Yorro Yorro
Everything Standing Up Alive
by David Mowaljarlai & Jutta Malnic
In a remarkable collaboration, Aboriginal elder David Mowaljarlai, from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and photographer Jutta Malnic rekindle a creation story that reaches back 60,000 years and is the oldest collective memory of humankind.
Yorro Yorro translated from Ngarinyin means 'everything standing up alive'. It follows the journey of original creation in the Kimberley and renewal of nature. Yorro Yorro is a testament to the extraordinary collective knowledge of the Wandjina peoples of the Kimberley.
Illustrated with more than 120 colour photographs, including extraordinary examples of rock paintings, Yorro Yorro tells of the Wandjina creation spirits and their ‘crossing over’ into ancestral beings and then eventually into human form.
Note from BHB
Referenced extensively throughout Gordon White’s superb Ani.Mystic, Yorro Yorro is a deeply meaningful and framework-shifting experience, illustrating Indigenous animistic cosmovisions at their most resonant.
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Table of Contents
Cultural Sensitivity
Foreword
Publisher’s Note
Preface
Introduction
Map
PART I - A JOURNEY TO THE STARS
1 Start
2 Towards the Little Lights
3 Snakes
4 Rambud
5 Turnback
6 Sydney
7 Derby
8 The Wunnan
9 Kalumburu
10 The Shield around the Light
11 Angguban - the Cloud Dreaming
12 Mowaela - the Duelling Place
13 Waanangga - the Sugarbag Site
14 A Hunting Diversion
15 Alwayu - Dreaming of Daylight and Darkness
16 The Old Pelican
17 The Track Wandjinas
PART II - MOWALJARLAI
18 Young Days
19 Mission Training
20 War
21 US Marine
22 Great Changes
PART III - LALAI
23 Creation in the Kimberly
24 The Earth Serpent
25 Law
26 Dulugun
With Argula to Dulugun
Another Argula Story
Getting Locked Up in the Underworld
You Can’t Escape Your Life Record
27 Songs
How the Crocodile Brought Fire
Wunggu Wodarre Yallinballi Ngagnari
The Seaplane that Fell Down
28 Healing
29 The Flood
30 Bandaiyan - Corpus Australis
31 A Wandjina Died
32 Guyan Guyan
Appendices
1 Features of a Wandjina
2 Waangga, Sugarbag
3 Time Periods
4 Bandaiyan, Corpus Australis
Glossary of Ngarinyin, Worrorra, Wunambal
Glossary of other words
Index of Illustrations
General Index
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More than 120 colour photographs throughout.
Paperback Edition
248 pages. Printed card cover.
ISBN: 9781925360059
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Press, reviews, endorsements
"Mowarljarlai was a visionary. His notion of two-way thinking is as authentic and provocative and relevant as ever."
Tim Winton
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About the Authors
The late David Mowaljarlai was a senior traditional lawman of the Ngarinyin people in the West Kimberley, Western Australia. Not only he was an extraordinary painter, he was an anthropologist, teacher preacher, story teller and linguist. He was a member of the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), and the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee of the West Australian Museum. Mowaljarlai was Aboriginal of the Year in 1991, and he was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1993
Jutta Malnic, a Sydney photographer, was travelling in the Kimberley to photograph rock art in 1980 when she met David Mowaljarlai. She began a six-week project with him in 1986 that grew into six years. Jutta wrote Yorro Yorro as a non-Indigenous collaborator in conjunction with David, combining the journal of her travels in the remote northern Kimberley with his cultural knowledge of the rock art in the area and the songs and stories which inspired them.