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In remembering this extraordinary Aboriginal leader, it is difficult to forget the meaning of his family name, Yunupingu – which in the Gumatj dialect of the Yolŋu Matha language means “the rock that stands against time”.
Across so many decades, Yunupingu’s deeds and actions in the struggles for lands, seas, language and rights have surely reflected the meaning of that name. From his father’s campfire accounts of surviving being shot by Europeans in the 1920s “by a man licensed to do so”, to becoming the longest-serving member and chairman of the powerful Northern Land Council, leading the Yothu Yindi Foundation and hosting the annual Garma festival. His passing leaves an indelible mark far beyond the north-east Arnhem Land home of his people.
Yunupingu was born in 1948 at Gunyangara on Melville Bay, across the waters from the aluminium mine and processing plant which was to dominate his and his people’s lives for so many decades. He grew up on a beach in Yirrkala in “a series of humpies made out of bent iron and a mix of stringybark and paperbark”, as he wrote for the Monthly.
It was around the time of the arrival of Methodist missionaries at Yirrkala, arguably a blessing and protection from the period of the “cattle prospectors and land thieves who hunted and killed Yolngu women and children”.
Schooling at the mission, insistently encouraged by his parents, followed by a two-year stint at a theological college in Brisbane gave Yunupingu the English language, not to mention an introduction to the non-Yolŋu world. Not that, in a sense, he needed it. In 1963, as a 15-year-old, he had assisted in the drafting and translation of the 1963 bark petitions – the Yolŋu clans’ unsuccessful attempt to stop mining at Gove.
From childhood and indeed for his whole life, Yunupingu was deeply schooled in and promoted traditional law and religious practice through language, song and dance. Heavily influenced by his father, but also by ceremonial leaders from other clans in the region, it was to be the backbone of his commitment and activism.
The 1973-74 the Gough Whitlam-appointed Woodward royal commission, which followed a failure to win land rights in the Northern Territory’s supreme court, transformed the landscape of the struggle and launched Yunupingu’s political career. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976 was endorsed by the then Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Fraser.
In 1977 Yunupingu was elected as chair of the Northern Land Council – a position he held on and off until 1992. He remained a member representing his people until 1998. Over that time and beyond, as chair of the Garma festival, he would meet and negotiate with – and at times confront – prime ministers, from Bob Hawke to Anthony Albanese.
Along with the Central Land Council chair Wenten Rubuntja, and given the promise of a treaty, he embraced Hawke at the 1988 Barunga festival. Yet when the Barunga statement painting was displayed by Hawke, it was met by a deep sadness, as Yunupingu wrote in 2008:
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A few years later I travel to Canberra to hang a painting that was dreamed on that day: the Barunga statement. I think that I am in Canberra for a celebration but it is a funeral – it is Bob’s last day as prime minister and he sheds a tear as he hangs the painting. I am sure that his tears are for his own failure – we have no treaty; his promise was hollow and he has not delivered – but they are genuine tears from a genuine man who tried leadership and was caught out by politics.
Yunupingu’s preparedness to take on local and federal politicians was legendary, perhaps no more so than his retort to the then NT chief minister, Shane Stone, in 1996 when Stone dismissed an action by the NLC to take on his government over human rights. Stone called Yunupingu “just another whingeing, whining, carping black”. The response? Just another “redneck”.
Yunupingu won national recognition: Australian of the Year in 1978, an AM in 1985 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne in 2015 – not to mention being recognised by the National Trust as one of Australia’s “100 living national treasures”. In 2017 he was one of three Indigenous Australians honoured by Australia Post in the Legends commemorative stamp series marking the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum.
With end-stage kidney disease that killed his younger brother, the musician and educator Dr M, and despite a successful transplant, Yunupingu wrote in 2016 that he could see his life was coming to a close:
I have lived my song cycle and I have done what I can to translate the concepts of the Yolngu world into the reality of my life … And of course, I have mixed feelings when I reflect on my life’s work. I feel a deep sadness at times, yet I know that I have done much that is useful. I know that I have secured my family’s birthright – we will not drift off with the tide; we will stand and endure, and our names will pass down through the decades and the centuries.
Indeed the “rock that stands against time”. His is a voice that should not be forgotten. As he said, it is now “for others to do the singing”.
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Chips Mackinolty is a Darwin-based writer and artist who has worked for the NLC on and off since the 1980s
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All images and naming protocols used in this article have been approved by the Yunupingu family
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