Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to Yatungka
and her husband Warri, the last two Mandildjara people to live in the
traditional way on the Western Gibson Desert of Australia. William Peasley wrote their saga in The Last of the Nomads.
Aborigines have one of the oldest continuous cultures on
Earth. They have lived in Australia for
at least 40,000 years, some say 60,000. Nomads
first inhabited the more fertile regions, leaving the deserts for later. Folks have lived in the Gibson for maybe
20,000 years. Most readers, if dropped
off in the Gibson, naked, with a spear and boomerang, would be dead in a day or
three. Water is extremely scarce. For the paleface colonizers, the desert is
dangerous, miserable, a land of horrors.
For Aborigines, it was home sweet home, where they belonged, a sacred
place. They had an intimate understanding
of the land, and learned how to live in balance with it.
Yatungka and Warri spent most of their adult lives as pariahs,
because their relationship violated a tribal law that defined permitted and forbidden
marriages. Laws were taken very
seriously. If they returned to their
people, they might be beaten, or even killed.
So, their family lived away from the tribe, wandering from waterhole to
waterhole, hunting and foraging.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the government made efforts to move
the Aborigines into settlements, where intense culture shock led many to lose
their identity, become massively depressed alcoholics, and abandon their
ancient traditions. The sons and kinfolk
who stayed with Yatungka and Warri eventually moved off to civilization, but
the outlaw couple feared to join them.
Anyway, in 1977, it was the third year of an extreme drought,
the worst in a century, maybe the worst in many centuries. The kinfolk of the outlaw couple were worried
about them. Mudjon was a respected elder
who had been raised on the desert in the traditional way. He knew all the waterholes, and cared about Yatungka
and Warri. His dream was to take the Mandildjara
people back to their desert paradise, return to the old ways, and preserve
their traditions. Few of the young were interested.
Mudjon asked a white friend to help him search for the
couple, and he agreed. Mudjon was joined
by five white lads, including Peasley.
They loaded up three vehicles and took off across the vast roadless
desert. Mudjon knew that this was
probably his last visit to the territory of his people, and the last time a
traditional Aborigine would drink from each well, or leave footprints in the
dirt. Peasley noted, “It was very sad
for him to move through the land where once his people hunted and laughed and
sang around the campfires.”
The chapters describing the long search contain some fascinating
passages about the old way of life. Mudjon was a master at reading the land, noticing
the countless slight details that provided strong and detailed messages to him,
but were invisible to the whites. Without
a map for the 1,500 km (932 mi) journey, he guided the team from waterhole to
waterhole, looking for signs of the couple.
It was a powerful experience for him, to see old campsites, windbreaks,
caves, springs, rock paintings, and other artifacts — the remains of an ancient
culture.
Eventually they found signs of the missing couple. At several locations, Mudjon started a
brushfire that sent smoke high into the sky, where it would have been visible
from up to 160 km (99 mi) away. Warri
did not respond with a smoke signal.
It was an ancient custom of the desert people to routinely
light brushfires as they journeyed from waterhole to waterhole. This had three benefits. (1) Fire flushed out hidden game. (2) It signaled their progress to other
groups. (3) It regenerated the earth and
stimulated plant growth. Fresh green
sprouts attracted game. Wildlife became
dependent on burning. This was called
firestick farming. In recent decades, in
regions no longer visited, the burning has ceased, the water holes are not kept
cleared, and animal and bird life largely disappeared.
One happy day, they saw smoke from Warri, and drove to his
campsite. When Mudjon greeted him, there
were no smiles, hugs, or handshakes.
Warri was about 150 cm (5 ft) tall, naked, extremely thin, and both eyes
were inflamed. He wasn’t strong enough
to hunt, so they were living on quandongs (peach-like fruit). Yatungka returned from foraging with several
dingo dogs. She displayed no signs of
excitement. She was about 165 cm (5’ 5”)
tall, younger, naked, very thin, but in much better physical condition.
They would not survive much longer at the waterhole. The rescue party knew that the nearest well
that still had some water was 150 km (93 mi) away, an impossible journey on
foot. The couple agreed to return to the
Wiluna settlement with Mudjon and company.
They wanted to see their sons again.
Mudjon assured them that there would be no drama about the taboo
violated long ago.
In Wiluna, many folks came to look at the long-missing couple,
and were stunned to see their emaciated condition. “There were no greetings, no shouts of joy, in
fact there was no sign of recognition on either side, and yet the sons of Warri
and Yatungka were within a few meters of their parents.” Tears streamed down the cheeks of Warri and
many others. A few months later, Mudjon
got very sick, declined, and died. A
year after their return, Warri and Yatungka caught a disease. He died in April 1979, and she died a few
weeks later.
For me, this was a powerful book, not primarily for what it
said, but for the silent message unperceived by the white heroes who came to
the rescue. Peasley spent his boyhood on
a farm in Australia, and he sometimes discovered signs of prehistoric
campsites. He felt sad that, after more
than 40,000 years on the land, the people had not been able to leave behind
anything more significant than simple campsites, grinding stones, rock
paintings, and so on.
For me, this low impact living was an amazing
achievement. They successfully adapted
to a hot dry ecosystem, and it was a wonderful home for them. What a terrible problem! The Gibson Desert that the rescue party drove
across looked nearly the same as it did 1,000 years ago, or 10,000. The silent message screams “genuine
sustainability, beautiful, healthy culture!”
Humans are also capable of adapting to godforsaken nightmares
like Chicago, jammed together with millions of isolated, anxious, stressed out,
depressed strangers… ah, the wonders of progress! The rescue party was proud of their advanced
technology, which gave them the ability to dominate, exploit, and rubbish the
continent. What significant artifacts will
they leave behind to impress the youngsters of generations yet to be born? Will the land be in no worse condition in
another 1,000 or 10,000 years? These questions
are taboo, heresy in a culture whose god-word is Growth.
Peasley did confess to having some uncomfortable
thoughts. When the rescue party knew
that the couple was alive and nearby, he realized, “We were about to intrude
into the lives of the last nomadic people in the Western Gibson Desert, and in
doing so, it was possible that we might be responsible for bringing to an end a
way of life that had gone on for several thousand years.”
Peasley, William John, The
Last of the Nomads, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle,
Australia, 1983.
The
Last Nomads is a 45 minute Australian documentary of this story.
The Future
Eaters provides an environmental history of wild Australia, the early human
impacts, the mass extinctions, and the lessons painfully learned.
The
Life and Adventures of William Buckley tells the story of an Englishman who
abandoned civilization and spent 32 years as a hunter-gatherer in the early
days of Australian colonization.
