LAUSR

The Aboriginal people of North East Arnhem Land, Australia, are a diverse community speaking several languages, but united through a kinship system connecting individuals and clans between two moieties of the Yolngu nation: the Yirritja and Dhuwa (1,2). Every animate or inanimate object belongs to either Yirritja or Dhuwa moiety, and both moieties complement each other in the Yolngu structure. The history of this Indigenous nation has been one of survival and resilience, especially during the battle for control of their ancestral lands and maritime borders that culminated in the Land Rights Act of the Northern Territory 1977 (3). The Yolngu nation has a history of engaging and negotiating knowledge landscapes of the ‘Other’, ie, Macassan traders and Christian Missionaries (3-6), and their ability to combine traditional and contemporary methods of communication is embellished in the Yirrkala Bark Petition to the Australian Parliament to recognize the ownership of their land (3,6). Here the relatively new technology of the cold, heavy, steel typewriter was incorporated with the traditional bark painting to convey complex and intricate stories of creation, ceremony and law.