ABSTRACT
For the purpose of this chapter we assume that the past is an aspect of real time, universally experienced by all human beings, although perceived and structured by people of different cultures in different ways. Our geographic focus is Yirrkala, in the Northern Territory of Australia. Some 3000 Yolngu-speaking people are the traditional owners of lands in northeastern Arnhem Land consisting of an area of approximately 8 500 km2; since passage of the 1976 Land Rights Act, they are also owners in Australian law. Yirrkala, on the Gove Peninsula, is situated approximately 650 km east of Darwin. Here, on a site overlooking the Arafura Sea and near a permanent source of fresh water, Daymbalipu Mununggurr’s father, father’s brothers and other Yolngu leaders helped to establish a mission station in the 1930s. During the first years of the mission’s existence, between 50 and 100 Yolngu people were regularly staying there. For the most part they were members of the clans on whose land the mission station was located, the clans with nearby lands and those with close marriage ties. Some 900 Yolngu now live at Yirrkala or on homeland centres (outstations) affiliated with Yirrkala.
