Time & tide in the Crocodile Islands : change and continuity in Yan-nhangu marine identity

Abstract

This is the first broad ranging ethnography of the Yan-nhangu people of the Crocodile Islands and Arafura Sea of Australia's northeast Arnhem Land. The Yan-nhangu are a previously unexamined sociolinguistic group of the Yolnu people. This thesis depicts Yan-nhangu links to their sea country through evidence and anecdote gathered by participation in the everyday practices of island life. The ocean is focal, both as a physical space and as a mental map inscribed with cosmic meaning. In its currents, colours and sounds are the manifestation of ancestral powers at work beneath its surface. A site of engagement and a place of memories, it is fundamental to Yan-nhangu identity. Here presented are the social, mythological, ecological and linguistic relations of the Yan-nhangu set in the historical and contemporary contexts of the region. In revealing the enduring features of Yan-nhangu distinctiveness within the broader context of Yolnu culture four themes provide a framework for discussion: similarity and difference, spiritual connection to place, physical connection to place, and the ongoing significance of change and continuity. I explore the topics of Yan-nhangu history, cosmology (mythology), social organisation, language, ecological relations and economy of turtle resource exchange. A shared Yolnu cosmology supports a superordinate mythic and ideational framework articulating the conflicts and competitions of social practice. Distinctive metaphors, rhetoric and ancestral emblems lend coherence to relations of connection and differentiation in the perspectives of Yolnu kin and groups. For the Yan-nhangu the ancestral bequest of the sea is implicated in their every day experience, in relations with kin, and in the historical and contemporary expressions of their identity, in life on their islands - relations that are increasingly played out in the light of the powerfully transformative influences of the colonial settler State. Through a specific focus on the Yan-nhangu, this thesis draws attention to the lacuna in Australian research into marine based indigenous societies and their struggle to govern their resources. For the Yan-nhangu change and continuities in this struggle can only be understood in relation to the broader history of the Yolnu, and more recent engagements shaped and constrained by the State. Show more