| Narrative | Ronnie Wavehill says, in Charola and Meakins (2016, p 42): ‘The ngumpin [Aboriginal people who had been butchering a beast] ran away southwards, away from Tartarr. They went downstream a bit and then out across the rocks. The kartiya [whitefellas] were chasing them on horseback, galloping like mad. The ngumpin stopped there in the dry creek and hooked up their spears. “Don’t go”, the kartiya boss was saying. “Don’t get close otherwise we’ll get speared.” They were frightened of the ngumpin. The horsemen never caught up to them, so a lot of them got away. A horse can gallop but those ngumpin were very good runners’.
Phillip Yamba Jimmy spoke to the Northern Territory News about Tartarr (Hope, 2016, p 12): ‘Men with rifles and Aboriginal trackers returned soon after and shot anyone they could. The version told by Mr Jimmy has it that people were sat around a tree and murdered one by one. He said the families let the dead decompose in the sun then collected the bones in paperbark and carried them 10km to Seale Gorge, a sacred site of the Gurindji and associated tribes...The Tartarr story featured on the 1967 land petition signed in thumbprint by Vincent Ligiari and other Wave Hill walk-off leaders...’.
The 1967 Gurindji Petition to the Governor-General (National Museum of Australia 1967, para. 2) included: ‘Our people have lived here from time immemorial and our culture, myths, dreaming and sacred places have evolved in this land. Many of our forefathers were killed in the early days while trying to retain it’. And (para. 3): ‘We have begun to build our own homestead on the banks of beautiful Wattie Creek in the Seal [sic] Yard area, where there is permanent water. This is the main place of our dreaming only a few miles from the Seal [sic] Gorge where we have kept the bones of our martyrs all these years since white men killed many of our people’. |
