Reviewed by Amanda Kearney
Zohl de Ishtar has written an interesting piece of work that draws upon her personal experience of working alongside Indigenous women in the community of Wirrimanu (Balgo) on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert in central Western Australia. The book, Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women’s Law , pivots on de Ishtar’s efforts at problematising the relationships that emerge, erode and persist between Indigenous people who live within remote communities and the non-Indigenous people who come, transiently and long-term to reside in these townships. The book’s contents have been described as evocative, profound, post-colonial and radically feminist, with the work being published and marketed within the frame of an ever-growing social consciousness, reflexivity and empathy among non-Indigenous readers. I see de Ishtar’s work as framing Indigenous women’s Law and life on largely non-Indigenous terms, for a non-Indigenous audience. This in itself is part of an ongoing discussion and point of contention in anthropology and related Indigenous and literary studies [1]. It is in relation to these disciplines that I locate myself and therefore it is from this perspective that I approach Holding Yawulyu . I also identify myself as someone who works collaboratively with Indigenous women in contexts of Law and land. The reason for flagging these personal identifiers is in response to what I feel de Ishtar has attempted to do in her writing, but is not entirely successful in achieving—namely, the act of reflexive writing. Positioning oneself appears to be a large part of de Ishtar’s initial commitment to this work, with the view that it is an outsider’s account and response to Aboriginal women’s Law and culture that is documented here. I am not convinced that de Ishtar’s Holding Yawulyu successfully maintains this position and it is this observation of the work that I wish to speak to.
Holding Yawulyu is composed over a number of discrete chapters, some of which document de Ishtar’s encounter of everyday and ceremonial life within the Aboriginal community of Wirrimanu, while others provide the context to life in Wirrimanu both before and after de Ishtar’s time there. The work deals specifically with the land and Law of the Kapululangu people. For Kapululangu women, Yawulyu is Law and powerful ceremony. De Ishtar entered into this community and spent time living there from the late 1990s into 2001. She came to live and work with Kapululangu women elders. During her time in Wirrimanu de Ishtar worked in a personal and professional capacity to assist Kapululangu women in the setting up and operation of the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre. This book really stands to document the course of events that led to the opening and, sadly, the dissolution of the Women’s Law and Culture Centre. Holding Yawulyu is certainly a brave piece of work that will appeal to many readers across academic and non-academic terrains. It works to demystify life in Aboriginal communities and illuminate some of the points of engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians but, unfortunately, in many ways it also contributes to a body of literature that exoticises Indigenous people and their ways of living.
De Ishtar handles Yawulyu with the respect and command that it deserves, and goes to great lengths to describe the importance of this Law for Kapululangu women and to share some of the details of its practice, presumably with the cultural sensitivity demanded of her by the Kapululangu women. Yawulyu or a-Yawulhu is one form of Law and ceremony, held by Aboriginal women in various parts of Northern Australia. This ceremony is understood as pivotal to the maintenance of land and health, physical and emotional wellbeing. It is granted a power and status that is derived from the ancestral Spirits who created the Law and is maintained and enacted in the ongoing lives of these women today. As indicated by de Ishtar, Yawulyu, and similar forms of ancestral Law, are held by women today as a source of pride and cultural persistence.
De Ishtar contextualises her encounter of Wirrimanu and Yawulyu by engaging with the earlier works of Catherine and Ronald Berndt, anthropologists who worked to record details of the lives of Kapululangu people and their neighbours in the Sandy Desert Region from the 1960s onwards. She contextualises her discussion by delving into the White history of the township, with a particular focus on missionary presences and local politics. The beginning and end sections of the book sit rather uncomfortably with these contextual efforts. The contextual chapters are juxtaposed alongside intensely personal accounts of the lives of both de Ishtar and Kapululangu women. The details contained in the contextual chapters are often presented as seemingly ‘objective’ in their telling of the region’s history. De Ishtar provides this as an unproblematic background to the current and emergent settings in Wirrimanu. One gets the sense that de Ishtar has not interrogated this literature adequately and has not engaged at length with Indigenous perceptions and understandings of this White history. I am therefore of the view that her account of the region’s White history would have been strengthened by engaging Kapululangu voices on the subject and documenting individual and group accounts of Indigenous responses, resistances and resilience to the White presence within their township. This I feel is an ongoing flaw in de Ishtar’s work, namely the minimal use or documentation of Indigenous voices and dialogue on the page. If the work is concerned with the lives and Law of Kapululangu people, then Kapululangu voices must be heard.
The strongest impressions gained from this book come from those chapters which document de Ishtar’s engagements with the local Wirrimanu community and which relate directly to the Kapululangu women and Yawulyu (early and latter chapters). Early in the work de Ishtar is positioned as an Irish-Australian lesbian (preface), radical feminist (50), embarking on a ‘solitary sojourn’ (xv) into the lives of the Wirrimanu women elders, a sojourn that she claims would ultimately bind her life to theirs (40) She identifies herself on such terms as cultural worker and apprentice to these women, and writes of gaining knowledge and insight into the practices of Yawulyu that culminate in her having responsibility for, caring for and holding Yawulyu (40).
