Whispering Winds: Stories of Pain and Recognition

Japanangka was born in the old time amongst his ancestors, an Anmatjirra man, and found wandering nomadically over the red earth in a world of timelessness on sugar ant country, making country camps all over the land with the old jilpas under the stars, and steeped in bush lore from centuries ago. Fat kangaroo and bush turkey were in abundance and the country was green and grassy under the swaying she-oaks. Still, Japanangka stood tall, astride a horse, stockman's gait and strong. He had an akubra hat glued to his head, a cheeky smile, dancing eyes, rolling laugh, and light brown skin. He was the son of a Nordic man and tribal woman and had to blacken his wide face for the welfare boys and run and hide far away from camp, playing with his shanghai until the white fella mob were gone. When the devil mob came with their cattle and destroyed his sugar ant lands, he went droving the cattle as far north as Camowheel and got paid with flour, trous', and tobacco. He became the head stockman, boss man and bucked on wild, kicking horses bareback, and had to leave his country for long stretches of time. He lived among the white fellas far from his country and kin for sun-ups and downs of time; his homesick heart ached in concert with the whistling winds and rose and fell with the crackling embers of the fire, night after night, and he sent smoke signals along the tracks to his country, on the back of the whispering winds.

In the early 1980s, the heyday of Land Rights, I lived in Central Australia, working as a sociologist with the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress. A senior Aboriginal man, Dick Lechleitner Japanangka, worked alongside me, and we visited many Aboriginal communities and coauthored two books: Health Business and Settle Down Country. We held many meetings and recorded in language—on film and in print—the voices of Aboriginal people. We fought for two-way medicine delivery and for the Pintupi people returning to thei