Laurie Baymarrwangga (Gawany) Baymarrwaŋa (c. 1917 – 20 August 2014) was the senior Aboriginal

traditional owner Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

of the Malarra estate, which includes

Galiwin'ku Elcho Island, known to its traditional owners as Galiwin'ku (Galiwinku) is an island off the coast of Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located at the southern end of the Wessel Islands group located in the East Arnhem ...

, Dalmana, Murruŋga, Brul-brul and the Ganatjirri Maramba salt water surrounding the islands and inclusive of some 300 other named sites. She devoted her life to the intergenerational transmission of the ancestral language and knowledge of her homelands on the

Crocodile Islands The Crocodile Islands are a group of islands belonging to the Yan-nhaŋu people of the Northern Territory of Australia. They are located off the coast of Arnhem Land in the Arafura Sea. List of islands Larger islands * Milingimbi Island, in t ...

, for the benefit of future generations. She is a great-great grandmother of the Malarra-Gunbiirrtji clan, and in 2012 was reportedly 95 years old."News for Seniors". Australian Government Department of Human Services. Issue 87, May 2012. p. 13 She spoke the Yan-nhangu language, Djambarrpuyŋu, and several other regional languages of northeast

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

. She was named Senior Northern Territory Australian of the Year, and Senior Australian of the Year in 2012. Her encyclopaedic knowledge was the inspiration for an ethnographic publication and a language documentation project.

Early life

Laurie Baymarrwangga (Gawany) Baymarrwaŋa was born c. 1917, on Murruŋga Island (largest of the outer

of north-east

), in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Career

She was first photographed by the Rev Harold Shepperdson on Milingimbi in 1925 and then by

Donald Thomson Donald Finlay Fergusson Thomson, OBE (26 June 1901 – 12 May 1970) was an Australian anthropologist and ornithologist who was largely responsible for turning the Caledon Bay crisis into a "decisive moment in the history of Aboriginal-Europea ...

on Murrungga island in April, 1937. She survived the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Japanese bombing of

Milingimbi Milingimbi Island, also Yurruwi, is the largest island of the Crocodile Islands group off the coast of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Location Milingimbi lies approximately east of Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin and west of N ...

in 1943. In the 1960s, she began a return to her island

homeland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...

at Murruŋga, becoming permanently resident in the 1970s. In 1968, she started a bilingual school under a tree on the island, and it was taken over by NT Education in 1975. In 1993, she started the Yan-nhaŋu dictionary project with fellow speakers and the anthropologist Bentley James. (Yan-nhangu Dictionary 1994-2003) In her late eighties and with no English Baymarrwaŋa worked in Yolŋu matha with Bentley, and together they visited and recorded the first Yan-nhaŋu maps (600 sites).‘Big Boss Last Leader of the Crocodile Islands: Buŋgawa bathala rom ḏäl ga rälpa ḏumurru’. Year: 2015. NITV; Runtime: 53 min, Directed By: Paul Sinclair, Produced By: Jade Sinclair Matt Dwyer, Language: Yan-nhangu language, English subtitles With barely 250 Yan-nhaŋu words recorded they began the Yan-nhaŋu dictionary team (1993-4) preparing the first Yan-nhaŋu dictionary, first ethnography, and using self-generated funds, created a family of lasting collaborative projects. Side by side they created, conceived, designed and ran the earliest Crocodile Islands Rangers and junior rangers programs, an on-line (talking-pictorial) trilingual dictionary for homelands schools, multi-generational "Language Nests" project, heritage protection projects on the fish-traps, fresh water wells, fire regimes, creating cultural artefacts, and care for and registration of sacred sites on the Crocodile Islands. Claire Bowern compiled a learner's guide to the language. Together Baymarrwaŋa and Bentley wrote the Yan-nhaŋu Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary of the Crocodile Islands with over four thousand Yan-nhaŋu words translated into Dhuwal/Dhuwala and English for children speaking Yolŋu and English. The Yan-nhaŋu Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary seeks to provide opportunities for new generations to know the language of place and walk in the footsteps of the ancestors. Together they handed out the atlas to over thirty homelands, twelve schools and hundreds of libraries Australia wide. The generosity and vision of this project spring naturally from the wisdom of kinship and reciprocity that are at the heart indigenous relations to country. The Yan-nhaŋu dictionary team continues work on Yan-nhaŋu grammar. In 1997, together Baymarrwaŋa and Bentley introduced Yan-nhaŋu into the bilingual school curriculum. In 2002, she initiated the Crocodile Islands Rangers, which she personally funded in 2009. They conceived of and negotiated the creation of a turtle sanctuary and were working towards a plan to feed local children everyday with local fish caught and distributed by local rangers, "Lima gurrku guya riya-gunhanyini ŋalimalamagu gurruṯuwaygu : We will share our fish with our kin". (Baymarrwaŋa 2002) In 2010, after a struggle stretching back to 1945, Laurie received back payments for rents owed to her as the land and sea owner of her father's estate. She donated it all, around A$400,000, to improve education and employment opportunities on the islands and to establish a 1,000 square kilometre turtle sanctuary on her marine estate. ..She wants us all to remain courageous and undaunted in our recognition of the value of cultural differences in creating a future and a nation of which we can all be proud".

Death and legacy

Laurie died in August 2014. The Crocodile Islands Rangers, which she helped establish, stated "Our wonderful patron sadly passed peacefully away in August 2014". The anthropologist Dr. Bentley James, who worked with her to create the Yan-nhaŋu Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary said on his website, ::"The very much adored, and deeply admired paramount matriarch of the Yan-nhaŋu people Laurie Baymarrwaŋa passed peacefully away in her ninety seventh year on Wednesday 20th of August. Her life was inestimable, her virtue remarkable, and her passing bequeaths a fabulous legacy. Born in the time before the coming of the missions, she remembered the old ways, the ways of kin and country. Her dream to entrust this knowledge to new generations as a foundation, a font of strength and counsel in the law, drove her to create a homeland, a school, ranger and heritage programs, marine sanctuaries, language nests and an Atlas among other gifts. Senior Australian of the year 2012, her vast knowledge of generations of social and physical geography was revered by others who themselves are old and wise. To the very end she struggled to save her ocean home from mining and exploitation, unspoiled for future generations. Baymarrwaŋa’s love and generosity for the world is something one rarely sees . . . if only it were more common. A truly great leader, a nurturer, her spirit returns to the homelands that created and compelled her". A painting of Baymarrwaŋa by artist Gill Warden was featured on the

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, ...

2019 International Women's Day poster. The film about her life won a posthumous award from the United Nations Peace Prize for Indigenous Film. 2015.

Awards and honours

* In 2011, she won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NT Research and Innovation Board for the Crocodile Islands Initiative in honour of her ongoing struggle to care for the linguistic, cultural and biological diversity of her homelands and save them from administrative closure. * She was the 2012

Senior Australian of the Year The Australian of the Year is a national award conferred on an Australian citizen by the National Australia Day Council, a not-for-profit Australian Governmentowned social enterprise. Similar awards are also conferred at the State and Territo ...

, awarded for her "leadership and commitment in caring for the Crocodile Islands biological and cultural environment".

References

External links

An evocation of Laurie Baymarrwaŋa and her life
(from ''Anggarrgoon'', a blog on Australian languages).
Baymarrwangga's Homelands Struggle
A wordpress blog recounting her struggles to save the linguistic, cultural and biological diversity of her homelands. {{DEFAULTSORT:Baymarrwangga, Laurie Year of birth missing 1910s births 2014 deaths People from the Northern Territory Indigenous Australian people