It is to be acknowledged that in the first instance de Ishtar is reflexively locating herself in relation to the work, and this is admirable: disclaimer alone, however, does not remove the authorial implications of one’s position. The work would have benefited from an ongoing reflection on de Ishtar’s own position, own agency and attempts to understand particular events in relation to her very identity as constructed by herself and by others. Instead there is a tendency in discussion about engagements between de Ishtar and the wider community (both those of an everyday and more profound nature - as with her having to leave the community), for the terms of engagement to be understood in relation to ‘political/administrative, religious and Culture Industry elements of the settlement’ (276), gender, Aboriginal and white men, rather than in terms of de Ishtar herself. As such, beyond her initial engagements with her own identity, de Ishtar herself largely exits the picture, until the latter part of the book, and then is only given limited agency in the situations that arise and fall around her and the community. Her absence from the text was striking at times, and one cannot easily gauge the means by which de Ishtar gained information, how it was recorded, how it ultimately came to be represented on the page. She notes that efforts to record material on tape and as notes were abandoned early on (although a diary was kept and written into privately), in preference of a method that is described as “simply living—living simply—with the women” (49). One does not get a clear sense of what this entails and, again, cross reference to the words and dialogues of Kapululangu women is not done frequently enough for the reader to feel comfortable with de Ishtar’s authority in representation.
Representation is at the very heart of this book. According to de Ishtar, writing as a radical feminist offers the ‘right to delve into the subjective’, and according to her work, also brings the opportunity to be ‘intuitive’ and ‘irrational’ (50). Certainly there is great merit to this approach, and it is one that produces powerful and passionate work. However, I sit uncomfortably with these principles when they are employed in the representation of Indigenous women’s lives and Law. To what extent do the Kapululangu women themselves control this representation? Does it mirror the views of Law, life, land and people that are held by the women of Wirrimanu? I feel these issues should have been addressed in the book and openly interrogated by the author. Furthermore, I question the feminist principles that shape gender discussion in this work, and feel that the duality and opposition between Kapululangu men and women has been overstressed. In the latter parts of the book de Ishtar documents conflict and antagonism between Wirrimanu’s Aboriginal men and women, a tension that manifests itself in varied forms. According to de Ishtar one of these manifestations is expressed in men’s Law and women’s Law in Wirrimanu being equated with gendered power, and ultimately brought into competition and opposition with one another. In addition to this, de Ishtar identifies an ‘allegiance between White and Black/Indigenous male politics’ (255). I believe there are some problematic gender assumptions at work here. Gender issues in many Indigenous communities cannot be contained by non-Indigenous notions of gender, nor should they be understood on non-Indigenous terms. In many cases, Indigenous men and women will assert a symmetry in women’s Law and men’s Law, one in which the two are engaged in an ’interdependence-dependence’ relationship, in which difference is politicised but also seen as complementary. Again, perhaps these issues could have been avoided had Kapululangu people’s voices been introduced into the text to state their position on this issue, therefore illuminating Kapululangu gender relations for the reader.
In the closing chapter of this work, De Ishtar falls prey to self-congratulatory tones. This is expressed in her review of events that have occurred since her leaving the community. It is to be acknowledged that her work with and alongside Kapululangu women elders was intensely valuable, very real and emotionally powerful for all involved. The eventual dissolution of the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre is a point of contention for de Ishtar in the last chapter, and her level of emotional engagement with this concern is evident and honourable. However, the lasting impression is one in which de Ishtar is credited with maintaining (in addition to facilitating) the initiative, and all efforts after her departure are discussed in very negative and defeated terms. This overall impression is contrasted by a powerful comment that de Ishtar makes in this last chapter. She writes, ‘in an era when Indigenous people are increasingly demanding the right to speak, write and research for and among their own and are calling for Whites to stop speaking for them, it is far too common for Whites to respond by self-silencing’ (279). One can see her point, and I remain impressed by this, however, the surrounding pages do not create a dialogue in which I can honestly see this demand being met within the context of de Ishtar’s work.
I wish to restate that this book is intensely interesting and a very brave effort. Although I have raised many strong points, I do admire de Ishtar’s initiative. I feel, however, that there was a different story to be told here, namely de Ishtar’s story, as opposed to de Ishtar telling the Kapululangu women’s story. Given the wide appeal of the book, I reiterate my concern about the work’s representation of Kapululangu women and men, Wirrimanu and the relationships that govern the day-to-day lives of its residents, for what I imagine is a majority non-Indigenous audience. Overall I think the issue of representation needed to be addressed explicitly by the author, and I feel that the work would have benefited from a deeper commitment to reflexive writing.
Amanda Kearney is a tutor and researcher in the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University.