Aboriginal Studies Press recently release a second edition of its celebrated title Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk-Off.
With a new foreword from Brenda L Croft (Gurindji People), Professor of Critical Indigenous Creative Practice and Research Knowledges, ANU and Deputy Chair, AIATSIS Council, the book, first published in 2016, has received accolades for its approach to community-driven truth-telling told in both Gurindji and English.
Professor Croft was invited to support the 2014 Gurindji History Project that led to the book, by taking photographs.
"Being one of the project's photographers meant that I got to travel in the company of incredible Senior Knowledge Holders and Elders ... to important sites far and wide across Gurindji homelands,' said Professor Croft," she said.
"I was aware how privileged I was hearing personal and communal stories recounted by Elders with connections to places steeped in ancestral knowledges. Country seemed to sing and pulsate as Countrymen and women moved across it - re/memorying, reinvigorating place and people through retelling oral ancestral and communal histories."
On 23 August 1966, approximately 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, protesting against poor working conditions and the taking of their land by pastoralists. Led by Vincent Lingiari, this landmark action in 1966 precipitated the equal wages case in the pastoral industry and the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
For the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory, history is divided into Puwarraja, the Dreamtime, and Yijarni, true stories. With stories of early station life, including the landing of the first aeroplane on Gurindji Country as well as massacres and killings, the book places the Wave Hill Walk-Off into the wider context of the impact of colonisation, giving it a deeper significance than just an industrial dispute.
The new edition of Yijarni was launched at the Gurindji Freedom Day Festival in Kalkaringi, Northern Territory. The festival includes free camping for visitors, a Freedom Day march, the Karunkarni Art Exhibition, music, fireworks and the Freedom Day sports carnival where teams across the Northern Territory compete for the Vincent Lingiari shield.
In the Griffith Review, Tara June Winch described the work as "a celebration of culture, country and language, of Aboriginal activism and the trade union movement, of standing up to systemic racism and oppression".
"At its heart, this is a book about truth-telling; about the impact of genocide in the Tanami Desert; about listening to what has come before in order to know where to go today."
Renowned activist, musician and former federal minister Peter Garrett noted that it is "widely acknowledged that the1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off - with Vincent Lingiari leading the Gurindji people - was a seminal moment in the history of Aboriginal society's tragic encounters with the European occupiers of Australia'.
"I highly commend this intimate, heart wrenching, and informative account of one of the single most important events in our recent past," he said.
Historian and author Henry Reynolds said Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country was "powerful and compelling; essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of modern Australia".
