uncles.

Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions Lajamanu is on lockdown except for essential services. This means no one from Lajamanu can go out or no one comes in unless it is listed by the NT government as an essential need. This is all in an effort to keep the spread COVID-19 under control and as far as the Northern Territory is concerned as zero (except for the 1 case caught weeks ago at the Darwin airport). As you can imagine this means my conservation work is limited and many of my joint conservation trips have been cancelled. We are under a lot of scrutiny to keep doing our tasks while adhering to the travel restrictions. Fortunately, all the Central Land Council field staff are in the same boat and the CEO has been very good to us in being a constant pillar of support by liaising with all the health officials in the state on a regular basis. Every trip I make from this point on even it is inside the IPA has to be approved by the CEO beforehand.

I held my first IPA committee meeting last Thursday which went so much better than expected. The day before I took two of the rangers with me and went to remind all the committee members about the meeting. I broke a record by finishing the meeting in 1.5 hrs despite the meeting being scheduled to go on from 10-3 and finished with lunch. As usual with the tribe almost nothing starts on time. They refer to this as Yapa (term used for indigenous people) time. Luckily with the help of my rangers we collected all the members by jeep and managed to get the meeting going at 10:30. My boss called on via video conference as he is banned from leaving Alice Springs to visit indigenous communities due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions. At the end of the meeting I was given the skin name ‘’Japangardi’’ which means daytime and the associated colour is green bestowed by Jerry Patrick as the practice of welcoming me into the community. The animal connected to this name is the goanna (land monitor). Basically a skin name is the tribal family name used to refer to themselves which places them within the tribe’s societal structure. This name is usually embedded as their middle name like Jerry ‘’Jangala’’ Patrick. So from this point on my name within this community will go as ‘’Jonathan Japangardi Gnanapragasam’’. This means my ranger coordinator is my brother-in-law whose skin name is ‘’Jampijimpa’’. All male names start with J while all female names begin with N.

There are also two relationships here which are considered poisonous. You will laugh at the first.

*son-in-law and mother-in-law

In an ideal situation these two parties cannot be in the same room at the same time. When this is not possible they will sit at opposite sides of the room or vehicle and will never speak to each other. The two reasons behind this are quite ingenious and weird. Due to the marriage system that is in place here it is quite often that the son-in-law and mother-in-law are usually of similar age which results in a higher likelihood for a love relationship to occur. Another view is that the true marriage bond is between the mother-in-law and son-in-law as she promises her daughter to him in marriage. As a sign of respect for each other they refrain from talking to each other.

*daughter-in-law and father-in-law

this relationship has the same protocols as the relationship above, but is less severely implemented and practiced.

When I was in Alice Springs I went for a cultural awareness training programme where one of the exercises was to map out the marriage system based on a name for each scenario. In this system there is a first choice, second choice, third choice marriage option, with the latter two to be used only when the first choice is not available based on your family skin group. It is always advised to go with the first choice as I found out on the training programme. The complications that arise in the tribal societal structure if one doesn’t adhere to it are catastrophic as it means your place in society might get disrupted on the hierarchical scale and results further in issues regarding land ownership arising. A Kardiya may think that this is unethical to make someone marry a person who they don’t love, but there are reasons why these rules are in place and they have worked for thousands of years, only to be screwed up by the younger generation who don’t adhere to it. Under this scheme I am not allowed to marry a Warlpiri girl despite my skin name although for fun I checked out which skin group I was allowed to marry. So if I were Warlpiri I am allowed to marry someone from the ‘’Nampijinpa’’ skin group. I have gained a few fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters in the tribe and also a few mother-in-laws. Fortunately, since I am not Yapa the restriction protocols are not very relevant or practiced in these circumstances so I can rest easy.

The housing issue and health problem is severe in Lajamanu. There are so many people crammed into a single house and health is very poor for many of the younger generation in particular. Alcohol is banned in Lajamanu including for Kardiya (unless you get a permit) as a means of keeping the youth sober. Alas the practice is not always followed and so the police have to do regular checks to stop alcohol and drugs entering the community. So much we as Kardiya take for granted when we live in cities.

The rangers and I have been on two bush trips so far. We went around to check Emu Rockhole, Turkey’s Nest and other waterbodies for any animals which had fallen in and died which we have to remove and also for presence of Cane Toads. Luckily for us all the waterbodies have been clean with no dead carcasses and no one in the community has seen Cane Toads all year within the IPA which is wonderful news. On our drive we saw a few wild horses and one of the Warlpiri men has rescued a baby camel and is raising it as a pet on his property. I have yet to see Dingoes, which are my favourite Aussie animal, but look forward to seeing them once I get out into the bush more.